Ex-Gay Watch

At the suggestion of XGW commenter cowboy, here is an open forum to discuss any loose ends from 2007, or hopes and dreams for 2008. We can start with cowboy’s:

I’m not going to make some transitory quest to fit back into my college-days jeans or resolve to get my taxes done early this year. I want happiness. Okay…I’ll settle for some contentment on some level with being single. But celibacy is not a long-term option for me.

Would a lodge-styled mansion in Wilson, Wyoming and a partner like the Jake Gyllenhaal’s character in Brokeback Mountain be asking for too much happiness?

In any case, to everyone here at XGW: may you find happiness in this new year!

And let me just add my personal thanks to everyone who has read and/or commented here. It has been a year of changes, hopefully improvements, but more is in store. Our request for next year is more interaction, information from you about things we should be covering. You will see better ways to share those kinds of tips shortly. In the mean time, we hope 2007 has been good to you.

And a special thanks to Mike Airhart, for starting this whole thing, and our writers, past and present, who give of their time and energy to help others possibly avoid some painful mistakes – very special people all.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and whatever else makes this time of year special to you.

PS: And cowboy’s wish ain’t bad either

Although Exodus International and its affiliate ministries are often perceived by the general public as a unified entity, Exodus does not, in fact, speak for its affiliates except on a very broad level. Educational curricula and counseling techniques can vary widely from ministry to ministry, as can political stances and “non-essential” doctrinal positions.

Some curricula are available to those wishing to run an ex-gay ministry, however, including Bill Consiglio’s one-year, fifteen topic Forward Program, for which a leader training workshop will be offered in January, as advertised on Exodus’ events page.

Dr. Consiglio is a semi-retired Christian counselor and the founder and acting director of HOPE Ministries in Connecticut. He is also a past member of Exodus International’s board of directors, a popular speaker in ex-gay circles with ties to NARTH, and the author of two books, Homosexual No More (1991) and The Forward Program (2005).

Based on the sample handout included on the workshop’s web page, Consiglio’s curriculum is fairly standard evangelical fare. SSA (Same Sex Attractions, the primary term used for homosexuality in the curriculum) is presented as a polar opposite of “saved biblically faithful disciple of Christ” and a condition that the struggler must learn how to “embrace, befriend, heal, control and manage.”

The sample handout does not elaborate on how participants are to achieve the goal of “liv[ing] with SSA” (a topic reserved for future lessons), though based on Consiglio’s past advice, one wonders if it includes employment of the rubber band technique.

Again in typical evangelical fashion, all openly gay individuals are described (and summarily dismissed) as “living for SSA,” and homosexuality is equated with “sado-masochism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, pedophilia, transvestism, transexualism, beastiality [sic], prostitution, adultery [and] ephibophilia [sic].”

Consiglio is careful not to promise heterosexuality to anyone who goes through the Forward Program, though the stated goal of making “significant progress in the resolution and management of SSA” is ambiguous enough that individuals steeped in the rhetoric of Love Won Out might read such a possibility into Consiglio’s words.

Such an assumption would be easy enough to make based on Consiglio’s own statements elsewhere. Chuck Colson cites Consiglio in his book Answers To Your Kids’ Questions:

According to Bill Consiglio, director of Hope Ministries, 40 percent of homosexuals who seek change “move into full heterosexuality, with many entering marriage and parenthood.” An additional 40 percent are able to live fulfilling lives as celibate Christian singles. (pgs. 116-117)

Given the changes Exodus has made to its public statements over the last several years, it’s quite possible that Consiglio no longer stands by that assertion. Ex-Gay Watch has contacted Dr. Consiglio for clarification, and is currently awaiting a response. When asked whether he still stands by that statement, Dr. Consiglio responded that his program’s goal is to help participants resolve their underlying issues and manage their behavior, not to turn them into heterosexuals. He further stated that “Some percentage who are able to achieve these two goals (resolve and manage), have cleared the way for heterosexual interests and adoption of a heterosexual life. I have seen reports of percentages from 10 to 40%. The only group that may have accurate statistics is NARTH.”

Nonetheless, there seems to be little in his curriculum to correct the impression that already exists in the minds of many in his prospective audience.

Pat Robertson’s really reaching with his preaching in the latest episode of the 700 Club. According to him, laws protecting LGBT persons are not appropriate because gays and lesbians make up such a small part of the population:

(beginning at 1:10 in the video)
Maximum- maximum – 2% of our population could consider themselves gay or homosexual, and about 1% would consider themselves lesbian. That’s it! … There’s one thing about having ten, fifteen percent or twenty percent of our population being discriminated against, that’s a different matter.

By Pat’s logic, Jews should not be protected under hate crimes laws because we only make up maximum – maximum – 2% of the population. Statistics actually put us at around 1%. Now, you would be hard pressed to find an evangelical Christian, especially one as publicly outspoken as Robertson, say “boo” about the Jewish people. We’re a very precious population to them, especially to evangelicals who immerse themselves in eschatology. Jews play a crucial role in the final battle between Jesus and the Devil, in which the status of Israel is at stake and in the end all Jewish souls either accept Jesus as the Messiah to be “saved” or are damned to Hell to spend eternity. In fact, Christian Zionism is a hotly debated topic in the Jewish community, because we love Israel but many of us are wary of aligning ourselves with a group of people who ultimately want us to renounce our Jewish faith by accepting Jesus.

It does Pat no help to argue that gays should not be protected because their “lifestyle” is a “choice.” Would he say the same thing about the Jewish lifestyle choice? Make no mistake – I CHOOSE to be Jewish, just like my cousin CHOOSES to be Agnostic. I choose to live a Jewish lifestyle by wearing a kipah and studying Torah.

Did Robertson slip, or is his agenda of Christian Dominionism showing?

The Bishop of San Joaquin, California is leading his diocese out of the Episcopal Church in protest at the Church’s increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians.

The Right Reverend John-David Schofield previously attributed his views on homosexuality to his experience of Fresno-based ex-gay group New Creation Ministries.

Although he has been candid about his support for ex-gay ministry, Schofield denies claims that he is or ever has been homosexual. A 1995 newsletter from Voice of Integrity, a pro-gay Episcopalian group, said the Bishop “told members of his clergy that he was a “cured homosexual”.” The publication carried the headline “Bishop outs himself in interview,” a reference to an interview Schofield gave earlier to Foundations Daily, a journal of the conservative Episcopal Synod of America.

On examination, it is not clear whether the Bishop outed himself: his claims are ambiguous. In the interview, he speaks of homosexuality as “a lifestyle which I have seen as destructive,” and apparently alludes to his own experience of ex-gay ministry – but the extent and nature of his involvement is not spelled out.

According to Reverend Bill Gandenberger, of the same diocese, Schofield responded to Voice of Integrity’s charge by saying that he “absolutely never” claimed to be a “cured homosexual.”

Last week, Schofield’s Diocese of San Joaquin voted by 173-22 to accept an invitation to join the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, based in South America.

Explaining the move, Schofield blamed the Episcopal Church’s “failure to heed the repeated calls for repentance issued by the Primates of the Anglican Communion and for the cessation of false teaching and sacramental actions explicitly contrary to Scripture.” The phrase “sacramental actions” alludes to the controversial ordination of Gene Robinson, the Anglican Communion’s first openly gay bishop.

Presiding US Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori says dissidents can leave, but insists the San Joaquin diocese will remain part of the Episcopal Church.

Update: Even conservative Episcopalian commentator David Virtue says as recently as yesterday that the Bishop was a practicing homosexual:

What happens is this. When a homosexual or lesbian renounces the lifestyle they get accused of being “self-loathing” and “homophobic”, much like the Bishop of San Joaquin, John-David Schofield who renounced the lifestyle many years ago.

Growing up in a 1960’s conservative evangelical home, Scott Harrison not only knew homosexuality was a sin, he knew it was “the worst sin a person could do. It was worse than murder.” He described to the Southern Poverty Law Center the exorcism delivered upon him by a minister at Living Waters/Desert Stream [see edit below], a neo-Pentecostal ex-gay ministry. After a “very intense, dramatic” group prayer that lasted three hours, Harrison found himself “drenched in sweat” and “psychologically wounded.” Because of “how it happened and the incorrectness of the theology,” it “felt like a spiritual rape” to him. Harrison was the victim, but says it’s hard not to blame himself, even 20 years after the incident. When asked how he became involved in such a bizarre event, Harrison responds:

When you’re coming from a perspective that you believe God can give messages to people, words of prophecy, then it’s very easy to become prey. This guy got a team of people together. One of the aspects that is pretty strong in Vineyard, still, is that they believe that people can be “demonized.” Not meaning that a person is fully possessed by Satan, but that a person has given him or herself over to Satanic strongholds in his or her life, so that it may take an exorcism to release the various demons that this person has given over their lives to.

He adds that as an ex-gay minister,

I didn’t believe change was an easy process. People would have said, if you asked them in private, [that] the option was one of celibacy, as opposed to accepting oneself as gay and lesbian. When [ex-gay ministers] talked about change at that time, they were talking about behavior modification.

Not much about that has really changed, with Alan Chambers (head of Exodus International) claiming he’s never really met an ex-gay, and declaring that he wakes up every morning denying that part of his being that comes so naturally.
Harrison believes that legally, ex-gay ministries should be allowed to exist, but as faith-based organizations, not state-sponsored ones. Ex-gay ministries have no place in public schools, just like representatives of religious institutions are barred. And he says exposure to the messages of Exodus Youth (Exodus International’s ex-gay youth ministry) are downright dangerous:

I don’t think that’s healthy for anyone, but especially not for high school students. Teenagers are idealistic. They’re going to grab for that, believing they can actually change their sexuality, when we have plenty of evidence showing it’s not possible. What’s going happen when they don’t change? More youth suicides, more youths engaging in risky behaviors, feeling betrayed by the church and by God and giving up on their faith. If I’d heard that message as a teenager, I don’t know if I’d be here today.

Thank G-d he IS here today, to give us his valuable point of view.

Edit 1/3/2008:

Today we received an email from Scott Harrison with the following corrections to this story:

…the original interview had stated that the exorcism or deliverance occurred at the hands of the pastor of my church, the Vineyard San Pedro, not at the hands of leaders of Desert Stream or Living Waters, which were based out of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship congregations in Santa Monica and later in Anaheim, California. I understand that not all of these details appeared in the original interview and that it might have been possible to infer that the San Pedro Vineyard was somehow directly connected to Desert Stream or Living Waters.

The reality is that the San Pedro Vineyard supported the work of Desert Stream, but was not a host for ex-gay ministry. When interviewed, I cited the deliverance session as an example of how demonizing homosexuality (for example, referring to homosexuality as a satanic or demonic perversion of the “one true” sexual orientation of heterosexuality), which is the modus operandi of most ex-gay leaders, can open the door to all sorts of abuses such as what I experienced. I clearly stated this when I was interviewed and wish the SPLC article had been a bit stronger on this point.

Response to Part 3 of Dr. Patrick M. Chapman’s Review of “Ex-Gays”, posted on Ex-Gay Watch, November, 2007, by Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse.

Response to “Part 3: A Focus on the Results — Examining if it is Harmful”

In this final response, Chapman raises a number of interesting questions, but again continues 1) applying a pattern of logic and argument that would, if applied broadly in the mental health field, establish self-defeating and unsustainable implications for the entire field and 2) on that basis then highlighting isolated findings and anecdotes as if they refute the broader pattern of empirical findings from the study.

In his first paragraph, Chapman chides us for imprecision and inconsistency both in how we characterize the claims about harm made by the various professional organizations, and in how we characterize our own findings and conclusions. He provides a link to the very same American Psychological Association Public Affairs website that we site in our book that cautions about harm from attempts to change sexual orientation. This is one of the less forceful warnings about harm (we cite others in our book in many places; see for example pp. 330-331). Further, public pronouncements by key professional representatives (for instance, psychiatrist Jack Drescher’s op ed piece, titled “Conversion attempts mostly lead to harm”) have yet further heightened the perceived likelihood and severity of risk of harm. Regarding his listing of how we describe this literature in the book, we do regret using “always” harmful (p. 19) as he points out, but the other quotes are reflective of the diverse array of characterizations of the likelihood of harm.

To address his pattern of logic, let’s begin by some simple clarification of how to think about harm. I (Jones) recently had minor knee surgery, and both the surgery itself and the medication prescribed post-surgery had risks. The fact that the rare person has had serious, even devastating reactions to such surgery and medication did not and can not itself invalidate my choice to pursue this procedure or the doctor’s administration of the treatment. The risks have to be weighed against the potential gains I expected in light of my dissatisfaction with the state of my knee prior to surgery and in light of the likelihood of such risks. Read more…

Francis Schaeffer is a name that commands automatic respect in most evangelical circles. His book, How Shall We Then Live?, and its companion video series, have been credited as the primary catalysts that led to the formation of the religious right and the politicization of the evangelical church.

Now, however, Schaeffer’s son Frank (an evangelical celebrity in his own right) has come forward to set the record straight with his new book, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. In an interview with John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, he discusses what his father (who died in 1984) really thought about the religious right leaders who capitalized on his call to action, and what he thought the church should look like.

On the leadership of the religious right:

The public image of the leaders of the religious right I met with so many times also contrasted with who they really were. In public, they maintained an image that was usually quite smooth. In private, they ranged from unreconstructed bigot reactionaries like Jerry Falwell, to Dr. Dobson, the most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met, to Billy Graham, a very weird man indeed who lived an oddly sheltered life in a celebrity/ministry cocoon, to Pat Robertson, who would have had a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement.

On his father’s alignment with the religious right:

He has been used by people like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and others to give some respectability to points of view that really were not his. What made my dad’s heart beat fastest was talking about people’s philosophical presuppositions and how they lived. He wanted to put people’s lives back together again, people who had problems. The politicized view of him is illegitimate.

On the politics of the religious right: Read more…

Whenever something remotely gay or ex-gay hits the headlines, Stephen Bennett is there pandering with a press release. He so desperately wants to be relevant, and yet he just isn’t. At times I actually feel sorry for him.

Responding to media questions about presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee’s 1992 statement on isolating those with HIV/AIDS, one can almost see Bennett jumping up and down like an attention-starved puppy as he issues yet another press release. This time he bills himself as “a worldwide Christian support community for parents with children who are homosexual, HIV positive or children who have died from complications due to HIV/AIDS.” When did he add the HIV/AIDS part? Apparently just yesterday, but then it does mesh nicely with the Huckabee issue.

It’s a coincidence that Stephen left his homosexual lifestyle in 1992 — the same year now presidential candidate Mike Huckabee made his statements on HIV/AIDS and reference to homosexuality as being “sinful.”

Smooth Stephen, real smooth.

Bennett has done a lot of things. He used to draw the portraits of celebrities (not half bad), then send them in as a fan and have them signed. Some might even think the work was commissioned by the celebrities themselves, though we are sure not intentionally. This was before his sign business, but on to the interesting stuff.

When he started a podcast, he called it a “nationwide radio program.” Apparently charging to listen wasn’t working out, so he started a church — a “virtual” church. Originally you could get sermons sent to you for $50 a month, but the material has become so stale it’s free now. It was creepy to hear him ask for everyone to gather round in a circle and hold hands, knowing he was probably sitting at his computer recording it all by himself. Read more…

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has posted an excellent, detailed report on the state of the ex-gay, or “sexual reorientation therapy” movement. It touches on most of the important issues of concern, and should be a catalyst for more debate.

Let’s take the following as a foundation for our view of sexual reorientation therapy:

Reparative or sexual reorientation therapy, the pseudo-scientific foundation of the ex-gay movement, has been discredited by virtually all major American medical, psychiatric, psychological and professional counseling organizations. The American Psychological Association, for instance, declared in 2006: “There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. Our further concern is that the positions espoused by NARTH [the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality] and Focus on the Family create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish.” [emphasis added]

They correctly recognize that ex-gay ministries paint only a grim, distorted view of anyone who might be gay. This tactic has been used in the past to discredit the lives of others and it was no more accurate then than now — though unfortunately it can be quite effective.

About the only time the word “gay” appears in the ex-gay lexicon is in the phrase “gay lifestyle,” which is largely seen as describing a hedonistic mix of one-night stands and sexually transmitted diseases that culminates in early death or abandonment when youthful beauty fades. The ex-gay movement has little language to describe the real world in which lesbians and gays hold elected office, appear on TV shows and raise families.

As “homosexuality as a disorder” becomes less credible to the average person, ex-gay groups are moving farther into the extreme. Just as with racism, those advocating discrimination, both legal and social, against gays are becoming more shrill. As Jim Burroway has well documented, Watchmen on the Walls is a prime example. The SPLC recognizes this as well and points out their connection with Exodus. Read more…

One of the most basic beliefs of the Christian faith is that Jesus died so that sinners did not have to do anything to earn God’s forgiveness and love. Exodus International, being a Christian organization, believes just that:

We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are-yet was without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)
Because of Jesus, we don’t have to worry about screwing up and falling out of favor with God, and we don’t ever have to try to earn God’s love.
–from the December 2007 Exodus Youth newsletter

The question being posted in this topic is: If God’s love is already upon Christians because of their faith in Jesus, and they have to do nothing to earn it, how is it many Christians and Christian organizations can justify ostracizing homosexuals? After all, every Christian is a sinner that is justified through faith, so their sexual acts should have nothing to do with how much God loves them.

I’m posing this question to practicing Christians. All faiths and creeds are free to discuss this topic, but anti-faith comments are not productive in this discussion.