Alternative gimmicks and vaporware.

February 17, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Karen Ocamb’s blog, LGBT POV, carries Wayne Besen’s revelation that a Jewish “ex-gay” enterprise is headed by an ex-convict. Read: “Ex-Gay Icon exposed as an ex-con.” Arthur Goldberg is the co-founder of Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) and president of Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality (PATH). According to Ocamb and Wayne Besen this Arthur Abba Goldberg, according to investigators was “the Wall Street criminal mastermind who was convicted in 1987 and went to prison for ‘fraud of spectacular scope’ that included ‘bilking poor communities with complicated bond schemes.’”

The amateurish web site for “PATH” (”Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality” and “Change is Possible”) has no “About” page. It looks like a transparent front for the organizations in its sidebar full of links. Among them is the notoriously wing-nutty NARTH which has been discredited repeatedly as quack anti-gay psychology. But its home page is full of “we” talk to tell you its views. Examples, “We support personal choice | we support the individual’s right to know | we support individual self-determination | we advocate compassion and respect | we advocate policy neutrality . . .” But who is we? On the News page are only two items, one an undated NARTH release, and the other a release about PATH’s launch on July 8, 2002, or is it July 8, 2003? Apparently you can find out by following up with them.

Media Contacts:   Arthur Goldberg, 201-433-3444   Richard Cohen, 301-805-6111

Ocamb’s column further identifies Goldberg as Executive Secretary of NARTH, which is based here in Southern California, and from TWO and South Florida Gay News reports, also President of Congregation Mount Sinai, a temple in Jersey City. Apparently Goldberg has found a way to be in two places at once, or his temple in Jersey City doesn’t need him around much, or neither does NARTH.

As for the International Center for Gender Affirming Processes (what does that mean anyway?), it is either too new or too vaporous to have its own web site. It is mentioned on several sites including NARTH in connection with Goldberg where he is named a “Principal”, but for an “international center,” shouldn’t it have some actual or even virtual existence?

And why would an ex-con con artist care about homosexuals? Apparently Goldberg has a gay son living in New York, so maybe we have some of the parental tension going there that we did with the late Pete Knight, the California state senator who gave us Proposition 22, who finished out his life not on speaking terms with his gay son.

We see this going on and on and on. Any pretense that the ex-gay phenom really has well-intentioned moral and religious people behind it keeps getting blown with the reality that opportunists are running these programs. Add that to the fact that the founders of Exodus, and others who have worked through the “ex-gay” programs admit that it simply doesn’t work, and you have an enormous sham. When will both the gimmick-mongers and religious control freaks leave this issue and move on to something else more profitable?

— Pastor Dan Hooper

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