Tag Archives: reparative therapy

Archbishop Admits Church’s Mistake in Supporting Reparative Therapy

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Malta’s top bishop acknowledged church leaders were mistaken when they released a controversial position paper designed to oppose a bill which seeks to make reparative therapy outlawed in the island nation.

Speaking to the Times of Malta, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta said he “would not have simply released a position paper” about the reparative therapy bill knowing what he knows now.

The bill, entitled the Affirmation of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression Act, seeks a “ban

Source: Archbishop Admits Church’s Mistake in Supporting Reparative Therapy | Bondings 2.0

Gay ‘cure’ group faces consumer fraud complaint from rights coalition

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One of the leading ‘gay cure’ groups in the US is facing a federal fraud complaint from a gay rights coalition.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have joined together to make the case against People Can Change.

According to HRC, the Virginia-based group People Can Change “preys on vulnerable LGBT people and families by using damaging and discredited claims that it can change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity”.

PCC says it provides services to people who are “seeking to overcome homosexual desires”, with desperate people and families forking over as much as $650 per ‘workshop’ in a bid to cure homosexuality.

Source: PinkNews

Curare l’omosessualità? Le menzogne delle cure riparative – Progetto Gionata

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Riflessioni di Carlos Osma tratte dal blog Homoprotestantes (Spagna) del 5 giugno 2012, liberamente tradotte a Progetto Gionata da Nieta Gennuso:

Qualche giorno fa ho letto l’intervista che una rivista ultraconservatrice cattolica ha fatto ad Alberto, un giovane evangelico che affermava di aver abbandonato lo “stile di vita” omosessuale. Non è stato necessario fare un’analisi approfondita per capire i messaggi principali dell’intervista: l’orientamento sessuale non esiste, è solamente un’alterazione derivante da fattori ambientali ed educativi che con una cura adeguata può essere curata.  Questa “guarigione” è il massimo a cui una persona che crede di essere omosessuale può aspirare, dato che la vita che la aspetterebbe come gay o lesbica è di continua insoddisfazione, ricerca di pornografia, infelicità ecc…In poche parole, la propaganda omofoba di sempre, messa in bocca a un giovane di 20 anni, che senza dubbio ha dovuto soffrire molto. In poco tempo l’intervista è stata pubblicata integralmente nella rivista “Actualidad evangelica”, della Federazione delle entità religiose evangeliche della Spagna, senza alcun tipo di chiarimento, o commento critico su ciò che si diceva in essa.

Source:  Progetto Gionata

Campaign group launches action against ‘gay cures’

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Campaign group AllOut is urging the public to take action against a phoney ‘gay cure’ group

A petition calling for a ban on phony ‘gay cures’ will be delivered to governments across the world, beginning in France tomorrow and then the UK. So far, over 26, 000 people have pledged their support for the Time to end ‘gay cures’ campaign. The aim is to get 50, 000 names on the online petition.

The group is hoping for enough public pressure to cause a ‘domino effect’, whereby the ten countries that the campaign is focusing on will denounce the treatments and make them illegal. There are fears that the practice leads to self-harm and may even drive some to commit suicide.

AllOut, which promotes LGBT equality internationally, are concentrating in particular on the activity of extremist Christian group Desert Stream. The organisation is conducting a world tour with their ‘healing’ programme. According to AllOut, each ‘gay cure’ session costs up to $1,200.

Desert Stream is holding Living Waters training programmes, claiming to teach people how to ‘cure’ homosexuality. The programme is currently happening in France, and will then be offered in other countries including the UK, Finland and Lithuania. The petition will be delivered to all the countries where the sessions are currently planned to take place.

-full report at Pink Paper 

(Sign the AllOut petition here)

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Ex-Gay Groups Go Back to the Future

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Exodus leader Alan Chambers, who recently admitted that since “reparative” therapy cannot “cure” homosexuality his group will no longer promise “change,” has come under fire from other ex-gay proponents. One of those seeking Chambers’ scalp is Dr. Robert Gagnon, who has called for Chambers to resign as head of Exodus.

Apparently, what chaps Gagnon’s butt the most is Chambers’ assertion that gay Christians can go to heaven “if they have a relationship with Jesus Christ.” Gagnon is apparently so upset about Chambers’ position that it took 35 pages to cover all his objections, including this one:

Alan’s approach of providing assurances of salvation to those actively engaged in sexually immoral intercourse is a very different approach than Jesus’ and Paul’s warnings that immoral sexual behavior, among other offenses, can get one excluded from the kingdom of God and thrown into hell.

Gagnon’s verbose reaction belies the truth that “reparative” therapy is finally on its last legs, condemned by every reputable psychological organization and propped up only by discredited studies from the likes of de-certified Paul Cameron and the work of Robert Spitzer, who recently disavowed his own research.

Chambers is simply the latest “ex-gay” to realize he isn’t. Exodus’ founder Michael Bussee discovered that back in 1979, when he and Gary Cooper—another ex-gay pioneer—fell in love and got married.

“By calling ourselves ‘ex-gay’ we were lying to ourselves and others. We were hurting people,” Bussee recalls.

Now that “pray away the gay” is quickly headed for the historical dustbin, Gagnon and his “ex-gay” enthusiasts will need a new generation of leaders to keep the snake oil business going.

I have a suggestion. Instead of relying on new “science” why not get medieval on homosexuality and hire former Navy Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt? He recently claimed on The David Packer show that he can exorcise the gay right out of you.

via Candace Chellew – Hodge, Religion Dispatches.

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Sexual Healing: Evangelicals Update Their Message to Gays

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At the world’s largest ministry for homosexual Christians, there’s no more talk of “curing” same-sex attraction. 

Thirty years ago, Alan Chambers was a Christ-loving 10-year-old with a terrible secret. He knew he was attracted to other boys. He also knew that the Bible called homosexuality an “abomination.” After nearly a decade of hiding his feelings (and his love of shopping and decorating) from family and pastors, he discovered a ministry called Exodus International. Today, Chambers is the president of Exodus and the author of the book Leaving Homosexuality. He oversees more than 260 ministries, spearheads large annual conferences, and is married to a woman.

More recently, Chambers publicly rejected reparative therapy — a school of counseling that aims to make gay people straight. At the Gay Christian Network Conference in January of this year, Chambers told the audience that “99.9 percent of [Exodus participants] have not experienced a change in their orientation.” Around the same time, he pulled all reparative therapy books from the Exodus bookstore. His actions irked a number of therapists, including one marriage counselor, improbably named David Pickup, who argued that Exodus had “failed to understand and effectively deal with the actual root causes of homosexuality.”

The question is whether Chambers’s changes will filter down through the rest of his organization. One of Exodus’s policy statements promises that the group will “stand with the LGBT community both in spirit, and when necessary, legally and physically, when violence rears its head in Uganda, Jamaica, or anywhere else in the world.” It’s no coincidence that those particular countries are mentioned. Just last month, Exodus board member Dennis Jernigan traveled to Jamaica, where homosexuality is a crime, and urged the country not to change its laws. In 2009, another board member gave a speech in Uganda that inspired a Christian campaign to make homosexuality punishable by death.

” (On Friday, the day after we spoke, Exodus sent out a press release distancing itself from Jernigan’s statements and announcing his resignation from the board.)

-full report at Atlantic

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