Former APA Head Denounces SPLC's Lawsuit Against "Ex-Gay" Group JONAH

Nicholas Cummings, who headed the APA for one year back in 1979, has penned a USA Today column slamming the SPLC for their fraud lawsuit against the New Jersey-based "ex-gay" group JONAH. Cummings, who has keynoted the convention of NARTH, the most vile, lying "ex-gay" group in the nation, claims that hundreds of his patients successfully became heterosexual.

Of the roughly 18,000 gay and lesbian patients whom we treated over 25 years through Kaiser, I believe that most had satisfactory outcomes. The majority were able to attain a happier and more stable homosexual lifestyle. Of the patients I oversaw who sought to change their orientation, hundreds were successful. I believe that our rate of success with reorientation was relatively high because we were selective in recommending therapeutic change efforts only to those who identified themselves as highly motivated and were clinically assessed as having a high probability of success. [snip]

But contending that all same-sex attraction is immutable is a distortion of reality. Attempting to characterize all sexual reorientation therapy as "unethical" violates patient choice and gives an outside party a veto over patients' goals for their own treatment. A political agenda shouldn't prevent gays and lesbians who desire to change from making their own decisions. Whatever the situation at an individual clinic, accusing professionals from across the country who provide treatment for fully informed persons seeking to change their sexual orientation of perpetrating a fraud serves only to stigmatize the professional and shame the patient.

I find it beyond disgusting that USA Today would give op-ed space to a man that works with NARTH, a group whose lies about gay people make the Family Research Council look good by comparison.

RELATED:  One of the plaintiffs in the SPLC's suit is a young man named Chaim Levin.  In 2010 Levin and I attended the Truth Wins Out picket of NARTH's annual convention in Philadelphia.  In the driveway of the host hotel, Levin described to us how his "ex-gay" counselor at JONAH had instructed him to strip naked and fondle his own genitals as the totally not gay anymore counselor watched. This "therapy" was ordered so that Levin could "get in touch" with his "true masculinity."