- Richard Drew/AP
As details emerge in the lawsuit against the Jersey City anti-gay “therapy” group JONAH, or Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing, it’s clear that they were doing a lot more than trying to pray away the gay. The entire concept of conversion therapy repugnant, emotionally damaging, and futile, but what these poor kids went through is another whole level of abuse. Awful.
Chaim Levin, 23, of Brooklyn said his mother, Bella Levin, spent more than $10,000 on his counseling over 18 months. He said he was brought into a locked, mirrored room with a male counselor twice his age and told to strip.
“I felt it was an unsafe environment. I was naked with a man twice my age and he told me to touch myself,” Levin said. “I resolved never to go back . . . never to talk about it.”
Benjamin Unger, 25, of Brooklyn said he was ordered to beat a pillow with a tennis racket and shout “Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!” in synchronization with each blow.
“I had to beat my mother up to heal from being gay,” Unger said. JONAH counselors, he said, believe mothers are to blame if their sons are gay. Unger said he didn’t talk to his mom for months after that, but they are on good terms now.
The young men said they also were repeatedly placed in situations where others in therapy sessions screamed humiliating words like “faggots” and “homos” at them in mock locker room and gym settings. They said the goal was to make them mad and get in touch with their masculinity. [NY Daily News]
Are there really parents who would prefer abuse to a gay and happy son? Fuck that.