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We posted this Daily Show clip last week by the show's rising star, Jason Jones, because we thought it was funny.


[link to part 1] [link to part 2 (above)]

But if we'd looked at our feeds that day, we would have noticed that something odd was happening to the "ex-gay" "therapist" featured in Part 2 of the clip. The self-described "psychotherapist and educator" Richard Cohen was disappeared from the web sites of two "ex-gay" activist groups that had previously served as his organizational cover.

On March 31, writer David Robinson described on the Ex-Gay Watch blog the odd disappearance of Cohen from sites that had been primary proponents of his controversial "therapies."

Over the past couple of days, The National Association for the Therapy of Homosexuals (NARTH), and Parents and Friends of Gays and Ex-Gays (PFOX), have quietly removed all traces of any affirmation of Richard Cohen. PFOX has removed all references to him entirely, while NARTH has left only historical events which included his name - all his articles are gone and his books no longer appear in their online bookstore.

We missed the post along with mentions of it by Pam Spaulding and others. Fortunately, though, the virtual versions of the paper gay press is out there to catch -- a week or two later -- things that fall through the quickly-revolving blog cycle. Bar Area Reporter rehashes the purging in this week's issue:

As recently as last year Cohen had been president of Parents and Friends of Gays and Ex-Gays, whose slogan is "supporting the right of homosexuals to choose change." PFOX believes that individuals can change their sexual orientation and has paid for a series of controversial billboards promoting that idea.

The name of the anti-gay group was chosen as a twisted alternative to the pro-gay group Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Cohen had been expelled from the American Counseling Association in 2003 for violating its code of ethics. He continues to offer counseling in Maryland without a license.

One of the most recent of his frequent media appearances was a "Diagnosis Mystery" segment on The Daily Show, on March 20. Words cannot describe how hysterically bizarre the segment was.

Two days after the segment aired, Cohen sent out a fundraising appeal for his International Healing Foundation. In it he said he did such media appearances "in an effort to reach people who would normally never hear our message."

He called The Daily Show experience "the most degrading experience I've ever had in the media. I unknowingly allowed myself to be manipulated and coerced by the producer and the host. I take full responsibility for this mistake." He accused the program of taking comments out of context and making him look like a fool.

The Daily Show segment appears to have been too much for Cohen's ex-gay allies.

Even before Cohen's former sponsors had purged references to him, another "ex-gay" group, Exodus International, which claims to be the largest organization in that "movement," had criticized Cohen:

Randy Thomas, vice president of Exodus International, is rightly embarrassed by Richard Cohen?s appearance on the Daily Show:

The guy on the video announces Richard as the foremost expert on "healing the gay" or something like that. Richard is not the foremost of anything except making a spectacle of himself and completely misrepresenting the larger "ex-gay" movement. He is not a part of Exodus and apparently not willing to take our private feedback and accountability to heart.

But if the Daily Show appearance was finally just too much for Cohen's fellow activists, there were plenty of other bizarre appearances by the man before that:



On ABC's Jimmy Kimmell On CNN's Paula Zahn

Truth Wins Out founder Wayne Besen who appeared on the same Daily Show report as Cohen details his downfall in a syndiated column that appeared this week in several papers, including SGN.

The wheels began to fall off the car when I got a tip that Cohen had been kicked out of the American Counseling Association in 2002. He managed to hide this career suicide from the public until I informed the media in 2005.

With his counseling career in ruins, Cohen turned to the media as his only channel to attract new clients to his "healing" seminars. However, his act that played so well at the NARTH convention made him look like a quack to mainstream Americans. On his appearance on CNN's Paula Zahn Now earlier this year, Cohen actually performed his tennis racket routine to the guffaws of million of viewers. He made a further buffoon of himself on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live where boxer George Foreman looked as if he wanted to give him a left hook. He further disgraced his image on Showtime's Bullshit, starring comedians Penn and Teller.

However, Cohen's "jumping on Oprah's couch moment" came on his appearance with me on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart . To prove he was heterosexual, Cohen belched and cursed and when he was feeling the heat, he got up in the middle of the interview to "shake it off."

Cohen's antics were even more than PFOX and NARTH could take and they heaved him overboard, purging their websites this month of his kooky books and articles. The largest ex-gay group, Exodus International, even put out a statement saying they do not endorse the counselor's work.

But taking his name off the websites may not be enough to get Cohen and his bizarre techniques off the cable news shows. He appeared as part of a long documentary about "Conversion Therapy" on Australian network ABC. Although the documentary was probably taped months ago, CNN International re-aired it recently. Raw Story has the video. Snippets of the documentary showed up again this Friday on Anderson Cooper 360.

Labels: activism, celebrities, news bites, TV, youtube