Ex-gay survivor Peterson Toscano will be appearing on The Morning Show With Mike and Juliet this Thursday, September 13 on a segment entitled “Can You Choose to Be Gay or Straight?”. The Morning Show airs on the Fox Network weekdays at 10:00 am EST. Exodus president Alan Chambers is also slated to appear on the program.
P
From an Exodus e-mail sent this morning:
Will Peterson Toscano be by himself among Alan, his wife Leslie, and the Exodus network therapist? The panel leans heavily on the Exodus side.
I hope Peterson will have other former ex-gays to back him up.
Haven’t these ppl been face to face before?
Maybe not the wife beside him contributing to the conversation but still… guess she’ll be a point of interest in it now.
Jayson Graves… something tells me hes going to rebuke the ‘cruel treatment’ Tuscano professes ex-gay mnistries provide.
May God lay a hand on this conversation.
Acccording to Warren Throckmorton, he was initially invited but then disinvited in favor of Graves.
Throckmorton says he suspects his own tone is too “measured” compared to Graves, but he doesn’t say whether it was Fox or Exodus that disinvited him.
Fox
Just watched it and am curious why Alan stumps for the “right to change in free America” and then is the CEO for an organization that is seemingly hell bent on taking any kind of rights for gays from other adults.
I don’t think that Mike and Juliet were convinced, nor the audience for that matter. And admittedly, my gaydar went off with Mike, so when he requested as a counterpoint to be turned gay because he is straight, I went, “uh, hum.”
I had expected something meatier as in exactly the methodology of change — but the time was limited and much of the focus was on “rights”.
But, rights for all?
I was all excited to transcribe the segment, but I ended up DVRing the regular FOX channel @ 10AM (not FOX news), when apparently it was on CBS @ 9AM, at least here in Naples FL.
Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go scream.
Re “the right to change in free America” – or in any other free country, come to that
The ex-gay leaders’ talk of the right to change is a red herring. People have a perfect right to change – if they can. The issue is whether they can.
Let us take the following scenario. I have a friend who has a “thing” about his height. He wishes that he were taller. One day he tells me excitedly that he has seen an advert in a magazine that states: “Add inches to your height in weeks!” (This advert used to appear regularly in the kinds of magazines that deal with astrology, fortune-telling, numerology etc., and perhaps it still does.) And of course there’s a P.O. Box number to which he can send his cheque or postal order.
I tell him that there’s nothing wrong with his height; that he would do better to accept himself the way he is; and that he should keep his money in his pocket. Why? Because I want to deny him the right to change his height? Of course not. The reason for my advice is that I know perfectly well that he can’t change his height, and that the advert is a con. If he’s determined to waste his money, then he has the right to do so, and I have neither the right nor the ability to prevent him – but neither am I going to aid and abet him.
The existence of people whose sexual orientation has changed from homosexual to heterosexual is as problematical as the existence of, say, genuine physical mediums (who paranormally bend spoons, levitate furniture and produce materialised phantoms). If there really are such people, then they are as scarce as winners of the National Lottery jackpot – if not a good deal scarcer.
Let us take Spitzer’s report on sexual orientation change. Its validity has been challenged on a number of criteria. But even if we discount all the objections and take it at its face value, the proportion of homosexual adults who have genuinely changed to heterosexuality is – even at a generous estimate – about 0.01%. So the honest answer to anyone who asks “Can I change my sexual orientation?” is that, even if it’s not an absolute impossibility, it’s so unlikely that it amounts, for practical purposes, to the same thing.
And here I would like to add that to say that something may change – however likely or unlikely that is – is not the same thing as saying that you can make it change, even with God’s help.
Those who peddle such improbable commodities as cures for baldness, ways to increase your height, better sight without glasses, etc. – even if some of them actually believe in what they’re doing – are essentially conning people into striving after something that they’re never going to get. But in one respect they have the moral edge over the ex-gay cults. So far as I’m aware, they have never demanded that people who are bald, who are shorter than average, or who have less than 20/20 vision, and who don’t try or want to change, should be discriminated against – never mind trying to pass off such discrimination as a moral imperative.
The clip is up:
http://www.mandjshow.com/videos/is-homosexuality-a-choice/
That scenario, William, is probably the most sound argument about this topic I’ve ever heard. But, I do have one thought about that. In China, where competition for jobs has, as one news report put it, sparked a “height craze”, there are actually Doctors who perform surgical techniques that can add up to 15% to a person’s height. Granted, it requires the breaking of bones and being bedridden for months. And, there really hasn’t (from what I’ve been able to find) been any real study on the side-effects (other than weakend bones, being bedridden, in a wheelchair for an extended period of time not to mention the psychological effects and financial burden.)
I guess the answer is, sure, it can be done! One can choose to, and actually become, a taller person. But at what cost? I think the same could be said for this whole ex-gay thing. Sure, a person can be so broken and then through excrutiating pain, be put back together in a little different format. But, again, at what cost? One wonders how desperate a person must be; how much hatred they carry in their hearts for themselves, to go through so much pain and misery for a chance at a form of change.
j.