Turning off gays

By Mark Benjamin
A loose network of Christian ministries and social workers, with the blessing of the political right, are putting gays and lesbians on the couch, determined to "cure" them.

Editor's note: This is Part 1 of a four-part investigation into the Christian netherworld of "reparative therapy," a disputed practice to convert gays and lesbians into heterosexuals.

July 18, 2005 Last month, the Montgomery County Board of Education in suburban Maryland settled a lawsuit over sex education in the county's public schools, brought in part by PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays). The group is a branch of a national network of "ministries" that claim homosexuality is a chosen and dangerous lifestyle, and that through "reparative therapy" a gay person can be turned straight -- into an "ex-gay."

PFOX won a restraining order in May and successfully halted the county's new sex ed curriculum, intended, among other things, to promote tolerance toward gays by treating homosexuality as natural and benign. A judge concluded the school curriculum did exclude other views on homosexuality -- namely, those of PFOX. Under the settlement last month, the county agreed to pay $36,000 of PFOX's legal expenses. The group also gets a seat at the table in drafting a new sex ed curriculum for county schools.
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