U.K. network to air anti-gay series

SUMMARY: Britain's Independent Television network will broadcast a 10-part series on converting gays to heterosexuality.

LONDON -- Britain's Independent Television network will broadcast a 10-part series on converting gays to heterosexuality.

The stars of the show

The series, "Alpha: Will It Change Their Lives?" centers around the anti-gay Alpha course, a recruitment program run by evangelical Christians.

The network has not provided time for GLBT organizations to refute the allegations that gays can become straight.

The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) calls it "the biggest Christian propaganda campaign ever seen on British TV."

GALHA secretary George Broadhead said: "It teaches people to reject 'practising' homosexuals and to feel guilty about sex generally -- unless it is within marriage."

Broadhead said the project has attractive packaging and marketing and works like a cult. "It is not until you are well into it that the unpleasant bits become apparent Â… a lot of young and vulnerable people are being drawn in."

The Alpha course, which originated at a London fundamentalist church, preaches that homosexuality is a sin and that gays and lesbians will go to hell. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, has endorsed it as "a wonderful tool for the Christian faith."