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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.
I don't think Apple should have banned it: they should have just packaged it with an App to cure Bigotry.
Isn't there a 10 day waiting period required for that app?
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Why would Apple want the vast bulk of their customer base cured?
(I jest, big Apple fan here.)
Trolling is a art,
This post is significantly more offensive than the app in question.
At least your stereotype manages nearly two whole dimensions...
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Everyone complains about Apple's tight control over what apps can be installed -- until that power is used to ban an app they disagree with. Sure it's a bigoted, ridiculous app. But just who's phone is it?
So Visa/Mastercard can turn you away if they don't like your politics. Apple can turn you away if they don't like your ideology. What's next? And does this bother anyone besides me? Could it not be argued that things like card payment services and the iPhone platform are public accommodations that should be open to all on a non-discriminatory basis? If not, we risk granting de facto censorship ability to private organizations, relinquishing a substantial part of the freedom gained over the past few hundred years. This concerns me.
And yes, I would feel the same way regardless of the beliefs and ideologies being rejected. Freedom is freedom, regardless of one's beliefs.
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.
I may not like Apple, but this is the game you play when a single private entity controls a distribution channel.
Granted, I really don't like the app or it's message either. So this is kind of a win/win from my perspective.
On the one hand, it's offensive and Apple has a previous precedent of banning things it deems controversial. Despite complaints and a few inconsistency it seems like they reasonably adhere to this. Which is good since even if you disagree with the policy, at least you can more or less expect what will happen if you push it. Thus I was surprised when this got approved.
on the other hand, if all it takes is a petition to remove an app then boy is that a bad precedent to set. Consider how the SF library system in the mid 80s bolderized mary popins to remove the uncultured ebonics of the black maid because they deemed it portrayed black women badly. One can go on. but everything pisses some group off. That in fact was the rationale Ray Bradbury gave for writing Farenheight 451. All books offend so burn them all.
And when I think about it, what do I care if there is a gay cure app? I'm not planning on buying it. If you think about it, the urge to ban that app is pretty aligned with the urge to write that app. that is, the writer of the app is probably concerned about what gay people might be doing in bed behind closed doors but he will never encouter that himself. and the people offended by it will never buy that app. yet both want to eliminate things that abstractly bother them
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I have a house with incredible interior design and sparsely filled with designer furniture. Does that make me gay ... I hope not? I hope not, maybe I should tell me wife. It just means that I have a distinct appreciation for something that you can't comprehend (it has a few pieces by Eames and Jacobson with a few LC2s and LC4s mixed in ... for those interested).
I'm EXTREMELY glad they removed that app. I'm sure I speak for all open-minded, freedom-loving people when I say that I don't want anyone exposed to that kind of material.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
I'm a developer and I'm selling programs for Mac OS, but as long as Apple decides which app to include in the app store and which not I won't buy or use an iPhone and won't develop for iOS. It's as simple as that. There should be no restrictions about which app someone can legally run on their computer, phone, or any other device they have bought, and Apple has set a bad precedent with the app store model.
Before people complain that company X can sell on their own store whatever they want: Sure they can. If others can legally open another app store for the same device, that should be fine. But locking devices/only allowing whitelisted apps should definitely be illegal, and I hope that future legislation will make it illegal (but doubt it will happen).
Dude, acting effeminate, loving musicals, having a house with incredible interior design and going antiquing are not being gay. Loving the cock and not the vagina is. So why should the guy change his personality just because he managed to change his sexual preferences? (And just to be clear, I don't think for a second that he did manage that.) You're being bigoted.
Write the app for android and distribute it via your site. I'm guessing this wouldn't get removed from marketplace.
Apple has the right to remove anything. If you don't like it don't support them by buying their products, otherwise deal with it. The app store is like a cable channel. If comedy central doesn't want to run your ad no matter how you pay them they don't have to.
Keep writing letters saying you want to be able to install your own apps via websites, but other than that Apple can do what they want. I just buy Android even if it isn't quite as nice, because lets be honest...of the 100,000s of app only about 1,000 are worth anything. ie. like my banks native app...and although I had to wait 6 months I got it on the Android. Angry brids has been on the android for a long time now...what are these magical apps that you can't get on Android or at least some kind of a clone.
Actually, yes, the post is offensive because it promulgates a stereotype of homosexuality - that it is all about being feminine and obsessing about interior design, or that liking musicals is a sign of being gay. I don't care about the app. If someone isn't comfortable with their sexuality and wants to try and shift it around a bit, that's their business. But re-enforcing stereotypes and caricatures of homosexuality affects actual homosexuals.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Are you sure he wasn't just English?
--- Do you believe in the day?
I don't think Apple should have banned it: they should have just packaged it with an App to cure Bigotry.
Well thank you, Taco, for calling everybody who doesn't approve of homosexuality a bigot. Have you, or any of the other homosexuality-supporters, ever considered that there are more than two sides to this? You don't have to fully 100% approve or disaprove of homosexuality, and as a Catholic I take offense when being labled as one of them.
The Catholic Church knows that there's a difference between homosexual attraction and homosexual acts, something that many people on "both" sides often forget. Homosexual attraction, like any other kind of sexual preference, is influenced by a variety of factors; most important of all of those factors is conditioning (like, allowing/encouraging yourself to think homosexual thoughts, or hanging around with homosexuals, for example). Some people can't help that they have homosexual attractions and I completely understand that, as does the Catholic Church believe it or not. The difference though with the Catholic opinion is that we believe that people who experience severe homosexual attraction are called to chastity. And no, that's not "supressing your desires" like most anti-Catholic people make it sound like. Self-control is never a bad thing, last I checked.
The Catholic Church doesn't approve of homosexuality, but not for the reasons that many think. Many pro-LGBT people with misunderstandings of the Catholic religion (such as lumping it together with all of the other Christian faiths) think that it's just "forbidden" and "sinful" and an "abomination" for little reason, while the real reason why it's sinful to the Church is that it denies the life-giving aspect of sexuality entirely. For more information, read any of the many books or articles out there summarizing Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body; the Catholic Church's opinion on sexuality is a lot more reasonable than many people make it sound like.
Yes, I've heard there's a "g-spot" "in there" (cough), and I know that animals engage in homosexual behaviors. Animals do lots of things that aren't socially acceptable (killing, flinging poo, not wearing clothing... I could go on for pages). The mere existence of all of these doesn't change the fact that I'm allowed to have an opinion about sticking reproductive organs into germ-infested digestive tracts for little reason besides pleasure. There are "bigots" out there like WBC, but please don't label the Catholic Church (whether or not you were) as one of them. I hope I've made sense explaining the Catholic position...
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
On another note, this is yet another example of why the Android platform is light-years ahead of the iPhone platform. Never would have been removed, and even if it had been, the developer would have been free to distribute it themselves. While I completely understand that it is within Apple's rights to remove any app for any reason, I can't help but think that this sets a very bad precedent. If all it takes is a petition and enough public pressure to remove an app, who's to say what other legitimate apps might be taken down? I'll take my open(-ish) platform, thank you.
-- There, everybody likes a gorilla.
Now what am I supposed to do if I suddenly wake up some morning and discover I'm gay?
Proverbs 21:19
According to the latest Gallup poll on homosexuality, 48% of the US population believes that homosexuality is immoral. That's more than 44% who believe that doctor-assisted suicide is. Yeah, you could pander to homosexuals and remove the app, and then offend the other half of the country by thus giving implicit support to an activity they consider immoral. That's the problem with "offensive" censorship: everything offends someone. Once you start censoring, you can't really stop until you censor everything. Or, of course, Apple could assume that all iPhone users are left wing and the rest of the population's opinions do not matter, which seems to be what happened.
Considering how bigoted the Slashdot hivemind generally is concerning people who use Windows, or oppose OSS, or aren't technically inclined, or some of the rather rough things people here say about the Chinese, or the religious... it's rather hypocritical for Slashdot to be calling anyone else bigoted...
by not displaying my political banners on the front of your house. Censorship is bad and evil you jackbooted thug!!!
Be very careful about your assumptions. "whereas in the US, the majority of the country supports gay marriage" is likely very false since there are very few states that support this, and those that do, do so by a very narrow margin. I very much believe that there is a large population that simply doesn't care, but a very small minority that actually "supports gay marriage".
I find the concept grossly offensive and am quite disgusted that it is believed to be socially acceptable. It is accepted by those who have no understanding of human history and the damage to society that those beliefs cause. Nature (and God) made us to be one way and one way only and I am totally sick and tired of those that say that moral absolutes are intolerance. You can believe whatever you want but, don't push those beliefs on the rest of us that understand right and wrong. I am not a bigot or a "homophobe". I have a strong disgust for deviancy and that is something very different.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Actually, *you* idiot, that was exactly my point.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
That's interesting... I choose not to be gay... how's that not a choice?
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
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.
Do you therefore thing Amazon should remove Mein Kampf from its book store? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mein-Kampf-Uncensored-Adolf-Hitler/dp/0984536132/
OK, we can make an exception for Mein Kampf, perhaps, because anyone can put it in its historical context; but what if something similar were written today? Should Amazon not stock it? What if Amazon refused to stock material about some niche political view that you happened to agree with?
If the omnipotent magic man in the doesn't like something, he can say it outright. But guess what? he hasn't said anything in thousands of years. And even then there's no evidence that he actually said anything then, there's nothing actually innovative at all in the bible.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
The GP is referring to a recent nationwide study that found support for full gay marriage to be at 53%--a clear majority.
Clearly not, or homosexuality wouldn't exist in the animal kingdom or amongst humans in anything like the numbers we see.
They are "intolerance" (in the bad sense of being bigoted, not the good sense of "I'm intolerant of rape") when they're contrary to reality. Homosexuality is widespread amongst humans, and by an overwhelming majority is reported to be essential, not a "choice". People who are gay virtually always say that they're simply that way, not that they decided to be that way--any more than you could decide to be gay. Could you decide not to be heterosexual? I don't mean decide to have gay sex, I mean could you decide to feel romantic attraction to someone of the same sex?
Yes, you are. The fact that you have strong convictions behind your bigotry makes it no less bigoted.
I pity you. In fifty years we'll look back on you the way we now look back on people who fought to preserve anti-miscegenation laws: at best misguided and trapped in your particular perspective, unable to consider what's blindingly obvious to the rest of us.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
And what they wanted was: Attention. Streisand Effect. Apple, YHBT.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
i believe that pedophilia, like homosexuality, is a biological, natural, innate malformed sexual orientation. both are malformed in the darwinian sense, the sense that neither, biologically, results in offspring
however, socially, homosexuality is harmless because it occurs between consenting adults. therefore there is no social reason to have any attitude towards homosexuality except to shrug: it doesn't matter, no big deal
unfortunately, pedophiles are oriented towards children. children are not able to make informed consent. of course, children can be fooled into consenting, which many pedophiles think they are doing, but a child is in no position to make decisions about their sexuality, since their sexuality is not formed yet: there is no INFORMED consent possible. furthermore, the influence of the pedophile's advances on that child is harmful to that child's development of their own sexuality. what is appropriate and what is not. therefore the genetic future of the parent of that child is threatened. therefore there is an innate darwinian biological revulsion fear and hatred towards pedophilia: it threatens your genes by threatening the proper formation of the sexuality of your children, which is needed to pass on your genes
so pedophiles, unfortunately, have an innate sexual orientation which utterly and completely dooms their entire lives. in this respect i think of pedophilia like i think of cystic fibrosis or huntington's disease: you are genetically doomed to a life of suffering. either the pedophile can try, often unsuccessfully, to suppress their sexuality their entire lives, or they can engage in activity that is not only criminal, and trangressive towards the healthy psycholigcal development of an innocent child, but you could get killed by enraged parents. there is no way a pedophile can exercise their sexuality without being a criminal. castration doesn't even work: the desires stay in the mind
i really see no solution to pedophilia except banishment to northern greenland. it is a horrible curse. pedophiles just are innately incompatible with human society
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I don't think Apple should have banned it: they should have just packaged it with an App to cure Bigotry.
Well thank you, Taco, for calling everybody who doesn't approve of homosexuality a bigot. Have you, or any of the other homosexuality-supporters, ever considered that there are more than two sides to this?
The difference though with the Catholic opinion is that we believe that people who experience severe homosexual attraction are called to chastity.
I see your Gay Chastity and Raise you on Catholic Sex abuse cases.
Many pro-LGBT people with misunderstandings of the Catholic religion (such as lumping it together with all of the other Christian faiths) think that it's just "forbidden" and "sinful" and an "abomination" for little reason, while the real reason why it's sinful to the Church is that it denies the life-giving aspect of sexuality entirely.
No you're more likely to be equated with Mormons who have to deny the existence of True Hermaphrodites in order to justify their view that "The Gay" can be cured, or that it must be suppressed (see Chastity). That and the catholic view and Mormon view on woman and the priesthood is oddly similar.
For more information, read any of the many books or articles out there summarizing Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body; the Catholic Church's opinion on sexuality is a lot more reasonable than many people make it sound like.
I would have trusted his words more if he had done something reasonable when the Catholic pedophile priests were exposed. Like maybe a full blown public inquisition with all the trimmings. Heck the victims of the past inquisitions were dealt with by the local governments so that the Church wouldn't have blood directly on it's hands then, they just did the rooting out of evil part. Instead he did a timid denouncement of them and thought the matter closed.
I hope I've made sense explaining the Catholic position...
You only succeed in confirming a stereo type. Sorry for the aggression directed at you. Religion is more then just a hot button for me, and I'm feeling a bit Trollish.
My point is that your smug outrage at Apple's draconian control of the App Store is hypocritical unless you are similarly outraged at why Disneyworld doesn't allow unsavory third parties from setting up shop inside their own little walled garden.
People who bought iPhone specifically bought a ticket into Apple's walled garden--they knew what they were getting themselves into and they did it for legitimate reasons just like people who buy tickets to Disneyworld are happy with the limitations; so why are you outraged about the existence of Apple's walled garden and not Disneyworld's?
Alan is a friend of mine. He's not evil or smug. He's not even remotely close. He's genuinely disappointed that something he felt could help other people like himself was censored simply because a bunch of people made a big deal about it.
-- There, everybody likes a gorilla.
If they are going to design their devices to be locked to it then it probably needs to be treated as a commons.
The system for using other appstores could bootstrap using an Apple approved app that made it clear to the user that Apple thinks it is a bad idea to trust other entities with curating the user experience.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The one legitimate argument for Apple's draconian system is to protect the consumer. An app like this is just as much a fraud as one claiming it can cure cancer, and if they want even the slightest credibility... On the other, they blew that by letting it in in the first place.
You seem to be TRYING to make the point that "being gay" is just "who you are," and that you can't stop being gay simply because you want to, or somebody tells you you should. I believe it's your use of those specific stereotypical traits as proof that he's still *totally gay* that people are finding rather offensive.
None of us give a shit what your friend likes, but I bet your friend would probably be hurt by your characterization of him: "Look at this guy. He's stupid, thinks he's not gay any more because he has a wife and doesn't fuck guys. But he still goes to see musicals and loves antiquing. What a total fag."
Your point would have been fine if you had simply said, "My friend claims he's not gay anymore, but he's also told me that he still finds men sexually attractive, even if he won't act on it." Instead, you started dropping the limp-wristed, lace-collared, mincing fairy stereotypes, and then seem to wonder why people object to that characterization as offensive.
Being gay means you are sexually attracted to your own gender. It doesn't mean you "know the words to some songs from Cats," or "really love nicely designed rooms," or "enjoy finding old things at antique shows." I've been to some antique stores with an ex-girlfriend... I actually found it quite fascinating to talk with some of the dealers about the history of the pieces. And not once did I ever find myself developing an appetite for another man. I've also been to musicals, the opera, the ballet, the symphony, and (*gasp*) a few fine art museums. Still no urge to blow another guy. Amazing how those activities are *completely* unrelated to whether or not someone is gay, isn't it?
1. You're really not attracted to ANY non-whites? Are you mad? (My mind is boggling as a parade of gorgeous multi-ethnic babes slinks through my imagination)
2. I agree it's a combination of nature and nurture, but I don't see why anyone should want to, or be expected to, resist their nature. I might (hypothetically!) be born with an urge to kill, but I think most of us can see why it's in society's best interest to nurture me away from that urge; and I can see (when the red mist isn't present) why it's in my best interest not to murder. But if my urge is to seek physical intimacy with a man with whom I share a mutual attraction - why would I fight that? Why would anyone want me to?