The Snake Oil Bulletin: Butt Nekkid 'Gay Conversion' Clinic Gets Dressed, Closes Forever

A Merry X-mas and a Chappy Challadays to you all! We at the Bulletin have found ourselves having caught a touch of the Holiday Cheer, though a few tablespoons of wizard elixir should clear it up right quick. In the meantime, we've decided to profile a few positive stories this go around to spread this joyful contagion to you, our beloved readers, who have kept this rickety little dog and pony show going for almost a whole year. A WHOLE YEAR. It's a Festivus miracle!

As thanks, here are a couple feel good stories to brighten up your holiday drudgery with the cure for all that ails you. Let's dive right in with a story about some nice Jewish boys finally getting what they deserve.

Gay and trans conversion clinics are going out of business. Imagine the closing sales.

In an amazing development for human rights and just basic decency, two different "LGBT conversion" clinics have permanently shut their doors just this past week, with surely more to come.

The first is the Toronto-based Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, which this week announced is finally shutting the doors on their Child Youth and Family Gender Identity Clinic, which an independent panel found was secretly just a trans-conversion program. True, the centre never called the program a "conversion clinic" in those words -- rather it was always billed as a program to help people get in touch with their confused gender identity. While for legitimate therapists that involves helping the patient come to terms with their new or simply unsure gender identity and to help their families come to accept it in turn, the Centre was still operating under the assumption that gender identity was something that had to be "corrected."

The independent review found that the centre was still practicing outdated methods of trying to convert trans people, so the director of the Centre has agreed to just shut the whole thing down. Hurray!

The second, far more salacious shutdown is JONAH, those child-molesting putzes   we've covered before . They're the ones who ordered teenage boys to strip naked and masturbate in front of theirtherapists"life coaches." Y'know, cuz No Homo.

[contextly_sidebar id="imFCcGJGLLP5NHwxvyMRo0iAXHopu9qv"]The last time we saw these Orthodox schmendriks , they were having their tuchuses handed to them by the New Jersey court to the tune of several million dollars in restitution and legal fees. The jury unanimously found JONAH guilty of fraud for claiming to the men and young teens sent to their camps that they could cure them of their homosexual feelings.

Turns out the New Jersey court system wasn't quite done with these superlative yutzes , because just this week JONAH agreed to a settlement with the plaintiffs that gave them exactly one month to fuck themselves right off. By January they have to completely shut down their practice, and by June all their assets must be liquidated and all presence of their group scrubbed from the net.

Predictably the JONAH people are being whiny little nebbishes about this, what with secrets being exposed about their all-nude retreat weekends. Those were some doozies. For years, JONAH contracted with and housed in their office a man named Rich Wyler, an ex-gay Mormon who ran a conversion therapy program called People Can Change (PCC), the hallmark of which was a series of weekend-long manliness retreats that involved young men signing non-disclosure agreements and spending the weekend stripped naked in front of their equally naked counselors. Y'know, for therapy:

One of Wyler’s major complaints is that the plaintiffs and the court misinterpreted the weekends he still organizes eight times a year: “Why is it that in our homoerotic culture we’ve...made it so any male touch is now sexual? It was really horrible to have something to me that is powerful and sacred and brotherly and nonsexual and beautiful be mocked and sexualized and eroticized. It was just criminal what they were trying to do,” he said, his voice rising with exasperation. “And all because they want people like us to go away.”

Ugh, listen to that. Honey britches, you weren't forming non-sexual brotherly bonds. You were forcing dudes to strip naked so you could play out some adult baby roleplay the likes of which would make Diaper Man Vitter squirm in his Pampers, as former client Jonathan Hoffman, a JONAH "success story," testified:

The simulated birth is the beginning of a psychodrama-packed weekend spent almost entirely naked. First, attendees of the retreat strip down, and tie on blindfolds. Naked and blind, they are led to mattresses laid out on the floor. Staffers swaddle the men in blankets, tight, to “simulate the womb.” The men then wriggle out of their plush blankets—meant to approximate a birth canal—and staffers “come and kind of nurture these new babies…you know, kind of wipe water on their face, and kind of clean them up, and it feels very real,” Hoffman said. Next, the men play out boyhood, with a “crazy, fun father who like bursts into the nursery and says ‘Come on, boys, let's have some fun together!’” (["Therapist" Alan] Downing sometimes played the role of “father.”) By this stage, both participants and staff members are nude. The men are lead out of the “nursery” and into a field, where a “wild party” begins. There’s a waterslide, fireworks and “brotherly dancing” around a campfire. The naked men fling mud and throw cake—laid out for just that purpose—at each other. They’re all “just expressing their little boyish energy” for about an hour, explained Hoffman, who now lives with his wife and child in Jerusalem, where he works as a conversion therapy life coach.

Afterward, everyone showers together. “It's just carefree, you know, if there's cake on my back, can you help me get it off my back,” said Hoffman, adding that the nudity “becomes very secondary.” He explained that if men got erections during the weekend, they were encouraged to talk to a staffer to “process it,” talk about what might be causing it until it went away. In gay conversion therapy, sexual attraction is never just sexual attraction; there must be some sublimated drive, deficit or trauma to be dealt with.

"Can you help me get this cake off my back, bro? It's just so messy and dirty. That's it, bro. Oh, your hands are so strong. Now make sure you get my glutes all soapy and wet..."

Excuse us for a second. We have to go, uh, "process" some things in our bunk.

The nude brojobs are only the most salacious details about PCC's retreat weekends. In other scenarios, life coaches blindfolded participants and bounced basketballs while threatening to shove sports equipment up their asses, because therapy.

In another, participants were blindfolded (noticing a pattern?) and made to run through an obstacle course of aprons, spoons, and tampons (seriously) while being barraged with belittling insults so that they could confront feminine urges. Look, just between us girls, GAY MEN DON'T MORPH INTO WOMEN. The feminine pronouns and catcalls and "hay gurrrrl" are all ha-ha funny joke. We don't magically sprout menstrual cycles after our first drag show. These life coaches must have gotten their therapy cues from I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry , and their greatest crime of all is forcing us to reference that shiqquwts .

Ooh ooh, did we mention all the cuddling? Because hoo boy was there cuddling:

Toward the end of the weekend, participants are emotionally raw, Levin remembers. That’s when cuddling begins.

Spirit Guide[a counselor]: Can you connect to that boy inside you now?

Jack: Yes.

Spirit Guide: Would that little boy like to be touched or held?

Jack: Yes.

Jack and the Spirit Guide then cradle each other on the floor, and the lights go down. Music comes on: Spiritual “life coach” and singer Shaina Noll’s saccharine rendition of “ How Could Anyone .” How could anyone ever tell you that you were anything less than beautiful?/How could anyone ever tell you you were less than whole? 

Eventually, all the men are on the floor, staffers cradling participants. Unger remembers staffers whispering “I love you,” “you’re beautiful,” and other affectionate phrases during the cradling—which Downing calls “healthy touch"—as “How Could Anyone” played over and over.

We're not going into all the details of JONAH's conversion therapy because FUCKING GROSS, but suffice it to say you should all take a gander at the Newsweek article because the abuses the program committed are extensive.

Perhaps we can see this JONAH shutdown as one last Hanukkah miracle for the young men harmed by this program, and for that we drink tonight. Molotov! 

FINALLY, the perfect gift for the tinfoil-hat-wearer who has everything

Who can't relate to this? Every year you toss your name into the family Secret Santa pool, and every year you end up pulling cousin Terry. UGH, you groan, remembering the last time you got cousin Terry a very nice gift of a new iPod, and your return gift was an hours-long lecture about chemtrails, flat earth, the Zionist conspiracy to frame Michael Jackson for Watergate, and THE MIND CONTROL WAVES, MAN, DON'T YOU KNOW?

Jesus, what A Asshole.

Well fret no more, dear reader. One hilarious little Kickstarter has just begun to finally give your Sandy Hook denying kin what he always wanted. Introducing the Shield Hat , the stylish alternative to old-fashioned tinfoil.

Oh there's a video. Strap on your radiation blockers or the YouTube government mind-control rays will enter your brain:

Jesus H. Christmas. This is beautiful. Let that opening word salad about reflections cascade over you. Do you feel the ionic radiation charge coursing through your chakras?

In a nutshell, the Shield Hat is a silver-lined ski cap (or stylish baseball cap if you're willing to shell out $35) which supposedly reflects "harmful signals" from "electromagnetic smog," and they demonstrate the hat's power with lots of pictures of people using cell phones and ear buds...underneath their supposedly signal-deflecting hats. S-M-R-T these people are not.

We also find it incredibly cute that the makers of the shield hat advertise you can wear it on a first date. By all means, don your stylish tinfoil beanie on a first date, and regale yourescortdate with tales of how you don't go by the Pizza Hut on Broad St. because the demon waves from the oven are coming after you and you're not about to fall for their game. The hat also supposedly has "anti-bacterial and anti-odor" properties, which we can only assume is meant to reassure the conspiracy-minded that no, they don't need to start showering again because THERE'S BUGS IN THE WATER.

The makers of Shield Hat are apparently believers in the wi-fi allergy non-theory of made-up horse plop, which we have   covered before . The story behind the Shield Hat is even more hilarious, as it actually boils down to a conversation the creators had with their psychotic cousin, who claimed that he couldn't sleep at night because the wi-fi router and cell phone signals were keeping him awake. It could also be the metric ton of hoarded newspapers piled on his bed or the unwashed stench of pet urine choking the ventilation of his squatter's den, but we're not experts.

The makers even include this adorable little disclaimer at the bottom of their post:

Is there some evidence that signals are harmful?- We are not saying that it`s proved or we should be scared.There is no official evidence that signals cause something. You know, asbestos wasn`t dangerous before and after some period all buildings were taken down. Just google it or check it on youtube there are plenty of documentaries also made by CNN or BBC which are dealing with this topic.

Stellar evidence, boys.

For their part the Shield Hat inventors are incredibly optimistic about the quality of people who would be purchasing their product. Repeated mentions of wearing the hat "to hang out with friends" point to their sincere hope that their customers have seen the outside world since the Clinton years, and their insistence that the hat protects newborns from cell reception points to their genuine desire that Samuel the Sandy Hook denier and Darlene the Doomsday prepper finally meet on The Blaze personals, and are willing to leave the security of their respective fallout shelters long enough to bone.

As of this article the Kickstarter has hit some $12,000 out of the $19,628 goal (round numbers are a tool of the GOVERNMENT, MAN) and there are still 17 days left, so you'd better jump in on this deal before it's too late. If you're planning to buy one for your cousin Terry, and understand that it won't be ready for Christmas, Shield Hat offers handy e-cards with no details provided as an IOU for one tinfoil beanie, because nothing pleases a conspiracist more than a vague message mysteriously left just for them.

Flotsam, Jetsam, and Hokum

• Everyone made fun of Carly Fiorina this week because she kinda sorta lied through her teeth about Obama firing a general who retired back in 2003, but little do they know that Carly was just exposing the REAL secret: Barack Obama has perfected time travel! Prepare for Barry crossing the Delaware and a rewritten Second Amendment guaranteeing all Americans the right to bear lightsabers.

• See Ben. See Ben run. See Ben run his mouth. See Ben's brain broke . Broke, brain, broke .

• Watch the adorable Democratic fucktussle over campaign data or some crap. Unless they shake that campaign data and a Muslim hooker robot falls out, it's not going to beat the Republicans for news grabs.

• Scum-sucking leech human Martin Shkreli is going to big boy jail after losing his big boy job . One thing all Americans can agree on is that we are not Blue America or Red America, but we are the United States of Fuck This Guy.

[ Newsweek / CBC / Daily Dot ]