Samuel Brinton, the poster-boy extremist, working for the anti-therapy campaign of the National Center of Lesbian Rights (NCLR), has managed to have an article published in New York Times on January 22, 2018. This article was crafted to resemble a regular article. But it is part of their campaign and reiterates the tiresome slander of the defamation rhetoric crafted to influence public opinion. The aim is to marginalize and ultimately remove all professionals who counsel people with unwanted same-sex attractions (SSA’s) from the public arena. Why now, you may ask? And why in the New York Times? What kind of man is he, and do his newly acquired heterosexual feelings mean the end of the “born that way” hoax?

1. Why here?

Why in New York? The answer is quite simple. The national anti-therapy campaign of the NCLR was launched in 2014 by radical lesbian Kate Kendall to remove all therapy for unwanted same-sex attractions once and for all from the public arena in the USA and abroad. It has only been successful in a small number of American states, including the state of New York but has failed miserably in at least twenty others. This latter fact is never mentioned by the NCLR.

As far as New York is concerned, New York State’s conversion therapy bill was ordered to a third reading in the State Assembly on January 3, 2018. A similar conversion therapy bill had previously passed the Assembly in March 2017, but died in the Senate.

In New York City however, a bill designed not only to ban therapy for minors, but for all ages was passed in the New York City Council, but still needs to be signed by the mayor.

Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who supported the bill, said:

“We will ensure all individuals will be able to live without fear of coercion into change into someone they are not”.

In the bill however, the factor ‘coercion’ is not mentioned. Neither does the bill insist on specifying ‘what’ someone is. And certainly not what the client wishes or how he/she views him/herself.

The legislative City Council fell for the activists’ slander of so-called “harm” but the New York City mayor has not signed it yet, and has his doubts. His wife is according to reports ex-gay.

In order to put the pressure on, Brinton and his team have managed to get an article published in the New York Times with the headlines “I was tortured in Gay Conversion Therapy, and it is still legal in 41 states”. His campaign is called “50 States, 50 bills“.

The NCLR has good connections with the editors at the New York Times, and we see the weekly emails of the NCLR-director Kate Kendall to her supporters frequently being published in the paper by the “editor of LGBT affairs” as unbiased news, without fact-checking or input from “the other side”. In his current article, Brinton slanders and defames therapy more viciously than ever before, with abundant use of the word ‘torture’. His team apparently hopes to shock readers, and ultimately, the mayor into approval.

2. Why now?

For the first time the activists are openly showing their ultimate goal, to ban therapy for all age groups and not just for minors. Many people have suspected this all along. “First let the camel get his nose inside the tent — and only later his unsightly derrière”, a quote from a gay activist manual (page 1, download it here).

The ban on therapy for minors was therefore only a setup and try-out before going in for the kill. New York City is one of the two most gay-influenced cities in the US, and the NCLR hopes that this expansion of the ban, aimed at preventing even consenting adults from seeing a therapist of their own choice, will spread like an oil spill over the country. If it succeeds, it will remove the entire scientific debate from the face of the earth. The weapon is fear-mongering, and all engines are full speed ahead.

3. Who is Samuel Brinton?

Brinton, the activist with his boyish charisma, who has hitched up with the NCLR team for the last eight years, speaks like a machine gun, leaving no room for an adversary to get a question in. His contribution to the NCLR consists of his tales.

Recently, he wears high-heeled shoes as a defiant provocation whenever coming into contact with heterosexuals. If you raise so much as an eyebrow, he is onto you.

His stories of unprecedented physical torture sessions in his youth by his religious father are barely credible and on the verge of the impossible, and they place him in a martyr’s role like a Hollywood blockbuster. He has become a superstar. The activists claim that this alleged abuse by his father is a classic example of reparative therapy. It is for this reason that NCLR-director Kendall has recruited him.

Later, Samuel had also seen a religious counselor of sorts for talk sessions about homosexuality, but the descriptions of this counselor are vague and unverifiable. Samuel cannot remember his name, nor the exact location of the sessions he claims to have attended. In some interviews he says it all started at age eight, in other interviews he says it was at age fourteen. His parents deny all allegations, and view him as a disturbed young man.

There has been a great amount of criticism of Brinton and his team over the years. The NCLR escalates its rhetoric whenever possible.

In 2012, the slander consisted merely of

“therapy is potentially harmful”.

In 2018 without any new research having being published, it has grown into

“the extremely harmful and highly dangerous and lethal practice of conversion therapy, renowned for its torture of victims and reparative rape of unwilling lesbians in unidentified cellars, as inhumane as it is barbaric, a dark and shady underworld”.

Like a traveling circus, Brinton is dragged across the country by the radical lesbians of the NCLR campaign to reiterate his allegations of torture before legislative counsels and fund-raising events.

His dramatic stories have never been substantiated, nor has any one else come forward with a similar story about the alleged physical abuse, boot camps or cellars. No evidence has been presented, and all allegations consist exclusively of his memories. In view of his parents denying all his tales, he has since been suspected of pathological fantasy and fabrication.

Originally, Brinton said that “it sort of, kind of, like, felt like torture”. In later versions, the hesitant phrase “sort of, kind of, like, felt like” was removed, leaving only the word “torture”.

The effect was dramatic. His stories are crafted in such a way that they cannot be verified and at every performance, he knows how to manipulate the audience, leading them to cry: “Oh my god!”

4. Brinton exposed on Youtube

In a Youtube video, Brinton has been exposed as a liar.

In Wikipedia, we read about pathological lying:

“Although it is a controversial topic, pathological lying is a compulsive drive and has been defined as falsification entirely disproportionate to any discernible end in view, may be extensive and very complicated, and may manifest over a period of years or even a lifetime.

Defining characteristics of pathological lying include

• A definitely internal, not an external, motive for the behavior can be discerned clinically: e.g., long-lasting extortion, physical or mental abuse or habitual spousal battery might cause a person to lie repeatedly, without the lying being a pathological symptom.
• The stories told tend toward presenting the liar favorably. The liar “decorates their own person” by telling stories that present them as the hero or the victim. For example, the person might be presented as being fantastically brave, as knowing or being related to many famous people, or as having great power, position, or wealth.
• Pathological lying may also present as false memory syndrome, where the sufferer genuinely believes that fictitious (imagined) events have taken place. The individual may be aware they are lying, or may believe they are telling the truth. People with PF tend to lie about their identities and past history.
  
• The average age of onset is 16 years when the level of intelligence is average or above average. Sufferers have also shown above average verbal skills as opposed to performance abilities. Thirty percent of subjects had a chaotic home environment, where a parent or other family member had a mental disturbance.
• Pathological liars do not feel rejected by their community; they have high levels of self-assurance that help them lie successfully. One study found a prevalence of almost 1 in 1,000 repeat juvenile offenders. This amounts to more than 300,000 individuals in the USA.
  
• Pathological lying is considered a mental illness, because it takes over rational judgment and progresses into the fantasy world and back.”

On his website, therapist Mark Tyrell writes:

“Some people who lie pathologically do so to seek attention. Individuals who want to have center stage wherever they are, may have to make up stories to capture people’s interest. These types of people crave an audience and get high off it, and this leads them to lie more. Therefore, if you see someone constantly engaging in attention-seeking behaviors, he or she may also be lying to support this need. Pathological liars are very likely to plan their lies or stories, sometimes fabricating tales so intricate you can’t tell they’re lying. They are often found to believe their own lies.”

5. Brinton’s delusional fabrications

We have done extensive research on Brinton. The results are shocking. On the website LGBTQ-Nation, in 2011 we read on Samual Brinton:

“On eve of a reparative therapy conference in New Hampshire, a 23-year-old draws on painful experiences to help others. Samuel Brinton is not afraid to say he’s gay. That is, not anymore. The 23-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate student is the son of two Southern Baptist ministers, and endured years of reparative therapy designed to “cure” him of his homosexuality while living in Kansas. Sam is used to telling his story — he speaks often about his experiences in the hopes that others who have endured similar struggles will find hope.””

In his story, Samuel Brinton is described as the teenage victim of five alleged suicide attempts after so-called therapy. He had been beaten by his father, so he says, and had seen a counselor at the wish of his parents. Samuel does not speak of quote “years of reparative therapy” as the website editors claim above, but only of a few months. He can’t however remember the name of the counselor that he saw, nor where the alleged sessions took place. Let us critically review important elements in this article:

“I think it’s done,” he remembers saying, and adds as an aside: “And then I began my acting career.” Instantly it was as though the months of painful therapy had never happened. The household returned to normalcy, and Sam continued to pray every day for God to make him straight.”

From a psychiatrist’s point of view, this appears to be psychotic thinking. He says he “then started an acting career”, and instantly all problems never happened. This is either serious dissociation or it is psychotic delusional behavior. It is impossible in a normal individual for such traumas to instantly disappear as if they never happened. We cannot rule out the possibility that they did not happen in the first place. After all, he cannot remember name or location of the so-called religious “counselor” (which by the way has nothing to do with licensed professional psychotherapy, the target of his campaign.)

Adding to our suspicion of delusions, Sam then says according to this gay website:

“(Sam carried) the belief that he was the only living gay person in the world, that the government had killed all the other gay children, and that they’d kill him too if he acted gay. He carried this belief as truth until his second year of college.” “I’m dying of AIDS, I’m completely alone, and the government is looking for me,” Sam remembers feeling.”

For a 13 year-old, this is totally psychotic. No normal youth believes he is dying and that the government is looking for him. This is a paranoid delusional state. And according to the photos, he smiles as he tells the story. In the Youtube videos, it is surprising how he loves the attention he is getting.

If the alleged suicide attempts happened at all, then this is clear evidence of major psychiatric pathology, needing psychiatric help, surveillance and medication. There is no mention however of any psychiatric care from a professional or from the general practitioner. Was it all real?

About his parents, he says:

“Standing at the edge of the roof, Sam remembers telling himself, “If I don’t change, they’re going to kill me.”

This is yet again a paranoid delusion, fearing you will be killed. He is deeply mentally disturbed. Sam goes on to fabricate the next story:

“Sam says he’s living proof that reparative therapy is “killing people.” A support group to which he belongs began with ten members; eight have since taken their own lives. Sam is ever on the lookout for opportunities to help others in the same situation, with the message that not only does it get better―it can be made better.”

No one has ever investigated the preposterous allegation that there is this therapy group, in which no less than eight of the ten members commit suicide, that the therapy group just went on and on until Sam left and merrily went to college.

Why has the anti-therapy campaign not followed through on this, this stuff is dynamite, interviewing the berieved parents, asking the siblings how they feel, asking the police commissioner what to make of this, interviewing the GP’s on how well they surveyed these alleged victims, demanding reports from the hospital where all these ‘casualties’ were brought to, and asking religious community leaders to comment? Why didn’t local newspapers step in? Where is the New York Times when you need them? Not a shred of evidence.

And then we are led to believe that he just went merrily to college to study nuclear physics as if nothing had happened. In the NCLR campaign there is no mention of this alleged therapy group. He also did not mention it when he was dragged by the NCLR lawyer Samantha Ames (photo, to the right) to Geneva to convince the UN to change the Treaty on Torture. Do the lawyers of the NCLR perhaps also realize that this kid has an enormous imagination, to say the least? Brinton has never repeated it either.

For their campaign, the NCLR could be using at least eight pairs of berieved parents to drag around in their traveling circus, cruising from state to state for the next therapist-bashing performance, but they use Brinton, and Brinton only. Surely that should ring some alarm bells.

Why did the gay website LGBTQI-Nation publish all this in 2011 without any substantiation? We read that there was an alleged “reparative therapy” conference (no further specifications are given) in New Hampshire. And it had to be discredited. And in a hurry. They found Samuel Brinton with his incredible tales, none of which had to do with licensed therapy, but which could be used to discredit therapy anyway. This is activism.

Malice can be seen on the NCLR website, as Sam also presents this story, saying:

“… conversion therapy, the dangerous practice used by some therapists and counselors to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”

No mention of his father anymore on the NCLR website. He then goes on to call the person whom he saw, a therapist:

“My therapist moved to what can only be called physical abuse.”

Therefore, he is changing the narrative to please his employers at the NCLR, so as his story can be used against licensed therapists.

6. Criticism of Samuel Brinton by Wayne Besen

Gay-lib activist Wayne Besen feels it is “grossly irresponsible” for anyone to use Samuel Brinton for a campaign.

On the website queerty in 2011, we read:

“On Friday we posted the “I’m From Driftwood” video of Samuel Brinton, a young gay guy whose parents had reportedly punched, burned, electrocuted and stabbed him to make him straight. But Towleroad has reported that they covered the story back in 2010, that gay activist Wayne Besen hasn’t been able to verify the story in over a month of trying, and that one Towleroad commenter claims that Brinton’s Facebook page “has a picture of the entire happy family at his college graduation ceremony, May 31, 2011,” even though Brinton’s dad reportedly threatened to shoot his son in the head if he ever came around again. Hmmm… “

Then at the bottom of the page in the comments section, Wayne Besen writes:

“Samuel came forward and told a story presumably in an effort to help others. There are groups like mine who would be thrilled to use his example to demonstrate the harm caused by “ex-gay” therapy. We live for real life examples like this.

However, until he provides more information to verify his experience, he makes it impossible for us to use him as an example. Indeed, it would be grossly irresponsible for us to do so.

If a group like mine puts out or promotes a story that turns out to be exaggerated or fake, the religious right would rake us through the coals and by extension the entire LGBT community. This would cast an ominous shadow on all of the legitimate ex-ex-gay testimonies that have helped so many people come out of the closet.

So, for the sake of the movement he is trying to help — it is critical that Sam reveal exactly who the therapist was that tortured him. He could do this publicly or privately, but we need more information before we can use his narrative.

We very much hope he will provide enough information so we can help people by sharing his compelling story.

Sincerely,

Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out, October 11, 2011 at 8:10pm”

———- ———–

7. Reply to Besen from Brinton:

“Greetings,

I just wanted to say I provided an update to the New Civil Rights Movement this evening after a few days of avoiding all electronic contact. This story was extremely painful and resharing it is not a pleasant experience.

In my remarks I mentioned that my parents did come to my graduation since I am the very first person to graduate from college in my family. I am working on building a relationship to them as well as counseling to deal with the repercussions of the therapy. My friends can verify that I was shocked they were there but so happy to see the love starting to rebuild.

I was indirectly in contact with Wayne and although I know he wants me to send the information of the therapist, that is simply not an option. Counselor after counselor has seen me revert to near suicidal tendencies when I try to dig deep into the memories of that time and I simply don’t have his name. I can picture him clear as day in my nightmares but his name is not there. The movement can’t use me I guess.

I have no problem with people not believing my story. It is not for me to try to prove. I don’t want to be the poster-child of the anti-conversion therapy movement since graduate school at MIT is plenty tough as it is. The video you are seeing is from over a year ago and believe me when I say a lot can happen in a year. I have changed and am finding even more stability in Boston.

I thank you for challenging the validity since blind-faith never served anyone (point-in-fact my parents) but hope you’ll understand that sometimes moving forward takes its own path which I am walking. Many of you have been finding me on Facebook and I’ll be happy to answer questions there in my own time.

Smiling,
Sam Brinton at 2:10am “

Brinton writes: “Counselor after counselor”. How many, where, when, who? And who pays? In the whole campaign there is no mention of Brinton having seen more than one counselor, a religious one. Another remark that just withers away.

He also writes “finding even more stability”. Was there any lack then?

He writes that discussing the painful matter leads to “near suicidal tendencies when I try to dig deep into the memories of that time”. But that doesn’t seem to prevent him from becoming the main attraction with this story as he now performs in state after state.  Aren’t his remarks about alleged “suicidal tendencies” just a way to avoid the journalist Wayne Besen? Another lie? You can even book him through his website. Although be warned, it is expensive,

“My name is Sam Brinton and you might be looking to see about me bringing my story and experience to your campus or your organization. I would LOVE to make that happen!”

 

8. More lies

8.1 In his New York Times article, he writes

I have begun to repair the damage that conversion therapy caused me and my family.

“Reparative” therapy does damage to the family? But in the 2011 interview above, he denounces his parents as the ones who were applying the so-called reparative therapy on him. We read,

Together, the therapist and Sam’s parents instilled in the boy the belief that he was the only living gay person in the world, that the government had killed all the other gay children, and that they’d kill him too if he acted gay.

8.2 In his New York Times article, the duration of time spent in sessions has suddenly increased to more than two years

“For over two years, I sat on a couch and endured emotionally painful sessions with a counselor.”

In 2011 he only spoke of months. This is yet another lie, as to be expected from a compulsive liar.  And after this alleged great length of time, he still cannot remember who or where. Why doesn’t he ask his parents, who are now also portrayed to be victim of this counselor?

8.3 In the NYT article, he starts off speaking of a “counselor”, but further on, he changes the tune to a “therapist”

“The therapist ordered me bound to a table to have ice, heat and electricity applied to my body.”

In the British Daily Mail in 2011, however, the headlines were that it was “Baptist conversion therapy”, not professional psychotherapy.

He is slandering the whole professional community of licensed therapists, based on this change of rhetoric.

8.4 In his NYT article, he claims that thousands of youths have been subjected to the same experiences in the USA over the past few years in licensed psychotherapy as he had allegedly at the hands of his father.

“The Williams Institute study shows that 6,000 teenagers would have undergone treatment before they reached 18 if their state had not banned the practice.”

This is yet another lie. In no way does he give readers a true account of social reality.

8.5 In the NYT he writes that

“The practice can be performed by a licensed therapist in an office, in a correctional-style campground, …”

There are no reports of “correctional-style campgrounds” to date. And his employer, the Trevor Project, and other gay organizations do not offer this information either. Another fabrication. Brinton strikes again.

8.6 He mentions a study by the Williams Insitute

“including about 350,000 who received the treatment as adolescents, according to a study by the Williams Institute, a think tank on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy at U.C.L.A.”

But this is not a fact-based “study”. It is merely an estimate written by an individual sitting at a gay institute behind a computer at a desk. In no way does the pdf-file of this “study“ contain any information based on substantiable data-collecting. It is indeed a think tank, the writer only thinks this. Another twist of the truth.

8.7 If it were true that more than 50% of persons with same-sex attractions in this day and age seek change and choose for heavily regulated professional “treatment”, then it is their business. Brinton has no trust in professionals, but that should not be allowed to become another man’s problem. The experiences in his parental home may not be generalized. His preferences are an option, but may never become the law.

8.8 In view of all this, I agree with Besen that it is totally irresponsible for the NCLR and above all the so-called reputable New York Times to publish his fabrications, decorating the slanderous headlines with king-size rainbow colored flags in order to hammer the message home. It is a political campaign and the New York Times editor for LGBT-affairs is part of it. President Trump relentlessly accuses this paper of fake news.

If his brother-in-arms, Wayne Besen, can’t stop him, then WE need to do so. We need to call for a court order to silence his campaign because these unsubstantiated tales of “torture” are not only manipulative, but harmful to the interest of hundreds of thousands of clients, minors and adults alike, and therefore to the public interest.

He is suffering from a mental condition and will keep this up for a lifetime even, I have substantiated that above. He cannot help being that way. Exchanging opinions is therefore futile, but the public interest is the victim and we need to step in.

9. Brinton now has heterosexual feelings?

In his current New York Times article, Brinton writes that he now is bisexual and gender fluid.

This is remarkable, coming from one of the loudest protagonists of the “born that way” ideology. Bisexuality implies that over the years he has also acquired heterosexual feelings next to his homosexual feelings, a possibility which forms the heart of the “conversion” therapy he is so vehemently battling against. He writes in The New York Times,

“Today I am proudly bisexual and gender fluid, and I serve as the head of advocacy and government affairs for the Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for L.G.B.T.Q. youth.”

To BusinessEqualityMagazine.com, he says:

“I tend to describe myself as a bisexual for my sexual orientation (meaning I am sexually and romantically attracted to two or more sexes or genders) and genderfluid for my gender identity (meaning I fluctuate among a variety of genders including masculine and feminine and androgynous).”

He used to be full blown gay, and now publicly admits that he is battling with male identity issues, opposite-sex attractions even, and that he has not seen the end of this struggle, a stance which constitutes the core of the therapeutic endeavors that we describe on this site. From an activist point of view, the bell tolls for the end of the “born that way” hoax.

The gay-activist website Queerty wrote in 2011:

“For any parent who thinks that treating their child like a Vietnamese war prisoner might make them straight, it doesn’t work—unless you consider Sam’s story a shining example of heterosexuality.”

Yeah, but he is beginning to like women now.

On his employer’s website (January 18, 2018), he states that he regularly needs mental help:

“As a genderfluid individual who regularly uses mental health services to remain a productive member of society, it is frightening to think that I could be denied care.”

Is it wise for the Trevor Project to hire a spokesman who is so mentally unstable that he has become totally dependent on counseling to remain productive, and whose integrity is not impeccable? After all, even Wayne Besen has his doubts.

In his article in the New York Times, Brinton writes that he came out bisexual all along,

“In the early 2000s, ….to erase my existence as a newly out bisexual.”

He did not come out bisexual, he came out gay. Lying, as usual. There is no mention of heterosexual feelings at that time, that was the whole point. We have it on record, see above.

10. Conclusion

The continuing saga of Samuel Brinton proves once and for all that you were not born that way, that sexual feelings are fluid, that gender identity issues are psychologically correlated to sexual identity issues which he now mentions, that this young man has had serious male identification issues with his same-sex parent in the past, and that he is still struggling with his childhood feelings and stability.

Understanding this is the essence of reparative therapy, the psychological approach to figuring out and alleviating the many factors that contribute to confusion and stress of same-sex attractions and identity issues.

This gay-related complex, this can of worms, cannot be understood nor tackled with the “born that way” hoax which leads to defeatism and the continuation of turmoil, as it conveniently defines all emotions as being caused by other people and the outside world. With the “born that way” hoax, all personal responsibility for your own feelings evaporates and is replaced by a crusade, a brutal attempt to forcefully tackle and silence the imaginary foe, be it parents, therapists, institutions and even society itself.

Of course, the gay-genes guys will never give up. Perhaps Sam’s genes shriveled. After all, he is a nuclear physics scientist now, examining the toxic effects of nuclear waste. I am beginning to suspect that a great surge of radiation went through his body, killing all the gay genes he has. Wow, that makes sense. Don’t talk or pray the gay away, radiate the gay away! I sense a market niche here, a new approach.

Our team will then be needing a poster-boy. Mr. Brinton sir, send us an email and name your price. To quote Humphrey Bogart in the last line of the movie Casablanca (1942) “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”.

Job Berendsen, MD