Controversial App Touts Gay Cure
A controversial app available through Apple’s iPhone app store is creating controversy because the app is being touted by its creators as a way to cure people from being gay.
Truth Wins Out on Monday urged people to continue signing its Change.org petition to demand that Apple remove the “ex-gay” iPhone app that was created by Exodus International, a group that believes people can and should “pray away the gay.”
According to a news release, Truth Wins Out has reached out to Apple several times, and the company has not yet responded.
Watch a video report on the app here.
“If Apple does not respond, we will take steps to ensure that Apple meets the victims of ‘ex-gay’ ministries and learns how their lives were destroyed,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “It is astounding that Apple would allow an app from an organization that promotes gay exorcisms, demonizes LGBT people, and is rejected by every respected mental health association in America.
“Apple doesn’t allow racist or anti-Semitic apps in its store, yet it gives the green light to an app written by an anti-gay extremist group that targets vulnerable sexual-minority youth with the message that they are ‘sinful’ and ‘perverse,'” said Truth Wins Out’s Director of Communications and Development John Becker. “This is a double standard that should not stand.”
A University of Minnesota professor said Exodus has distorted his research and also is demanding the app be taken down.
Dr. Gary Remafedi, director of the Youth and AIDS Projects and a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, sent a letter Monday to Apple founder Steven Jobs and its interim CEO, Tim Cook, about the Exodus International app, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Florida-based Exodus International, which describes itself as “the world’s largest worldwide ministry to those struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction,” says its app is “a useful resource for men, women, parents, students and ministry leaders.”
In his letter to Apple’s top executives, Remafedi wrote that the app “erroneously cites my research in support of claims that homosexuality can be changed. … Associating my work with that of the ex-gay ministry and other unfounded treatments is professionally injurious and grievous.”
