February 14, 2013

Excerpts from ex-gay Christopher Doyle’s opinion piece on the Christian Post website: … “The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which claims to be ‘a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society,’ has been conducting a hate campaign for several years against former homosexual leaders, therapists, and persons with unwanted same-sex attraction (SSA).”

“The mission of SPLC’s hate campaign is three-fold: 1) Character Assassination: spreading false and misleading information on their website and via the media about therapists who offer professional services to individuals with unwanted SSA; 2) Fabricate evidence and embellish the facts about the so-called ‘dangers’ of sexual orientation change effort (SOCE) therapy; and 3) Recruit vulnerable and disgruntled clients to take legal action against organizations that offer assistance for those struggling with unwanted SSA in hopes to put them out of business.”

“The SPLC’s method of character assassination is simple. Repeat a lie loud enough and long enough, and people will believe it. The first lie is that SOCE is inherently harmful to persons with unwanted SSA. On their website, an article entitled ’10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked’ lists #10 Myth: “Gay people can choose to leave homosexuality.’”

“‘If people are not born gay, as anti-gay activists claim, then it should be possible for individuals to abandon homosexuality. This view is buttressed among religiously motivated anti-gay activists by the idea that homosexual practice is a sin and humans have the free will needed to reject sinful urges . . . a number of ‘ex-gay’ religious ministries have sprung up in recent years with the aim of teaching gay people to become heterosexuals . . . (but) in 2009, for instance, the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution, accompanied by a 138-page report, that repudiated ex-gay therapy.’”

“Let’s examine just a few of the SPLC’s ‘facts’ about ‘ex-gay’ therapy. The SPLC erroneously asserts that licensed mental health practitioners are religiously motivated and promote the idea that homosexuality is a sin. In fact, the SPLC is combining highly educated professional psychotherapists with religious ex-gay ministries, and then pronouncing that they are one in the same.”

“In truth, they are not the same, and the SPLC knows that. But it is far more compelling for the SPLC to repeat the lie that psychotherapists simply tell clients to ‘pray away the gay’ rather than to distinguish psychological services with religious interventions. The truth is that decades of scientific, peer-reviewed literature attests to that fact that homosexuality is fluid for some individuals and that some people can and do change from SSA to heterosexuality.”