Ex-Gay Watch

The effort by Peter LaBarbera and the Family Research Council to lock HIV-positive gay travelers out of the United States reminds me of a Christian song.

In 1985, conservative Christian contemporary singer Steve Taylor released a song called Lifeboat (lyrics).

The song is about a teacher, Mrs. Aryan, who offers her very young and impressionable public-school classroom children a lesson about something called “values clarification.” In this parody of moral relativism, the children are assigned to clarify their values with a game in which five people must fit into a lifeboat built for two. The children must clarify their values by tossing three people overboard.

The five people are:

• an “old, old crippled grandfather”
• “a mentally handicapped person” who “can never be a productive member of society”
• “an overweight woman on welfare, with a sniffling, whimpering baby”
• “a young, white doctor with blue eyes and perfect teeth,” and
• Joan Collins.

In a clever refrain, the good little kids dutifully throw overboard the presumed refuse of society: the grandpa, the “fatty,” and the “retard” — and the baby.

That is exactly what LaBarbera and FRC want their “Christian” followers to do to foreign travelers who have tested positive for HIV: Toss them overboard, or better yet, keep them from boarding even for a temporary visit.

But in the end, Steve Taylor has a surprise for his Christian audience: The good school kids throw the teacher overboard, too.

And that’s precisely what conscientious Christians need to consider doing — not to society’s rejects, but to LaBarbera and FRC for promoting lifeboat theology in the first place.

In his article, LaBarbera claims to be “associated” with Focus on the Family — and FRC continues to serve as a Washington public-policy extension of Focus, with James Dobson serving on its board. What, then, are Focus’ responsibilities in response to this episode? Conservative Christians deserve an answer.

‘Lifeboat’ via iTunes

A UCLA study recently suggested that a mother’s genes may play a contributing role in their sons’ sexual orientation. (Previous XGW coverage.)

Exgay movement pundit Prof. Warren Throckmorton responds to the study here.

Teach The Facts critiques Prof. Throckmorton’s analysis here.

(Background note: Throckmorton has aided the antigay parents group PFOX in its effort to inject exgay lessons and literature into the Montgomery County, Maryland, high school sex-education curriculum. TTF is a local group of parents that has advocated against the imposition of unscientific misinformation with antigay political and religious biases upon a fact-based curriculum.)

As Ex-Gay Watch has frequently noted, since late 2004 Exodus has periodically praised antigay activists who are euphemistically labeled the “Philadelphia 11.” The Philadelphia group was the subject of a recent exgay ad campaign.

The group’s real name is Repent America, and it is led by one Michael Marcavage. Exodus and Focus on the Family portray the group as Christian martyrs for illegally disrupting a Philadelphia gay street festival, disobeying police orders, getting arrested, and finally getting hit with trumped-up hate-crime charges that were later dismissed. (The prosecution may have been overzealous because Repent America already had a long criminal record of disrupting public events and government meetings in southeast Pennsylvania.)

A Google search today turned up extensive cooperation between Exodus’ heroes and — lo and behold — the Constitution Party (Recent XGW coverage of the CP.)

Read on for some concrete examples:
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On his web site, African-American exgay activist D.L. Foster acknowledged yesterday that he is an active supporter of the Constitution Party. Foster says he spoke at the Party’s 2004 Georgia convention.

Foster appears to be correct that no professed racists were on the 2004 Georgia state program.

However, the convention’s listed speaker, Gary DeMar, allegedly strives for a fundamentalist federal government and advocates the execution of homosexuals and adulterers. (Related documentation via Google search.)

As XGW also recently noted, the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified several Constitution Party candidates and speakers in other states as self-declared white supremacists.

No doubt Foster disagrees with the assessments of the liberal SPLC, but does he also deny the self-disclosures of white supremacism by party candidates?

Focus on the Family tonight acknowledged its host church’s observations that the gay-affirming protesters at “Love Won Out” in St. Louis were friendly, well-behaved and gracious.

Focus does not offer a demographic breakdown of LWO attendees, nor does Focus quote any Exodus officials’ opinions of the protesters.

Alan Chambers is quite adept at the semantics-dance as evidenced by a recent Exodus press release:

“While there are some who may not agree with our message, we ask for their consideration and welcome their presence at this event,” said Chambers. “We continue to share our message of hope knowing that there are hundreds of thousands of lives who have been changed by this truth [emphasis added] and there are many more who are longing to hear it.”

Take careful note of the condition Chambers adds this time; he’s a slippery one! Chambers used to claim ex-gays alone numbered in the “hundreds of thousands” but now he’s counting lives “changed by this truth.” Those lives could include ministers, desperate parents unable to deal with the fact their adult children have been out for decades and are now happily married, and various local political bigots looking to use ex-gays as justification for anti-gay legislation. I have asked Chambers to explain his previous statistical claim on numerous occasions via email and even a phone call and he continues to decline my requests for explaination. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch confirms our suspicions that few attendees at last weekend’s LWO were actually ex-gays:

Most of the audience were parents and family members of gay people, while about one-fourth were ministers.

Last weekend’s Love Won Out has set off a rash (relax, it’s a good kind of rash) of infographics but also some people took it beyond the realm of civility and vandalized the Exodus billboard. Mike Tidmus has a pretty good roundup. My favorite however is from Justinsomnia.

Note: Due to a legal dispute, the parody above was removed from this web site from March 1 to March 24.

Read NancyP’s commentary on the Feb. 25 St. Louis vigil at Pam’s House Blend.

Peter LaBarbera’s Illinois Family Institute identifies itself as an independently financed partner of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and the Alliance Defense Fund.

His career has been spent protesting against communism, leftist Latin American Christians, liberal freedoms, and supposed antifamily values. In the 1980s, he supported “contra” terrorist attacks against liberals and leftist civilians in Nicaragua. During his tenure with Robert Knight at the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, LaBarbera actively promoted the exgay movement — for example, offering favors to Jerry Falwell and his handpicked exgay spokesman, Michael Johnston, at a forum with Soulforce that I attended in 1999. LaBarbera’s writing enjoys support from both the Exodus Media Blog and the Exodus national office.

LaBarbera is a conservative, to be sure, but I thought surely (surely!) his politics are a far cry from what the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the most extreme political party in the United States: The Constitution Party.

According to the SPLC, the Constitution Party (formerly the U.S. Taxpayers Party) seeks to make the Old Testament the law of the land. It seeks to undo every constitutional amendment since 1913 — including women’s right to vote. It seeks to re-legalize assault weapons for undisclosed purposes, and it flirts with advocates for the execution of adulterers and homosexuals.
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch follows up on yesterday’s “Love Won Out” exgay road show. The newspaper counts more than 350 vigilers peacefully protesting the conference from outside.

(Previous XGW coverage, including photos by Colleen Keating.)

The Post-Dispatch notes that a handful of career exgays dominated the stage inside — and some charged distraught parents an exorbitant $50 (in addition to the $50-60 admission fee) for a few $7 exgay books [see addendum below]. According to the Post-Dispatch, there were few if any exgays apparent among the 1,700 attendees:
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