Box Turtle Bulletin

Nicolosi: Gays Would Be “Jerking Off In Hamburgers All Over”

Another former patient of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi comes forward

Jim Burroway

May 3rd, 2008

Earlier this week, Daniel Gonzales provided his reaction to the recent Byrd, Nicolosi & Potts paper that appeared in Psychological Reports. Daniel’s comments were based on his own experience as a former patient of Dr. Nicolosi’s:

In my first session of therapy with Dr. Nicolosi he repeatedly pressed myself and my father, who was there with me, asking us if I had been molested as a child — which I hadn’t. In fact, much of that first session was focused on “digging around” for the supposed cause of my homosexuality.

Gabriel Arana, a Cornell University grad student and columnist for the Cornell Daily Sun, has come forward to write about his remarkably similar experience with Dr. Nicolosi in a recent column:

For three years I had weekly sessions with Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, president of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Dr. Nicolosi thought that homosexuality was a pathology, a sublimated desire to reconnect with one’s lost masculinity. The theory: under-attentive fathers and over-attentive mothers create gay children. The purpose of therapy was to put me in touch with my masculine identity and thereby change my sexual orientation.

…

Years after I stopped therapy, I requested the case notes, knowing they would be destroyed after seven years. They provided an annotated collection of long-forgotten events. Next to the description of an argument with a male friend, Dr. Nicolosi scribbled “needs to look at the real source.” This was code: whatever the problem, it would be traced back to my lost masculine sense of self; I was angry because my friend had not paid attention to me as my father had not. Much of therapy also involved uncovering the numerous ways in which my parents had cheated me (as a teenager, I was more than happy to blame things on them).

According to Arana, Dr. Nicolosi didn’t try to conceal his utter disgust with gay people:

Disgust with what was termed the “gay lifestyle” was implicit in therapy. I remember Dr. Nicolosi telling me, in response to the question of whether one could easily contract HIV from semen, that if this were the case then gays would be “jerking off in hamburgers all over” to infect people.

That is was passes for ethical professionalism at NARTH. As does this:

…I know Dr. Robert Spitzer’s study well. Dr. Nicolosi asked me to participate in it, but instructed me not to reveal that he had referred me; while he wanted his organization’s views represented, he did not want to bring into question the study’s integrity.

The Spitzer study is the famous ex-gay study that purported to show that people can change their sexual orientation. However, the study was stacked with people who had a vested interest in demonstrating change. According to Dr. Spitzer, “the majority of participants (78 percent) had publicly spoken in favor of efforts to change homosexual orientation, often at their church,” and “nineteen percent of the participants were mental health professionals or directors of ex-gay ministries.” Among that 19% was Alan Chambers and Randy Thomas, Exodus International’s president and vice-president.

By the way, this is not the first time we’ve seen allegations that Nicolosi advised his clients to lie to Spitzer. Daniel Gonzales described a very similar conversation with Nicolosi nearly three years ago:

Nicolosi told me it would be great if I could represent the positive/success side of ex-gays in this study. Joseph Nicolosi asked me to lie to Spitzer when I called in for my study interview by denying Nicolosi had referred me. Turned off by this attempted manipulation, I never went through with taking part in the Spitzer study.

Hat tip: Ex-Gay Watch

NARTH Builds An Echo Chamber

Jim Burroway

May 1st, 2008

The April 2008 edition of the pay-to-publish vanity journal Psychological Reports features a new report from NARTH. Written by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, past president Joseph Nicolosi, and Richard W. Potts, the report carries the unwieldy but self-descriptive title, “Clients perceptions of how reorientation therapy and self-help can promote changes in sexual orientation.” While the title describes what the authors meant to show — how clients describe the benefits of reparative therapy — the report itself actually illustrates something very different: the ex-gay movement’s ability to instill an almost robot-like parroting of ex-gay rhetoric among their clients.

In ordinary surveys in the real world, there are always respondents whose answers don’t fit the authors’ hypothesis. In Stanton and Jones’ recent ex-gay study for example, there were those who claimed to have changed and those who didn’t (i.e. the “failures”). Both were represented in the paper because that’s just how the real world works. Absolute and total conformity to any hypothesis is virtually impossible.

But NARTH doesn’t operate in the real world. Not one of the 142 responses in the 26-page article deviated even slightly from the NARTH party line. The only responses appearing in this paper fully supported NARTH’s therapeutic framework.

Perfect outcomes like this may be found in the world of politically repressive regimes where dictators win “elections” by near-unanimous votes. But it is absolutely unheard of in scientific literature. Did the authors discard the responses that didn’t fit their preconceived theories? Or was their echo chamber so fully sealed that no dissent could even enter?

You can read more about it in our latest report, “Repeat After Me”: The Reparative Therapy Echo Chamber.

Ex-Gay Therapy: “Like Throwing Spaghetti At A Wall”

A video critique of the latest ex-gay therapy paper by Bryd, Nicolosi & Potts

Daniel Gonzales

May 1st, 2008

A new paper by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, past president Joseph Nicolosi, and Richard Potts was supposed to show what therapeutic techniques former clients of ex-gay therapy found effective. But what the paper really showed was how effectively those former patients absorbed and accepted the ex-gay movement’s distortions of human sexuality.

Daniel Gonzales, a former patient of Dr. Nicolosi shares his reaction.

You can read our analysis of the Byrd, Nicolosi & Potts paper in our latest report, “Repeat After Me:” The Reparative Therapy Echo Chamber.

Click here to read the video transcript

Father of Ex-Gay Rants NARTHisms in Utah

Timothy Kincaid

April 3rd, 2008

A while back, Belinda Jensen, the president of the American Fork High School PTSA in Utah became impressed with Standard of Liberty, an LDS-oriented anti-gay organization. So she invited the group to make a presentation.

Standard of Liberty, and it’s co-founder Stephen Graham, are passionate, but not particularly accurate or logical.

Q: You say homosexuality is physically harmful. How?

A: Homosexual sex (sodomy), causes chronic illnesses and life-threatening disease (HIV/AIDS), shortening life by an average of 20 years. The human body is simply not made for this behavior. In addition, adopting the “gay” identity often masks dangerous psychological problems that need attention.

Q: Doesn’t heterosexual sex carry the same physical risks as homosexual sex?

A: No, none, if there is abstinence before marriage, and fidelity and healthy, normal sexual intercourse in marriage.

Because, of course, he thinks fidelity is by definition missing from gay relationships.

And my favorites:

Q: Should even those privately struggling with SSA, who have not “acted out,” be chastened, offered help and correction, and held accountable by the church?

A: Yes. The church should be concerned with the person’s soul. People with this problem have become involved in perverse and sinful lust to the detriment of their eternal salvation.

and

Q: How many really change from unwanted homosexuality?

A: A new study reports a 38% success rate. An additional 29% had made progress and were committed to continuing their efforts. That’s a combined total of 77% experiencing success. (Jones and Yarhouse, 2007) In the mental heath profession, this rate of success is considered very high.

You may recall that the Jones and Yarhouse study revealed little to no statistally measurable change in orientation in the prospective sample. The much touted “successes” were either in recollection (which again were quite small) or were those who had decided to no longer call themselves “gay”. However, they still identified their orientation as homosexual (”I’m not gay but my attractions are”).

In short, the Jones and Yarhouse study was funded and fully supported by Exodus and conducted by two researchers who were avid supporters of ex-gay ministries. They wanted to study 300 participants, but after more than a year, they could only find 57 willing to participate. They then changed the rules for acceptance in order to increase the total to 98. After following this sample for 4 years, 25 dropped out. Of the remainder, only 11 reported “satisfactory, if not uncomplicated, heterosexual adjustment.” Another 17 decided that a lifetime of celibacy was good enough.

But for some reason Jensen thought that Stephen Graham had just the presentation that she wanted for the Parents, Teachers and Students Association. The principle of the High School was not so convinced and cancelled Graham’s presentation.

Undeterred, Graham shifted the forum to a local library. In his speech his anti-gay activist motivations became clear.

Standard of Liberty co-founder Stephen Graham began with an account of how his son overcame gay tendencies after counseling, then screened individual film segments detailing the “gay agenda,” “gay demands” and “gay agenda in schools.”

Graham relied heavily on NARTH materials:

Graham presented statistics from www.narth.com, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. Some of the most common concerns for gay men, he said, include HIV/AIDS, marijuana, Ecstasy, amphetamines, sexually transmitted diseases, suicide, heart disease, anorexia, anal warts and anal cancers.

“These things do occur in normal population, but not nearly at the rate as in people troubled with homosexuality,” he said.

Along with some unidentified 1993 video, Julie Harren-Hamilton’s 2006 DVD, Homosexuality 101, starring Alan Chambers, Julie Harren, Mike Ensley, Christine Sneeringer, and Jack Harren, was featured both on his site and in his speech.

Various representatives from the Utah Pride Center were at the presentation to counter Graham’s propaganda.

The Utah Pride Center will hold another meeting to offer information on resources for parents and youths at the library at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 9.

“Refried Freud” — Psychoanalysis and Ex-Gay Therapy

Jim Burroway

March 30th, 2008

Beyond Ex-Gay co-founder Christine Bakke is truly a delightful woman. I got to spend a little bit of time with her again last February in Memphis during the Beyond Ex-gay Mid-South Regional Gathering. Not nearly enough time though — she was exceptionally busy putting together the art show for the weekend.

Last Friday, Christine posted a very thoughtful essay inspired by Peterson Toscano’s comments that ex-gay ministries are still depend on the developmental theories of Sigmund Freud — “Refried Freud” he called it. Which, when you think of it, means that the ex-gay movement is stuck in a very peculiar time warp. Most of their operating theories are founded on some rather ancient Freudian theories that the rest of psychology has largely abandoned.

Some of us are old enough to remember when Freudian psychoanalysis was all the rage back in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Everyone who was anyone, it seemed, was seeing an analyst. And everyone who was anyone was just as messed up after seeing their analyst as they were before. It’s no wonder that Freudian psychoanalysis has largely fallen by the wayside. As a discipline, they remained too wedded to a narrow set of untested and untestable theories, while the rest of psychology and psychiatry honed their methods and understanding over generations of research and observation, throwing out old theories when they were disproved and adopting new ones as they came along.

Meanwhile, Freudian analysts and their ex-gay therapy counterparts, undeterred by the march of time, continued to press forward with their oft-parodied opening gambit: “So now, tell me about your mother.”

Christine Bakke knows where that leads all too well:

The fishing expeditions (a friend started to believe he didn’t feel his father’s love after being badgered with, “did your father say he loved you? It doesn’t matter if you knew; did he say it? He didn’t say it? Then you didn’t really know it, did you? Of course you didn’t know it; didn’t feel it. How can a child know it if they’re not explicitly told it?” and so on) and leading questions and suggestions (one pastor’s wife suggested I make up abusive things that might have happened to me, so that I could break the curse of satan, just in case I didn’t remember specific things that might have happened to me in my life. I forcefully refused.) I was even told that sometimes women can be gay because they have not been able to grow out of the stage of penis envy.

I knew one women whose therapist gave her assignments to flirt with men. An ex-gay guy who went on several dates to try to learn how to be with a woman (without disclosing that he identified as ex-gay), on the recommendation of his therapist. A woman who was counseled by the leader of the ex-gay group that women should wear makeup (”need to put some paint on the side of the barn”). A man who changed his last name because his ex-gay therapy led him to believe that his parents were to blame for him being gay. A woman who insinuated that she had been abused because she felt like her story didn’t “fit” the ex-gay model without some kind of a root cause. A young man who said that after he got out of the ex-gay movement and was finished with reparative therapy, that’s when the real repairing began. He had to repair the relationships with his family after buying into the belief that they were distant from him and made him gay.

The American Psychological Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973. In doing so, they relied on non-psychoanalyitic studies like those of Evelyn Hooker. But the American Psychoanalytical Association dismissed non-psychoanalyic studies as “superficial.” This created a strange closed-off echo chamber where evidence that ran counter to a theory was thrown out because it didn’t fit the theory. In fact, the APsyA remained hostile to homosexuality until 1991, when openly gay candidates were for the first time allowed to apply for acceptance by the APsyA.

Since then, the APsyA has begun to consider the implications of research in a whole host of mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which today are regarded as being at least partly physiological disorders. This would have been anathema to psychoanalysts a mere generation ago. Last year, the APsyA issued a statement supporting same-sex marriage. That’s quite an improvement since 1991.

But ex-gay therapies continue to rely on the same outdated theories that once threatened to make psychoanalysis a historical footnote. While the APsyA are allowing nonpsychoanalytic research to inform their work, ex-gay ministries remain stuck firmly in the past. But the problem with relying on untested and untestable theories is that they are no more scientific than any other folk remedies or superstitions. And some of these remedies may be damaging. Christine Bakke contrasts her experience with therapists and misguided religious-based lay leaders, and concludes:

Of course, like in my case, even licensed therapists who have an ex-gay mindset and agenda can be just as damaging as the lay leaders. Sometimes I can’t decide which is worse. Counseling by a therapist we think should know the best because we think they’re the experts and we trust them more, or lay leaders who we think love us more because we are not paying them. No matter what, ex-gay counseling done by therapists or lay leaders, many poorly equipped through books, Exodus conferences, Living Waters training programs (one week long), Love Won Out day-long conferences, on-the-job training, or for some, nothing more than being ex-gay themselves, mixed with refried Freud, is a recipe for disaster.

I highly recommend you read her entire essay.

Exodus and Narth Review “For the Bible Tells Me So”

Timothy Kincaid

March 15th, 2008

Daniel Karslake observed that much of the debate over homosexuality and Scripture was conducted by shouting at each other. He set out to create a documentary that would argue his position without villifying those who disagree with him.

He succeeded admirably. The movie received positive reviews from over 90% of critics and was rumored to be on the Oscar short list.

A number of religious leaders were invited to participate in a panel discussion at Stetson University in Florida on March 10th. Among them were representatives from Exodus and Narth as well as liberal and conservative local ministers. The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports the response.

Overall, the movie won praise from both the conservative and liberal panel members.

“I loved that the core of it was families’ stories,” said Mike Ensley, a counselor with Exodus Ministries, which helps youth wanting to overcome homosexuality.

Not all response was in the form of praise

Dissenting about some of the movie’s science was Julie Harren Hamilton, a Palm Beach psychologist and president-elect of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, which helps clients change their sexual orientation.

She disputed the suggestion that homosexuality is simply genetic, arguing that the causes are more complicated.

Karslake, the filmmaker, defended his research but agreed with Hamilton that everyone should study the issues for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

The movie is now available on DVD. While this is hardly a perfect documentary or the final word on the subject, it is undoubtedly a powerful and effective message. As the New York Times critic put it

But there is no denying that the film, however inelegant, fills a need. The inevitable DVD should be packaged in a plain cardboard sleeve, so that viewers can carry it in their pockets and, if confronted by a homophobe, hand it over and say, “Watch this, then get back to me.”

Sadly, I doubt it was at all able to change the views of Ensley or Harren-Hamilton.

The Grey Zone

Jim Burroway

January 31st, 2008

Last week, we reported on the videos posted online by the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) which were plastered with warnings about content ownership and permissions. We described their paranoid attempt to circumvent free debate under the copyright law’s “fair use” provision.

Now Ex-Gay Watch was tipped to a video on YouTube which challenges NARTH’s attempt to curb free debate. And in doing so, the video provides an brilliant illustration of how feeble many of NARTH’s theories really are. Enjoy!

Open Debate and NARTH’s Paranoia

Jim Burroway

January 22nd, 2008

Ex-Gay Watch’s David Roberts noticed that the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) has posted six videos from their 2007 conference on their web site. I haven’t had a chance to look at their videos yet, but you don’t have to look far to see something very odd — like this red-lettered warning at the top of the page:

Video on this web site cannot be copied, reproduced, downloaded or used in any way other than for viewing on the NARTH web site. Any violation thereof will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

That same message appears on each video’s opening screen. And in each video, there’s a permanent subtitle, “Property of NARTH.com,” which remains at the bottom of the screen throughout the video.

Aside from the technical difficulties of complying with this warning (most media players silently download an copy of the video while playing it — is my mother in trouble because she doesn’t know how to clear her cache?), a much bigger question looms: what is NARTH afraid of?

Copyright law already holds that nobody can copy someone else’s work — even with attribution — without obtaining prior permission from the owner of that work. NARTH’s property is already protected by law just as Box Turtle Bulletin’s is, so it can’t be that.

Companies and nonprofits routinely generate material which they consider “proprietary” and are strictly controlled according to who has access to the information and how it is handled. This kind of information, which typically includes competition-sensitive data, is further protected by law beyond the normal copyright restrictions. But putting “proprietary information” on the World Wide Web for free and without any sort of firewall removes the sensitive nature of the information, and such protections become moot. Clearly, NARTH isn’t afraid of the information “falling into the wrong hands,” so it can’t be that either.

Copyright law also holds that very brief quotations from someone else’s work can be copied when offering a critical examination of that work or the ideas behind it. Those brief copies are protected under a legal principle known “Fair Use.” NARTH’s attempt to run around copyright law notwithstanding, it’s a critically important part of free debate and examination. It’s the principle that allows writers to write book reviews without having to obtain prior permission for brief quotes. It’s also the principle that allows theologians, theoreticians, scientists and other academics to debate and critique each other’s work, free from the stifling strictures of prior permission. In sort, it also allows for the free discussion of differing worldviews, values and philosophies which make informed debate possible. And since NARTH claims they’ve consistently called for “an openness to differing worldviews, values and philosophies,” surely their objection isn’t that, is it?

So what is NARTH worried about?

Are they worried that a critical watchdog group might — oh, I don’t know — use a very small snippet from their own statements in order to examine and critically discuss some of those “differing worldviews, values and philosophies” — and how they impact real people, real families, and real sons and daughters?

If that’s what NARTH is afraid of, then their latest attempt to infringe upon the legal principles of “fair use” is simply laughable in the face of their claims of wanting open debate for “differing worldviews, values, and philosophies.” David Roberts observes:

It’s hard not to find some humor in a character like [past NARTH president Joseph] Nicolosi, but this truly is a silly thing to do. Like the process by which reparative therapists form their claims, hording information and discussion like this is really the antithesis of what scientific thought is all about. If they truly believe their claims will hold up under scrutiny, well then let others scrutinize freely.

Hat tip: Ex-Gay Watch.

Video: Inside “Love Won Out”

In this multi-part series of videos Box Turtle Bulletin editor Jim Burroway discusses attending Love Won Out.

Daniel Gonzales

January 14th, 2008

Today’s videos focus on Joseph Nicolosi, who until recently always delivered Love Won Out’s opening session on “The Condition of Male Homosexuality.” In the first video Jim recalls an encounter with a greiving father attending LWO. Jim believes the message of LWO is serving to keep a relational wedge between the father and his son. In the second video Jim discusses Joseph Nicolosi’s acknowledgment that one of his former patients, Daniel Gonzales, is outside the church conference protesting.

Driving A Wedge Between Father And Son

Nicolosi Acknowledges Former Patient Now Protesting

Daniel Gonzales Interviewed on Strictly Confidential

Jim Burroway

November 29th, 2007

BTB Contributing author Daniel Gonzales appeared on Peter Godbold’s Strictly Confidential Radio program last night. Daniel talked about his experiences as a former patient of Joseph Nicolosi, past president of NARTH. The audio is a little choppy at first, but it clears up as the interview progresses. You can listen to the interview here.

Richard Cohen’s Back In The Saddle Again

Jim Burroway

November 9th, 2007

So here’s the puzzling thing. It was just last March when Cohen’s hilarious demonstration of his “holding” therapy on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show proved to be such an embarrassment that Exodus publicly disassociated themselves from Cohen, while NARTH (headed at the time by Joseph Nicolosi) and PFOX (headed by Regina Griggs) quietly scrubbed all references to him on their web sites.But now it looks like Nicolosi and Griggs are willing to let bygones be bygones. Look at these two endorsements printed on the back of Cohen’s latest book, Gay Children, Straight Parents:

“Richard is movingly candid about the brokenness in his own family life, and he’s not afraid to get down in the trenches and cry, mourn and laugh with everyone else who struggles. This book offers sound practical advice for healing family relationships.”
— Joseph Nicolosi, author of Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality and Preventing Homosexuality: A Parent’s Guide

We all want the best for our children. Please read this book and follow Richard’s suggestions for building a healthy parent-child relationship, one based on unconditional love and mutual respect.”
—Regina Griggs, national director, PFOX

Among the “sound practical advice” that Cohen offers in Gay Children, Straight Parents is the same therapy that he demonstrated on CCN, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and on Comedy Central. Cohen’s “suggestions for building a healthy parent-child relationship” haven’t changed one iota since they first appeared in his 2000 book, Coming Out Straight. So why are they now endorsing something that they found so terribly embarrassing then? Maybe Cohen’s fair weather friends are ready to rejoin Cohen’s huggery bandwagon after all.

You can read all about each of his twelve steps for parents in our latest report, From Buggery To Huggery: Richard Cohen Has A Plan For Your Family.

Video: Inside “Love Won Out”

In this multi-part series of videos Box Turtle Bulletin editor Jim Burroway discusses attending Love Won Out.

Daniel Gonzales

October 29th, 2007

A Culture Within A Culture
Love Won Out can sometimes be somewhat mysterious to those who are outside the evangelical world. What’s more, homosexuality and the ex-gay movement largely exists outside the experience of the typical evangelical church-goer. This makes Love Won Out a unique culture within a culture.

Blaming Fathers For Gay Sons
Most of the Love Won Out audience consists of mothers and fathers of gay sons and daughters. Guess who Love Won Out singles out as the main culprit behind their son’s homosexuality? Don’t take my word for it — you can hear it straight from Joseph Nicolosi’s lips.

See also:

The “Love Won Out” Series:
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word “Change” Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For “Change”

Protesters In Scary Costumes Against “Scary” Reparative Therapy

Daniel Gonzales

October 21st, 2007

Wayne Besen and his group Truth Wins Out protested last year’s NARTH conference with the theme “quacks” featuring duck costumes, duck calls and large inflatable duck pool toys.

Besen spoke to the Dallas Voice about his theme for this year’s protest:

Besen said protesters have the option of wearing “scary costumes” in connection with the protest’s theme that “reparative therapy is scary.”

“It will highlight the horrors of coming out of the ex-gay movement,” Besen said. “As scary as the costumes might be, they pale in comparison to the real thing.”

But Besen said he hopes no one shows up in anything that might be considered obscene.

“We want to present a colorful depiction of reparative therapy, but we don’t want anyone providing poster images for the ex-gay movement,” Besen said.

Last year, Besen coordinated a protest of the group’s conference in Orlando, where the protesters wore duck suits and “quacked” at the therapists. Duck suits would also be appropriate this year, he said.

Wayne has all the details for those interested in attending the protest on his website.

More On the Exodus Study

Jim Burroway

August 21st, 2007

Ex-Gay Watch has more information about the hetertofore secret Exodus study being conducted by Stanton Jones out of Wheaton College. Known as the Thomas Project, the study appears to be small (around 100 people), and consisting of a simple telephone interview. Unknowns include recruitment methods, employment or ministerial status of study participants, or the interview methods. Nevertheless, it’s expected to provide a basis for Exodus president Alan Chambers’ claim of a 30% success rate.

We may learn more about the study as early as mid-September during the Exodus Regional Conference in Nashville. More details will likely be available at the NARTH conference at the end of October.

Notes On the NARTH Conference Agenda

Jim Burroway

August 20th, 2007

A few weeks ago, the National Association For the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) posted its 2007 conference agenda (PDF: 108KB/3 pages). Through considerable detective work, Ex-Gay Watch’s David Roberts suggests that one item may be a talk by Stanton Jones on the results of a secret five-year study on the outcomes of religiously-based change therapies.

Another item I noticed is a talk by Christopher Rosik called “A Proposal For the Development of Treatment Guidelines For Unwanted Same-Sex Attractions.” This talk appears to be a response to Warren Throckmorton’s and Mark Yarhouse’s Sexual Identity Therapy Framework, which outgoing NARTH president Joseph Nicolosi has already rejected.

Rosik’s previous stab at this subject is nothing more than a common Cameron-esque anti-gay tract which pulls medical science out of context to re-pathologize gays and lesbians. In fact, it is so Cameron-esque that he cites three separate papers by Paul Cameron, two to claim that gays and lesbians have a significantly shorter lifespan than anyone else, and another to claim that child sexual abuse “causes” homosexuality.” I wonder if Rosik’s talk at NARTH will be significantly different?

Paul Cameron in EDGE New York — and NARTH

Jim Burroway

July 27th, 2007

EDGE New York published an article by Arielle Chavkin about Paul Cameron’s “Scandiavian Gay Lifespan Study.” Her report includes several observations by Jason Cianciotto and yours truly.

And speaking of Paul Cameron, Ex-Gay Watch’s David Roberts noticed that NARTH has added yet another link to a study using Paul Cameron’s research. Just scroll down a bit on NARTH’s front page and you’ll see this in the center column:

7.25.07 - Distortions of Science
Studies of Homosexual Parenting: A Critical Review [link]

That handy little link will take you to a paper by George Rekers and Mark Kilgus that was published in the Regent University Law Review back in 2002. Regent University, if you’ll remember, is the school established by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson. That same law review issue contained two other articles which cite Cameron, Child Molestation and the Homosexual Movement (PDF: 76 KB/16 pages) by Stephen Baldwin (not the actor), and Homosexuality: Innate and Immutable? (PDF: 340 KB/42 pages) by A. Dean Byrd and Stony Olsen, 2002. Meanwhile, NARTH continues to maintain their own articles citing Paul Cameron on their web site.

These are just a few of Paul Cameron’s many collaborators who are complicit in not only perpetuating his pseudo-science, but who also help to support his stated agenda for gays and lesbians.

EDGE Boston Examines Reparative Therapy

Jim Burroway

July 25th, 2007

EDGE Boston has published David Foucher’s third part of his four part series on the ex-gay movement. I’m very impressed with this series — he really did his homework. In this especially well-written installment, Foucher examines the pseudo-Freudian theories underlying the ex-gay movement in general and reparative therapy in particular — theories which Robert-Jay Green of the Rockway Institute points out aren’t very well proven. Although Warren Throckmorton doesn’t agree with Dr. Green that these theories have been “disproven” (in Dr. Green’s words), he does broadly agree that these theories aren’t compelling in the way the ex-gay movement uses them:

“When I read the research, what appears to me to be the best rendering of it is that different factors operate differently for different people,” he explains. “In an environment like that, when you don’t know the answer to what causes sexual orientation, it’s really not proper in my opinion to inform clients of anything different than that. The reparative therapists inform clients that their attractions are due to childhood dynamics. The gay-affirming therapists may go the other way and say that sexual orientation is an intrinsic aspect of who you are, it’s because of your genetics or it’s prenatal, and that it would be harmful to try to alter it in some way. I don’t think the research would allow either dogmatic conclusion.”

Fourcher also uncovers what ends up being the very essence of what it means to be ex-gay: the naming and labeling of homosexuality. Jack Drescher is quoted this way:

“You can switch identities, they’re not fixed. But sexual orientation is not as flexible as identities. A person can come out, say they’re gay, change their mind, say they’re not gay, change their mind again, say they’re gay again. It has nothing to do with their perceptual feelings - because people who call themselves gay don’t have all the same sexual feelings, and people who call themselves ex-gay don’t have all the same sexual feelings either. These are just labels.”

But towards the end of the article, where Fourcher discusses the APA’s task force to examine conversion therapies, he gets this whopper from NARTH president Joseph Nicolosi:

“We do not want to diminish the rights or civil liberties of gays or lesbians — they have a right to pursue their lives, their happiness, their dreams; those rights should not be limited in any way,” (Nicolosi) counters. “But for those who are unhappy for any reason, for those who want a conventional sexuality, a conventional marriage, we want to help them achieve that.”

That stated position may not be completely supportable; as of this writing the top article on NARTH’s homepage is titled, “Marriage as Culture: The Case Against ’Same-Sex Marriage’” - a clear indication that NARTH is embroiled, at least philosophically, in more politically-charged issues surrounding gay and lesbian rights.

“People such as Joseph Nicolosi might today claim that they do not take a pathologizing perspective on homosexuality,” (Clinton W. Anderson, Director of the APA’s Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Concerns Office) agrees. “But if you look at the history of their careers and what they have advocated, that’s just not a credible position. They do seem to bring a prejudiced attitude towards homosexuality to the table.”

This is turning out to be one of the best articles I’ve seen on conversion therapies in a long time.

See also:

EDGE Boston Features Love In Action

Video - Soulforce Survivor’s Initiative - NARTH Action

Daniel Gonzales

July 3rd, 2007

Earlier today I wrote about Soulforce’s action at NARTH. Here’s video of the event in two parts.

Special thanks to Esteban Rael for shooting this and all the local community groups that came to support us.

Soulforce Begins ‘Survivor Initiative’ At NARTH Headquarters

Daniel Gonzales

July 2nd, 2007

This morning Soulforce kicked off the Survivor Initiative with an action and press conference outside NARTH’s headquarters in Encino, CA (aka “The Valley”). Present were Paige Schilt, Shawn O’Donnell, Darlene Bogle, and myself. NARTH is officially headquartered at Dr. Nicolosi’s clinic in an office tower on Ventura Boulevard. We assembled on the sidewalk in front of the building entrance along with a news crew from the local Fox affiliate and about two dozen supportive community members. Formal statements were made and then Darlene and Shawn took collages representing our exgay journeys and delivered them to NARTH’s office on the 13th floor.

This event announces the beginning of the Survivor Initiative campaign which will continue through the month of July and highlight the stories of people affected by exgay programs.

Update: Video of today’s action has now been posted.

Hat tip James Mills for the photos. 

Geneticist Francis Collins Responds to NARTH’s Dean Byrd

Jim Burroway

May 25th, 2007

On April 4, the NARTH website published an article titled, “‘Homosexuality Is Not Hardwired,’ Concludes Dr. Francis S. Collins, Head Of The Human Genome Project” by A. Dean Byrd, who is NARTH’s incoming president. In this article, Dr. Byrd pulls several quotes from Dr. Collins’s book, The Language of God, A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief , suggesting that Dr. Collins shares Byrd’s view that homosexuality is overwhelmingly environmental in origin and behavioral in expression.

David Roberts of Ex-Gay Watch contacted Dr. Collins to ask whether he agrees with Byrd’s descriptions of his views. Collins responded this way:

It troubles me greatly to learn that anything I have written would cause anguish for you or others who are seeking answers to the basis of homosexuality. The words quoted by NARTH all come from the Appendix to my book “The Language of God” (pp. 260-263), but have been juxtaposed in a way that suggests a somewhat different conclusion that I intended. I would urge anyone who is concerned about the meaning to refer back to the original text.

The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence. But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved. That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.

Your note indicated that your real interest is in the truth. And this is about all that we really know. No one has yet identified an actual gene that contributes to the hereditary component (the reports about a gene on the X chromosome from the 1990s have not held up), but it is likely that such genes will be found in the next few years.

David Roberts concludes:

NARTH is obsessed with theories on the cause of homosexuality. It enables them to treat it like a disease, not simply part of the human condition. And of course, a disease needs a cure, right? In a way, this article is NARTH in miniature; a lot of odd, recycled theories packaged with an facade of professional authority and provided to other organizations as a pseudo-scientific alternative to the truth.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?