SPLC and Truth Wins Out Launch Nationa Campaign Against Ex-Gay Myth

One of the most insidious lies that the Christianists and professional Christian set endeavor to perpetuate is the lie that sexual orientation is a "choice" and/or that one's sexual orientation can "change." Never mind that literally EVERY legitimate mental health and medical association disputes this lie and condemns so-called "conversion therapy." Indeed, conversion therapy has only two real purposes: (1) politically it gives conservative/nutcase politicians a smoke screen to hide behind, and (2) ex-gay "ministries" can be cash cows as charlatans fleece parents and their LGBT children of thousands of dollars for "placement" in such a ministry. The truth and the damage done to those often forced into this fraudulent programs means nothing to the Christianists. Box Turtle Bulletin has a must read piece that looks at the resent statements by John Smid, the former director of Memphis-based Love In Action, the country’s largest ex-gay residential program, who admits that the "ex-gay" programs don't work and that no "ex-gays" exist in reality. Here are a few highlights:

The former head of one of the nation’s most prominent ex-gay ministries now says that homosexuality is something that cannot be “repented,” because “repentance from something means it has to be something you can control, like actions.” John Smid, the former director of Memphis-based Love In Action, the country’s largest ex-gay residential program, now says that homosexuality is “an intrinsic part of their being or personally, my being. One cannot repent of something that is unchangeable.” He also says that in all of his years in ex-gay ministries, he never met a gay man who became heterosexual, and that he now considers himself homosexual “and yet in a marriage to a woman.”

In 2010, Smid reportedly wrote several letters of apology to some of his former clients, and disclosed on Andrew Marin’s blog that he still experiences “erotic attractions to those of the same gender (male).” Smid’s latest blog post on his own web site continues on those themes: I have gone through a tremendous amount of grief over the many years that I spoke of change, repentance, reorientation and such, when, barring some kind of miracle, none of this can occur with homosexuality. The article today is a great example of how we as Christians pervert the gospel as it relates to homosexuality as though homosexuals aren’t welcome in the kingdom unless they repent (which many interpret to change). But since homosexuality is not “repentable” then we put homosexuals into an impossible bind.

Given this reality, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Truth Wins Out have launched a national campaign to expose the "ex-gay" myth for the cynical, deliberate lie that it is. Activist Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out - who I worked with closely in 2003 to expose ex-gay poster boy Michael Johnston as a fraud - has these details on the new campaign which hopefully will force some political whore politicians (typically Republicans) to stop claiming that being gay is a choice:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Truth Wins Out (TWO) launched a national campaign today targeting conversion therapy, a thriving practice that claims to “convert” people from homosexuality to heterosexuality. The groups made the announcement in coordination with today’s National Coming Out Day.

The campaign will begin with a series of community meetings in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., for survivors of the practice, which has been discredited or highly criticized by virtually all major American medical, psychiatric, psychological and professional counseling organizations. Survivors are also invited to share their own stories at www.splcenter.org/conversion-therapy. The campaign also will encourage community advocates and elected leaders to scrutinize local conversion therapy programs.

“Conversion therapy programs have devastated all too many lives and families by attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation,” said Christine Sun, deputy legal director, who leads the SPLC’s LGBT rights project. “This practice is based on nothing more than junk science and must stop.”

The American Medical Association officially “opposes the use of ‘reparative’ or ‘conversion’ therapy that is based on the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation.”

In 2006, the American Psychological Association declared: “There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.”

Conversion therapy and the ex-gay myth need to be thrown on the trash heap of history and responsible politicians need to cease kissing the asses of deliberate liars and purveyors of untruth and dangerous - and some times deadly - "therapy" programs.