Ex-Gay Watch

The national leadership of ex-gay umbrella network Exodus International promises and fails to deliver heterosexual attraction to its Christian followers, even as it uses those followers in various campaigns of antigay political warfare.

While Exodus’ national leaders focus on partisan politics and misdiagnosis of sexual struggle, other organizations focus more on helping same-sex-attracted persons live according to their Christian values.

One such organization: GayChristian.net, a support group for celibate same-sex-attracted Christians as well as for Christians who believe that God calls them to monogamous same-sex marriage.

From GCN’s frequently asked questions:

Are you sexually abstinent?

Not all gay Christians have the same answer to this question. Some gay Christians believe that God does not want them to be sexually active, so they choose to be celibate. Many others choose to date and marry just like straight Christians, with the only difference being the gender of the person.

This site is designed to be a haven for all gay Christians, whichever view they take. However, as Christians, we do believe that sex should be taken seriously, and we don’t support the promiscuity and sexual looseness that are often a part of the secular world.

Whether celibate or monogamous, GCN’s participants do not buy into ex-gay identity politics of groups like Exodus:

Is this an ex-gay site?

No. This site is designed to be a safe haven and place of fellowship for Christians who identify as gay. Membership is open to anyone, however, as long as they are willing to help us maintain that atmosphere.

For British Christians, there’s a similar organization which left Exodus for the reasons stated above: Courage UK.

If you know of organizations that help same-sex-attracted persons balance faith and sexuality without politically exploiting them or steering them toward predetermined outcomes, please feel free to discuss them here.

Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International said:

In Philadelphia, eleven Christians were jailed for sharing a message from the Bible to a crowd of people attending a public pro-gay event.

Was this “sharing a message from the Bible” Alan? Or was it an attempt to disrupt a licensed, lawful event until someone was arrested and a spectacle could be made?

For the record, this is the incident described here by the two “grandmothers” from Repent America. Watch their video and compare it to the actual record above and see if you detect any dishonesty in their depiction of events.

A video of an earlier point in the event shows that the OutFest participants were perfectly willing to tolerate the signs and taunting of the “Eleven.” But the self proclaimed street preachers were not content with this, and pushed their way into the event until it was disrupted and law enforcement had no choice but to remove them.

Michael Marcavage and those he sponsors are not new to Philadelphia law enforcement. He seems to know just how far he can push to get arrested, but not so far that this country’s formidable First Amendment rights will not gain his release – local hate crime laws and all.

Yet most every time that Alan Chambers mentions hate crime laws, he uses this as the sole US example of the horrible stifling of Christian witness that adding sexual orientation would bring down on us all.

Religious beliefs have been covered under those laws since the late 1960′s, and I don’t see any limits on speech against this or that faith. Neo-Nazis certainly have their say against African Americans and Jewish citizens, though I don’t believe they are allowed to physically interject themselves into another lawful event such as the Eleven did above.

It doesn’t add up Alan.

Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, head of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) did not appear in his scheduled time slot at LWO Saturday. Joe Dallas, author of The Gay Gospel?: How Pro-Gay Advocates Misread the Bible, spoke in his place. Nicolosi recently appeared in a CNN Anderson Cooper 360 segment which featured the Phoenix LWO conference. As reported here, his comments and demeanor were not exactly flattering. Could Focus on the Family be reconsidering their longstanding alliance with the causation and cure obsessed Nicolosi?

In the following clip from the same CNN special, Nicolosi remarks glibly on the subject:

Yet the Love Won Out website reflects at least an outward change in their claims along these lines. In the past it contained the statement “Focus on the Family is promoting the truth that homosexuality is preventable and treatable…” That has now been changed to “change is possible for those who experience same-sex attractions…”

While more information will no doubt be forthcoming, we would have to agree that moving away from Nicolosi, NARTH and their strange, implausible theories can only be a step in the right direction.

Before every Love Won Out conference, Focus on the Family leases billboard space in the area where it will be held. Before the last conference, one company refused to lease space to them citing the contents did not “meet their community’s standards for appropriateness or the copy is deemed offensive towards any business, group or individual.” FOTF then announced that they would contact their lawyers even though the billboard company, Clear Channel, did not appear to be under any legal obligation to accept their business.

Last Wednesday, FOTF issued a press release that claimed another company had denied their business for billboard space ahead of the latest conference in Omaha. This time the company, Waitt Outdoor, gave no reason but simply declined to do business with them via email. That didn’t stop Melissa Fryrear, director of gender issues at Focus on the Family, from speaking as a victim on behalf of the group while making up her own reasons:

Apparently the idea of embracing a diversity of opinion is not extended to groups like ours, which offer the message that same-sex attractions can be overcome by those who are dissatisfied living homosexually.

Another company, Lamar, took the order so they got the opportunity to use the refusal for PR and have their billboards, too. I guess no one involved thought about the possibility that Waitt Outdoor was simply following advice given to Walmart and Ford by the AFA, by just “staying neutral” on this issue of the culture wars.

Following Al Mohler’s controversial article Is Your Baby Gay? last month, evangelical monthly Christianity Today enters the gay gene debate with Re-engineering Temptation. Of interest to XGW are the comments by Alan Chambers of Exodus:

This conversation puzzles Alan Chambers, president of the ex-gay group Exodus International. Christian leaders aren’t pushing for a medical answer to alcoholism or pornography, he noted. Instead of looking to science, Chambers said, Christians should study the struggles of reformed homosexuals.

“People like me who struggled with it and found freedom are more than sufficient proof that we can overcome our genetics,” he said. “Science will never trump the Word of God.”

Did Chambers just concede that homosexuality is genetic? If so, he is clearly referring to homosexual orientation, rather than behaviour. Furthermore, he claims to have “struggled with it and found freedom.” And so the cycle of slippery terminology and elusive meaning continues.

“Freedom”? Like “healing”, “overcoming” and “changing,” there’s a word that slides over the question of whether reversal of homosexual orientation is really possible. As I noted in my analysis of British ex-gay James Parker’s interview last month, trying to get a straight – um, plain – answer on this issue from an ex-gay leader is difficult. In response to the question, “Are you still attracted to men?”, James Parker immediately responded with “Let’s put it this way,” going on to answer a question of his own choosing instead of giving a yes or no to the question asked. Alan shows the same reluctance when asked the same direct question:

[Do you still have attraction to men? You're just choosing not to act on it?]
My attraction greatly diminished over the course of many years. Sixteen years into it, my life isn’t even remotely the same as it once was; but I often say that I will never be as though I never was; and the truth is that I’m a human being, and for me to say that I could never be attracted to men again, or that I couldn’t be tempted, would mean that I’m not human, and that’s just not the case.

Is he still attracted or not? Despite a veneer of honesty and self-disclosure, this answer still leaves me clueless whether Alan Chambers, and by extension the ex-gays he represents, still consistently live with homosexual attractions.

I am convinced that semantics is one of the major battlegrounds in challenging the ex-gay movement. There is a divide between the rhetoric and the reality, and as long as leaders continue to use language in such a slippery, imprecise way, inventing their own hazy definitions, we must continue to press Exodus and other ex-gay groups on this.

Source: wthrockmorton.com

In an attempt to further evaluate the problems with Paul Cameron’s latest study, Dr. Warren Throckmorton asked Morten Frisch, Danish epidemiologist, to review the Cameron’s paper. Among other things, Frisch had this to say:

Cameron and Cameron’s report on “life expectancy” in homosexuals vs heterosexuals is severely methodologically flawed.

It is no wonder why this pseudo-scientific report claiming a drastically shorter life expectancy in homosexuals compared with heterosexuals has been published on the internet without preceding scientific peer-review (http://www.earnedmedia.org/frireport.htm). The authors should know, and as PhD’s they presumably do, that this report has little to do with science. It is hard to escape the idea that non-scientific motifs have driven the authors to make this report public. The methodological flaws are of such a grave nature that no decent peer-reviewed scientific journal should let it pass for publication.

It is disgraceful that one can trace so many of the negative “statistics” found in articles published by ex-gay and anti-gay organizations right back to Paul Cameron and his work. It is often hidden through several degrees of separation, but more often than not he, and apparently now his son, are the ultimate source.

Read Dr. Frisch’s full response and Dr. Throckmorton’s comments on his blog.

Can a person be both gay and Christian? It’s an important question that has only begun receiving serious attention over the last couple of decades. Many evangelical Christians would respond with a flat “no” and refuse to engage the question further. Exodus International’s answer is a bit more nuanced, but the strong implication one nonetheless gets from most ex-gay publications is that individuals who accept a “gay identity” (even the celibate, sometimes) are just kidding themselves if they think they’ll one day join the chosen few in paradise.

So what, then, is a Christian? Many evangelicals would respond that it involves having a “personal relationship” with Christ, beginning with the act of asking him into one’s heart. In theory it’s as simple as that, though in practice one is then supposed to begin changing one’s behavior to better conform to Christ’s example. In theory (again), that transformation is supposed to be an outgrowth of one’s relationship with Christ, but in practice outward appearances are usually all that matters; one merely needs to agree with a checklist of do’s and don’ts, accompanied by a properly liberal use of Christianese terms and Bible verses in one’s speech, to be regarded in your average church as a “good Christian.”

Even setting aside the gap between theory and practice that exists in many churches, we quickly run into a dilemma when we realize that different Christian sects have different ideas about what makes a person a Christian. Is it enough to say the sinner’s prayer and join a church? Which beliefs does a person have to agree with? How many (and which) good deeds, if any, does a person need to perform? What role does the sacrament of communion play? How important is baptism? Is confession before a priest/minister necessary, or can one confess directly to God? Does denomination matter? Can Christians lose their salvation, and if so, how? Disagreements over these and many other questions have fueled a thousand schisms.

Read more…

For those who didn’t get to see the CNN special last week, here is what can only be described as a minor temper tantrum from the longtime head of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuals (NARTH). Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, who has often described gay people as fundamentally narcissistic, appears to earn such a diagnosis for himself.

Transcript

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Joseph Nicolosi often accuses the media of distorting his research. He was reluctant to speak with us.

(on camera): We were hoping we can talk to you when it’s over. NICOLOSI: Yes. OK. Well, I don’t think so.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Eventually, he did agree to go on camera, but:

(on camera): You’re categorically saying that, if a father and son have a normal relationship, that child will not be gay?

NICOLOSI: Yes.

TUCHMAN: That’s a pretty strong statement, right?

NICOLOSI: You want to debate? Do you want an answer or you want to debate?

TUCHMAN: Well…

NICOLOSI: I gave you an answer.

TUCHMAN: Yes.

So, there are some stereotypes you talk about, how, you know, if a child’s effeminate, if he’s creative, he’s artistic, those are things to look out for. Is that fair to say?

NICOLOSI: Goodbye. You’re confusing effeminacy with artistic. I didn’t say artistic.

Here.

TUCHMAN: Hey, Doctor?

(voice-over): For the record, the word “artistic” is right here in the Love Won Out literature.

This is a quick follow-up to my earlier post on Paul Cameron’s “Scandinavian Gay Lifespan” study. Cameron purportedly presented the paper at a recent convention of the Eastern Psychological Association.

Just this morning, Phil Hineline, president of the Eastern Psychological Association sent me an email in response to an inquiry I made last week. It includes a statement which disassociates the EPA from Cameron’s claims and challenges Cameron’s description of his presentation. You can read the statement in its entirety here.

Before	After

Ex-Gay Watch congratulates John Paulk on his new look, which we trust matches his good cooking.

We don’t know whether he learned to project long-haired, diet-conscious, post-metrosexual masculinity from Kyan and Carson or from Ex-Gay Eye for the Christian Guy, but however it happened, he looks fabulous, and healthier than ever.

More pictures of Paulk, cooking colleagues and family are in color here.

Best wishes to John and his family from the folks at XGW.