Ex-Gay Watch

In late June, web site and the Gay Spirituality blog, Michigan psychotherapist Joe Kort offered his own lengthy clinical and personal assessment of reparative therapies.

Kort disputes 10 “myths” generally promoted by reparative therapists. While ex-gay programs differ, I think each program is likely to promote at least some of these myths. Most glaringly, the programs avoid the obvious reality that vast numbers of heterosexual youth suffer from the alleged causes of homosexuality — parental absence and sexual abuse — without turning gay.

Addendum: In May, Joe Kort discussed his personal and professional journey with Psychotherapy Networker.

Kort’s story is a winding road from struggling same-sex-attracted college student; through ex-gay therapy, which negatively impacted him and his parents; onward through a futile effort to re-closet himself; his initial struggles working with gay client-patients; and his efforts to overcome professionals’ opposition to gay-affirmative therapy.

Here is activist/author Wayne Besen’s press release.
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Responding to an e-mail defending the subordination of women, Andrew Sullivan writes:

The strength to be subordinate! And this comes from a religious tradition that began with a man who defied almost every social convention of his time and treated women — even single women — as his equals; who never married and broke up the families and marriages of his disciples; who told his own parents as a teenager that they had no final control over him; and whose best friends were a single woman and a single man who is described in the Gospels as resting his head on Jesus’ breast in an act of profound intimacy. How you get the subordination of women and the persecution of homosexuals from all that is beyond me.

The exchange brings succinct clarity to a key difference between Christ-centered Christianity, and the political ideology practiced by Focus on the Family and its allies — including a recent Bush administration judicial nominee.

Exodus announces the second ex-gay ad, published today in the L.A. Times. (Here’s other XGW coverage of the Exodus ads.)
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• Dalai Banana discusses the allure of spiritual regression (OK, this is my own spin) — the temptation to limit oneself to an immature, beginner-level spirituality that sells trite answers to life’s questions. In time, some people discover the answers were inconsistent or factually, historically or scientifically erroneous, or they find that the wrong questions were being asked to begin with. Their faith matures. Those who don’t mature — who continue to use their faith as a crutch to justify their own prejudices — become embarrassments and political liabilities to their respective religions.
• The liberal Catholic blog In Today’s News reacts, in part, to XGW’s discussion of fluidity with a discussion of bisexuality. In a separate entry, ITN offers advice to the GOP for saving marriage:
  

  If you want to protect heterosexual marriage, focus energy on improving health care and education, increasing wages for working Americans so that one partner can actually support a family, preventing divorce, and eliminating financial tax burdens on married couples by taxing corporations instead.

  The antigay MarriageWatch site at Catholic University of America tracks states with DOMA laws and constitutional amendments.

• Ex-ex-gay Scott Cruse offers a simple commentary on Ex-Gay Theoretical Theology (as opposed to practical theology).
  

  Moving on to the ex-gay question, the theoreticians tell us that homosexuals can’t be Christians, that homosexual sex is an abomination, or that God will cure us if we really want Him to and have enough faith.

  By the way, those last three words are a sure sign you’re dealing with theoretical theology. That’s the escape hatch.

• Just months after gaining a presence in the NEA, Jeralee Smith, head of the Ex-Gay Educators Caucus, says “We’re asking NEA to disengage from all organizations that contribute to a sexual environment.” What an odd request. Does Smith intend the NEA to disengage from her own organization? Whatever the answer, the ex-gay lobbyists would like the public to know that they’re tolerant:
  

  “If you’re happy being gay, that’s fine,” said Elaine Berk, co-director of JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality) and an exhibitor at the ex-gay caucus booth.

  “We deal with people who are unhappy being gay,” said Berk.

  However, JONAH and its partners in the ex-gay PATH coalition are already on record supporting legal harassment against gay-tolerant educators, employers, and media.

• When Jeralee Smith of the ex-gay caucus isn’t asking the NEA to kick out sex-issue groups like her own, she has reportedly been using the caucus soapbox to wage a smear campaign against Kevin Jennings of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. According to The Washington Times, Smith and antigay NEA colleague Diane Lenning accused Jennings of protecting the confidentiality of a distraught teenager in 1988 who reported being involved sexually with an adult. According to the Times, the NEA Republican educators caucus reacted to the smear campaign by firing Lenning as its chairwoman.
• Evangelicals Concerned profiles British ex-ex-gay Christian counselor Jeremy Marks, who will speak July 24 in Pasadena, Calif.
• The libertarian Gay American reviews one of Focus on the Family’s “Eleven Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage.”
• Dispatches from the Culture Wars analyzes “contradictory claims from the Right on separation of church and state.”
• Exodus spokesman Randy Thomas does his periodic smear against mutual tolerance. Instead of noting Swedish censorship of antigay Christians and calling it intolerant, he blasts tolerance per se.
• New on DVD: The 1993 documentary One Nation Under God about the ex-gay movement and ex-ex-gays.
• Jason Kuznicki assesses an article by Johann Hari about alleged connections between fascism and homosexuality.

Bit by bit, I’m updating old sections of the site.

Here are updated entries and their revision dates:

July 20, 2004
Exgay Darryl L. Foster on Exgay Politics

I figured I’d dig around for a little background info on Cincinnati Ohio, where Exodus published a full-page ad in the Cincinnati Enquirer on Thursday.
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Exodus International has launched an ad campaign starting with a full page in the Cincinnati Enquirer. Headlined, “I Questioned Homosexuality,” its theme is also reflected in a new entry page to the Exodus website titled “Question Homosexuality… Change is possible. Discover how.”

To their credit, the graphic layout and copy are lean and fresh.
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I really appreciate the depth and range of insights coming through the comments on the flexibility and fluidity post. For those who follow new posts via the RSS feed, or haven’t had a chance to follow the comments, here is a synopsis.
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A good discussion has ensued under the Gay Story With an Ex-Gay Theme post. I want to continue that with my thoughts on the flexibility or fluidity of sexual orientation.

Kinsey may have put orientation on a single scale from gay to straight, but I’m more inclined to think there are at least two relevant scales. The second one is the fluidity/flexibility scale.

While we find it most fitting to describe our baseline as gay, straight, or in between, the tendency to flex and bend also has a baseline and may shift at times over the course of a lifetime. There are probably a sizable percentage with little or no flexibility, some with moderate flexibility or phases in which fluidity spikes for a while, and a few with a lot of it.
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