Survivor Recalls Leading Ex-Gay Therapist’s HIV/AIDS Superstitions and Research Fraud

by Michael Airhart
Truth Wins Out

Ex-gay survivor Daniel Gonzales remembers being forced to sit with his father as a leading ex-gay therapist tried to make them falsely believe that Gonzales had been abused as a child. The same therapist later urged Gonzales to help him rig the results of a flawed 2001 study by Dr. Robert Spitzer.

Former ex-gay Peterson Toscano was horrified to discover that the same therapist — the longtime president of a supposedly secular organization that promotes ex-gay therapy — has been using his phony claim to be secular to spread blatant religion-based bigotry having nothing to do with science or mental health.

Now, from 2006 Yale University graduate Gabriel Arana, comes word that the therapist — Joseph Nicolosi of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality — mis-counseled him for three years, teaching him superstitions instead of truth.

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Bedfellows: NARTH and FOTF

For the first time in a decade, the American Psychological Association is reviewing its procedures on working with clients who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. NARTH is attempting to bully the APA into allowing the disreputable, pseudo-scientific practice of “ex-gay” therapy.NARTH is known for its bizarre theories, such as “non-homosexual men who experience defeat and failure may also experience homosexual fantasies or dreams.”

Last year, NARTH was embroiled in two major controversies that lead to its President, Joseph Nicolosi, stepping down from his post. In the first, a NARTH doctor wrote an essay supporting gender variant children being "ridiculed" in school so they would conform. In the second, another NARTH doctor wrote an article justifying slavery.

Upon co-founding the group, the late Dr. Charles Socarides said, “Homosexuality is a psychological and psychiatric disorder, there is no question about it.”

NARTH’s leader, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, has said factors in the causation of homosexuality include “fear of tall bridges” a “phobia of the phone” and once claimed that gay men are more likely to be “pee shy.”? He has encouraged his clients to become more masculine by drinking Gatorade and calling friends “dude.”

The organization’s methods are so peculiar and bizarre that the American Psychological Association specifically condemned NARTH by name at the APA’s annual convention in August 2006. According to the APA:

“For over three decades the consensus of the mental health community has been that homosexuality is not an illness and therefore not in need of a cure. The APA’s concern about the position espoused by the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality and so-called conversion therapy is that they are not supported by the science. There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. Our further concern is that the positions espoused by NARTH and Focus on the Family create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish.”