Stephen Bennett Seeks to Profit From Huckabee AIDS Issue
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.
It seems the church is closed now, and in 2007 he was supposed to criss-cross the nation to preach and give out a bunch of neat stuff. We know because he was asking for thousands in donations about this time last year to buy a new SUV for the task. No word on how that went, though he did get a writeup in One News Now because he ditched Ford due to the AFA boycott (they wouldn’t promise to stop advertising in GLBT publications). He always finds a way to get some ink.
Yes, at the end of each year Bennett always places panicked pleas on his website, asking for more and more money (details) ostensibly to tell the world how “NO ONE is born gay” and that he is a “FORMER homosexual” (he loves capital letters). Last year he even threatened to quit if he didn’t get $100K, a less drastic version of Oral Roberts 1980s plea. One can join Bennett’s ministry with any of a dazzling array of special packages; bronze, silver, gold, platinum, inner circle, lifetime – you name it. But you won’t get much from Bennett unless you give first, and if history is any indication, not much after either.
Bennett’s latest project (new ones come up about once a year) is something called The Parents Group (of which he is “executive director and founder, no less). Basically, it’s a forum hosted on his brother Bo’s web service and again, you can’t get in unless you pay. In a secular version of his usual over-hype, he claims “We HAVE the LATEST and GREATEST Web 2.0 technology, developed by “iGrOOps.” There isn’t a spec of the nebulous “web 2.0″ in it as far as I can tell, but it does sound good.
If all this seems more tongue and cheek than usual, well it’s just hard to describe Stephen Bennett any other way. When you realize that all the “international this” and “world wide that” is really the proverbial desk in his garage, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking him too seriously. Then again, he did show up to ask a question on the get-it-online-only Value Voters Presidential Debate earlier this year. Does that count?
The big question we would like to ask of Bennett is this: Do you live off this ministry income? Is this your only means of support? If so, that might explain why you seem so desperate to profit off situations like the one above. We only wish you hadn’t gotten your ideas from a book entitled “Marketing Your Way to Ministry for Fun and Profit.”
If you would like to set the record STRAIGHT (oops, sorry) on this Stephen, feel free to do so in the comments.
Ah,
Steven of the “I’ve had hundreds of boyfriends, none of whom ever have materialized, lived for a summer as a houseboy in a Provincetown guest house I refuse to name, freqented bars in connecticut where no one recalls me, lived for years with a lover whom I refuse to disclose” personal testimony. Yet he’s overwilling to show up anywhere, any time, at the drop of a hat to tell you a story and collect a buck.
100 years ago Steven would have traveled with a carneval show.
100 years from that ref. point, Steven Bennett is a carnival show.
“Totally unscripted”, “reality television”, done ex-gay style.
Next year, or some time, S.B. Industry will be found weeping — praying for forgiveness, tearing of clothes, ash-rubbed into his product bewildered hair — pleading he was lying all along and please, please, please forgive him (because God already has, of course).
The ultimate message will still be the same. The real same:
“Send Money Now!”
Yup, SB has never indicated in the past that the parent/friends support group is related to HIV/AIDS. Promo materials only say that members have one issue in common: ‘homosexuality.’ I never cease to be amazed at SB’s boldness in delivering his offensive, self-serving, ever-changing ‘ministry’ proclamations.
I pulled this Christmas message from Stephen’s web site. Apparently “SBM gives freely…all year long.” PLEASE send money so he can continue to do what he does so well “freely.”
Whatever happened to his road show…did it go on as scheduled or was it cancelled after he was run off the road by gay activists while leaving a toll booth on his way to speak in Mass? I kinda feel like most who have come into contact with him…something just doesn’t compute. One wonders what will happen when his kids are old enough to start “spilling the beans.”
j.
I’ve seen him speak a few years back. Back when i was still trying to continue my exgay thereapy my dad and I went to hear what he had to say. I tried really hard to get some good out of the message. My dad thought he was a total flake and that we wasted our time. (My dad is pretty conservative for what its worth, so thats saying something)
I remember talking to a leader of an exodus affiliated ministry who was a mentor of mine. He laughed when i told him went to an SB seminar. If exodus leader cant take this guy seriously who can?
I’ve seen SB in person, too. He was clearly playing to the fears and bigotry of the conservative, white-haired Sunday morning crowd. The low point was when he paraded his ‘beautiful wife and two precious children’ up to the platform to the applause of the congregation. The message was clear – they were proof of his deliverance from homosexuality. As a formerly married man with two children of my own, I knew SB’s family isn’t proof of anything — but the audience didn’t know any better. They were pulled into his message of intolerance and no doubt bought his false statistics like “75% of all homosexual men were sexually abused as children or youth.”
I tell you what Rick…if SB said he was a ‘ho…this pretty much shows he still is.
I’m just saying…
Ever notice how the wives of all ex-gays are “beautiful” and all of their children are “precious”? Not that all wives should feel beautiful and all children feel precious. But it just seems like they are overplaying their hand.
From 12-24-07 SBM email:
In addition to BM’s 24hr phone service, you can also donate online, or mail your financial gift (must be postmarked by 12/31/07)
And what Christmas
pitchgreeting wouldn’t be complete without the virulently anti-gay Biblical admonishments of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and 2 Corinthians 5:17.