Ex-Gay

• Michael Keegan @ Huffington Post: Connecticut and the Cause of Our National Political Paralysis. 

• Stephen Webster @ Raw Story: Discovery Channel kicks Ted Nugent to the curb. 

• Steve Benen @ Maddow Blog: Learning the wrong lessons from the Newtown massacre.

• Hussein Rashid @ Religion Dispatches: Pam Geller’s Latest Subway Ad Inadvertently Attacks Hebrew Bible.

• Adam Serwer @ Mother Jones: Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin Now Going After Gay Troops. 

• Wayne Besen @ Truth Wins Out: “Ex-Gay” Rock Star John Paulk Exposed As Fraud…Again. 

• Carlos Maza @ Equality Matters: Washington Times Op-Ed Distorts California’s “Ex-Gay” Therapy Ban.

Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show this week to report on his group’s so far unsuccessful lawsuit against California’s new law prohibiting the use of ex-gay therapy on minors. Barber asserted that “anecdotal, unsubstantiated, politically motivated claims of suicidal thoughts” that frequently result from the unsafe and degrading therapy techniques “have nothing to do with science.” “Simply on the science alone they just don’t have a leg to stand on,” Barber said.

But as we’ve reported before, the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, National Association of Social Workers and American Psychiatric Association have all found that sexual orientation conversion therapy is a dangerous sham.

Barber, who just yesterday he claimed that nearly half of all gay people are victims of sexual abuse as children, doesn’t really care about the findings of the country’s leading medical organizations, he just cares about preserving extremely harmful practices under the pretense of defending children against the supposed gay menace.

“The homosexual activist lobby is an insatiable beast” intent on “throwing children under the bus,” Barber claimed. He warned that gays are working to “turn our public schools into indoctrination centers” and “using these kids as pawns in a dangerous and selfish political game of chess.”

Barber: I know from personal experience dozens and dozens of former homosexuals, typically it’s through a relationship with Jesus Christ that they are able to come to a full and complete freedom from their unwanted same-sex attractions. We know the untold thousands of people who have left homosexuality, those results speak for themselves. You match that up against these anecdotal, unsubstantiated, politically motivated claims of suicidal thoughts and so forth, we see that this is clearly a political move; it has nothing to do with science or helping these children. They are using these kids as pawns in a dangerous and selfish political game of chess.

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Barber: We’ve seen, as I mentioned before, thousands of people who have left homosexuality but they have to be able to establish that it’s fixed for legal purposes so that’s what it all boils down to, it’s all about the legality. We’re confident even the Ninth Circuit will hold that clearly this is an overreaching law that is politically motivated, intended to silence opposition to homosexuality and that simply on the science alone they just don’t have a leg to stand on.

Mefferd: You look at how the LGBT activists are operating in California and it just seems like there is no limit to what they want, it’s just one thing after another out there, they get one thing and then they move on to the next thing and they move on to the next thing and with great vigor.

Barber: That’s right. The homosexual activist lobby is an insatiable beast, as I’ve often said before. They do want everything that we’ve said that they wanted and that is not just affirmation of homosexuality but celebration of homosexuality under penalty of law, they absolutely want to turn our public schools into indoctrination centers and the narrative that people can and do leave homosexuality does not align with their political, cultural and legal goals so they are throwing children under the bus here—in order to try ends justifies the means agenda here.

Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver appeared on VCY America’s Crosstalk yesterday to discuss his so far unsuccessful legal challenge to California’s law banning ex-gay therapy practiced on minors, where host Vic Eliason commended his efforts and said that affirming a gay person’s sexual orientation is “like saying to the pyromaniac: go ahead and try it again.”

Staver: These clients who have a right to receive the kind of counseling that they want and is benefiting them, they will be told ‘no you can’t have that anymore.’ The only kind of counsel that you can get is that these confused feelings that you have and that you don’t want, don’t worry about them, just act on them, let’s change your religious and moral views instead.

Eliason: That’s like saying to the pyromaniac: go ahead and try it again. Inflaming emotions and passions….

Staver argued that the law will hurt survivors of child abuse because they will begin to “have feelings towards somebody of the same-sex because that’s how he was abused, that’s how he was dominated,” saying that gays are “abnormal” and have a “risky” lifestyle. He added that sometimes sexual orientation conversion therapy isn’t even needed because the orientation can “go away spontaneously” and “without any intervention at all.”

The likes of a Jerry Sandusky, the monster that he has been on the media and around the country, molest a young boy. That boy then begins to have anger and identity issues and it affects his relationship with his classmates and with his parents, then begins to act out or have feelings towards somebody of the same-sex because that’s how he was abused, that’s how he was dominated. That’s a normal response for someone going through something like this where they’ve been sexually dominated.

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There are studies that show that some minors for example that might develop these same-sex sexual attractions, they go away spontaneously, they go away without any intervention at all, they just simply go away. Now, what happens if you have situations like that where someone just says, ‘hey it’s natural and normal, go ahead and act on it.’ Well no it’s not natural and normal, in fact it’s abnormal, it’s risky.

After his group said that discredited and dangerous sexual orientation conversion therapy is “designed to bring homosexuals out of bondage and into healthy behavior,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins maintained that such counseling is simply a “compassionate” and “nonjudgmental” way for gays and lesbians to find the “wholeness that has been eluding them in their current lifestyle.”

While speaking today with con man and ex-gay group leader Arthur Goldberg, who once again compared his embattled group to Weight Watchers, on Washington Watch Weekly, Perkins lauded conversion therapy as a way for gays to pursue “this path of wholeness.” Earlier this year, Perkins argued that gays and lesbians seek to “redefine the norms of behavior” because “there is an emptiness within them.”

Goldberg even claimed that gay rights activists are only pretending to claim that sexual orientation cannot be changed as part of a “pre-planned agenda,” and that people who failed at conversion therapy simply didn’t try hard enough.

Goldberg: This was actually part of a pre-planned agenda that was set forth in a book that they wrote called “After the Ball,” I know that one of your most scholarly staff guys Peter Sprigg has written on this and I’ve also written on this, my book is called “Light in the Closet: Torah, Homosexuality, and the Power to Change,” they spell out an agenda in their in which they say for example, tell people that we’re born gay: ‘We know we’re not gay, we know we’re not born gay, but that doesn’t matter.’

Perkins: This lawsuit, I would say it looks frivolous to me, it’s kind of novel. Their using a consumer law, consumer fraud is what they’re challenging here, that you’re promising one thing and not delivering. It’s kind of outrageous I think. You’ve said that it’s ‘without merit, designed to create a chilling effect upon speech and programs to assist people in overcoming these same-sex attractions.’

Goldberg: Correct. Their theory is basically if someone goes to Weight Watchers and says ‘I want to lose fifty pounds’ and they don’t lose fifty pounds, they’re going to say, ‘oh Weight Watchers you promised me you’d help me lose fifty pounds and I didn’t lose fifty pounds,’ same basic theory.

Perkins: Obviously the outcomes of any type of counseling is in large part determined by the patient following and genuinely perusing this path of wholeness.

Goldberg: Yes. In fact as an example, I don’t want to get into the facts of the case, but one of the plaintiffs talks about ‘I went to five sessions.’ Five sessions, hello? Is that any kind of long term involvement in terms of showing that you’re really serious about wanting to overcome?

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Perkins: I think we’ve got to be very clear here. You’re here to help those who want help and it’s a compassionate help, a nonjudgmental help for those seeking a wholeness that has been eluding them in their current lifestyle.

Goldberg: Precisely.

Last time talk show host Steve Deace talked to an ex-gay activist, he brought Greg Quinlan of PFOX onto his show to warn that gays and lesbians engage in “sexual cannibalism” and are “recruiting” kids “to behave as homosexuals.” Yesterday, he interviewed Debora Barr, the author of All Things New: A Former Lesbian’s Lifelong Search for Love, who writes that after joining a church her “same-sex attraction diminished.” Deace told Barr that he believes the “huge surge in homosexual behavior” in society is a result of the “collapse of the family unit,” while Barr claimed that gays and lesbians are really seeking to repair broken relationships with their parents. “The problem with that is two hurting women can never get what they need from each other, the same as two hurting men can never get what they need from each other;” Barr said, “it’s just a distortion of love.”

Deace: It’s no coincidence we have seen a huge surge in homosexual behavior at the same time we’ve seen a collapse of the family unit. Because without those traditional roles of a mom and a dad represented in a home and that healthy balance that produces a healthy sexual identity in children, which is collapsing in our culture in the last thirty, forty years, that balance if that’s not modeled and witnessed, it’s going to create confusion in young people, particularly if you throw in anything like a betrayal or an abuse. Really, the surge in this lifestyle is not just about propaganda from popular culture but it really is about people that are literally trying to find meaning and purpose in their life when they come from an environment growing up that didn’t offer them that.

Barr: That is so, so true. I believe that a child’s upbringing is so important and when they don’t get they need—for me, my relationship with my mother got broken at a critical stage in my development, I needed that mother figure in my life and all of the sudden that relationship was broken. So what I was trying to get from other women was that thing that I needed, that piece of female—I don’t even know how to describe it. But it seemed when I was in relationships with women, I was in three serious long-term relationships of five or six years, one of them was seven years, these women were all older than me, and it wasn’t until I got out of this life and could look back over my life and see these patterns that I realized that what I was seeking was that mother figure in my life. The problem with that is two hurting women can never get what they need from each other, the same as two hurting men can never get what they need from each other; it’s just a distortion of love.

Linda Harvey of Mission America is still incensed by California’s new law preventing minors from undergoing pseudo-scientific sexual orientation conversion therapy, and on her radio show this weekend she called it a “fascist” law that is “banning heterosexuality.” She suggested that parents and counselors work to break the law, which she said would be more loving to gay or lesbian youth.

This SB 1172, passed in California, signed by Governor Jerry Brown, bans all counseling that would reduce or eliminate same-sex attractions and especially they ban this for minor who are people under the age of eighteen. So that means that parents, if you have a child who has come to you and said they have same-sex attractions and they think they are gay, and many kids with all the propaganda that is very one-sided are believing that the were born that way if they feel that way, but it’s the blessed parent who at least gets a chance to counsel them differently. Hopefully your response will be one that is, ‘I love you no matter what but this is wrong,’ so the two things at the same time, ‘but I will help you to find the counseling you need.’ California is basically banning heterosexuality. So for these children, if a child has been persuaded that they are born this way, that they have same-sex attractions, and you as a parent want to take them to a counselor, no licensed, professional counselor in the state of California is now going to be able—unless they break the law. Perhaps some of them will have a conscience on this and think differently and think that maybe their responsibility to their client on this as in other areas of counseling and that the client might want to have a choice in the matter as they do in other areas of counseling, they’re not supposed to counsel anything but ‘oh no, homosexuality, you must embrace that.’ It’s so anti-choice, it’s so rigid, it’s so fascist, this is just the same old stuff you get from the supposedly tolerant folks, tolerance is actually intolerance, inclusivity is actually exclusivity.

She also argued that the resounding criticism of ex-gay therapy by the country’s major medical and counseling organizations is “baloney” because she knows “tons of ex-homosexuals.” According to Harvey, the only reason such counseling doesn’t work for some people is that the clients simply aren’t working hard enough to change their sexual orientation because they think it is “too tough.”

Harvey later lamented that school counselors in California will not tell gay and lesbian students to change their orientation, warning of “child endangerment and child corruption” along with “educational malpractice” and “psychological malpractice” in California schools.

‘There’s no such thing as change.’ That’s baloney. I know tons of ex-homosexuals and people that have been ex-homosexuals for twenty years or more, I know ex-transgender people. The fact that a few people try it and it doesn’t work or they give up doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for some people, and that’s true of all counseling. How many people do you know who throw their hands in the air and say ‘oh this is too tough’ and they are just more comfortable where they are even if it’s painful. That is human nature, that is what people do all the time, so it is not going to be any different in counseling. Think about school counselors, every single high school and middle school have counselors on site, in California if a child confidentially comes to them and says ‘I’m struggling with—I think I might be homosexual,’ this person is going to have to say, ‘great, then you’re born that way.’ This is child endangerment and child corruption and I think it is educational malpractice, it’s certainly psychiatric malpractice.

To promote Americans For Truth About Homosexuality’s fall banquet, keynote speaker and pseudo-scientist Judith Reisman of Liberty University appeared on AFTAH Radio Hour with Peter LaBarbera to discuss the fictional connection between pedophilia and homosexuality. According to LaBarbera, “many homosexual men were victims of predators, older men, as teenage boys they were seduced into the lifestyle,” and once again insisted that CNN anchor Don Lemon is gay because he was molested.

Reisman argued that pedophiles have targeted the government, the military and schools for infiltration like Soviet spies in order to seek power.

LaBarbera: Judith do you think they are going to succeed in creating sympathy for pedophiles?

Reisman: They already have, this is growing. Let’s understand something; you have many pederasts and pedophiles in positions of power. I thought about writing a book years ago called ‘Pedophiles in Power,’ you don’t get to where we are unless you have so to speak spies in the woodwork, you know? Through World War II some of our top people were working for the Russians and they were advising Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So you have to have people in power, in top positions of power, both in the military by the way, in the church and in the school in order to create the kind of—

LaBarbera: So Judith you’re saying you can’t get to this level of influence without people in high places and of course we’ve seen that also with the homosexual movement and other movements.

LaBarbera and Reisman agreed that the California law banning sexual orientation conversion therapy is designed to help child predators convince their victims that they are gay and therefore increase the gay “power structure.”

LaBarbera: Because of this law, this oppressive law that the homosexualists have pushed, trying to ban treatment for people with this unwanted homosexual attraction that now a boy becomes a victim of say an older man, a pedophile, and he won’t be able to get treatment to reverse that homosexual ideation that’s going on in that kid’s mind.

Reisman: I think that’s the design of the bill, let’s be frank, that’s the design of the bill. There are people in high places, powerful people, who do not want children to reverse their—get straightened out. They don’t want that, they do want to increase their power and their power is based and increased in the numbers of people who self-identify as homosexuals or bisexual or transgender and so forth and so forth. The power lay in the population, the power lay in increasing the number of people who self-identify as dysfunctional but think that that’s normal. The bill in California is designed to increase that power structure, the voting bloc if you will.

LaBarbera’s co-host, pastor John Kirkwood, called the “homosexual movement” the “greatest threat to freedom” in the US and LaBarbera said gays and lesbians are “similar to the Muslims, when they get the power that’s when they start oppressing freedom.”

LaBarbera: There are sectors of society that don’t want kids, little boys and girls to get help with unwanted homosexual attractions. We always said it was coming, we said that when the homosexualists, which are people promoting homosexuality in our culture, when they get the power it’s sort of similar to the Muslims, when they get the power that’s when they start oppressing freedom. John, it is an outrage that you as a parent in California if this bill is signed by Governor Jerry Brown and the gay activists are pushing hard for it to be signed, you as a parent, if you are in California you could not have the freedom to give the treatment you want for your son who might have been molested by a pedophile or by a juvenile, Judith’s been talking about these juvenile predations or say a teenage boy seduces another teenage boy or say a twelve year old boy into homosexuality, you would now be restricted, your options would be limited because they want that idea to get out there that the child is gay.

Kirkwood: This is why that I say the greatest threat to freedom, I normally say religious freedom, in the United States is the homosexual movement. They won’t be satisfied until they control everything.

Save California’s Randy Thomasson went on yet another anti-gay tirade while appearing on The Janet Mefferd Show, this time excoriating gay rights advocates for successfully pushing a new law in California that puts limits on harmful and discredited sexual orientation conversion therapy. He claimed that the Democrats who backed the measure decided “to do the Devil’s work” and “to go against religious freedom, against free speech, against the freedom to even love your own child and care for your own child.” He argued that LGBT people were likely abused as children but because of the new law, parents will be prohibited by the “completely insane” law from providing counseling to a child who survived sexual abuse.

Let’s talk about hepatitis, let’s talk about HPV, let’s talk about a whole host of sexually transmitted diseases, let’s talk about higher cancer rates for homosexual men, let’s talk about earlier deaths for homosexual men; you’ve got to realize the harm of children going into this lifestyle, it puts them at greater risk of all of these ills. Again, the Democrats are saying ‘no, no, no,’ we want to go with our homosexual activist friends, our volunteers, our political supporters, we are going to go against religious freedom, against free speech, against the freedom to even love your own child and care for your own child, and we are going to do the Devil’s work here and that exactly what’s been done.

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To label something that is helping the child overcome a conflict, the feelings that have resulted from trauma, you cannot say that it’s harmful to be helpful to a child deal with trauma, it’s absolutely opposite of that. So the state is coming in to say ‘let’s push aside parental rights, this is a health or safety issue’ is completely bonkers, it’s calling black white and white black, it’s calling right wrong and wrong right, it’s completely insane and it’s very angering to think about the child who belongs to the parents and the parents have a God-given right to seek what’s best for that child and if the child’s been molested at a camp or somewhere else, the parent wants counseling for the gender-confusion that’s resulted, even if the parent wants the counseling, even if the parent pays for the counseling, even if the parent finds the counseling, the state says to the parent ‘you can’t do that’ and tells the molested child ‘no help for you.’

Later, Thomasson said that gay rights supporters want to “wipe out all the competition” by placing limits on the pseudo-scientific practice, warning that next the state might decide to ban vaccinations or chemotherapy. He concluded by telling Mefferd that gays and lesbians should not receive civil rights protections since they can change their sexual orientation as “people get out of addictions in America when they work at it and try,” calling gay rights “dangerous for America” and “antithetical to a free society.”

Look at what we have in our society, we have conflicts in society, we have disagreements in society, but do we allow those who are in power to wipe out all competition? In fact, we have rules about companies can’t have a monopoly, right? The US Supreme Court has been involved in those types of rulings. But here we see that a rival, homosexual activists say ‘we want to wipe out our rivals here,’ look if something is controversial then you can’t wipe it out, otherwise, you have to apply the same rule: let’s wipe out regressive therapy, which is controversial, let’s wipe out tarot card therapy, let’s wipe out chiropractic care, let’s wipe out vaccinations, let’s wipe out chemotherapy, see you can’t in a free society get rid of all controversies, you have to allow controversy and disagreement within a free society.

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Homosexuality is not biologically based, we’ve never heard bisexuality or transsexuality is biological, it’s obviously a chosen thing. But when you look at what has happened is it’s been turned into a minority even though a minority civil rights protected class requires that there be an immutable, non-changeable, characteristic. We have thousands and thousands of former homosexuals, showing that change occurs; people get out of addictions in America when they work at it and try. Now we have this turned into a hammer upon everyone else; ‘gay rights’ defeats and trumps everyone else’s rights who disagree and that’s why it’s so dangerous for America, gay rights are antithetical to a free society.

California’s new law preventing pseudo-scientific sexual orientation conversion therapy from being used on minors has not gone over well with anti-gay activists. Charisma magazine news editor Jennifer LeClaire even believes that California may soon decide to “outlaw the Bible” as a next step. LeClaire claimed that homosexuality is caused by demonic “spirit of immorality” that “enters in through some sort of abuse and the lies of the enemy,” Satan. “Sexual orientation change efforts can help set the captives free,” LeClaire said. “That’s why the enemy saw to it that California, a state with a high gay population rate, bans such therapy.”

When he signed the bill on Saturday, the liberal governor said change therapy would “now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.”

Really? Since when is helping a confused teenager under assault by powers of this dark world a dustbin of quackery?

I don’t believe kids are born gay. I don’t have all the answers, but I believe there’s a spirit of immorality involved at the root level. I believe it often enters in through some sort of abuse and the lies of the enemy that follow. I believe it involves emotional and spiritual brokenness. I believe deliverance is available to those oppressed by this spirit. And I believe sexual orientation change efforts can help set the captives free. That’s why the enemy saw to it that California, a state with a high gay population rate, bans such therapy.

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What’s next for California lawmakers? Banning the gospel—or any practice that aims to reduce or eliminate people going to hell? Will Brown relegate the good news of Christ to the dustbin of quackery, too? Will California outlaw any ministry that does not affirm or encourage experimentation with or acceptance of homosexuality? Will churches lose their tax-exempt status if they preach the gospel?

Don’t think it can’t happen. It’s illegal to carry a Bible in some countries. Missionaries are barred from evangelizing in some countries. It’s officially against the rules to pray in the public square in some countries. Many countries are closed the gospel altogether and if you preach you could end up in prison or heaven.

California leads the nation in many trends. After trampling parental rights with this new bill, could it be possible that California will be the first to outlaw the Bible, prayer, missionaries or even the gospel itself, too?