Promotion of Extremists Over Experts Offers New Life to Con Artists
In November 2006, Truth Wins Out (TWO) protested the annual meeting of the infamous conversion therapy organization, The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). The conference was held in Orlando, so we capitalized on the location by staging a colorful Disney themed demonstration.
Protesters disrupted the proceedings by clutching squeaky-toy plastic ducks and blowing ear-piercing duck whistles. One activist wore a Donald Duck suit to highlight NARTH’s pseudo-scientific quackery, while another donned a Goofy outfit with a sign that read, “NARTH is Goofy”. As the unscientific cons shuffled into their hate-conference, we boisterously chanted, “Quacks, quacks, quacks, stop the attacks.”
Our protest was devastatingly effective. It branded NARTH’s leaders as charlatans, a damaging association for an organization that desperately wanted to be taken seriously in scientific circles. TWO was vindicated in 2010, after NARTH’s lead “researcher and writer”, Dr. George Rekers, was exposed as a closeted fraud who had vacationed with an attractive, young male escort he met on RentBoy.com.
The propaganda organization was so humiliated and disgraced that it changed its name to The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity. Today, this rebranded organization continues to promote junk science. The main difference is that The Alliance is more overtly religious than its predecessor. NARTH maintained a veneer of secularism to mask that it existed to disseminate fake anti-LGBTQ “science” for sectarian groups like The Family Research Council, The American Family Association and Focus on the Family.
Unfortunately, thanks to Donald Trump’s election, the “Age of the Quack” is back. Our dawning of the “Era of Ignorance” is underscored by Trump’s unqualified and dystopian cabinet nominees. This deleterious rise of hucksters and charlatans threatens to revitalize the flailing “ex-gay” industry.
New York Times columnist M. Gessen provided insight on what we can expect during the Trump regime:
In and out of government, people who know what they are talking about will be supplanted by people who perform their loyalty most loudly. Quackery will continue its ascent; expert consensus, not only in medicine but in all the disciplines that enable us to know and navigate the world, will be marginalized.
The right wing “media” ecosystem could also catapult the “ex-gay” industry to renewed prominence. For example, a single sym
pathetic “ex-gay” interview, by chronically uninformed podcaster Joe Rogan, could spread damaging misinformation at warp speed to 14.5 million listeners. The shit show could be greatly amplified by Elon Musk and other right-wing personalities on X.
One of the more ominous signs of our new reality is Trump nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). More than 75 Nobel Prize winners reacted by signing a letter imploring senators not to confirm him. Two scientists who participated were Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, who were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for the discovery of microRNA.
Kennedy, for his part, discovered outlandish conspiracy theories on the Internet. In today’s MAGA World, that credential might be enough for senators to ignore the renowned doctors and confirm Kennedy.
In terms of conversion therapy, Kennedy is not a known supporter. But his tendency to favor “alternative” cures, and his suspicion that the medical establishment is suppressing unconventional treatments, will likely be exploited by the “ex-gay” industry and its right-wing promoters.
Kennedy’s non-profit organization, Children’s Health Defense, has some shady partners and policy positions, that should raise more red flags than a Chinese government parade:
Kennedy has partnered with, financed or promoted fringe figures — people who claim that 5G cellphone towers cause cancer, that homosexuality and contraceptive education are part of a global conspiracy to reduce African fertility and that the World Health Organization is trying to steal countries’ sovereignty.
One of his group’s advisers, in Uganda, suggested using “supernatural insight” and a man she calls Prophet Elvis to guide policymaking. “We do well to embrace ethereal means to get ahead as a nation,” she wrote on a Ugandan news site this year.
Wahome Ngare, a Kenyan physician who sits on the group’s advisory board, argued at a conference in Uganda this year that contraception and health education were part of a global plot to reduce Africans’ fertility.
The New York Times found that Kennedy and his organization have expressed alarmingly primitive views on HIV:
Kennedy himself has questioned the accepted science behind AIDS. He falsely said that AIDS may have been caused by the recreational use among gay people of the drug amyl nitrite. It is caused by the virus H.I.V.
Last year, Children’s Health Defense posted a video promoting a book that questions the link between H.I.V. and AIDS.
In an interview with NPR in 2015 before joining Children’s Health Defense Africa, Dr. Ngare mused about stories that “vaccines have been used for spread of H.I.V.” and called for a boycott of polio vaccines.
Dr. Ngare’s backward views have placed gay people in grave danger, The New York Times reports:
At the conference in Uganda, Dr. Ngare spoke to far-right lawmakers and activists who support draconian punishments, including life in prison, for people convicted of having gay sex.
The United States has imposed sanctions on Ugandan officials over that law.
Uganda is also a major supporter of conversion therapy. It offers LGBTQ people conversion torture as a remedy for their “condition.” CNN wrote:
On President Yoweri Museveni’s recommendation, the law prescribes rehabilitation for convicted homosexuals to change their sexual orientation, even though scientists say so-called conversion therapy is harmful and ineffective.
Anthony Mills, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, discussed the potential downside of Kennedy’s mistrust and misuse of medicine. But his warning could equally be applied to “ex-gay” programs:
In its unvarnished form…it is more radical than conservative, more destructive than constructive and more corrosive than restorative.
This week, we saw a glimpse of how right-wing activists are attempting to slip conversion therapy into public policy. Florida’s prison system is coercing transgender prisoners to undergo “therapy” to deal with “unaddressed psychiatric issues and unaddressed childhood trauma that could lead to a misdiagnosis of gender dysphoria.” The policy suggests that cross-gender hormones “may be requested by persons experiencing short-termed delusions or beliefs which may later be changed and reversed.”
What Florida is forcing on transgender inmates is classic conversion therapy. It is premised on the discredited religious belief that gay and transgender people don’t really exist. They are simply victims of family childhood trauma that led to a rejection of their gender. The “therapy” offered delves into the roots of how one allegedly becomes gay or trans. Once the underlying causes are determined, these quacks falsely believe that sexual orientation or gender identity can be reversed.
The American Psychiatric Association says that attempts to change sexual orientation can lead to “anxiety, depression and self-destructive behavior” including suicide. Yet, instead of following the experts, it seems that many Trump officials are predisposed to following extremists. They are partial activists who breezily tell LGBTQ youth, “Just give it a try, how can it hurt you?”
Tragically, sampling what these toxic organizations are peddling often causes serious, lifelong trauma or even death. If you need examples of how damaging these programs are, visit Truth Wins Out’s YouTube page or read my book, Lies with a Straight Face: Exposing the Cranks and Cons Inside the ‘Ex-Gay’ Industry.
Kennedy is far from the only unorthodox nominee. Dr. Mehmet Oz was chosen to lead Medicare and Medicaid services. This quack had to pay $5.25 million to settle a class action lawsuit for peddling bogus weight loss treatments. Another miracle cure he has recommended is red onions for stopping cancer. The UK Independent reported:
The TV doctor said on his show that red onion, endive and sea bass could reduce the risk of ovarian cancer by up to 75 per cent. The claim prompted a group of researchers to publish a paper in the journal Nutrition and Cancer titled Reality Check: There Is No Such Thing as a Miracle Cure.
It’s a small leap from fake cancer cures to believing that one could possibly cure homosexuality through prayer or therapy. In fact, contemporary “ex-gay” ministries are intimately tied to Trump-supporting, faith healing mega-churches that claim to cure cancer, paralysis and homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.
Today’s largest “ex-gay” program is The Changed Movement, an arm of Bethel Church, based in Redding California, which has 11,000 members and a $60 million-dollar annual budget. Curing diseases and “fixing” broken people is a core part of Bethel’s archaic teachings. This includes their claim of being able to grow back missing limbs, as well as performing exorcisms to cast out demons.
In 2013, Bethel’s pastor Bill Johnson co-authored a book with extremist Lance Wallnau, that focused on how right wing Christians should hijack American institutions to install theocracy. Both pastors are major Trump and JD Vance supporters and have the administration’s ear.
Trump’s contemptible nominees are a who’s-who of right-wing fundamentalists, as well as a bevy of zealots who wrote Project 2025, an Orwellian document that seeks to transform America into a version of The Handmaid’s Tale. Trump’s motley crew of radical misfits includes former Arkansas governor and Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee, white nationalist Pete Hegseth, homophobic cult member Tulsi Gabbard and hardcore bigot Stephen Miller (among others).
The Advocate said of Miller, a key Trump advisor, “Miller’s track record on LGBTQ+ rights is about as grim as it gets. For LGBTQ+ Americans, his record is one of relentless antagonism.”
It’s easy to see Miller and other wingnuts, such as Steve Bannon, using the “ex-gay” industry to troll and gaslight, just for the fun of it. In fact, Bannon protégé Milo Yiannopoulos is now posing as an “ex-gay”, after interning with conversion therapy cheerleader Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Yiannopoulos is exploiting Trump’s victory to stage a comeback, after the alt-right cancelled him for advocating for sex with minors. According to The Hollywood Reporter:
He continued his public displays of bigotry for a while, serving as grand marshal in a 2019 Straight Pride parade in Boston. That was among the first signs of the sea change to come. In 2021, amid his career chaos, his four-year marriage to a man referred to as “John” in press reports ended as Yiannopoulos began gay conversion therapy. In addition to swearing off sex, Yiannopoulos said he’s also embraced Catholicism and cut out drugs and alcohol, which he sees as intrinsically linked to the gay lifestyle.
“I was an addict — I feel like I was a slave to a drug,” he says of his relationship with sex. “I’m not happier, I’m more content, which is new for me. I go to sleep at peace.”
Well into the new decade, the self-proclaimed “ex-gay” divorcé decided it was time for a career pivot.
Riding the shifting political winds, the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity has jumped on the anti-woke bandwagon. Instead of defending their quack therapy or providing legitimate studies, the conversion therapy organization has framed the issue as one of freedom of speech. They are falsely claiming that they are victims of a woke mob that is suppressing their scientific opinions. In their November Newsletter, The Alliance President Andy Visser whined:
The LGBTQ+ ‘identity’ movement, along with other WOKE movements, claims to promote a scientifically verified case for the concept of unchangeable ‘sexual identity.’ This is politicized ‘science…’
Amplified by harsh media blasts, faith communities are being pressured and bullied into accepting the loudly shouted ‘born that way’ mythology. These faith communities may jump on board the WOKE mentality we have discussed and cheer the deadly LGBTQ+ community on.
The Alliance quacks don’t want Americans discussing their surreal “therapy”, creepy counselors who have engaged in sexually molesting clients or failed therapists who are themselves deeply closeted homosexuals. They want to appeal to “Cancel-Culture” backlash. They want to brazenly portray themselves as free speech martyrs to gullible MAGA supporters.
Truth Wins Out will battle this cynical strategy at every turn. We will, once again, expose these con artists as the scientifically bankrupt frauds they truly are. Stopping “ex-gay” conversion practices is not a “free speech” issue. It is about protecting innocent people from false speech and crackpot “cures” that never work.
Trump’s political resurgence, fueled by a tsunami of lies, has given new life to cons and quacks of every stripe. But we’ve seen this miserable movie before and the results for the “ex-gay” industry will be the same. Their right-wing fiction will resoundingly fail and, in the end, TRUTH WILL WIN OUT.
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