In his latest article for Charisma magazine, Exodus President Alan Chambers speaks a lot of truth, but is blinkered to how it applies to his own organization.

With amusing timing, Chambers remembers a school bully who picked on him for being gay – and later turned out to be gay himself. He writes:

I did feel some empathy for him, but the fact that he was launching an all out verbal assault on me while he was struggling with the same issues was tough to reconcile. … [He] shunned me and encouraged others to do the same. I guess insecure people often displace their insecurity by demonizing others.

In a statement reverberating with irony, Chambers says that as he went from junior to high school, “I did a lot to repackage my image and worked hard to overcome anything that would hint that I might be gay.”

Little has changed, but Chambers cannot see it. Twenty-plus years later, ex-gays are still trying to repackage their image with the help of Exodus; and while Exodus’s attacks on gays may take on a more sophisticated form than the juvenile taunting of Alan’s classmates, it is nonetheless bullying borne out of fear.

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