Tomorrow, the march continues toward banning the abusive practice of “ex-gay” therapy for minors. In Pennsylvania, State Rep. Brian Sims will join State Sen. Anthony Williams to introduce new legislation to smack down the quacks.
Tomorrow’s activity in the Keystone State follows similar laws in California and New Jersey. Massachusetts Rep. Carl Sciortino has also introduced a bill that is winding its way though the legislative process.
Momentum for such bills has picked up since the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously upheld the California law. The win in California will hopefully open the floodgates and set the stage to pass similar laws across the country.
The more one looks at the crackpots and cranks who run the “ex-gay” industry, the clearer it becomes that such quackery must be kept away from vulnerable children. For example, Voice of the Voiceless founder, Christopher Doyle, announced last week that a former “Satanic Drag Queen” would receive the ex-gay group’s “Courage Award.”
Trace McNutt said in an interview with Doyle that he became involved in drag when he learned that “the rock stars and the royalty of the gay world were the drag queens” and as a result turned into “an alien, sexual deviant creation…satanic version of a drag queen.” After battling drug addiction and homelessness, he realized that homosexuality was a choice and started attending church where “some of the most masculine, butchest men reached into my life and loved me.”
Groups like Voice of the Voiceless deliberately exploit losers who are dazzled by the bright lights of “ex-gay” media stardom. Such circus acts are then put on a pedestal and paraded on-stage until they eventually crash and burn – revealing that they had never actually changed their sexual orientation.
The latest “ex-gay” freak show occurred this week at the University of Lagos in Nigeria. One of the university’s star students, Chibuihem Amalaha, claims to have demonstrated through modern science that homosexuality is unnatural. His “experiment” used magnets and showed that the north and south poles of two magnets are attracted to each other while same poles repel each other. He conclude
d that this “means that man cannot attract another man because they are the same, and a woman should not attract a woman because they are the same. That is how I used physics to prove gay marriage wrong.”
Clearly, Amalaha is the second coming of Einstein. The University of Lagos even applauded his study and some of his professors believe that he will “win a Nobel prize one day.”
Or, maybe he will simply be handed balloons as he leaps out of a clown car?
Sadly, activists like Doyle are trying to get bizarre ideas, such as the magnet theory, into school libraries. Indeed, it was actually his boss, Richard Cohen, who originally came up with the magnet madness, which was demonstrated in the 2009 documentary Chasing the Devil. According to Doyle, “The very idea that a school or community library is banning a book because of political correctness is contrary to our country’s ideals of liberty and the pursuit of self-determination.”
Doyle doesn’t quite seem to understand that it is his incorrect science, not political correctness that has kept his wacky views off of the library shelves.
Another “ex-gay” activist, Rev. Grace Harley, is attempting to gain sympathy by pretending that she is a victim. “I have suffered more discrimination and intolerance as an ‘ex-gay’ than I ever did when I was gay….We need your protection and your compassion. To give sexual orientation protection to one group while excluding another (ex-gays) is outright discrimination.”
The thing is, if you are trying to hoodwink the public, you can’t let them in on your devious strategy. Voice of the Voiceless writer, Nathan Ruark, inadvertently revealed that “ex-gays,” such as Harley, were going to cry victim and hijack the language of the LGBT movement in order to find support.
“If we are to change the way our society is going, we need to adapt to our current social environment and use the legalization of tolerance and non-discrimination to our advantage,” wrote Ruark.
The “ex-gay” myth is a series of insane ideas that contradict all contemporary science, mixed with cynical public relations strategies designed to confuse people. This is why the New York Times editorial board was correct to write: “The old idea that homosexuality is an illness that can be ‘cured’ may at last be headed for the trash heap.”
Lawmakers in all 50 states need to take concrete steps to protect LGBT youth from charlatans. The last thing helpless teenagers need is “help” from so-called therapists who clearly are the ones in need of professional counseling.
