Nightline catches Marcus Bachmann lying to City Pages
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| ABC Nightline |
| G.R. Anderson's cover story keeps making waves. |
In a story headlined "Pray Away The Gay," correspondent Brian Ross cites a 2006 City Pages cover story to help demonstrate how, despite Marcus Bachmann's claims, the Bachmann family's Christian counseling service ties to "cure" gays with religion.
Marcus Bachmann was asked if his clinic tried to convert patients from gay to straight in an interview with a local newspaper in 2006, and said, "That's a false statement."
Marcus Bachmann told us the family clinic didn't try to convert gays. ABC found out he wasn't telling the truth. "If someone is interested in talking to us about their homosexuality, we are open to talking about that," he is reported to have said. "But if someone comes in a homosexual and they want to stay homosexual, I don't have a problem with that."
That "local newspaper" was us, and ABC's story links directly to G.R. Anderson's 2006 cover story, The Chosen One.
Ross reports that a former client of the clinic, Andrew Ramirez, has come forward to tell The Nation that a Bachmann and Associates counselor told him, "God would forgive me if I were straight." And the network shows how an activist from Truth Wins Out, armed with a hidden video camera, caught another counselor on tape saying that he could pray his way out of being gay.
That is to say, Marcus Bachmann apparently lied to City Pages.
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| To read The Chosen One, click here. |
The counseling center has factored into Bachmann's campaign narrative, as well -- evidence, she said, of her ability to understand what it takes to create jobs and run a small business.
But the practice of using religion to try to "cure" gays has been scorned by the American Psychological Association as dangerous, wrong, and ineffective when dealing with a person's sexual orientation.
And then there's the pesky matter of a Christian holding one of the 10 Commandments -- the one about telling the truth -- at arm's length.
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| Truth Wins Out used a hidden video camera to catch a Bachmann and Associates counselor urging him to pray away the gay. |
"We're very proud of our business and all job creators in the U.S.," was all she had to say.
Previously:
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