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07/14/2011

How the 'ex-gay' advocates lie: A quick, incontestable visual

by Jeremy Hooper

The Liberty Counsel's Senior Fellow of Hyperbolic Condemnation is currently pushing this Tweet:

Screen Shot 2011-07-14 At 3.57.06 Pm
@jmattbarber

Being the "culture war" geek that I am, I instantly recognized the spin. Spin that you will only find on conservative sites/forums:

Screen Shot 2011-07-14 At 3.57.30 Pm
Google Search

That last one is actually an amicus brief, filed in the Prop 8 federal trial. Filed by -- who else? -- Matt Barber's employer, the Liberty Counsel.

So now are you ready to see how unbelievably fallacious this line is is? Yeah? Wanna see it? You ready? For the B.S. on full display? Okay, here we go:

So first off, the biggie: This pieced together line comes from the 2009 Report of the APA's Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation -- a document that determined "change" efforts to be "unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm." Unequivocally. You can read all about the report here.

So since the report is essentially a repudiation of what the "ex-gay" advocates hold dear, how do people like Matt arrive at such claims and go so far as to put them in amici briefs? Well, to get the first line, one has to cherry pick and de-contextualize it from page 50, wherein it is (a) immediately followed with the fact that those making the claim "continued to have same-sex sexual attractions, and (b) noted that almost all of the perceived "change" is based almost exclusively on on religious conviction:

Screen Shot 2011-07-14 At 3.56.01 Pm
[Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation]

But then get this: To find the second part, one not only has to skip several pages, but he or she actually has to GO BACK to prior ones. Five pages back, in fact, amid verbiage that again highlights the conservative Christian bias in all of this supposed data:

Screen Shot 2011-07-14 At 3.56.49 Pm
[Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation]

This is what they are using to put together this abomination of a cogent quote: Two completely different quips, completely detached from context, from paragraphs five pages away from one another! IN AN AMICUS BRIEF, NO LESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It'd be funny if human lives weren't being stifled/harmed. It'd be funny if the GOP's brightest star of the moment wasn't so connected to all of this!

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