Posts Tagged As: Conversion Therapy

Exodus Co-Founder: I Regret Teaching If You Had Enough Faith You Would Be Changed

A multi-part video interview series with Michael Bussee, co-founder of Exodus International turned critic.

Daniel Gonzales

May 17th, 2010

My question to Michael, is there anything specific you regret teaching, produced an answer with two separate and distinct parts.  (We’ll have a video up tomorrow of the other half of his answer.)

First we look at the idea that if you worked hard enough in an ex-gay program you would be changed.  Michael now believes the only thing being a loyal Christian guarantees in life is sharing in Christ’s sufferings.  To teach otherwise Michael says is heresy.

Yes, heresy, you don’t hear that word thrown around on this blog very often.

(transcript below jump)

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Undercover in Lansing’s ex-gay ministry

Timothy Kincaid

May 14th, 2010

It hasn’t been a good year for Corduroy Stone, an ex-gay ministry in Lansing, MI, or for it’s director, Mike Jones. In September, 2009, Truth Wins Out interviewed Patrick McAlvey who exposed Jones’ methods (similar to those of discredited Richard Cohen) and his inappropriate behavior.

Following that exposé, Corduroy Stone was disaffiliated from Exodus International. And this week, they were dropped by the Michigan Department of Corrections from being allowed to conduct their ministry within the prison system.

Also this week, CityPulse magazine published an undercover report from a reporter who posed as a gay man wishing to rid himself of unwanted same-sex attractions.

Although the article mostly left me with pity for both the sad director and his unhappy clients, one of the sessions that Brandon Kirby described relates to and helps us understand the statements by Dr. George Rekers – and others – who deny being gay while clearly demonstrating behaviors that suggests otherwise:

“We’re working through accurate vocabulary that captures where we are,” he said. “And that’s very similar to what we do when we look at the word gay. The definition of gay in this culture is very fluid like the definition of Christianity. When someone uses those terms, I haven’t the slightest idea what they mean until I’ve pursued that. I don’t know what anybody is communicating. When your friend told you, ‘You’re just gay,’ I don’t know what she means because it’s a very fluid word.”

The other client, Ben (not his real name), described his experience coming out to a friend. Jones asked him to define “gay.”

“I always thought gay meant you were attracted to people of your same sex,” he said. “I’ve since then revised that definition, and I would say that gay is somebody who is actively involved in that lifestyle. So, I guess I’m not gay. I experience same-sex attraction.”

I asked Ben why, then, he told his friend he was gay.

“I told him many years ago when I didn’t really know what gay meant. I had a couple experiences when I was a teenager, but it was only until recently, last year or so, that I differentiated gay and same-sex attraction.”

It’s sad, the linguistic gymnastics required to continue putting faith in this failed system.

Exodus Co-Founder: When People Left Our Program They Just Disappeared

A multi-part video interview series with Michael Bussee, co-founder of Exodus International turned critic.

Daniel Gonzales

May 13th, 2010

As notable ex-gay survivor Peterson Toscano wrote in 2007, ex-gay programs and Exodus have absolutely no sort of after-care or follow-up when a participant leaves a program:

Never once has an ex-gay program I attended ever done any sort of follow-up. I mean I can’t buy a soy latte these days without having to fill out a survey about my coffee experience. Yet folks can spend tens of thousands of dollars on reparative therapy and nothing–no aftercare, no reflections on what worked and what didn’t work.

I’m admittedly curious about what goes through the mind of an ex-gay leader when a participant stops coming.  Do they assume the person is cured?  Have they gone back in the closet? Are they living the dreaded homosexual lifestyle?

It’s not an easy thing to confront as you can tell by Michael’s body language in this segment and that I had to ask the question three times before we got into the meat of the issue.

(transcript after the jump)

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Exodus Co-Founder: I Never Saw One Of Our Members Become Heterosexual

A multi-part video interview series with Michael Bussee, co-founder of Exodus International turned critic.

Daniel Gonzales

April 27th, 2010

Today’s video is short and concise.  I asked Michael point blank if he believed anyone in his program at Exodus ever changed.

(transcript after the jump)

Read the rest of this entry »

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

American Psychological Association Announced Committee To Review Position On Ex-Gay Therapy

Daniel Gonzales

May 22nd, 2007

Given how Focus on the Family bungled initially “reporting” on the APA’s announcement of the nomination process I can’t wait to see “coverage” of how committee members were finally selected.  Here’s how committee members were actually selected:

Task Force members were selected after an open nominations process. All nominations were reviewed by the APA Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns (CLGBTC) which forwarded the complete list of nominations and a suggested slate of nominees to the APA Board for the Advancement of Psychology in the Public Interest (BAPPI) for review.  The CLGBTC and BAPPI recommendations as well as the full list of nominations were then sent to the APA President who made the final appointments to the task force in consultation with the APA Board of Directors.

Here’s the list of committee members, all of whom appear to be gay-affirming:

 Judith M. Glassgold, PsyD – Dr. Glassgold is a clinician, researcher and visiting faculty at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University. She sits on the editorial boards of Pragmatic Case Studies in Psychotherapy, Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy and PsycCritiques. Much of her work focuses on ethical issues in psychotherapy including the interplay of psychology and religion. Dr. Glassgold will serve as the Task Force Chairperson.

Lee Beckstead, PhD – Dr. Beckstead is a counseling psychologist who has focused his research and clinical work on helping gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people with strong religious affiliations. He works full-time in private practice and is a staff associate in the University of Utah’s Counseling Center.

Jack Drescher, MD – Dr. Drescher is a psychiatrist in clinical practice. His academic appointments include that of Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor in the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at New York Medical College. He also serves as the editor of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy.

Beverly Greene, PhD – Dr. Greene is a Professor of Psychology at St. John’s University and a practicing clinical psychologist. She has published extensively in the psychological literature on multi-minority identities and the interplay between multiple identity status, coping with social marginalization and psychotherapy. She was a founding co-editor of the APA Division 44 series Psychological Perspectives on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues.

Robin Lin Miller, PhD – Dr. Miller is a community psychologist and an associate professor at Michigan State University. She is currently the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Evaluation. She was appointed to the Task Force to provide specific expertise in research and evaluation methods.

Roger L. Worthington, PhD – Dr. Worthington is the interim Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Missouri-Columbia and an Associate Professor in the university’s Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology. Dr. Worthington is on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and on the editorial board of the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. His research interests include multicultural counseling, heterosexual identity, sexual prejudice, and lesbian, gay and bisexual issues.

I can’t wait to see Focus get it’s panties in a bind over this.

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