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Amy Sussman / AP Images for Southern Poverty Law Center
From left, Michael Ferguson, Chaim Lavin, Ben Unger and Sheldon Bruck are suing a New Jersey organization for consumer fraud for offering "gay conversion" therapy services.
Four young men who say they underwent therapy that sought to “convert” them from gay to straight are suing a New Jersey provider known as JONAH, alleging fraud and accusing it of using dangerous sham tactics to try to “fix something that isn’t broken.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday filed the lawsuit in Superior Court of New Jersey on behalf of the men and two of their parents against Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH), its founder, Arthur Goldberg, and counselor Alan Downing.
The lawsuit alleges the defendants violated New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act by providing “conversion therapy” that falsely claims to “cure” gay clients.
It is the first time a “conversion therapy” provider has been sued for fraudulent business practices, according to the SPLC, a Montgomery, Ala.-based civil rights organization that fights hate and bigotry.
Suing are Michael Ferguson, 30, of Salt Lake City; Benjamin Unger, 25, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Chaim Levin, 23, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; and Sheldon Bruck, 20, of New York City, along with Levin’s mother, Bella Levin, and Bruck’s mother, Jo Bruck.
The lawsuit says clients of JONAH’s services typically paid a minimum of $100 for weekly individual counseling sessions and another $60 for group therapy sessions.
Ferguson was in his 20s and Unger, Levin and Bruck were in their late teens when they underwent the therapy, according to the lawsuit.
The four men say they were lured into JONAH’s services through deceptive practices and then subjected to humiliating and emotionally damaging therapy techniques, including group sessions in which they were instructed to stand naked in a circle with their counselor, who was also undressed.
“JONAH profits off of shameful and dangerous attempts to fix something that isn’t broken,” Christine P. Sun, deputy legal director for the SPLC, said in a statement. “Despite the consensus of mainstream professional organizations that conversion therapy doesn’t work, this racket continues to scam vulnerable gay men and lesbians out of thousands of dollars and inflicts significant harm on them.”
JONAH, based in Jersey City, did not respond to telephone messages and emails from NBC News for comment.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages as well as revocation of JONAH’s business license and an order to stop its employees and associates from continuing reparative therapy practices.
In the lawsuit, Ferguson said he participated in one session in which clients took turns trying break past a human chain to wrest away two oranges, which were used to represent testicles, from another individual – all the while being taunted with statements such as “you’re such a fag, homo, queer boy.”
“They play blindly with deep emotions and create an immense amount of self-doubt for the client,” Ferguson was quoted as saying in a press release from the SPLC. “They seize on your personal vulnerability, and tell you that being gay is synonymous with being less of a man. They further misrepresent themselves as having the key to your new orientation.”
Unger said his counselor advised him to spend more time at the gym as well as to get naked with his father at bathhouses to “get in touch with his masculinity.”
“These counselors are skilled at manipulating you into believing just about anything,” said Unger. “During my time with JONAH, they told me constantly that my mom had made me gay. I was so convinced that I refused to have any contact with her for several months, which caused a great deal of damage to our relationship.”
In another exercise, according to the lawsuit, clients were blindfolded in sporting scenes as counselors and others dribbled basketballs and hurled anti-gay slurs at them.
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JONAH, formerly known as Jews Offering New Alternatives for Homosexuality, was founded by Goldberg, a former Wall Street executive and attorney.
The organization describes itself as “a non-profit international organization dedicated to educating the worldwide Jewish community about the social, cultural and emotional factors which lead to same-sex attractions.”
JONAH’s mission statement adds:
"Our Rabbinical sages explain that because mankind has been endowed by our Creator with a free will, everyone has the capacity to change. Furthermore, the Rabbis emphasize that parents, teachers and counselors have a special responsibility to educate, nurture, and provide an opportunity for those struggling with unwanted same-sex attractions to journey out of homosexuality.
Through psychological and spiritual counseling, peer support, and self-empowerment, JONAH seeks to reunify families, to heal the wounds surrounding homosexuality, and to provide hope."
The SPLC says the essential premise of conversion therapy, sometimes also called “reparative” or “ex-gay” therapy – that it will “convert” a gay person into a straight person – has no basis in scientific fact. Such therapy has long been discredited by mainstream mental health and medical professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, according to the law center.
Two months ago, California became the first state in the nation to ban gay conversion therapy for minors when Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1172. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, called gay cure therapy "quackery" and said parents were never informed of its potentially dangerous aftereffects.
At least two groups, the Christian legal organization Liberty Counsel and the California-based Pacific Justice Institute, have filed lawsuits challenging the California ban.
Also, U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier , D-Calif., said that on Wednesday in the U.S. House, she plans to introduce a resolution, called Stop Harming Our Kids, aimed at stopping reparative therapy practices on minors.
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Leave a Comment:
Why would they go through some sort of conversion if they were content with their perversion? I think they should all get together and suck a big one - a joint, not what you perverts were thinking. Or, they could practice packing their fudge.
"Wileywillie69" intelligence personified. Okay, that is not correct.
The southern poverty law center, that says it all, a radical left wing group. This is just another example of the extreme hypocrisy of the "tolerance" crowd: if you disagree with them and oppose their agenda, they are the first in line to attack you, call you names, try to silence you, sue you, etc. And their own cliches can be used against them: they tell us that if we are against homo "marriage", for example, then don't get one, mind your own business. So, if you don't want this therapy, don't get it! But don't dictate to others what to think and practice. We also forget that many of the world's national psychological and psychiatric associations still have homosexuality as a disorder. Are you going to "push your values" on them by having them follow what one association in America does! Shame! You need to allow for more "diversity."
The reason for the attempt to stop such therapy is obvious: if even a single person is cured, that destroys the myth that people are born that way. And that is one of the biggest refutations of the lie that such therapy does not work, that there are people who have been cured. But they tell such people that they are lying, have been brainwashed, etc. Amazing! They want to tell people they have never met what they are really thinking!
lol, no, even if "one person is cured" that proves..nothing, let alone that you aren't born that way. Sexuality isn't that simple, and "one person" declaring themselves "cured" proves nothing about others. lol.
you're funny.
Excellent post. Precisely.
Chris, I don't agree with you that gays are not "born that way." However, I do agree that the SPLC is probably a leftist group...which, like so many modern leftists, is deliberately targeting a Jewish organization when there are so my Christian programs that share the same anti-gay agenda.
vermontguy,
You seem to admitting that there are homosexuals who are not born that way and that when they claim to not be you have to take them at their word. This also means that therapy can be legit, for if it can be caused by environmental factors, for any given person at least, it is subject to change. But, the whole "gay" nonsense is largely predicated on the idea that homosexuality is innate, that such persons cannot change, and therefore they comprise a minority group, etc., So if someone with deep-seated, long-standing homosexual tendencies, who swore that they were born that way, is freed from such tendencies, then that does go a long way to shatter this idea. Besides, there are thousands of such persons.
And you proved my point that you are inferring that such persons must be lying or that there claim is, in some way, not true, or suspect. But why, if this doesn't make a difference? You betray the need to maintain the claim that this is biological. This is understandable, for then persons suffering from the homosexual disorder are challenged, and the temptation will be to fall back on the "I can't help it because I'm born this way" idea.
The lawsuit is the scam. It looks like these people didn't want to have therapy in the first place. There are some that are afraid they are gay or don't want to be gay. This is a place for them to go. Hopefully this lawsuit gets tossed.
Wow, the ignorance of your comment is so amazing, I don't even know were to start. But how about with this. "Known as the pink dollar or "Dorothy dollar" in the United States, estimates of the US LGBT market put its value at approximately $790 billion in the year 2012. In addition, many of these households are known by demographers as "DINKY" — which generally have more disposable income. In the United States, gay people are on average economically advantaged, with 28% of gay households reported as having an income in an excess of $50,000 a year.
So apparently by your incredibly ignorant comment, the above statistics can be explained away by ". Many of them turn to stealing, frivolous lawsuits and the like to support their frivolous lifestyles." Now I hate to rain on your homosexual bashing parade, but before making incredibly ignorant comments, with no basis in fact, you might want to do something called RESEARCH.
Like any addiction help organization, like Alcoholics Annonooumus, treatment does not work for everyone. What is imortant to note is there are no harm in therapy. There is however over 17,000 deaths in the US every year from AIDS, a predominantly homosexual disease (as noted in the Advocate). Many others die from injuries, suicides and substance abuse.
So, which is more harmful? The lawsuits gearing up against the real trouble makers, PFLAG and thier cohorts that encourage children to participate in dangerous homosexual activities.
Before you criticize me, if you happen to be homosexual, think back to see if you remember some type of Jerry Sandusky in your past.
www.lawsuitcoming.com
but there can be harm in therapy. duh. so your post is wrong from the start.
try again?
Jose, I won't say you're an idiot, as that would not be polite and might get me suspended. But I'm tempted...!
Jose, with you 100%. Thanks for posting lawsuitcoming.com (I thought that was a joke at first).
The activists have used workplace HR departments to shut down (the sane) opposing viewpoints for years. Now they're using civil courts to do the same thing. These people are *fascistic*. We will have no rights -- certainly not freedom of expression -- if we capitulate to this absurd, farcical movement.
"Progressives" need to re-learn which side is pro-freedom.
You can't cure weirdo.
I bet they went in with no intention other that to sue down the line and claim they were victims. Poor little dearies! By the way, every person in this world is broken in some way on the inside and you know it's true.
"JONAH, formerly known as Jews Offering New Alternatives for Homosexuality, was founded by Goldberg, a former Wall Street executive and attorney."
Your article leaves out important information about Arthur Goldberg. He was convicted and imprisoned for major fraud and was disbarred. He was no longer welcome either on Wall Street or by Attorneys anywhere. That is why he chose to make his living selling the idea that anyone can become straight.
As this story is all about the issue of fraud, it is important to know the character of this group.
Yes, Jean, and while you are at it, I wish you had investigated the backgrounds of the founders of all the Christian anti-gay conversion groups.
Wow what does that say about you when your considered too crooked for Wall Street and the legal profession? Next stop, Killer Clown.
A friend of mine used to talk about an unattractive couple he knew. He said "If you looked at Jane, you'd turn gay. But then, when you looked at Jack, you'd go back to straight"!
Gays aren't so bad -- its the h o m o s e x u a l s that are such a drag.
Ok...I want a refund on my Marvel Mystery Oil and I am suing my Dr because they were unable to cure my common cold.
I am sick of the vigorous efforts of the gay community to obliterate this choice. Why is it entirely OK for someone who is biologically male to undergo painful surgery and hormone treatments to become a WOMAN, but it is NOT OK for someone who is biologically male or female to visit a therapist because they are not heterosexual and they wish to be? Something is deadly wrong with the sort of thinking that PROMOTES this bizarre sexual self-mutiliation while simultaneously condemning psychotherapy directed at sexual conversion.
If JONAH's "therapy" included standing naked in group therapy, encouraging mutual nudity with other males as a way of getting in touch with masculinity and pretending some oranges are testicles while shouting homophobic taunts then it RICHLY deserves this lawsuit, as these are inappropriate and unacceptable activities. Emotionally abusive and just plain WRONG.
But not all sexual conversion therapy engages in these practices and not all conversion therapy is a big waste of time. If a man or woman wants to use psychotherapy to change their sexual orientation, they have every right to make the attempt.
Partly right.
But they should only be sued if participants were *physically forced* to participate in something they objected to *at the time*. These people are adults, and chose to participate.
Otherwise, all therapy would need to conform to some bland set of practices that no jury would deem "inappropriate". Many programs (e.g. even martial arts) include activities that could be misconstrued as extreme or inappropriate -- that's not for a jury to decide. It would stifle creativity.
You're either born gay or straight(or possibly, bi). Just get over it and BE WHO YOU ARE!
Nevermind.
Were they forced into JONAH by JONAH? Maybe whomever insisted they go through something like this should be the one's that are sued. Maybe they should go to moron therapy for falling for such crap to begin with. What the hell did they expect? They obviously had problems accepting themselves and now want to blame someone else for a stupid decision they made thinking they could be "cured" Now they want to be paid for there own idiocy? Were they held against their will? Could they choose to leave at anytime? Now they want a pay day. Sorry dudes I don't feel sorry for you. Quit blaming others for your choices. Accept being gay and move on with your lives.
Ironic how the superior intellect and non biased northeastern is seeking the "Southern Poverty Law Center" for help. Please spare me the "northeastern intellegencia", North good, South bad sentiments which are seen on these pages all too often.
Why did they go if they didn't think they were "broken"? To bad these guys lost their money, but they were not forced to under go any of the treatments. Even the naked ones. Anyone can walk away at any time. It may not be what they thought, but they were not forced to take part.
I have nothing against gays. Gay is gay, I don't believe it can be changed at this point and time. Whether society will ever believe that someone is broken or not is another story.
If you want to see if a Gay guy can be converted, it's very simple. Put him in a room with a naked Salma Hayek, Monica Belluci, and Megan Fox. If this doesn't convert him, nothing is going to. Nothing.
Where can I sign up for that test.
I didn't read anywhere where they were forced to be a part of this program. In fact, they obviously thought there was something strange about their attraction to other men. Many people do not like this therapy because it just might work. Homosexuality is unnatural. What's so hard to understand?
The reason some gay people think there is "something strange" about themselves is that society drills that into them.
Personally, I have no urge to fight gay marriage. It wouldn't hurt me or my own relationship or family. But... that said, there has to eventually be some recognition that homosexuality is akin to a disease; it alters nature's plan for the gender division and the purpose of sex to begin with - reproduction. For this system to fail means that something has gone wrong so... while we should assure that gays have equal rights in every respect, there should also be an effort to find the root cause of this malady and then, discover a cure.
goes to show you that the gay life style is not good are there would not be this many going trying to find someway to get ride of the sinful life style
Control freaks and cheap salesmen are hard to understand ...
For all of you who keep making comments such as "Why did they go into the therapy in the first place if they did not think there was something wrong with them"? The answer is a simple one. Well simple if you have homosexual friends. Many of my friends who are homosexual have told me that literally for years they were shunned an told how "perverted" they were by society and even close family members. And up until very recently (the last 15 years or so) homosexuals have been treated as both second class citizens and pariahs by large segment of our so called "Christian" society.
So if you are told from day one that you are "perverted", "sick", "a disgrace to your family" and so on, what would be your reaction? According to my homosexual friends in many cases it is an overwhelming feeling of doubt/despair that they are not "normal". And they do everything they can to be "normal". With "normal" being in this case "homosexual". And that even includes dating members of the opposite sex and marrying. But the reality is they are living a lie because "society" is forcing them to do so. And that includes the llie they can be "cured". Of course they cannot, anymore than a hetrosexual can be "cured" of their hetrosexuality. .
That is it in a nutshell, Progressive.
Well these guys were in their early 20's and late teens so if the last 15 years or so has been "good" for homosexuals as you put it then your argument doesn't hold true for these men. If they were 35-40 or older then maybe but I doubt at age 7 they were told they were perverted as not too many 7 year olds are into sexual orientation at that point.
Hopefully we can put an end to this nonsense. These so-called 'conversion' clinics are nothing more than psychological abuse.
Then the queers shouldn't sign up & pay for it.
On the question of sexuality, it's actually very simple. What man controls what makes their dicks get hard? Not rocket science there now is it. For most it's the ladies. For some it's dudes. I don't get it but I don't I have to. Only they do. Live and let live.
After a heated arguement the JONAH people said to the plaintiffs "kiss my ass" and the plaintiffs responded - "O good you want to settle out of court"
That's what he gets for trying to "save" them. Let them go to hell instead.
Well I'm sure by the tone of your comment, they will see you there.
Hahahahaha!
Sue them right out of business and while your at it take their homes too!Serves them right for basing everything on a 2000 yr old fairy tale.
Is that a nervous laugh? Goes back much further than 2000 years ago. I don't think it will be too hard to prove these four guys entered the program with no intention of trying to change. Suing was their plan from the beginning.
let me get this right, these people, of their own free will, went to this organization that practices these 2000 year old fairy tales, and are now suing them because it didn't work? so wh is really to blame here? the 2000 year old fairy tale, or the idiots that went to them?
Next time try scientology, that's more intelligent than what millknee/BD have to say.
BD, maybe they deserve the suit. Have you ever met someone who is gay that didn't want to be gay? If so, why would they choose therapy instead of a girl?
Just sayin.'