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When I wrote on Saturday about Truth Wins Out's undercover investigation confirming Marcus Bachmann's Christian counseling clinic was attempting to “cure” gays, the question was asked, will the mainstream media cover it?
It was a good question, I wasn't certain the question was yes. But now, it is. Yesterday, the story made the Los Angeles Times.
This was likely prompted because Monday night's ABC Nightline aired a report on it. The report picks up on two independent investigations. Brian Ross culled from the work of The Nation magazine and the Truth Wins Out undercover investigation. Some of the hidden camera footage Truth Wins Out collected was included.
Nightline speaks with Andrew Ramirez who as brought by his parent to Bachmann's clinic when he was 17 in 2004. He told The Nation magazine:
“He basically said being gay was not an acceptable lifestyle in God’s eyes,” Ramirez recalls. According to Ramirez, his therapist then set about trying to “cure” him. Among other things, he urged Ramirez to pray and read the Bible, particularly verses that cast homosexuality as an abomination, and referred him to a local church for people who had given up the “gay lifestyle.” He even offered to set Ramirez up with an ex-lesbian mentor. Ramirez was not impressed. After his second appointment, he resolved not to go back, despite the turmoil it might cause in his family. “I didn’t feel it was something that I wanted to change, and I didn’t think it could be changed,” he says. “I was OK with who I was.”
So glad this young man had the strength to spare himself the damage and danger of this therapy. Many kids can't say no to their parents.
Also interviewed is Truth Wins Out's John Becker who last month went undercover into the clinic and secured the footage confirming “Pray Away The Gay” techniques and theories being espoused by a clinic counselor.
Michele Bachmann and her campaign refused to comment to ABC on the story. They released a statement to producers:
“Those matters are protected by patient-client confidentiality,” the statement says. “The Bachmann's are in no position ethically, legally, or morally to discuss specific courses of treatment concerning the clinic's patients.”
No, not really. They can't pull that off. You can discuss your general techniques and philosophies of treatment without getting specific about names and individual cases. You don't have to betray a confidence to answer the simple question, “Is gay a curable illness, in your view?”
More attention: Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen will be speaking to MSNBC news today at 11:30 am EST and undercover gay John Becker will be appearing to discuss this on the Ed Show tonight at 10 pm EST. They will both be appearing on Michelangelo Signorile's Sirrus radio broadcast at 2:30 pm EST today.
Signorile raises more questions about “Dr.” Marcus Bachmann's educational credentials as well. Seems the Union Graduate School where he attended got itself investigated by the Ohio Regents board in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It culminated in a report that included this summation: ” … expectations for student scholarship at the doctoral level were not as rigorous as is common for doctoral work … ” Some reorganization and cessation of programs followed.
There also appears to be a discrepancy between the degree Bachmann claims to have and the time period when the degree was actually offered by the Union Graduate. From Signorile's blog The Gist:
JARS goes on to write that it seems highly suspect that Marcus Bachmann has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology because, if you follow the timeline, the school wasn't offering it:
What does all this mean? On his website Dr. Bachmann states he’s had 23 years experience. Simple math brings us to the year 1988. If Dr. Bachmann’s Ph.D. was completed prior to this date, he might have graduated from The Union Graduate School which offered ONLY a Ph.D. in Arts and Sciences. If he graduated later than 1986, then he would have graduated from The Union Institute (1986), or The Union Institute and University (2001) and his Ph.D. would have been in Interdisciplinary Studies. If in fact Dr. Marcus Bachmann graduated from this institute, whatever it was named at the time, he would not have graduated with a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. The ONLY doctorate in Clinical Psychology was offered after 2001, and the degree is a Psy.D. (Doctor of Psychology) and not a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy).
The threshold for “no comment” has been crossed, in my opinion. At some point, a continued duck and hide strategy begins to look very suspicious and will only draw more attention from the press and more questions. Time for the Bachmanns to sit down for some straight talk on this topic.
On The Lighter Side…
General election issues abound for Representative Bachmann. If you haven't checked out Whoopie Goldberg's rant on The View yesterday, please do. Bachmann seems to have lost the soccer mom demographic with her signing of the The Family Leader pledge, which among other heinous declarations implied African Americans enjoyed a better family life under slavery.
It's funny, but damn, Goldberg is pissed—really pissed—about the ignorant slavery component of the Leader's pledge. And righteously so. She says:
“Dammit, I am sick of this crap! Could you people get your act together?
You don't know anything about how slaves raised their kids or why people were together, just don't add stuff like that if you don't know what you're talking about! Number two: white people, black people, asian people, some of us are single parents, some of us turned out ok with single parents and you know what? Stop pointing the finger at single parents! I'm sick of people who don't know what the Hell they're talking about going off! I'm sick of it!”
Pretty thunderous applause.
It's bad when even resident Fox Head Elizabeth Hasselbeck has abandoned you and declared your Presidential chances gone. “It may put the nail in the coffin for any sort of chance for Bachmann…”
The ridicule factor is very high for the Bachmanns. Gawker compiled this rundown of people wondering if in Bachmann, we're seeing another Ted Haggart, George Rekers or Larry Craig dynamic playing out. Doth the lady protest too much? Some of the high-profile people whose gaydar “Mr. Michele” has pinged on:
Cher, who used her Twitter the other day to riff on Bachmann (as the gay news website Towleroad noticed). Pundit Andrew Sullivan, who called Bachmann a “ssuper-sserial hunter of gays” and then compared him to Waiting for Guffman character Corky St. Clair. The Daily Show co-creator and satirist Lizz Winstead, who tweeted that Bachmann is “the white Al Reynolds.” James Urbaniak of The Venture Brothers, who Tumbled: “It's pretty much a given that the most vociferously homophobic men are usually repressing something. But, oh Mary, Michele Bachmann's husband Marcus takes the ever-loving cake. He's a cure-the-gay therapist out of a John Waters movie. I haven't seen flames this high since the last California wildfire…” Kids in the Hall comic and television actor Dave Foley, who asked via Twitter: “How can Michele Bachman be opposed to gay marriage when she is married to gay man.” Foley made a few other tweets about Bachmann, using “#MarcusBachmanIsSoGay“; the hashtag got a bit of traction. Keith Olbermann referred to Bachmann as a “bizarre-sounding man who's calling gays 'barbarians'” and wonders how you can “hide” him without putting him in some sort of closet.
See also Michele Bachmann's Husband Is Fabu. You can also now follow the parody account @DrMarcusBachman on Twitter. Select tweets:
Sorry I was gone a while, I was burning some old albums all week, the heartbreak. @cher
Like the movie The Undefeated, I'll bring the spirit of John Wayne's co-star, Rock Hudson.
I wish the left would stop calling the tea party, tea baggers. It is not accurate, belive me, i've checked.
Looks like the gays really ARE a threat to traditional marriage, at least, specifically the Bachmann's. The popular gay dating site GAYDAR has offered Marcus Bachmann (NSFW) a free lifetime membership offering him the chance to conduct all the unfettered research into homosexuality any good Christian “scientist” could ever dream of:
In light of Marcus Bachmann’s spike in popularity on gay and gay-friendly blogs across the U.S., internet dating megasite Gaydar.net is offering the the husband of Tea Party presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (R-MN) a complimentary lifetime membership. As a rep at Gaydar HQ explains,
“Marcus Bachmann is popping up on everyone else’s gaydar, we figure he might want to be on the real Gaydar! With over six million members, we like to think Gaydar is the picture of inclusivity–from swarthy barbarians to piggy politicos–all are welcome!”
And let's also welcome “Dr.” and Representative Bachmann to the big league of national politics. Not a place for people with skeletons in their closet.
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NBC’s Today ran coverage this AM as wellThey ran basically the same information as ABC, but added in the video with the “Dr” going on his gays=barbarians crap AND that he had denied doing reparative quackery in the past. The story’s available on the msnbc web page, albeit only as video so there’s no comments. Would love to see how mainstream responds.
How long before the Bachmannsfile a suit against Wayne, John and TWO over this? I can’t imagine it would go anywhere, but we all know that the Christian right wingers love to harass their critics–and the more biting the criticism, the more severe the harassment. (Our local Christian TV station once threatened to sue me and the paper I wrote for for doing a piece on nutjob Molly D’Andrea, who ran an ex-gay program called Set Free If You Want To Be. They claimed that the fact that I had quoted Molly and some of her guests constituted copyright infringement. Needless to say, it got laughed out of court.)
But bravo to TWO for doing this! And cheers to all the MSM outlets who are going after the Bachmanns, too!
Ex-gay services and camps are hot beds of sexual abuse and psychological torture.
In a decent society scum like Bachmann and George Rekers would be prosecuted for kidnapping, torture and in the case of Rekers, murder.
Just as Obama should be prosecuted for torturing Brad Manning, GLBT-antiwar hero.
We need a program to actively encourage and aid children and young adults who need to be emancipated from their bigoted christer parents.
This story got immediate traction because Wayne Besen had PicturesEVERYTHING on the news is about the Pictures.
The Bachmanns are toast. If it’s not his Screaming Nelly Queen-ness (and I say this as a lover of Screaming Nelly Queens) it’s her weird ideas about slavery (at first she said the “Founding Fathers” ended it. Now she says it was great for black families ) and then the fact she and Marcus have been taking money from the Federal goovernment she claims to hate.
I agree. Pictures, video, audio make the difference. Good job to TWO. The story is huge today. Matthews covered it too and ABC asked Jim Carney at the White House briefing if the admin approved of federal funds paying for this. Bachmann is giving “no comment” to every outlet, which at this point is only feeding the frenzy.
Add the huge slavery story and she’s an overall trainwreck. She’ll never get near the White House. I am thinking she’s too damaged to even be considered as a VP pick.
Not necessarily.The big bad evil liberal media is so afraid of her that they are making stuff up about her like they did with Sarah Palin- or that’s how Fox will spin it and the crazy tea party crowd will believe it. Confirmation bias at its finest.
Are you arguing she can win the White House?No. The tea party isn’t that strong or populous. They will only bring her the Electoral College votes of the same Red States any GOP nominee would win, tea party support or not. And her craziness which will only come in sharper focus the next 18 months will tank her in blue and enough of the purple states.
Sarah was supposed to fire up the base for McCain. And clearly she did, 100K people went to see her speak in St. Louis right before the election.
How’d that end up working out for Johhny boy?
Tea party people vote GOP whether they are excited or not. The alternative is a black socialist.
No.But there will be people stupid enough to vote for her, some from Fox and some from hearsay. I’m not sure which group is dumber, come to think of it. There will also be debate and publicity that she doesn’t deserve. She can’t win but she probably can make a bunch of money, which may be her only goal.
CNN AlsoThey ran the story today, in an extended version. Nixon resigned the Presidency for lying. The Bachmanns have already done a lot of lying long before she even gets to Iowa. There’s enough stupid Republicans out there who will still vote for her. I’m sure Mitt’s spin team is ready with attack ads for when the primary season begins in earnest. Can’t wait to see them eat their own.