The Law & Crime Network has produced a video about Alan Chambers’ arrest, along with a brief, if somewhat flawed, summary of his history. Most of it seems reasonably even-handed considering the seriousness and nature of the charges. They do, however, introduce one new detail. According to the video, “The detectives wrote that one of the accounts they had investigated was used to connect with male sex workers.”

If accurate, this would indicate that Chambers at least had an adult outlet for male sexual contact, though there is no evidence at this point indicating whether he actually pursued it. It also raises troubling questions about why, if adult avenues for male sexual contact were available, the alleged communication involved someone presented as a teen, and whether there could be other undiscovered incidents or communications. We sincerely hope that is not the case, for everyone’s sake.

Organizations such as the Restored Hope Network, Changed Movement, Brothers on a Road Less Traveled (also known as Brothers Road), and Portland Fellowship promise transformation to people in deep emotional distress over their sexual orientation or gender identity. They work with vulnerable adults, sometimes minors, and sometimes survivors of prior sexual abuse. Yet a review of their public-facing materials reveals a striking absence: None of these organizations appear to publish formal, enforceable policies for preventing sexual misconduct and abuse within their programs.

I find no publicly accessible background check requirements for leaders, no mandatory reporter protocols, no independent complaint mechanisms, no codes of conduct governing the relationship between leaders and participants, and no enforcement measures.

This matters, I think, and the need is urgent.

Operating Outside Professional Oversight

These organizations fall outside any state regulation, licensing, or oversight. Portland Fellowship, for example, explicitly states it is “not a mental-health agency” and does not practice what is commonly referred to as reparative or conversion therapy. The Restored Hope Network describes its member ministries as being led by a mix of “pastors, counselors, well-equipped lay persons” — few of whom are subject to professional oversight.

The programs involve intensive emotional work, group vulnerability exercises, and significant power imbalances between leaders and participants. In any licensed therapeutic setting, these conditions would trigger robust structural protections: informed consent procedures, dual-relationship prohibitions, independent review boards, and mandated reporting requirements. Those measures are what make licensed professional therapy relatively safe from sexual abuse. In U.S. ministry settings, however, such protections rarely or barely exist.

A Pattern of Harm

The absence of safeguards is not hypothetical. The broader sexual orientation change ministry space has a documented history of abuse:

• Alan Chambers, the former president of Exodus International — the predecessor umbrella organization to the Restored Hope Network — was arrested in May 2026 after allegedly exchanging sexual messages with someone he believed to be a 14-year-old boy, who turned out to be an undercover detective. He was charged with solicitation of a minor, transmitting harmful material to a minor, and unlawful use of a two-way communication device.
• Living Hope Ministries, as documented in the film “Pray Away,” pressured a young Julie Rodgers to publicly disclose details of a prior sexual assault in her testimony to make it more compelling for audiences. That’s a clear example of institutional exploitation of a survivor’s trauma.
• Before People Can Change changed its name to Brothers Road, its Journey Into Manhood program faced a consumer fraud complaint to the Federal Trade Commission in 2016.
• Desert Stream/Living Waters Ministries, a member of the Restored Hope Network, acknowledged through its own founder, Andrew Comiskey, that a longstanding staff member sexually abused at least one teenager who had sought help from the ministry. In 2010, founder Andrew Comiskey admitted in a blog post that a family had sued Desert Stream over the sexual abuse of a teenager undergoing therapy to change his sexual orientation. The case was settled out of court.
• In 2011, ex-gay activist Scott Lively was caught employing a convicted child sexual abuser to run his local youth drop-in center, the Holy Grounds Coffee House, in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Policing Participants, Not Leaders

One of the more professionally run ministries in this space is Portland Fellowship. A closer look at Portland Fellowship’s residential program, the Upper Room Community, illustrates where these organizations place their enforcement energy… and where they don’t. The program’s published requirements page states that participants “are expected to live within moral guidelines implicitly and explicitly found in scripture: no sexual misconduct, no drunkenness, no illegal or recreational drug use, no gossip or slander, etc.” and that “violations of these moral standards will be dealt with immediately, and could result in expulsion from the Upper Room Community and eviction from the house.”

In other words, Portland Fellowship has a detailed behavioral code. But it applies to participants, not to ministry leaders. There is no corresponding published code of conduct governing leader behavior, no published boundary policies for the staff-participant relationship, no independent reporting mechanism for participants who experience misconduct by those in authority over them. The surveillance runs in one direction: the organization monitors and disciplines the people in its care, while publishing no comparable framework for holding itself accountable. For a nine-month residential program costing $800 per month, where participants are expected to attend multiple weekly sessions and scheduled mentoring meetings, this lack of accountability is a serious red flag.

Rebranding the Practice: Change Efforts by Another Name

The accountability gap is compounded by a pattern of strategic rebranding. When Oregon’s HB 2307 sought to ban licensed therapists from practicing sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts (SOGICE) on minors, Portland Fellowship published an April 2015 newsletter explicitly distancing itself from the legislation. The newsletter argued that the ministry does not practice “reparative therapy” or “conversion therapy” because its staff serve “in a layman capacity, not as professional therapists,” and because its stated goal is “wholeness and healing through Christ” rather than “sexual reorientation.”

Yet in the same document, the ministry described homosexuality as “a relational issue” with “relational” solutions, outlined a methodology of “discipleship, surrender, prayer, and obedience” aimed at “moving us toward emotional and sexual wholeness,” and opposed the proposed ban because it would prevent minors from exploring “resolutions through therapy.” The substance of the work — programs designed to move people away from same-sex attraction and toward a heterosexual norm — remains functionally identical to what professional and medical bodies define as SOGICE. By framing it as ministry rather than therapy, organizations such as Portland Fellowship, the Changed Movement, and other Restored Hope Network affiliates effectively position themselves beyond the reach of the consumer protection and professional conduct laws that are designed to prevent harm, even while they continue to deliver the same interventions under a different label.

The System Is the Problem

Several institutional traits compound the risk in SOGICE settings. Participants arrive in conditions of acute emotional vulnerability, often experiencing shame, family pressure, and religious distress. Then SOGICE programs encourage deep personal disclosure in group settings. Leaders hold enormous influence over participants’ self-understanding and life decisions. And many participants are survivors of prior abuse, a population that licensed professional standards recognize as requiring heightened safeguards.

Brothers Road, for instance, runs a dedicated program for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse, while Portland Fellowship describes its participants as people “wounded by past hurts.” These are exactly the populations for whom formal, enforceable protections are most critical, and yet they are conspicuously absent from these ministries.

What Accountability Looks Like

Mainstream religious organizations have increasingly adopted formal safeguarding frameworks in the wake of abuse scandals: criminal background checks for all leaders and volunteers, mandatory safeguarding training, two-adult rules for interactions with minors, clear reporting protocols, and independent review of complaints. These are baseline expectations, not aspirational goals.

The organizations that we name here fall short of even these baseline standards in their public disclosures. General statements opposing forced treatment, such as Brothers Road’s position that it opposes any change effort “forced on anyone against their will,” are not substitutes for enforceable policies with complaint procedures, third-party oversight, and real consequences.

The Bottom Line

People seeking help from these organizations deserve to know: Who screens the leaders? What happens when boundaries are violated? Where do complaints go? Who investigates? What are the consequences?

Until these organizations can answer those questions publicly and transparently, the people they claim to serve remain at elevated risk. And the pattern of harm documented across this movement is likely to continue.

Chambers is of course well known to us as the face of the ex-gay movement for over a decade, ending in 2013 when he oversaw the closing of Exodus International, once the largest organization holding out the promise of changing from gay to straight. It was an umbrella for hundreds of ministries and reparative therapy groups.

Chambers, who is married with a wife and two adult children, once claimed to have overcome his same-sex desires but later admitted he had always been gay. This is a developing story, more details to come as we get them.

It begins with a green camo hat. “Once I put it on,” Toscano writes, “the cap seemed to summon brown and tan work pants, heavy boots, and a jacket meant for moving unseen in the woods.” As a fem gay man in rural Pennsylvania, Toscano uses camouflage quite literally—to avoid confrontation, to pass, to disappear. But the metaphor doesn’t stop at his wardrobe.

He traces this reflex to earlier shapeshifting: his Italian-American family assimilating into suburban whiteness, his own stint in the evangelical anti-gay world, and the performative masculinity he once learned through conversion therapy. “Like so many trying to blend into America’s melting pot,” he writes, “I learned how to hide who I was to survive.”

That line—to survive—is key. The essay isn’t just about a gay man wearing camo. It’s about what happens when self-preservation requires self-erasure. Toscano’s ability to name this tension—how survival sometimes asks us to mimic our oppressors—is what gives Camouflage its depth and sting.

But what makes this piece especially timely is how Toscano connects personal camouflage to collective betrayal. “Today, we are slipping backward,” he writes, pointing to the mounting attacks on trans people, immigrants, and activists. He doesn’t just lay blame on the far right. He calls out cisgender gay men, especially those who, after gaining rights and visibility, now attempt to distance themselves from the “T” in LGBTQ+. He reminds us of Barney Frank’s 2009 move to exclude trans protections from ENDA. He sees history repeating itself—again.

It’s a brave, unflinching critique from someone who knows firsthand what it’s like to be both closeted and complicit. And he doesn’t let himself off the hook: “Some, like me,” he admits, “must rebel against the temptation to camouflage ourselves and flaunt our differences, perhaps fully clad head to toe in designer rainbow camo.”

That mix of self-awareness and challenge is what makes Toscano’s voice so necessary. He isn’t just documenting injustice—he’s interrogating the subtle ways we absorb it, reenact it, and sometimes, reward it.

In a time when queer visibility feels both more normalized and more dangerous than ever, Camouflage reminds us that authenticity has always had a cost. And that some of us, if we’re not careful, will pay it with someone else’s dignity.

About Peterson Toscano

Peterson Toscano is a performance artist, Bible scholar, and queer climate advocate known for using storytelling and satire to explore issues of identity, faith, and justice. He survived 17 years of conversion therapy before coming out as gay and later co-founding BeyondExGay.com. His groundbreaking solo performance Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House offers a hilarious yet harrowing look at ex-gay programs (watch here). In Transfigurations–Transgressing Gender in the Bible, he uncovers gender-nonconforming characters hidden in plain sight within sacred texts (watch here). Learn more about his work at petersontoscano.com.

Last year we reported on an interview with Disney actor Matthew Scott Montgomery on Christy Carlson Romano’s podcast Vulnerable. In it he described his experience with reparative therapy under Joseph Nicolosi Jr., son of the late Joseph Nicolosi Sr. The latter was the well-known co-creator of reparative therapy who passed away in 2017. If you haven’t already, take some time to read that post and watch the interview.

We recently received an email from Matthew telling us that he wanted to retract some of the statements he made in the original interview. He claimed that Dr. Nicolosi Jr. had demanded this.

I request that you promptly remove the article that you have published. Dr. Nicolosi Jr. has demanded, and I have agreed, to send this notice and demand to you.

From the sound of things, Nicolosi may have come down on him hard, possibly with legal threats. The video retraction above explains things but here is the point-by-point.

• He used the term “conversion therapy” when Nicolosi wanted it to be called “reparative therapy.” Matthew wanted to also clarify that it was never presented to him as conversion therapy. It is important to note that, since that term has collected so much negative baggage, and is specified in bans in many states, Nicolosi and others are obsessive about not allowing their practices to be associated with it. Conversion therapy is the colloquial equivalent to Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (S.O.C.E.) which would seem to cover what we know about reparative therapy from Nicolosi Sr.
• He had said or implied that he was sent to therapy but in fact he signed a consent form and was over 18 at the time. We should remember that one can be 18 and give consent but still have been sent or felt compelled to go. It is usually described as a very stressful and intimidating process in the first place.
• He described having gone through electroshock therapy when it was instead, according to Matthew, something Nicolosi called a “tac/scan device.” He described it as plastic rods he held in each hand “which produced bilateral vibrations to my hands through small plastic vibrating motors.” The only thing we could find under the term “tac/scan” was a video game. Also, we asked experts in the field of psychology who said they had not heard of it, and that it sounded “quacky.” (see update below)
• He said he was told, as part of his “homework,” to apologize for being gay to his parents. He now says that, while he felt compelled to do so, no one instructed him to. It’s hard to understand exactly what one would apologize for.
• He described having done “science equations” in a workbook. He now says the books were about “SSA” and situations that might trigger it. This sounds like a diary of such situations day-to-day in his own life, which would be more likely.
• He made a comment (joke) about Nicolosi Sr. that he now describes as “not funny, it was thoughtless, careless, rude and uncalled for.” He did not specify but we suspect it was at about 19:20 on the original video where, speaking of Joseph Nicolosi Sr., he says “he has a [practice] — he had, he passed away. God works in mysterious ways — I’m kidding!” While in poor taste, it does fit Matthew’s jovial style.
• He also got the timeline incorrect of when he attended therapy. He was there starting April 12^th, 2010, took five months off for work, and then returned to therapy until February 6^th, 2012. This is approximately what we speculated in our previous post. It isn’t clear how this is significant.

Again, we got the sense that Nicolosi had given Matthew little choice in this. Nicolosi Sr. was a bit of a bully, but I don’t recall him ever making these kinds of demands of anyone. Nicolosi Jr. has added a number of new therapies to his mix, while his father was a true believer that reparative therapy was totally effective, i.e., if you do what I say and mean it you will change.

We have listed each issue so you can see what was important to him. What is perhaps even more significant is what Nicolosi ignored. Matthew described Nicolosi’s Encino office as a place where gay actors come to get straightened out.

This place specifically was for gay men who wanted to be turned from gay to straight and make it as a straight movie star in Los Angeles. That’s what this place was.

He went on to describe elaborate precautions, a routine choreographed with special indicator lights and waiting rooms to keep various (perhaps famous) clients from bumping into each other. He also emphasized that it was overtly Christian. Nicolosi Sr. protested the claim that his practice was religious, though he certainly spoke in Christian settings and incorporated some of those beliefs in his presentations.

While demanding all those other things be retracted, some relatively minor, Nicolosi doesn’t seem to have cared about that last bit at all. This certainly could indicate validation. Whatever else it may mean, it gives us a peek into Nicolosi’s priorities.

Matthew requested we take down the article entirely. That isn’t generally how these things are dealt with. The original interview happened and we wrote about it. We don’t erase history, good or bad. Instead we have reported on the retraction in detail which is bound to be more effective anyway. Making something disappear does not deal with the people who have already read the post and perhaps referenced (as we originally did) or even duplicated it.

Matthew indicated that this entire ordeal had caused him great stress. This is another reason we think Nicolosi landed on him so hard. However, he has fulfilled his obligation by contacting us. This is how we have chosen to deal with the corrections. We don’t know if any of the retracted items might, in fact, be true, with Matthew retracting them under pressure. We asked him but he declined to answer. Hopefully Nicolosi is out of his life for good now.

Update: We searched under different terms and found something that sounds similar to the “tac/scan device” Matthew mentioned. This device is one of many different devices used in EMDR therapy. Apparently, anything that alternately stimulates both sides of the brain can be used, so this may well be legitimate for treatment of trauma.

Transcript of retraction video provided by Matthew (PDF): Transcript

Kimathi, who belongs to the Straight Black Pride Movement (SBPM) hate group, was invited to speak at an event hosted by the Pan-African Pyramid forum in Kampala on March 15th. In his speech, Kimathi attacked LGBTQ+ rights, made inflammatory comments about opposition leaders like Bobi Wine, and even disparaged Nelson Mandela’s legacy.

The visit by Kimathi, who was previously fired from a U.S. government job for his extreme anti-gay views, is just the latest instance of American hate groups attempting to influence and reinforce Uganda’s oppressive policies toward its LGBTQ+ citizens.

As we have recently reported here and here, evangelical Christians and other extremists from the US have interfered heavily in the social and political workings of Uganda. For decades they have been influential in helping to create anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that calls for the death penalty and to sway public opinion against that segment of their population.

This influence has contributed to president Yoweri Museveni, once a somewhat progressive leader, saying things like this:

For more disturbing details on Kimathi’s hate-filled rhetoric in Uganda and his ties to influential Ugandan figures, read the full article.

Much of the modern ex-gay movement — and a broader rebellion by American religious conservatives against perceived threats to their worldview — are rooted in San Francisco’s Jesus People Movement of the early 1970s. As it happens, my own family spent time in this movement and in San Francisco. The experience reshaped my parents and defined me for life, spiritually and philosophically. In fact, certain ideals inherited from that era — community justice, personal growth, and religious accountability — inspired the creation of the Ex-Gay Watch website in 2002 and the formation of the ex-gay survivor movement.

Now, a fascinating new journal article by Chris Babits explores that almost-forgotten era of conversion-therapy culture, offering a fresh look at the origins of contemporary American evangelicals who misunderstand themselves and their place in a free and rational civic culture that they reject as demonic.

Demons in San Francisco Bay: How a Street Preacher Launched Modern-Day “Conversion Therapy”

By Chris Babits for Pacific Historical Review, Winter 2024

Author and scholar Chris Babits observes that California in the 1960s saw a fusion of spiritual and psychological beliefs, with the Jesus People Movement forming among people from all walks of life who were moving to California for jobs, a fresh start, and personal meaning — at a time of unpopular wars, civil-rights battles, exposures of moral failure in older generations, and younger generations demanding change. Pentecostalism, in particular, enjoyed a strong presence on the U.S. West Coast, and as the state became a post-World War II melting pot, California’s religious landscape included faith healers, Eastern medicine believers, and fundamentalists.

Kent Philpott: Misperceptions and Projections

Kent Philpott, a Baptist seminarian who became a self-described “flaming Pentecostal” and part of the Jesus People Movement, experienced a spiritual awakening in the Haight district of San Francisco. There, he claimed to witness New Age drug use, mystical religious expressions, and what he decided were demonic possessions. Immersed in the Haight, Philpott paradoxically embraced superficially Christianized versions of the same magical practices he railed against, such as glossolalia and miracles. By attributing demonic attributes to unfamiliar people and ideas, Philpott unwittingly rejected restraints against the worst impulses of religious zealotry. He helped establish the Soul Inn — a residential center for conversion to conservative Christianity and, I contend, conversion to a white patriarchal culture that was idolized by evangelicals and scorned by civil rights, antiwar advocates, and survivors of religious and domestic abuse.

Conservative Interviews Reveal Contradictions in Ex-Gay Narratives

In Babits’ examination of Philpott’s work, he finds that as Philpotts’ Bay Area ex-gay ministry took shape, Philpott interviewed LGBTQ Christians for his books “The Third Sex?” (1975) and “The Gay Theology” (1977). Those interviews inadvertently contradicted Philpott’s stereotypical portrayals of the “gay lifestyle” and assertions about demonic possession. Many interviewees had long-term, committed same-sex relationships and expressed a desire for marriage and family. Several ended their same-sex relationships after converting to evangelical culture, attributing this change to spiritual inspiration rather than prior demonic possession. While Philpott emphasized the role of Satan in influencing same-sex desires, only one interviewee mentioned undergoing an exorcism. The interviews also revealed complex experiences with gender identity and presentation, suggesting that same-sex attraction was not simply about lust or “confusion” as Philpott claimed. Many interviewees struggled to develop heterosexual attractions even years after their religious conversions and “ex-gay” counseling, challenging Philpott’s assertion that Jesus could eradicate same-sex desires.

Disregard for Mental Health Research

Critics such as Babits contend that Philpott’s approach to counseling lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients veered far from mainstream mental health practice, even the dated practices of the 1970s. When the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1973, Philpott did not engage with this significant shift in his books. Instead, he dismissed the psychiatric approach as inadequate, believing that mental health professionals avoided addressing patients’ religious needs. Babits boldly states that Philpott’s integration of beliefs in demons, miracles, and divine healing with pseudo-psychological ideas about same-sex attraction and gender identity would have been considered unethical for a licensed mental health professional. However, as a religious figure, Philpott was able to promote conversion therapy to reactionary Christians despite the absence of scientific evidence that these practices ever worked. Indeed, these ex-gay practices were accomplishing the opposite: Reinforcing sexual compulsion and harmful behavior instead of transforming people into happy heterosexual couples.

Where Evangelicals Lost Their Way

Despite Philpott’s personal shortcomings and the downplaying of his role in histories of “conversion therapy,” California remained prominent in the therapeutic and political wars over the practice. Organizations such as Focus on the Family and individuals like Dr. Joseph Nicolosi continued to promote sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts. In response, California became the first state to ban licensed mental health professionals from offering such therapies to minors, with other states in the American West following suit.

The rise of the “ex-gay movement” in the 1970s coincided with white Baby Boomers’ reactionary backlash against Sixties idealism and modern, fact-based understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality. The idealistic vision of community and personal freedom embodied in songs like “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” gave way to a search for new sources of meaning and fulfillment, fueling the rise of evangelical and charismatic Christianity among white Baby Boomers and Generation X. Beginning in the early 1980s and even more true today, contemporary Christian music emphasizes individual spiritual experiences and personal salvation over orthodox hymns or gospel ideals of selfless charity, equity, and justice.

Ironically, the same liberal yearning for authenticity, self-discovery, and escape from the mainstream that had drawn young people to San Francisco in the 1960s drove many of them toward reactionary and illiberal religious movements that often stand in opposition to personal freedom and democratic community values. As the hippie dream of a more just and equitable society gave way to white resentment in the 1970s and 1980s, the focus on personal transformation and spiritual fulfillment that had once been a means to social change became, for some, an end in itself.

As February draws to a close, so do Black History Month in the US and LGBT History Month in the UK. It seems, then, an appropriate point to introduce readers to the Revd Augustine Tanner-Ihm.

Born to a Jehovah’s Witness family and brought up in an impoverished black neighbourhood of Chicago, Augustine was a teenager when he realised he was gay. He knew from his cultural and religious background, however, as well as his recently found evangelical faith, that being a ‘practising homosexual’ was not an option. A book given him by a mentor was his introduction to the idea that with enough effort, he could change his sexuality.

Life took him to Liverpool, England, where he found a church home and, looking for support in his struggle with his orientation, he joined a group he soon realised was practising a form of conversion therapy, where “very much the goal was for you to be able to marry the opposite sex.” Vulnerable in what he has described as an oppressive atmosphere, he felt duty-bound to remain because his visa was essentially in the church’s control.

He describes his experience in news articles for the Manchester Evening News and The Independent. Now the Reverend Dr Augustine Tanner-Ihm, he is an ordained priest in the Church of England and curate of St James and Emmanuel, Manchester – an evangelical parish whose journey to becoming LGBTQ+ affirming is told in the short documentary below (TW: suicide):

Find out more about Augustine, including his work as an educator and academic, at augustineihm.co.uk, or follow @augustineihm on Twitter/X.

While Ugandan officials claim the law reflects local values, the article exposes how American anti-LGBTQ+ groups have actively shaped and promoted it over many years. Organizations like Family Watch International, Abiding Truth Ministries, and Exodus International (now disbanded) have provided the ideological framework, messaging, and pseudoscience used to justify AHA 2023.

The involvement of these American extremists undercuts arguments that the law represents an authentic African response to colonialism. As the article states, “the very language and pseudoscience of this law is adopted from U.S.-based anti-LGBTQ+ groups and figures.” It’s the toxic export of Western homophobia, not the preservation of tradition.

AHA 2023 has already unleashed a wave of violence and discrimination against Uganda’s LGBTQ+ community. With six people charged so far, we can expect worse human rights abuses if the law is not repealed. The Constitutional Court of Uganda now has a duty to strike it down.

Beyond the court case, the article suggests economic actions like aid cuts may pressure Uganda to reverse course. But policymakers should learn a larger lesson – that the spread of anti-LGBTQ+ hatred often has American (and Evangelical) roots. Restricting extremist U.S. groups from spreading their agenda abroad is overdue. More work also needs to be done to counter their messaging where it has already taken hold.

As the article concludes, LGBTQ+ Ugandans are being used as “a scapegoat to move people away from what is really happening in the country.” The American extremists fueling AHA 2023 rely on distortion, fear and hate. Ugandans deserve to know the full truth about the foreign forces putting their fellow citizens at risk.