News and analysis of exgay politics and culture.
One aspect glossed over in recent media reports about Liverpool Frontline Church and its ex-gay ministry is its roots in an American ministry, LIFE. Here’s how I summarized the issue back in July, for The Guardian‘s Comment is free: But let’s be clear that concern over the Life connection is not a simple matter of [...]
Local government, police and community investors have distanced themselves from Frontline Church in Liverpool, England, after details of its “gay conversion” ministry were publicized. In July, I wrote for The Guardian‘s Comment is free about Liverpool LIFE ministry, a group patterned after LIFE NYC, an extreme, anti-gay organization founded by Joanne Highley. Although Frontline’s defenders [...]
In the Wavertree district of Liverpool, England, Frontline Church has a ministry to gays and lesbians. It’s an ex-gay ministry, LIFE Liverpool, that they say helps people work through childhood pain to overcome their homosexuality. It was founded in 2000 with the help of Joanne Highley, head of LIFE New York City, whose unusual teachings [...]
The ex-gay LIFE ministry, in New York City, teaches gays and lesbians that their sexual orientation is sinful and must be changed. Homosexuality is a psychological, emotional and spiritual disorder that can be overcome with prayer, deliverance and counselling, it says. It often comes with demons attached, according to leader Joanne Highley; if you’ve had [...]
British teenager Michael Causer died on August 2, 2008, aged 18, a week after being beaten and stabbed for being gay. Almost three years after this brutal, homophobic hate crime, Michael’s family, along with the LGBT community in Liverpool and across the UK, are asking why the story was largely ignored by the national media [...]
A gay teenager has died, just one week after he was brutally beaten in a homophobic attack. Eighteen-year-old Michael Causer of Whiston, near Liverpool, England, died in hospital on Saturday August 2 at 12.30pm. He had been attacked by other youths while walking with friends in nearby Huyton, some time before 11am on Friday July [...]
Story here. Updates here and here. I’ve been fortunate. I don’t live in the most gay-friendly community in the world, but I’ve never personally been subject to a homophobic assault in my area. My family is well-known round here, and it’s no secret that I’m gay. I’ve had schoolkids ask me about my partner, and [...]
This article was originally published in Third Way magazine, June 2006 I ONLY had to say three syllables, and yet the simplest words turned out to be the hardest. Mom. I’m. Gay. They were difficult words because I had grown up evangelical, and survived well into my twenties convinced that I could never be openly [...]
Dave Rattigan says:
I'm more shocked to discover that a straight person has been...
Norm says:
I was among those that were banned from RHN's Facebook. ...
Emily K says:
Yeah, I thought evangelical Christianity specifically (and Protestantism in general) was...
Patrick Fitzgerald says:
Ben: So they’re admitting there IS harm, but its just exaggerated.
Anthony Venn-Brown (@gayambassador) says:
Love your work Mike....good article. strange word “Antinomianism”
antinomian "one who...