Current.tv hosts a video interview with Exodus exgay youth recruiter Mike Ensley.
From Current.tv’s description of the video:
Can God really do anything? Mike Ensley believes He can. Mike Ensley is a former homosexual saved by grace, and now living in freedom from homosexuality. This is Mike’s testimony of how the loving and caring nature of Jesus Christ has changed his life. For with God all things are possible.
Exgays recruiting children? Tsk 🙂
Next thing you know those exgays will be wanting to get married! Oh, wait…
I have no significant objections to what Ensley says; it’s what he doesn’t say that I find immoral and anti-Christian:
1. Ensley claims, from anecdotal and very cynical personal experience, that gay and lesbian couples are unfaithful. He ignores and suppresses any evidence to the contrary. Ensley voices a perspective that is faithless, devoid of hope, and eager to convince same-sex-attracted persons that they cannot be monogamous.
2. Ensley accuses childhood bullies of convincing him that he was gay — but instead of opposing such bullying or calling for repentance, Exodus opposes youth antiharassment programs and instead accuses the victims of such bullying of spreading homosexuality and recruiting youths.
3. Ensley whitewashes efforts by Exodus, FRC and Focus on the Family to:
make the existence of gay couples illegal through so-called sodomy laws;promote discrimination against gay workers;encourage landlords to evict gay tenants;support state laws that separate adopted children from their gay parents if such families make the mistake of visiting or passing through an antigay state; andadvertise on behalf of Repent America, an organization whose founder is sympathetic to calls for the “Biblical” execution of homosexuals.
Mike — no objections to here to Ensley banging on about his life, as he sees it blah blah blah. Apart from the fact he blames homosexuality (and by it, gay men) for his own stupid choices. Refusing to take rsponsibility is the sign of a boy, not a man.
And obviously you didn’t read the fine print on the contract.
Mike’s paid to “question homosexuality” — not Focus, FRC, Exodus etc.
You know I think that Mike Ensley and Exodus (in a way) are good for our community in that they cause us to question, to think about things and to also realize what a dangerous fraud Exodus and the ex-gay premise is. Religion and the use of the Bible can be a huge blessing in people’s lives or it can be destrucively dangerous as we have seen repeatedly throughout history.
I know of many gay men who have had Mike’s skewed perspective because I was one of them. I believed the lies that Mike is espousing in this interview. These lies depressed me and made me feel like there was no hope because I was coming from a premise of self-hate all along. It took me almost 15 years to finally accept myself due to my religious upbringing (being taught to hate myself because I am gay) and also not being able to step outside and analyze my belief system.
There is a book I read back in 1990 called After The Ball by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen (two gay men in a committed relationship) that was very critical of the gay community. The book was humorous but also forced me to look at the darker side of the gay community. This book also set some healthy boundaries and rules for helping individuals find the kind of love they wanted and needed. It was about creating the kind of world that most of us felt we could achieve (the commitment and respect) when we were newly out and proud. Our community has come a long way. We have a tremendous amount of respect in places we never had before but mostly from ourselves as a result. We are moving forward and progressing in tremendous ways. Unfortunately Exodus and individuals like Mike Ensley are stuck in a negative self-defeating mindset. These people won’t see the committed monogamous gay relationships because they don’t believe they exist yet the fact is they really do exist. Most Christian extremists create a world that is just that, a fantasy. It is a narrow fantasy as well and it is very sad but their theology/dogma will not allow them to see past that. In that way they are stuck, programmed/brainwashed by their theology to see what they want to see and to not see what they don’t want to see.
Mike needs to question ex-gay dogma and start realizing that there are thousands upon thousands of gay Christians who believe that Christ is their Savior and Lord and who also have accepted the gift of their homosexuality as well. He needs to look at http://www.soulforce.com and http://www.ecinc.org along with a host of other GLBT affirming Christian organizations. The Bible and Christ are far more inclusive than he is ready to begin to believe. Also he obviously is not ready for the more radical understanding that the Bible has the capacity to help him and all gay Christians to accept themselves and to love themselves. That is if people are ready to accept the correct translation and historical interpretation regarding what Paul really meant and the “clobber passages” in the Bible. Clobber meaning those passages that preachers and various Churches use to demean and reject gay people. They interpret these passages based on centuries of ignorance, fear and prejudice which most Christian Churches have inherited from the Catholic Church’s Medieval worldview. The Protestant Apple does not fall far from the Catholic Tree and that influence has been passed down from generation to generation and has been thrust upon us by many different Churches.
If only more Christians would look at the Bible with a more scholarly historical perspective as opposed to accepting it as some magic book that is supposed to make everything the way they think it should. Far too many Christians are guilty of placing the Bible before the God of Heaven which is just another form of Idolatry. It is learning to listen to God and trust in God (within yourself) as opposed to the various hatemongering “Christian” organizations that are out to “save” people from hell and their fearmongering is based on one major hidden premise-the love of money. It is through a personal trust in God and by extension in myself that I began to accept myself and love myself for who I am as a gay man.
What Mike (like most “ex-gays”) does is confuse sexual addiction with homosexuality. Sexual addiction has no more to do with homosexuality than heterosexuality has to do with addiction. Mike should read the book called Cruise Control by Robert Weiss if he wants to understand the difference. Mike is extremely confused about reality.
Mike, extrapolating on your point about Ensley not believing gays can be monogamous, he wrote an entire post on his blog a few months back about his belief that no gays can be monogamous. I posted about it on my blog last week.
That’s my main problem with him and many ex-gays. If they want to be ex-gay, great, but intentionally painting gays in a negative light is not the way it should be done.
Benjamin,
Good point about how some Christians venerate an object of paper and ink and hold it in higher esteem than God. Some folks would be horrified if you burned a Bible, yet they never seem to get around to reading it. Others memorize scriptures and read the Bible daily, yet use it as a sort of reinforcement of their positions, seeing only what they agree with and dismissing that which challenges their beliefs. And many are more interested in what “the Bible says” and not too much in what God says.
Peter Gomes, the openly gay minister at the Memorial Church at Harvard, wrote a wonderful book called The Good Book which really helped me see beyond the Bible as a holy text and let me begin to understand it as a tool to know God. As I read it, I began to see that the Bible was not a sacred deity to be obeyed, but rather a guide to help man understand a sacred diety.
Timothy Said:
…the Bible was not a sacred deity to be obeyed, but rather a guide to help man understand a sacred diety.
I couldn’t agree with you more there. The reviews and excerpts on that book are intriguing, I’m ordering it now.
David Roberts
David,
I recommend it hightly. This book was instrumental in rejuvenating my faith