Ex-Gay Watch

Some of these have been on the blogroll before, and I have no idea how they got dropped. Anyhow, here goes:

Newly Noted

• Accidental Christian
• Arbitrary Marks
• Disputed Mutability
• Joe Brummer
• Nonsequitur
• Odd Psalms
• Paradoxy
• Prodigal Sheep

Exgay movement leader Alan Chambers and former exgay Peterson Toscano are both featured in the October 2006 issue of Maxi, a German women’s fashion magazine.

Toscano’s weblog has pictures and excerpts from the articles. (The articles are not available on Maxi’s web site.)

Among the excerpts is a German-language quote from a former exgay named Daniel, 25. Toscano helpfully offers a Babelfish translation of Daniel’s quote from German back into English:

However I particularly repent one: that mine Coming out three years too late dam. At that time I was at the Collge and a quantity of marvelous types missed, with which I could have led mad relations.

No wonder they call it “Babel”fish.

If someone can figure out how to buy the October issue of Maxi online (or translate the article accurately for us), please let us know. Ich spreche nicht Deutsches.

While summarizing more than two-dozen recent news stories involving mostly antigay and exgay activists on Sept. 22, QueerlyKos (TerranceDC) observed:

When I weigh in one hand the best that the “ex-gay” path can offer me, and the life that I have now with my family, there’s no contest.

What’s stranger still is that, at bottom, the “ex-gay” and I are simply different sides of the same coin. I thought about it as I was getting lunch, and realized that the eatery was playing instrumental Christian “Muzak” over the AP. I recognized one of the chorus of one song that I grew up hearing and singing, around the time I was coming out (at 12): “At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light, and the burdens of my heart rolled away. It was there by faith I received by sight, and now I am happy all the day.”

The difference between the “ex-gay” and me is simple one of different burdens, different struggles. The minister Wayne Besen writes about, sees his sexuality as a burden, a cross to bear. Growing up and coming out in a similar religious context, for me, has meant something different. Despite all my noise about being “out, loud, and proud” the struggle for me has been to let myself believe that I’m worthy of love and happiness “Just As I Am,” to borrow a phrase from another hymn. The burden is having been taught almost from the beginning that I don’t, and contending with people who still believe that.

Which struggle is harder?

It looks like I might be collaborating with various Atlanta based organizations in planning a response to the Love Won Out there on November 4th. I’m currently brainstorming ideas and would love to harness the power of our readership which demonstrated its intelligence in responding to my last request for ideas.

Comments on this post are disabled – please email me your ideas daniel@exgaywatch.com

Oh and I should mention this “Atlanta” event is being held 30 miles from the center of town. That’s ten miles even more less-convenient than Palm Springs. Google lists two First Baptist Churches in Woodstock so I did some research and this is the one. Roy Blankenship is their Minister of Communications and Counseling Ministries and also sits on the Exodus board of directors.

From an article in the Desert Sun, it seems that a minister in Palm Springs is planning a conference called Love Breaks Out.

I don’t know much more than is in the article other than it’s being organized by Nick Warner, a clinical psychologist, and pastor at Desert Oasis Chapel in Palm Springs. Warner spoke at the Unity Rally and was knowledgeable, intelligent, compassionate and disinclined to villainize those who attended the LWO conference. He was one who mentioned at the rally that he had been to a LWO conference and that the attendees were motivated by fear and misunderstanding rather than by hate.

Also, one of the speakers will be Worthie Meacham, a very sincere, honest, and loving person who is a gifted speaker and good friend (and who sat in front of me at church Sunday morning).

Meacham, 45, lived as an ex-gay for more than a dozen years until a pro-gay, pro-Christian conference convinced him God had not forsaken him.

“The church says either one or the other; either you keep your spirituality or your sexuality,” he said.

As we find out more information, I’ll post it.

UPDATE: The event has more information on its website at www.lovebreaksout.com

The ex-gay movement’s favorite verses of the Bible are 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

And there it is, right there in easily understood English. Some of the church members in Corinth were homosexual offenders who were washed and sanctified and have “overcome the homosexual lifestyle”.

In an article written by Joe Dallas, borrowed from Exodus International, and on the Focus on the Family’s website (add in NARTH and you’d have a whole Love Won Out conference) we see this claim about 1 Corinthians 6:9-11:

Sexual orientation simply cannot be changed,” a gay psychiatrist says confidently, warning “there may be severe emotional and social consequences in the attempt to change from homosexuality to heterosexuality.” This argument draws heavily from the social sciences, as it must; the Bible supports no such claim. Indeed, St. Paul makes the opposite remark, clearly stating homosexuals can change

But is that what the letter to the Corinthians really says? Did Paul pull out his quill and jot down a letter to “homosexual offenders” that had become heterosexual?
Read more…

A New England theater describes The Big Voice, an award-winning musical, like this:
Read more…

How do you challenge ‘Satan’?
Good As You, September 25

Focus on the Family accused of breaking IRS laws
MLM Liberal, September 25 (reprint from Talk to Action, Sept. 21)

Commenters debate using the word “hate” to describe ‘Love Won Out’
Pam Spaulding/Pam’s House Blend, September 25

Palm Desert, Calif., blogger supports Unity Rally
Written Rebellion, September 25

No wonder Anne Heche stays away from mother Nancy
Damn That Ojeda, September 25

‘Love’ In Action?
Ahimsa (Australia), September 25

Exgay movement targeting Australia
Richard Watts (Australia), September 25

Just another day in the life of people who blog about exgays.

Performance artist Peterson Toscano, a former exgay from the Love In Action program in Memphis, recently performed “Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House” in Sweden.

He received good reviews from a conservative Swedish publication, Kvälls Posten.

But, sorta like the Bible, accuracy is lost somewhere during the performance piece’s translation from English to Swedish.

Several days after it came to light that the antigay National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality was hosting racist content on its web site, NARTH quietly removed the racist article, which had been hosted for 15 months without protest from NARTH’s leaders and membership.

But instead of apologizing for its indecency, NARTH has posted this new disclaimer disavowing responsibility for the content published on its own website by its own board members and panelists:

This flight from responsibility is less than satisfactory for the National Black Justice Coalition, which last week issued a letter of protest to NARTH executive director Joseph Nicolosi and this weekend published the letter on its web site.

(Hat tip for NBJC link: Truth Wins Out)