The ex-gay movement consists of people and organizations that encourage people to refrain from entering or pursuing same-sex relationships, to eliminate homosexual desires and to develop heterosexual desires, or to enter into a heterosexual relationship. Beginning with the founding of Love In Action and Exodus International in the mid-1970s, the movement saw rapid growth in the 1980s and 1990s before declining in the 2000s.
Richard A. Cohen is an American psychotherapist and author associated with the ex-gay movement. He is a co-founder of Positive Approaches to Healthy Sexuality (PATH), and the past director of the defunct International Healing Foundation.
John Paulk is an American activist who, from 1998 to 2003, was an advocate of the ex-gay movement and conversion therapy. In April 2013, Paulk disavowed his belief in gay reparative therapy and issued a formal apology for his role as an advocate of the movement.
The Family Research Institute (FRI), originally known as the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality (ISIS), is an American socially conservative non-profit organization based in Colorado Springs, Colorado which states that it has "...one overriding mission: to generate empirical research on issues that threaten the traditional family, particularly homosexuality, AIDS, sexual social policy, and drug abuse". The FRI is part of a sociopolitical movement of socially conservative Christian organizations which seek to influence the political debate in the United States. They seek "...to restore a world where marriage is upheld and honored, where children are nurtured and protected, and where homosexuality is not taught and accepted, but instead is discouraged and rejected at every level." The Boston Globe reported that the FRI's 2005 budget was less than $200,000.
Wayne Besen is an American LGBT rights advocate. He is a former investigative journalist for WABI-TV, a former spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, and the founder of Truth Wins Out. Besen came out to his parents before starting his Truth Wins Out Organization. After coming out to his parents, they bought him an ex-gay DVD that could supposedly hypnotize people and turn them straight. It was that and the invitation by President George W. Bush of ex-gay leader Alan Chambers to the White House that led him to start the Truth Wins Out organization.
Exodus International was a non-profit, interdenominational ex-gay Christian umbrella organization connecting organizations that sought to "help people who wished to limit their homosexual desires". Founded in 1976, Exodus International originally asserted that conversion therapy, the reorientation of same-sex attraction, was possible. In 2006, Exodus International had over 250 local ministries in the United States and Canada and over 150 ministries in 17 other countries. Although Exodus was formally an interdenominational Christian entity, it was most closely associated with Protestant and evangelical denominations.
Ex-ex-gay people are those who formerly participated in the ex-gay movement in an attempt to change their sexual orientation to heterosexual, but who then later went on to publicly state they had a non-heterosexual sexual orientation.
Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) is a non-profit organization that promotes the ex-gay movement. PFOX advocates the view that homosexuality is not a product of biological determination. Past presidents of PFOX include Greg Quinlan and Richard Cohen.
Truth Wins Out (TWO) is an organization formed by Wayne Besen to fight what it considers "anti-gay religious extremism", especially the ex-gay movement.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the 1960s.
Andrew Comiskey is an American conservative Christian political activist and is the founder of Desert Stream Ministries, a former ministry of Exodus International. He has written several books based on his experience with avoiding homosexual relationships and behaviors, and gives seminars to those who wish to be free from such relationships and behaviors. He is considered to be a prominent ex-gay leader, and has appeared as a guest on The 700 Club.
Jack Drescher is an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst known for his work on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Arthur Abba Goldberg is an American businessman and leader in the ex-gay movement. He is co-founder and co-director of Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) and president of Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality (PATH).
"The Homosexuals" is a 1967 episode of the documentary television series CBS Reports. The hour-long broadcast featured a discussion of a number of topics related to homosexuality and homosexuals. Mike Wallace anchored the episode, which aired on March 7, 1967. Although this was the first network documentary dealing with the topic of homosexuality, it was not the first televised in the United States. That was The Rejected, produced and aired in 1961 on KQED, a public television station in San Francisco.
CBS Reports is the umbrella title used for documentaries by CBS News which aired starting in 1959 through the 1990s. The series sometimes aired as a wheel series rotating with 60 Minutes, as a series of its own, or as specials. The program aired as a constant series from 1959 to 1971.
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews is a three-volume work of pseudo-scholarship, published by the Nation of Islam. The first volume, which was released in 1991, asserts that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade. The Secret Relationship has been widely criticized for being antisemitic and for failing to provide an objective analysis of the role of Jews in the slave trade. The American Historical Association issued a statement condemning claims that Jews played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic slave trade, and other historians such as Wim Klooster and Seymour Drescher concluded that the role of Jews in the overall Atlantic slave trade was in fact minimal.
Homosexuals Anonymous (HA) is an ex-gay group which practices conversion therapy and describes itself as "a fellowship of men and women, who through their common emotional experience, have chosen to help each other live in freedom from homosexuality." HA regards homosexual orientation as "sexual brokeness" that may be "healed" through faith in Jesus Christ. In common with other Christian fundamentalist groups, HA regards heterosexuality as "the universal creation-norm". This approach has been criticized for stressing that a person must renounce homosexuality to be a Christian, and because there is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.
John J. Smid is the former director of the Memphis, Tennessee ex-gay ministry Love in Action, a group that claims to convert lesbians and gay men to heterosexuality.
Sinclair Rogers II was an American Christian pastor who was part of the ex-gay movement. In the late 1980s, Rogers was a President of Exodus International, and became one of the earliest personalities associated with the ex-gay movement. He wrote a life-story entitled "The Man in the Mirror," which was published in pamphlet form by Last Days Ministries.
