Ex-Gay Watch

The following are a few of my musings on faith and religion. If that’s not your thing, you may want to skip this thread.
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Really now, who uses the term “sodomite” anymore except maybe Fred Phelps? The AgapePress, that’s who:

Hartline says last year the not-for-profit San Diego Pride organization was under investigation for employing numerous pedophiles as volunteers and staff during its yearly parade and festival. He believes these pro-homosexual events are generally pornographic and that they are frequented by militant sodomites.

Keep in mind, that’s in the author’s voice, it’s not a direct quote. Also did I mention San Diego pride was July 29th. That’s almost a full month ago and Hartline and the Agape still aren’t over it.

And yet Nancy Brown over at Exodus’ blog links to and reprints Agape stories regularly.

On an Australian radio program ex-gay Richard Cohen may have said the stupidist thing to date about ex-gay ministries:

RICHARD COHEN: I was exclusively homosexual. Now I am exclusively heterosexual. I’m not interested in guys. I feel my “guy-ness”. If somebody wants to change, it’s guaranteed. It can be done.

What little grasp on reality that Cohen ever had seems to have been jarred loose the last time he beat a pillow with a tennis racquet. And someone should remind Cohen that one of the biggest criticisms of his own brand of therapy is that it isn’t his own “guy-ness” that he’s been cuddling.

On Saturday August 26th Living Hope Ministries is having an exgay conference at Vista Ridge Baptist Church in Carrollton, TX. Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out, an organization which counters exgay propaganda, is seeking locals interesting in participating in TWO’s counter event. Email Wayne here. On a personal note, I would love to attend. If anyone is feeling generous and would get me a plane ticket please let me know.

Update 8/23/06: From the press release announcing details of Wayne’s event:

WHO: Wayne Besen, Executive Director, Truth Wins Out; Brother Curtis Smith, Pastoral Leader, Trinity MCC, Arlington; Rev. Ken Ehrke, Agape MCC, Fort Worth, TX; Daniel Gonzales, Contributing Author, Ex-Gay Watch; Fort Worth Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

I knew something had to be done with the images from the recent exgay protest at the APA convention. The two groups who organized the protest (NARTH and Exodus) hold far more radical views than the protest presented. The first image shows the original message and is followed by my interpretation of what these organizations actually believe.

Such a book actually exists.

Exodus has a section of its website devoted to fighting the civil rights of former clients/patients.

Both NARTH and the Tradititional Values Coalition have published summaries/reactions to a story in The Advocate titled “Life in the T Zone – With the aid of testosterone, biological women are expanding the old ideas of male and female. But being gender-queer can involve health risks.”

Before XGW reader Autumn brought this to my attention I’d heard the term gender-queer before. I learned gender-queer is an identity for people who have no desire to get sexual reassignment surgery but don’t wish to present themselves as either of the two binary genders our society presents them with. Oftentimes that involves prescribed hormones such as testosterone. To be clear, The Advocate article is stricly about the gender-queer identity and makes no mention of shemales, transvestites or drag queens.

In the NARTH article, after summarizing and quoting The Advocate, the following is tacked on as though it were quoted from The Advocate as well:

Many individuals who consider themselves transgendered, undergo only partial surgeries or hormone treatments and identify as She/Males. Numbers of these individuals become part of the online pornography industry. Sexually explicit She/Male sites number in the hundreds online.

In the TVC article (cahed version), after summarizing and quoting The Advocate, we encounter this little turd:

They [transgender activists] seek to gain special rights for cross-dressers, transvestites, drag queens, and She/Males (individuals who undergo only half of a sex change operation and live as half man/half woman. These seriously disturbed individuals typically get involved in obscene and graphic pornography online.)

Both NARTH and the TVC appear to be trying to create a link between upstanding transgendered people and some of the most outrageous pornography available online. For a “Christian” organization and a professional mental health organization to use the term “shemales” in connection with transgendered people is shameful. Lou Sheldon I expect this from, Nicolosi should be better than this (to be fair no author is listed for the NARTH article). Then again, in one of my therapy sessions when I remarked I was having trouble maintaining a masculine demeanor Nicolosi replied:

“we all know when we’re acting a little bit faggy”

Perhaps Joe should begin choosing his words more carefully. Wikipedia has an excellent explanation of why the term “shemale” is so offensive:

The term “shemale” (along with tranny and “chick with dick”) is commonly, but not exclusively, used in pornography and the sex industry; videos and magazines involving such people are a common sub-genre of pornography. It is often seen by transsexual people as a powerful term of abuse.

This is why NARTH and the TVC’s equating of gender-queer people with “shemales” is shameful. Google “shemale” (I’ll spare you a link) and all you’re going to find is hard-core pornography. Such a thing has no place in a serious discussion of gender roles and conformity.

We briefly discussed the accusations against Lou Beres, previous leader of the Oregon Christian Coalition and a long-time anti-gay activist, relating to inappropriate behavious with under-age girls. These allegations were confirmed here by his nephew, Rich Galat.

It now appears that Galat and other family members have had their charges verified. According to the Portland Mercury, Beres has admitted to police that he “had sexually touched his sister-in-law in the 1960s when she was a teen, and two friends of his daughters—one incident was in 1976 or ’77, according to the report, and the other was unspecified.”

We wish his victims and other family members all the best and hope that this revelation will help in the healing and full recovery from this man’s violations.

UPDATE

The story appears to have been broken by gayrightswatch.com

hat tip goodasyou.com

Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute has been completely discredited. After being expelled from the American Psychological Association and condemned by resolution of the Nebraska Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association, it would seem logical that Cameron would not be quoted as a “source”.

Years of obviously inaccurate “studies” and debunked claims should suggest that those associated with Cameron have no regard for honesty. Even Exodus tries to not appear too closely linked to Cameron’s reports. But there are always some so hungry for a negative thing to say about gay people that they are willing to sell their integrity in order to push an agenda of hate.

One such person would seem to be Audrey Barrick, Christian Post reporter, who trumpets Cameron’s latest claims under the headline Survey: One-Third of Foster-Parent Molestations Homosexual. According to Cameron (via Barrick):

A tally from Illinois and Minnesota (2003-2005) showed that a third of foster-parent molestation perpetrators engaged in homosexuality with their charges – their own foster-children.

This “survey” is a regurgitation of Cameron’s year old claim that got the Texas Eagle Forum in hot water and was debunked in the Wall Street Journal.

This required several leaps of logic, some of which I’ll discuss later. The biggest is that Dr. Cameron had no data about the makeup of homes in which the Illinois children were abused; indeed, a state DCFS spokeswoman told me the agency doesn’t record whether households are same-sex. It’s possible that much of what Dr. Cameron calls homosexual abuse occurred in what would be considered heterosexual homes.

Nonetheless, Barrick dutifully reports

Family Research Institute pointed out that homosexuals comprise between 2 to 4 percent of adults, as studies reported, “thus the figures above indicate a disproportionate amount of homosexual molestation.”

and slides in the anti-gay agenda

“These 40 foster-parent molesters, given the limited official information about molestations of foster children, comprise one of the largest samples in the literature on this issue,” said Dr. Paul Cameron, chairman of the Family Research Institute, in a released statement. “And the evidence keeps on accumulating, indicating that those who engage in homosexuality are much more apt to sexually abuse their foster-children. Children are our most important possession; they must be protected form predators. One way to do that is to bar homosexuals from fostering or adopting children.”

For all Barrick knows, or Cameron for that matter, every single incident of molestation occurred in households of married individuals who attend church on Sunday and contribute to Focus on the Family. To claim that children can be “protected” by barring “homosexuals from fostering or adopting children” is nothing but a deception based on bias.

But Barrick is not alone in alone in her abdication of ethics in favor of homophobia. She’s joined this week by Bill Fancher, Fred Jackson, and Jody Brown of Agape Press in an article critical of the World AIDS Conference.

It is very difficult to locate the Agape in the opening comments from the three:

Pro-family advocates say the International AIDS Conference taking place in Toronto this week is a huge waste of time and money — as well as an opportunity for those in attendance to take a swipe at sexual abstinence as a way to combat the deadly disease.

In a world with tens of millions of cases of HIV infection, most of whom live impoverished and without any hope of treatment, the united efforts of nations, medical providers, and philanthropists who are joining together to fight this pandemic are written off by these three as “a huge waste of time and money”.

The reason? Because the Conference is not focused on preventing gay sex.

Using Paul Cameron as their source, Fancher, Jackson, and Brown show an amazing display of ignorance about the current face of AIDS in the world

He points out that billions of American dollars are spent trying to convince smokers to quit smoking — yet homosexuals are told researchers will do all they can to stem the spread of AIDS so that they can continue to have sex, the number-one cause of AIDS. Cameron feels there is no logic to such an approach.

Dr. Cameron has attended the International AIDS Conference before, but has been denied a booth to promote abstinence of homosexual sex as a preventive measure.

But would “abstinence of homosexual sex” have any impact on AIDS on a global scale? Not if you believe the information provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Worldwide, more than 90 percent of all adolescent and adult HIV infections have resulted from heterosexual intercourse.

If Cameron has indeed attended the International AIDS Conference before, he would know that vast majority of AIDS cases world wide are not gay men. And he would know that he’s doing nothing but sowing animosity and stirring up fear and hatred. Cameron again demonstrates his willingness to say anything no matter how untruthful or morally reprobate in his goal to demonize gay people and seek harm to their lives.

And Barrick, Fancher, Jackson, and Brown have shown themselves willing accomplices.

It is true that sometimes the gay community will make misplaced accusations of homophobia. Sometimes those who may not support full equality for gay people are not acting out of malice but are simply uninformed or conflicted or perhaps have not applied thought, logic, and consistency to an issue.

But there are also times when people behave in a hateful manner and act out of spite and malice. And this week some California Assemblymen demonstrated that attitude.

In response to a revision of a bill requiring pro-gay education in schools, on Monday the Democrats in the Assembly suspended the rules to bring a representation of successful gay people onto the floor to “benefit Republicans by showing them the strength of our diversity and the many accomplishments in a variety of disciplines”. Yes, I believe it was partisan and petty. And it was not necessarily homophobic of some Republicans to be annoyed at being so “benefited”.

However, regardless of the motivation of the presentation, the response of some legislators crossed the line. When the gay citizens were on the floor, these elected representatives of the people stormed off in protest. Not protest of the Democrats, or protesting the priorities, but protesting the presence of gay citizens. Because they were gay.

It is hard to see how this action can be described in any way that does not include homophobia.

It is unfathomable that this would have occurred with ANY other group of Californians, be they Moslems, Samoans, vegetarians, or bird fanciers. To display distain to any other segment of the populace would be political suicide. Most legislators, whether or not they are supportive of gay equality, consider all people to be their constituents regardless of their orientation.

Ex-gay gadfly James Hartline wrote an article praising two of the representatives who walked off the floor, Jay LaSuer and Dennis Mountjoy, for their “examples of godliness and faithfulness to the families of California”. Hartline quoted LaSuer as saying “Why is immorality in America being honored…?” and Mountjoy as saying “I find it puzzling that … behavior in the bedrooms was celebrated!”

Incidentally, the above mentioned bill was revised to simply state that orientation is added to the list of characteristics (race, religion, etc.) that schools cannot present in a pejorative manner. It passed with bi-partisan support. Reportedly, only LaSuer and Mountjoy voted against the non-disparagement bill.

Hartline is an extremist and his delight in the deliberate insult of Californians based solely on their sexual orientation may not be representative of all ex-gay attitudes. Not all ex-gay ministries would endorse the public humiliation of people simply because they are gay.

However, considering the increasingly political nature of Exodus and the inclination on the part of ex-gay ministries to exaggerate and misstate “the homosexual lifestyle”, I wonder whether they too will soon seek to exclude gay people from the definition of constituency and encourage incivility towards them.

“Porno-Pete” LaBarbera has resigned his position as Executive Director of the Illinois Family Institute to:

…pursue his goal of creating a national organization dedicated to confronting the homosexual activist agenda.

[snip]

LaBarbera’s group, Americans for Truth, will be based in Naperville, Illinois.

In other words, Peter will be able to obsess over gay people full-time, whereas that pesky Illinois Family Institute sometimes required he deal with other issues.

Now contrary to the IFI’s press release, Pete doesn’t have to “create” his new organization, since Americans For Truth was formed in August of 2000 by disgraced ex-gay and spreader of HIV Michael Johnson.

Hat tip (and happy birthday) Scott H.