Ex-Gay Watch

An April 2004 newsletter of Focus on the Family declares that God will destroy the United States and Western civilization will crumble if life-long gay couples are allowed to marry or celebrate civil unions.

Dobson accuses the undefined “homosexual activist movement” of having a 40-year “master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family.”

Dobson continues with another 3,600 words of largely unsubstantiated accusations, insults and threats. He expands upon statements earlier this month, in which he listed 10 reasons why gay couples in love post a mortal threat to God and humanity — the last and perhaps most important reason being an end to the cherished culture war.

Citing a single Bible passage (2 Chronicles 32), the Focus on the Family leader concludes by warning of — and, I believe, wishing for — God’s destruction of the United States if gay couples are ever granted equality.

Dobson generously appends a list of (expensive) resources to help supposed Christians destroy gay relationships and save the nation.

• Be
  Intolerant (Item Code: BD785)
  Alarming numbers of young adults have accepted a “whatever” tolerance of
  religion and worldviews. Ryan Dobson proclaims there’s nothing wrong with
  righteous intolerance. Paperback. Suggested donation $10.00.

• The
  Homosexual Agenda (Item Code: BH005)
  Think the homosexual movement is gaining ground on just a few isolated
  fronts? Think again. Paperback. Suggested donation $15.00.

• Why You
  Can’t Stay Silent (Item Code: BL148)
  How involved in the culture should Christians be? Discover why Christ
  calls you out of the church pew and into the world to make a difference. Hardcover. Suggested donation $18.00.

• Blessing
  Your Husband (Item Code: BL165)
  You love him, you live with him — but when was the last time you thought
  about blessing him? Hardcover. Suggested donation $19.00.

• Why Marriage Matters (Item Code: BP449)
  Are you finding it difficult to defend the benefits of marriage to your
  friends or struggling with the issue for yourself? Here’s help. Paperback. Suggested donation $14.00.

• Respect: A Marriage Essential I-II (Item Code: CD301)
  When a woman feels unloved, she reacts in ways that may seem disrespectful
  to her husband. And when a husband feels disrespected, he often reacts in
  ways that his wife perceives as unloving. This guest has a suggestion that
  can put an end to this cycle. Broadcast CD. Suggested donation $9.00.

• Marriage
  Collection II (Item Code: CD607)
  Fortify your marriage with insightful advice from this collection of
  popular broadcast CDs! 6 Broadcast CDs. Suggested donation $42.00.

• Is Marriage in Jeopardy Pack (Item Code: F00015T)
  Latter-day marriage confusion? This booklet delivers the truth — and
  nothing but the truth — about the same-sex marriage controversy.
  20 booklets. Suggested donation $6.00.

Addendum, April 1: Dobson’s history of the gay “movement” is severely butchered and off the mark by at least two decades. The Washington Post notes that the leftist sexual-social revolution died out among gays in the 1980s and early 1990s. For years, conservative gays across the nation have been demanding assimilation. With conservative and independent demand for marriage dominating gay activism, sexual and cultural revolutionaries whose ideals date from the 1970s say they are upset at being consigned to the fringe, and some are reconsidering whether they want to identify with the gay or queer labels anymore.

But as Steve Miller at IGF briefly indicates, the revolutionaries of 1969 did not launch gay equality as a political issue in the first place. That cause was launched decades earlier by gay assimilationists and moderates like Frank Kameny.

To oversimplify a complex situation: There have always been, arguably, at least two different gay movements — assimilationist and revolutionary — and I count additional, rival movements divided by conflicting religious, social, political, and sexual goals.

After a "lesbian identified" Methodist minister is acquitted in an official church trial, Exodus executive director Alan Chambers criticizes the church leadership before launching into a tirade against "liberal" churches as a class.

Chambers begins by accusing the Methodist jurors of honoring an imaginary manual of homosexual politics rather than the Bible, but he offers no quotations from the jurors to substantiate his ridicule.

Chambers then dictates that same-sex attraction ("homosexuality") is punishable by death, according to the Bible. So why doesn’t Chambers obey the Bible on this matter? Chambers does not answer this obvious question. Instead, he further asserts that even if the Bible were unclear about homosexuality, the book does not need to specify that an act or feeling is a sin in order for everyone to know it is a sin.

Chambers quotes II Timothy 3:16 out of context, apparently to justify an inerrantist view of the Bible. Based on this view, and despite the Biblical God’s frequent changes of heart and direction (often in response to prayer), Chambers dictates (again without elaboration) that God never, ever has a change of mind.

It is then that Chambers launches into an assault upon "liberal" churches as a class.

It is time for the liberal and passive social clubs that refer to themselves as Churches either change their inaccurate description of themselves or start truly reflecting and representing Christ’s absolute truth and grace. God will not be mocked, especially not to those who are dying and going to hell for lack of truth.

Had he thought more about the targets of his stereotypes, Chambers might have realized that his broad condemnation of liberal "social clubs" to hell happens to cut across the Roman Catholic Church, whose official social-justice policies are extremely liberal by his standards: Antiwar, antinuclear, antipoverty, anti-death-penalty, pro-welfare. Chambers’ sweeping verdict of damnation against liberal churches also covers some African-American denominations, the pacifist Anabaptist churches, countless foreign orthodox Christian churches that oppose U.S. conservative foreign policy, and all Jews.

In my past faith explorations, I have occasionally encountered some liberal churches that were lacking in various respects — no charisma, no enthusiasm, no extracurricular prayer, no support programs for the poor, the ill, the oppressed in their communities. But I also found conservative churches — often Southern Baptist or Assemblies of God — that lacked these very same characteristics. They were preoccupied with correctness and prosperity as representations of God’s favor. These particular churches were devoid, in my view, of the values of the Gospel.

One wonders about the source of Chambers’ stereotypes about "liberal" churches.

On Monday, Exodus applauded a Massachusetts constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage but permit civil unions.

Quite likely the Exodus leadership overlooked the whole civil-unions clause, or perhaps it was pressured overnight by its political partners, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, to take a tougher stand.

In any event, on Tuesday Exodus issued a revised opinion titled, “Massachusetts amendment still undermines marriage.” Exodus joins the religious right in calling the plainly worded compromise amendment “legislative trickery.”

Proclaiming “Beacon Hill not bullied by judicial tyranny,” Exodus International applauded the Massachusetts legislature’s approval Monday of a constitutional amendment that would ban marriage for gays and legalize civil unions instead.

The Family Research Council, however, accused the legislature of “blackmail” against the state’s voters for not giving them the option to vote on gay marriage and civil unions separately.

Michael Hamar points out one of John Aravosis’ sites, HateCrime.org, which compares the factoids used by Nazi German propagandists to justify discrimination against Jewish people, with the soundbites used today by Robert Knight (formerly of the Family Research Council, now with Concerned Women for America) to justify discrimination against gay people.

The comparison has been online for a few years, and I’m usually hesitant to draw connections between any political cause and the convenient bogeyman of Nazism. But I think the propaganda comparison is worth noting at the moment, since Exodus spokesman Randy Thomas recently associated gay equal rights with Nazism.

The comparison between CWFA/FRC language and pre-WWII Nazi language seems more substantive to me than the claims by Thomas and exgay activist Scott Lively that ultra-rightist Nazism derived its power from supposedly “liberal” homosexuality. But at the same time, I hope that groups like HateCrime.org will broaden their historical perspective.

The world suffered under many genocidal monsters during the 20th century: Cambodia’s Pol Pot, China’s Mao Xedong, Guatemala’s Rios Montt, the apartheid government of South Africa, and sub-Saharan despots. In the 21st century, new monsters are emerging: Islamic fundamentalists who espouse the slaughter of millions of people deemed politically and theologically incorrect.

Do some culture warriors inherit their beliefs and messages from monsters of the past? No doubt. But playing the Nazi card has limited utility in a modern world of diverse and complicated problems.

Village Voice writer Michael Musto accused an unnamed ex-gay activist of making overtures to him, when both happened to be in the green room for a taping of Geraldo Rivera’s show. (Thanks to Jim Barber for the link.)

Actually, Musto didn’t exactly use the word “overture.” What he did say isn’t printable in a family-values blog such as XGW.

Who was this ex-gay activist? The only ex-gay that I find among Geraldo’s recent guests is Stephen Bennett. However, there could have been others.

The creepy-crawly, somewhat dubious scenario painted by Musto reminds me of my own unsettling invitation onto Geraldo’s show. A decade ago, a Geraldo producer wanted me to tell the nation that an experimental vaccine had ruined my health.

While the thought of becoming famous for five minutes was tempting, I told Geraldo’s front man that my health was fine, thank you, and declined the invitation.

Perhaps Stephen Bennett should have done the same thing.

The Exodus media blog yesterday promoted a WorldNetDaily item categorically accusing gay parents, who seek marriage to protect their kids, of promoting incest.

Exodus claims that it does not endorse the items on its blog. The purpose of a media blog, after all, is (sometimes) to cover the media without comment. But as I have said before, impartiality is undermined in Exodus’ case by the extreme selectivity of the blog’s sources.

Exodus appears to spend at least an hour or two per day excerpting angry and ill-informed articles from antigay movement sources such as WND, AgapePress, Baptist Press, and ex-gay activists such as Stephen Bennett. Unlike mainstream Christian news media, these sources are better known for their omission of key facts from stories, and for pontification against those who do not share the source’s political or denominational ideology.

After collecting excerpts, Exodus publishes them without any constructive feedback. Exodus blog readers are left to conclude, if nothing else, that Exodus considers its excerpts to be accurate.

Now compare Exodus’ favorable treatment of antigay propaganda to its treatment of mainstream news media articles. Exodus doesn’t link to gay-tolerant or gay-affirming media voices at all, and it is selective in its choice of mainstream media articles: The Exodus media blog offers no excerpts from any of the dozens of mainstream news articles each week that report on school harassment, workplace discrimination, or violence.

In other words, Exodus misleads its blog readers to believe that harassment, discrimination and violence are not happening.

As it happens, Nancy Brown, the contributor of the incest post, has a vested and emotional investment in the issue of parenting: She operates an exgay web site that tells heterosexual parents they are to blame for their children’s homosexuality.

I’m mainly noting this for future reference.

Lynn at Noli Irritare Leones remembers attending a San Francisco gay parade decades ago.

NAMBLA isn’t welcome among gays now — and it wasn’t then, either.

Jody at Naked Writing is looking for people who have been in the ex-gay movement.

He is writing an article about the movement for a young men’s magazine and would like to hear from people with first-hand experience in ex-gay groups or therapy.

If you think you might qualify, visit Naked Writing and contact Jody.

Jeanne D’Arc of Body and Soul remembers Archbishop Romero, who was an outspoken advocate for El Salvador’s population. He risked (and lost) his life defending human dignity and justice at a time when thousands of liberal Salvadorans were being slaughtered by an anticommunist Salvadoran government receiving heavy military and financial support from the U.S. government under presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Some key leaders of the U.S. religious right aggressively promoted the undemocratic Salvadoran government, that nation’s far-right Arena Party, the contra terrorists in Nicaragua, and the genocidal Rios Montt in Guatemala because of their "anticommunism" and "patriotism" — both of which, arguably, can become religions unto themselves when misused.

This advocacy occurred even as the Central American regimes raped Catholic nuns; assassinated liberal mayors, labor organizers, and teachers; and mowed down whole households and neighborhoods deemed "liberal."

Among the religious-right supporters of anticommunist terror in Central America were Jesse Helms, Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye and future "Left Behind" author Tim LaHaye. I was on CWFA’s mailing list in the early 1980s when I was trying to become active in pro-life activities at my college.

As I read CWFA propaganda, and listened to my pro-life classmates’ stubborn dismissals of human rights as a concern, it didn’t take long for me to become disenchanted with the religious right. Beyond its pro-life veneer, I began to see that leaders of the religious-right political movement formed arrogant proclamations and alliances with intentional and persistent ignorance of key facts. The movement then acted with callous disregard for the lethal consequences. (Do the movement’s tactics back then sound familiar today?)

Addendum: Body and Soul is receiving useful comments and links in response to the tribute to Romero, including this link to a 2001 Commonweal article. The article explores U.S. Ambassador Robert White’s encounter with murdered nuns, and his subsequent change of heart toward U.S. policy (especially toward Reagan and the far right), as the murder and mayhem escalated in 1980-81.