I've long known that the so-called "ex-gay" movement is a sham. I've heard of supposedly "ex-gay" folk being discovered in gay bars, cruising for dates. As Pam Spaulding at Pandagon wrote,
How many gays and lesbians, desperate to avoid being ostracized from their fundamentalist families, seek out bogus outfits like Exodus International and Love in Action. The organizations promote "reparative" or "reorientation" therapy prey on the poor souls that turn to them, hoping the gay can be chased away. Using a combination of prayer and ludicrous exercises, the aim is to help homos in crisis "attain the goal of reaching their heterosexual potential."Spaulding includes a bog-full of nasty Freeper quotes with Freepers doing what they do best - spewing bile.
The American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973. In the APA's statement on Uses of Diagnoses "Homosexual" and "Ego-Dystonic Homosexuality", it says "homosexuality implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities". The APA has specifically urged its members "not to use the “302.0 Homosexuality” diagnosis in the current ICD-9-CM or the “302.00 Ego-dystonic Homosexuality” diagnosis in the current DSM-III or future editions of either document." Psychologists and other therapists such as those in the ex-gay movement who seek to "cure" homosexuals violate APA standards.
Spaulding described the recent conference of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). The conference was packed with "more than 1,000 therapists, sociologists, and psychoanalysts who believe homosexuality is not inborn and can be changed."
Now, how's that for a cash cow? All those therapists, sociologists, and psychoanalysts who can't make a decent living with a plain old practice treating people for garden-variety depression or listening to patients go on and on and on about their lousy jobs or their sucky love lives... they can rake in the cash trying to "cure" homosexuals. Since homosexuality isn't a disease that can be cured, these people are bound to be in business for a long time. I bet this cottage industry of "curing" homosexuals makes even more money for therapists, sociologists, and psychoanalysts than the burgeoning "divorce industry." When they aren't raking in hundreds of dollars per hour draining the pockets of parents with custody and psychological evaluations, they can "cure" homosexuals. What a racket!
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Natalie Davis
In doing extensive research and reporting on the ex-gay movement, I have had the dubious pleasure of speaking with Richard Cohen on numerous occasions. IMO, he's the worst kind of charlatan, one who really believes in the sick bill of goods he sells.
Great book selection: I've known Wayne Besen for years. He engages in really tough talk (sometimes to his detriment), but he knows his subject and tells the truth about what really lies behind ex-gay "therapy" and ministries.
And good on you for finding Ex-Gay Watch, which provides a necessary service to the world by giving fair, honest coverage of the ex-gay movement's dangerous myths and practices.
2 - The Countess (Trish Wilson)
I've heard of Ex-Gay Watch, but I didn't know they had a blog. I've known about the so-called ex-gay "therapy" for years. It seems that lots of psychologists are losing money, mainly because of new rules regarding insurance. I guess they need to find other ways of making money, and there are a lot of rackets out there. The ex-gay racket is only one of them, but it's a particularly nasty one.
3 - Natalie Davis
It surely is. The amount of ex-gay therapy and ministry-caused devastation I have seen just breaks the heart. And organizations like Exodus International and Love in Action give me the absolute chills. I care deeply for someone who is in a position of leadership at EI; I worry for him every day as I see a sweet person use increasingly vicious language to discredit GLBT people and to cast aspersion on our lives and families. (No doubt he worries for me too.)
Yeah, Ex-Gay Watch, which is written by my friend Mike Airhart and others, has been around for years. Mike is a fine journalist and a great human being. And I owe him an email or phone call.
4 - The Countess (Trish Wilson)
I used to be a Fundy about twenty years ago. I was Catholic Charismatic, so I wasn't into the Protestant version that has messed up the current Republican party so much. I read newspaper reports about supposedly ex-gay people cruising for dates in gay bars. You can't "cure" homosexuality because it isn't a disease, but that doesn't stop some enterprising psychologists from trying to make a buck off of it. I'm more familiar with how psychologists, sociologists, and therapists have jumped on the "divorce industry" bandwagon than I am with how they've jumped on the "ex-gay" bandwagon, but the motives seem to be similar. They are both rackets to make money from confused and scared people. I'd like to know how much it costs per hour for homosexuals to be "treated" by these people. I know it's in the hundreds for psychologists who make their livings doing custody and psychological evaluations.
Psychologists have been losing business in recent years, and they've been looking for novel ways to make money. I wouldn't trust an "ex-gay" psychologist at all. There are so many ethical problems with that line of work. At least one "professional" has been sanctioned for doing that kind of work, per my post.
5 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
I suspect that The Countess has hit the nail on the head - psychologists are losing money and need to make some. "Curing" homosexuality sounds like a good respectable scheme - but you can't cure an instinctive condition. Another scam.
Is "life coaching" just another racket, or if it is real? It strikes me strange that someone needs to "coach" someone on how to live life. Isn't that what growing up is all about? If you're a life coach and your neighbor comes in bawling because her husband just suffered a stroke and she can't handle it, do you bill her by the hour? I really wonder about the "helping" preofessions sometimes.
6 - Anthony Grande
That is all bull. You are just bad mouthing the Ex gays because that is all you can do. They got a movement going right know and it makes you nervous.
Homosexualality is a choice caused by something wrong happening or going wrong in someone's life. So it is a mental disorder.
They need help, not special rights.
7 - Natalie Davis
Hmmm. Am I going to take the word of a nearly 17-year-old kid over that of medical experts and the experiences of myself and others?
Mr. Grande, with all due respect, you are entitled to hold and state your opinion. In this case, you have no way to know what you're talking about.
8 - Nancy
So in Anthony Grande's opinion, Anthony Grande knows better than the entire APA? Practicing psychiatric medicine without a license, are we now? Christ, you'd be hysterically funny if you weren't so pitiful & patheticially ignorant, Grande.
9 - Natalie Davis
And not only the American Psychological Association, but the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the American Counseling Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics ...
Need I go on?
10 - The Countess (Trish Wilson)
Every time I hear "life coach", I think of Eva from Nip/Tuck. She has some serious issues, to put it mildly. Yup, I bet "life coach" is another racket made to make money for people who otherwise can't earn a living.
I'd rather trust what the APA has to say about gay "therapy" than what Anthony Grande has to say. Besides, Anthony, what do you have to say about this?
Ex-Gay Leader Confronted In Gay Bar. It's about John Paulk, board chair for Exodus International. Paulk made excuses for being in the gay bar, saying he had to use the bathroom. Heh.
11 - gonzo marx
nice linkage Countess, and a fine read for a Post....
/golfclap
as for Ant G...pay him no heed, he has a bit of a difficulty with factual accuracy....
i try and explain things , but you know how it is...
like...
James Dean was the actor, Jimmy Dean makes sausage
it's NOT the "Leaning Tower of Pizza"
and we don't get french benefits
but i digress...
Excelsior!
12 - Anthony Grande
Well, it sounds to me like some doctors are letting their personal beliefs get in the way of their practices.
We got some ex gays converting gays and everyone gets mad. They aren't hurting no one so leave them alone.
I thought this was a free country. How come that man has to explain himself?
13 - Natalie Davis
Actually, John Paulk (who is a pleasant enough fellow) left his Exodus board post after the Mr. P's incident. Last I heard, he and his female spouse and kids were living in Portland, OR, where he works with a little Exodus-affiliated ministry.
14 - gonzo marx
Ant G sez...
*How come that man has to explain himself?*
simplicity itself to explain why he had to do so
it's called hypocrisy
now go and look it up, then think about why it is hypocritical for someone advocating this whole "gay is a choice and we can save you from it" thing...and making money from it...when he is found in a gay bar and publicly busted
i realize that recognizing the Reality of that situation doesn't fit into the narrow confines of your worldview, but try taking the blinders off for once and looking at the Facts in an Objective manner...
k?
tnx
Excelsior!
15 - Natalie Davis
"How come that man has to explain himself?"
Ask his former bosses and a whole passel of fundamentalists who were none too happy with Mr. Paulk after his DC escapade... Then again, so many of their poster ex-gays end up finding and finally accepting their real selves, it's no wonder.
16 - The Countess (Trish Wilson)
gonzo marx, I saw the commercial too. I also hear that James Dean's car is haunted by his ghost.
The James Dean Curse
Snopes couldn't even debunk it. The legend is called "undetermined". Awright!!!!
And yup, Paulk stepped down from Exodus International after the gay bar incident. That didn't look good for the "ex-gay" ministry, did It?
Trish (who wants James Dean's cursed car)
17 - Greg Schoppe
two notes of interest... not points of contention, just notes...
1. Before the 50's you could easily find thousands of doctors who would claim that smoking was good for your health. Therefore, there is precident against the "10000 people can't be wrong" argument made above.
2. Just because some "ex-gays" have been seen to lapse, doesn't mean the program is a total failure. Many drug addicts return to their addictions after therapy. That doesn't mean the therapy is inneffectual for all.
anyway, just thought I'd bring some logic to this argument... it seemed a bit more emotionally fueled than logic fueled.
18 - Silas Kain
We got some ex gays converting gays and everyone gets mad. They aren't hurting no one so leave them alone.
Ex-gays converting gays -- what a total unmitigated joke. As far as these ex-gays not hurting anyone, that is another fallacy perpetuated by self-loathing, sexually ambivalent humans who are too repressed to realize that sexuality is as natural as a rain shower.
I'm not denying that the intentions of some ex-gays may be good; however, the overall ferocity of this group lends to the continued emotional blackmail, financial extortion and repression of gays. The gay community has come far too along in the last 35 years to allow itself to be victimized. I don't want to force my sexuality on anyone, that's an individual decision. That being said, I am out, proud and a positive member of society. Sure, there are those who will never accept of condone my lifestyle. And, as I said, that's a matter of individual choice.
19 - Luke
I don't see how something so clinical and unsexy as all these psycho-analists and shit is suppose to make homosexuals get horny when they see a naked woman, I mean, I'm sure as hell not going to get a stiffy either when a shrink is pointing out eroginous zones and things which are suppose to give me a boner on a diagram of a naked woman covered in side notes and technical jargan explaining which neurons in my brain are going to start firing when I look at grid reference F5.
20 - Luke
The only way to be heterosexual, is to have a perverse obsession with stairing at naked women, how the fuck is anyone suppose to teach you how to have perverted thoughts about women
21 - The Countess (Trish Wilson)
If the only way to be a straight man is to have a "perverse obsession with staring at naked women", maybe there should be an "ex-straight" movement. Somehow, I don't think the Fundies would get behind that one.
22 - Luke
Well, if a woman is walking down the street wearing a bearly there miniskirt, and I'm walking behind her, I'm imagining all the kinky shit I want to do to her, what does an ex-gay man think while he's staring at her ass? Probably thinking "My therapist said that I'm suppose to enjoy looking at attractive women, he said I should look at at least 10 attractive women per day, this is woman number 6, so just have to stare at another 4 attractive women to meet my quota, and then I can go home and jack off to gay porn"
23 - Anthony Grande
"simplicity itself to explain why he had to do so
it's called hypocrisy."
Wouldn't it make sense for a man who works with gays and tries to help them do a little research about how they act amongst eachother?
24 - Victor Plenty
Fundamentalists have had an ex-straight movement for much longer than they've had an ex-gay movement. It's carefully designed to minimize every hetero male's sexual interaction with women. They call it marriage.
Of course, it doesn't actually work, just as their efforts to "cure" gays have never worked. But that doesn't stop them from trying.
(Don't get me wrong here. Marriage can be a great thing. It's just one of many great things that tend to get ruined once fundamentalist extremists get hold of them.)
25 - Anthony Grande
And Silas is just pissed off because he knows that if they are truly "ex-gay" it would prove that homosexuality is a choice and is not created by nature.