Witness Lies about “Conversion Therapy”

On Monday, March 18, 2013, the NJ Senate Health, Human Services, and Senior Citizens Committee held a three-hour hearing on S2278, a bill to ban minors who experience unwanted same-sex attraction from receiving therapy from licensed counselors. Testimony came overwhelmingly from homosexual activists, who relied on unsubstantiated emotional and anecdotal arguments to support the bill. The most dramatic story came from Brielle Goldani, a man living as a woman in Toms River, NJ. Goldani claimed that, as a teenager in 1997, his church in New Jersey sent him to a “conversion therapy” camp in Ohio called True Directions, run by an Assemblies of God church. There Goldani says he was forced to masturbate to heterosexual soft-core pornography, flirt with members of the opposite sex, and submit to electroshock “therapy” and chemical IV injections in order to restore heterosexual inclinations. International Healing Foundation Director Christopher Doyle, who testified in opposition to the bill, said afterward, “I was shocked and horrified to hear about such abuse. As a former homosexual and practitioner of Sexual Orientation Change Effort (SOCE) therapy, I had never heard of such inhumane treatment, except from anti-ex-gay activists who often claim that SOCE employs such barbaric methods.” Investigation revealed Goldani’s story was fabricated. The Ohio Council of Assembly of God Churches denied the camp ever existed. The Ohio Secretary of State and Attorney General’s office confirmed this. No ethics complaints were ever filed to indicate the existence of such a camp, SOCE practitioners in Ohio had never heard of it, and the current pastor of Goldani’s former church said no one from his church would have been complicit in such a scheme. Instead, Goldani’s testimony was virtually identical to a 1999 movie called I’m a Cheerleader, where the abuse he described occurs at a camp called True Directions. NJ Family First’s Director of Government Affairs Greg Quinlan said, “Everyone is entitled to think as he chooses about the merits of SOCE. But people should be able to form those opinions based on facts—not movies. The New Jersey legislature has been taken for a ride by activists desperate to force their agenda, whose desperation displays their fear of having a real conversation. S2278 is an unconstitutional bill that violates minors’ autonomy, parents’ rights, professionals’ judgment, and individuals’ consciences, and it is a serious matter for everyone’s freedom when cynical mockeries like this are allowed to influence policy. Regrettably, committee chairman Joseph Vitale did not seem overly concerned. “While Senator Vitale may not care that a key witness lied, the parents, teenagers, and professionals this bill will affect deserve a truthful hearing. The legislature should not suffer such an insult or permit illegitimate testimony to determine binding votes. The right thing for Senator Vitale to do would be to call another hearing and bind witnesses under oath.”