Category: Warren Throckmorton

Exodus International Board and members condemn Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill

As a follow up to a letter delivered to Uganda’s President Yowari Museveni, the board and many member ministries of Exodus International have issued a statement condemning Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009.

Due to the continued threat of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, introduced before the Ugandan parliament on October 14, 2009, and bills like it in other nations, the Board of Directors of Exodus International and its North American membership felt a vital need to issue the following statement:

The statement is very similar to the letter which was delivered to the Ugandan President in November, 2009. The statement in full after the jump:

Continue reading “Exodus International Board and members condemn Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill”

Health care reform: Who must buy insurance?

The Christian Science Monitor takes a simple stab at this question here.

But here’s a key thing to remember: There is a simple concept at the center of this rambling, Rube Goldbergian machine. Democratic healthcare reform would expand insurance coverage in America by requiring people to obtain it.

That’s right. The healthcare reform bill would mandate that most US citizens and legal residents purchase “minimal essential coverage” for themselves and their dependents. They can get this either through their employer, or, if their employer doesn’t offer health insurance, they can buy it through new marketplaces that will sell policies to individuals.

Those marketplaces would be called “exchanges.” We’ll talk more about them in a later story. (We’ll also cover subsidies for health insurance, when it all would take effect, how it would be paid for, and what it means for businesses.)

I feel sure that the requirement to purchase health insurance will be challenged in court. Forcing a purchase with the penalty of fines seems to compel associations which could give rise to constitutional challenges.  The forced purchases, however, are key to the provision which is attractive to most people: elimination of pre-existing conditions as a reason to refuse coverage.

Why is Congress doing this? It’s a pretty obvious way to expand coverage, for one thing. Also, it will help bring in a flood of new customers for health insurance firms, including healthy young people who might not need much healthcare.

For insurance firms, those new customers could balance out the losses they might incur if they can no longer deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions. (Yes, that’s another change the bill makes.)

And remember, many people will not be buying this coverage purely on their own. Uncle Sam will be helping them. The bookend to the individual mandate is federal subsidies for insurance purchases, which reach deep into the middle class. We’ll talk about those next.

In essence, you and I (via taxes) will be providing coverage for people who may not want it so that people who need coverage for serious conditions will have it. Insurers may still benefit by virtue of the millions of new subscribers. I suspect there will be severe fines for insurers who attempt to limit coverage or benefits. But I don’t know. And the lack of knowledge is what is politically troubling. There will be legislators who approve this bill over the weekend that have not read it.

According to the NY Times, key votes are still in play approaching a Sunday vote.

Mankind Project provides journalist with a “very weird weekend”

The Mankind Project has been off my radar for months. However, UK journalist Tom Mitchelson put it back on with his eyewitness account published in Saturday’s UK Mail Online. 

I first heard about the MKP’s New Warriors Training Adventure at a NARTH (National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) conference in 2003. Various members, including then President Joe Nicolosi, were recommending it to those in attendance as a way to support healthy masculinity.  A few same-sex attracted men who tried it thought it was great and a few others thought it made no sense to be naked in the woods with other guys. New Warriors is still recommended on the NARTH website. In view of the current critiques of the sexual identity therapy framework (SITF), it is worth pointing out that the SITF discourages experiences like NWTA. More about that after I review Mitchelson’s weird weekend.

The next time I recall thinking much about MKP was when I read Chris Vogel’s Houston Press article about the suicide of Michael Scinto. You can read all of the articles on MKP and NWTA here.

For veteran NWTA watchers, these experiences will seem familiar. Mitchelson grabs your attention out of the gate:

How our man found himself with 65 naked men chanting, drumming – and screaming their rage against women to ‘reclaim’ their lost masculinity…

The temperature has plunged to freezing. I am deep in a remote English woodland outside Exeter.

I have been blindfolded and I am standing, holding hands, with a long line of men – who, until about 24 hours ago, I’d never met before.

Together, we are stumbling through the scrub as beating tribal drums guide our way. Oh yes, and we are naked. Totally naked.

Abruptly, my blindfold is ripped off and I see we have been led to a shadowy candle-lit room. There are about 65 of us in a double horseshoe formation.

This is a ceremony where we are to become ‘new warriors’. And then the dancing begins.

I wish I were somewhere else. Anywhere else. So why on earth am I here?

Why indeed? On its website, MKP proclaims:

We’re redefining mature masculinity for the 21st Century – and we want your help!

Along the way Mitchelson seems amused that the NWTA is viewed as a path to redefined masculinity.

A leader holding a wooden staff decorated with feathers rambles on about the mission of the weekend, using the pompous jargon that would later become very familiar: words like ‘shadow’, ‘warriors’, ‘masculine’, ‘commitment’ and ‘responsibility’.

He tells us how to be a man. It’s hard to take from a man wearing face paint, carrying a feathered stick.

Whatever healthy masculinity is, it seems to involve making the world into a giant man-cave, free from those pesky women.

Everything I read from them is baffling non-speak. They claim the weekend is a ‘process of initiation and self-examination that is crucial to the development of a healthy and mature male self’.

They claim they help move men away from the ‘comforting embrace’ of their mother – something, on the face of it, some wives might even encourage. Then I am told I will ‘confront’ my ‘dependence on women’, to help me move into the ‘masculine kingdom’.

The fun begins when they arrive at the camp. Continue reading “Mankind Project provides journalist with a “very weird weekend””

The value of self-determination in counseling

In response to the recent attacks on the sexual identity therapy framework, a supportive reader contacted me with a story of one of her experiences in counseling. I do know the person and can confirm the accuracy of the situation. Why should therapists avoid imposing their beliefs on clients? Read and see what you think.

As someone who has been in counseling, I enormously appreciate your emphasis on self-determination.  As you wrote the other day, any therapist can force any views at any patient. When I was in grad school, I had just started with a female therapist.  She was given plenty of information about my Christian beliefs and how it was important to operate within that for me to succeed.  And then within 5 weeks (before I quit), she sent me to the library to read a book that was essentially how to be a lesbian. And then she basically told me that if I’d just go and have sex with someone that I wouldn’t have problems with it anymore.  And then I quit.  Why is respecting beliefs a better way? I really had a hard time with that, because she tried to force me out of my beliefs.  And it was awful.  I had a hard time trusting any therapist after that.

That therapist should have made a referral. Apparently, the value conflict was so great that the therapist apparently was not able to get past it. Therapists are not machines and have strong beliefs about many things so when the conflict is great, referral is indicated. The sexual identity therapy framework allows for such referrals while at the same time requiring respect for clients and their values.