Ex-Gay Watch

Concerned Women for America and Focus on the Family have steadily increased the volume of their antigay press releases this week. One item in particular seems brazen in its defamation of author Judith Levine.

At this point, I can’t keep up with all the propaganda. I’ll tackle what I can over the next couple days. But under the current circumstances — a massive backlash resulting from sodomy-law repeal and growing recognition of gay couples seeking marriage — it would be nice if Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Human Rights Campaign, or People for the American Way made some effort to respond to, or better yet pre-empt, the war of allegations.

Amid the hysteria of media pundits, I’m not sure middle America is hearing much, if any, of tolerance advocates’ message at the moment.

– Mike A.

From Concerned Women for America:

Promoting Homosexuality at the Expense of School Children
“Why New York is wrong to create an exclusively homosexual high school.”

Were the Supremes Fully Informed?
“The CDC has been undercounting the cases of HIV for years.”

RELIGIOUS ISSUES

Christian Complacency Created Threat of ‘Gay Marriage’
“Christians should not ‘tolerate’ sin.”

QUESTIONS & QUOTES

Judith Levine Says ‘Gay Marriage Isn’t Radical Enough’
“Author of pro-pedophile book promotes polygamy, ‘any combination of genders.’”

From Focus on the Family:

Poll: Gay Acceptance Down
“Do the results indicate a public backlash?”

Vatican Speaks against Gay Marriage
“The Catholic Church is pushing back against the homosexual agenda.”

For two years as a teen-ager, I was a born-again Christian and an evangelical. By age 18, however, my faith had matured toward a politically independent Roman Catholicism. Later, my faith would be challenged further.

Whether I qualify as a Christian today depends on whether the person requesting my religious affiliation presumes to define “Christian.” To issue any single definition of the word, in my view, risks blasphemy.

While the evangelical peers of my teen years swiftly discredited themselves, I still feel some admiration for friends who, somehow, maintain an evangelical faith, moderate it with a spirit of hospitality and humility, and preach Biblical priorities of poverty and ethnic, religious and sexual injustice.

I know that many evangelicals like Peggy and Tony Campolo oppose the values and tactics of the religious right. But it disappoints me that few evangelicals publicly challenge the political partisans.

I was pleased today to see Evangelicals Concerned doing so, in this Seattle Times profile.

As luck would have it, the article brings together Evangelicals Concerned and Jeremy Marks, founder of the British, former ex-gay organization Courage. The group now affirms gay Christians.

“What brought about my change (of perspective) was seeing how
destructive the ex-gay ethos was to people’s lives,” said Marks, 51, who is
gay. “For all the devotion people made to coming to our ministry, the
sacrifices they made, the effort they made to overcome – the long-term
result was that nothing changed, and it brought about a crisis of faith for
them. In that crisis, some lost their faith entirely.”

The Seattle Times article notes that Metanoia Ministries, a Tacoma, Wash.-based ex-gay organization, indirectly promotes that crisis of faith.

Metanoia’s founder, “like many evangelicals, considers homosexuality a sin akin to
alcoholism or drug addiction – something ‘incompatible with a life in
Christ’ but forgivable by God and redeemable if the sinner truly repents.”

The ministry’s message, it would seem, is subject oneself to chronic guilt over affections and temptations that the organization admits may never go away.

Instead of leading to freedom from homosexuality, the guilt appears to trigger in some people a cycle of temptation, binge behavior, abstinence and renewed tempation.

And what might be the goal of this cycle of repentance and sin?

It’s “so you’re always dependent on God.”

This co-dependence sounds a bit like the 12-Step surrender to a higher power. Such a surrender works for some people, and I’m happy for those individuals. But for other people, the co-dependence on God amounts to an abdication of personal responsibility.

Born-again Christians, ex-gays and twelve-steppers often paint their past lives as an out-of-control rollercoaster of extreme ups and downs that only a Higher Power could control. In exiting from themselves, some individuals feel they have exited the problem. But this method of escape does not work for everyone. Many people’s personal issues do not conform to this rollercoaster absence of self-discipline.

Said one former Metanoia participant who eventually found the ministry unhelpful and a bit intolerant:

“All my life I’d been told gay Christians can’t exist.”

When ex-gays discover that gay people of faith do exist, that gays are capable of self-discipline and spiritual integrity, and that gays do not conform to the ex-gay stereotype, the ex-gay’s co-dependent view of God unravels somewhat.

“The more I looked at what Christ said himself
in Scripture, the more I realized that what God is looking for in his people
didn’t have anything to do with the gender of those in a relationship, but
how they were in relationships with someone,” said Cheri Storm, 34, who fell
in love more than a year ago with Kimberly McGill, 33, when both were in
their Edmonds church’s Bible study group. “Are you kind, are you
compassionate, are you honoring, are you building up someone and not tearing
them down.”

I have only encountered a very few ex-gay or antigay ministries that maintain an emphasis on central Gospel themes of charity, hospitality, simple living, and equality under God. They need to make themselves better-known, but since they lack funding from the religious right, it’s unlikely they’ll be launching ad campaigns and airborne banners anytime soon.

From the July 29 CitizenLink newsletter, there’s plenty for me to comment on later today. Focus on the Family seems to have taken its conspiracy theories, strawman arguments, sexual putdowns, stigmatization, and affirmations of antigay discrimination to a new low for the year.

NYC to Open First Gay Public High School
“School comes despite the fact that NYC and public schools are under budget constraints.”

Gay Relationships Short-Lived, Dutch Study Says
“Findings underscore that marriage isn’t what gay activists are really after.”

What is the gay agenda, and what can Christians do to stop it?
“A Q&A on the homosexual agenda.”

The last article is an interview with Alliance Defense Fund vice president Craig Osten. The article omits mention of ADF’s recent lawsuits to compel states such as Arizona to discriminate at will against state workers who happen to be gay.

As recently as the mid-1970s, television confined its depiction of homosexuals to suicidal whimperers and psychopathic lesbians. This bizarre caricature has faded from mainstream culture and from many if not most places of worship.

It remains alive and well, however, in some quarters.

According to Exodus chairman Alan Chambers, antigay 1970s popular culture was already too tolerant of non-evangelicals. Some weeks ago, Chambers spoke favorably of the 1950s — a time when black, Hispanic, Catholic, female, and Jewish “lifestyles” were fair game for (evangelical) Christian moralizing that, in Chambers’ view, blissfully permeated American culture. Then Exodus spokesman Randy Thomas unapologetically defended Chambers’ sentiment right here at Ex-Gay Watch.

Weeks later, I confess that I am still stunned and disgusted at the Exodus leaders’ proud ignorance — and their hostility to history. Both Chambers and Thomas were born in the 1970s. They possess little personal recollection of the era. They demonstrate no broad-based historical knowledge of political, cultural, and religious movements in the Americas from any period, never mind the 1950s to 1970s. Their limited awareness of innumerable historical movements seems to originate primarily from caricatures provided by talk radio.

For reasons that to me remain inexplicable, Exodus staff demonstrate a persistent and public contempt toward the history, faith, and values of women, blacks, political independents, and anyone whom they deem to be non-Christian.

Fenton Johnson, author of “Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s
Journey” (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), reflects thoughtfully and deeply upon his own faith journey in a Los Angeles Times commentary.

Johnson applies his observations on faith and tradition to gay Christians’ quest for equal treatment before God as well as civil law — and to the Christian Right’s battle against both faith in Jesus and Jesus’ message.

Johnson’s thoughts occur within the context of efforts by antigay Episcopalians to cause a churchwide schism over two recent trends toward fairness for gay church members.

In a July 27 commentary, Portland Oregonian associate editor David Reinhard wrote that gays should be content with a tattered patchwork of half-baked legal rights instead of fairness in civil marriage.

Reinhard also said that any comparison of racial discrimination and antigay discrimination “confuses an immutable trait (race) with a behavior (homosexuality) whose nature and origin are, at the least, in dispute. The analogy also ignores the clear, longstanding religious and moral objections to homosexuality.”

Steve Swayne, an assistant professor of music at Dartmouth College and a contributing writer at the Independent Gay Forum, responded that gays should not have to wait decades for a patchwork of rights to take solid form. Swayne adds:

Reinhard must forget the longstanding religious and moral objections to colored people. In addition, he might want to ask someone who is both black and gay how we view the analogy.

I chose neither to be black nor to be gay. Both are part of who am I and precede what I choose to do or not do. The analogy is perfectly sound to me.

Meanwhile, another letter writer notes that Reinhard’s objections to non-procreative marriages hurt heterosexual couples, too.

And a Portland minister recalls performing more than 100 gay weddings over 28 years.

Oregonian columnist Margie Boule writes the story a gay Oregon couple’s trip to Canada to get married. Her conclusion:

In a world where straight people often take marriage too lightly, Marc and Floyd celebrate the institution.

The Interfaith Working Group offers an excellent summary of the case it frequently makes to the media in favor of fairness for gays in civil marriage.

Both the editorial board and columnist Steve Dunleavy at the New York Post call the New York City public schools’ announcement of a predominantly gay high school “un-American,” “insane,” “idiotic, socially wrong, morally wrong and politically suicidal.”

Dunleavy says several times that he has “no problem … with a person being gay.” But in the next breath, he says, “But you in that crippled Department of Education – together with Mayor Mike – are institutionalizing a way of life which has been roundly condemned by the Bible, the Koran and the Buddhist scriptures.” So it appears that Dunleavy does have a problem with anyone being gay, and that he harbors prejudgmental notions about an imaginary “way of life.”

Without asking how the kids or their parents feel about being harassed with impunity in the city’s mainline public schools, Dunleavy concludes: “If, as the mayor says, this saves the kids from harassment at school, he has virtually erected a target for misinformed nutcase hoodlums who want to exercise their beer muscles.” Dunleavy seems to assume that the school won’t — or shouldn’t — offer outdoor security.

A Post “news” article again overlooks the violence that spurred the school’s formation. The item favorably quotes the head of the city’s principals union asserting, despite district policies to the contrary, that the school might somehow discriminate against heterosexual students.

New York’s Newsday ran a widely circulated Associated Press story that offered just a three-sentence quotation by Mayor Michael Bloomberg referring vaguely to antigay harassment. AP declines to research the harassment or provide any detail from readily available sources.

Another New York Post story follows the same outline as the AP story.

Ditto at the New York Daily News.

Having already helped remove harassment-free zones from a northwestern Pennsylvania high school, the American Family Association is battling to silence a Gay-Straight Alliance that has formed at the school.

In April, allies of the AFA cornered and taunted a student who participated in a Day of Silence vigil organized by tolerance advocates.

The AFA also is battling the local school board’s decision to bar discrimination against gay and transgendered teachers and school workers.

Concerned Women for America has issued its daily selection of propaganda.

The headlines below are verbatim from CWA; the summaries are mine.

In Their Own Words: Homosexual Activists Redefine Marriage And Family
CWA presents misquotes of countercultural gay leftists as if they represented the values of mainstream and conservative gays seeking to get married. How odd: One does not find the CWA representing the National Organization for Women’s marital values as its own.

What’s Perverse About Lawrence?
CWA’s Chief Legal Counsel Jan LaRue repeats the historical errors and medical myths that damaged the religious right’s defense of sodomy laws before the Supreme Court.

Targeted for Hate: A Canadian Columnist Pays Price for Disagreeing with Homosexual Agenda
Contrary to CWA’s misleading headline, the antigay columnist says gay friends and colleagues have rallied to his defense after a lunatic organized a grotesque hate-mail campaign.

Enforced Bias: Boston Globe Editor Reveals Liberal Paper’s True Colors
Brian Camenker accuses The Boston Globe of political correctness for requiring that letters to the editor, both pro- and antigay, be written in a civil and thoughtful tone.

Election of Homosexual Episcopal Bishop Exposes Myth of ‘Born Gay’
Instead of faithfully reflecting the bishop and his family, CWA barges in and pontificates that homosexuality is no excuse for “adultery.” And because the Human Rights Campaign criticizes un-Christian conduct by the Southern Baptist Convention, CWA accuses HRC of bashing Christians.

The July-August 2003 issue of the AARP Bulletin reports about financial troubles at the antigay Traditional Values Coalition.

According to the article, “Christian Crusaders? Or Not? Fledgling Group Purports to Represent ‘Christian Seniors,’” a new TVC front group called the Christian Seniors Association may represent a latch-ditch effort by conservative fundraiser Richard Viguerie to raise money for the TVC.

In fundraising appeals that he says are being mailed to more than 5 million older Americans, [TVC founder Louis] Sheldon portrays his new organization as a “Christian alternative to AARP” and promises anyone who joins it, for dues of $12.95 a year, “benefits that are as good, or better than AARP’s.”

TVC direct-mail letters reportedly say the CSA was formed to counter the AARP’s “far left” agenda. But the AARP article details severe financial difficulties at TVC.

The Bulletin has obtained documents showing that Sheldon’s tax-exempt Traditional Values Coalition ran operating deficits of more than $1 million in both 2000 and 2001 and remains in deep financial trouble.

The organization’s own independent auditor, in a report prepared last year, warned that the recurrent deficits “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

The AARP article suggests that it is actually TVC’s costly contract with Viguerie that has pushed the religious-right group “to the brink of insolvency.”

At the end of 2001 the Traditional Values Coalition had nearly $2.5 million in liabilities, including nearly $1.9 million owed to Viguerie’s firm, Amerigan Target Advertising, Inc.

The coalition’s obvious distortions of fact and contortions of civility surrounding the ex-gay culture war suggest to me that fundraising ripoffs aren’t the only means by which the coalition has offended its conservative base of support. Here are recent headlines from TVC:

Kennedy Reintroduces Pro-SheMale, Homosexual Hate Crime Bill
‘Non-judgmental’ AIDS Counseling Is Failure In Seattle
Dutch Study Exposes Infidelity Among Homosexual Partners
‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy Under Attack
Wal-Mart Petition Urges End To Pro-Homosexual Policy
Boston Globe Reveals Its Pro-Sodomy Bias

The TVC apparently isn’t limiting its inaccuracies to the ex-gay culture war.

From The Washington Post via The Agonist comes news yesterday that TVC has been acting as a lobbying puppet of the pharmaceutical industry. In doing so, TVC apparently distorted the facts, smeared the TVC’s pro-life allies, and infuriated Republicans:

A Christian lobbying group [TVC] fighting the proposed importation of low-cost prescription drugs has received behind-the-scenes help from the drug industry, the latest example of pharmaceutical companies trying to influence Congress clandestinely. …

Several Republicans said pharmaceutical companies, through their lobbyists, contacted other conservative groups, including the Christian Coalition, about waging a similar campaign against the reimportation measure. The Traditional Values Coalition was the only taker because several abortion opponents questioned the accuracy of the drug industry’s argument, according to lawmakers and conservative activists. …

House Republicans were so offended by the mailings that they recently barred the TVC and its leader, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, from attending future meetings of the Values Action Team, an umbrella group of socially conservative Republicans.

Addendum: National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru weighs in today against the TVC’s tactics.