Science vs. Politics and Religion: The "Ex-Gay" Sham

November 30 2005
Counterbias.com
Mel Seesholtz
 

It goes by many names: “reparative therapy” and “aversion therapy,” “reorientation therapy” and “conversion therapy.” Its sponsoring organizations have names like “Love Won Out,” “Love in Action,” and “Exodus International.” Their umbrella organization is NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. Their common goal is to change homosexuals into heterosexuals or, in the case of Love in Action, teach gay people to suppress their feelings and live a fraudulent life of repression. Managing editor of WashingtonBlade.com Kevin Neff said it well: “there is no such thing as ‘ex-gay.’ There is ‘repress-my-inate-immutable-characteristics-and-deny-their-existence,’ but no such condition as ‘ex-gay.’”

There is, however, such a thing as “income.” After Love in Action’s Refuge Camp facility in Tennessee was order closed until it obtained the proper licenses, LIA sued claiming “the state’s action not only violates the group’s constitutional freedoms they’re also claiming they’ve lost 80-thousand of dollars in lost enrollment.” Moreover, Love in Action thought its faith-based nature should exempt it from medical protocols and state licensing: “‘It’s repugnant for a faith based institution, Christian ministry, to come under the regulation of the state,’ [said] LIA’s attorney Nathan Kellum.”

“Reparative therapies.” According to Mel White, they engage in some extreme and rather strange “medical” practices. Who’s Mel White? 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.

And then there’s Exodus International. Psychologist Jeffry G. Ford was once the executive director of Outpost, an “ex-gay” ministry in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He spent many years as a national speaker for Exodus International, which serves as 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.

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 are major steps toward mental health and living an honest life of self-respect. Denying one’s sexual orientation leads to a disingenuous life of repression, witness the executive director of Love in Action: “Rev. John Smid… is married to a woman and claims to have left behind ‘the homosexual lifestyle,’ if not same-sex attractions” (italics mine).

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.

NARTH recently held its annual conference in Marina del Rey, California. Naturally, there were those protesting pseudoscience, theotherapies and the bigotry they inspire. One of the protesters was L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl. From the report featured on the Christian news service AgapePress:

According to an ExGayWatch.com blog, Rosendahl called the group’s research and methods “unproven, unsafe and abusive,” and described its persistence in viewing homosexuality as a condition to be corrected as “another form of rationalization for the continued persecution and prejudice against gay people.”

 

But [Alan] Chambers [president of Exodus International] feels it is the councilman and the other protesters who are promoting persecution and prejudice. “It’s the ultimate of hypocrisy among the small minority of the gay community and this local politician who is denying people the right to their self-determination – denying the right for someone to choose their path in life,” the Exodus International spokesman says, “and I think that’s not only un-American, it’s inhumane.” (italics mine)

“Research and methods unproven, unsafe and abusive.” The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Counseling Association, and a considerable number of other professional organizations all agree. “Ex-gay” research and therapies are just that. 

Aside from the professional organizations listed above, it’s hardly a “small minority of the gay community and this local politician” who oppose the pseudoscience and theotherapies that Traditional Values Coalition chairman Lou Sheldon says should include exorcism: “Lou Sheldon suggested exorcism is necessary to ‘release’ a person from homosexual lifestyle.” The gay community is overwhelmingly and adamantly opposed to “ex-gay” therapies, especially when they’re forced on minors, which is how and why Love in Action came to public attention.

“Self-determination” is everyone’s right. Would that NARTH and the Christian Right’s theocratic lobbyists remembered that when they campaign for laws to restrict the civil rights of gay and lesbian American citizens who choose self-determination while contributing their professional skills and talents to society and working toward the ideal of equality for all American citizens.

“I think that’s not only un-American, it’s inhumane.” Un-American? You must be kidding, Mr. Chambers. The American covenant holds that we do not discriminate against people for what’s beyond their control. As already noted, all mainstream medical associations put homosexuality in that category. Even Love in Action director Rev. Smid agreed: “We understand people don’t have control over what they feel…”

What’s “un-American” – by definition – is Exodus International’s assertion 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).” Exodus advocates that religious dogma cobbled together for political power and profit should take precedence over everything else, including science, common sense, reality, and the American covenant.

Bluntly put, the “scriptures” are texts written by men for their own purposes. Many of those texts preach hate and call for violence and murder. Scriptures were used to justify slavery and segregation when those practices were deemed “traditional values.”

Scriptural interpretation depends on time and place, who’s doing the interpreting and for what purposes. That was recently underscored by a group of renown theologians: James L. Crenshaw, professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School; L. William Countryman, professor of biblical studies at The Church Divinity School of the Pacific; and Mary Rose D'Angelo, associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. Some of their comments were reported by The Ledger’s religion editor Cary McMullen in his article “Theology Experts Explore Bible, Sex: FSC lecture speakers challenge some widely-held ‘truths’”:

With respect to homosexuality, Crenshaw said it is forbidden in the book of Leviticus, along with bestiality and cross-dressing. However, he said the biblical prohibitions should not necessarily be taken as final.

 

“We must reject at the outset any notion of the supreme authority of scripture. . . . Even those who take most literal interpretation of biblical texts, who claim to believe everything literally, nevertheless sit in judgment on their meaning at every juncture because readers determine meaning,” he said. As a result, Crenshaw said, “those who practice alternative sexual lifestyles” should not be condemned. (italics mine)

That was also the theme of Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest branch of American Judaism. It represents about 900 synagogues in North America with an estimated membership of 1.5 million. Some of Rabbi Yoffie’s comments during his keynote address at URJ's national assembly in Houston – as reported by the Associated Press, 365Gay.com, and the Washington Blade – demand repeating. 

The rabbi blasted “religious right” leaders who believe “unless you attend my church, accept my God and study my sacred text you cannot be a moral person. … What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God? … We need beware the zealots who want to make their religion the religion of everyone else.”

Rabbi Yoffie had more to say, particularly about those who condemn homosexuals: “We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933 one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations. … Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage. But there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry.”

The pseudoscience and theotherapies propagated by NARTH and its kindred organizations have contributed mightily to “the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry.”  So-called “ex-gay” therapies are a favorite of what Rabbi Yoffie called the “religious right.” He included all religions in that designation, but in America today it’s the evangelical Christian Right that’s the dominant player. Its leaders, their political organizations and “ministries” have used bigotry to lobby for what can only be called a theocracy in which the beliefs of politically ambitious fundamentalists and evangelical Christians are codified as civil law. That happened before in Western history. It was called the Dark Ages.

Jews and homosexuals didn’t fare well then either, unless the latter were officials of the Church:

He was the refuge of my spirit, the sweet solace of my griefs, whose heart of love received me when fatigued by labors, whose counsel refreshed me when plunged in sadness and grief . . . What more is there, then, that I can say? Was it not a foretaste of blessedness thus to love and thus to be loved?

-- Saint Aelred, from his eulogy for his lover Simon

From prehistoric rock paintings left by the San people in modern day Zimbabwe to Native American berdache who were venerated for their “Two Spirit” nature, homosexuals have always been present as well as disproportionately represented among the most creative minds and well respected members of ancient and modern societies. One would naturally conclude, therefore, that homosexuality is part of “God’s plan” and the specific nature ordained for some individuals. St. Paul urged that we be and act according to that God-given nature. That’s the essence of his arguments in the Epistles: being faithful to one’s nature.

When truthfully applied, that message sounds nothing like “the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry” coming from the Christian Right, as one true Christian recently noted:

Jesus said that the greatest commandment, after loving God, is to love your neighbor as yourself. As a person who has had the opportunity and privilege of marrying the person I love, the best way I can love my gay and lesbian neighbors is to desire for them the opportunity and privilege of marrying the person they love. To be an advocate for sexual minorities, to promote gay marriage, is, for me, a way to live the gospel that Jesus taught.

The perversion of religion for political purposes has as its goal a theocratic state, plain and simple. As Rabbi Yoffie said: doesn’t matter if it’s Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. Religious fundamentalism and politics are a lethal mix.