Editor's Note: Guest blogger Mike Airhart is the founder of exgaywatch.com and a newswire editor and content syndication professional with 20 years of experience in newswire editing, newsroom technology, mobile media, product development, and client support. Mike has written extensively on scandals and deceits of the Christian Right dating back to the 1980s, as well as rape prevention, hate crimes, HIV, immigrant rights, social prejudice, and economic injustice; his work has appeared in Sojourners magazine, Newsweek, and local news publications.



The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an ex-gay "think tank" that has provided junk-science arguments to the ex-gay and anti-gay political movements since 1992, appears to have evolved into a Utah for-profit corporation called Pilgrimage Resources - or, perhaps, a front for that corporation -- after NARTH allowed its non-profit status to lapse in 2012.

Yet NARTH still solicits donations on its website, inviting donors to become "partners" without telling them that their donation is non-tax-deductible and channeled to a business.

A leading champion of discredited "reparative therapy," NARTH falsely blames parents and child abuse for the development of homosexual orientation and promotes expensive "ex-gay therapy" (conducted by its "partner" therapists) to "cure" gay and lesbian persons of their presumed gender non-conformity. According to a Utah state government database, Pilgrimage Resources was registered as a corporation in February 2009 by David Clarke Pruden, NARTH's vice president of operations and the longtime president of the Mormon "ex-gay" group Evergreen.

At about the same time, NARTH stopped filing required renewals of its non-profit status with the IRS, and in 2012 the IRS discontinued that status. Currently, NARTH's website channels all donations and resource purchases through Pilgrimage Resources.

NARTH's website does not disclose that it lost its non-profit status, nor does it disclose that Pilgrimage Resources is a corporation; NARTH's bookstore and donation pages, hosted by Pilgrimage Resources, state that "All credit card orders will appear on your statement as Pilgrimage Resources to protect your privacy." We left messages for Pilgrimage Resources and NARTH, asking:

"We would like to know why Pilgrimage Resources is registered as a corporation in Utah, what is the current status of NARTH as a registered state or federal non-profit organization, and why NARTH is channeling 'donations' through a corporation instead of a non-profit."

We'll update this post if we receive a response.