Bullying is not a growth experience

UPDATE 2: The statement below has now been removed from the NARTH website. The first interview with Glatze is still available. Not sure what happened, the statement of regret was pretty shortlived (not quite a full day).

UPDATE: This statement has replaced the Glatze interview on the NARTH website:

Following the counsel of our friends at Exodus and others in the ex-gay community we have removed the Michael Glatze interview from our site. Some of his public comments have been found to be offensive to NARTH and hurtful to others. It is never appropriate to make some of the comments attributed to Mr. Glatze and we at NARTH wish to make our disapproval public.

You can see below what was there this morning. The first interview from 2007 is still available.

Yesterday, I posted about statements made by Michael Glatze on his blog about bullying being a growth experience for the bullied child. NARTH features Mr. Glatze as a possible role model for youth on their website here.

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This is the second interview with Mr. Glatze that is on the NARTH website, and it is easy to see that their leaders believe he is someone who should be emulated. Given the philosophy of masculinity that he espouses with the approval of NARTH, one wonders why evangelicals continue to look to NARTH as a credible group.

While it is proposed by many in the NARTH camp that toughening up as a stereotypical male will eliminate same-sex attractions, there is little evidence to support the idea. It is not far from the “man-up” approach to the ideas of Glatze that one can “grow up” from bullying.

Here is another reminder of the real life consequences of such ideas. I call on NARTH to rethink this reparative notion, and take an unambiguous stance against bullying.

Please see the left column icon, Bullycide in America. All money from the sale of this book go to creating more awareness surrounding the need for schools to take a zero tolerance toward bullying for any reason.