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rfmcdonaldnj.com's Susan K. Livio reports on an important legal finding in New Jersey against ex-gay conversion groups.
A New Jersey jury on Thursday found a non-profit group that provides gay-to-straight conversion therapy guilty of consumer fraud for promising clients they could overcome their sexual urges by undressing in front of other men, pummeling an effigy of their mothers, and re-enacting traumatic childhood experiences.
In the first case in the nation to put the controversial practice on trial, the jury concluded that Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Berk, the founders of Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing in Jersey City and life coach Alan Downing to whom JONAH referred patients, "engaged in unconscionable commercial practices" and misrepresented their services.
Chuck LiMandri, president of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund and JONAH's lead counsel, said he would appeal the decision, which he called a blow to religious liberty.
[. . . T]he victory has broader implications. The national civil rights legal advocacy group Southern Poverty Law Center filed the case to take a stand against conversion therapy — a frequent target of public criticism since the passage of same-sex marriage laws and other LGBT legal protections. In 2013, New Jersey joined California by outlawing licensed therapists from providing the therapy to minors. Oregon and Washington D.C. followed. Last month, a bill was introduced in Congress would classify commercial conversion therapy and advertising that claims to change sexual orientation and gender identity as fraud.
