‘Gay conversion’ group in New Jersey closing in January

A New Jersey nonprofit group that sought to help people struggling with their same-sex attractions is ceasing operations this month after losing a civil lawsuit, a media report said.

Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) told supporters in a Jan. 1 email that it would be closing its website, www.jonahweb.org, by mid-January, and that its leaders are not permitted to provide counseling, the Christian Post reported this week.

JONAH was sued in 2012 by three men and two mothers over its therapy services.

The Ferguson v. JONAH case marked the first time a so-called “gay conversion” organization was sued under state consumer-fraud law.

A jury agreed with the plaintiffs that JONAH had committed consumer fraud by promising they could stop people’s same-sex attractions and subjecting the men to unusual behavior-modification techniques, like beating an effigy of a mother.

In December, New Jersey Superior Judge Peter F. Bariso Jr., issued a permanent injunction on the group’s practices. JONAH founder Arthur Goldberg and other defendants agreed, as part of a settlement, to cease operations and to not appeal the ruling.

“JONAH peddled discredited, pseudo-scientific treatments to people who weren’t sick, who weren’t broken, and who needed nothing but love and support,” David Dinielli, deputy legal director at Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), co-counsel for the plaintiffs, said when the settlement was announced.

“The end of JONAH signals that conversion therapy, however packaged, is fraudulent — plain and simple,” Mr. Dinielli. Like-minded groups, he added, “would be well-advised” to take heed of JONAH’s fate and “abandon their foolish efforts to make gay people straight.”

Mr. Goldberg and Elaine Berk, founders of JONAH, said the “tragic miscarriage of justice” in their trial “reflects the near-triumph of political correctness and the gay activist agenda in the USA.”

JONAH sought to help Jewish people live according to their Torah beliefs, and others — Christians and Mormons — to live according to their religious tenets,  JONAH attorney Charles LiMandri of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund argued at the trial.

However, Judge Bariso did not allow several key defense experts to testify, disallowed testimony that characterized homosexuality as disordered, and curtailed discussion of people’s religious freedoms, JONAH leaders and its supporters said.

Mr. LiMandri said an appeal had been planned in the case, but “the financial risks to my client, who has never made any personal profit out of volunteering to help men troubled with unwanted same-sex attraction, made this deal necessary.”

The SPLC “should be embarrassed at the millions its donors spent to shut down one small voluntary nonprofit in New Jersey,” Mr. LiMandri said last month.

The settlement requires JONAH and its defendants to pay $72,000 to compensate the men and the mothers for fees they paid to JONAH, and for remedial mental-health counseling incurred by one of the men, the SPLC said.

The judgment also includes $3.5 million in legal fees for the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs have “agreed to accept an undisclosed portion of that award, but the defendants will be liable for the full amount if they violate the agreement,” the SPLC said.

Separately, the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ (NCLR) #BornPerfect campaign to end “gay conversion” therapy has promised to keep track of 2016 bills banning the practice. To date, California, New Jersey, Illinois, Oregon, the District and Cincinnati, Ohio, have banned the therapy for minors by state-licensed therapists.

Supporters of the therapy, which they call sexual-orientation change efforts, are pushing back against bans. Groups such as Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays and Equality and Justice for All support a #TherapyEquality campaign and “Safe Exit” program, in which churches can learn how to become places where people struggling with same-sex attractions can find help.