Thursday, June 28, 2012

Exodus International is Still Dangerous and Wrong

Exodus International and its "ex-gays" for pay claim that they are moving away from making claims that so-called reparative therapy but that the organization will continue to "simply focus on helping clients reconcile their anti-gay beliefs" and helping them live lives of celibacy or sham marriages to straight spouses.  The approach is in my opinion totally ass backwards.  Exodus ought to be focusing on helping clients understand the wrongness of their anti-gay brainwashing and helping them find gay accepting denominations.  Of course, if Exodus did this, the money pipeline from the anti-gay hate groups that masquerade as "family values" or "Christian" organizations would stop in a heart beat.  And then - Heaven forbid - folks like Alan Chambers (pictured above) would have to find real jobs. Not to mention get over their own psychological damage.  Think Progress looks at this hypocritical shift by Exodus and its "professional ex-gays".  Here are excerpts:

Media outlets across the country have published an Associated Press story today claiming, “Christian group backs away from ex-gay therapy.” Exodus International, an umbrella organization for various ex-gay ministries, is rebranding itself by no longer trying to “cure” people of homosexuality. According to its president, Alan Chambers, the group will now simply focus on helping clients reconcile their anti-gay beliefs (internalized homophobia) by embracing celibacy or marrying an opposite-sex partner despite their same-sex orientation, like Chambers himself did.

By so generously granting Chambers’ premise, the AP completely ignores the actual intention of ex-gay therapy. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association decided that homosexuality was no longer a mental illness. This meant therapists were to no longer treat homosexuality as a problem itself, but to instead help people reconcile the reality of their innate sexual orientation. It was only after — and because of — this decision that the first ex-gay ministry, Love in Action, began. From its integration into Exodus International in 1976 to the first introduction of the term “ex-gay” in 1980, these ministries have always been founded in the dangerous idea that being gay is a problem to be addressed, repressed, or circumvented.

In this regard, nothing has changed at Exodus. At its core, the organization clearly still believes that homosexuality is the cause of a person’s struggles, not the anti-gay society in which they live. Regardless of how these therapists attempt to treat homosexuality, they are still causing harm by trying to treat it at all — in complete violation of all social science research and ethics.

This disingenuous rebranding of ex-gay therapy away from a “cure” is not unique to Exodus. The Mormon contingent of the ex-gay movement has similarly been suggesting that just because a person has same-sex attractions doesn’t mean they have to identify as gay. Focus on the Family is still encouraging gay people to “resist same-sex attraction.”  .   .  .  . It’s not an exaggeration to say they are all simply advocating that people lie to themselves to conform to heteronormativity.

To many, ex-gay therapy may be a fringe practice, or a difference of opinion that isn’t particularly risky to those who might choose it. The truth is that the false belief that sexual orientation is not innate is at the root of all anti-gay beliefs, and nothing can rebrand the harm caused by that ignorance.

These ministries are poisonous and do a disservice to both the tortured "ex-gays" and the straight spouses duped into marrying them.  But then, the Christofascists care nothing about the damage they do to people.

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