Year: 2012

Earlier this week, I posted audio of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi talking about using porn in reparative therapy as a technique. A dispute had arisen between Exodus President Alan Chambers and Nicolosi about the use of porn in reparative therapy. In my view, the audio and rejected workshop description decided Round One in favor of Chambers. (See this post for the scoop)

Now, it looks like Round Two goes to Chambers as well. ExgayWatch has posted an email from Nicolosi where he explicitly promises cure to Alan Chambers.  Recall Alan claims that reparative therapists promise 100% cures. Nicolosi contested that in a Facebook posting saying:

Alan, what you are saying is untrue. I have never said I could cure someone completely from homosexuality. All my books make it quite clear that homosexual attractions will persist to some degree throughout a person’s lifetime.

Never say never.

In the email obtained by XGW, Nicolosi told Chambers that he could cure him 100%. After Chambers acknowledged on the Dr. Drew show that he could still find men attractive, Nicolosi wrote this (and more, go read the whole thing):

The point Alan is that you can get to a place where there is no more homosexuality. Really. You can actually get to a place where you can willfully (sic) think of an SSA image and have no bodily sensation.

Why stop half way? Why not do further work and finish the task and have it completely behind you. consider this invitation, not only for your sake but also as a testimony of complete healing to truly motivate others.

We have the therapeutic tools to get you over what ever SSA is remaining. (emphasis in the original email)

This is not that surprising to me. I attended three NARTH conferences (2002-2004) and I heard various reparative therapists make these claims. Various ex-gays would come out and say that. Part of the reason I believed the folks in the documentary I Do Exist was because I was hearing these claims made often. Time has told a different tale.

Also, other reports have come along where Nicolosi is quoted making grand claims. Take this one from 2009 – Nicolosi Claims 75% Cured.

Last week I blogged about a homosexuality conference in London hosted by the conservative Anglican Mainstream, and featuring Joseph Nicolosi, Jeff Satinover and Arthur Goldberg. One attendee was David Virtue who runs Virtueonline.com. His website is popular among conservative Anglicans. Virtue had much to say about the conference but one quote stood out. The quotes within this segment of Virtue’s article come from Nicolosi.

Nicolosi said he has been helping people to “increase their heterosexual potential” for 25 years, and puts his success rate among men at about two out of three. “75% of our clients are completely cured, the 25% who are not usually have other factors that are not brought into the counseling situation.”

“It is not the absent father, but the non-responsiveness of the father. It is when the father shuts downs and rejects the boy’s masculine striving and he shames the boy in his strivings to become a man. That boy will find some male to connect with. It is the negative experience of the father that destroys him and pushes him towards men who offer him homosexual sex as a way out.”

Virtue is not a critic and would not have a reason to lie. However, even though Virtue confirmed to me that Nicolosi said those words, he later changed the article to remove the reference to 75% cure at the request of Nicolosi’s wife – who was not at the conference.

Nicolosi is not the only one who makes wishful claims, it seems to be part of the genre. I can recall Richard Cohen doing the same thing, telling an audience once, that his clients, “never go back.”

I have been criticized by many (some of whom are not now doing so), for stealing hope from people as a consequence of my realistic approach to this area. I make no apology for it. Reality is what it is. We have to adapt. Following one’s values and beliefs does not rest on false hope or wishful thinking.

 

Part one is here; part two of The Blaze series where Barton answers his critics is more of the same from David Barton’s first response on his Wallbuilders’ website.

The article does not mention that Coulter and I are conservative Christians, both being active in our churches, we are not afraid of religion. We did not write our book to attack Christianity but to be faithful to it. In light of that fact, a reasonable question would have been: why are conservative Christians are also critiquing your work?

Seemingly oblivious to the irony, Barton criticizes me for writing about history since I am a psychologist.

“They don’t attack the facts — they attack the education – and that’s a way to change the topic,” Barton said. “If education really matters, there’s a lot I can point out. Ben Franklin didn’t have an education at all. George Washington didn’t have a military education.”

The historian explained that Americans have traditionally prided themselves “not on the labors you wear, but the fruit you produce.” He took specific aim at Warren Throckmorton, an associate professor of psychology at Grove City College (we mentioned Throckmorton in our original piece).

“The case of Throckmorton is a great example. He’s a psychology guy. Tell me what history experience he has — he has no training in that area at all,” he said, going on to wonder why Throckmorton is permitted to critique him with little scrutiny when he, too, purportedly has little formal history education.

We did attack “the facts.”

Furthermore, do you see what he did there? He said his critics don’t attack the facts but rather his education and then he did the same thing to me (ignoring my co-author, Michael Coulter)  in the next paragraph.  He didn’t answer our facts (even the ones raised in Part one of the Blaze series), he just criticized my profession and his perception of my training.

The primary question of fact Barton addresses is Jefferson’s faith. He says Jefferson was unorthodox in the last 15 years of his life. Jefferson was unorthodox as an older man but he began his skepticism of the Trinity before 1788 (he died in 1826), if we can believe his letter to J. P. Derieux — a letter that Barton does not cite in The Jefferson Lies.

To be continued, I am sure…

 

This morning Glenn Beck’s news site, The Blaze, launched a three-part series examining criticism of David Barton. Today was given to a description of some of Barton’s critics while the next two days, Barton will have the platform.

My book with Michael Coulter, Getting Jefferson Right, was mentioned as well as a couple of blog posts. Stephen Prothero’s USA Today column was mentioned as was criticism from a NYT’s article about Barton. I was glad to see the links to the articles so readers can follow them out and evaluate the at least some of the evidence. I do wish it would have been made clearer than the negative evaluation of Barton’s history is coming from people all over the ideological spectrum.

This series comes just ahead of Beck’s Restoring Love conference in Dallas where Barton will unveil his Founders Bible published by a division of Windblown Media.

Today, forty-six Christian leaders called on Christians in Uganda to reconsider their support for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. I am proud to say I am one of them. The letter attached should be taken as a general opposition to the application of criminal penalties for adult consensual same-sex relations.

(Washington — July 24, 2012) Today, a group of 46 American Christian leaders issued an open letter expressing solidarity with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Ugandans in the face of “increased bigotry and hatred.” The letter, coordinated by Faith in Public Life, Human Rights First and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, comes as a new Political Research Associates report released today accuses, among others, evangelicals such as Pat Robertson, Catholics and Mormons of setting up campaigns and fronts in Africa designed to press for anti-gay laws.

Today’s letter from U.S. religious leaders, including former U.S. Ambassador to Uganda and the Vatican Thomas P. Melady, President of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good Rich Cizik, and Soujourners President Jim Wallis, mobilizes Christian voices against rhetoric and actions in Uganda that demonize and criminalize homosexuality. In the letter, Christian leaders from across the United States, including prominent Catholics and Evangelicals, seek to establish that Christian beliefs are in direct conflict with the serious rights abuses perpetrated against LGBT people in Uganda.

The Christian leaders write: “Regardless of the diverse theological views of our religious traditions regarding the morality of homosexuality, the criminalization of homosexuality, along with the violence and discrimination against LGBT people that inevitably follows, is incompatible with the teachings of our faith.”

They also note that: “As American Christians we recognize that groups and leaders within our own country have been implicated in efforts to spread prejudice and discrimination in Uganda. We urge our Christian brothers and sisters in Uganda to resist the false arguments, debunked long ago, that LGBT people pose an inherent threat to our children and our societies. LGBT people exist in every country and culture, and we must learn to live in peace together to ensure the freedom of all, especially when we may disagree. We condemn misguided actions that have led to increased bigotry and hatred of LGBT people in Uganda that debases the inherent dignity of all humans created in the image of our Maker. Such treatment degrades the human family, threatens the common good, and defies the teachings of our Lord – wherever it occurs.”

“It’s important for Ugandans to know that not all Evangelical and Catholic leaders think LGBT people should be criminals,” says Frank Mugisha, executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda and the 2011 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award laureate, “This letter from prominent American Christians is a crucial step in our efforts to introduce Ugandans to more positive and loving Christian messages in contrast to the harmful rhetoric from our own pastors that only leads to more violence and hate.”

Sentiments contained in today’s letter will also be at the core of lobbying efforts occurring in Washington, DC this week as part of the 19^th International AIDS Conference. In that effort, faith leaders and activists from 15 primarily African countries will spend Wednesday, July 25 in meetings with administration officials and Members of Congress to express the need for bipartisan support to address serious human rights violations, including hate crimes, and challenges posed to HIV/AIDS prevention stemming from laws that criminalize homosexuality. These leaders and activists plan to hand deliver copies of the American Christian leaders’ letter to administration officials and Members of Congress.

In approximately 76 countries, consensual intimate same-sex conduct is criminalized. In Uganda, a proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill in its current version still includes the possibility of the death penalty in certain cases, and would criminalize any speech or actions the government might deem too positive about LGBT people. It could also criminalize HIV/AIDS and other health services that serve Uganda’s LGBT community. The legislation currently under consideration was first introduced in 2009, eventually tabled after widespread domestic and international pressure, but then re-introduced in the new parliament earlier this year.

For more information please contact:

Cate Urban at [email protected] or 202-463-7575 x234

Brenda Bowser Soder at  [email protected] or 202-370-3323

John Gehring, [email protected] or 240-644-3712

Please click this link to read the letter and view the signers. Join in by expressing your support in the comments.

 

 

Now there is no excuse for getting Jefferson wrong!

To get him right, now you can read Getting Jefferson Right on the Kindle, the Nook, any digital device, your computer (for only 4.99) and/or in paperback (12.95).

Amazon will have it available on the main site within a week and it should be in stores within a month or two. If you happen to go into Borders, Barnes and Noble, your local Christian book store, etc., ask them to carry it.

To find out more about the book and order the paperback copy, click this link.