Ex-Gay Watch

I just stumbled across a story in today’s New York Daily News. The bottom line:

Even in “liberal” school systems like New York’s, teen-age students are being denied access to websites about gay and lesbian youth issues. And educators are failing to discipline antigay bullies, because of ambivalence, fear of job loss, or embarrassment from being associated in any fashion with homosexuality.

After 12 days of silence about the subject, Exodus president Alan Chambers on Sept. 24 criticized Jimmy Swaggart’s Sept. 12 death threat against gay people.

The emphatically antifeminist Chambers borrows (strangely enough) from the same line of thought as profeminist Christian blogger Hugo Schwyzer, questioning Swaggart’s masculinity:

It never ceases to amaze me how insecure some men are with their own manhood and masculinity that being the object of same sex attraction threatens and frightens them to the point that they would consider murder. Unnatural as same-sex attraction is, it is as repulsive to God as every other sin and just as forgivable.

As the President of the world’s leading outreach to those affected by unwanted homosexuality and a key educational resource for the church at large, I am thankful that Rev. Swaggart’s message of hate is now more the exception than the rule in Christendom. I believe that the years of irrational anger and hatred for the same-sex attracted is coming to an end within the Body of Christ. I am proud that ministries like Focus on the Family through their Love Won Out Conference and Exodus International have helped make a life changing difference in the Church.

One antigay evangelist’s death threat and non-apology becomes fodder for two religious-right groups’ self-promotion.

Lemonade from lemons?

Does anyone else wonder whether the Democratic Party leadership might — through intent or apathy — be forfeiting the presidential election?

Kerry/Edwards have offered no details about his plans to:

• repair the Bush foreign-policy catastrophe;
• wage the war in Iraq differently;
• improve our nonexistent port security;
• prevent nuclear terrorism and proliferation;
• utilize our European allies, who happen to have almost no armed forces;
• slash the Bush deficit without slashing spending and Social Security; or
• fix the broken and corrupt election systems in Florida and other states.

The Dems are airing no ads in several contested states. They are not defending Kerry’s Senate record or his once-strong positions on human rights and war crimes. They are not asking Americans whether they want Vice President Cheney in power with or without Bush acting as figurehead.

Like the GOP, the Dems hide behind buzzwords while offering no constructive plan for the nation.

Discuss this or other topics.

I Read You Loud and Queer!
by Joe Kort, MSW

Coming out is a very hard thing to do. National Coming Out Day is October 11, 2005. When you come out, or when you did, are you are turtle or a hailstorm? Coming out is a relational experience, in that to come out to other people, you need to be involved. You must feel closely attached to those you tell. Safety is of utter importance, without which we’ll use our instinctive defenses to protect ourselves. The closer you are to someone the more you will either turtle or hailstorm. I believe that most people involved with ex-gay organizations and choose to deny their own homosexuality are turtles.
Read more…

Eugene Volokh (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars) challenges the myth that liberals are moral relativists while conservatives are paragons of moral absolutism.

Some exgay political activists like Prof. Warren Throckmorton accuse the nation’s schools of promoting “homosexuality.” They imply, usually without evidence, that pro-tolerance advocacy in education comes from political activists, not from the struggling students, their parents, and a few concerned faculty. (Here are past examples at XGW of the exgay battle against tolerance in schools.)

A Sept. 25 article in The Washington Post challenges the religious-right claims, promoted further by Exodus and its media blog, that same-sex-attracted students are tolerated in middle America; that violence is virtually nonexistent; and that antigay students are oppressed.
Read more…

Speaking for Exodus, exgay activist Nancy Brown scolds gay people today for wanting the same things that heterosexuals take for granted: marriages, kids, trustworthiness, jobs, scholarships, and notoriety on TV.

And she wags her finger at Atlanta activists for announcing a Boycott for Equality to achieve what Brown relabels “elitism.”

Brown rhetorically asks, “Are heterosexual persons really offered these same advantages based on the fact that they are not gay?”

Actually, yes, they are. If she had one to spare, would Brown offer a job, an orphaned kid, or a scholarship to a homosexual? Of course not. Surely Brown would not consider a scholarship for Jewish, Buddhist or married students “elitist”? Sadly, it appears that Brown believes homosexuals are inherently elitist, facts notwithstanding.

A footnote: The Boycott for Equality has been criticized as impractical and unfocused by some gay rights advocates. Brown overlooks this diversity of opinion among activists, and neglects to explain how the opposing fronts can both qualify as elitist.

Aggrieved-relatives group PFOX has launched an exgay billboard on Interstate 64 near Richmond, Va.

The billboard, an enlarged and repurposed version of its 2003 Washington, D.C., subway ad, declares that “Ex-Gays prove that change is possible.”
Read more…

Read Chuck Colson’s article at Christianity Today.

(Updated Oct. 18, 2004 to reflect Gary Glenn’s assignment of blame for uncorrected factual errors in the AgapePress article.)

From the religious-right propaganda service, AgapePress:

A Michigan pro-family activist says the single best way of preventing the spread of the virus that causes AIDS is to help get men to leave the lifestyle that accounts for most new cases of the disease. Thousands of AIDS activists recently held a “walk-a-thon” in Detroit, aimed at raising money supposedly to find a cure for the disease. Gary Glenn, president of the American Family of Michigan, sponsored the flying of a banner over the event promoting an “ex-gay” ministry website. The banner read: “Jesus Christ … HopeForHomosexuals.com.” According to Glenn, the statistics do not lie — sex between men is still the leading cause of HIV infections. He says, “Given that homosexual activity among men remains the single biggest cause of AIDS infection in the Detroit metro area and throughout the state of Michigan, the single most effective step we can take to stop the transmission of AIDS is to help men involved in that lifestyle escape it — get free of it.” It is not hateful, the pro-family activist adds, to offer someone a way out of a lifestyle that accounts for 61 percent of the new AIDS cases in the Detroit area. [Emphasis is XGW's.]

AgapePress mocks a fund-raiser for medical treatments and cures for AIDS and misquotes Glenn’s AIDS statistics — or it is a misquote? In the comments below, Gary Glenn seems to say AgapePress misread statistics in his press release. If that’s the case, then why has no correction been issued?

The facts about HIV infection in Detroit were not difficult for XGW to find:

According to the Michigan Department of Community Health (PDF report), men who have sex with men (including gay, bisexual, “Down Low,” closeted, experimenting, and exgay men) accounted for 44 percent of new cases in 2002, and that percentage was declining steadily.

Other health news: Focus on the Family protests efforts to include the topic of sexual orientation in Massachusetts sex-education classes. Lacking a sensational incident to motivate readers, Focus invents one by implying that kindergartners are to be given lessons in gay sex techniques.