Samuel Brinton strikes again. Now he is an ex-gay. The cameleon has changed his colors for the fourth time. The poster-boy of the highly aggressive National Center of Lesbian Rights is the Pied Piper of Hamelon. We are now, as of September 2019, led to believe that he is an ex-gay himself after he interviewed an ex-gay. Behold the gay copycat.

On NBC News, he is quoted saying:

“For a period of my life, I identified as ex-gay and came back out, and I wish people had been there to talk to me when I was ex-gay, because I felt rejected by both communities. I was rejected by the gay community, because they believed I was a hypocrite, and I was rejected by the straight community. It feels like the worst Venn diagram of your life, that neither side wants to claim you, Brinton said.”

It is strange that Brinton astonishes us with this new angle, this window of his life, because it does not fit his resume or coincide with his Youtube appearances anywhere. As an influencer, he has been on Youtube for more than a decade and he has been interviewed by countless newspapers in the US and the UK since he left primary school. Nope, no ex-gay stuff in our database. Where is it coming from, this time around?

Stilletos, yes. Torture sessions, yes, although he can’t quite remember where, when, or by whom. Names? Brinton is bad in names. Skin color? Can’t remember. Three months of torture, sorry 6, sorry 9, sorry 15. The last count was 18. Needles under his finger nails? Yes. At age 12? Yes. Until they bled? Yes? After which electricity was applied? Yes. Who saw it? “I was wearing gloves at school and at home, but no one noticed; I can’t help you there”.

And now this!

Let us have a look at the many changes in his political spin over the years. We know that he meets a lot of people and we see a trend: in his campaign, we get the impression of a troubled young man copycatting the rhetoric of other persons as though it happened to him personally. As an unguided missile, much harm is being done to a huge number of people. We feel that his youtube-influencing needs to be spelled out for all to see and to be put to the test.

1. Who is Samuel Brinton?

In 2014, a star was born when the National Center of Lesbian Rights (NCLR) in San Francisco recruited a charismatic youngster with a boyish face who they spotted on You Tube. He is being used for their slanderous political campaign against any form of talk-therapy that defies the gay ‘born that way’ mantra. The campaign is called ‘BornPerfect’, and Samuel poses as the ultimate victim.

2. His online victim history

Sammy is hired to spread his tales of mental harm (allegedly by Dad, year 2010), later changing it to electrocutions (allegedly by Christian counselors, year 2011), to verbal torture (allegedly by licensed therapists, year 2012), to physical torture including out-dated electroshocks, (year 2013, but historically only actually inflicted in the 1950’s to any one), to brainwashing (a tear-jerking performance he gave at the United Nations in 2015), to needles under finger nails (a Syrian regime practice around 2000-2010). Even notorious radical-gay activists to the likes of Wayne Besen expressed their concerns in 2012 on the Internet over the truthfulness of it all.

In 2017 in an op-ed in the New York Times, he suddenly claimed to be bisexual. In 2018, he claimed to have been transgender all along, prancing around as an uninvited party crasher at the Oscars. Next day, his Twitter selfies revealed him as a regular dude again. And now in 2019, Brinton is having himself interviewed in gay media as an ‘ex-gay’. Strange he never mentioned that one before.

3. The facts

On NBC News on September 4th 2019, we read:

“Brinton said he too, grew up in a faith tradition that reacted with horror when he came out, and that he too, once identified as “ex-gay.”

He goes on to claim that many of his friends identify as ex-gay, and that he was a member of that alleged ‘community’.

NBC writes,

“Brinton said, “Many of my friends identify as ex-gay, and I sit there waiting and listening to them, ready for whatever conversation they are ready to have. For a period of my life, I identified as ex-gay and came back out, and I wish people had been there to talk to me when I was ex-gay, because I felt rejected by both communities,” Brinton said. “I was rejected by the gay community, because they believed I was a hypocrite, and I was rejected by the straight community. It feels like the worst Venn diagram of your life, that neither side wants to claim you,” Brinton said.”

It is curious to note that Brinton never told his employers at the National Center of Lesbian Rights (NCLR) that he was “ex-gay” or that he had many “ex-gay friends”. He would have been fired on the spot. And what sort of “ex-gay friends” are allegedly surrounding him after all he has had to say about them in the papers and on the Internet ever since 2011?

NBC continues to quote him, saying,

“As I track hundreds of these conversion therapists, I am just waiting for them to come back out and recognize just how much damage they’ve done,” said Brinton, a survivor of conversion therapy and now head of advocacy and government affairs at the LGBTQ crisis prevention group The Trevor Project. “There are throngs of former conversion therapists and leaders who have recanted their work,” Brinton said. “At the same time, we still know that there are hundreds and potentially thousands of conversion therapists that practice every day.”

So, he knows of “hundreds” of therapists, then of “throngs” of former therapists, then of “potentially thousands” of therapists. By the way, he still cannot remember the name of that one therapist who he saw in his youth and who “tortured” him for two years on end for coming out gay, sorry make that bisexual, sorry make that transgender, sorry make that gender-fluid, sorry make that ex-gay.

It is a pity that he does not offer a list of the actual names of these “hundreds” or “potentially thousands” of therapists he claims to know who are still at work, the “throngs” he knows who have quit, and that one guy whose memory allegedly still haunts him. Because if he did, journalists could do some verification. But that is of course not our Samuel’s trade.

What next? I will tell you what is next. Sammy has a wife and two kids stashed away, but for privacy reasons their names and whereabouts cannot be revealed! No, seriously, pathological lying is a compulsive mental condition and he is designated to relentlessly come up with something new, just like we predicted in our 2018 article on him.

4. What constitutes a pathological liar?

a) According to psychologist Dr. Michele Barton,

“A pathological liar is somebody who lies without effort, someone for whom telling a lie comes more naturally than telling the truth. It can become a part of the liar’s everyday life, to the point where their whole existence is a fabrication. Pathological liars are usually very insecure individuals raised by authoritative and strict parents who do not accept an infant as he/she was, therefore the child has to create a persona that was lovable and acceptable by their parents to avoid punishment, embarrassment, and vulnerability

Most pathological liars either have narcissistic personality disorder or traits, and they compulsively lie just to make themselves look better. They generate an exaggerated sense of self-importance. If you or someone you know seems to be a pathological liar, there’s a chance that narcissism might be playing a role in that.
Pathological liars emerge for a number of reasons, but what is certainly common to all is a high level of underlying anxiety and deep-seated fear of rejection. Lying is something people do to protect their fragile psyche, even if they say it was to protect someone else.”

This description perfectly fits Samuel Brinton, especially his being insecure, apparently having authoritative and strict parents, and his obvious narcissistic traits.

His sense of self-importance is staggering, and on his website he offers everyone the chance to hire him for his story, read performance. He is not cheap, by the way, and his alleged agony with a shiny Vaudeville jacket and on high heels has become a sight to see, and a lucrative business model.

Just like Barton suggests, Brinton has a deep-rooted fear of rejection. He lies to protect his own vulnerability, saying that he is out to protect other people, preferably a nation-wide throng of alleged victims. And at every legislative success in his NCLR anti-therapy campaign (“50 States, 50 Bills”), he stands next to state governors as though he were The Ultimate Savior, grinning as he seizes yet another loudly proclaimed victory over all those who he has proclaimed to be the enemy. Or rather, he lets the state carry out that dirty work.

In the July 2018 edition of the gay magazine The Advocate after legislation was passed in Delaware, an activist admits,

“We are not aware of anyone currently practicing conversion therapy in Delaware,” Lisa Goodman, president of Equality Delaware, told the media outlet”.

But the war on therapy in that state continues anyway, proving that it has nothing to do with the actual facts in client care, but with salvaging the ‘born that way’ ideology which is going down the drain by the day. Delaware is yet another state that Brinton has managed to fool.

b) Bill Eddy LCSW is a licensed therapist who according to his website, has become an international expert on managing disputes involving high conflict personalities and personality disorders.

He says,

“One of the most interesting theories about pathological liars is that they may have the opposite ratio of cortisol and testosterone than most people. This allows them to be highly aggressive without concern for the risks involved, such as blatantly lying about something which could have serious consequences if they were caught.

The most successful pathological liars are sociopaths, also known as ‘antisocial personality disorder’ to mental health professionals. These different hormone levels may play a part in that. For most people, cortisol stops them from being overly aggressive and taking unreasonable risks. But for those with antisocial personality disorder, they may have a higher level of testosterone and a lower level of cortisol than the average person. This may result in the person lying outrageously, but convincingly. Just to be clear, not all pathological liars are sociopaths, but there is evidence to suggest that most sociopaths are pathological liars.”

This description too, fits Brinton like a hand and glove. Brinton may be born with a giant size grin, but that does not make him a wonderful and kind person. He is extremely aggressive in his anti-therapy campaign, ruthless, vicious, and mean. He is now recklessly slashing down people like the late Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, falsely accusing him of causing all sorts of feelings that other people allegedly would have (although most anti-therapy activists have not even read his books).

But most worrying is the fact that he also has no problem in even slashing down his own father, despite the fact that his old man paid for his high school and sent him to the most prestigious and expensive technical school in the USA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where Samuel graduated as a nuclear physicist. Samuel bashed and bashed, Dad paid and paid. And the kid is not done yet.

c) Scott Carroll, MD, is an academic child psychiatrist for a large regional medical center and medical school where he works with children and teens and their families with both emotional issues and medical illness.

He says,

“Some pathological liars are functionally delusional, meaning that they actually believe their own lies and can even pass a lie detector test. If they are caught in the lie, they can re-write their memories to believe a new lie on the spot.

For adults, compulsive lying is hard to stop because it can be extremely reflexive and habitual. People with Narcissitic Personality Disorder don’t tend to seek treatment for their narcissism — just for their anxiety or depression. So if that’s the cause of the lying, it may be tricky. Such people have usually had childhoods filled with abuse, neglect, and loss of care givers and grew up in foster care or an orphanage. And learning to tell lies was developed as a coping mechanism.”

Brinton may perhaps have had an emotionally tough first few years in his toddler life with very strict parents, and he has now taken it upon himself to take it out on the world. He is a man with a grudge, deeply emotionally rooted. His motivation and defensive detachments go back a long, long way. He is the perfect ammunition for the NCLR with their hatred campaign directed at discussing possible feelings for the opposite sex.

He has never seen a therapist for his pathological lying, but in interviews he claims to have seen many “counselors” for his depression and anxiety, although the number of therapists he has seen is clearly exaggerated in his statements, which is to be expected. One or two therapists should be enough if you choose a good one during your student days, but Brinton magnifies an alleged victim role by claiming that many counselors were necessary for a case like his. The question now arises: has he seen any at all, since he issues no names or references to contact and interview?

His false hysterical tales continue when he claims in a 2017 interview:

“I still have physical pain every single time my boyfriend kisses me.”

This statement comes in handy because such an alleged “pain” cannot be objectified by anybody and is therefore the perfect narrative to strengthen his “torture” fables and to justify his obsessive battle. With his great big smile, he charms everyone. But people who actually suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder do not smile and grin in this way; they are gloomy and secretive about past events.

d) Barton goes on to say,

“Lying can actually be addictive due to what it does to the brain. It’s behaviors and reward systems are very much like gambling — you never know when it’s a bust or jackpot. As the pathological liar becomes accustomed to that level of fear and anxiety, they almost cannot function without it. They do, however, pepper in a few truths. Pathological liars frequently will use a nugget of truth or fact to build the structure of their house of cards around; this also makes lies more palatable and accepted since part of it is true.”

e) Tasha Rube, a social worker from Missouri has compiled a lesson on how to spot a pathological liar. Among other things, she says,

1. Listen for other people’s stories being retold.
2. Observe whether the person dodges questions.
3. Watch out for manipulation.
4. Sexual tension.
5. Choosing the audience. Pathological liars have a good sense of which people will believe which lies.
6. Getting caught. Most of them will react aggressively when caught in a lie. If someone seems to get angry in response to accusations of lying, you may be dealing with a pathological liar. A pathological liar may become very defensive. They may also come up with another lie to cover up the first one. They also may start crying in order to elicit sympathy.”

At the United Nations hearing in 2015, he did indeed manage to let his voice break and to start crying, and it did indeed elicit sympathy as Tasha Rube above predicts, to the extent that the UN committee members at the hearing were shocked and in tears (see this NCLR video). As he spoke and started his lies, the pitch of his voice went up and he managed to mimic a small infant in kindergarten. Within 24 hours, the UN Charter on Torture was revised in the way that the NCLR asked for: the committee fell for it. No one did any cross interrogation, neither was someone from ‘the other side’ invited to speak.

4. Copycatting Ron Hubbard

The only person to have said the same sort of things about therapists is Ron Hubbard, a paranoid schizophrenic in the 1950’s who founded the Scientology Church and later the Anti-psychiatry movement together with radical left-wing psychiatrist Thomas Szass from New York. Brinton’s tales are a copycat of what Hubbard wrote and disseminated.

In a famous article Today’s terrorism (1969), Ron Hubbard wrote:

“The psychiatrist and his front groups operate straight out of the terrorist textbooks. The Mafia looks like a convention of Sunday school teachers compared to these terrorist groups. Setting himself up as a terror symbol, the psychiatrist kidnaps, tortures and murders without any slightest police interference or action by western security forces. Rape is rape, torture is torture, murder is murder. There are no laws that let even a medical doctor do these things. Very few people can be brought to testify against psychiatry. Yet 4 out of 5 contacted in a recent US survey had family or friends who had been ruined by psychiatry! They said, in general, “if I spoke up or complained, they’d take out my (son, friend, relative).” I well recall a conversation I had with a Dr. Center in Savannah, Georgia, in 1949. It well expresses the arrogance and complete contempt for law and order of the psychiatrist.”

Hubbard goes on to complain of torture, electrocutions, rape, aversive therapy of hot and cold being applied to the hands, and to complain of behavioral therapy to make men be disgusted with their genuine feelings.

On the website Imdriftwood.com in 2011, Brinton smiles as he proudly claims that his father’s abuse sent him to the hospital seven times, although there is no record of this. At other occasions, he spreads tales of secret sessions (he cannot remember when), where religious counselors (he cannot remember any name and cannot give a description of the person) and later on licensed therapists (no name either) in underground church environments (the whereabouts are ‘hazy’), where lesbian reparative rape ‘no doubt’ took place (no one ever filed a complaint), and hot and cold things were applied to his hands when he was presented a visual image of a same-sex adult, to the extent that he still feels pain in his hands when he touches someone.

Even a handshake has been ruined, so his horrified audiences are led to believe after they have paid up for a performance.

This is a copycat of the stories written by Ron Hubbard between 1950 and 1969. Hubbard became a rising star, and this aspect too has become an attractive part of Brinton’s life work.

In a You Tube video from 2012 on the site Imfromdriftwood, Brinton speaks of his alleged therapy.

“So let’s try therapy. I was told I had aids, I was the only gay person left in the world because the government found all the other gays and killed them as children. If they found me they would kill me. So the perfect way to keep a child, or a teen, from coming out, I moved onto physical therapy. My dad has held a gun up to my head multiple times.”

We can rest assured that no one ever told Brinton that he was the only gay person in the world or that the government found all the other gays and killed them as children. This is the paranoid lunacy of murder that we also find in the texts above of Ron Hubbard.

5. Copying leaders of ex-gay ministries

In 2019 a religious ministry leader McKrae Game finally decided to lead an open gay lifestyle, although he has a wife and two children. He is living in what is called a Mixed Orientation Marriage (MOM). He received mixed reactions to his new policy, as he says in an interview in the Post And Courier.

“When Mr. Game came out in June, he said he readied himself for a backlash. He still gets irate messages on Facebook from people who say they were traumatized by Hope for Wholeness. He gets angry responses on gay dating apps and across social media about his out-and-proud life.”

When Brinton says he was ex-gay, it is in fact Mr. Game’s life story. Counseling people who call themselves ex-gay, is also Game’s story, not Brinton’s. Wishing to talk with people about his mixed feelings, is Game’s story, not Brinton’s. Leaving ex-gay ministry, is Game’s story, not Brinton’s. And feeling rejected by the so-called gay and straight community at the same time, is Game’s story, not Brinton’s. He has never been rejected by the “gay community” in his life.

6. Conclusion

The game is over. Samuel Brinton is a scam. The NCLR campaign (“50 states, 50 bills”) to remove psycho-therapy from the face of the earth is based on Brinton’s tales, with fear-mongering being the prime motor.

His current claim to being an “ex-gay” has an upside for him: he can now claim before legislative bodies to speak from personal experience not only about being a “survivor” of alleged torture sessions, but also about being an “ex-gay” and mastering that knowledge, and about becoming an “ex-ex-gay”, a subject in which he would be the ultimate expert. He will appear to command the full scope of expertise anytime, anywhere, and he will get away with it as long as his tales are not substantiated by the awe-stricken and gullible crowd.

Luckily however, not all states have bought into the lies of his campaign. You can fool some people some of the time, but you cannot fool all people all of the time.

Job Berendsen, MD.