Ex-Gay Watch

The following quotes are from an article about a Focus on the Family forum where an Indiana congressman discussed how religion should influence public policy.

The Indiana Family Institute, a nonprofit with close ties to Focus on the Family, invited pastors to discuss how they might move Indiana down from its rank as No. 13 on the list of states with the most divorces.

and

Rep. John Hostettler told area clergy that divorce on demand is as dangerous as gay marriage, and pastors’ actions will be key to strengthening all Indiana families.

and

“If we don’t stand for God’s principles in our society, who will?” asked the Rev. Paul DeHart of the Newburgh Church of Christ. “What God has given us is the gift of democracy.”

and

“Christians make the best citizens because we don’t answer just to local magistrates,” DeHart said.

Those magistrates – and all public officials – are ordained deacons of God, Hostettler said. He cited the specific reference to civil government in the Bible, and extended the ordination to leaders of all backgrounds.

That diversity, however, should not limit the role faith plays in American public life, Hostettler said.

“A pluralistic society is one where all belief systems are present,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean all value systems are equal.”

It seems to me that at least in Indiana that once gay marriage is banned that divorce is next on the list.

The opening shots have been fired by both sides in the battle over a proposed amendment to the Texas state Constitution that would bar same-sex marriage, and the targets are thousands of voters.

Governor Rick Perry spammed the internet this week, sending out emails to 10,000 Texans asking for their support for the amendment.

In turn, an anti-amendment group sent out 10,000 mailers, stuffing the mailboxes of Democrats accusing Perry and his fellow Republicans of attacking gay and lesbian families. [*]

WOW! Look at that complete 180 in tone! Things like this would be why 365gay.com remains so irrelevant in current gay culture. Disgraceful, shameless and biased media outlets are by no means limited to the theocratic right.

Kodak wants to make transgender employees comfortable by giving them their own bathroom. Mara Keisling is with the National Center for Transgender Equality. She commends Kodak for helping America get over its fears.

“For some reason Americans don’t like to be in bathrooms with people who are different than them. And we always get past it with a particular group and then we find another group.”

She thinks gender neutral bathrooms will keep transgender people from being harassed. Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America is not as ready to praise Kodak and others for their concern.

“If companies want to add bathrooms to accommodate these demands it’s their business, but it isn’t an act of compassion. It’s an act of co-dependence.” [*]

Wait just a second…

Robert Knight -> [male]

CWFA -> [female]

So, speaking of gender confusion…

Oh come on people we’ve all wondered why a man is always representing a group with “women” in the name. Now seemed as good of a time as any to poke fun at the obvious. But in the words of Mike Airhart, exgays have no sense of humor so I’m sure I’ll get smack for this.

Moving to a serious note, please note how Knight offers no substantiation for his claims.

Isn’t it cute when dominionists normally preoccupied with us queers attempt these even more irrational forays into attacking trans folk.

In case you didn’t hear Pat Roberton’s moronic comments about Hugo Chavez:

You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don’t think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United … This is in our sphere of influence, so we can’t let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly.

Excuse me? We can pick and choose which doctrines we’re going to use to justify our actions? That sounds an awful lot like RELATIVISM.

And exactly which doctrine says we can oust foreign leaders if we’re not getting our fix of oil?

I’m coining a new term in the war of semantics, Pat Robertson is a “pick and choose absolutist.”

Once again, pick and choose absolutist. Use it around at least five of your progressive friends today.

This entry has been revised to respect the request of the respondent from the Urban Institute. The individual responding thinks it best for the authors of the Atlas to speak for themselves. When I hear from them, I will (with their permission) post their response. I believe the general meaning of the post remains the same.

In an article last week called Homosexual groups pursue minorities, the Washington Times stated “Roughly 4 million homosexual adults live in the U.S., according to the Gay and Lesbian Atlas, compiled by the Urban Institute in the District.”

This quote seemed a little low, considering that exit polls from the 2004 election estimated about 4 million gay voters based on participants willing to self-identify as gay to pollsters. And I’m fairly sure that not every gay person voted, unfortunately.

So I emailed the Urban Institute and they indicated that the actual wording from the Atlas is:

“Assuming no undercount, census figures imply that nearly 4 million Americans are gay or lesbian, or about 2 percent of all adults…”

The Times conveniently decided to eliminate the part about “assuming no undercount”. As several chapters went into the explanation of how the estimates were made and suggesting that the figure WAS undercounted, this is no small ommission.

It should not be surprising that the Washington Times misquoted the Atlas. This is the newspaper that never reports on gays without a negative slant.

The Times is also one of the last newspapers to regularly use “homosexual” instead of “gay” even when the usage changes the meaning. For example, in the article they also have the sentence: “Dyana Mason, the executive director of Equality Virginia, begins each summer with two road trips: one to the District for the black homosexual-pride celebration in May…” I think it’s a fair assumption that there isn’t anything called “homosexual-pride,” either black or otherwise. Later they discuss a “homosexual rights advocate” without stopping to consider that there probably aren’t many people advocating something called “homosexual rights”.

However, to deliberately misquote a source to mean something nearly the opposite of what was said goes beyond bad journalism and becomes propaganda.

Now that the Times has printed this “statistic,” we can soon expect to hear something that goes like this:

There are 291 million US residents and even the homosexual activist only claim 4 million homosexual, so only about 1.4% of the population is homosexual

They will conveniently ignore that the 4 million is out of the adult population, that the Urban Institute is not a homosexual activist organization, and that the 4 million number is vastly understated.

There’s some buzz going about on the right about a death threat being put out against exgay activist James Hartline. Red State forwards this quote:

“The moment was never riper for the San Diego (LGBT) community to push for the elimination and suppression of the James Hartline’s (sic) of the world. We currently have an openly lesbian (interim) mayor of San Diego and an openly gay mayor of Chula Vista; PEOPLE….WE are in POWER! WE are IN CHARGE!”

The quote was originally published in World Net Daily, who did not deign to link to the source or cite where and when it was released. It is not on the Hillquest web site, whom they alleged published it. There is essentially no proof that this quote was ever published outside of World Net Daily.

If this quote was actually published by anyone, then that is very regrettable, and whoever said it should apologize. Calling for “elimination” of people and suppression of free speech is a bad thing. But since World Net Daily doesn’t have anything to go on but reactionary invective, there’s no way to know.

Click image to enlarge.

Click image to enlarge.

Jamie Dean of WORLD Magazine wrote an article to examine sexuality serve as an unquestioning soapbox for Alan Chambers. I sent WORLD an editorial reply:

Ms. Dean composed a cute piece on Exodus but much like Alan Chambers and his organization gave us no reason to believe a word said. No ex-gay organization has ever provided proof change is possible. They can publish weepy testimonials of change but you take a group of people who desperately seek change and OF COURSE they’re going to self-report positive things to people like Robert L. Spitzer who simply took them at their word regarding change.

As for the number who have changed, even Chambers fabricates that number. In 2003 he was quoted saying ex-gays numbered in the thousands. In 2004 he was quoted as saying “tens of thousands,” and in your publication he’s upped the number to “hundreds of thousands.” [see footnote]

In the words of Exodus, perhaps WORLD should indeed “question homosexuality” a bit more.

Daniel S. Gonzales

In case you aren’t familiar with this “question homosexuality” phrase it’s Exodus’ motto. I intend on hijacking it by continuing to point out how Exodus and their media allies never substantiate or “question” the steady stream of absurdities emanating from Exodus. To “question” means to reason and think. Exodus policy rarely involves either and by using their own motto against them I intend to highlight this hypocrisy.

Stephen Bennett has reacted to the Washington Post article with a press release claiming that it is a “hatchet job.” He says:

Bennett no longer struggles with homosexuality whatsoever and is completely heterosexual – the way he was born.

The Washington Post released a one-sided article on Tuesday saying “people who are ‘homosexual’ CANNOT CHANGE.”

“This article is nothing but a ‘hatchet job,’ one-sided and is simply an OUTRIGHT lie,” said Stephen.

Bennett then goes on to say:

Bennett ended, “No one is born ‘gay’ and COMPLETE change is COMPLETELY possible.”

Stephen Bennett is a gadfly and professional ex-gay and anti-gay activist. Interestingly, his release itemizes broadcasts he’s been on and the first mentioned is the O’Reilly Factor. He doesn’t mention that Bill O’Reilly told him “You’re a religious fanatic, with all due respect.”

Although it’s tempting to ignore him out of hand, he is a frequent representative of Concerned Women for America and American Family Association. So, I’ll address a few of his claims.

First, Bennett makes the “no one is born gay” claim along with claiming that he was born completely heterosexual. Although I’m not willing to state definitively that gay people are born gay, the preponderance of the scientific evidence suggests that biological factors influence (if not control) the determination of sexual orientation. As the Post article explained, many scientists state that sexual orientation is determined (or at least the contributing factors thereto) before birth.

Basically, Bennett is making a claim that has not been substantiated, to my knowledge, by anyone and which is refuted by an ever-increasing mountain of evidence. The most Bennett, or any other ex-gay activist, could claim would be that it has not yet been proven that people are born gay nor has it been proven that the are not.

Second, the Washington Post article did not say “people who are homosexual cannot change”. The Post reported interviews with ex-gay advocates as well as ex-gays and ex-ex-gays but did not make any such claim.

Bennett is simply lying.

Third, Bennett says that he no longer struggles with homosexuality whatsoever. For all anyone else knows, this may be true. However, he seems to be the only one out there making this claim (though I may have missed some). The last testimony I recall claiming complete heterosexuality was John Paulk, whose ministry ended in disgrace.

When Bennett claims that COMPLETE change is COMPLETELY possible, he is saying that conversion from homosexual orientation to heterosexual orientation (complete change) is possible for every gay person (completely possible). To Exodus’ credit, this is not a statement that even they will make. Nor does any other ex-gay ministry of which I’m aware.

Which leaves me with the conclusion that Stephen Bennett is COMPLETELY dishonest.

The Washington Post does a two-fer today in covering the ex-gay agenda. The same Sandra Boodman has another article up that doesn’t quite make fun of Richard Cohen.

She skirts the edges of mockery by noting that his marraige was arranged by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the creepy, Kim Jong-Il-esque head of the right-wing newspaper The Washington Times. She describes in a somewhat sardonic tone Cohen’s bizarre practices, which include his hitting a pillow with a tennis racket and screaming “Dad!” and finding a nice man to cuddle with. Boodman also notes that Cohen was permanently expelled from the ACA.

She doesn’t do much to challenge Cohen directly, but in his case, does she really have to? Coehn justifies his lack of a counseling license in the interview by saying he’s “coaching,” and the article ends by quoting him as saying “You’ve got to feel it to heal it.” The facts speak for themselves, and require no explanation.