Undercover operation finds Marcus Bachmann’s clinic works to ‘cure’ gay people

[Shana A]

Undercover operation finds Marcus Bachmann's clinic works to 'cure' gay people
LGBTQ Nation • Saturday, July 9, 2011

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2011/07/undercover-operation-finds-marcus-bachmanns-clinic-works-to-cure-gay-people/

An investigation by "Truth Wins Out" — a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism — has revealed that the clinic of Marcus Bachmann, the husband of presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), practices reparative therapy, a controversial and discredited clinical method designed to "cure" gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

TWO's findings contradict claims by Mr. Bachmann that he and his clinic, Bachmann & Associates, do not participate in reparative therapy. The story broke today in The Nation magazine where Mariah Blake reported on the results of the investigation.

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Posted on Advocate.com July 09, 2011 09:25:00 AM ET
Hidden Camera Finds Reparative Therapy at Bachmann's Clinics
By Lucas Grindley

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/07/09/Hidden_Camera_Sting_Finds_Reparative_Therapy_at_Bachmann_s_Clinics/

New evidence has surfaced that Marcus Bachmann's Christian counseling clinics are actually in the business of reparative therapy for gay people – a claim that he had denied.

[...]

Truth Wins Out was formed in part to combat the myth that gays can be converted to straight, and it sent a hidden camera into Marcus Bachmann's office with a man posing as a patient. On the tape, counselor Timothy Wiertzema reportedly assures that "It's possible to be totally free of [same-sex attraction]. For sure." He claims, "It's happened! It really has happened to people."

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'God Has Created You for Heterosexuality': Clinics Owned by Michele Bachmann's Husband Practice Ex-Gay Therapy
Mariah Blake
July 8, 2011 

http://www.thenation.com/article/161883/%E2%80%98god-has-created-you-heterosexuality%E2%80%99-clinics-owned-michele-bachmann%E2%80%99s-husband-practi

In the summer of 2004, Andrew Ramirez, who was just about to enter his senior year of high school, worked up the nerve to tell his family he was gay. His mother took the news in stride, but his stepfather, a conservative Christian, was outraged. "He said it was wrong, an abomination, that it was something he would not tolerate in his house," Ramirez recalls. A few weeks later, his parents marched him into the office of Bachmann & Associates, a Christian counseling center in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, which is owned by Michele Bachmann's husband, Marcus. From the outset, Ramirez says, his therapist—one of roughly twenty employed at the Lake Elmo clinic—made it clear that renouncing his sexual orientation was the only moral choice. "He basically said being gay was not an acceptable lifestyle in God's eyes," Ramirez recalls. According to Ramirez, his therapist then set about trying to "cure" him. Among other things, he urged Ramirez to pray and read the Bible, particularly verses that cast homosexuality as an abomination, and referred him to a local church for people who had given up the "gay lifestyle." He even offered to set Ramirez up with an ex-lesbian mentor.

[AbraCadabra]

Ach no!
Not still again!

In SA they convinced/coerced gay soldiers in the then SADF under the apartheid regime to have sex-changes.
They obviously didn't have an understanding of transsexualism and sexual orientation, or at least where not interested in the difference.
So those boys got fixed up with vaginas and obviously very unhappy puppies indeed.

Those religious bigots just have to tell God how things aught to be, just so ridiculous.

Axelle

[justmeinoz]

Hopefully that will put a spanner in the works of her Presidential plans too. I think it is fair to assume she would have had at least some idea what was going on, and that he was breaking the 9th Commandment by saying they were not using reparative therapy.

I wonder what the Psychologist's Associations in the US will say about all this?

Karen.

[Shana A]

Posted on Advocate.com July 09, 2011 12:35:00 PM ET
In His Own Words: How I Went Undercover at Bachmann's Clinic

COMMENTARY: Truth Wins Out activist John Becker took a hidden camera with him to five therapy sessions at a Christian counseling center run by Marcus Bachmann.
By John Becker, op-ed contributor

http://www.advocate.com/Politics/Commentary/In_His_Own_Words__How_I_Went_Undercover_at_Bachmann_s_Clinic/

At the mention of Bachmann's name I stopped what I was doing and looked up. The speaker was the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was guest hosting The Ed Show. Rev. Sharpton continued talking about the counseling clinic run by Bachmann's husband: "As the Minnesota Independent reports, the clinic has been previously accused of engaging in reparative therapy, or treatment aimed at changing one's sexual orientation. Dr. Marcus Bachmann denies this..."

I chuckled when Rev. Sharpton said this. He won't be able to deny it for much longer, I thought. After all, I was watching this broadcast from a basement in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, having spent the previous eight days undercover in the Twin Cities receiving reparative therapy sessions at Marcus Bachmann's clinic.

[RhinoP]

This is an excellently, and I mean excellently, well-written piece of journalism, exposing Michelle Bachmann's husband's fraudulent gender-therapy practice, where a team of fraudulently-certified "therapists" try to cure gays of their orientation using direct defamation of character. The article then goes on to expose the religious control and abuse that Bachmann's huband has over her, the same abuse he serves to his patients. This piece of journalism dives deep into the facts to uncover things journalism usually does not work this hard to do; this is truly a revolutional article that I hope everyone reads.

http://news.yahoo.com/marcus-bachmann-gay-cure-033100212.html

[Lisbeth]

I remember seeing Michelle Bachmann hiding in the bushes at an OutFront Minnesota Lobby Day rally. And I heard about her claiming that a lesbian and a nun tried to kidnap her. They are fruitcakes, both of them.

[Shana A]

Michele Bachmann Clinic: Where You Can Pray Away the Gay?

By BRIAN ROSS, RHONDA SCHWARTZ, MATTHEW MOSK and MEGAN CHUCHMACH
July 11, 2011

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/michele-bachmann-exclusive-pray-gay-candidates-clinic/story?id=14048691

A former patient who sought help from the Christian counseling clinic owned by GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann and her husband, Marcus, told ABC News he was advised that prayer could rid him of his homosexual urges and he could eventually be "re-oriented."

"[One counselor's] path for my therapy would be to read the Bible, pray to God that I would no longer be gay," said Andrew Ramirez, who was 17-years-old at the time he sought help from Bachmann & Associates in suburban Minneapolis in 2004. "And God would forgive me if I were straight."

In the past, Marcus Bachmann has disputed the clinic has treated gay patients this way. But Ramirez's account, which was first reported by The Nation, is similar to the counseling session that appears on new undercover video shot by a gay rights advocacy group last month. That footage shows another counselor at the Bachmann clinic telling a gay man posing as a patient that, with prayer and effort, he could eventually learn to be attracted to women and rid himself of his gay urges.

[Joelene9]

  Reparative therapy is just like the "Facilitated Communication" Ouija therapy done to severely retarded and autistic kids in the late 80's and early 90's.  My sister was sucked into this with her daughter with severe cerebral palsy with severe retardation.  This therapy used an alphabet, common words and number chart in which both the therapist and patient floated a shuttle across it as with an Ouija board.  This was once touted by the glossy TV mag shows back then before this was debunked because of the inherent bias of the shuttle by the therapist.   
  If one with those urges wants to not be gay or even transgender, reparative therapy would not work because of the inherent bias of the therapist(s).  These people must find their own path and their own prayers to do so.  This will take a lot of sacrifices to achieve these goals.  It has been done more successfully by some of those who went this path.  I seen a lot of suicides and relapses from repairative therapies. 
  Joelene