Michele Bachmann's husband: My clinic does gay-to-straight therapy, but it's not our agenda
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., gets a hug from her husband Marcus following her formal announcement to seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Monday, June 27, 2011, in Waterloo, Iowa.
/ Charlie NeibergallMarcus Bachmann, the husband of GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann, acknowledged in an interview with the Star Tribune Thursday that his Christian counseling clinic engages in therapy seeking to turn gay people straight. But he said such therapy is only offered when a patient requests it, and that it is not the clinic's focus.
"We don't have an agenda or a philosophy of trying to change someone," he told the newspaper.
Bachmann's comments come following claims by patients who visited the clinic, Bachmann & Associates, that counselors tried to convert them from gay to straight. One man, posing as a patient seeking to be converted to straight, brought a hidden camera into a session at the clinic and recorded a counselor saying "God has created you for heterosexuality." (The counselor added that "God designed our eyes to be attracted to the woman's body, to be attracted to everything, to be attracted to her breasts.") Conversion therapy is opposed by the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association and been called ineffective and harmful.
Marcus Bachmann told the Star Tribune that the man who recorded the hidden camera footage "specifically asked for help" to become straight, adding that pursuing conversion therapy is "at the client's discretion."
He also addressed an audio recording in which he appears to describe gay people as "barbarians" who need to be "educated" and "disciplined," suggesting the recording was doctored. He said the notion that he "ever called a homosexual a barbarian" is a "myth."
You can listen to the audio, as posted online, at left. The relevant section begins around the 2:45 mark. In addition to the barbarian comments - which Bachmann says was in reference to children in general, not homosexuals - he is heard saying, "just because someone feels it or think it, doesn't mean we're supposed to go down that road. That's what's called the sinful nature. And we have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps."
The blogger who posted the audio, Ken Avidor, told New York Magazine, "Flat out, I didn't doctor a damn thing." He said he linked to the original podcast of the interview, which has since been taken down, and called on Bachmann to "call up his friends" at the radio station to get the interview released to settle the issue.
Michele Bachmann has largely refused to discuss issues of homosexuality since becoming a presidential candidate despite the fact that she has previously put her opposition to same-sex marriage front and center. In a 2004 speech, she described those "involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle" as stuck in "personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement," adding that nearly all gay people were abused at one point in their lives. She also claimed that there is no evidence that homosexuality "is an immutable physical characteristic."
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If a gay man wishes to marry a straight woman have a family full of kids and it works for them. Fine. So what? He isn't obliged to identify himself with any orientational tag.
BUT and it's a big but(t), It's never that simple is it.? We have the issue of the 'gay to straight' therapy. Again, if people want to invest in this voodoo,maybe, I think, whatever, it's their life.......
BUT BUT BUT!!!!!!!
This is being used as a weapon against the well adjusted and the rational who have come to terms with the fact that any shame or disorder they may feel about their sexual orientation is merely the brainwashing of society.
Imagine a female who stands up and says "I'm a women and in my honest opinion, no doesn't always mean no and some types of nonconsensual intercourse aren't rape."
She's absolutely entitled to her opinion but something bigger is at stake. Those principles were hard won and came too late for many women.
This is why I MUST condemn 'gay to straight' therapy as something far more dark and insidious than some crackpot psychobabble nonsense. It undermines the hard fought struggle of the LGBT community to live out their congenitally decided character, WHO THEY ARE not what they do, with dignity and equality.
One only has to listen Mrs Bachmann's deranged voice, filled with cod sincerity, insisting that homosexuality is merely a disordered psyche, a lifestyle choice that must be disciplined against and rectified to understand the truth in my words.
PS. I loathe any business that has' Christian' tagged onto it as this is the ultimate carney rip off. Any failure on behalf of the product or service can be written down to the 'clients' failing,or exciting G*d's wrath or displeasure.
The Bachmann's irrational and obsessive preoccupation with homosexuality certainly is an indication that neither of them are secure in their own sexuality.
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Great comment Zenia. I don't really have a strong "gaydar" sense because I don't care what people's sexual orientation may be. I'm a lot more interested in what a person thinks and what they like and how they feel about various things that are going on around us in the world. However, when someone is overly preoccupied with others sexual orientation, it runs up a red flag and tells me that person has a problem themself.
...........all were married, some with children. Sh*t, that MUST make them hetero then.