Ex-Gay Watch

This past Tuesday, PFOX posted some disturbing news. While innocently offering “materials on same-sex attraction and tolerance for the ex-gay community to a hungry public” at the Arlington County Fair, Arlington Va (Aug 15-19), they claim their representatives were viciously attacked, both verbally and physically, by “gay activists” who had also set up a booth at the fair.

As happens every year, gay activists disrupted our booth activities. They screamed obscenities, threw our materials from the exhibit table to the ground, insisted we recognize their same-sex “spouses,” demanded that PFOX leave, and hit a PFOX volunteer because he is ex-gay.

Clearly, this sounds like utter mayhem at the Arlington County Fair. One can only envision these helpless, innocent ex-gay volunteers, persecuted as they have been through the ages, standing in their booth with a message new to the world – that gay people should be straight – while an ugly mob of “the gays” shout them down with intolerance. It’s madness, but there is more!

The gays became infuriated when our ex-gay volunteers testified about leaving homosexuality. They adamantly refused to accept the ex-gays’ sexual orientation. One gay man went so far as to hit our ex-gay volunteer because he refused to recant his ex-gay testimony. We summoned a police officer, who ejected the gay man off of the fairgrounds. Our ex-gay volunteer decided not to press assault charges against the gay man because he wanted to turn the other check as Jesus had done.

Surely this is unacceptable; the gays have taken to physical violence against these poor volunteers, these ex-gays. If true, we simply have to speak out against such heinous acts against our ex-gay brothers and sisters. Of course, this is XGW so we trust but verify. And that’s where it became interesting. Read more…

Tim Todd Ministries has recently distributed 48,000 New Testaments — altered to conform to religious-right political correctness — to public-school students in the United States.

These New Testaments come with numerous “powerful full-color comics” that (Todd claims) communicate the “absolute truth,” that are packed with “absolute truths regarding moral issues young people are faced with everyday.” Issues covered in the comics range from drugs, alcohol, and peer pressure to abortion, evolution, and rock music.

Unfortunately, none of these issues is mentioned in the Bible, and even if they were, the comics present them in the form of fictitious strawman arguments by imaginary liberal and conservative culture warriors.

There is a six-page full-color comic dedicated to homosexuality. What makes this comic interesting — apart from its presentation of imaginary violent gay activists and gay-bashers as “absolute truth” — is the way it is neatly wrapped up by the testimony of a fictitious ex-gay character, who says he left homosexuality 30 years ago. The comic concludes with an encouragement to teens needing “freedom from homosexuality” to contact Exodus International. A URL is provided for them to follow to Exodus.

The presentation of fiction and culture war to public-school youth as though they were literal Biblical truth should deeply disturb conservative evangelicals, and especially Biblical literalists.

Tim Todd Ministries’ program to insert politically contorted and exploited Bibles into public-school settings is endorsed not by true respecters of the Bible, but rather by leading partisan polemicists of our time: T.D. Jakes, Michael Reagan, and the late Jerry Falwell.

Unfortunately, Exodus’ political allies have demonstrated again that they are willing to commit sacrilege in order to give the “change is possible” mantra an implied Biblical imprimatur. Despite their claims to uphold the Bible, they violate Deuteronomy 12:32, Deuteronomy 4:2, and Revelation 22:18-19, which — according to conservative Christians — forbid additions and changes to Holy Scripture.

Why does Exodus silently tolerate modification and fictionalization of Christianity in its name? We call upon Exodus to publicly repudiate the hacking of Holy Scripture with fictitious materials and the trivialization of ex-gay struggle through culture-war comics.

Hat tip: XGW reader John and OneNewsNow.

At a time when he should be getting a job, earning a wage from real labor, and focusing on his supposed “recovery” from lifelong homosexual struggles, the Rev. Ted Haggard has apparently sought donations for himself and for a defunct Colorado charity that the Rocky Mountain News (with help from writer Dan Savage and attorney Dave Coffman) has linked to a convicted sex offender.

Today, overseers of Haggard’s supposed ex-gay recovery rebuked the fallen minister and canceled his plan to work for the Phoenix Dream Center, a halfway house for people struggling with compulsive behaviors.

According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, the overseers said:

After their fact-finding was complete, they (overseers) informed Mr. Haggard that his plan and his communications about it were unacceptable. Mr. Haggard’s solicitation for personal support was inappropriate. It was never the intention of the Dream Center that Mr. Haggard would provide any counsel or other ministry. Mr. Haggard will not be moving in or working with the Dream Center. He will not be doing any ministry. He will be seeking secular employment to support himself and his family.

Unanswered questions:

Why would Haggard, who received a $138,000 severance package from his former church and owns a $715,000 house in Colorado, need two years’ worth of charitable handouts for himself and his wife?

Why would Haggard launder those handouts through a convicted sex offender?

Ex-Gay Watch has asserted at various times that Exodus’ flagship live-in program, Love In Action, altered its web site, put new limits on its youth program, and redefined itself from a therapeutic effort into a “ministry” in 2005 after Tennessee state regulators became concerned that unlicensed LIA staff were controlling participant/patient access to prescribed medications.

Specifically, XGW has said: “In 2005, according to Soulforce, Love in Action was investigated by the state of Tennessee for operating a mental health facility without a license. LIA then changed its operating procedures to avoid state regulation.”

LIA disputes Ex-Gay Watch’s assertion. We stand by our opinion, but in the interest of fairness, we wish to share with readers LIA’s official statement to us regarding events that transpired in 2005:

This is inaccurate. On the contrary, when Tennessee commenced its investigation we sued the state for discrimination against our ministry and won. Love in Action was fully exonerated of any wrongdoing and Tennessee was held responsible for all legal costs incurred, using $66,000 of Tennessee taxpayers’ money.

Ex-Gay Watch disagrees with the assertion that LIA was exonerated. In our view, the dispute with Tennessee was settled with assignment of legal costs and mutual agreement that LIA was now a “ministry” exempt from mental-health licensure requirements.

It remains our recollection (supported, we believe, by an analysis of archived copies of LIA’s web site) that LIA altered its web site in 2005 to remove some references to therapy and mental health, and to add new emphasis to spiritual and ministerial aspects of LIA’s counseling programs.

Love In Action has generously provided documentation from the state dispute that can be interpreted both ways:

Love In Action complaint against Tennessee regulators (PDF file)

Dismissal and settlement of Love In Action dispute (PDF file)

In fact, we see no direct conflict between LIA’s claim to have won the better end of the settlement, and XGW’s assertion that LIA changed its public outreach and certain potentially therapeutic aspects of its group-counseling programs in order to bypass regulatory authority and accomplish a settlement.

We leave it to readers to judge for themselves — and to former LIA participants from different years to tell us whether, in a given time period, they were treated as ministry participants or as patients.

Both the news media and the blogosphere have been roaring their disapproval of Sen. Larry Craig’s “hypocrisy” after he was arrested for alleged lewd conduct in a Minneapolis/St. Paul airport restroom.

But exactly how was Craig allegedly hypocritical? That’s where the accusations become vague — they preach to the converted and assume that any hypocrisy is self-evident.

I don’t think it is.

We don’t know whether Craig is predominantly attracted to the same gender and therefore “gay.” Even if he were, it is not necessarily hypocritical to be homosexual and to oppose same-sex marriage and inclusion in hate-crime laws (though I do find those stances unjust and purposely mean).

What is hypocritical, in my opinion, is the tendency of people like Craig and avowed ex-gay activists like Michael Johnston to advocate for laws that would punish people who live responsible, honest and healthy lives — while these antigay advocates 1) practice sexual irresponsibility and dishonesty, putting other people’s health at risk, and 2) falsely assert that their own secret down-lowness is representative not of themselves, but of the innocents whom they battle.

In other words, it is not sexual orientation or “identity” that makes closeted or down-low antigay advocates hypocritical. It is their unethical, illegal and unhealthy sexual behavior — and perhaps more importantly, their false accusations and discrimination against those who live and act responsibly.

How “Greenberg” is my valley?

You would think that an organization as professedly Jewish as JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality) wouldn’t need any help from the Goyim. You thought wrong. (“Goyim,” by the way, means “Nations” in Hebrew, and in scripture refers to the non-Jewish, or Gentile, nations.)

While perusing JONAH’s online library, I came across more than a couple “Jewish” resources that point to not-so-Jewish origins. Now, it would be one thing if JONAH owned up to this and put a disclaimer before the Christian-produced articles saying something like “this article is of a Gentile origin, but is helpful nonetheless” – but they do not. Instead, they edit the articles and muddle their origins so that the religious Jews reading them will not feel threatened.
I will list the non-Jewish sources I found in alphabetical order:

• Diane Eller-Boyko not only has a page in JONAH’s library; she is also a featured counselor at ChristianCounselingService.org. Fortunately for JONAH, she doesn’t drop one Biblical hint in her interview with NARTH’s Joseph Nicolosi.
• Janelle Hallman is a Christian counselor seeking to help using Christian values – the opening statements on her personal website make this explicitly clear. She works with the “secular” NARTH, where she tones down the bible-thumping, but it only takes a click to go from Jewish ex-gay article to Jesus Christ – the address of her site is provided at the top of her page at JONAH’s online library.
• Kaelly Langston contributed an excerpt from the first chapter of the book she’s apparently working on, called “The Rainbow Connection – The Truth About Homosexuality.” JONAH makes a half-hearted attempt at honesty here, and states that the text appeared in a “slightly different format” in the March 2003 issue of “BridgeBuilder,” the newsletter for Living Stones Ministry (a Christian ministry that takes their name from 1 Peter 2:4). One can only guess at how the other version of the article was “formatted.”
• Alan Medinger, known for using citations of the Nazi-admiring doctor Paul Cameron, has several articles on JONAH’s site, all beginning with the following text: “This article has been adapted for JONAH with the permission of Alan Medinger.” Well, at least they got his permission. But just what needs to be done to properly “adapt” an article for JONAH? I suppose you would need to get rid of all the Jesus references in it. Here is the original text (PDF) of his article “The Prison of Self-Protection,” which was originally published in the January 2005 issue of Regeneration News, the newsletter of Regeneration Ministries. The original article opens with a verse from the book of Matthew.
• Dr. James E. Phelan is a Christian social worker who has, in addition to his article at JONAH, made contributions to GospelCom.net and CatholicInsight.com. Because Judaism has consistently, historically supported a woman’s right to choose, Phelan’s pro-life stance would probably put him at odds with the morals of many of my people.
• Paul E. Rondeau will best be remembered as the man who put Holocaust Revisionism in bed with a Jewish ex-gay organization, by citing the research of Dr. Paul Cameron in his featured article “Selling Homosexuality to America.” He is director of development for Regent University (aka, Pat Robertson University), a major right-wing Christian institution. In fact, his article was first published in the Regent University Law Review, “a forum for Christian perspective on law in a traditional legal periodical.”
• Dr. Gerard Van den Aardweg’s book The Battle For Normality was published by Ignatius Press, a Catholic publishing house. Their site describes the book as “a Christian psychological approach and it offers the best opportunities for change.”

The cherry on top of all this is the “Non-Jewish Books” section of JONAH’s bookstore. JONAH’s “Jewish Books” and “Secular Books” sections each contain 8 items – while the “Non-Jewish” section contains 10. Is JONAH seeking to aid Messianic Jews? Or is it necessary to add the Non-Jewish resources to simply fill out the library? After all, NONE of the Jewish sources are specifically about homosexuality – they are about “traditional values” and bioethics. Every single non-Jewish book is dedicated specifically to the topic of Homosexuality.

If I were seeking help from JONAH, I would definitely be put off by their need to pool Christian resources to aid a Jewish clientele. A Jewish parent seeking help for their child would especially be put off- to paraphrase Wayne Besen, their kid might not come back an ex-gay, but they might come back an ex-Jew. This is one of the biggest nightmares of a Jewish parent. My ultimate question is, with all the rabbinical commentary, articles from Jewish periodicals, stories from Jewish counselors, and even support from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, why is it at all necessary to post thinly-veiled Christian resources? Is Jewish support for reparative therapy and ex-gay life really that sparse?

I certainly hope so.

Steve Gallagher is president of Pure Life Ministries, a Kentucky-based live-in and at-home “ministry” for persons deemed to be sexual sinners.

Gallagher’s organization may not have healed a single soul of their same-gender romantic and sexual attraction, but he is eager to make life difficult for same-sex-attracted persons just the same.

In a guest column for the religious right’s OneNewsNow, Gallagher expresses disgust that — compared to the AIDS-hysteria days of 1987 — fewer evangelical Christians now support job discrimination against same-sex-attracted people who are teachers by profession.

Also, in Gallagher’s column, those who are politically correct (like him) are described as “godly” and those who disagree with him are, well, you take a guess.

The fact that Gospel-inspired churches increasingly ordain same-sex-attracted people of faith especially offends Gallagher, who seems to believe that Christian churches should be houses of self-righteousness and warfare — not worship, repentance, and service to others.

(Note: To the best of my knowledge, PLM is not affiliated with Exodus.)

Hat tip: Good As You

We’ve commented occasionally about Charlene Cothran, the newly ex-gay publisher of Venus magazine who alienated her gay African-American readership with rhetoric of blame, self-pity and victimhood borrowed straight from the sorry political playbook of privileged white ex-gays.

Recently, some members of the African-American GLBT leadership have put together a video response produced by Human Rights Campaign and co-sponsored by the National Black Justice Coalition and the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches.

People for the American Way thinks that James Dobson of Focus on the Family has been unusually quiet of late.

Health problems and foot-in-mouth disease may have prompted Dobson’s low national profile, but PFAW suggests the organization’s strategic plan is alive and well:

Given a lackluster slate of Republican presidential candidates and a partisan refusal to support Democratic religious-values candidates such as Barack Obama, Focus is instead pushing its partisan agenda in state elections.

While some values voters may feel drawn to Obama’s frank talk about faith and charity, Focus and its state affiliates hope to mobilize “an army of citizen warriors” who believe that self-righteous militance is somehow Christian and convince them to vote for candidates who assert that politically correct, cherry-picked passages about fire and brimstone represent the totality of “Biblically based” values.

More information has come to light concerning the study we reported on here.

An anonymous source said they have contact with someone participating in the study, called the Thomas Project, out of Wheaton College, and the study consists of questions asked once a year by phone. This participant also noted that the questions were oversimplified, requiring basic responses where they felt detailed explanations were needed. We have good reason to trust this contact, though we will respect their request for anonymity.

There are unconfirmed reports that the study has a sample of as few as 100 to 150 participants. While we don’t know what work was done during selection or preparation, we now know that the data was collected via annual phone calls. A picture is forming of some weak methodology, but presumably more accurate assessments can be made if and/or when others in the scientific community are allowed to review the method of selection of study subjects, the content and method of questions, and the presence or lack of nonverbal measurements and control data.

We suspect Exodus’ Regional Freedom Conference (September 13-15) will be the most likely setting for the formal announcement of the results of the Thomas Project. We also suspect the results will claim rates of over 30% experiencing “change”, but this can’t be verified at this time. If so, it seems interesting that Exodus president Alan Chambers knew this before the study was barely a year out:

By Chambers’ estimate, only 30 percent of those who seek to switch orientations succeed. Fifty percent abandon the program. The other 20 percent, he says, go back and forth. “I would say it’s like [Alcoholics Anonymous],” Chambers says. “It’s in the 30-percent range [that] find a great degree of healing and move into heterosexuality, single or married.”

(Orlando Weekly interview with Alan Chambers, published 24 July 2003)

We will release more details as they become available.

Update: Peterson Toscano below relates a conversation with Chambers from 2005 which tends to confirm the lower sample figure of 100 participants.