Apple Removes Gay Cure App From App Store

recoiledsnake writes "Apple has removed the Gay Cure app after the pressure on Apple to remove the app started to snowball, culminating in an online petition initiated by Change.org which collected over 140,000 online signatures from people who wanted the app removed. Searching for the app now yields zero search results and Exodus International President Alan Chambers tweeted the following on Tuesday night. 'It's official, the @ExodusInl App is no longer in the @AppStore. Incredibly disappointing. Watch out, it could happen to you. #freedom' Gay Cure isn't the first app Apple has removed for touting an anti-homosexual philosophy. Apple back in November removed an app called the Manhattan Declaration which advocated the dignity of marriage as the union of one man and one woman." I don't think Apple should have banned it: they should have just packaged it with an app to cure bigotry.

Comments

Re:You can remove the gay, but not the FABULOUS!

[DamonHD]

At least your stereotype manages nearly two whole dimensions...

Rgds

Damon

Rename the app....

[787style]

In all seriousness, why take this down? The only people who would legitimately download this are people who are uncomfortable with being homosexual (for whatever reason - I wouldn't, but there may be some). Why would you want to deny those people that opportunity? It may not be society or their family that pressures them to want to be heterosexual - it could be individual free will. I can totally get why the word "Cure" would be offensive - that would insinuate that being gay is a disease. Rename the app to something more PC, but I don't think pulling the app is correct.

DISCLAIMER

I have several gay members of my family, have no discontent or ill will toward them - LOVE THEM TO DEATH. Do NOT believe that gay is a disease. My point is simply about choice.

Re:Rename the app....

[ccandreva]

I'm going to bet that no one talking about this knows what the apps actually does. Does the app say "Hold this to your forehead for 5 minutes while running to be cured of being gay" ? If so then it could be denied as being a fraud and skip the whole issue.

Along the same line, a vaccination for being gay would be just as bogus, but wouldn't be an argument against vaccines for polio.

I'm going come back on the freedom side. A person can want or not want, whatever they want. Moreover, as a general fear of absolutes, I would be incredibly surprised if everyone who was gay, was so for the same reason. I don't think we know nearly enough about it to make blanket statements.

Apple, of course, is free to do whatever they want with their business, and we are free to buy whatever phone we want, which is why I have a G2.

Re:Public Accomodations?

[johnlcallaway]

I fully support Apple's right to ban the app. Since I don't approve of their ban (both now and in the past), I don't buy Apple products.

See how that works????

You have the freedom to decide what crap to buy, and the owners of Apple have the freedom to decide what crap they want to sell. Your selfish desire for more freedom is at the cost of taking it away from someone else.

The fallacy of moral equivalence

[Brannon]

You think that the following two statements are morally equivalent:

"I'm gay and that's okay"
"You are gay and need to be either cured or persecuted"

They aren't.

Apple didn't ban because somebody somewhere was offended, they banned the app because a large group of people was *legitimately* offended. Point out a serious app with the theme "You are straight and need to be either cured or persecuted" if you want to prove me wrong.

Re:mixed feelings and abstract hate.

[Xest]

Personally I'm anti-censorship and mostly dislike Apple.

But I actually applaud them for this move. Whilst I would much rather Apple ran a completely uncensored store and allowed this app and everything else to go, they don't. As they don't run an uncensored store, and have, in the past, censored applications based on their arbitrary moral judgements, then it implies anything they allow through their filter is, by that same moral judgement, deemed acceptable by them.

This means that by allowing the app to remain Apple would be claiming that for example, whilst porn is morally unacceptable (as they have banned porn apps in the past) then applications such as this are morally acceptable. The perception being that Apple think this sort of thing is okay, but for example, porn is not.

As I said in a previous post in the other article, I think the best position for a company to be in is to not censor at all and hence not have to make moral judgements. Apple has done the right thing here - they've accepted that if they're going to enforce some morals such as banning porn, then they must enforce other morals such as banning the views of right wing bigoted fascist religious nutjobs.

Note that I'm not saying Apple shouldn't have an approval process not censoring doesn't preclude filtering out malware as that's a judgement based on security rather than arbiitrarily defined morales for example, but simply that once they got into the censorship game, they have to stand by their decisions, and in this case they've made the progressive, forward thinking decision.

So perhaps this left wing you are talking of simply recognises that the company has already made the decision to censor and hence that's really not what's in question here. Perhaps they simply recognise that the debate came down to what Apple feels is morally right or not based on that prior decision to censor. Perhaps they're simply happy that in a situation where censorship is already a given, it's better to accept that's the case and focus on the new battle- that of ensuring any censorship that does happen equally squeezes right wing religious bigotry and ignorance out of the equation. This doesn't stop protesting against censorship in general too, merely it's the case that that's just not what the battle was here.

So congratulations, they won, they got Apple to do the right thing under it's own rules. Now they can go back to trying to convince Apple to change those rules, and yes, if that means removing censorship, it means allowing this app back out too. One might even argue that forcing Apple to make decisions publicly like this which aren't the best thing to have publicised PR wise is in itself a good tool in fighting against such censorship in the first place as again, the only reason Apple had to have this battle is because they had chosen the censorship route.

Well done Apple on doing the right thing under your current rules, and well done arbitrarily defined left wing (whoever you are) that Archangel Michael seems to think has done something wrong.

Re:mixed feelings and abstract hate.

[vegiVamp]

I'm gay. The app, itself, I don't much care about - although I find GPs thoughts about it being two-sided most interesting. The app doesn't touch me, and it's just an app, it doesn't actually do anyone any harm.

What I do care about, however, is the existence of right-wing, religious,homophobic nutters who sincerely believe that I can be cured, and that drugging and violent electroshocks are the way to go about it. Those are exactly the nutters who get their sick, distorted world-view reinforced by this kind of app, and become then even more likely to take it out on me and my fellow deviants.

So, yes, I do want this app banned. What I do in my bedroom has no impact on them whatsoever; but what they would do to me to "cure" me is harmful to the extreme.