Another "Ex-gay" Therapist Is Busted

Wayne Besen appears to have hit pay dirt again. It seems that
Alan Downing (pictured above) - the Director of Coaching and Group Services for the Jonah Institute, and a staff member of the Spring Lake Heights Counseling Center, of Spring Lake Heights, New Jersey and Brash-McGreer Associates of Medford New Jersey - who markets the lie that gays can "change" and become straight has been busted for inappropriate sexual behavior with much younger patients in his "ministry" program. What is it about these proponents of the "ex-gay" myth (e.g., George Rekers) who get off with voyeurism and other activities with young gays who could very well be their children. Rather than allegedly counseling others about the same sex attraction ("SSA" to use their jargon), these frauds need some serious psychological counseling themselves. The sad truth is that these snake oil programs exists for two reasons: (1) so that leeches like Downing can enrich themselves off of religiously brainwashed gays and (2) so that Christianists can claim to legislators and judges that being gay is achoice and, therefore, not worthy of legal non-discrimination protections. These folks give the term sleazy a whole new meaning. Here are some highlights from Truth Wins Out:
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Truth Wins Out (TWO) released an exclusive video statement today from two former clients of “ex-gay” life coach Alan Downing. The clients, Ben Unger and Chaim Levin, alleged that during individual therapy sessions, Downing made them undress in front of a mirror and touch their bodies while the significantly older therapist watched. Unger and Levin call the sessions a “psychological striptease” and believe they were harmed by what they consider unprofessional behavior and sexual misconduct.
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Downing, who admits he is still attracted to men, is a major player in the “ex-gay” industry and a practitioner of so-called “reparative therapy”. He is the lead therapist for Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) and is listed on the People Can Change website as a “Senior Trainer” for Journey into Manhood, which is a controversial “ex-gay” backwoods retreat designed to supposedly make gay men more masculine.
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“These dysfunctional,unscientific programs are rife with sexual impropriety and need to be shutdown,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Too often,repressed ‘ex-gay’ quacks pretend they are trying to get into your head when they are really trying to get into your pants. They call what they do reparative therapy, but it’s more like re-perv-ative therapy.”
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JONAH was co-founded by Arthur Abba Goldberg, a Wall Street criminal mastermind who was convicted in 1987 of “fraud of spectacular scope”. Upon completing parole,Goldberg secretly reinvented himself as a moral leader who “cures” gay and lesbian people. Known as “Abba Dabba Do” in the financial world, Goldberg was sentenced to 18 months in jail for bilking poor communities with complicated bond schemes and served six months in prison.
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This is an unscrupulous organization of high moral turpitude that has few qualms about harming desperate and vulnerable clients. This group has consistently been tied to bizarre, sexually suggestive methods that are unsettling, dangerous and ineffective.”
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Journey into Manhood, where Downing is a counselor, exhibits similar eyebrow raising techniques. Writer Ted Cox infiltrated this peculiar program and was surprised to find what he called,“homoerotic exercises” and a cabin that he called “The Cuddle Room” because it was a space where supposedly “ex-gay” men gave each other inappropriate massages.
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I truly believe that parents who place their underage children in these "ex-gay" programs need to be charged with child abuse and prosecuted. No youth deserves to be emotionally and psychologically scared simply because their parents are religious extremist whack jobs.

More GOP Paranoia

As part of its push back after the stinging electoral set backs it experienced in November, 2008, the Republican Party has tried to depict the Democrats as a party controlled by extremists. Barack Obama has similarly been depicted as not an American and as somewhere between a communist and a Nazi in his political leanings. Truth be told, of course, it is the GOP and not the Democrats who are the ones controlled by extremists. In the GOP's case, it has largely become a group dominated by religious extremists and racists - which is a large part of the reason moderates defected from the party in droves. A new column by George Packer in the New Yorker accurately looks at the more pervasive mental derangement and paranoia that are now prerequisites to being a Republican. Here are some highlights:

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A few days ago, I wrote that the “paranoid style” has been a continual temptation and danger for modern conservatives (whom Hofstadter called “pseudo-conservatives,” owing to their radicalism in wanting to overturn existing laws and institutions). Several readers expressed disbelief that I didn’t mention their left-wing counterparts, . . . There’s plenty of criticism of Klein, Moore, Nicholson Baker, and other paranoid stylists of the left. . . I didn’t mention them in discussing Hofstadter and the current reaction to Obama for this reason: Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck have far more power in the Republican Party (it sometimes seems to include veto power) than Klein, Lee, and Moore have in the Democratic Party.

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The reasons are complex, but I would list these: the evangelical and occasionally messianic fervor that animates a part of the Republican base; the atmosphere of siege and the self-identification of conservatives as insurgents even when they monopolized political power; the influence of ideology over movement conservatives, and their deep hostility to compromise; the fact that modern conservatism has been a movement, which modern liberalism has not.

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Goldberg would have even more basis for his complaint if I were the author of a book called “Conservative Fascism” and he were not the author of a book called “Liberal Fascism.”