The following CNN news video is about a lawsuit filed by Michael Ferguson and some other gay men. He is apparently claiming that therapy that was supposedly designed to turn gay men straight was fraudulent or at least not grounded in science. This is often called “reparative therapy.” The defendant in this case is the JONAH organization. This video was added to the CNN website on November 27, 2012.
JONAH is Jews Offering New Alternatives For Healing. Ferguson describes various strange therapy techniques, such as using oranges to represent a man’s testicles.
Nothing I see in this video establishes that JONAH did anything illegal. There is an allegation that JONAH counselors promised to turn gay men straight. That could be illegal, and no professional counselor who is ethical would ever promise a specific result from mental health counseling. The science is experimental by nature and will not work for everyone.
So the legal question doesn’t come down to whether the therapy was strange, bizarre, or unorthodox. It simply comes down to whether the gay plaintiffs were actually promised by JONAH that they would be turned straight, or heterosexual. At this point, that sounds like an allegation, not a proven fact.
Side Note: Wolf Blitzer seems extremely biased in this interview. Talk about a puff piece. There wasn’t one probing question by him. This was like an advocacy piece, not a news piece. CNN purports to be a news organization. They should do better than this.