Yes, GfS, I can admit it when I'm wrong, but I'm not wrong in this case. You are the one who doesn't dare admit that you are wrong because the whole defense you've built up for yourself is that sexual orientation is a matter of choice.

The three people I have met who claimed to have been cured of being homosexual were psychological basket cases. With them, "ex-gay" means depressed and perpetually angry. Also, all three of them have entirely given up sexual activity of any kind. And no friends, because not many people can stand to be around them for any length of time. Obviously, they have stuffed their true sexual nature back into the closet and are living in rigid denial. So much for your "cure."

You attack me on the basis of what you presume to be my religious beliefs, implying that I am a hypocrite because I don't believe in the power of God to "heal" gay people of their "aberration." Well, just because I'm a member of a church doesn't mean that I believe in an anthropomorphic God who looks like Professor Dumbledore and performs magic tricks. It's an easy enough refutation of your position if I were to simply respond, "Why would God change them? He made them that way in the first place!"

You are at odds with the medical and psychology fields with the contention, that sexual orientation is a matter of choice, and you cling fast to your hero, Richard Cohen, self-styled "ex-gay" who claims he cured himself and also claims he can cure others. His method? He lies on a sofa with his clients, strokes and caresses them, and assures them that they are, indeed, loved.

Is that the way you go about it, counselor?

You and Ake are at least partially responsible for such atrocities as the brutal torturing and pistol-whipping of Matthew Shepard, whose battered body was left hanging on fence on a country road in Wyoming, to be found by a passersby, who, at first, thought the body hanging on the fence was a scarecrow. Shepard died in a hospital a few days later of inoperable brain damage. Why was this young college student so brutally murdered? He was gay.

And the message upon which this whole Ungandan "kill the homosexuals" movement—read genocide—is based is found in Richard Cohen's book. What he says in his book is completely at odds with medical and psychological practice, and indeed, Cohen has neither credentials nor sanction by any professional organization. He's a charlatan. Yet, his book is being used as the basis for the passage of the "kill the homosexuals" laws in Uganda.

People like Cohen—and you—and Ake—spout the fictions that give psychopaths such those who murdered Matthew Shepard a feeling of justification for their brutality.

Here's your hero being interviewed, GfS. Watch it. Watch the whole thing, all 17 minutes of it.

Richard Cohen.

Further:   It's notable that both you and Ake snap onto any thread having to do with homosexuality, like magnets to a refrigerator door. You can't resist an opportunity to spread your misinformation. But why are the two of you so obsessed with male homosexuality? What this kind of obsession clearly indicates (and this is sound psychology) is that you are both latent homosexuals who are in rigid denial and can't miss an opportunity to argue, not with me and others—but with your own inclinations.

Don Firth

P. S. Okay, GoofuS, let's hear your vociferous denials, personal attacks on everything about me, and your general kicking and screaming tantrum. This one ought to be a doozy!!