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Newsweek Examines Anti-Gay Ad Blitz

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Pinpoints Examples of Bias & Misinformation

Conversion Therapies Unmasked as Failures

By Jack Nichols

The July 27 issue of Newsweek magazine has examined the full-paged anti-gay advertisements placed recently by fundamentalist Christians in such newspapers as The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today. The ads, says a sub-headline in Mark Miller's article ("Going to War Over Gays"), show how conservatives are trying "to convince homosexuals to convert to the straight and narrow."

revkenn.jpg - 2.64 K The Rev. D. James Kennedy: Continues Attack on Gays The ad campaign, according to Newsweek, began when the national director of the Rev. D.James Kennedy's Center for Reclaiming America, found herself in full agreement with fundamentalist football star Reggie White's anti-gay commentaries as well as those of Republican Senator Trent Lott, a Southern Baptist, who believes homosexuality is akin to alcoholism and kleptomania. What convinced the director that an ad campaign was necessary, however, was White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry's characterization of such anti-gay views as "backward."

"We need to stand up against (McCurry's) anti-Christian-thinking," she is quoted as saying. The ads are described in Newsweek as "promoting a campaign to convert homosexuals to heterosexuality."

Though anti-gay Christian crusaders get quoted, so too do leading supporters of same-sex love and affection. Elizabeth Birch of the Human Rights Campaign says: "The economy is booming, Clinton did well in China, and the borders are secure. There's nothing left (for the Republicans) to talk about." Thus, according to the HRC's executive director, the ads are "all about firing up the right wing grass roots of the Republican Party." ebirch.gif - 5.61 K HRC's Elizabeth Birch
The Republicans' dogged refusal to bring to a vote the President's nomination of openly gay James Hormel for Ambassador to Luxembourg also gets mention.

But Newsweek sees more than mere politics in the "Christian" ad campaign. The question jumps to etiological questions surrounding homosexual inclinations. This, says Miller's article, refocuses the issue to a "controversial movement to 'rescue' gays."

Such an issue is "too complicated" according to Newsweek, to be properly treated in newspaper ads. The national newsmagazine explains that mental health professionals do not, as a rule, "believe adult sexual orientation can be�or even should be permanently altered."

Dr. Lowell Tong, chair of the American Psychiatric Association's Committee on Gay, Bisexual and Lesbian Issues is quoted as saying that sexual behavior�during short terms only�can be changed. But his emphasis rests on behavior alone because Tong apparently does not think that a homosexual orientation itself can be changed.

Newsweek is clear about the fuzzy nature of claims made by Exodus, the so-called Ex-Gay movement which boasts 85 "agencies and ministries" and practices anti-gay "counseling" within a "Christian" framework. "Because Exodus keeps no statistics," reveals author Miller, "it cannot say how many of the 200,000 people who have contacted the group since its founding in 1976 have actually maintained a heterosexual lifestyle."

Many who submit to religious-based sexual-orientation conversion therapies, Newsweek explains, have been psychologically harmed by the therapies which can include "powerful drugs and even shock therapies." According to two New York psychologists quoted, the vast majority of persons who make attempts at changing their attraction to their own genders, fail. "The price can be high," says the newsmagazine.