Prominent Ex-Gay Torture Therapist: I’m Dating Men

Just in from Wayne Besen’s Truth Wins Out:

The nation’s most notorious conversion therapist, David Matheson, has quit the “ex-gay” movement and has announced he is seeking to date men. Matheson is the author and creator of several infamous “ex-gay” programs and bogus studies, as well as the director for the Center for Gender Wholeness. Matheson has been featured in an ABC News report and The New York Times.

Journey into Manhood’s director, Rich Wyler, revealed the news in a post to a private Facebook group obtained by Truth Wins Out. “David…says that living a single, celibate life ‘just isn’t feasible for him, so he’s seeking a male partner,” according to Wyler’s statement. “He has gone from bisexuality to exclusively gay.” TWO contacted Matheson on Sunday evening, and he provided a statement that was surprisingly unrepentant and failed to apologize for the grave harm he has caused many of his clients:

“My time in a straight marriage and in the ‘ex-gay’ world was genuine and sincere and a rich blessing to me,” Matheson told TWO via text message. “I remember most of it with fondness and gratitude for the joy and growth it caused in me and many others. But I had stopped growing and was starting to die. So I’ve embarked on a new life-giving path that has already started a whole new growth process.

“I wasn’t faking it all those years. I’m not renouncing my past work or my LDS faith. And I’m not condemning mixed-orientation marriages. I continue to support the rights of individuals to choose how they will respond to their sexual attractions and identity. With that freedom, I am now choosing to pursue life as a gay man.”

A protégé of the late Joseph Nicolosi, the infamous therapist from the now defunct National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), Matheson also co-wrote the program for Journey into Manhood, an absurd “ex-gay” program where gay men go into the forest to engage in “manly” activities in a fruitless effort to modify their sexual orientation. Matheson is the author of “Becoming a Whole Man,” which according to Amazon “is the result of a six-year quest to understand and respond to the most difficult challenges facing men with unwanted homosexuality.”

According to Truth Wins Out, Matheson co-wrote an ex-gay treatise with Norman Goldwater, who was recently caught cruising hook-up sites as “Hotnhairy72.”

Longtime JMG readers will recall my previous reports on the bizarrely homoerotic Journey Into Manhood.

RELATED: Truth Wins Out is continuing to pressure Google to remove an ex-gay torture app from their download store. See the petition here.