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Fringe Jewish Group Blasts APA Gay Decision

We can too make ’em straight, JONAH says

by
Ilya Khodosh
August 11, 2009
(David McNew/Getty Images)
(David McNew/Getty Images)

When the American Psychological Association declared last week that its member therapists should not offer “reparative therapy or other treatments” that promise to turn gay patients straight, there were howls of outrage from the expected sources: conservative Christian groups that promise to do just that. But it turns out such beliefs aren’t the sole province of those who believe in Jesus. The group Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, known as JONAH (insert your own blowhole-related pun here), criticized the APA’s resolution, too, claiming that “the secular bias in the report against religious values” encourages religious clients to blaspheme by suggesting “an alternative religion or lifestyle that affirms their gayness.” JONAH was founded in 1999 by two New Jersey Orthodox Jewish couples with gay kids, and it claims to help those “struggling with unwanted same-sex attractions to journey out of homosexuality” with the help of support groups, therapy referrals, and lots of books and tapes. JONAH Director Arthur Goldberg, who is presumably not the former Supreme Count justice and U.N. ambassador, chairs a handful of homosexuality-pathologizing organizations and wrote Light in the Closet: Torah, Homosexuality, and the Power to Change. He called the APA resolution an “unbalanced, scientifically flawed document,” noting that it was prepared by six “gay-identified therapists,” Evidently, gays not only flout Biblical law but also make inadequate researchers.