Salon is running a four-part investigative series on “reparative therapy,” a controversial practice that tries to “cure” people of homosexuality. (Yes, I like quotation marks a lot.) The first article of the series gives a great (terrifying) background on the so-called therapy.

Author Mark Benjamin points out that not only are the groups that support and provide this “therapy” giving out false and dangerous information to individuals, they’re also spewing their hate through legislative action:

Last month, the Montgomery County Board of Education in suburban Maryland settled a lawsuit over sex education in the county's public schools, brought in part by PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays). The group is a branch of a national network of "ministries" that claim homosexuality is a chosen and dangerous lifestyle, and that through "reparative therapy" a gay person can be turned straight -- into an "ex-gay."

PFOX won a restraining order in May and successfully halted the county's new sex ed curriculum, intended, among other things, to promote tolerance toward gays by treating homosexuality as natural and benign. A judge concluded the school curriculum did exclude other views on homosexuality -- namely, those of PFOX. Under the settlement last month, the county agreed to pay $36,000 of PFOX's legal expenses. The group also gets a seat at the table in drafting a new sex ed curriculum for county schools.

Disgusting.

In the second article in the series--to be published tomorrow--Benjamin goes to a reparative therapy session.

Related: The NY Times reports on Zach, the much blogged about 16 year-old from Tennessee forced to enter one of these insane conversion programs.