Wayne Besen and Jerry Mungadze Will Be on Alan Colmes Tonight

Get some popcorn and gather round the radio kids because this promises to be a rip roaring good time.  Bring some crayons too.
Alan Colmes is hosting Wayne Besen and Jerry Mungadze on his show tonight which begins at 7pm.  Wayne has more details on his site (apparently this segment will air at 8pm).
Mungadze is the Texas therapist who uses crayons to map the brain and says his ex-gay clients demonstrate their change via brain changes. On this blog, Michael Bailey challenged Mungadze to send his patients to Bailey’s lab and Besen has offered Mungadze $10k to rewire his brain.
mungadzecolorpic
 
UPDATE: Mungadze said on Alan Colmes that he doesn’t believe in conversion therapy. That might be a surprise to The Joni Show folks. He also said he uses brain wave assessment to determine sexual orientation. This is in contrast to what he said on David Foster’s show Pure Passion. There was no mention of any kind of brain wave assessment on the Pure Passion show.
 

PFOX hit with defamation lawsuit by TWO

As expected…

WASHINGTON , Feb. 22, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Truth Wins Out announced today that it has filed a defamation lawsuit against Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) and its President Greg Quinlan after he claimed on a television show that Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen tried to have him killed. The lawsuit (Case number: CL12000008-00) was filed in Virginia’s Northumberland County Circuit Court where PFOX is headquartered. Norfolk attorney Michael Hamar will represent TWO.

“We will not let PFOX’s outright lies and bizarre fabrications go unanswered,” said TWO Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Greg Quinlan’s false allegations were deviously designed to damage my reputation and that of Truth Wins Out. We look forward to vigorously challenging Quinlan’s delusional version of events and debunking them in a court of law.”

On October 7, 2011, Quinlan was interviewed on News-Plus with Mark Segraves (WDCW-TV). At the 10:38 mark of the show, Quinlan fabricates an alleged hit on his life. According to Quinlan:

“Truth Wins Out if you look further, including Wayne Besen. He’s asked for people, you know, somebody needs to run Greg over. He needs to be hit with a bus. Somebody should inject him with AIDS. Those are the things that Wayne Besen and Truth Wins Out says about me. That’s pretty hateful rhetoric.”

TWO sent PFOX a letter offering the group an opportunity to apologize for their smear campaign. Unfortunately, Quinlan did not take the highroad and express regret for his false and misleading charges.

“When people engage in smear campaigns they are usually smart enough not to write lies on their website or make false allegations on television,” said TWO’s Besen. “That Quinlan would so brazenly lie in social and mainstream media is incredibly reckless and irresponsible.”

 

PFOX President says Wayne Besen behind threats to his life

In an interview recently with Mark Sagraves of WDCW-TV, PFOX President and lobbyist for the New Jersey Family Policy Council, Greg Quinlan, said (at 10:32 in the interview):

Truth Wins Out if you look further, including Wayne Besen. He’s asked for people, you know, somebody needs to run Greg over. He needs to be hit with a bus. Somebody should inject him with AIDS. Those are the things that Wayne Besen and Truth Wins Out says about me. That’s pretty hateful rhetoric.

Really? Besen has said some critical and dismissive things about ex-gays but I’ve never heard anything like that. Quinlan may soon have to provide proof of that since Besen absolutely denies the charges and may sue for defamation.

There are other questionable aspects to Quinlan’s claims. In the interview, Quinlan says that both APAs say that sexuality is fluid (not really, they say identity can shift but that orientation is pretty fixed). He says he is not paid to be ex-gay (sorry, I know the history there, his reputation is founded on his status as an ex-gay). He says that is acceptable for him to refer to gays as “faggots” because it is acceptable for blacks to use the “N” word referring to themselves (I’ll let readers ponder that one).

When confronted with the fact that Richard Cohen was expelled from the American Counseling Association, Quinlan said at 11:40, “But he hasn’t lost his license.” To my knowledge, Richard never had a license and he certainly does not now. Then he told Sagraves that Richard has a 90% success rate helping people change. If Richard claims that, I have never seen it.

Quinlan misrepresents Bob Spitzer. He says Spitzer says, “people can change, if they choose to change and they are highly motivated.” This is just not right. I know Bob Spitzer and he thinks change is infrequent and that such change is not just a matter of choosing to do so.

Finally, Quinlan wants civil rights for ex-gays but not for gays. He accuses Dean Hamer of lying – probably also an actionable statement if Hamer were so inclined to follow up.

In the culture war, this may be a new low. If Quinlan cannot prove his charges against Besen and Hamer, he has disqualified himself as a spokesperson. He certainly has passed along misrepresentations on the subject he claims to know when he talked about Cohen, Spitzer and Hamer.

The culture war brings out a toxicity from some who claim to be Christian as if winning the culture war at any cost is the mission. I think this story resonates with me because I have been the target of accusations and action of late. Even my children have been the target of lies about them, because of animosity toward me.

In the past, have been attacked by both Besen and PFOX over my views, but, as far as I can recall, the only personal smears about me or my family have come from those claiming to be Christian.

In addition to whatever truth comes out, I also hope that a result is reflection which will lead to a decline in personal vilification.

 

 

Wayne Besen links rape and the ex-gay movement

This is just off the wall.
Wayne Besen has a blog post this morning with this title:

‘Corrective Rape’ of Lesbians In South African Schools Shows Sickness of ‘Ex-Gay’ Movement

In a confusing post, Besen first suggests via his title that the rape of lesbians in South Africa somehow demonstrates something about the ex-gay movement. Then he says, “these extreme cases do not represent the so-called “ex-gay” movement in general.” However, in the last sentence of the post, he hints again at a link with this: “It is time to end the sickening abuse in all of its injurious forms that occur in the name of “corrective” or “ex-gay” therapy.”
This is outrageous. When Paul Cameron links gays and teacher-student sex, he is rightly denounced and dismissed. In my opinion, this post from Besen is the same kind of tactic. What is the point of that post and that headline? How does it further accurate understanding of the story he claims to be telling?
I call on people of good will to challenge this kind of shrill, polarizing rhetoric. I didn’t approve of Sally Kern calling the gay agenda worse than terrorists and I hope people will condemn this linking of sexual violence with people who refrain from homosexual behavior due to conscience of religious belief.

Genes and sexual orientation: Tale of two activists

Over at Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), Pete LaBarbera alerted his readers that he was on WGN last night in connection with a story about “gay genes.” He noted in a mass email yesterday (did anyone see it?):

Americans For Truth will be featured tonight in a story on the cable super-station WGN-TV, based in Chicago, concerning the latest academic pursuit of the “gay gene.” It will air between 9:00 and 10:00 Central Time on WGN which reaches across the country. You can learn more about the (liberal biased) Northwestern U. “genetic homosexuality” study at www.gaybros.com. As you know, pro-homosexual advocates are seeking to prove that homosexuality is genetic — with the hope of then declaring the issue outside the bounds of moral debate.

While this is not a strong denouncement of the project, it appears that AFTAH believes the research led by Alan Sanders is biased from the start. LaBarbera is right that some activists would like to prove a genetic source of homosexuality (case in point below). However, what if there are genetic components to sexual orientation? Is there any way to discuss or research these factors without being considered “liberal” and/or “biased?” Isn’t a blanket dismissal of pre-natal factors just as biased?

On the other hand, as if to prove LaBarbera’s point, enter Wayne Besen’s new videos from Dean Hamer and Jack Drescher.  To Dean Hamer, Besen poses the question, “Is homosexuality inborn?” Hamer replies that “there is more and more evidence that sexual orientation has a strong biological component.” Hamer then points to two “population based studies of twins.” One is Kendler’s study in the US and the other is Bailey and Martin’s study in Australia. Hamer says these studies “have shown that genes are the single most important factor in whether a person is gay or straight or somewhere in between.” He said the studies have been replicated and are convincing. I will save for another post a detailed response to those statements, but for now I will say that I do not agree with Dr. Hamer’s characterizations. For instance, in the Australian study, the actual concordance of homosexuality among male identical twins was only 11%. Kenneth Kendler and colleagues in 2000 found a higher concordance (31.6% combining males and females), but did not designate genetics as being a determining factor. About his study of twins, Kenneth Kendler told the BBC,

By no means is sexual orientation genetically determined but clearly genes are playing some role by interacting with a range of environmental factors.

Dr. Drescher’s video provides a more nuanced and I think accurate reading of research. About those who say they know what causes sexual orientation, Dr. Drescher says, “The truth of the matter is, we don’t know, nobody knows, and anybody who says that they know is lying to you.” Drescher also presents a reasonable view of the role of sexual abuse saying that for individual people, such abuse could play a role but as a general rule, believing abuse to be at root is an unfounded stereotype.

Now, coming full circle back to the website LaBarbera noted in his email – gaybros.com, we find a nuanced and I believe accurate view that cuts between activists Besen and LaBarbera. Here are a couple of excerpts:

At the present time, there is no uniformly accepted theory of why some men and some women develop a sexual orientation that is more or less exclusively focused on members of their own sex.

and

Most contemporary researchers believe that sexual orientation – the general disposition of people toward homosexuality, bisexuality, or heterosexuality – is the result of both biological factors and psychological experiences. Most researchers do not believe that sexual orientation is the result of nature (biology, including genetics) alone or nurture (environment) alone. What researchers want to know is how specific factors in biology and psychology interact to guide sexual development. These researchers therefore look for biological and psychological differences between homosexual and heterosexual people, both men and women.

Then after listing the many studies which find biological factors correlated with sexual orientation (e.g., finger length ratio differences, brain differences, etc.), the website says this:

These studies are designed to show a correlation between a trait and sexual orientation. This is not the same as showing that a trait causes sexual orientation. What is not yet known is whether these traits and sexual orientation have a common origin in genetics or other biological influences on development, though these hypotheses are being pursued. In any case, these lines of research are suggestive rather than definitive. Among other factors, it is these and other uncertainties that prompt continued research.

These statements sound anything but biased to me. All concerned would do well to heed them. Working hard to spin what is known may play well to activists but saying homosexuality is or isn’t all “genetic” or “inborn” or “environmental” does not well represent what is known. We need to follow the research where it leads and hold our theories loosely.