Ex-Gay Watch

As often as ex-gay political leaders emulate the anger and the strawman arguments of the religious right, I believe it’s important to avoid overgeneralizing.

I have noted over the years (long before this Salon blog) that there are ex-gay ministers who remain focused on genuine person-to-person fellowship with people who, for whatever reason, find homosexual identification or attraction completely unworkable in their own lives.

These ministers eschew the bitterness and self-defeat that inevitably accompany affiliation with the political religious right.

I’m not sure these ex-gay ministers would want to be named in this blog, since the ex-gay political activists would harass them. So I tend not to name them.

I disagree with these ministers’ opinions about homosexuality. And I know that their flock will, at most, overcome same-sex behavior but not the sexual attractions.

Nevertheless, to the extent that a few ex-gay ministers work with struggling individuals without anger, prejudgment or ulterior political motives, I respect their independence and their compassion.

If an unhappy same-sex-attracted person refuses to listen to a happy gay or gay-tolerant minister telling them that God loves them, then perhaps they will listen to an ex-gay minister tell them the same thing.

From an article in today’s Denver Post:

“American society is good at focusing on micro-morality but it misses the larger morality,” media historian Robert McChesney said.

The quotation is directed at the trendy obsession with fake news at the New York Times, but it applies to the religious right in particular.

The narrow media preoccupation with the Times occurs at a time when Americans are more disenchanted than ever with the narrowness, shallowness, and sloppiness of news and entertainment in the mass media in general.

Yet Republicans in the FCC are pushing to consolidate those media even further, so there is even less news, fewer viewpoints, and fewer options for local musicians.

The religious right has been quiet about media consolidation — even as it complains that it already can’t get its views aired. Why the silence? My guess is that, among its many ethical oversights, the religious right idolizes unregulated big business and is reluctant to confront vices of business no matter how severely families are impacted.

Among those other “ethical oversights”:

• Movement organizations have little to say about vices other than the carnal kind, so they are left out of public-policy debates.
• Religious-right leaders contradict themselves on sexual matters, as their moral tunnelvision prevents them from examining the implications of what they say. I’ve pointed this out elsewhere.
• The movement aggressively pushed for the Bush tax cuts, smearing skeptics. So what do the Republicans do? They eliminate reductions in the marriage penalty and breaks for small businesses. So now, as Warren Buffett notes, most families will continue to pay up to 30 percent of their income in federal taxes, while taxes for billionaires will drop as low as 3 percent. In a nutshell, the religious right just helped rob its own support base of families.

So I see a micro-morality problem among the religious right. The movement can’t see beyond its very small worldview. As a result, the movement is largely to blame for its own shrinking influence over popular culture.

From today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

An African cardinal and leading candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II disrupted a Georgetown University graduation ceremony when he used his commencement speech to mock homosexuals and unmarried couples in the audience.

Ironically, the cardinal complained that it was he being mocked by gay students and family members who sat silent and stunned in the audience.

The New York Times reports today on the religious right’s declaration of financial warfare against the Young Women’s Christian Association.

The Traditional Values Coalition is seeking to bar federal funding to the YWCA because Ireland’s hiring does not conform to the religious right’s definition of Christianity. YWCA organizations receive $114 million in grant money now under federal review, according to the Times.

Patricia Ireland, the YWCA’s new chief executive, “emphasized that while the group had Christian roots it now focused on empowering women and ending racism.” Both goals are arguably more in tune with Christian morality than the sexual witch hunts of the religious right. Ireland does not cite abortion advocacy as one of the YWCA’s objectives.

The American Family Association is quoted arguing that:

• Leaders of “Christian” organizations must conform to the religious right’s definition of Christianity, and
• a leader does not qualify as a Christian unless one’s marital sex acts meet with AFA approval.

Ireland’s response is that opposition groups were “just becoming aware that the Y.W.C.A. embraces women without regard to their faith or denomination.” Inclusiveness, of course, is compatible with Christian values.

Meanwhile, the antigay wing of Concerned Women for America wants the YWCA to drop “Christian” from its name. This wing is run largely by men: Robert Knight and Peter LaBarbera.

“I’m not the head of a Christian organization,” Ireland said. “I’m the head of a social justice women’s organization.”

It puzzles me that the YWCA would hold on to its name, given that change in the organization’s self-perception — but it has the right to do as it wishes, and the federal government has no legitimate basis to discriminate against groups based on whether they meet the religious right’s definition of “Christian.”

I wonder whether the religious right is battling for a financial monopoly over Christianity, obstructing federal funding for efforts that Jesus of Nazareth might have applauded.

Since the YWCA has committed no financial wrongdoing, the grant money appears to be in no danger.

Love Won Out and Love Welcomes All will face off June 21 in Portland, Ore.

Love Won Out is a touring political rally organized by Exodus and Focus on the Family. The audiences, numbering several hundred per event, are treated to tightly controlled lectures by political activists who view rigid gender roles, discrimination, and religious threats as valid methods to save gays from despair and damnation. The common theme: Only certain conservatives’ view of God is valid; the conservative god’s love is somewhat conditional upon political affiliation and sexual conformity. Focus on the Family charges substantial admission fees for LWO, and gives a small amount to Exodus.

Love Welcomes All is a Christian counter-movement, originally organized in part by ex-ex-gays and by Soulforce. LWA declares that the Christian God’s love is unconditional and apolitical; that an individual can optionally change or moderate one’s sexual behavior, but not one’s God-given love for others. Admission is free.

Focus on the Family publishes a daily newsletter of political propaganda called CitizenLink.

CitizenLink is worth a look, if only to observe the organization’s extraordinarily small moral scope — its lack of vision. Eight out of 12 items on Tuesday’s page relate to sex and reproduction. The rest relate to fund-raising and gambling.

This is perverse.

Contrast Focus’s softcore fixation to Sojourners, where evangelical Biblical morality encompasses war, hunger, poverty, cultural and religious prejudice, globalization, racism, violence against women, sexual equality, nonviolence, materialism, free speech, family matters, humility, prayer, historically rooted reflections on Christian religious writings, and the list goes on.

Sojourners regrettably doesn’t interact much with non-Abrahamic faiths, but with a budget 1/200th that of Focus on the Family, Sojourners nevertheless offers an expansive moral and spiritual vision.

Addendum: I felt I should add that Sojourners does not fit within a “liberal” or “progressive” political label. It is right-of-center on abortion and homosexuality; it places a high value on straightforward Biblical readings; and it is as critical of socialism as of capitalism.

Invoking the Sermon on the Mount, David Horowitz criticizes Gary Bauer and Paul Weyrich over their threats against Republican Party official Marc Racicot — and their intolerance toward gay conservatives.

Last week, I objected to the phrase “Judeo-Christian” as something of an oxymoron and a myth. Since then, Mark O’Keefe of the Religion News Service has written on the subject:

Leading Muslim organizations say it’s time to drop the term Judeo-Christian to describe the values and character that define the United States.

O’Keefe mentions a 1984 scholarly article by Mark Silk, tracing the very short history of “Judeo-Christian.” Google lists 35 references to the Silk article.

The Muslims and the National Council of Churches say “Abrahamic” is a better choice. This sounded reasonable enough to me.

But Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab-American News in Dearborn, Mich., adopts perhaps the most practical approach:

“I believe we should call this the United States of America…. This stuff about language has to stop. We are all just Americans.”

The web site for Besen’s upcoming book offers “Loving Ex-Gay Quotes” suggesting that ex-gay messages are far from loving.

I’ve already ordered the book on the strength of its synopsis, and I hope the book is well-documented.

However, the online quotes are not independently sourced (footnoted).

I’m curious to know, for example, whether — and in what context — Exodus executive director Alan Chambers really said, “But as a property owner of Orlando, I wouldn’t rent to someone who is gay any more than I would rent to a person who is a practicing witch.”

Besen tends to be thorough in his work. Nevertheless, I have trouble believing that even someone as politically amateur as Chambers would make such a bigoted remark, at least publicly. On the other hand, this quote — if accurate and representative of its context — would help explain Chambers’ support for legislated discrimination and prosecution against gays, not to mention pagans.

Christian evangelicals nail down an agenda for 2003 and 2004 that focuses on genuine social-morality issues.

Of interest to those who are committed to legitimate moral concerns, not exgay culture wars.