TRIAL VIDEO: Ex-Gay JONAH Witness Explains How Naked Dance Parties With Men Totally Made Him Straight

Via the SPLC:

This is a condensed version of a sworn video deposition presented at a June 2015 trial in New Jersey: Ferguson v. JONAH. Conversion therapy provider JONAH offered Hoffman as a “success story” witness claiming that conversion therapy works to change sexual orientation from gay to straight. A jury unanimously decided that JONAH is liable for consumer fraud for misrepresentations including that its program was effective in changing sexual orientation from gay to straight.

You have GOT to watch this. "It's literally just a fun 'boy' atmosphere where men are just having a lot of fun together experiencing their wild side. By the time the 'wild party' comes along everybody just kind of joins the fun unclothed. After the 'wild party' they are led to the showers."

(Via Equality Case Files)

Christopher Doyle Has The JONAH Sadz

"Because of the lack of respect by Judge Bariso for JONAH’s spiritual practices, it was practically impossible for the jury to hand down a not-guilty verdict. At nearly every point before, during and after testimony was given, the judge undermined JONAH’s freedom of religion. Potential jurors who believed homosexuality is a sin were screened out; defense attorney Charles Limandri was not allowed to discuss JONAH’s 1st Amendment freedom of religious expression in his closing arguments; and Judge Bariso effectively handicapped JONAH’s ability to defend itself by cutting out the ability to argue with a synthesis of faith and science, which would have been a true reflection of their religious counseling program. In order to mount an appeal, JONAH’s attorneys, the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, will need upwards of a million dollars. This is in addition to the three million it already cost for the initial defense, and the nearly four million JONAH might have to pay for the Plaintiff’s legal costs should the guilty verdict be upheld." - Ex-gay crackpot Christopher Doyle, in a money beg posted today on BarbWire.

Maggie Gallagher Has The JONAH Sadz

"The Blaze is reporting that an independent film about same-sex attraction called 'Audacity' had generated 130,000 views for its trailer on YouTube when the trailer was abruptly pulled by YouTube in response to user complaints. YouTube has not specifically said why the trailer was pulled, but its policies include 'commercially deceptive' content as a possible reason. I have not seen the trailer in question, but it occurs to me to ask: are we seeing the first fruits of a new post-JONAH strategy by the gay rights community to shut down speech? The SPLC had announced that 70 other religious nonprofits that help people with same-sex attraction live 'nongay' lives were in its targets. But I wonder, are these the first fruits of their victory?" - Maggie Gallagher, referring to the latest anti-gay film by banana man Ray Comfort. (Tipped by JMG reader Christopher)

BREAKING: SPLC Wins Fraud Suit Against New Jersey "Ex-Gay" Torture Group

NJ.com reports:

A New Jersey jury on Thursday found a non-profit group that provides gay-to-straight conversion therapy guilty of consumer fraud for promising clients they could overcome their sexual urges by undressing in front of other men, pummeling an effigy of their mothers, and re–enacting traumatic childhood experiences.

In the first case in the nation to put the controversial practice on trial, the jury concluded that Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Berk, the founders of Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing in Jersey City and life coach Alan Downing to whom JONAH referred patients, "engaged in unconscionable commercial practices" and misrepresented their services.

The verdict requires JONAH and Downing to refund thousands of dollars paid by former clients Michael Ferguson, Benjamin Unger, Sheldon Bruck, Chaim Levin, and parents Jo Bruck and Bella Levin for the individual and group counseling sessions and the "journey into manhood" weekends in the woods. Downing charged $60 to $100 for group and individual sessions but shared 20 percent with JONAH to help defray its administrative costs.

The SPLC says they will now seek an injunction to force JONAH from operating. They'll also seek legal fees. What a terrible, terrible month for Maggie Gallagher!

Quote Of The Day - Maggie Gallagher

"By some mysterious providence, three things happened in the past few weeks: Rachel Dolezal was outed as a white woman. Bruce Jenner was lauded as a white woman. And in a New Jersey consumer-fraud case against JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing), the Southern Poverty Law Center has spent millions to deprive any future New Jerseyans of the basic right even to try to change their sexual orientation. Together they lay down the new moral rules: Apparently, you can change your racial identity, but if you do, you are lying. You can dress up as a woman on the cover of Vanity Fair, and everyone must believe that you are in fact female. But when it comes to sexual orientation, even the attempt to change your identity or behavior must be viewed as an imposition against the laws of nature, if not nature’s God." - Maggie Gallagher, writing for the National Review. Gallagher is the head of the legal group defending "ex-gay" torture against the SPLC's  lawsuit. (Tipped by JMG reader Christopher)

NEW JERSEY: SPLC Attorney Shreds Head Of "Ex-Gay" Group During Fraud Trial

The SPLC's fraud lawsuit against the New Jersey-based "ex-gay" group JONAH has been underway since last week. Via New Jersey Jewish News:

On the trial’s second day, the plaintiffs’ lawyer Lina Bensman pointed out that Goldberg was a disbarred attorney who in 1989 was incarcerated for six months on federal tax fraud and conspiracy charges while heading a New York underwriting firm. She asked why he had occasionally identified himself as a “doctor,” although he was not a physician and had no PhD. “I am a JD, a juris doctor,” he explained. Goldberg also acknowledged that he used the title “rabbi” on occasion, although he was not ordained. “I was not a rabbi,” he said. “I have no formal religious training other than going to a yeshiva in grade school.”

Goldberg also testified, “I have never been a licensed counselor. I give advice.” But after being shown a signed document projected on a video screen, Goldberg acknowledged he had applied to the American Psychotherapy Association to become a certified relationship specialist and a certified professional counselor. “But these certifications were revoked?” asked Bensman. “Yes, ma’am” he replied. “And the certifications read, ‘I certify I have not been convicted of a felony’?” “That is correct,” he said. Under questioning by his own attorney, Goldberg said he believed that his felony fraud and conspiracy convictions were essentially nullified more than 20 years after his guilty pleas in 1989, allowing him to check “no” on the application.

More about Goldberg from the Village Voice:

In 1987, prosecutors accused Goldberg of orchestrating a massive municipal-bond fraud scheme, essentially selling more than $2 billion in bogus bonds between 1985 and 1986 to finance public works projects in smaller, rural, and often poor communities in the Midwest. Most of the projects were never completed, and Goldberg was eventually charged with 52 counts of bribery, fraud, and conspiracy, among other things, by a federal grand jury. He later pleaded guilty to three counts of mail fraud in California. The scheme cost the U.S. Treasury millions in lost taxes, and Matthews & Wright Inc. lost its license to sell securities and later dissolved completely.

Goldberg, who testified before a jury on June 8, declined on several occasions to speak on the record for this article. One day at the JONAH offices in Jersey City he confronted a Voice reporter, asking her to leave the building and calling her presence "absolutely inappropriate and out of line." He would later agree to answer a few questions, through his lawyer, via email. "Over 100 people lost their jobs and a good career because of what Arthur did, and that's just pure greed," Goldberg's former colleague says. "And he never apologized to anyone. I hoped he'd get life [in prison]. If I'd run into him on the street, I'd grab him by the throat."

Hit the first link for more about the trial and the second for an excellent and lengthy history of the "ex-gay" movement. Equality Case Files is attending the trial and is posting transcripts of the proceedings. JONAH is being defended by a legal group headed by Maggie Gallagher.

UPDATE: Check out how hate group leader Austin Ruse characterizes Goldberg over at Breitbart:

All his life Arthur Goldberg was a liberal New York Jew, almost stereotypical. He fought for civil rights for African Americans, he fought for better housing for New York’s poor, the whole schmear of respectable liberal causes. And then his son came out as gay and Arthur wanted to help him. When they founded JONAH, neither Goldberg or Berk knew that choice in sexual orientation or choice in psychological counseling would become a third rail in progressive politics. Now they are the target of one of the richest and most powerful left-wing groups in America. The Southern Poverty Law Center — with $340 in the bank and revenues of $50 million a year — is a group with almost limitless money to spend on litigation and it, along with activist Wayne Besen of a group called Truth Wins Out, have spent millions to put JONAH out of business and to punish Goldberg and Berk for trying to help those with unwanted same-sex attraction.

NEW JERSEY: Jury Hears Openings In "Ex-Gay" Fraud Suit Filed by SPLC

Via the Associated Press:

The four plaintiffs sued Jersey City-based JONAH in 2012, claiming the group violated state consumer fraud laws by characterizing homosexuality as a mental disorder and claiming it could successfully change patients' sexual orientation. The plaintiffs say they underwent treatment that included being told to spend more time naked with their fathers and participating in role-playing in which they were subjected to anti-gay slurs in a locker room setting. "My clients needed help but JONAH lied and JONAH made it worse," plaintiffs' attorney David Diniello told jurors. "All they got was junk science and so-called cures."

Three of the four plaintiffs were young men from Orthodox Jewish families in Brooklyn, Diniello said, who were grappling with their sexuality in a culture in which "there were no gay people" and there was pressure to marry and have children. The fourth, Michael Ferguson, is a Mormon who sought out JONAH. Attorney Charles LiMandri, representing JONAH, said none of the four asked for their money back at the time. "All four of these men left JONAH on good terms, speaking glowingly" of their experience and referring it to friends, he said. It was only after being contacted by activists that they denounced the organization, he said. "The plaintiffs became aggressors after they left JONAH to destroy JONAH," LiMandri said.

One plaintiff reports that the "therapy" included beating a pillow with a tennis racket while screaming about his mother. (You might remember "ex-gay" nutter Richard Cohen demonstrating this on CNN.) In 2012 plaintiff Chaim Levin told Truth Wins Out that his JONAH treatment included "removing my clothing and touching myself in a locked room" while the counselor watched.

NEW JERSEY: SPLC's Fraud Suit Against "Ex-Gay" Group Begins This Week

Via the SPLC:

Jury selection is underway in the SPLC’s landmark consumer fraud case against a New Jersey provider of conversion therapy, which purports to turn gay people straight. Opening arguments in the Superior Court of New Jersey are expected to begin on either Tuesday, June 2 or Wednesday, June 3. The SPLC filed the suit – Michael Ferguson, et al., v. JONAH – in 2012 against conversion therapy provider JONAH for deceptive practices that lured plaintiffs into the expensive, harmful therapy. The case, brought under New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act, is the first of its kind nationally. “This case is about exposing the lie that LGBT people are mentally ill and that they need to be cured,” said David Dinielli, SPLC deputy legal director. “Groups like JONAH should not be allowed to use bogus therapy, based on junk science, to scam LGBT people and their families out of thousands of dollars.”

More from Mic.com:

According to the complaint filed at the case's inception, customers of JONAH's services typically paid a minimum of $100 for weekly individual counseling sessions and another $60 for group therapy sessions, with some paying as much as $10,000 a year for the services. The lawsuit describes sessions in which unlicensed therapists ordered them to strip naked and touch their genitals while saying negative things about themselves in front of a mirror, group exercises involving the reenactment of childhood sexual abuse and the use of homophobic slurs while the plaintiffs tried to grab a pair of oranges meant to symbolize testicles.

"Stuck in the past": According to every mainstream mental health authority in the United States, JONAH's practices fall so far outside the mainstream as to be unethical, even dangerous. "It's unethical for counselors to be involved in reparative therapy," David Kaplan, chief professional officer and former president of the American Counseling Association, told Mic. "It's not a mental health intervention — it's a religious practice."

Kaplan is such an outspoken critic of conversion therapy that he dislikes even using the word "therapy" to describe the practice. "A lot of us refer to it as 'sexual orientation change efforts.' 'Therapy' connotes a mental health intervention. This is not a mental health intervention. A mental health intervention relates to the diagnosis and treatment of a mental disorder. Homosexuality is not a mental disorder. There's nothing to fix, there's nothing to repair, there's nothing to convert."

Former NOM chairman Maggie Gallagher heads the legal group defending JONAH. Yesterday Gallagher told CBN that "it will be fun to beat the Southern Poverty Law Center."

Court Rules "Ex-Gay" Groups Can't Claim That Homosexuality Is A Disorder

The Southern Poverty Law Center has won a landmark battle in its consumer fraud lawsuit against the New Jersey-based "ex-gay" group JONAH.

A New Jersey Superior Court judge has ruled misrepresenting homosexuality as a disorder in marketing conversion therapy services violates the state’s consumer protection laws – a devastating ruling for the conversion therapy industry, which claims to “convert” people from gay to straight, the Southern Poverty Law Center announced today. The ruling marks the first time a court in the United States has found that homosexuality is not a disease or a disorder and that it is fraudulent for conversion therapists to make such a claim. Superior Court Judge Peter F. Barsio Jr. found that it “is a misrepresentation in violation of [New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act], in advertising or selling conversion therapy services, to describe homosexuality, not as being a normal variation of human sexuality, but as being a mental illness, disease, disorder, or equivalent thereof.” The ruling is part of the consumer fraud lawsuit filed by the SPLC against Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH), a New Jersey-based conversion therapy provider. The suit claims the group used deceptive practices to lure plaintiffs into their costly services for gay-to-straight therapy that can cost in excess of $10,000 a year.

Last week the same court ruled that JONAH could not call "ex-gay experts" as witnesses as their testimony would be mere "incestuous validation" of each others' research. Hit the first link and read much more about today's win. See the full ruling here. Maggie Gallagher is the chairperson of the legal group defending JONAH.

HomoQuotable - John Paulk

"It’s funny, for those of us that worked in it, behind closed doors, we knew we hadn't really changed. Our situations had changed - we had gotten married, and some of us had children, so our roles had changed. I was a husband and father; that was my identity. And the homosexuality had been tamped down. But you can only push it down for so long, and it would eke its way out every so often. I went to a gay bar - not looking for sex, which is what people thought - but because I was missing my community. I was looking to sit in a place with people I felt comfortable with, and that was other gay people.

"I would be in hotel rooms, and I would be on my face sobbing and crying on the bed. I felt like a liar and a hypocrite. Having to go out and give hope to these people. I was in despair knowing that what I was telling them was not entirely honest. I couldn’t do it anymore. For 25 years I felt guilty and filled with self-loathing, trying to reject this part about myself. I’m culpable - I spread the message that my sexuality had changed, and I used my marriage as proof of that." - Former "ex-gay" poster boy John Paulk, quoted in a Newsweek article about the movement he once led.

RECOMMENDED: Read the full story.

"Ex-Gay" Coffee: $15 Per Bitter Bag

The SPLC is suing the "ex-gay" Jewish group JONAH for defrauding its clients by promising to cure them. Good As You tips us that JONAH's legal group is raising money by selling "Defense Fund Coffee" at  $15 per 12oz bag. Maggie Gallagher is their chairwoman.

Quote Of The Day - Maggie Gallagher

"Professor Nicholas Cummings, rather a giant in the field of psychology who gave a deposition in this case, published an op-ed Wednesday in USA Today. Some have accused Cummings of supporting damaging forms of what they call 'reparation therapy.' But the SPLC lawsuit originally claimed any form of sexual-orientation change therapy was necessarily fraud because it never helps people. Cummings’s point is that competent therapy can be helpful to highly motivated patients who choose to deal with same-sex attraction in other ways than, well, being gay. He is firmly pro–gay rights — but for all gay people, even those who choose to live their sex lives in accordance with their faith." - Maggie Gallagher, writing for the National Review.  (Tipped by JMG reader Christopher)

FACT CHECK: Cummings may consider himself "pro-gay rights," but somebody who keynotes the convention of NARTH, the most vile and lying of all the "ex-gay" groups, is no fucking friend of ours.

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."

Double Talk From Maggie Gallagher

"I don’t back something called 'conversion therapy.' I don’t even really know what conversion therapy is, and I’m not qualified to express an opinion on a particular kind of therapy. I back the right of gay people to seek the kind of counseling help they want, not the kind the SPLC lawyers want them to have, including help to live their sexual lives with integrity, according to their own values, not the SPLC’s values. That’s all." - Maggie Gallagher, writing for the National Review.

RELATED: The SPLC is suing JONAH, a New Jersey-based "ex-gay" group whose therapy included telling young men to expose and fondle their genitals in the presence of a totally not gay anymore counselor. Because that gets the patient in touch with his true masculinity. Maggie can call it whatever the fuck she wants, but that IS the group she is backing.  She is the chair of their legal defense team.

Maggie Gallagher Backs "Ex-Gay" Group

"Chuck Limandri, my old friend from the Carrie Prejean, Prop 8 fights, is a heckuva a lawyer and one brave man. He’s taking on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s massive legal machine to defend the right of Jewish gay people to seek help. SPLC is using consumer-fraud laws to try to bankrupt these small nonprofits and if it wins this case has announced plans to take it nationwide against 70 groups offering some form of sexual-orientation-change efforts. They must not want publicity because this landmark case is flying under all media radar screens." - Maggie Gallagher, writing for the National Review. (Tipped by JMG reader Andre)

FACT CHECK: The SPLC's suit against JONAH is hardly "flying under all media radar screens." It has been reported upon by dozens of new sites, by all the major dailies in New Jersey (where the case was filed), and by virtually every major LGBT news blog in the nation. The case has been mentioned here on JMG over a dozen times since the suit was filed in November 2012.

RELATED: In December last year, Gallagher announced the formation of the above-mentioned Limandri group. She is the chairman of their board of directors.

NEW YORK CITY: Gay Activist Wins $3.5M Molestation Lawsuit Against His Cousin

The Brooklyn Supreme Court yesterday awarded $3.5M to activist Chaim Levin, who sued his cousin for childhood sexual abuse. Levin is also a plaintiff in the Southern Poverty Law Center's pending lawsuit against JONAH, a New Jersey-based Jewish "ex-gay" organization. The New York Daily News reports on yesterday's win:

Chaim Levin, now 24, claimed in a Brooklyn Supreme Court lawsuit that he was repeatedly molested by his first cousin Sholom Eichler at a synagogue, at a relative’s home and at an upstate bungalow where the family vacationed. Levin contended that between 1996 and 1999, he was forced to perform oral sex and was once sodomized with a pen by Eichler, starting when he was 6 years old. The abuse mostly occurred at Eichler’s home on Eastern Parkway and the synagogue Vishnitz, on Montgomery St. in Crown Heights, according to the suit. “It was pretty brutal. It was killing me, but I was too afraid to tell anyone,” Levin said. A court referee ordered Eichler to pay Levin $1 million for pain and suffering and $2.5 million for future pain and suffering due to the repeated assaults, said Levin’s lawyer, David Krangle.

It remains unclear whether Levin will ever collect his judgment as Eichler, the son of wealthy retailers, has fled to Israel and did not appear in court to deny the charges. Brooklyn prosecutors were unable to bring a criminal complaint due to the statute of limitations, but Israeli prosecutors are reportedly investigating whether molestations also took place there during a trip Eichler and Levin made to Jerusalem in 1999.

RELATED:  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 counselor watched. This "therapy" was ordered so that Levin could "get in touch" with his "true masculinity."

Maggie Gallagher: Farewell To Optimism

"So in this, my final column, I say my farewell to optimism and my hello to hope. What is the difference? Optimism is a prediction; hope is a virtue. My hope rests on this: The truths to which I've dedicated my life, both professionally and personally, are too important to ignore, too foundational to be abandoned, too much a part of reality to be lost forever. Do not abandon politics. It is one important means to create culture -- to name our shared reality.

"But we need, as well, a next generation of culture creators, of storytellers, with the credentials to name reality: empirical social scientists, novelists, poets, preachers and filmmakers.We need donors to invest in building the networks and communities through which such voices are born, flourish and give meaning to the lives of millions.The future belongs to those of us with enough hope to rebuild on the ashes of optimism, a new American civilization -- uniting sex, love, babies, mothers and fathers in this thing called marriage." - Hate group leader Maggie Gallagher, whose nationally syndicated column was "retired" this week after 17 years.

RELATED: Gallagher does an exit interview (of sorts) today with the Huffington Post.  Interviewer Lila Shapiro asks if anything good can come of gay marriage. Gallagher:  "Not really. I hope I'm wrong though. Oh, except for making it less likely the Supreme Court will decide that gay people are politically powerless and need special court protection to function in a democracy. Oh, and of course it would make some gay people happy so that's a good thing. Good that someone will be happy!"

ALSO RELATED: While Gallagher left NOM over two years ago, she remains busy in the anti-gay hate industry and now chairs the legal group that is defending Jewish "ex-gay" crackpots JONAH against the fraud lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Maggie Gallagher To Defend Jewish "Ex-Gay" Group Against SPLC Lawsuit

A recently-formed legal group chaired by Maggie Gallagher announced today that they will defend the "ex-gay" Jewish group JONAH against the fraud lawsuit filed last month by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

JONAH is a faith-based, nonprofit organization that offers assistance to men and women seeking to resolve their sexual conflicts, including unwanted same sex attractions. JONAH has been unjustly sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) who claims that homosexuality is permanently fixed and that people cannot be helped in overcoming their unwanted same-sex attractions.

SPLC 's position is inconsistent with numerous scientific and medical opinions and studies, finding that sexual attraction is influenced by many factors, both environmental and biological. Even certain gay activist groups claim that sexual attractions can be fluid and change throughout people's lives. SPLC's allegations also ignore the thousands of people who have already benefitted from programs, such as those offered by JONAH and others, many of whom are now living their life long dreams, including traditional marriage and children.

From the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund website:

The official launch of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund (FCDF) took place at the beautiful home of Claire Reiss in La Jolla, California on September 6, 2012. About 75 people gathered to hear various speakers—including chairperson Maggie Gallagher—who addressed the pressing need for the FCDF. FCDF’s president and chief counsel, Charles LiMandri, had previously attended a private summit on marriage and religious liberty in New York, which gathered together Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop-Elect Salvatore Cordileone, Princeton University’s Robbie George, the evangelical pastor Jim Garlow, and many others. At that summit, it quickly became clear that serious Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Mormons all agree: if we do not halt the secular progressive agenda of harassment and intimidation of people of conscience, our children will not experience or enjoy the freedom and liberty that we have long known as Americans.

Orthodox Rabbis Denounce "Ex-Gay" Therapy By Jewish Group JONAH

Pink News reports today that the Rabbinical Council of America has denounced JONAH, the Jewish "ex-gay" group based in New Jersey which was just sued for fraud by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They also want JONAH to remove a letter from their website which claims that the Rabbinical Council has endorsed their work. Their statement:

“As rabbis trained in Jewish law and values, we base our religious positions regarding medical matters on the best research and advice of experts and scholars in those areas, along with concern for the religious, emotional, and physical welfare of those impacted by our decisions. Our responsibility is to apply halakhic (Jewish legal) values to those opinions. Despite numerous attempts by the RCA to have mention of that original letter removed from the JONAH website, our calls, letters, and emails remain unanswered.”

The Rabbinical Council represents over 1000 Orthodox rabbis in the United States.

UNRELATED: Also yesterday the Rabbinical Council posted a message to "express dismay" over the vote to upgrade Palestine's status at the United Nations.

SPLC Sues "Ex-Gay" Group

The Southern Poverty Law Center today announced that it has filed a lawsuit against an "ex-gay" group, accusing them of fraudulent business practices. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), pro bono co-counsel Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP and the law firm of Lite DePalma Greenberg, LLC filed a lawsuit today against Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH), its founder, Arthur Goldberg, and a counselor, Alan Downing, for peddling conversion therapy services, a dangerous and discredited practice that fraudulently claims to convert people from gay to straight.

The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of New Jersey, charges that the defendants violated New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act through fraudulent and deceptive claims that their counseling services could cure customers of being gay. These fraudulent and deceptive claims include so-called scientific methods invented by Joseph Nicolosi, a founder of the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), the leading secular organization promoting conversion therapy.

The lawsuit is the first of its kind to directly sue a conversion therapy provider for fraudulent practices. It describes how the plaintiffs – four young men three of whom are New York residents and two of their parents – were lured into JONAH’s services through deceptive commercial practices.

“JONAH profits off of shameful and dangerous attempts to fix something that isn’t broken,” said Christine P. Sun, deputy legal director for the SPLC. “Despite the consensus of mainstream professional organizations that conversion therapy doesn’t work, this racket continues to scam vulnerable gay men and lesbians out of thousands of dollars and inflicts significant harm on them.”

JONAH was founded by Arthur Goldberg, a disbarred attorney and multiple felon who once worked on Wall Street. View the lawsuit's initial filing here.

Among the suit's plaintiffs are former JONAH client Chaim Levin and his mother, Bella Levin, who paid for his "treatment."  Read about Chaim Levin's experiences at JONAH at Truth Wins Out.

UPDATE: The New York Times has published a lengthy look at the suit.