Bizarre And Homophobic Conversion Practices Exposed In Trial Of Ex-Gay Leaders

A New Jersey jury is hearing testimony in a lawsuit alleging that Jersey City-based Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing, or JONAH, violated state consumer fraud laws when it promised to turn gay people straight.

In the process, exactly went on inside JONAH’s so-called “conversion therapy clinic” is being made public, and it’s not pretty.

This week, JONAH co-founders Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Silodor Berk along with “life coach” Alan Downing admitted under oath to employing what even the group’s own defense attorney calls “bizarre” conversion therapy methods.

Related: Grieving Mother Says “Gay Conversion Therapy Killed My Son”

Here are just four of the methods:

1. Forcing clients to stare at their own fathers’ genitals.

2. Duct-taping men together and then lecturing them about the “gay deathstyle” and “bowel disease.”

3. Asking men to and masturbate in front of a mirror while therapists watched (Downing insists this was voluntary).

“I do not tell someone they should take off their clothes,” he testified. “It’s an invitation.”

4. “Journeys Into Manhood” or “Journeys Beyond.” These 48-hour weekends included taking victims to a secret location and insisting they participate in exercises ranging from getting completely naked with counselors to blindfolding them while screaming homophobic slurs. Props in the bizarre activities included duct tape, bed sheets, rope, oranges, baby powder, and handcuffs.

According to Downing, “[The duct tape] is a metaphor … the idea of the tape is to create some level of resistance. We try to create an external metaphor to take the story outside of the man’s mind.”

Neither Downing, Goldberg, Berk nor any of JONAH’s staff mental boast any real mental health credentials. Yet they insisted to the jury that they “try to adhere to … ethical guidelines.”

Right.

In 2013, Gov. Chris Christie, A Repubican presidential aspirant, signed a law banning conversion therapy in New Jersey.

Related: The Horrors Inside A Christian Conversion Cult Are Exposed First-Hand

h/t: Mic

Graham Gremore

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PHOTOS: Milwaukee Pridefest Turns Up the Volume

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Advocate.com Editors

www.advocate.com/pride/2015/06/18/photos-milwaukee-pridefest-turns-volume

PHOTOS: Capital Pride Celebrates 40 Years

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Yannick Delva

www.advocate.com/pride/2015/06/18/photos-capital-pride-celebrates-40-years

Laverne Cox Gets Ice Cream Flavor Named for Her for Pride

At Three Twins Ice Cream in San Francisco, you can order Laverne Cox’s Chocolate Orange Is the New Black during Pride weekend.

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Trudy Ring

www.advocate.com/pride/2015/06/17/laverne-cox-gets-ice-cream-flavor-named-her-pride

Politico Compares Caitlyn Jenner to America’s First ‘Transgender Sweetheart’

For this magazine, it’s a rare look at a transgender pioneer who also transitioned in the public eye.

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Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2015/06/17/politico-compares-caitlyn-jenner-america-s-first-transgender-sweethe

Channing Tatum Would Make Everyone Naked If He Had Super Powers

— Magic Mike XXL‘s Channing Tatum asked what he’d like his super power to be during in an AMA on Reddit

Jeremy Kinser

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Rachel Dolezal Reveals She’s Bisexual, Compares Her Story To Caitlyn Jenner’s

She’s black, she’s white and now she’s bi. The unusual case of former NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal took an interesting turn yesterday during her interview with Savannah Guthrie on NBC Nightly News when she revealed she has dated both men and women.

Dolezal, who has been embroiled in a race scandal that sent the Internet into overdrive this past weekend, finally broke her silence, and in the process, threw enough curve balls to give viewers a severe case of whiplash. Allegations of physical abuse, along with speculation that Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal might not even be her biological parents were just the tip of the iceberg. She also uses spray-on bronzer to achieve her darker completion, and she is “definitely not white.” Dolezal firmly believes she has never lied about her race; however, she does admit to “moments of some level of creative non-fiction.”

Okaaayyyy…

The big jaw-dropper about her identifying as the “B” in the LGBT came when Dolezal was discussing Caitlyn Jenner’s cover story in the current issue of Vanity Fair. Dolezal said she cried upon reading the piece. She went on to say:

“I resonated with some of the themes of isolation, of being misunderstood — to not know if you have a conversation with somebody, will that relationship then end because they have seen you as one way. And even in dating relationships…one of the things…you know… and I’m bisexual, and so, you know, I’ve dated men and women. And I will intentionally ask, like, ‘So do you just date light-skinned women? What’s your spectrum?’”

Thankfully, Dolezal avoided agreeing with the comparisons she has received from many ill-informed people who feel her situation is similar to that of a transgender person. People magazine reached out to a psychologist and racial identity expert who stated that being transracial is very different from being transgender.

Derald Wing Sue, a professor of psychology and education at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, explained to the publication:

“Most people who are transgender, [when they are] as early as 4 or 5, believe already that at some level that they are a child born with the wrong anatomy. I don’t see this [with Dolezal].”

“I think [the comparison] is all an attempt to not really see the issue. The issue is deception, honesty and pretense. You have to get to the bottom of that.”

So Rachel Dolezal is still not willing to say definitively whether she is black or white, but she is bisexual.

At least she finally identifies as something.

Jeremy Kinser

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