Ex-Gay Watch

The Alliance Defense Fund and “Love In Action,” an exgay live-in facility in Memphis, are suing the state of Tennessee.

Until recently, LIA claimed to offer therapeutic services. When the state challenged LIA’s failure to obtain a license and hire accredited, college-educated staff members, LIA reworded its web site and marketing materials. LIA deleted its claim to offer licensed therapy and wrapped its mental-health activities in religious language. But LIA continued to provide pseudo-therapeutic services to the mentally ill, including:

• behavior and thought modification programs;
• a 24-hour immersion in 12-step treatment geared toward the reversal of unwanted homosexuality; and
• management of clients’ food, activities, and antidepressant medication

In a public statement reprinted by the Queer Action Coalition, ADF and LIA pretend ignorance of LIA’s history as a flagship exgay live-in facility for the mentally ill.

However, as noted many times previously by Ex-Gay Watch, former participants and employees of LIA including Peterson Toscano and Jeff Harwood say that LIA staff were underequipped, undereducated, and poorly trained to cope with emotionally unstable and suicidal clients.

Toscano notes today on his weblog that LIA, which drills into clients the notion of taking responsibility and refraining from playing victim, has now solicited the resources of one of the religious right’s largest, best-funded and most litigious activist organizations, and Tennessee’s two largest Southern Baptist churches, in a vast exercise of playing victim before the media and the state’s unfortunate taxpayers.

Read more about the exgay lawsuit against Tennessee (PDF copy) and Love In Action press release (Word document) at the Queer Action Coalition web site.

Concerned Woman, Dennis Lynch, has issued an article declaring that Father Mychal Judge was definitely not gay. Judge was the priest who died on 9/11/01 in service to victims of the terrorist attack and the firefighters that were attempting to rescue them and who became known as a hero.

Lynch bases the bold assertion on the following:

Prior to Father Mike’s death, everyone who knew him for any length of time would never describe him as a homosexual. In fact, never has even one homosexual activist ever provided evidence that Father Mike was “gay.” Yet, in newspapers immediately after the funeral mass, Brendan Fay was quoted saying that Father Mike was a homosexual. Fay arranged a media event where many people spoke of Father Mike’s concern for the homosexual community and claimed Father Mike was “gay.” This was news to me, and I knew Father Mike for nearly a decade.

The Media Lies About Father Mike

After the first series of newspapers stories reported that Father Mike was a homosexual, suddenly politicians were standing up in Congress lamenting the death of “Father Mike, the gay priest.” Concerned that Father Mike was being used by homosexual activists, I began to contact many people who knew him for as long or longer than I did. I wanted the truth about Father Mike to be published. Not one of these longtime friends every heard or saw anything that Father Mike did that would indicate he was homosexual. I personally spent weeks at a time with Father Mike where he and I spoke about many personal matters. Not once was there even a suggestion that Father Mike was “gay.” He was a celibate Catholic priest and nothing more.

That is the extent of Lynch’s argument.

Lynch’s, like so much of the anti-gay crowd, bases his argument on a distorted logic: if you can’t prove something is true, then that proves it’s false. He presents nothing to support the idea that Judge was not gay, simply that there wasn’t proof enough for him. He doesn’t claim that “there’s inadequate information to determine his orientation” but states as fact that Judge was NOT gay.

Based on the tone of the article, I find it highly unlikely that Judge, or anyone else, would consider coming out to Lynch. The rest of the article is an attack on Brendan Fay and other “homosexual activists”. It is quite clear that he views gay people in a very negative light.

Further, to Lynch, Judge’s homosexuality existed only if heard or seen. A celibate gay priest doesn’t fit into the definition of homosexuality as undestood by the Concerned Women and the anti/ex-gay movement. Because Lynch wasn’t “living a homosexual lifestyle” they don’t have language to reconcile his being gay.

In contrast, the New York Times quotes a close personal friend of Judge:

The former city fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen, a close friend of Father Judge’s, said Thursday that excluding men of his caliber from the priesthood would be simply “a shame.”

Mr. Von Essen, a married, practicing Catholic who said that Father Judge came out to him years before his death, added, “To sacrifice your life to God and try to do so much good every day and to be prevented from doing that – it’s no wonder they can’t get anyone to join the church to become a priest or a nun.”

On one hand there is the personal testimony of Von Essen, a reputable person without an obvious agenda, that Judge declared himself to be a gay man. On the other is a assertion that Judge was not gay based a vacuum of information. It is not difficult to decide whom to believe.

If you are still having doubt, consider too that Father Judge was a longtime member of Dignity, a gay Catholic group, and was a longtime activist for gay rights. The Times also reports that he had told several friends, both gay and straight, that he was a celibate homosexual.

Lynch did state something in his closing paragraph with which I agree:

Although homosexual activists have hijacked this truth, I know that, from heaven, Father Mike would want you to know the truth about him. He would also want you to pray for those who bear false witness.

I believe that Father Judge would have wanted the truth to be known. He would also want you to pray for those who bear false witness.

Those who make statements about that which they do not have evidence and based wholly on what they choose to believe, by definition are bearing false witness.

Feel free to pray for Dennis Lynch.

The ex-gay movement exists, to a great extent, because of its usage of a language that allows them to say one thing and mean another. Sometimes this contorted way of thinking produces comical results. One such example is shown in the Love Won Out press release. In discussing mom-from-hell Nancy Heche’s presentation:

…she lost her husband to AIDS after discovering he had secretly lived a homosexual lifestyle during their marriage.

Yep. You read it right. The “homosexual lifestyle” is being married and pretending to be straight. Oh… but that’s what the ex-gays do. Darn, this is confusing.

On a more serious note, later the press release revealed the true agenda of this organization when reporting on Joe Dallas’ speech:

Also, the author asserts, the church needs to “repent of being intimidated by the gay rights movement and recommit itself to its prophetic role.” He says if Christians, who are “the conscience of the state,” allow themselves to be intimidated into silence, then “the state has no choice but to become a sociopathic state.”

And if the church allows that sociopathic, homosexuality-affirming culture’s increasing self-destructiveness to proceed unchallenged to its logical, morbid conclusions, Dallas contends, “God will require the blood of the state at the hands of his visible representation, who allowed itself to be intimidated into silence.”

Exodus, FOTF, etc. have for a while been pretending that they were simply offering an option to people who “wish to leave the homosexual lifestyle.” They’ve been saying that they aren’t trying to change those who are happy being gay.

Dallas, however is clearly stating that if the church does not fight to deny gay people any affirmation in society (read rights of any kind) then God will destroy the government.

This is not the benign offering of an option that they have been claiming.

Lies certainly come easy to these people

In keeping consistent with their anti-gay, pro-ex-gay agenda, the Washington Times has another non-news article about the Spitzer report. The excuse for this article was coverage of a forum by teachthefacts.org’s, the group arguing for accurate sex education in Maryland. Nothing at the forum was reported but rather reporter Jon Ward blathers on (incorrectly at times) about the Spitzer report, instead:

Interviewing 200 former homosexuals, Dr. Spitzer conducted the study in response to a request by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 2000 to determine the risks and benefits of “reparative therapy.”

My understanding is that there was no request by the APA to determine the risks and benefits of reparative therapy. The study was made at the request of ex-gay activists Spitzer had met. I don’t have a link for that, so feel free to correct me.

The majority of the article was dedicated to how reputable Spitzer is and how his study found that some homosexuals “can and do change.” The sole argument against the findings in the study, as reported, was:

But speakers at a Sunday forum sponsored by Teachthefacts.org dismissed the Spitzer study.

Dr. Paul A. Wertsch of the American Medical Association (AMA) said the study was biased because it drew most of its subjects from ex-gay therapists or ministries.

“I don’t think it’s a very good study,” said Dr. Wertsch, who heads the AMA’s committee on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Matters.

There was no further elaboration on how biased the study was with many of the “successes” actually having employment dependant on being a success. No mention was made of the methodology (a single phone call, no face-to-face, no follow up) or how Spitzer is unhappy with the inaccurate reporting of his survey.

Tucked into the middle of the discussion about Spitzer and his report was the following:

Earlier this year, PFOX and the county parents group Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum filed a lawsuit against the county school system, saying its sex-education course discriminated against certain religions and promoted homosexuality.

A federal judge ruled in favor of the lawsuit, and schools Superintendent Jerry D. Weast scrapped the course and the citizens advisory panel that helped develop it.

Without saying so, the Ward suggests that the judge validated Spitzer’s report, which is deceptive, at best.

And Ward gets in his parting shot:

Dr. Wertsch did not mention any other studies of ex-gays at Sunday’s forum on Sunday.

In 2002, researchers Ariel Shidlo and Michael Schroeder recruited 182 men and 20 women for a study on the negative effects of reparative therapy. They found that 176 subjects said reparative therapy was harmful, while 26 said it was successful.

Ward actually reported in his “news” article the details of a report that wasn’t discussed at the meeting he was covering. It isn’t often that a legitimate news report tells you what WASN’T discussed. Not unless, of course, it is a hopelessly biased article trying to make a point.

Update: Based on a report by the Good As You blog, this XGW post originally cited a press release attributed to Bertram Fields.

However, Good As You wrote Fields to confirm the story’s authenticity. Fields wrote back:

“Release is a phony. I never issued any such release. Cruise is not giving any lectures.”

–The Moderator

In case you’re ever in an argument and want to prove “intelligent design” is creationism in disguise, here’s the proof from within the religious right:

“And creation versus evolution or intelligent design versus evolution, it’s been nuanced, it’s changed a little bit, but it’s the same basic issue.”
-James Dobson, Focus On The Family radio broadcast, +25:18 into the program, Sept 27, 2005.

I realize this has absolutely nothing to do with exgays but this one was too good to ignore. I encourage all of you to share this with all the cultural/political bloggers you know and see if this can’t get some traction.

In case anyone wishes to contact Dianne De Groot, admissions director of Ontario High School, her email address is info@ocschools.org.

WorldNetDaily published this wacky, factless diatribe on Banned Books Week, and how libraries are really banning the Christian view by not including antigay scripture tracts with all their young adult fiction. We also have AgapePress highlighting the efforts of exgay Deb French to remove two homosexual magazines from the Upper Arlington Public Library in Arlington, OH. We also have the month-old story whereby Laurie Taylor is trying to get homosexual literature banned from an Arkansas public library. Go back a couple of months and you find more.

I suppose ex-gays like Ms. French would feel awkward about libraries having much more homosexual literature than ex gay literature. I’m surprised there’s not more exgay literature in our libraries, seeing as how hundreds of thousands of people have become ex-gay. With that many exgays and only 2.3 percent of men declaring themselves as gay, you would think the number of authors and books would be a little more even.

I guess this battle will continue just under the radar for as long as the imbalance between gay and antigay literature exists. It rarely gets hot enough to make national headlines, but it seems like every few months another concerned parent decides that certain books are too tabboo for libraries and must be eliminated. Now that the ex gay crowd is getting in on the action, we might be seeing more demands for ex gay literature, rather than just the classical Farenheight 451 Christians.

As an anecdotal example of the trauma caused in families by the rigid and literal interpretation of selected scriptures on homosexuality, one woman put her religious dilemma into words for the StarTribune online. Randi Reitan and her family have decided to leave the Lutheran Church.

This is not an easy choice for Randi:

Our family has been Lutheran for generations and it is hard to leave behind our heritage in this church.

Phil’s family has Lutheran clergy in all generations. His great-grandfather preached in Swedish many years ago in Minneapolis; both his grandfathers were pastors here for many years; his father started as a pastor at Oak Knoll Lutheran Church, and his brother’s first parish was in Minnesota after graduating from Luther Seminary.

My family life centered around our small Lutheran church in northern Minnesota. My dad was a surgeon and he wanted us to experience the mission field, so he took our family to Madagascar for a summer while he did surgery at Manamboro Lutheran Hospital. My mom was one of the pillars of our congregation, as well as leading programs on the conference level. There was never a Sunday morning our family wasn’t sitting in the fifth row on the left side in our little white church.

When it was time for me to go off to college, my dad said I could pick any college as long as it was Lutheran. Phil and I met and fell in love at that Lutheran college. We wanted to start our marriage in service and we spent a year teaching on the mission field in Chieng Mai, Thailand, through a Lutheran organization.

For people whose lives have been defined in many ways by the religious organization to which they belong, it isn’t easy to just give that all up. The pressures to conform to what you have always believed are tremendous; these pressures are the backbone of the ex-gay movement.

Fortunately, there are families like Randi’s that, when faced with the decision of what is really important to them, decide that love, acceptance, and valuing their family are more importance than blind adherence to ill-contrived dogma. Rather than insist that her son go through ex-gay indoctrination, Randi’s difficult and painful decision was:

We know without a doubt our gay son is God’s beloved. He is precious in God’s House. Now we must find a church home that truly understands that most basic truth.

Focus on the Family performed a disservice to its readership today when it raised the strawman argument that unnamed gay activists claim 10 percent of the population is gay — only to refute that long-abandoned claim with additional half-truths about a recent CDC survey that was discussed here at XGW.

Focus and the Traditional Values Coalition claim CDC support for their assertion that between one-half of one percent, and at most two percent, of the population is gay. But the survey didn’t say that. CDC reported that 2.3 percent of the sampled population identified “homosexual,” 1.8 percent identified as “bisexual,” 3.9 percent preferred some other label (including, presumably, “gay” or “queer”), and just 90.2 percent of the sample identified as heterosexual.

Focus never identifies these gay “10 percent” activists — to the extent that any ever existed, they appear have faded from existence 10-15 years ago.

But perhaps it’s time for a comeback. With 7 percent of the population identifying as something other than “heterosexual,” and up to 3.9 percent rejecting the conservative label “homosexual” as a description for same-gender attraction and relationship, gay activists may have ceded too much ground to the half-truth-tellers of James Dobson Inc.

What Others Say:
Good As You