Tag Archives: gay rights

The Kansas Economy Sucks, So Let’s Do a Little Gay Bashing to Distract Everyone

by KellieBagot Posted on February 12, 2015

Mother Jones

Michael Hiltzik reports on Kansas governor Sam Brownback’s move this week to revive the culture wars:

Brownback’s latest stunt is to abolish state employees’ protections against job discrimination based on sexual orientation. In an executive order Tuesday, Brownback reversed a 2007 order by his Democratic predecessor, Kathleen Sebelius, that had brought state anti-discrimination policies in line with most of corporate America and 31 other states.

….Possibly, Brownback is hoping to deflect attention from the disastrous condition of the Kansas state budget, which has been hollowed out by Brownback’s extremely aggressive tax-cutting. Income tax receipts continue to fall below Brownback’s rolling projections — the latest estimates show them coming in 2% below forecast made just last November.

….The economic suffering that Brownback’s policies have imposed on Kansans is bad enough; to add to the pain by removing protections against workplace harassment over sexual orientation is a new low.

As Hiltzik points out, there’s no special reason for Brownback to do this now. The anti-discrimination policy has been in place for eight years, and Brownback apparently felt no particular angst about it during his entire first term.

But things are different now. When he was first elected, Brownback promised that his planned tax cuts on the rich would supercharge the Kansas economy and bring about prosperity for all. That turned out to be disastrously wrong, and now he’s slashing spending on education and the poor to make up for the catastrophe he unleashed. This is understandably unpopular, so what better way to distract the rubes than to engage in a bit of gay bashing? That’ll get everyone riled up, and maybe they won’t even notice just how much worse off they are than they used to be. It’s a time-honored strategy.

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The Kansas Economy Sucks, So Let’s Do a Little Gay Bashing to Distract Everyone

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg: America Is Ready to Accept a Pro-Gay-Marriage SCOTUS Ruling

by ManuelMaurer Posted on February 12, 2015

Mother Jones

In a new interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she believes Americans are set to accept a constitutional decision legalizing gay marriage in the country, saying it would “not take a large adjustment” for people to eventually come around on the issue.

“I think it’s doubtful that it wouldn’t be accepted,” Ginsburg said. “The change in people’s attitudes on that issue has been enormous.”

The justice’s comments are yet another indication the Supreme Court will rule in favor of gay marriage this June, when justices will hear a monumental case deciding if the Constitution provides the right for same-sex marriages.

“In recent years, people have said, ‘This is the way I am,'” Ginsburg added. “And others looked around, and we discovered it’s our next-door neighbor–we’re very fond of them or it’s our child’s best friend, or even our child. I think that as more and more people came out and said that ‘this is who I am,’ the rest of us recognized that they are one of us.”

Earlier this week, President Obama said he thinks the court will make a historic “shift” in this summer’s ruling and that it’s time to recognize “same-sex couples should have the same rights as anybody else.”

In the court’s decision not to block gay marriage in Alabama on Monday, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his dissent that the ruling offered another “signal” that gay rights advocates will be similarly successful this summer. Despite the decision, however, several Alabama counties still refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Even with such defiant opposition, Ginsburg maintained a positive outlook.

“One way or another it will be decided before we leave town in June.”

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg: America Is Ready to Accept a Pro-Gay-Marriage SCOTUS Ruling

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Mormon Church Comes Out in Support of LGBT Rights

by japildakar3 Posted on January 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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In a groundbreaking news conference on Tuesday, the Mormon Church officially announced its support for some LGBT rights, on the condition that the same legal protections are extended to all religious groups. But in doing so, the church also made clear their endorsement did not reverse the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage.

“We call on local, state, and the federal government to serve all of their people by passing legislation that protects vital religious freedoms for individuals, families, churches, and other faith groups while protecting the rights of our LGBT citizens in such areas as housing, employment, and public accommodation in hotels, restaurants, and transportation,” Elder Dallin Oaks, a top official of the church, said. “These protections are not available in many parts of the country.”

“We must all learn to live with others who do not share the same beliefs or values,” church officials stated.

The announcement comes as an anti-discrimination bill makes its way through Utah’s state legislature that seeks to ban gender-based discrimination in the workplace and housing. In the past, the church has made overtures towards friendlier LGBT stances, but Tuesday’s press conference is by far its most clear endorsement of gay rights. Mother Jones‘ Stephanie Mencimer has covered the church’s evolution on same-sex marriage:

In the five years since the LDS church sent busloads of the faithful to California to canvass neighborhoods, and contributed more than $20 million via its members to support the initiative, it has all but dropped the rope in the public policy tug of war over marriage equality. The change stems from an even more remarkable if somewhat invisible transformation happening within the church, prompted by the ugly fight over Prop. 8 and the ensuing backlash from the flock.

Although the LDS’s prophet hasn’t described a holy revelation directing a revision in church doctrine on same-sex marriage or gay rights in general, the church has shown a rare capacity for introspection and humane cultural change unusual for a large conservative religious organization.

“I am proud that the LDS Church has seen fit to lead the way in non-discrimination,” state senator and founder of the Utah Pride Center Jim Dabakis said in a news release following the announcement. “As a religious institution, Mormons have had a long history of being the victims of discrimination and persecution. They understand more than most the value and strength of creating a civil society that judges people by the content of their character and their ability to do a job.”

Watch Tuesday’s announcement below:

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Mormon Church Comes Out in Support of LGBT Rights

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1958: The Year That Writing About Gay Rights Became Legal

by BryantRiggins Posted on January 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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I’m familiar with the usual highlights of the gay rights movement, but not much more. So I found today’s article by David Savage about the 1958 Supreme Court case ONE vs. Olesen pretty interesting. Lower courts had ruled the Los Angeles magazine ONE obscene and therefore illegal to ship by mail, but a young lawyer named Eric Julber persuaded the editors to appeal to the Supreme Court:

By coincidence, the Supreme Court was struggling at the same time with the question of obscenity in a case involving Samuel Roth, a New York book dealer, who was appealing his conviction for selling sexually explicit books….”All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance — unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion — have the full protection of the guaranties” of the 1st Amendment, said Justice William J. Brennan in Roth vs. United States, handed down on June 24, 1957. “Sex and obscenity are not synonymous,” he added.

With that ruling fresh in their minds, several Supreme Court law clerks read Julber’s petition — as well as the magazine itself — and advised the justices it was not obscene. “This was an easy one for the liberal justices. It was a speech case,” recalled Norman Dorsen, who was then a law clerk to conservative Justice John Marshall Harlan and would go on to lead the national ACLU from 1976 to 1991. But even the conservatives were not in favor of censorship practiced by the Post Office.

“The conservatives on the court then — Felix Frankfurter, Potter Stewart and Harlan — were not like the real conservatives we have now. They were more tolerant,” he said. Brennan, the author of the Roth opinion, looked at all the petitions on his own. He would have seen the magazine and its supposedly obscene articles. After taking several votes, the justices decided on a simple, one-line ruling issued on Jan. 13, 1958, reversing the 9th Circuit decision.

This is obviously a bit of local color for us Southern Californians, but also an interesting tidbit in the history of gay rights for those of you who, like me, had never heard of it before. Worth a read.

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1958: The Year That Writing About Gay Rights Became Legal

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FDA Panel: Don’t Let Gay Men Give Blood

by Blaine3524 Posted on December 9, 2014

Mother Jones

It turns out, in the eyes of the Food and Drug Administration’s experts, that even a year without sex isn’t enough to guarantee the safety of blood donated by gay men.

Last week, the agency’s Blood Products Advisory Panel met to discuss revoking the agency’s 32-year-old prohibition on gay men donating blood. The prohibition, introduced during the early days of the AIDs crisis, forbid any man who had had gay sex since 1977 from giving blood—regardless of the circumstances or how long it had been since his last sexual encounter. The rule has remained unchanged, despite vast improvements in our medical knowledge of HIV and AIDS, and our ability to screen blood samples to ensure they’re free of disease.

Activists were hopeful that the FDA’s 17-member panel would vote to revoke the rule. Last month, a different committee of medical experts convened by the Department of Health and Human Services voted 16-2 in favor of a hypothetical rule that would let men give blood so long as they had not had sex with another man for at least a year. And while even this may be overkill—modern blood tests can detect HIV within a few weeks of infection—it is less discriminatory than the current ban.

Yet that modest step was too much for the FDA’s experts, who wrapped up last week’s meeting without voting on the proposal. “There’s too many questions in science that aren’t answerable,” one panelist concluded. “It sounds to me like we’re talking about policy and civil rights rather than our primary duty, which is transfusion safety,” noted another.

The panel’s calls for further research before lifting the ban left LGBT activists frustrated. “It was met with an alarming amount of resistance that just I didn’t expect,” said Ryan James Yezak, founder of the National Gay Blood Drive, who gave a presentation for the panel. He was taken aback by the claim that there’s not enough research to determine whether loosening the ban on donations would pose a risk to the blood supply. “That’s simply not true,” Yezak told me. “There is evidence that supports moving to a one-year deferral, at the minimum.”

He cited, for example, a study of Australia’s one-year deferral policy, and support for a similar policy from organizations such as the Red Cross and American Medical Association. But the committee wasn’t swayed. “I felt like it went in one ear and out the other,” Yezak said. “I may as well have not been there, because I don’t feel like the discussion reflected what happened at the HHS meeting.”

The FDA could still approve the one-year deferral plan without the endorsement of its Blood Products Advisory Panel, but there’s no timeline for considering such a decision, and the agency isn’t in the habit of rewriting rules against the recommendations of its own experts.

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FDA Panel: Don’t Let Gay Men Give Blood

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A Federal Appeals Court Just Ruled Against Gay Marriage. This Judge Just Issued An Epic Dissent.

by BeauBlakeley Posted on November 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, a federal appeals court upheld bans on gay marriage in Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Michigan. In a 2-1 vote, the 6th Circuit reversed lower courts’ rulings which had found the bans unconstitutional and sets up a likely Supreme Court showdown. Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey issued a scathing dissent. Here are her five best lines.

1. “The author of the majority opinion has drafted what would make an engrossing TED Talk or, possibly, an introductory lecture in Political Philosophy.”

2. “For although my colleagues in the majority pay lip service to marriage as an institution conceived for the purpose of providing a stable family unit ‘within which children may flourish,’ they ignore the destabilizing effect of its absence in the homes of tens of thousands of same-sex parents throughout the four states of the Sixth Circuit.”

3. “Because the correct result is so obvious, one is tempted to speculate that the majority has purposefully taken the contrary position to create the circuit split regarding the legality of same-sex marriage that could prompt a grant of certiorari by the Supreme Court and an end to the uncertainty of status and the interstate chaos that the current discrepancy in state laws threatens.”

4. “Even more damning to the defendants’ position, however, is the fact that the State of Michigan allows heterosexual couples to marry even if the couple does not wish to have children, even if the couple does not have sufficient resources or education to care for children, even if the parents are pedophiles or child abusers, and even if the parents are drug addicts.”

5. “…they are committed same-sex couples, many of them heading up de facto families, who want to achieve equal status—de jure status, if you will—with their married neighbors, friends, and coworkers, to be accepted as contributing members of their social and religious communities, and to be welcomed as fully legitimate parents at their children’s schools.”

It’s important to note the author of the majority opinion was Judge Jeffrey Sutton, who was appointed by former president George W. Bush. Thursday’s development demonstrates yet another example of Bush’s conservative legacy carrying on in federal courts long after his presidency ended.

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A Federal Appeals Court Just Ruled Against Gay Marriage. This Judge Just Issued An Epic Dissent.

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This Anti-Gay Candidate’s Message Is Bigger in Moscow Than Massachusetts

by Beau96Refnvx Posted on October 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Even though he’s running to be the governor of Massachusetts, Scott Lively makes no secret of his extreme anti-gay views. The evangelical pastor, who’s being sued by gay-rights groups for his involvement in Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill, has gotten flack on the campaign trail for his beliefs, even encountering some raucous booing at a gubernatorial forum earlier in the year.

Read more: Meet the American pastor behind Uganda’s anti-gay crackdown

Lively knows that his focus on traditional values makes him an unpopular choice in the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. “The only way Scott Lively is going to become governor of Massachusetts is by a miracle of God,” he told MassLive last month.

While Lively’s views can’t find much domestic audience, they play well in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Lively’s anti-gay zeal is on display in Sodom, a new documentary that aired on Russian television last month, to much acclaim. The film was produced by famously anti-gay TV host Arkady Mamontov, who once implied that the Chelyabinsk meteorite explosion was caused by the gay rights movement. The film aired on Rossiya-1, Russia’s main government-funded TV channel.

“For American homosexuals, this man, Scott Lively, is public enemy number one,” intones the film’s narrator. On camera, Lively speaks about the gay “agenda,” which seeks “anti-discrimination policy” in the name of ultimate “societal conquest.” Lively insists that “The average American is not in favor of homosexuality. But they are afraid to speak publicly about it, because the gays have so much power and they can do harm to those people.”

Lively brings the film’s producers to the headquarters of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC. Set against a dramatic soundtrack, Lively paces outside. “This organization, instead of focusing on the true needs of people around the world, they are trying to declare that homosexuality is a human right,” Lively says. “They spend vast amounts of money to promote this agenda around the world instead of defending genuine human rights.”

This is just the latest entry on Lively’s anti-gay résumé, as my colleague Mariah Blake has reported. In 1995, Lively coauthored The Pink Swastika, a book that argues that gay Nazis inspired the Holocaust because Judaism forbids homosexuality. In 2007, Lively went on a 50-city tour of Russia and other ex-Soviet republics to warn of the “homosexual agenda.” In 2009, he gave a five-hour presentation on Ugandan national television calling homosexuality a disease and claiming that gays aggressively recruit children.

It’s unclear if Lively’s segment in this film was shot before he declared his candidacy for governor in September 2013. Yet it’s a revealing comment on the state of American (and Russian) politics that a candidate can find more traction for his extreme anti-gay views in Moscow than Mattapan.

Take a look at the video below. (The Lively segment starts at 8:17; he arrives at HRC at 12:00.)

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This Anti-Gay Candidate’s Message Is Bigger in Moscow Than Massachusetts

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Social Conservatives Are Freaking Out Because the GOP Let 2 Gay People Into the Party

by DorthySilver Posted on October 1, 2014

Mother Jones

The Republican Party is slowly beginning to accept the existence of gay people among its ranks. As I wrote last month, there are two openly gay GOP candidates running for the US House this year—both with the support and financial backing of the national party (a third prominent openly gay candidate lost in a primary). But the social-conservative groups that have long held sway over the party aren’t taking the change lightly.

Late last week, three anti-gay-rights groups—the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the Family Research Council (FRC), and CitizenLink—sent a letter to national Republican leaders declaring their intention to actively oppose openly gay Republican House candidates Carl DeMaio and Richard Tisei, as well as Oregon Senate candidate Monica Wehby, who has endorsed gay marriage. “This decision was reached,” the groups wrote, “only after having exhausted all attempts to convince the Republican leadership of the grave error it was making in advancing candidates who do not hold core Republican beliefs and, in fact, are working to actively alienate the Republican base.”

The groups sent the letter to John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the leaders of the Senate and House election committees, claiming DeMaio, Tisei, and Wehby are “terrible role models for young people.” The organizations not only criticized the official Republican apparatus from supporting such candidates, but also vowed to launch a “concerted effort” to encourage people to vote against them.

Tisei is firing back. “I think that the majority of people at this point look at organizations like that as going backwards rather than forwards,” he said in an interview with Mother Jones. “I think DeMaio and myself represent the threat that we’re people who will be able to move the debate forward and help change the Republican Party. That scares a lot of those groups that are in existence primarily to hold people back.”

Tisei says that he hasn’t heard anything from the national groups regarding the letter from NOM and FRC, but isn’t concerned that the party would retract its support just because social-conservative groups are in a tizzy. “I think most party leaders recognize that the majority of younger Republicans have a different opinion and eventually the party needs to move in the right direction,” he says.

The Republican Party is still walking a narrow line when it comes to LGBT issues. The leaders of the party recognize that opposition to same-sex marriage is often a nonstarter among the young voters they need to win back, but the party still needs the religiously conservative voters that haven’t come around on marriage equality. Party leaders seem perfectly willing to accept a few gay candidates. But they won’t allow any meaningful consideration of ways the law could change to improve life for LGBT folks.

For a Republican running in a blue state like Tisei in Massachusetts, critiques from the far-right may prove more useful than detrimental; it gives him an opportunity to present himself as a middle-of-the-road, moderate candidate, attacked from all sides. “As a gay Republican, you’re under siege from both the left and the right, cause you’re a threat to both,” he says. “The left wants to keep things exactly the way they are for political reasons—they want their voting bloc to not be dissipating, they don’t want to have two parties who are good on the issue. Those on the far right don’t want to see the Republican Party change at all.”

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Social Conservatives Are Freaking Out Because the GOP Let 2 Gay People Into the Party

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The Supreme Court May Be About to Save—or Destroy—Gay Marriage

by Chet66Bkpm Posted on September 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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Supporters of gay marriage have been on a roll: In the past year, federal courts across the country have nullified same-sex marriage bans in more than a dozen states.

Yet these victories are complicated by the lack of a national legal standard on gay marriage: For now, it remains a state-level question. But that could change if the US Supreme Court steps in. Last week, the high court announced that it will review a package of seven gay-marriage cases from five states in late September when it chooses which cases to consider in their 2014-2015 term.

Legal experts say it’s likely that the court will hear at least one of the cases. “I think they’re going to take a case,” says Dale Carpenter, a professor of civil liberties law at the University of Minnesota law school. “The only question is which one. They know whichever they take, it’s going to be momentous.”

This cluster of cases centers on two key questions: All seven ask SCOTUS to consider whether a state law limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the 14th Amendment. Six of the seven cases also raise the question of whether states must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

The Supreme Court ruled on two landmark gay marriage cases in 2013: Hollingsworth v. Perry, which overturned California’s Proposition 8, and US v. Windsor, which invalidated the Defense of Marriage Act. But neither weighed in on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans, leaving the choice to allow gay marriage up to each individual state. If the court takes one of these new cases, it’s likely that its decision will have a broad and more definitive impact. “Should they decide that the 14th Amendment actually protects the rights of same-sex marriage, that would have the effect of being binding on the federal government,” says Jane Schacter, a professor at Stanford Law School.

The cases before the court involve the 14th Amendment’s guarantees to equal protection under law and due process. If the high court rules that it is a violation of either promise for one state to deny a marriage license to a same sex couple, then it would become unconstitutional for any state to do so. Any state that failed to comply with the ruling, Carpenter elaborates, “would face immediate lawsuits—a complete waste of time and money.”

It’s anyone’s guess which case (or cases) SCOTUS may choose. The justices will choose between three Virginia cases, and one each from Utah, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. Ted Olson and David Boies, the attorneys on one of the Virginia cases, successfully argued Hollingsworth v. Perry last year. The attorney on one of the other Virginia cases is Paul Smith, who has argued multiple cases before SCOTUS, including Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, which struck down state sodomy laws. Carpenter says that the cases from Utah, Indiana, or Wisconsin might prove the most comprehensive choices for the court. “Utah, Indiana, and Wisconsin involve the marriage issue and the recognition issue and the state attorney generals are fully defending those laws. You have all the elements together in those cases,” he says. “The Supreme Court might want to just take a very clean case in which you’ve got the state squarely taking the position and defending its law.”

The Supreme Court could take multiple cases or all of them. It could also consolidate cases, something the court has done in the past with hot-button issues. (For example, 1954’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education combined six desegregation cases.) “All these plaintiffs want to be the chosen one,” says Schacter. “But it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they take more than one case.”

Here’s a closer look at all seven cases being considered by the court, and what’s at stake in each:

1. Herbert v. Kitchen (Utah): SCOTUS briefly dealt with this case earlier this year. In December 2013, a federal district court struck down Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage. Weddings began immediately. In January, the high court issued a temporary stay, putting a halt to marriages while the state’s appeal was considered. In June, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s ruling that the state’s same-sex marriage ban was unconstitutional.

2. Smith v. Bishop (Oklahoma): First filed in 2004, this case originally sought both to overturn Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriages and to recognize marriages performed in other jurisdictions. In January, a district court judge ruled that the state’s ban is unconstitutional, but dismissed the portion of the lawsuit addressing marriages from other states, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing. Both sides appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed the district court on both counts. In its appeal to SCOTUS, the state of Oklahoma is asking the court to rule exclusively on the marriage question.

3. Bogan v. Baskin (Indiana): This case began as three separate suits filed on behalf of a widow and 11 couples. Several plaintiffs have same-sex marriage licenses from other states that are unrecognized in Indiana. In June, a district court judge consolidated the suits into Baskin, and struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage. He did not stay the decision, allowing marriage licenses to be issued immediately. Earlier this month, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s decision.

4. Walker v. Wolf (Wisconsin): In February, the American Civil Liberties Union filed this case on behalf of eight same-sex couples, three of whom had married in other places. In March, a district court judge denied the state’s requests to dismiss the case. In June she ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, overturning Wisconsin’s ban on same-sex marriage. Her ruling was unclear on whether marriages could begin or not: Still, clerks in some cities began marrying couples immediately. Earlier this month, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s decision.

5, 6, and 7. Rainey v. Bostic, Schaefer v. Bostic, and McQuigg v. Bostic (Virginia): These three cases are different iterations of a suit filed in July 2013 by plaintiffs Timothy Bostic and Tony London, who seek to get married in Virginia. Carol Schall and Mary Townley joined the case in September 2013. They were legally married in California in 2008, but their union is not recognized in the Old Dominion. This has made it impossible for Schall to formally adopt her own daughter. In February, a district court judge ruled on all three cases, concluding that the state’s laws barring in-state gay marriages and prohibiting recognition of out-of-state marriage licenses is unconstitutional. In July, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling. A fourth case, Harris v. Rainey, a class action suit, has been incorporated into Rainey v. Bostic.

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The Supreme Court May Be About to Save—or Destroy—Gay Marriage

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"Ex-Gay" Conversion Therapy Group Rebrands, Stresses "Rights of Clients"

by GordonLudwick Posted on August 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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As the “ex-gay therapy” movement suffers major legal and legislative blows, one of its leading proponents has undergone a major rebranding effort.

On Wednesday, in a bizarre, décolletage-heavy, news-style video, the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH)—the professional organization for conversion therapists—reestablished itself as the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity (ATCSI). In what it calls a “major expansion of our mission,” ATCSI claims it will continue “preserving the right of individuals to obtain the services of a therapist who honors their values, advocating for integrity and objectivity in social science research, and ensuring that competent licensed, professional assistance is available for persons who experience unwanted homosexual (same-sex) attractions.”

NARTH’s makeover, along with a similar rebranding effort by Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX), comes in response to growing national opposition to conversion therapy. ATCSI’s new website says the group has become “increasingly involved in legal and professional efforts to defend the rights of clients to pursue change-oriented psychological care as well as the rights of licensed mental health professionals.”

Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH), another ex-gay therapy organization run by former NARTH Board Member (and convicted fraudster) Arthur Abba Goldberg, is currently being sued for a different kind of fraud—accepting money but failing to deliver on the conversion promised.

Meanwhile, California and New Jersey‘s bans on ex-gay therapy for minors have held up in court. Michigan may be next to pass a similar bill. Many conversion therapy groups have shut down in recent years, including Love in Action, Evergreen International, Love Won Out, and Exodus International; The latter’s president issued an apologetic open letter to the LGBT community last summer. In July, nine remorseful former leaders in the ex-gay therapy movement penned a joint letter condemning ex-gay therapy as an “ineffective and harmful” practice that “reinforces internalized homophobia, anxiety, guilt, and depression.”

Conversion therapy, which is discredited by the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, and the American Counseling Association, has been shown to increase risks of suicide, depression, drug abuse, and HIV/STDs. Its damaging effects have led to the creation of “ex-ex-gay” survivor groups.

Despite this growing tide of opposition, ex-gay therapy is not a thing of the past. Proposed youth bans similar to California’s and New Jersey’s have failed to pass in Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Washington, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Hawaii and Rhode Island. The Republican Party of Texas even endorses the practice in its draft 2014 platform.

In a press release regarding NARTH’s makeover, LGBT activist nonprofit Truth Wins Out (TWO) warns “not to be fooled” by the “cynical branding effort,” calling the group’s literature “anti-gay hate speech wrapped in medical language.” TWO Executive Director Wayne Besen calls ATCSI “the same old swine peddling junk science to desperate and vulnerable people.”

TWO’s press release also points out some of NARTH’s stranger recommendations: The group has encouraged clients to increase their manliness by drinking Gatorade and calling their friends “dude.”

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"Ex-Gay" Conversion Therapy Group Rebrands, Stresses "Rights of Clients"

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