Billboard Advertising ‘Ex-Gay’ Therapy In Dallas Is ‘Coming Down’

A controversial billboard advertising the services of a therapist specializing in “ex-gay” therapy won’t be up for long.

In Dallas, Texas, alongside U.S. Highway 75 motorists can see the above billboard advertising the services of David Pickup’s Reparative Therapy Center. Pickup’s website states he is a member of the American Psychological Association and the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and NARTH, the ‘ex-gay” group that now goes by the name Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity.

Reparative therapy, also known as “ex-gay” or “conversion” therapy, has been deemed not only ineffective, but harmful and possibly dangerous by many major medical organizations around the world.

Yet Pickup’s billboard claims it is “real therapy” that “really works” – a claim many might think would be challenging to back up, since leaders of the “ex-gay” movement have not only been admitting SOCE, Sexual Orientation Change Efforts, do not work, but also acknowledging they are gay, with some even marrying a person of the same-sex.

John Wright at Towleroad, who broke the billboard story, reports that “Pickup is a licensed marriage and family therapist who helped write a plank endorsing reparative therapy that was added to the Texas GOP platform last year.”

Wright noted also that Jeremy Schwab, “who heads a Dallas ex-gay ministry called Joel 2:25 International … reportedly was the driving force behind the Texas GOP reparative therapy plank.”

But the existence of the billboard has apparently caused some controversy.

Terry Kafka, the president of Impact Outdoor Advertising, the company hosting the billboard ad, told The New Civil Rights Movement this afternoon via telephone that he has received four calls about the billboard and added, “it’s coming down in the next week or so,” ahead of schedule.

It seems that what the ad is for might have been misrepresented to Impact.

Kafka says his company accepted the ad after being told it was for “couples therapy,” not reparative therapy, and says that he had never even heard of reparative therapy. His company, he said, “is not a proponent of it.” Kaftka also said all controversial ads go through him and his ad manager didn’t mention the ad because couples therapy isn’t controversial. 

But reparative therapy “is not what we stand for,” Kafka told NCRM. He added he believes in “live and let live” and is “non-judgmental.”

 

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