THE PERSISTENT BIAS against ex-gays.

Public-policy decisions on homosexual issues are, in fact, typically determined by gay activists who carry this intrinsic prejudice.  It is gay teachers who determine policy for homosexual students; gay librarians who determine what books are permitted on the library shelves; and gay mental-health professionals who get to tell the world whether any sort of sexual-orientation modification is possible.  For example, anyone who has a comment or question about APA (American Psychological Association) policy is referred to the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns, which does not recognize ex-gays or the concerns of people struggling to change.

In fact, the most grievous and damaging example of this prejudice is the recent APA Task Force Report on the treatment of homosexuality, written by a panel that consisted almost entirely of gay mental-health practitioners. Of the six APA panelists, five self-identify as gay or bisexual, and the APA Staff Liaison who chose them, Clinton Anderson, is also gay. All of the panelists admitted, at the start of their work, to being opposed to reorientation therapy. Not a single  reorientation therapist who applied to be a part of the Task Force–and there were several distinguished and scholarly psychologists who did apply– were permitted to join the committee. . . .

An additional result of gay activism’s power to determine public policy is the fact that ex-gays are then marginalized and intimidated into silence. Gays see them as “gays-in-process,” or gays with a small “g,” and not entitled to claim a valid identity in their own right. Ex-gays, they believe, are merely gays who have not yet come out of the closet; they are simply “inhibited by their own homophobia.”