Chaim Levin

"Chaim Levin is an activist who advocates for causes that include the fight against sexual abuse, LGBTQ issues within the Orthodox Jewish community which he was raised in, as well as the issue of secular education not being taught in many ultra-orthodox Jewish schools."

"Levin was part of a successful lawsuit that forced the closure of a Jewish conversion therapy organization (JONAH) that purported to "cure" LGBTQ people of being LGBTQ."

" ... I spent the better part of my 20's pursuing justice and dignity for LGBTQ people, especially within the Orthodox Jewish community.​

As a survivor of four years childhood sexual abuse and conversion therapy in my late teenage years, I have been on a very public journey of healing and seeking justice after 8 years ago I decided to share my struggles with the world as I was going through and coming to terms with them.

I believed that the only way for me to survive was to take my battles to the public in order to try rectify some of the injustices that were done to me and many others at the hands of the conversion therapy industry. In 2010, the words conversion therapy weren't known to the world like they are today. With the help of Wayne Bessen, a mentor and friend who founded the organization Truth Wins Out, Benjy and I appeared in a Youtube video in which we described the specific things that organizations such as (the now-shuttered) organization JONAH once did to their clients in order to supposedly cure us of [what they called] same-sex attraction. Some of those things included having us strip naked while standing in a locked room alone with a JONAH ‘life coach’ who himself ‘struggled with same-sex attraction.’ 

That Youtube video was the first step of many that ultimately led to a consumer fraud lawsuit against JONAH. Ferguson v JONAH was filed on behalf of myself and six others by the Southern Poverty Law Center on November 27th 2012. It was because of this lawsuit that conversion therapy was found to be a fraudulent and unconscionable business practice by a jury. More importantly, it was because of this lawsuit that we got a real insight into the inner workings of the conversion therapy industry. In open court and in depositions that are mostly public record now, the junk science and emotional manipulation that fed and continues to feed groups like JONAH affiliates such as People Can Change (now known as Brother’s road), was exposed in public for the world to see."

​

Continue reading: https://www.chaimlevin.com/videos

Men Sue Reparative Therapy Center Over Psychological Harm

NOVEMBER 28, 2012





Four young men have taken the rare step of suing a facility that provides so-called "reparative therapy," and the individuals who run it, claiming that the techniques used to "cure" their homosexuality included ones that inflicted psychological damage. The suit was filed yesterday in Hudson County (N.J.) Superior Court against the organization known as JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing), which is located in Jersey City. The suit charges the organization with falsely claiming to be able to rid the men of their sexual attraction to other men through proven scientific techniques. According to the suit, these techniques were demeaning and emotionally damaging and included having to remove their clothing and beat images of their mothers. One of the defendants, Chaim Levin, now age 23 but 17 when he sought out JONAH's services, told the Jersey Journal, "It was so awful and so degrading and so wrong in so many ways."

Commenting on the suit to Psychiatric News, psychiatrist Jack Drescher, M.D., said, "APA has raised concerns about the potential harm done by trying to change a person's sexual orientation. Anecdotal reports of harm include worsening of depression, anxiety, and even suicidal ideation—not to mention individuals entering into heterosexual marriages with the unrealized hope that these would lead to conversion. Unfortunately, many of the individuals, like the defendants named in this lawsuit, are unlicensed and not subject to professional regulation or censure. Hopefully, if the plaintiffs' suit is successful, it will have a chilling effect on the proliferation of unlicensed individuals offering false hope to unhappy individuals struggling with their sexual identities." Drescher is president of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry and editor emeritus of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health.

In late September California passed a law banning reparative therapy in youth younger than age 18.

APA position statements on reparative therapy are posted atwww.psychiatry.org under "Position Statements." For a comprehensive review of mental health issues affecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals see The LGBT Casebook from American Psychiatric Publishing. (Drescher is a co-editor of the book.)

California Outlaws "Reparative Therapy"

OCTOBER 3, 2012

Over the weekend, California became the first state with a law banning so-called reparative therapy, a discredited intervention that claims it can turn homosexuals into heterosexuals. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill into law, outlawing the practice of reparative therapies in youth younger than age 18. Brown said he hoped this law would relegate conversion therapy to "the dustbin of quackery," noting that the practice has led to depression and suicide among young people distressed by the realization that they are attracted to people of the same gender. The law takes effect January 1, 2013. 

APA has an official position condemning conversion therapies for being "at odds with the scientific position of APA, which has maintained since 1973 that homosexuality per se is not a mental disorder." It notes as well that "The potential risks of 'reparative therapy' are great and include depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by [a person seeking this therapy]."

Jack Drescher, M.D., president of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry and a past chair of APA’s Committee on Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Issues, is concerned, however, that the law only applies to licensed therapists, and most people doing conversion therapies are unlicensed. In addition, Drescher said that the promised legal challenge claiming the law violates free-speech rights, if upheld, "would provide an opportunity for conversion therapy proponents to trumpet their victory and further market these harmful services."

APA's 1998 and 2000 position statements on reparative therapy are posted at www.psychiatry.org under "Position Statements." For a comprehensive review of mental health issues affecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals see The LGBT Casebook, new from American Psychiatric Publishing. (Drescher is a co-editor of the book.)

Times Calls Reparative Therapy "Pseudopsychiatry"

MAY 24, 2012





In an editorial in today's edition, the New York Times condemns as dangerous so-called reparative therapy, which its adherents claim can change homosexuals into heterosexuals, labeling it "absurd, potentially harmful, pseudopsychiatry."

The paper published the editorial in response to its article a few days earlier describing psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, M.D.'s, renouncing of a widely publicized—and widely condemned—study a decade ago in which he said he found evidence that reparative therapy can indeed change sexual orientation. Spitzer gained fame as one of the lead architects behind APA's 1973 deletion of homosexuality as a mental disorder from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and became a hero of the gay-rights movement, thus making his claims about reparative therapy especially shocking. However, he recently admitted that his study was flawed, relying solely on the personal accounts of people who said they had successfully changed their sexual orientation and whose names were supplied by organizations promoting reparative therapy. There was no control group or standard definition of what the so-called therapy involved. In its condemnation of the practice, theTimes stated that evidence exists showing that "reparative therapy can lead to depression or suicidal thoughts and behavior.... It should have been rejected long ago."

Read an account of Spitzer's original study in Psychiatric News, and for a comprehensive review of mental health issues related to sexual orientation, see The LGBT Casebook, new from American Psychiatric Publishing.

Spitzer Reportedly Recants Controversial Reparative Therapy

MONDAY, MAY 21, 2012

The “patina of scientific credibility” to which leaders of the so-called “ex-gay” movement have been clinging in their embrace of a deeply controversial 2001 study on “reparative therapy” has been taken away.

   That’s what psychiatrist Jack Drescher, M.D., told Psychiatric Newsabout reports that Robert Spitzer, M.D., the author of the study that concluded that some “highly motivated” individuals could change their sexual orientation through so-called reparative therapy, had essentially repudiated it. “There’s very little scientific evidence that people can change their sexual orientation, but individuals in the ex-gay movement try to lend their beliefs a patina of scientific credibility,” Drescher said. “Spitzer’s study seemed to give them that patina, which he himself has just taken away.” 

An article appearing Friday in the New York Times reported that Spitzer—who is well known to APA members as a leader in the development of DSM-III and DSM-IV, and renowned as one of those most responsible for getting homosexuality removed from the DSM in 1973—had renounced his 2001 study. The study had been presented at the 2001 annual meeting of APA and published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2003.

 “I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy,” Spitzer wrote in the letter to Ken Zucker, M.D., editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior.“I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some `highly motivated’ individuals.”

Psychiatric News could not reach Spitzer for verification. But Drescher, who is a friend and colleague of Spitzer's, said he has spoken many times with Spitzer over the years and that he has long acknowledged the study’s failures. “I don’t think Spitzer realized at the time how his name, which is well known, would be used by people for purposes with which he didn’t agree,” Drescher told Psychiatric News.  The Times article is here. The letter to Zucker is here.  For coverage of the original study seePsychiatric News here.