For years I’ve read the hysterical rants and raves of James Dobson, Lou Sheldon, Jerry Falwell and the rest of the sanctimonious leaders of America’s Christian Right as they and their minions predicted the end of society, the end of civilization and even the end of the world if same-sex marriage – or “civil unions” – were legalized. The “ends” didn’t happen, and their vein-popping anger, unbridled hate (in the name of “God,” of course), and theofascist delusions of grandeur were just dealt a series of serious blows (aside from fruit flies).

On June 29, 2005, Canada took a definitive step toward equality for all its citizens.

“At a time when the United States is talking boldly about spreading freedom to all people everywhere, we should look to our neighbor to the north to see what freedom really means.”

-- Alan Van Capelle, executive director, Empire State Pride Agenda

 

“Canada is a beacon to the world on making sure that all families are protected by the same rights and responsibilities.”

-- Joe Solmonese, president, Human Rights campaign

 

“Today the Canadian Parliament has become a world leader in Human Rights by granting same-sex couples complete equality under federal law.”

-- Luke Gahan, spokesman, Australian Marriage Equality

Gay Canadian citizens will have the right to a legal civil marriage within a matter of weeks. Equality won.

As if to preface that civil affirmation of equality (and another yet to come), a day earlier, on June 28, 2005, the head of the United Church of Christ endorsed same-sex marriage and the equality of all “God’s children.” In a speech at Emory University, the Rev. John H. Thomas said the church’s General Synod “should affirm the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender persons” to marriages “equal in name, privileges and responsibilities to married heterosexual couples. … I believe our local churches, as they are able, should move toward the development of marriage equality policies.”

Then, on Thursday, June 30, 2005, Spain also took a definitive step toward equality for all its citizens. “We were not the first, but I am sure we will not be the last. After us will come many other countries, driven, ladies and gentlemen, by two unstoppable forces: freedom and equality,” said Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero before the historic vote. Gay Spanish citizens will have the right to a legal civil marriage within a matter of weeks. Equality won.

Other than more evidence that homosexuality is genetically determined, the UCC’s, Canada’s and Spain’s declarations of equality for all people were some of the worst news Dobson, Sheldon, Falwell and the rest of the Christian Right’s dogmatic leaders could have gotten. Coupled with the existing (and successful) legal recognition of same-sex “domestic partnerships” and “civil unions” in several European and Scandinavian countries, it further exposed the Christian Right’s hypocrisy, their ridiculous arguments, and their advocacy of a theofascist state very similar to the one the Taliban used to run in Afghanistan. And make no mistake about it: James Dobson, Lou Sheldon, Jerry Falwell and the other leaders of the Christian Right are every bit as dangerous, perhaps even more so now that they’re on the defensive.

How did they respond to the decisions of the United Church of Christ, Canada and Spain? With the usual doomsday stuff wrapped in the usual specious yammering about “religious freedom.”

“Religious freedom” is in no way threatened by legalizing same-sex civil marriages and the benefits that recognition brings to real-world families with children. People can still practice their faith and belief as they wish. Churches can still control the flock with their dogma. What they can’t do is advocate civil hate, discrimination against and persecution of American citizens in the name of their “religion.” History’s had enough of that.

Nor can they ram their faith-based bigotries and religious dogma down everyone’s throat and embed them in the civil laws of secular nations that must – ethically, morally, legally – serve and respect all citizens. That’s where their “religious freedom” ends, as it should, as it did in Canada and Spain, and as it did in Jefferson’s notion of a wall between church and state.

Last week was not exactly filled with good news for the Christian Right at home either. In California, where Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition hate group is based, the state Supreme Court unanimously upheld lower courts’ decisions and let stand a law granting registered same-sex domestic partners many of the same rights, protections and responsibilities of heterosexual marriage. The decision came on the heels of San Francisco County Superior Court judge Richard Kramer’s ruling last March that Proposition 22 and other California laws limiting marriage to unions between one man and one woman were unconstitutional.

In New York, the state legislature took a step sure to infuriate the Christian Right, as Beth Shapiro of 365Gay.com reported:

In the closing hours of the 2005 session, the New York State Legislature passed a bill that provides domestic partners, both same-sex and opposite-sex, the ability to make decisions about the funerals of partners. 

It allows New Yorkers to designate a person to carry out their wishes for the disposition of their body after they die. Additionally, the legislation extends domestic partners the same priority status in decision making as surviving spouses, creating historic significance for New York’s LGBT community.

And back on the West Coast, another so-called “Christian” group, Culture and Family Institute, was busy attacking an Oregon “civil unions” measure that would benefit families. As reported by the Christian news service AgapePress, the director of CFI, Robert Knight, blatantly exposed his and his organization’s anti-gay, hate-filled crusade against families: “What appears to be an act of tolerance and extension of equal rights is really an immoral deed on the part of the government, no matter what they call it -- whether it’s gay marriage, domestic-partner benefits, or civil unions.” But Mr. Knight wasn’t done making a mockery of himself and his “pro-family” organization:

The CFI director contends that approving homosexual civil unions or otherwise extending the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples would be wrong because “it’s the government tempting someone to sin.” By accommodating active homosexuals’ lifestyle, he asserts, the state would be “tempting them into remaining trapped in homosexuality instead of seeking a way out. So it’s immoral.”

“The government tempting someone to sin”? Don’t look for logic, rationality or political science in Knight’s statement. Doing so could seriously damage your brain. But his comment does echo one of the Christian Right’s new emphases in their increasingly unhinged unholy war against gays and their families: the so-called “ex-gay” movement. 

In “Death by Bush and Fruit Flies,” I mentioned the investigation into allegations of child abuse at the “ex-gay” Refuge program run by Love in Action, Inc. On June 27, 2005, spokesman for Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services Rob Johnson confirmed that “DCS dispatched its special investigations unit to the facility [Refuge camp], and after conducting a full investigation, determined that the child abuse allegations were unfounded.” But the executive director of Love in Action made a comment that confirmed what independent scientific research has been saying for more than a century. (A featured story in the July 5, 2005 issue of The Advocate magazine provides a timeline for the “106 years of ‘Born that way.’”) Rev. Smid’s comment also explicitly stated the dangers of such “ex-gay” programs: “We understand people don’t have control over what they feel, but we teach them they are able to control what they do,” [John] Smid said. “We don’t have to act on those desires, even if we feel them.”

Rev. Smid would certainly seem to be admitting that homosexuality is not simply “a choice,” but an innate, genetic, “God-given” nature that “people don’t have control over.” His so-called “moral” solution: repression, denial, and living a life that’s a lie. Not exactly a prescription for mental health or happiness, is it? Managing editor of WashingtonBlade.com Kevin Neff said it well: “there is no such thing as ‘ex-gay.’ There is ‘repress-my-innate-immutable-characteristics-and-deny-their-existence,’ but no such condition as ‘ex-gay.’”

Destructive Trends in Mental Health is a new book edited by Rogers H. Wright and Nicolas A. Cummings. The work was reviewed for the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality by N.A.R.T.H. member and chairman of its “scientific” advisory committee, A. Dean Byrd.

Dr. Byrd is also director of clinical training for LDS social services at Brigham Young University. The Mormon church is staunchly opposed to recognizing homosexuality and any social or cultural, legal or economic measures that would benefit homosexuals and their families. Sheri L. Dew, CEO of Deseret Book, general officer of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and second counselor in the LDS Relief Society general presidency, addressed the Republican National Convention on August 30, 2004. In an article she wrote for Meridian Magazine damning same-sex marriage and its alleged “destruction” of the “traditional family,” Ms. Dew called for “a comparison between the atrocities of Hitler and what is happening in terms of contemporary threats [by gays] against the family.”

Dr. Byrd’s book review appeared on-line while the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services was conducting its investigation of the Refuge camp. The investigation was prompted by the blogging of one of the program’s 16 year-old involuntary inmates, “Zach.” Although no difficult to prove “emotional abuse” was found in that specific case, what goes on in the adult versions of “ex-gay” programs is clearly beyond reasonable or ethical medical protocols, as Mel White knows firsthand. Who’s Mel White? From the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report “A Thorn in Their Side”:

From the 1960s through the early 1990s, the Rev. Mel White played a behind-the-scenes role in the resurgence of evangelical Christianity. While pastoring several West Coast churches and working with national crusades like Youth for Christ, White produced films and ghostwrote books for a “who’s who” of evangelical leaders, including the Revs. Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy and Pat Robertson.

Unknown to his friends and colleagues, White was also a closeted gay man who was nearly driven to suicide after two decades of struggling to save his marriage -- and, he believed, his soul -- with “reparative therapies” including electric shock and exorcism.

Dr. White now campaigns against anti-gay bigotry and “ex-gay” therapies.

As A. Dean Byrd noted in his review, “Wright and Cummings express alarm from the ‘ever-proliferating therapies that are not only without validation but are irresponsible, and often later shown to be harmful.’” How appropriate, since Dr. Byrd is affiliated with N.A.R.T.H., an organization that advocates “therapies that are not only without validation but are irresponsible, and often later shown to be harmful.”

One section of Byrd’s review was entitled “Gay Activism in APA.” It was followed by a section entitled “Advocacy Without Evidence of Efficacy.” The juxtapositioning was as telling as the quoted excerpts.

In the “Gay Activism in APA” section, Byrd quoted Rogers H. Wright from the book’s Introduction:

gay groups within the APA have repeatedly tried to persuade the association to adopt ethical standards that prohibit therapists from offering psychotherapeutic services designed to ameliorate 'gayness,' on the basis that such efforts are unsuccessful and harmful to the consumer. …

 

Such efforts are especially troubling because they abrogate the patient's right to choose the therapist and determine the therapeutic goals. They also deny the reality of data demonstrating that psychotherapy can be effective in changing sexual preferences in patients who have a desire to do so. (italics mine)

Shouldn’t “psychotherapeutic services designed to ameliorate ‘gayness’” be unethical and illegal, given the abundant evidence that these for-profit programs run by Christian ministries are indeed “unsuccessful and harmful to the consumer”?

According to the American Medical Association, “there is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of reparative therapy as a treatment to change one’s sexual orientation.” The AMA “does not recommend aversion therapy for gay men and lesbians.” The American Psychological Association has stated that “groups who try to change the sexual orientation of people through so-called conversion therapy are misguided and run the risk of causing a great deal of psychological harm to those they say they are trying to help.” The American Psychiatric Association concurs: “gay men and lesbians who have accepted their sexual orientation positively are better adjusted than those who have not done so.” And according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “therapy directed at specifically changing sexual orientation is contraindicated, since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving changes in orientation.” Ex-gay therapy was publicly decried in 1999 as unethical by both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association. The National Association of School Psychologists and the American Counseling Association also agree. Indeed, the American Psychiatric Association has endorsed gay marriage as a way of promoting mental health.

“The patient’s right to choose the therapist and determine the therapeutic goals.” What if a patient (aka “consumer”) determined the therapeutic goal to be becoming a homosexual or increasing pre-existing “gayness”? Would Dr. Byrd provide the therapy? Or would this be another case in which the medical practitioner’s personal religious beliefs dictated medical decisions?

John Nardo, M.D. is a psychiatrist in Georgia. He is among the professionals publicly questioning the ethics and legality of forced treatment like that imposed by Love in Action and other faith-based “ex-gay” programs: “To me this is something of an unimaginable situation, reminiscent of the mid-19th century when people were committed to hospitals by families for all sorts of things. Though it is possible that there are some other factors involved, Zack [his spelling] appears to be a person who has been deprived of his constitutional rights without due process of law -- because he is gay.”

As Dr. Nardo noted, if Love in Action were a licensed mental health facility it would be bound by Tennessee law that gives children 16 or older the same rights as an adult with respect to mental health treatment. The American Psychiatric Association’s opposition to “reparative” and similar “ex-gay” therapies is a matter of record, and Refuge inmate Zach was 16 years-old at the time of his forced incarceration.

Psychologist Jeffry G. Ford was once the executive director of Outpost, an “ex-gay” ministry located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For many years he was a national speaker for Exodus International, a communications hub for “ex-gay” ministries. His firsthand accounts of the “ex-gay” sham and the damage reparative, conversion and aversion therapies do have been published in peer reviewed scientific journals. His seminal study “Healing Homosexuals: A Psychologist's Journey Through the Ex-Gay Movement and the Pseudo-Science of Reparative Therapy” appeared in The Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy.

Exodus International is not only a hub for “ex-gay” ministries, it provides another example of what happens to health care in a theocracy. The American covenant holds that we do not discriminate against people for what’s beyond their control, but Exodus asserts that “even if homosexuality were partially or completely genetic in origin, that does not change the moral question involved: God declares in the Bible that homosexual and lesbian activities are sin (Romans 1:26–27).” In the American theocracy Exodus advocates, pseudo-science and religious dogma cobbled together for power and profit take precedence over everything else, including common sense, reality and their own history.

On July 28, 2004, LA Times writer Steve Lopez did a background story on Exodus:

The Florida-based group was inspired nearly 30 years ago in Anaheim by charismatic Christian leaders who declared homosexuality a sin. Just one problem. [The] two men who helped get the movement started were counseling gays to go straight when, lo and behold, they fell in love with each other. … The two men dumped their wives, abandoned Exodus, and wore each other’s wedding bands. …

Acknowledging and accepting one’s homosexuality is a major step toward mental health and living an honest life of self-respect. Repressing it would indeed be a “destructive trend in mental health.”

It’s unethical for licensed psychiatrists and psychologists to provide dangerous therapies that promote the repression, denial, and life-lie Rev. Smid lives and wishes to impose on others.

It is indeed a destructive trend in mental health care not to pull the licenses of those practitioners who provide such “ex-gay” therapies, as well as the licenses of all health care providers whose professional decisions and responsibilities are dictated solely by their personal religious beliefs.

The APA and state licensing agencies could have begun at the “Love Won Out” conference in Bothell, Washington where infamous N.A.R.T.H. “psychologists” such as Bill Maier and Joseph J. Nicolosi were claiming that homosexuality can be “healed by the power of God’s love.” And if that doesn’t work, there are always electric shock treatments and exorcisms. No doubt desperate “ex-gay” mentally unhealthy programs will soon suggest lobotomies to “cure” homosexuality.

In the meantime, however, new levels of meanness can be expected from the leaders of the Christian Right, especially the obsessively homophobic Lou Sheldon, Andrea Lafferty and the rest of the crew at the Traditional Values Coalition. For example, they’re again attacking the video shown at the Lincoln Memorial because it dares to depict gays and other Americans advocating for their civil rights. How inappropriate given what Lincoln represents in American history and what the Great Emancipator may have enjoyed in his private life.

And then there’s TVC’s attack on the upcoming San Diego Gay Pride celebration and two of its organizers who, Sheldon alleges, have violated Meagan’s Law: “We believe these men have violated the federal Megan’s law by working directly with minors who are involved in the Gay Pride event. We urged them to surrender to local authorities and cooperate with any investigation.” But the rabid Rev. Sheldon also took the opportunity to damn California’s governor: “Of course, we are disappointed but not surprised at Governor Schwarzenegger’s clumsy endorsement of this event. He is an embarrassment to law-abiding Californians and the conservative movement.”

And what was “Governor Schwarzenegger’s clumsy endorsement”? In a letter of commendation to the Gay Pride Parade and Festival, Mr. Schwarzenegger wrote, “California is proud to host events that celebrate diversity and support active civic participation. … I applaud your efforts to foster ties within your community and to promote cultural and social acceptance in our Golden State.”

Rev. Sheldon, you are an embarrassment to America and fair-minded people everywhere.