Box Turtle Bulletin

More Anti-Gay Math Problems

Timothy Kincaid

February 26th, 2008

Perhaps we should pity the anti-gays; they have seem to have learning problems. I’m not saying that they are downright stupid, but they certainly do seem to be confused about math.

In response to a booklet created by the NEA and the APA called Just the Facts about Sexual Orientation and Youth, the usual suspects jumped in with their indignation and, well, ignorance. And the Christian Post was right there to give them a venue.

“Among the so-called ‘facts’ in the 24-page document is the opinion that homosexuality is ‘a normal expression of human sexuality,’” stated Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC), in an email to FRC supporters.

I suppose it is amusing that this statement alone is shocking, shocking I say, to FRC’s supporters. You can almost hear the froth forming at Tony’s lips when he says, “normal”.

But the gem in the piece was this:

“Despite decades of activism and media propaganda promoting acceptance and celebration of homosexuality, and a number of political and judicial victories for the pro-homosexual movement, polls show that a clear majority of Americans still believe that homosexual behavior is ‘morally wrong,” said Paul Sprigg, vice president for policy of the FRC.

Well, unless there are two wacky Spriggs, his name is actually Peter, not Paul (or Mary), and he’s the darling of anti-gays such as PFOX. Sprigg is just chuck full of opinions about gays, all of them vile.

As it turns out, not only is Sprigg a raging loon, he also doesn’t understand mathematics. This is the result of Gallup’s annual poll (May 2007) of public opinion on the morality of homosexuality:

49% believe homosexual relations are morally wrong; 47% believe they are morally acceptable; with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

In other words, the numbers are statistically equal. But even without allowing for sampling error, 49% is not “a clear majority”, it’s a simple plurality. A “clear majority” would be a number above 50% which allows for the sampling error.

And those numbers are a year old. Which, if we look at the chart below, may well make a difference when Gallup runs its poll this May.

Poor Peter (or Paul or Mary or whoever he is). Not only is it clear that time is his enemy, but he left out the other little facts which show that his battle is nearly over and it’s time for him to start sewing the white flag:

* In general, do you think homosexuals should or should not have equal rights in terms of job opportunities? 89% yes; 9% no

* Do you think homosexual relations between consenting adults should or should not be legal? 59% yes; 37% no

* In your view, is homosexuality something a person is born with, (or is homosexuality) due to factors such as upbringing and environment? 42% born; 35% upbringing; 11% both

and even

* Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages? 46% yes; 53% no.

And, as I’m sure you guessed, these trends are not in his favor either. But somehow I think that someone unable to recognize that 49% is not a clear majority also won’t recognize that his brand of demonization and loud (false) accusations is losing badly.

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.

LaBarbera Award: PFOX’s Gabriel Espinosa

Jim Burroway

November 7th, 2007

It’s been a long time since I gave one of these out. I almost thought I’d have to retire it. What was I thinking?

Another PFOX member is the latest proud recipient of the LaBarbera Award. This time, it goes to Gabriel Espinosa, who is PFOX President Reginna Grigg’s right hand woman and PFOX webmaster.

The Montgomery County (Maryland) Council is considering a new gender identity nondiscrimination bill, which has generated a lot of heated debate. JimK at TeachTheFacts.org has published a couple of letters from the far-right fringe in opposition to the proposed measure. The sticking point is over men’s and women’s restrooms — who should be allowed to go into which one. Gabriel joined in with her cahrming little note, reportedly done up in about a 40-point font. Please exuse the French:

Bill 23-07

Allowing men who think they’re women into women’s bathrooms and locker rooms?

ARE YOU PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MINDS?

Hopefully, it will be one of your daughters who gets raped first!

Sincerely Yours,
Gabriel Espinosa
President
Furryllama Media Productions

Congratulations to PFOX’s Gabriel Espinosa, today’s LaBarbera Award winner!

PFOX Allegations Still Thin

Jim Burroway

September 19th, 2007

PFOX is still milking their “assault” martyrdom at the Arlington County Fair for all it’s worth. Today, we even have WorldNetDaily getting into the act. But David Roberts at Ex-Gay Watch continues to dig into the facts, and the more he digs the less he finds.

PFOX Plays the Martyr Card. Again.

Jim Burroway

September 18th, 2007

Two weeks ago, I gave Regina Griggs the LaBarbera award for hyping a heated argument and portraying it as a major assault at the Arlington County Fair, complaining that “almost every day we are on the front lines suffering harassment and injustices merely because we demand our equal rights.” It certainly made for a great fundraising appeal anyway.

PFOX has a long history of actively looking for a confrontation a minor confrontation that they can blow up into biblical proportions. The latest example of that happened the Falls Church Festival in Falls Church, Va. Apparently Gregg Quinlin, who was manning the PFOX booth that day thought that taking a photo was tantamount to an altercation. Once again, Ex-Gay Watch has the details. I hope Griggs has the generosity to share her award.

Any bets on when the next fundraising letter goes out?

The LaBarbera Award: PFOX’s Regina Griggs

Jim Burroway

September 5th, 2007

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) Executive Director Regina Griggs has long co-opted the status of a persecuted minority by describing a strange parallel universe where homosexuality is perfectly accepted and it’s the ex-gays who experience “discrimination.” Her organization works aggressively against gays and lesbian families at all levels, but if anyone expresses any opposition to her efforts they are labeled as engaging in “discrimination against the ex-gay community.” She’s even positioned “ex-gay” as another kind of orientation. To support this line of argument, Griggs has a long history of blowing criticisms out of proportion to prop up the idea that the so-called “ex-gay community” is a persecuted minority under constant siege.

In her most recent example, Griggs claimed that members of her PFOX organization were “attacked” at the Arlington, Va County Fair:

As happens every year, gay activists disrupted our booth activities. They screamed obscenities, threw our materials from the exhibit table to the ground, insisted we recognize their same-sex “spouses,” demanded that PFOX leave, and hit a PFOX volunteer because he is ex-gay.
…
One gay man went so far as to hit our ex-gay volunteer because he refused to recant his ex-gay testimony. We summoned a police officer, who ejected the gay man off of the fairgrounds. Our ex-gay volunteer decided not to press assault charges against the gay man because he wanted to turn the other check as Jesus had done.

This is not the first year that PFOX has had to summon the police for protection from gay activists.

This story was picked up all around the anti-gay circuit, including Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink webzine and Family News In Focus radio program. But it appears that this incident didn’t really happen. Ex-Gay Watch’s David Roberts did some digging and has the story:

Since PFOX stated that the police were “summoned” and that they “ejected the gay man off the fairgrounds” we decided to check with the Arlington County Police Department…

We contacted the Arlington PD and ended up speaking with John Lisle of the Media Relations/Legislative Affairs Office. He had no initial knowledge of such an incident. After checking briefly, he again said that no one was aware of such an incident. So we sent a copy of the PFOX statement to him at which time he agreed to check more thoroughly. After over two days of research, there was nothing he could add to his statement; no report exists and no one recalls such an incident.

David Roberts also learned that Arlington County Fair officials hadn’t heard of any problems either. In a follow-up story, he reported:

Yesterday, we spoke with Jackie Abrams, Vice Chair of the Arlington County Fair. According to Abrams, no physical altercation occurred, police were never called and no one was ejected from the fairgrounds - she was emphatic and certain. “I was in radio contact with the other board members during the Fair, and definitely would have known if the police had been summoned. It did not happen [her emphasis],” said Abrams. She added that her calls to PFOX, and specifically to PFOX president Regina Griggs, had gone unanswered.

David Roberts also spoke with two eyewitnesses who worked at nearby booths. Each reported an incident of a heated discussion, but neither of them saw anything physical — no shoving, no hitting, no police or fair officials escorting anyone off the property.

In other words, there is no shred of evidence that anything happened the way Griggs describe it. In fact, all evidence suggests that this is just another one of her many attention-grabbing stunts.

This isn’t the first time Griggs has claimed victimhood status for ex-gays. It’s been a long-running theme of hers, and she’s been very diligent in coopting the experience and the language of the gay rights movement. One of her best examples can be found in this letter she sent to the APA last March:

The ex-gay movement is a civil rights movement to ensure the inclusion of former homosexuals in all realms of society and to support the ex-gay community’s equal access to schools on the same level as gays currently enjoy. Ex-gays and their supporters should not have to be closeted for fear of other’s negative reactions or disapproval. They do not think something is wrong with them because they decided to fulfill their heterosexual potential. Nor do they believe others should condemn them for the personal decision they have made for their lives. Because of the abuse heaped upon them by society, former homosexuals experience discrimination at every level.

The PFOX website’s “About” page has more examples where the “ex-gay community” experiences “abuse heaped upon them by society.” And in the most amazing turn of logic, they go so far as to claim that anti-discrimination and hate crime laws which identify sexual orientation as a factor for protection somehow “legitimize intolerance against former homosexuals” — a notion that is both ludicrous and blatantly false. The fact is, these laws protect everyone regardless of sexual orientation — including non-gays of all stripes, ex-gays among them.

But it’s the last point which makes Grigg’s hysterical notions of “discrimination at every level” so particularly outrageous. Terrance Heath recently began a huge undertaking with the LGBT Hate Crimes Project, and if Grigg’s really wanted to understand the face of intolerance, she should look at a few of these examples:

• Michelle Abdill and Rhonda Ellis of Medford, Oregon were shot execution style on December 4, 1995 by Robert Acremant, who wrote a letter to his hometown newspaper saying that it was easier to kill them knowing they were lesbians.

• Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder of Redding, California were murdered on July 1, 1999 by white supremacist brothers Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams, who confessed to killing the couple because they were gay.

• Author Warren, a developmentally disabled gay man from Grant Town, West Virginia, was murdered on July 3, 2000 by two teenagers. After kicking and beating him, they drove him to the edge of town ran over him four times to disguise his death as a hit-and-run.

• Guin “Richie” Phillips disappeared on June 17, 2003. His body was found on June 25, 2003, stuffed in a suitcase in Rough River Lake. During Joshua Cottrell’s trial, Cottrell’s aunt and cousin testified that he planned to kill Phillips because he was gay.

• Michael Sandy died on October 13, 2006 after being hit by a car while trying to escape four attackers. His attackers later said they targeted Sandy because they were seeking gays to attack and rob.

Griggs might do well to consider that a little bit of perspective is in order. There were 1,171 hate crime incidents in 2005 based on sexual orientation. Twenty-three of those crimes were anti-heterosexual. It’s quite possible that a few ex-gays might be caught up in that mix. If so, those crimes are every bit as deplorable as the other 1,148. But to try to compare the “ex-gay community’s” experience with the very real discrimination and harassment that gays and lesbians experience across the country is beyond offensive.

If the “ex-gay community” has experienced abuse and discrimination “at every level,” where are the ex-gays who were kicked out of the military for being ex-gay? Where are the ex-gays who have been fired from their jobs because they were ex-gay? Where is their answer to Daniel Fetty?

The “ex-gay community” should consider themselves blessed that they have no such answer.

But Regina Griggs isn’t interested in counting blessings. Instead, she’d rather count something else. Notice how she ends her rant about the Arlington County Fair:

… Almost every day we are on the front lines suffering harassment and injustices merely because we demand our equal rights.

The public eats up our information because they have never been exposed to factual truth about same-sex attractions. Teens especially are eager for our educational literature. But our brochures and flyers cost money to print. We also have to pay for exhibit fees and travel. If you would like to help with costs, please make a tax deductible donation to …

Nice. Milking a non-event using hysterical hyperbole to raise money. The LaBarbera Award was created to highlight “the most outrageous, offensive, malevolent, crazy, or excessive statement or claim.” Regina Griggs more than earned the award just on her latest drama-queen antics alone. Capping them with a fundraising appeal is just the rhetorical equivalent of running up the score. Congratulations, Regina. You’ll be a hard act to follow.

PFOX is an Exodus member ministry.

Ex-Gay Watch Catches PFOX

Daniel Gonzales

September 1st, 2007

I’d previously posted on PFOX’s rather hysterical claims a homosexual activist assaulted an ex-gay at the Arlington County Fair. At the time I noted only suspect websites catering to the religious right were reporting on the supposed incident.

Bravo to editor Dave Roberts at Ex-Gay Watch for undertaking an investigation. Roberts contacted the only gay organization with a booth at the fair, the Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance. He also contacted the fair’s event manager and the Arlington County Police Department and strangely no one had heard of such an incident. Roberts wrote:

We contacted the Arlington PD and ended up speaking with John Lisle of the Media Relations/Legislative Affairs Office. He had no initial knowledge of such an incident. After checking briefly, he again said that no one was aware of such an incident. So we sent a copy of the PFOX statement to him at which time he agreed to check more thoroughly. After over two days of research, there was nothing he could add to his statement; no report exists and no one recalls such an incident.

This graphic in GoodAsYou’s typical sense of humor seems to sum things up best.

PFOX Reports Assault By ‘Angry Homosexual Activists’ At Arlington County Fair

Daniel Gonzales

August 29th, 2007

From PFOX’s press release:

As happens every year, gay activists disrupted our booth activities. They screamed obscenities, threw our materials from the exhibit table to the ground, insisted we recognize their same-sex “spouses,” demanded that PFOX leave, and hit a PFOX volunteer because he is ex-gay.

LifeSite.net has a shortened account but as of this blogging no reputable news sources have reported on the incident.

Update: Ex-Gay Watch did some investigating and found local authorties have no knowledge of such an event ever taking place.  See more recent post here.  

PFOX Settles with VA School

Timothy Kincaid

August 6th, 2007

PFOX claims it was discriminated against by a school that didn’t let them distribute propaganda claiming that gay people “can seek help and information in overcoming those feelings”.  The school claims that they don’t let anyone distribute flyers at high schools, period.  And now they’ve settled.

A settlement, reached last week, specifically states that PFOX will have the same access given to other groups and can submit fliers for distribution to middle and elementary school students if it wishes, said PFOX’s lawyer, Timothy Tracey.

It seems the terms of the “settlement” are that PFOX does not get to have preferential treatment at high schools.  But having won the right to do what they could do all along, PFOX is “considering” whether to distribute flyers to middle school students.

PFOX and Richard Cohen: On the Downlow

Jim Burroway

July 20th, 2007

Richard Cohen had been president of PFOX, but was forced out a year ago after publicly embarrassing himself and PFOX on CNN. Last spring, he embarrassed himself again on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. That prompted PFOX and NARTH to scrub their web sites of all mention of him.

Wayne Besen, of Truth Wins Out, reports that PFOX hasn’t exactly cut all their ties with Richard Cohen. They just took their relationship on the downlow:

To find out if there was a clandestine collaboration between PFOX and Cohen, Truth Wins Out conducted a simple experiment. The organization sent PFOX a request for an “ex-gay” speaker under the screen name FamilyManMd.

PFOX first offered an African American ex-lesbian. However, when “FamilyManMd” requested a Caucasian male speaker, the screen name received a rapid e-mail from Cohen offering his services. Cohen had previously been expelled from the American Counseling Association, which he failed to mention in his e-mail prompting his services.

Threatdown: Ex-Gay Survivors

Jim Burroway

July 10th, 2007

One of my favorite segments on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report is the “Threatdown,” where Stephen Colbert runs down a list of the leading threats to society. Continuing reactions to the Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference leads me to believe that if there were an ex-gay “Threatdown,” former ex-gays would top the list.

The Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference continues to reverberate in some very interesting ways. For thirty-two years, ex-gay ministries, particularly as embodied by Exodus International, have enjoyed a virtual monopoly in framing the issues and setting the parameters for debate. Until now, their only counterparts have largely consisted of gay-rights advocates who know very little about the ex-gay movement and, often, next to nothing about contemporary Evangelical Christianity that is at the heart of the movement.

But the Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference has changed all that, and the reactions from ex-gay ministries are telling. Exodus president Alan Chambers left an angry-sounding comment on Shawn O’Donnell’s blog, and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX, Richard Cohen’s former outfit) responded with a hysterical open letter on their MySpace page:

While you all claim in websites, protests, in organizations, or coalitions, to want to help people who are “trapped in the ex-gay movement,” you seem to be more concerned with sticking your nose in my business, and telling me the way you think I should live, along with who I am. You don’t know me, and you don’t know my needs and wants. While you go on and on with slogans like “I survived the ex-gay movement,” it’s actually the groups like you that make it harder for us to “survive” if anything.

…Your attempts to get what you and you only want don’t scare me, nor do your lies and false accusations. If I want to change, that’s my business. Who are you to tell me who I am or how I should live? You know what? You’re no one. So get a life stay outta my business!

It’s hard to imagine that 175 people (give or take) gathering on a largely empty campus in Irvine, California could provoke such vitriol. Those who gathered for that conference didn’t seek to invalidate anyone else’s experience, nor did they try to project their experiences onto others. They were merely trying to describe their own experiences within the ex-gay movement. These stories acknowledged the good with the bad, and they were deeply personal and unique to each participant there.

Just a few miles down the road, Exodus held their Exodus Freedom Conference. I actually attended both conferences. And I must say that the contrast between the two was quite striking. While I was at the Exodus conference, I heard speaker after speaker describe their own lives of drug abuse, sexual abuse, physical and emotional trauma, depression, sexual compulsion, and so on.

Taking them at their word, I couldn’t help but believe that these speakers were telling the truth when they said they had led miserable lives. And again, taking them at their word, I was glad to know that they had overcome all of the addictions, abuse, traumas, depression, and whatever else that led to so much misery and heartache. But what I don’t remember hearing was anyone saying that their experience was all that unique. What I heard instead was the implication that their own personal struggles were common and even nearly universal among everyone who is gay or lesbian.

And so while I heard very few attempts at the Survivor’s conference to invalidate anyone’s story who is happy with their ex-gay experience, I certainly heard speaker after speaker at the Exodus conference invalidate my story and the stories of so many people I’ve come to know.

And so when I see the open letter from PFOX complaining that somehow the ex-gay survivors are “sticking your nose in my business, and telling me the way you think I should live, along with who I am,” I can’t help but shake my head at the incredible chutzpah it takes to say that with a straight face.

For the first time, former ex-gays are coming forward to tell their stories of their own experiences from deep inside the ex-gay movement. And they have done this in a way that draws directly from the language and culture of the movement. This also means that for the first time, the legitimate counterpart to the ex-gay message speaks the ex-gay language because they lived it. They walked that walk, and they know the talk far better than all the well-intentioned but often ill-informed activists who came before.

And more importantly, many of these former ex-gays still speak the language of Evangelical Christianity. For some, they have emerged from their struggles with their love of God intact. Tragically however, that was not the case for many others. And that, too, for many, is a consequence of their experiences with ex-gay ministries. But again, not all.

Peterson Toscano sums this up pretty well as he reflects on the defensive reactions to the Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference:

These ex-gay survivor stories strike a cord. While at Love in Action, whenever one of us would get defensive about some feedback we got from staff or other participants, the staff encouraged us to look into that defensiveness to see if there was anything in it. Perhaps we felt defensive because we heard a truth that we were yet not able/willing to grasp.

Richard Cohen Is “Disappeared”

Jim Burroway

March 31st, 2007

Ex-gay impresario Richard Cohen’s embarrassing performance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show continues to reverberate through the ex-gay movement. Ex-Gay Watch reports that PFOX and NARTH are quietly scrubbing their web sites of all mention of him. It’s as if he never existed. Nope. Nothing to see here.

Richard Cohen had been president of PFOX, but was forced out after his previous embarrassment on CNN. Now PFOX and NARTH are pretending like they never heard of him. Which is odd really, considering that he never tried to hide his form of therapy from anyone. In 2000, he wrote a whole book about it — complete with photographs — with Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s endorsement featured on the front cover. NARTH even sold it in their bookstore. How can anyone pretend this is new information?

See also:

Richard Cohen Shifts Gears
Richard Cohen Is “Disappeared”
Fallout From Richard Cohen’s “The Daily Show” Appearance
Therapy In the Wild, Wild West

Fallout From Richard Cohen’s “The Daily Show” Appearance

Jim Burroway

March 23rd, 2007

Since Wayne Besen and Richard Cohen appeared on the Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” last Monday, many in the ex-gay movement have been deeply embarrassed by Cohen’s performance. And apparently, Cohen has been feeling the heat. Warren Throckmorton received an E-mail from Cohen that said, in part:

This week’s interview on The Daily Show was difficult. It took place in my home and office, and was the most degrading experience I’ve had in the media. I unknowingly allowed myself to be manipulated and coerced by the producer and the host. I take full responsibility for this mistake. I have learned since my interview with The Daily Show that this program treats most of the experts they interview the same way they treated me: taking bits and pieces of the interview, re-edit it out of order, and make the interviewee appear foolish.

Happily, regular Daily Show viewers–which I am not–are in on the gag and know that this is the way the show generates laughs. I have learned well from this experience to better research future interview opportunities and to be more discerning about the offers that I accept, and what therapeutic approaches I demonstrate on the air. I sincerely apologize if my decision to be on this and other interview programs has caused you any hurt or harm. Please forgive me.

In other words, he’s sorry he demonstrated on the Daily Show the same therapeutic approaches he showed on CNN. Which also happen to be the same techniques he demonstrated in his own book clear back in 2000. That book has been widely available for seven years It’s not an obscure book, but the way. It features a foreword by Laura Schessinger.

I think it’s important to notice that he’s not apologizing for his inappropriate and bizarre techniques, he’s only apologizing for demonstrating them before a national audience. But they say when life gives you lemon, make lemonade. Or make a fundraising appeal. Or something like that. Cohen’s message continues:

I am not a public relations expert and very much need the help of one. I have had to handle the media on my own. I realize now that this needs to be changed.

If you can contribute financial resources toward funding public relations and media strategizing, so we can launch a positive campaign to promote the truth about SSA and the possibility of change, please contact me. I/we need and appreciate your help in this urgent matter.

The fallout from that appearance has continued. Ex-Gay Watch now reports that Exodus president Alan Chambers had joined the board of PFOX last year. Cohen had just been forced out of PFOX in the wake of previous embarrassing television appearances, and Alan joined to try to make a positive change on the condition that PFOX sever all ties with Cohen. Nevertheless, PFOX has remained wedded to Cohen’s methods and theories, and Cohen himself claims to be an advisory board member for PFOX. For this and for other reasons, Alan Chambers has resigned from the PFOX board.

And that’s not all. This brand new policy statement was added to Exodus’ web site:

Exodus International does not endorse the work of Richard Cohen or the methods utilized in his practice. Some of the techniques Mr. Cohen employs could be detrimental to an individual’s understanding of healthy relational boundaries and disruptive to the psychological and emotional development of men and women seeking clinical counsel and aid.

Alan Chambers has taken a very positive step. I congratulate him on his move.

Hat tips: Warren Throckmorton and Ex-Gay Watch.

See also:

Richard Cohen Shifts Gears
Richard Cohen Is “Disappeared”
Fallout From Richard Cohen’s “The Daily Show” Appearance
Therapy In the Wild, Wild West

PFOX Distorts Dr. Spitzer On Their New Website

Jim Burroway

February 14th, 2007

This is pretty outrageous. Teach The Facts noticed that the website for PFOX (Parents and Families of Ex-Gays and Gays) has gotten quite a makeover. (It’s also a severely jumbled mess if you try to view it using Firefox or Safari) And in the process, they placed a video of Dr. Robert Spitzer front and center of the web page.

(For those of you at work, please note that the video loads and plays automatically, and depending on your browser you may have difficulty disabling it. The sound may be loud, and may be annoying or distracting for people working nearby. This is a huge no-no among professional web designers, who would never do this sort of thing out of simple courtesy to their visitors. But then PFOX has never been known for courteous behavior.)

In that video clip, Dr. Spitzer is heard to say:

The DSM stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it’s a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, and it’s kind of the Bible of psychiatry. I came up with a definition in 1973 that made it possible to argue that homosexuality was not a mental disorder. I mean, the gay activists have taken the viewpoint that from a political/strategic point of view they do better if they can convince society at large that once you’re homosexual you can never change. Now, I can appreciate that that helps them politically, and I’m sympathetic towards their political goals, but I think it’s just not true.

Dr. Spitzer has been at the center of the ex-gay controversy ever since he presented preliminary findings in 2000 of 200 ex-gays who reported some change in their sexual orientation. He revealed that it took him some sixteen months of repeated searching to find the two-hundred participants for the study, and even then, nearly a fifth of those participants were in leadership positions of ex-gay ministries and many more made public pronouncements about their “transformation” at church functions. The process of determining the degree of change for these participants consisted of a single telephone interview.

While he concluded that it was possible for some very highly-motivated people to undergo some sort of change in sexual orientation, the study’s many weaknesses prompted the Archives of Sexual Behavior to take the very unusual step of publishing some twenty-five peer review commentaries when they published the study in 2003. Most of those commentaries were highly critical of the study’s methodology and conclusions.

PFOX has a lot of nerve cherry-picking that single quote from Dr. Spitzer. What they don’t reveal is that as recently as this past Monday The New York Times reported:

But after enduring an avalanche of criticism from peers who said he had given too much credence to the accounts of his subjects, many of whom were leaders of ex-gay ministries, Dr. Spitzer now says many advocates of sexual reorientation have misrepresented his views.

“Although I suspect change occurs, I suspect it’s very rare,” he said. “Is it 1 percent, 2 percent? I don’t think it’s 10 percent.”

Dr. Spitzer has previously condemned misappropriations of his study by anti-gay lobbyists and activists in their efforts to limit civil liberties for gays and lesbians. It’s impossible to imagine that Dr. Spitzer would lend his endorsement to an organization like PFOX, which is among the more notorious for its unethical practices.

You may remember that PFOX was embarrassed last July when then-Board President Richard Cohen demonstrated his highly unorthodox conversion therapy techniques on national television. Cohen, who had been permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association two years earlier, finally left the organization, although it’s unclear whether he resigned or was forced out.

PFOX is now headed by Regina Griggs, who I saw at last Saturday’s Love Won Out conference in Phoenix at the PFOX booth. Love Won Out was jointly presented by Focus on the Family and Exodus. This brings to mind the following questions: Does Focus on the Family endorse PFOX’s blatant misappropriation of Dr. Spitzer’s image, voice, and good name to create a fraudulent endorsement of PFOX’s methods and message? And will Exodus, of which PFOX is a member ministry, condemn PFOX and strip that organization of its annual certification for carrying out such fraudulent representations?

Therapy in the Wild, Wild West

Jim Burroway

July 24th, 2006

By now this is all very old news. In the online world, anything more than a few weeks old is ancient history, but I experienced a sort of deja vu this weekend as I re-read Richard Cohen’s 2000 book, Coming Out Straight. Interesting reading, I know. Let’s just say it’s what I do on my afternoons off.

You may remember ex-gay activist Richard Cohen, president of PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays), who was featured on CNN’s Paula Zahn Now on May 23rd demonstrating his unusual methods for “curing” homosexuality. He advocates some very unorthodox therapeutic exercises — many of them drawn from pop-psychology fads of the 1970’s and 1980’s.

One technique involves the client beating a pillow with a tennis racquet while screaming at his parents. Remember when that was all the rage? Beating a pillow while screaming about how angry you are at your parents presumably allows you to work through your feelings about your remembered “abuse” which, according to Cohen, you weren’t allowed to express as a child. There’s a lot of recycled “adult children” talk sprinkled throughout his theories, and they’re all described in his book from six years ago. Not much has changed here.

But his most controversial therapy involves “holding” or “touch” therapy, where he takes a male client onto his lap, holds him gently, and repeats affirming words to him. Cohen claims that this recreates the father-son bond in the “adult child,” which, according to the distant father/domineering mother theory which he favors, is supposed to be the key missing component in the lives of gay men. He went on to demonstrate this technique on-camera with a client identified as “Rob.”

This raised quite a few eyebrows among professional therapists. Among those shocked by this display was Dr. Warren Throckmorton, a professor at Grove City College in northwestern Pennsylvania, who himself is very active in the ex-gay movement:

When my wife watched the clip (I taped it), she said she couldn’t get past the “ick factor” to even evaluate what was said. We discussed which was the ickiest, the tennis racket slamming the pillow while screaming at mom; or the client-cuddle technique where Richard holds his client like a baby in a kind of nursing position. We couldn’t decide.

Dr. Throckmorton had worked closely with PFOX in their attempts to force the Montgomery County (Md.) school system to revise its sex-education programs to include information about ex-gays. This “information” from PFOX includes, for example, a reading list for teachers and students which promoted the idea that gays are diseased and need to be “healed” — a position that is incompatible with modern psychology.

I don’t know to what extend Dr. Throckmorton was bothered by these actions. But he has clearly decided that the sight of a colleague who is a well-known figure in the ex-gay movement embarrassing himself on national television would be the last straw:

Since viewing the “Paula Zahn Now” segment, Throckmorton has notified PFOX that, although he supports its mission and its belief that people are not born homosexual, he will not represent the group as long as Cohen remains its board president.

So why do I bring all of this up now? Well, I was reminded of it as I was reading Cohen’s book. And there it was, exactly what I was looking for: the same detailed descriptions of his “holding therapy” in pages 207 through 211 that he demonstrated on CNN. This book isn’t exactly obscure. It comes with a glowing foreword written by that other famous non-therapist therapist, Laura Schlessinger.

Cohen’s enthusiastic endorsement of this holding technique is found throughout his book (along with pillow-beating, or “bioenergetics” as it is termed). This nationally-televised demonstration may be shocking, but it’s not new. It’s been a part of Cohen’s practice for several years, and no one can accuse him of hiding it.

And there’s another thing that’s no longer hidden: Cohen’s permanent expulsion from the American Counseling Association in May 2002 — although he’s doing his best to hide that. You certainly won’t find any mention of it in PFOX’s website.

While we disagree strongly in many points, I’ve come to respect some of Dr. Throckmorton’s recent actions. He’s one of the few ex-gay proponents to recognize that biological factors can play a role — in possible combination with environmental and developmental factors — in the sexual orientation of many gays and lesbians. This position, more or less, is generally in agreement with those held by most serious researchers, although Dr. Throckmorton places more emphasis on environmental factors. But at least it’s a start. More specifically, he recently criticized Joseph Nicolosi’s “reparative” theory of homosexuality (which is essentially the “distant-father” half of the weak-father/strong-mother theory), declaring “I am not a reparative therapist.” Nicolosi (with the late Charles Socarides) is often looked to as a father of the ex-gay movement, and this theory is the operative theory among almost all of the most prominent ministries. (Ironically, it is this “reparative” drive that Richard Cohen’s techniques are supposed to “heal.”)

And despite his enthusiastic participation in Exodus conferences and other ex-gay activities, he has offered draft guidelines for the practice of what he calls ’sexual identity therapy” which seeks to establish an ethical framework by emphasizing the actual needs and aspirations of the client, and not the political, religious or moral ideals of the therapist. For example, the draft states, “Therapists should be open to the possibility that embracing same-sex attractions may place other vital aspects of identity at risk. It is also important for therapists to take a neutral stance toward the client’s worldview.” There are areas in these guidelines which can stand improvement, but this effort is certainly a welcome departure from NARTH’s draft guidelines which simply regurgitate the customary anti-gay rhetoric.

Besides, I have to believe that anyone who grew up just a few blocks away from me — a fellow River Rat from Portsmouth, Ohio — can’t be all bad.

But like any specialty in which standard practices, ethical guidelines, certification, and official oversight are all absent. and especially where the distinction between religious ministry and clinical practice is often obliterated, the field of sexual reorientation therapy can resemble the wild west, complete with charlatans and snake-oil salesmen. When one makes it his life work to enter into this kind of work, one must be very careful when choosing those with whom one associates and makes common cause.

See also:

Richard Cohen Shifts Gears
Richard Cohen Is “Disappeared”
Fallout From Richard Cohen’s “The Daily Show” Appearance
Therapy In the Wild, Wild West