Ex-Gay Watch

On Nov. 17, Creators Syndicate columnist Deb Price profiled Wayne Besen’s first experience with an ex-gay ministry and his subsequent encounters with people who felt victimized by the movement.

Some money quotes:

Besen’s mother gave him an audiocassette that promised to turn gay people into heterosexuals. He listened three times to the tape of “weird music, self-hypnosis exercises and laughable psychobabble theorizing that distant parents cause homosexuality. ”

“Afterward, my parents asked, ‘How did it go?’ I answered, ‘They blamed you for making me gay.’ They were incredulous. They knew they were good parents. They didn’t want me to listen to the tape after that.”

On the frequent failure of ex-gay activists’ marriages and ministries:

“The religious right loves to show the wedding pictures. But they never show the divorce papers.”

I found the profile insightful about Besen and ex-ex-gays, but it may suffer a bit in its reduction of ex-gays to a cliche:

Deeply religious gay people, terrified of losing the love of their families and going to hell, enter the revolving-door, heart-breaking life of trying to be an “ex-gay.”

Clearly not all ex-gays are heartbroken. Hostile, at times, toward the civil liberties of gays, non-conservatives, and non-Christians. But heartbroken? Often, no.

Extending earlier discussion a bit:

Lars Gaardfeldt of Sweden wrote a 1998 lecture, The Bible as Medicine: Bible and Prayer as Miraculous Cure Against Homosexuality. The lecture begins with a summary of base assumptions that are common in the "reparative therapy" movement:

• There is no such thing as homosexuality
• Homosexuality is never a genuine part of a persons identity
• No one is homosexual.
• You should not let anyone say that she or he is homosexual.

Exodus spokesman Randy Thomas repeats a variation on this mantra in his weekly press releases.

Gaardfeldt analyzes the work of author and reparative therapist Leanne Payne, finding it neither scientifically sound nor well-rooted in Christian teaching.

Among his conclusions:

I claim that the religion you find in "The Broken Image" and in other books written by healers dealing with homosexuality, is what the German political theologian J.B. Metz has defined as "bourgeoisie religion."

It is a religion where justice and equality are subordinated and where moralistic terms as respectability and purity are at the centre of interest. In addition I claim that this bourgeoisie religion is a religion where the heterosexual relationship is very near to become an idol.

In this bourgeoisie religion homosexuality is a threat.

I’m not a fan of reducing the problem to one of trite labels like "bourgeoisie" or overgeneralizing about evangelicals. But I do see a tendency at the Exodus national office — despite its claim to be countercultural — to accept and affirm middle-class American culture with its inequalities and injustices. I see an additional tendency to slap an evangelical Christian seal of approval over culturally based religious prejudices, and to treat marital heterosexual sex as an idol.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Exodus membership reportedly includes dozens of local ex-gay counselors who are single and celibate, and who express no unrealistic hope that they will ever be attracted to the opposite gender. Unfortunately, this predominance of celibacy among ex-gay counselors is not reflected in the propaganda of the national office, which offers the marriages of its top activists as proof that "change" is possible for everyone.

Missing from the Exodus press releases is a discussion of the 70 or 80 percent (or more) of ex-gays who experience no change. Instead of openly addressing how to minister to those who are unchanged, Exodus lobbies for discrimination against the majority of "reparative therapy" patients (and would-be patients) who are uncured.

The effort to conceal a tide of celibacy behind a front of married activists; the omission of unhealed patients; efforts to legislate discrimination; and an absence of discussion about most of the social and economic sins condemned in the Bible, all give some weight to the argument that current Exodus leadership accepts and promotes a religion rooted more in the predominant culture than in the message of Jesus of Nazareth.

(Updated Nov. 24)

I have added Categories to the sidebar. Thus far, the site’s entries are indexed by category from July 25 to the present. So the search results will be incomplete for the time being.

Ex-Gay Watch’s main e-mail address, editor @ exgaywatch.com, has apparently been bouncing messages for more than a week.

We believe the problem is fixed. If you recently sent mail to us, please resend it.

365gay.com reports that a Bronx high school teacher was fired for “15 specific incidents of discrimination, harassment and misconduct during the 2001-2002 school year.” Other incidents dated as far back as 1985.

Teacher Terence Brunson, 44, demanded the transfer of lesbian students out of his classroom. He also ordered “all homosexual students in his [class] to raise their hands and publicly identify themselves.” And he told a lesbian student, “I could get a guy to turn you straight.” This was apparently Brunson’s notion of ex-gay counseling.

Teachers like Brunson make life (and education) difficult for sexually struggling students. Ex-gay organizations could make a constructive difference for these children if they worked with pro-tolerance groups to punish bullying and foster respectful disagreement.

But XGW does not know of a single ex-gay organization that works to reduce violence and harassment by antigay teachers and students. If someone knows of specific ex-gay efforts to stop bullying, please contact us.

In the wake of the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, Exodus could have informed its membership of the diversity of thoughtful, faithful and impassioned Christian opinions on the subject.

Instead, Exodus on Nov. 21 replayed the propaganda of five antigay political organizations: the Alliance Defense Fund, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Liberty Counsel, and the Massachusetts Family Institute.

Exodus helpfully reminded readers of the ex-gay leadership’s own political activism against Massachusetts gay couples:

Alan Chambers’ testimony
Randy Thomas’ testimony
Dawn Videto’s testimony

Exodus and its political allies are on public record in favor of discrimination against gays in employment, housing, law enforcement, public services, and participation in church. In re-airing the organizations’ propaganda, and in omitting mainstream religious viewpoints, Exodus made it appear to some observers that it agrees with its allies’ broad allegations about the gay “lifestyle,” which they define as immorality, promiscuity, sexual compulsion, hopelessness, disease, and hatred of God and family.

In its Nov. 21 message, Exodus reminded readers that there are gay people affected by these organizations’ policies. But it did not treat those gays as individuals with opinions, moral values, or rights that might be worthy of respect.

Ex-gays are people, too, of course, and they may be negatively impacted by Exodus’ support for discrimination against individuals perceived to be gay. XGW finds no concrete evidence that Exodus’ political campaign against gay couples does anything to help ex-gays cope with their own sexual, emotional, and religious struggles — or their sometimes-troubled ex-gay marriages.

In a Nov. 10 “media spotlight,” Exodus cites actions by a British law enforcement and a Colorado family court as proof that U.S. homosexuals (“the perceived oppressed”) as a class are out to oppress, silence and punish anyone who disagrees with them.

In the first case, a bishop was interviewed by British authorities after he declared that gays need to get psychiatric help. Exodus does not quite explain how this qualifies as oppression or censorship, nor does it explain how the bishop’s action qualifies as Christian hospitality.

In the second case, previously discussed at XGW, a court ordered an ex-gay woman not to teach her hatreds to the child she shares with a lesbian.

Exodus confuses these actions with the U.S. constitutional separation of church and state. This separation does not apply in Britain, where the Church of England is the official church, and in Colorado the court attempted (however awkwardly) to balance the religious rights of both women, not just the ex-gay woman.

Does Exodus perhaps assume that the religious freedom of antigay Christians must override the religious freedom of others? Does Exodus assume that antigay hostility and Christian faith are inseparable?

Lacking solid evidence of religious oppression, Exodus resorts to strawman argumentation:

It is hypocritical of the few gay activists who say that Christians shouldn’t be politically involved because of faith when in reality all exercise of civil liberties is based on the individuals own belief system.

XGW is unaware of any gay activists who assert that Christians should not be politically involved. Of course, some gay activists are, in fact, Christian. Some are even conservative.

We all engage the system in faith that our beliefs about particular issues are right. Therefore, no one should be silenced or told by the government what they can or cannot say or believe in.

This viewpoint is admirable and worthy of applause. Unfortunately, Exodus frequently blasts the media for including diverse homosexual viewpoints. Case in point: Law & Order: SVU.

The gay identified community certainly deserve respect. As opponents in public policy they should be afforded every opportunity to speak their minds and do what is legally afforded to them. However, just like every other sub-cultural group, they can be and should be held accountable.

These are additional libertarian sentiments, but XGW is curious to see these sentiments reflected in Exodus’ actions. There are, no doubt, grounds under which segments of the gay population can be accurately and specifically criticized. Unfortunately, Exodus tends to overgeneralize. Instead of criticizing specific activists or events, it criticizes much of the gay population for the alleged beliefs or actions of an unidentified few. And when antigay Christians such as the Colorado ex-gay woman and the British bishop are criticized or held accountable, that is treated as persecution.

Camassia nicely weaves together some recent debate across the blogosphere over a tendency among evangelical Protestant churches to scapegoat homosexuality for their own declining commitment to family values. (Previous XGW discussion about this.)

Read more…

Prof. Warren Throckmorton, an advocate for ex-gay politics, admits he didn’t see Law and Order: SVU last week. (Original XGW entry on L&O:SVU).

But then Throckmorton proceeds to get the plot wrong — and then he blasts the show for not portraying positive examples of ex-gays — even though it did include some good ex-gays.

For the record, the plot was about a doctor whose career and family resemble that of Charles Socarides. (Google search.) The doctor found an ex-ex-gay man in bed with the doctor’s closeted, gay, young-adult son. The doctor then murdered the man and severely beat his son in a fit of rage and humiliation.

Parental beatings of their gay children are a reality. So is parental hostility and repression that traps same-sex-attracted children between a rock and a hard place, leading to despair. And so is the practice by some doctors of mischaracterizing and massaging scientific data to serve political goals. But judging from the reactions of Throckmorton and Exodus International, the ex-gay movement seems unwilling to talk about these problems — or see these problems presented in TV shows.

The L&O:SVU episode was a bit overwrought and moralistic, and it contained TV’s typical stock characters. Nevertheless, it demonstrated that some happy ex-gays exist — and that there are numerous family, scientific, and criminal matters that the movement is reluctant to address. Throckmorton’s diatribe may unwittingly substantiate a key point of the episode’s writers.

An aside:

The tagline on Throckmorton’s weekly self-published columns states, “[Throckmorton's] research ‘Initial Empirical and Clinical Findings Concerning the Change Process for Ex-Gays,’ was published in the June 2002 issue of the American Psychological Association’s publication Professional Psychology: Research and Practice.”

XGW participant Michael Hamar now asks about Throckmorton: “When is someone going to get the APA to go after this liar? His own June 2002 APA Journal article is NOT consistent with his columns. His APA article most certainly is not consistent with the claims made by his buddies in the ‘Christian’ Right on a daily basis.”

Hamar commented in greater detail on Throckmorton’s APA article a few weeks ago.