June 14, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Homosexual lobby groups are outraged at Google for having an app that claims to be able to cure unwanted same-sex attraction in 60 days, available at its Google Play online store.
The self-help app is from the organization called Setting Captives Free, which produces a series of interactive courses that deal with addictive behaviors including sexual impurity, overeating, substance abuse, gambling, and smoking.
The group claims to have helped over half-a-million people overcome unwanted habits.
The contentious app is called Door of Hope. “You have arrived at the Door of Hope, the 60-day interactive course that will teach you to enjoy a newfound relationship with the Lord and how to find freedom from homosexuality. It is possible, and you can learn how,” the brief description of the app states.
PinkNews reported that a homosexual group calling itself Gaylesta (The LGBTQ Psychotherapist Association of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area) sent a statement to Google condemning the idea of homosexual reparative therapy and calling on Google to pull the app.
The group's statement reads, “Gaylesta has been outspoken and active in exposing the dangers of so called ‘reparative therapy.’ Homosexuality is not a condition or disorder that requires treatment. Striving to treat what is not a disorder is not therapy, it is professionalized homophobia. It is dangerous, and it is a threat to all LGBTQ people,” it states.
“Individuals who have undergone these treatments often have a significantly larger chance of becoming self destructive and suicidal,” the statement continues. “It is unconscionable to think that a smartphone application could be made available to the general public to help ‘treat’ homosexuality. This app poses a serious public health risk, putting the lives of unsuspecting people, including minors, at risk of harm, by telling them that their innate sexual orientation is wrong and needs to be changed. We ask that all smartphone application stores (including Google Play and iTunes) remove these applications from their stores immediately and that they further make it a policy to disallow such applications from being available in the future.”
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The homosexual activist group All Out also condemned the app and started a petition demanding that Google remove it from their store.
Andre Banks, executive director of All Out said it was “ridiculous” that Google has made an app available that can cause “terrible harm to lesbian, gay, bi, and trans people, or anyone forced to try to change who they are or who they love.”
“Major health associations including the American Psychiatric Association and the Pan-American Health Organization have condemned so-called gay ‘cures’ as dangerous to people’s’ health,” Banks said according to PinkNews.
“It is absolutely ridiculous we still have to have this conversation in 2013. Gay people have always been part of the human experience and they always will. There is not a cure for love, because love is not a disease,” Banks concluded.
However, the former president of the APA is on record for saying that the organization's condemnation of gay ‘cures’ was due to the APA having been taken over by “ultraliberals” beholden to the “gay rights movement,” who refused to allow an open debate on reparative therapy for homosexuality.
Dr. Nicholas Cummings, who himself introduced the motion to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness in 1975, was president of the APA from 1979 to 1980.
He said the APA “started changing pretty drastically by the late 1980s.”
“By the mid 1990s, the Leona Tyler Principle [which required that all public positions of the APA be supported by scientific evidence] was absolutely forgotten, that political stances seemed to override any scientific results,” said Cummings. “Cherry-picking results became the mode. The gay rights movement sort of captured the APA.”
Apple has reportedly already pulled the Setting Captives Free app from its App Store for iPhone and iPad.
This marks the third time that Apple has pulled an app because it promoted a traditional Christian view of homosexuality.
Two years ago Apple banned an app created by the international Christian ex-gay ministry Exodus International. The app provided a gateway to the ministry’s news, blog, podcasts, and other social networking and resource materials and was originally given a 4+ rating by Apple, meaning that it was found to contain no objectionable content. Exodus International said that the app was not aimed at “curing” homosexuality, as was claimed by its critics.
In November, 2010, Apple pulled an app created for the Manhattan Declaration, a pro-life and pro-family document signed by nearly 500,000 people. The app was attacked because it opposed same-sex “marriage.”
More info about the Setting Captives Free courses is available here: https://www.