Ex-Gay Watch

Bishop Yvette Flunder of the United Church of Christ finds hateful rhetoric, redefined “moral values,” fear, intolerance, exclusion, racism, sexual bigotry, zeal for war, and anti-Islamic prejudice growing among the leadership of America’s “official” Christian churches.

Flunder contrasts this fraud with the peacemaking, poverty reduction, and bridge-building done by “real” Christians.

From numerous other blogs:

Liberal columnist Jennifer Barnett Reed of the Arkansas Times demands the return of her Christian faith, stolen by amoral, greedy, hypocritical, and idolatrous forces within the religious right.

Well done. Reed’s commentary methodically spells out examples of the political religious right’s apostasy.

United Church of Christ seminarian Chuck Currie links to this Washington Times story about Trinity Christian Academy in Texas. The Academy apparently admits political idolaters and white-collar thieves from the religious right, but kicks out a top student and varsity athlete for being honest about his sexual orientation and for supporting other students who are honest about theirs.

Last week I discussed the Exodus media blog’s distortion of hate-crimes statistics — and its unapologetic republication of violent threats against gay people.

On Friday, Exodus blogger Nancy Brown — speaking for the organization on its main web site — once again distorted FBI hate-crimes statistics.

Brown jumbles the hate-crimes data, throwing physical assaults, robbery, vandalism, and death threats into the same category as mild insults and “a friendly pat on the back,” as if to dismiss the entire subject of antigay violence. She argues that such crimes are innocent or "at worst" non-violent — and therefore, it stands to reason, not worthy of prosecution.

Instead of blaming perpetrators for antigay violence and hate, Brown claims that the hate “is from the victim toward himself.” Without clinical substantiation, Exodus blames the resulting pain of a hate crime not on the physical and emotional assault, but on “psychological re-enforcement of the underlying belief I had that I was not worthy.”

With this sort of quackery, Brown exonerates perpetrators of all but the most brutal assaults and murders. Speaking for Exodus, Brown does not merely oppose hate crime laws that enhance the penalties of existing laws. Exodus also disputes the notion that violence is, in fact, "violence." Coincidentally, this dispute arises when the victims — especially students — happen to be gay. 

Brown argues that “for centuries others have experienced those same insults, rejections and slurs without resolution, intervention or de-constructing our constitution and way of life.” This is, of course, false. And even if it were true, Brown’s suggestion that crime victims might simply grin and bear the pain is morally offensive.

Laws were passed in the United States and Europe to halt defamation, discrimination and hate crimes based on race and religion. Canada and some European nations went further, passing measures enforcing civility in public discourse and declaring some extremist groups illegal. Does Brown resent that gay people now seek equal coverage under modest U.S. laws? Or does she long for a white Protestant lifestyle of decades past, before laws against racism and anti-Semitism were enacted? This remains unclear.

Brown asserts, “We cannot build special housing, special schools, special resorts, special restaurants etc. etc. etc. for each sub group of society.” But every sizable ethnic and religious group in America has already built these. Jewish-run retirement homes, fundamentalist schools, hetero-only resorts, Ethiopian restaurants, African-American holidays. The U.S. Constitution permits groups the freedom to associate for the benefit of their members and the preservation of their culture. Brown sloppily lashes out against these groups, as if to oppose any group of Americans that does not conform its housing, schools and resorts to her own cultural bias.

I haven’t had time this week to go back to the actual FBI data and discuss the actual counts of murders and violent assaults that Brown repeatedly distorts and buries.

I welcome others to do the research and comment here.

BigFib reports that People Can Change has launched two websites:

MostPeopleChangeBack.com

and

ChristiansCanChange.com

I wish! The world could use some exgay activists who are broad-minded and honest enough to launch such sites.

Sfweekly.com lampoons a trio of Northern California ex-gay ministries.

One group helps parents reinforce their own stereotypes about “the gay lifestyle” that they imagine their adult children to be living. Group leader Carol has no qualifications in counseling or medicine, so it’s no surprise when the parental support talk runs amok. The parents condemn their children to hell, outright. They imagine their children to be pedophiles. They collectively reinforce their own namecalling — lobbing exactly the sorts of insults and stereotypes about their children that, Carol claims, cause homosexuality: “People call them sissy-boy or queer or fag, and they begin to believe that.”  A bizarre sort of demon envy is evident, as the parents mistakenly attribute more power and influence to Satan than to God Almighty.

Like PFOX, this parents’ group seems never to have met honest, less-than-cured exgays. Is this because these parents barricade themselves within an artificial world of stereotypes, or is it because exgay advocates make no effort to set antigay parents’ groups straight?

“Jose,” the next profiled exgay advocate, is a bit more grounded in reality than the parents. He is honest than change of sexual attraction is a slow process — but dishonest, perhaps, in failing to acknowledge that significant change, if it happens at all, rarely lasts long. What Jose seems to advocate is not healthy, sexually aware celibacy, but rather asexuality — a denial or suppression of all sexual attraction.

Whereas Jose sees the exgay lifestyle as a journey into asexuality, the sfweekly.com article portrays a third profiled ministry as a warrior cult. These warriors invent the vice of “cannibalism” when a healthy, unaddicted gay person offers no tangible vices to blame on homosexuality. The warriors also, allegedly, accuse all men of wanting lust, not intimacy. Naturally, this belief raises troubling questions about the warriors themselves:

If this were true of men, then aren’t the exgay warriors condemned to a life of lust? Is it really wise for women to marry lust addicts? And might these exgay warriors really be the “man-hating feminists” popularized by their own conservative mythology?

The sfweekly.com article doesn’t explore questions as deeply as I’d like. It identifies none of the exgay advocates or groups, so most of its observations are unverifiable. Furthermore, the writer’s disguises and deceptions steer the story in some intentionally extreme directions.

As it happens, the third ministry’s slogan easily identifies the group, via Google, as New Hope Ministries. The article might have benefited from a look at NHM’s history: It was founded by two of the exgay movement’s grandparents, Frank and Anita Worthen.

The damage allegedly done by the Worthens to former exgay clients is profiled in Wayne Besen’s book, Anything But Straight.

(Hat tip: Dan Gonzales)

Based on a single unidentified survey, writer David Klinghoffer helps Christianity Today redefine “secularist” as irreligious and unethical.

Secularism, as I see it, is a separation of church and state that acts as religious Americans’ single strongest shield against one religious sect or denomination using government to suppress all other faiths — as well as science. Secularism is not a religion. It is a defense of religions — more specifically, a defense of religious expression that differs from that of one’s neighbor. It is a defense of each individual person or group’s relationship with God.

Secularism, as the self-deluded religious right sees it, is atheism. It is evolution. It is reason. It is honest moral disagreement and ambiguity. It is an admission of the faint possibility that one’s own faith, while perhaps better for me than my neighbor’s faith would be, is neither perfect nor absolute.

More on secularism and American liberty from…

Jason Kuznicki
Jon Rowe
Steve Sanders

I have installed an interesting blog client for Windows — BlogJet. Let’s give it a whirl….

The Christmas message reprinted below is directed at the leadership of the Anglican Communion. But it is perhaps even more applicable to the U.S. exgay movement.

While some Anglican leaders have at least acknowledged that hate speech sometimes leads to hate crimes, neither Exodus nor numerous independent exgay activists have acknowledged this.

Exodus continues to resort to antigay church leaders’ rhetoric — unsupported by mainstream science — that gay people are, with little or no exception, mentally defective. In its press releases, Exodus is silent about antigay violence. The "crimes" section" of Exodus’ media blog largely denies that some crimes are rooted in antigay hate, and instead reports wrongs committed by gay people.

In June, Exodus reprinted letters to CNSNews.com that denied the existence of hate crimes and simultaneously defended violence against homosexuals. Instead of criticizing the letter writers, Exodus blogger Nancy Brown conceals FBI statistics showing high numbers of violent antigay assaults, shifting reader attention instead to her own defense of verbal intimidation. Having hidden the number of assaults, Brown cites an out-of-context factoid from a report on domestic violence and argues:

"Sadly, it seems likely that the gay community is itself the worst perpetrator of crimes against homosexuals."

Brown neglects to cite readily available statistics on heterosexual domestic violence.

Exodus’ apparent intent from all that: Insinuate that same-sex sexual orientation causes crime. Through its silence and its evasions, Exodus effectively denies that antigay hate crimes recorded by the FBI and local authorities even qualify as a discussion topic.

Meanwhile, Focus on the Family recently relies upon a single, discredited ABC story to argue that 1) Matthew Shepard’s murder was not antigay, and 2) therefore, NBC’s Katie Couric should be misquoted and smeared for asking an obvious interview question: Does the religious right’s antigay rhetoric fuel violence against gay people?

While we frequently challenge exgay leaders to rectify their distortions of science, redress their therapeutic failures, and halt their efforts at discrimination and criminalization, we must remember that hate speech and hate crimes represent a very real matter of morality and the value of human life.

Just as antigay Anglicans are held accountable for their actions or negligence, it’s appropriate to hold Exodus-affiliated exgays accountable.

Gay-tolerant and gay-affirming mail to the Exodus national office is either misquoted or ignored. Perhaps it is time to consider politely asking Exodus-affiliated local ministries how they ethically justify paying annual fees to the national office.

– Mike

An Open Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury
from the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement

Your Advent letter to the Primates of the Anglican Communion is indeed accurate when it says that many homosexuals feel there is no good news for them in the Church. As an organisation devoted to bringing Christ to the homosexual community the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement can testify to the profound rejection Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered people continue to experience within the Church.

You are also right to draw attention to the violent and sometimes deadly consequences to homosexual people of Church leaders calling us, for example: "animals"; "lower than dogs" and "subhuman" or suggest that we are mentally defective.

We have not heard, so far, any hint of an apology for our hurt feelings, yet alone any sense of repentance for the torture, suicide and murder that are the consequences of these dehumanising words. But it is not only words that kill, silence can be equally as deadly. Where is the voice of the Archbishop of the West Indies, Most Revd Drexel Gomes when many songs within the popular culture of his Province call for the murder of homosexuals?

Indeed, where are the words of apology and signs of repentance from the whole Church for the bonfires, fed by Christian zeal, which consumed our living bodies for so many centuries? Perhaps Church leaders who quote part of Leviticus 20:13 in their attack on homosexual people still believe in the justice of the punishment called for there: "They shall be put to death.".

The diminishing of homosexual people and denial of their human rights is not something practised by others; your own Church in Britain worked hard to see homosexual people denied the equal protection of the law very recently. The Church’s intervention was successful and now faith communities may uniquely deny us equal treatment in employment. You must see that such actions too give oxygen to the hate- filled minds of those who would hurt and kill us.

Homosexual people continue to be deeply offended by the actions of many parts of the Communion where our existence is not even acknowledged, where our voices are strangled before we can be heard or seen as part of the family of God brought into being by the Word. It was once the same here, we were forced by law and social convention into invisibility, we ache for the suffering of our brothers and sisters in the world who are still silent and unseen, and even worse, forced by convention to condemn and persecute their own.

This is a burden often too heavy for them to bear, and we know well the reproaches they suffer. We wonder if the present atmosphere of fierce rejection will ever pass so they may learn to speak with confidence, or if they will, even then, find a Church willing to listen.

The rape and murder of Fannyann Eddy, founder of the Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Association and a lesbian rights activist across Africa, in Sierra Leone on 29 September 2004 , reminds us of the consequences when different faith communities often compete with each other in their open hatred of homosexual people as a sign of their "political correctness". We also want to avoid the development of competing branches of Christianity based on who "hates fags" most.

You are right to point out that even in countries where there are no legal penalties against homosexuality the problems can be immense, as in the Brazilian province of Bahia where over a three year period some 200 people were murdered in homophobic assassinations.

You appeal for careful consideration and thoughtful prayer in this present crisis which the Windsor Report seeks to address. But why are we here?

For thirty years American Anglicans have made clear their intentions. Lambeth Conferences in 1978, 1988 and 1998 called for dialogue and the willingness to listen to lesbian and gay Christians. It is because of the failure of the Communion to enter into any serious and meaningful discussions that we have arrived at this potential parting of the ways. You have become party to this profoundly flawed process, devised in particular by your predecessor, and the other Primates who have failed the Communion and brought us, thereby, to this perilous place.

Like many Anglicans we have welcomed the facilitative developments arising from our Covenants with our ecumenical partners; we rejoice in the diversity and inclusiveness that these have embraced. Among the Porvoo Churches there are those who see no problem with homosexuality and who are at a loss to understand our current crisis, while some Old Catholic dioceses have authorised liturgies for same-sex blessings.

But the process which has thrown up the idea for a Covenant between Anglican Churches might well appear anything other than facilitative or embracing of difference to many Provinces, and particularly to lesbian and gay Anglicans.

There is reasonable concern that the call for such a Covenant at this time has elements of duress and coercion that do not speak of the "appropriate commitments which we can freely and honestly make with one another".

Twenty years ago when your former Province of Wales was considering the moves of some Provinces towards the ordination of women, it sought the advice and aid of the Instruments of Unity. It received a ‘chilly response’ to its suggestions that such changes should be achieved by Communion-wide consensus. We have seen the ordination of women, changes in marriage discipline and changes in the liturgy; all decided within the competency of the local Church without any call for a limit to "autonomy" or threat as to how these might fail in "honouring the gift" of the many links, both formal and informal, that unite us.

It seems to many that the present threat of schism is much to do with what has gone before, and that the Church has decided to "delay justice" for its Lesbian and Gay members in order to preserve a Church that is already straining over the diversity that has developed hitherto. There is a clear implication that we are being asked to "wait a while" as the Anglican Church settles to these earlier changes, with the promise of justice in the future.

There are many amongst us who, in the short or medium term, would gladly relinquish such fripperies as the wearing of a mitre if freedom from tyranny for the majority of LGBT people in our world were the prize, or even for the promise of making that struggle for justice a top priority for the Anglican Communion. But others see justice delayed as no justice at all, and are not convinced that the Communion has any real or lasting concern for the plight of its lesbian and gay members beyond your tenure of office.

Yet while we do not wish to see the sacrifice of the inclusiveness of those Provinces which have embraced fully their baptised lesbian and gay members, and opened all the doors of God’s service to them, neither do we wish to be separated from the Provinces where our brothers and sisters in Christ are still forced to silence and deception for survival.

We too find ourselves between a rock and a hard place.

You say that "staying together as a Communion is bound to be costly for us all" and we see that it has already been costly to you in terms of your conscience and integrity. Your change of heart over the ordination of Jeffrey John to the episcopate must have come at enormous personal pain, as well as the loss of goodwill and support of many who initially welcomed your arrival at Canterbury.

Unity alone would not be a price many LGBT Anglicans would be willing to pay for retreating back into their silent ghetto, no matter how temporary we felt that might be. We have already paid a costly price over the centuries in our service of the Lord, and we are not convinced that the present cost would be born evenly. We look with sadness at the refusal of some Christians to remove their so called ‘missionary presence’ from an illegal intrusion into other legitimately constituted Dioceses, and maintain their unfettered demonising homophobic stance.

Lesbian and Gay Christians feel a deep sense of repentance, not for what has happened to Gene Robinson in New Hampshire, but for their silent and sometimes active complicity in the past and continuing persecution of their kind by the Church. We will not be party to any plan that denies or delays unduly our full inclusion in Christ’s Church. Do not ask us, too much blood has been spilled already.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Kirker (Revd)
General Secretary