Exodus International has turned much of their public voice over to Nancy Brown. In addition to being the principal writer on Exodus Media Blog, she also authored some of the FAQs that Exodus posts on their website.
Considering that Nancy is not same-sex attracted and has not ever identified as gay, it is difficult to see why she was selected. But perhaps it is this lack of personal experience or context that uniquely qualifies her to shamelessly make bizarre claims without blushing. Or maybe it is a lack of knowledge about statistical sampling that gives her confidence to make assertions that a more knowledgeable person would find shameful.
Whatever the reason, Nancy’s answers to some of the questions on the FAQ’s are so clearly false that a legitimate organization would immediately pull them and remove her from any access to the public. However, it seems that Exodus currently serves primarily as an ant-gay activist organization – or at least that appears to be the extent of their public efforts – so perhaps it is no surprise that Nancy’s laughable assertions are featured at the Exodus website.
As an illustration of her ignorance and malice, let’s take a look at the FAQ:
Do homosexuals have committed, monogamous relationships?
Do gays really stay together?
Nancy’s tells us “the answer is NO!”
Now I don’t need to tell this crowd that if it wasn’t so hateful, this would be funny. Many, many people who participate in the success of this site are in relationships that are committed, monogamous, and very long term. So what could Nancy possibly use in her efforts to willfully ignore the evidence in front of her eyes?
Nancy makes three arguments: spiritual, psychological, and statistical. She fails miserably at all three.
Spiritual
Nancy posits an unusual theological point. Continuing Exodus’ fondness for redefining words to the point that they have little relationship to what the rest of the word thinks, Nancy decides that “committed” has nothing to do with the commitments one makes to a spouse but instead relies on compliance with Nancy’s religious belief
When the word “committed” is used it can mean different things. There are those who have long-term contractual relationships with partners in a business commitment and marriage relationships where the Holy Spirit is not the source. Many people become involved in relationships as a result of their own need to be preferred, but a person can only be truly committed in a relationship if he or she is acting under the direction of the Holy Spirit.
Well first off, Nancy, when someone asks if gays are in committed relationships, it doesn’t mean different things. It means are they committed to each other.
And second, Nancy, Christian faith is not a required component of commitment. By your definition no Muslims, Athiests, Budhists, or other non-Christians are in committed, monogamous relationships. This is a shameful, arrogant, condescending, sinful dogma that verges on heresy.
I think it fair to say that this new doctrine of Exodus is no more founded in Scripture than is their silly notion that identities are sinful. No religious scholar with any sense of honor would make the argument that committed fidelity is reliant on whether or not the person is led by the Holy Spirit.
Nancy’s spiritual argument – utter nonsense. And more than a little arrogant.
Psychologically
Nancy Brown shares the same qualifications to discuss psychology as does Elmer Fudd: none. But, naturally this doesn’t stop her.
Psychologically speaking the answer is NO! Homosexuality does not become a factor in a person’s life due to a deficit in sexual activity; it becomes a factor due to a deficit in emotional intimacy. Homosexuality may fill the gap with sexual activity but it does not fulfill the need for the self-identity, emotional affirmation, and acceptance designed by God to give each of us a sense of preference and well-being.
This is a continuation of the claim that you often see that gay people don’t really love each other, it’s just about sex. Nancy sees it as “a deficit in emotional intimacy”.
It’s difficult to see how an organization that claims to be knowledgeable about gay people could argue this position. Either they care far more about advocacy than honesty or they have chosen to believe their own lies. But perhaps it isn’t that hard to deny the basic humanity of those whom you despise; history is full of examples. At one point some southern preachers claimed that black people didn’t have souls. The Nazis portrayed Jews as rats and vermin.
Wikipedia reminds us that “Sociologists and historians often view dehumanization as central to some or all types of wars.” In this way attrocities can be waged on persons that “don’t have feelings the way that you do.” In her war on the lives and freedoms of gays and lesbians, Nancy has chosen just this tactic.
Or, alternately, perhaps Nancy doesn’t know what love looks like. Perhaps she’s never had that feeling you get when you glance across the room at that special person and feel that rush of euphoria just to be a part of her life, or stayed up all night nursing your man through an illness, or felt the gut-wrenching fear when you hear sirens in the area of your home and can’t reach your spouse, or experienced the sense of awe when you tell the woman in your life that you will love her and honor her for the rest of your life. Reading Nancy’s testimony one gets the sense that perhaps she has never had those exeriences.
But whatever Nancy’s motivation she claims that gay couples do not come together in a bond of emotional intimacy – all gays do is rut.
Nancy’s psychological argument – utter nonsense. And more than a little hateful.
Statistical
Now surely an honest person would seek to honestly portray relationships as they are. And surely an intelligent person would either uses statistics correctly or – recognizing their own inadequacies – refrain from using them at all. Nancy sallies forth undaunted.
Statistically speaking the answer would be NO!
Nancy uses five “statistics” to support her claim
Despite claims of greater numbers only .9% of men and .4% of women have had exclusively same sex relationship since the age of 18
I’m really not sure what she’s getting at, but this comes from a book written in 1984. Either she’s saying that less than 1% of the total population 22 years ago had come out without trying a relationship with the opposite sex – in which case I’d say, “so what”. How does that have any reflection on whether relationships which gay people are currently in are committed or monogamous? The current prime rate is about 8.5% but that has little bearing on the color of my drapes.
Or else she’s saying that .9% of men and .4% of women (in 1984) were with opposite sex partners since they were 18. To which I say, “WOW!!! That’s amazing”. This means that more than a quarter third of gay men (.9 of 3.4 2.3) were with their partner since they were 18. I only know one heterosexual who fits that criterion.
Only 15% of gay couples have a 12-year or longer current relationship
Only 5% of gay couples have a 20-year or longer current relationship
OK, this is just funny. Nancy says that committed, monogamous relationships don’t exist because only about 14 million gays in the US are in them for more than 12 years. (Didn’t anyone review this FAQ before Nancy posted it just to make sure it didn’t look like it was written by a mental patient?)
And secondly, this “statistic” is taken from an online survey. Online surveys, while useful, are not statistically valid. They almost never reflect a realistic portrayal of a demographic, unless the demographic is “those who answer online surveys”. And just in case that no one at Exodus has ever had a beginner course in statistics (which is possible), the survey website provides this information:
the results of the Gay/Lesbian Consumer Online Census are not statistically projectable to the entire population
next Nancy tells us
Median range for the number of sexual partners in the lifetime of the average homosexual is 101-500
Where does she get this “fact”? From NARTH.
Repeating NARTH’s analysis (never a good idea), Nancy extrapolates on the Exodus website the results from a 1997 telephone survey of gay men over the age of 50 living in Australia and claims them to be factual for all gays and lesbians. She conveniently forgets to qualify her “research”. She also forgets to mention that 21.6% of these men were in a monogamous relationship (ya know, the type that doesn’t exist).
Trying to pass this off as a “fact” about whether or not gays have committed monogamous relationships requires either a great deal of ignorance or a love for deceipt. It takes real effort to be more duplicitous than NARTH.
Self described “monogamous” homosexual couples in the past year averaged 3-5 “extra-marital” partners
For this “fact”, Nancy turns to the Family Research Council. But you might notice that they phrased this quote differently:
The Handbook of Family Diversity reported a study in which “many self-described ‘monogamous’ couples reported an average of three to five partners in the past year.
Nancy removes “many” and that the report was only about men and presents the “study results” as applying to all monogamous gay and lesbian couples. Was that an accidental slip?
I don’t have immediate access to the Handbook of Family Diversity (Demo, Allen, and Fine) but anyone who does can feel free to comment. For now let’s just say that based on the credibility level of Nancy Brown (or the Family Research Council for that matter) I think it’s reasonable to assume that this “fact” is no more valid than any of her other one.
But as to whether gay couples do exist, I can look beyond Nancy’s numbers and look at the 2002 census (which certainly cannot be dismissed as homosexual propaganda). Historically, gay persons have been very suspicious of governmental efforts to keep tabs on them. And it should also be remembered that in 2002 “sodomy” was still illegal in a fourteen states. Nonetheless, 1,202,418 were willing to hunt down and tick the box that told the Federal Government that the same sex person with whom they were living was their “unmarried partner”. I think it fair to say that this number is on the low side. But supposing that there were only 1.2 million gays and lesbians in relationships, wouldn’t it be the height of ignorance to claim that none of them were committed or monogamous?
Nancy’s statistical argument – utter nonsense. And more than a little dishonest.
In conclusion, Nancy says
The evidence biblically, psychologically, and statistically demonstrates that committed homosexual relationships are practically non-existent.
In conclusion, I say that Nancy Brown – and Exodus International – makes statements that are arrogant, hateful, and dishonest. The fact that a vast number of gay people are in loving, caring, committed, monogamous, long-term, stable, and happy relationships is irrefutable. And Exodus is not ignorant of that fact. Alan Chambers is personally aware of the many gay people in such relationships that participate at this site; and to continue to propagate at the Exodus website the evil lie that such relationships are practically non-existent shows a willful contempt for honesty.
Median range for the number of sexual partners in the lifetime of the average homosexual is 101-500
So um… since my number is, well, let’s just say waaay below that, does that mean at some point there’ll be a knock at my door and 100 sex-crazed dykes will come flooding in to bury me in a big sweaty pile of gal-lust?
I don’t know whether to be eager or frightened.
At this rate, I’m going to have to find some kind of Sex-Partner-Of-The-Month Club to keep up with the Gay Joneses.
“Today my husband has grown to the place that he understands that he did not “love” me when we married. He was confident and safe in the realization that I loved him and he wanted the approval of being married. He understands love much better now. My hope is that one day he will love me as I love him.”
The above is from Nancy Brown’s testimony. Her testimony goes on and on about all the trials and tribulations of her marriage. She married her gay husband in 1976. She seems to revel in the misery of this unhappy marriage.
Her situation is beyond sad, but it is also self-imposed. I kept thinking the whole time while reading it: What is her husband’s side of this bizarre 30 year story?
I’m 32, I’m bi, and I can count everyone I ever even thought of removing my panties for on one hand and don’t intend for that situation to change anytime soon. So I’m bringing down the average, too. I’d love to meet the people bringing up that average, but they probably died with a huge smile on their face. 😉
The only relationships Nancy Brown seems qualified to discuss are S/M ones.
On this one Tim K I’m going to totally agree with you. The statistics show that many homosexual people DO form lasting monogamous relationships. To claim that none last or that none are truly monogamous is blatantly absurd. We can argue over the finer details of the comparisons to those entering heterosexual relationships (i.e. – do homosexual relationships last as long, are as monogamous?), but the broad thrust of the Exodus article in incorrect.
Well Nancy Brown’s husband is the Don Brown of Lifeguard Ministies. He says a lot less at this webpage…
https://www.lifeguardministries.org/testimonies/don.htm
Tim, it’s late at night and I am sleepy but from my read of your analysis of her statistics section, I was of the idea that you had some things wrong. Something wasn’t clicking for me; but then when you talk about statistic something usually doesn’t click for me! ISU should rescind my Mathemaics degreee!
I have to wonder, though, after her Spiritual and Psychological arguments, of what need was a statistical argument to her – except to make the article beefier?
John, is Nancy Brown’s testimony available online somewhere?
Wow, so we don’t form lasting relationships??? Ummm… Maybe Ms. Brown should be telling this to the monogamous, upper-50s gay couple I know who have been together since their early 20s. Or maybe she should be saying it to the other homosexual couples I know who have been together anywhere from 1-3 decades or more. What is her basis for the terms “psychologically” and “deficit(s)” within the framework of the question??? I believe psychological factors have a lot to do with love, attraction, and the formation of relationships, regardless of the orientation of the relationship… very few humans are born completely autonomous with no “deficits” of any sort… relationships are a natural form of symbiosis, regardless of the orientation or religion under which they are established. Over the years I have heard countless couples of all orientations and religious affiliations refer to their committed relationships as the act of making each other complete, filling in those gaps. It takes a special kind of blind arrogance to believe that the Holy Spirit only dictates one type of relationship to be Blessed by God.
As for the statistics on sexual partners… who did they interview, male hookers, the bar-flies at sex clubs, or cruisy bath-house patrons? I suppose that using these same methods which are so prevalent in fundy research, one could also interview the clientele at a crack-house in a primarily black neighborhood in the city and walk away with “statistics” which state that 96% of African Americans are substance-abusers. I am one of many homosexual men I know in my age category (late 20s) and older who can still count all their sexual partners on one hand, which is less than many of my heterosexual peers (dyed-in-the-wool, Bible-thumping fundamentalist Christians included).
Given their track record, it does not surprise me in the least that Exodus would choose someone like Nancy Brown to represent them.
Heterosexuals get all the support society has to offer and still suffer from adultery and divorce. Gay relationships get no support (and a lot of hostility), so would be a huge surprise that they might be a bit more unstable? It’s another “blame the victim” tirade, IMHO.
Secondly, while I see some examples of “open relationships” online, it’s pretty hard to tell whether the rate is higher than in the straight community. There is less stigma which may make gays more open about it.
As for the 100s of sex partners, this seems to be something that Exodus actually encourages. If you “sin” by having a tryst, you are forgiven; if you endeavour to form something permanent you are an unrepentent sinner.
I think there is some room for legitimate disagreement over Biblical interpretation (Christians seem to disagree over this on nearly every issue anyway), but when you cross the line and start bearing false witness against people, you are committing a much bigger sin than you are trying to stamp out.
Specks, planks.
Neil,
The link to Nancy Brown’s testimony is in the second paragraph of Timothy Kincaid’s orginal post. I also did seem a Testimony from her husband Don elsewhere on the same site, but his testimony doesn’t really comment past the marriage itself in 1976.
So, wait. Nancy Brown’s marriage ended when her husband went gay (or gayer)? That is sad and I imagine painful.
So now Brown works on telling the world that people with same sex attractions who identify as gay or lesbian are deviant, unreliable and flawed. Does anyone else here see a conflict of interest?
While in Love in Action I felt most unsafe around a straight male staff member who had a gay dad who came out when his son was just a teen.
So what does he end up doing for work? Bullying gay guys into going straight (and really with his suppressed anger and abhorance of homosexuality, it felt like bullying).
Brown may have many insights to share about having a gay spouse, but just like Ted Haggard demonized “the gay lifestyle” based on his own infidelity and acting out, I wonder if Brown’s view gets clouded by her own experience and as a result she takes out on the rest of us the feelings she has towards her ex-husband.
So, wait. Nancy Brown’s marriage ended when her husband went gay (or gayer)? That is sad and I imagine painful.
So now Brown works on telling the world that people with same sex attractions who identify as gay or lesbian are deviant, unreliable and flawed. Does anyone else here see a conflict of interest?
While in Love in Action I felt most unsafe around a straight male staff member who had a gay dad who came out when his son was just a teen.
So what does he end up doing for work? Bullying gay guys into going straight (and really with his suppressed anger and abhorance of homosexuality, it felt like bullying).
Brown may have many insights to share about having a gay spouse, but just like Ted Haggard demonized “the gay lifestyle” based on his own infidelity and acting out, I wonder if Brown’s view gets clouded by her own experience and as a result she takes out on the rest of us the feelings she has towards her ex-husband.
Peterson,
As far as I can tell, they are still married. I strongly suspect that if she did the normal thing and divorced the guy, since he was gay and “couldn’t love” her the way she loved him, she wouldn’t be so caught up in this craziness.
Her testimony is very long. His is short. His implies that he is just fine as of the marriage starting in 1976. She goes on and on about this bizarre marriage, basically saying that she is really married to Jesus. That is what is keeping her going. I am sure that she thinks the whole thing is inspirational. I think that a young woman engaged to a gay guy would be very discouraged from going through with the marriage after reading Nancy’s testimony.
Below is the link to the webpage where one can access both Don and Nancy Brown’s testimony from their LifeGuard Ministries website:
LifeGuard Testimonies
Wow Timothy, I really love the way you write.
However, I am confused by part of this.
Nancy said only .9% of gay men have had the same partner since the age of 18.
I don’t know where she got those numbers from but I can’t see where you got yours from either. You said “This mean that more than a quarter of gay men (.9 of 3.4) were with their partner since they were 18.”
Where’d you get the out of 3.4 from? .9% means .9 out of 100, not .9 out of 3.4.
Wow. The average relationship length among my small circle of gay couple friends is just over 12 years (range: from 3-38). I won’t attest to anyone’s monogamy but my own, and I am sure that it would be inappropriate to generalized from my circle of friends to “the average homosexual.” However, Nancy’s numbers involve one heck of a leap from pretty odd samples to pretty broad populations. It’s hard to know where to start, but I thought that this quote was especially charming:
“Median range for the number of sexual partners in the lifetime of the average homosexual is 101-500[iv].”
Look at the title of [iv]:
Paul Van de Ven et al., “A Comparative Demographic and Sexual Profile of Older Homosexually Active Men,” Journal of Sex Research, 1997.
There’s a whole lecture in this one example about how do avoid inappropriate generalization. Remember — we’re generalizing here to, in Nancy’s words, “the average homosexual.”
1. Of course, the sample included only MEN — and we are generalizing to the “average homosexual.” (sorry, Boo)
2. Of course, these are OLDER men (over 49, when you read the article), who have had a lot more time to accumulate sexual partners than the average homosexual. — but we are again generalizing to the “average homosexual.”
3. Of course, these are SEXUALLY ACTIVE older men. Okay, so perhaps Nancy is going to argue that men who aren’t sexually active aren’t gay, but I would have begged to differ up until I met my partner at the not-so-tender age of 26!
4. Oh, and these are AUSSIE sexually active older men. Never having met any Australian gay men, I’m in no position to comment on how representative they are of “the average homosexual.”
5. Now let’s look at where Van de Ven et al. recruited their sample. Among other strategies, they went to “…places of sexual contact within, outside, and marginal to organised gay communities (gay brothels, sex shops, beats, saunas)…and pornography outlets.”
6. So HOW did they go about recruitment? Well, they included “…advertising with some sexual titillation.”
7. Still, they found that LESS THAN A QUARTER of their sample of raunchy old Aussie gay guys endorsed the box representing 101-500 lifetime sexual partners (meaning that they were anywhere within that range). Partly because this a broad category, compared to some of the other available categories, like “2-10,” “11-20,” etc., it included more men than the other categories. Thus it was the “median range.”
8. Interestingly for Nancy’s case, they reported on a small group of these raunchy old Aussie gay men who had only ever had ONE sexual partner during their entire lives. Hmmm…
9. Nancy is arguing a really tough case. Basically, she wants to suggest that gay people are incapable of committed, monogamous relationships. To prove this correct is scientifically impossible — it would take methodology that is unethical and unavailable. To prove it wrong, all one has to do is find ONE example of two gay people in a committed, monogamous relationship.
On second thought — no need to generalize from my circle of friends. Their very existence disproves Nancy’s point.
Alan and the folks at Exodus are not stupid. I doubt that Nancy is either. This drivel was posted in a clear attempt to DECEIVE and MISLEAD the naive reader.
Well, I have to go to work for a living now, so I’ll let someone else tackle one of the other references she uses…
Timothy:
I think you might have gotten a bit confused about Nancy’s statement that:
“Despite claims of greater numbers only .9% of men and .4% of women have had exclusively same sex relationship since the age of 18[i]”
It is understandably confusing, as it is entirely irrelevant to the rest of her post. I think she left off the plural on “relationship.” She did write “exclusively,” rather than “exclusive.”
As I read it, she is trying to say that only .9% of men and .4% of women are homosexual. The rest have had at least some opposite-sex experience, making them something other than homosexual.
It’s the old, “there are so few of you that you don’t really matter and don’t deserve equal rights” schtick raising its head in a very awkward place. It has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the article.
marcus,
Thanks. That may indeed be what she meant. Of course, it’s not too surprising to anyone with any familiarity with gay people that quite often gay men (and even more so gay women) have tried a heterosexual relationship of some sort (whether sexual or not) before coming out. And 22 years ago, most people did not come out until after 18.
I was trying to say this but I think you did so much more clearly than did I.
Randi,
0.9% was of the total population, gay and straight. To comparte this to just the gay population, I used 3.4% which I got from the CDC report last year. Actually it was an error on my part. I should have used:
2.3% gay male – 1.3% female
1.8% bisexual male – 2.8 female
4.1% gay and bi persons
It should have said:
1. Of course, the sample included only MEN — and we are generalizing to the “average homosexual.” (sorry, Boo)
Well, oddly enough, between this morning and now I have managed to have sex with 500 different partners, finally putting myself over the median. Can’t let the guys win everything, ya know. It was a tough effort, but I think it was worth it. I’m going to go drink some gatorade.
Thanks for clarifying Timothy, I misunderstood what Nancy Brown was saying, I thought she was saying out of all gay men only .9% had had the same same sex partner since 18.
Actually, I have no idea what Nancy Brown meant. And I don’t think she does either. She was just looking for something nasty to say and thought that would work.
In her ex-gay ministry’s testimony, Nancy presents herself as an extremely unhappy and bitter woman who has invested her life in a 30-year failed marriage to an ex-gay man.
Her testimony contains several pages’ worth of poorly substantiated insults against her ex-gay husband and his family. But her vantage point is disconnected from reality: Early in her testimony, Brown models the ideal courtship and marriage upon a romance novel in which the husband plays Fabio, fawning over his wife-to-be and wooing her daily:
But real life is not a romance novel; the socially conservative gender role for a wife is more comparable to housekeeper, janitor and secretary than to ardent lover. But instead of acknowledging the conservative reality, or actively thwarting her assigned role by taking charge of her life, Brown instead scapegoats her ex-gay husband’s homosexuality for her lack of fulfillment:
When her husband heeded the ex-gay movement’s conservative gender role for an authoritarian husband, Brown felt cheated — and again sought something else to scapegoat:
Nancy unfortunately exhibits most of the characteristics that she attributes to her ex-gay husband: Her testimony exhibits narcissism; social isolation; emotional brokenness, confusion about gender roles, and “emotional adolescence.” In the rare case where she acknowledges a personal flaw — her co-dependence — Brown scapegoats so-called homosexuality even for that.
When she scapegoats vague groups of bogeymen whom she has never engaged as neighbors, she fails to realize that she is really just describing herself:
Brown claims no longer to be bitter — but the bitterness in her testimony is visible, palpable, and unmistakable.
Finally, her notion of God as her true husband is blasphemous, unbiblical, and indicative of a deeply unhealthy mindset.
In short, she has spent most of her adult life trapped in denial of her own personality flaws, self-pride in her self-directed spirituality, self-pity, and unresolved and unrelenting bitterness. She vents all that negative emotion against those who might otherwise best understand and help her escape her own un-Christian psychological prison.
It seems to me that Brown hates the personal attributes that define an ex-gay activist — in other words, she is repelled by the characteristics that have tragically come to define herself. She hates the day-to-day reality of the conservative gender role for a wife; she projects despair over her own isolation; and she is spiritually imprisoned in her self-centered view of God.
But instead of constructively solving her problems, she blames others. She lobs insults at those who can best understand her, she co-dependently waits for others to bring meaning to her life, and she relies upon self-pity for nourishment and renewal.
Jesus would call upon Brown to humble herself — to own up to her deep personality flaws, her contempt for her neighbors, and her selfish spiritual fantasies involving God as Husband. But Nancy is so closed in upon herself and her small circle of self-reinforcement that she is unlikely to hear Jesus speaking to her.
Mike-
I too was struck by how extremely unhappy Nancy seems to be in her marriage, judging from her own testimony. She demonstrates, better than any of us could ever say it, the problems created when ex-gay ministries encourage people to enter heterosexual marriages even though their basic homosexual orientation has not changed.
I was married 26 years. On the whole my wife and I had a very good relationship. But reading Nancy’s words brought back many, many painful memories of the loneliness and hurt I know my wife often felt.
Nancy’s testimony is so pathetic and sad that it’s difficult to get angry about her hateful words on gay relationships.
On one hand, I would think that it is heroic to stay within a 30 year marriage – even if it is an essentially bleak one like Brown’s. But noting what has been excerpted here, it seems more a cruel folly.
Nancy seems to have been co-opted into an abusive faith and world view, one that does not lead to a life, more abundantly; but is a product of a severe, legalistic, loveless religion. And true to this faith, she wishes to share [impose] her desperate unhappiness with all.
Timothy: I’m afraid that I am still somewhat confused by the numbers you quoted from the CDC. If we are talking about 4.1% of 300 million (US pop.) being gay that means there are 12.3 million Mo’s out there. Yet the figures you present of 2.3% gay men and 1.3% only add up to 3.6% or 10.8 million. Are you adding bisexuals to this? If so, I still don’t see how you arrive at 4.1%. When you add 3.6% of gay men/women to the figures of 1.8% bi men and 2.8% bi women, that’s 8.2% of the population that is gay or bi meaning 24.6 million. Which is it? Also, is there a link you can provide for the CDC figures? Thanks.
Behold the power of Google: I found your post from last year on this with the link provided. I’ll read the links. Thanks.
John, we also have a search feature on this site.
My math is
men – 2.3 gay + 1.8 bi = 4.1 gay/bi
women – 1.3 gay + 2.8 bi = 4.1 gay/bi
I doubt these numbers are completely correct (only 90% claim to be heterosexual so there’s probably also some gay folk in the “I refuse to answer” group) but they are the best we have at the moment.
Did anyone else find it weird that Don’s testimony deals almost exclusively with events before his marriage and Nancy’s with events after the marriage? Plus, I usually am not one to make these sorts of judgments, but it certainly seems like Nancy hates her husband and blames her unhappiness squarely on him. For writing such a long testimony, you learn virtually nothing about her. It’s more of a diatribe about how her ex-gay husband has continually disappointed her for the last 30 years and how she has had to endlessly compromise (in her eyes) to make it “work”. I see nothing Christlike here. It’s just depressing. What greater purpose does such a loveless marriage serve?
Thanks for posting this Tim. Have never read this kind of lengthy, very personal testimonial and am now wondering how common it is. I found both testimonials deeply disturbing; not only because of the two individuals involved. This couple has 5 children – and they are counseling others. That is truly frightening! Nancy, at least, seems to have a very tenuous grip on reality which is even more disturbing than the obvious anger and depression.
I’ve always assumed that leaders in the ex-gay movement were a bit more tightly wrapped – harboring some strange beliefs and an abundance of missionary zeal but, nonetheless, self-aware enough that they were probably using their ex-gay status to earn a living. Also assumed that the use of junk science and blatantly dishonest statistics was primarily a conscious effort to make their case. That may be true for some but in Nancy’s case, suspect she actually believes this stuff.
I’d normally be tempted to write her off as an example of fringe pathology in the movement but if they’ve put her out front on Exodus she may be more representative. I’d appreciate knowing if other folks have run into this kind of public “confession” before. As someone who has a strong interest in the religious right and is also responsible for a professional LGBT task force, this information (with links, if you have them) would be very helpful.