If you remember, last week Anderson Cooper ran a three-part series about Kirk Andrew Murphy and the “Sissy Boy Experiment” that drove him to commit suicide. For a long time Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin has followed the lethal experiments of George Rekers. So what new insights does Burroway have on this almost 40-year-old story?
Burroway and Anderson say that every “ex-gay” patient they’ve met has still had a strong homosexual orientation. Burroway says media needs to continue discrediting ex-gay therapy’s touted “successes” to prevent its traction and that we should create a national organization to help the survivors of ex-gay therapy (as no such organization currently exists).
Hue-Man
The ex-gay charlatans fly below the radar, preying on vulnerable gays. Network TV doesn’t “do gay” very often and the troubled closeted gay is usually portrayed as violent, not as a victim. The only exception I can think of was on Degrassi: The Next Generation (ep. Beat It, Part 2) where Riley went online to find out how not to be gay and ended up in the clutches of these money-grubbers. AC360 is exposing to a wider audience some of the ugliness of these monsters and the plight of their victims.
Jeffree
Jim Burroway’s report also did a better job than AC’s of showing how the “treatment” Kirk Murphy received a) affected his whole family negatively and b) was used to promote therapy that wasn’t just ineffective, but harmful.
The BTB series is *definitely* worth a read, if you haven’t taken a gander yet.
It comes down hard on the shoddy research & followup, plus Jim explains how parents were led to believe this was “scientific.”
Since NARTH and JONAH are still pushing books by Nicolosi that refer back to Rekers, this isn’t just about the 1970s, it’s about what is being peddled to parents now.
Roman
Someone needs to investigate Michele Bachmann’s husband Marcus who runs a “Christian counseling” business in the Twin Cities that “treats” homosexuals with reparative therapy.
MEP
@Roman: Roman, do you know anyone who was treated by him?
TMikel
The more we expose this sort of “treatment” the better. We have lost too many gay men and women to those who claim they can “cure” them when no cure is needed. A national organization is needed and would be helpful.
alan Balehead
don’t make to money exposing this..not too sincere..do it for the gays!
Vinci S.
Someone needs to investigate Roland Martin’s wife Jacquie Hood’s (http://jacquiehood.com/) or Roland himself on their exact involvement with “gay reparative therapy.”
Unless of course, they’ve had a change of heart, it was really only one person, it wasn’t a conversion and he just forgot to take this off of his website:
http://www.rolandsmartin.com/page/news.cfm?ArticleID=10.
This guy is supposedly part of the “left-wing media”?
Huh?
Right Wingers Are Socioptahs (John From England)
@Vinci S.: You need to post that on rod online 2.0. A site for blak gays.
Right Wingers Are Socioptahs (John From England)
The biggest issue the left have is that we are not inherently as single minded as the right. We have hobbies. Interests. A variety of passions that take up our time.
The right only focus on one issue-gays, religion, capitalism, small government, guns, immigrants-and make it the ONLY issue that they will fight until it disappears. Everything is a game they must win or else they will, die!?
They are relentless and won’t give up. Can’t give up as YOU are their focus and the longer you exist, the unhappier they are.
You can’t change their mind and you will never be able to because they are incapable of thinking analytically, weighing up an issue and seeing greys. Empathy is beneath and is seen as a sign of failure which is the enemy to the right.
They always win because they are relentless bullies BUT the left can beat them because they are single minded and that isn’t a recipe for intellectual strategic brilliance.