NAACP Appreciates PFOX Participation, Invites Them Back
Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) sent out a mailing today titled “NAACP Rocks,” referencing a 2006 letter of appreciation from the organization to PFOX. According to the attached copy, PFOX held an exhibit at the NAACP annual convention that year. It is not yet known if they participated in 2007 or if they will be there this year, but the email suggests they plan on participating in 2009.
The PFOX exhibit displayed useful information on unwanted same-sex attractions and tolerance for the ex-gay community. We distributed many brochures, flyers, stickers, and buttons. The attendees were enthusiastic about our booth and our ex-gay volunteers staffing the booth were well received. Many people remarked at how glad they were to see us and took extra handouts to distribute at their church back home. Gay groups like the Human Rights Campaign have exhibited at the NAACP for many years, but PFOX was the first and only ex-gay booth there.
We would like to exhibit there next year. Please make a love offering at http://www.pfox.org/donate.htm or send a gift to the address below so we can pay the exhibit booth fee.
Thanks and see you at the NAACP convention next year!
Here are examples of the brochures PFOX might have circulated.
According to the NAACP contract for exhibit space (as of this year), PFOX could secure a presence for as little as $500. The rules to exhibit seem pretty lax, though one would hope that groups which seek to curtail the rights of others would be antithetical to the goals of the NAACP. Ironically, PFOX considers themselves a civil rights group, protecting the rights of ex-gays, and referring to them as a separate and distinct orientation. This enables them to use verbiage lifted from organizations working for GLBT rights, the very rights that PFOX seeks to negate. That bit of sad logic is an apt testament to the anger and bitterness so common to PFOX.
It is not known why there was a two year delay before this was announced. XGW has no record of the information being public before now, and we haven’t yet received a reply to our query from the NAACP. The letter has a boiler-plate structure to it and could be the standard sent out to all participants.
It is a pleasure for me to express appreciation to you for having been an exhibitor during our 97′ Annual Convention Commerce and Industry Show in Washington, D.C., July 15 – 18, 2006.
It is a pleasure for me to express appreciation to you for having been an exhibitor during our 97′ Annual Convention Commerce and Industry Show in Washington, D.C., July 15 – 18, 2006. We value your support and participation as the NAACP works to assure full rights and equal opportunities for all of our citizens. Cooperatively addressing shared concerns contributed significantly to the effective implementation of our vital
programs.The success of our 97′ Annual Convention was due in large measure to the support provided by Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays + Gays. We were gratified by the enthusiasm and avid participation of our delegates, members and friends from across the nation who expressed many favorable comments about our convention. The additional audiences we reached through our web cast are also aware of your involvement as a contributor to our historic 97thAnnual Convention.
One still must wonder if an organization with antisemitic or racist overtones would be approved to exhibit, much less receive a letter of thanks for doing so. Perhaps they were confused by the “and Gays” that PFOX tacked onto their name some years ago. It has been suggested that this was done at the advice of civil rights attorney and longtime PFOX Vice President Estella Salvatierra to enable greater access to groups which would not wish to be part of anti-gay efforts, but who might see “Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays” as more neutral. But again, a simple Google search (or even a scan of their website) would reveal the more accurate and odious nature of PFOX, so this is indeed puzzling, even disappointing news.
The letter is signed by Bruce S. Gordon, President and CEO. Gordon resigned in March 2007 after expressing frustration with the job.
The NAACP says they welcome comments. If you reach them, please be civil and share any responses below. They may honestly be unaware of the nature of PFOX and their goals.
No word yet on whether PFOX representatives managed to generate any “attacks” during this event.
—
NAACP National Headquarters
Mailing Address: 4805 Mt. Hope Drive, Baltimore MD 21215
Toll Free: (877) NAACP-98
Local: (410) 580-5777
David– I never said anything about a vast conspiracy. And, in my post I only said that “I see it” as a disability. I was answering a question people had asked about how I see the term “ex-gay” or “gay” and to clarify that. I realize other people have other opinions about it.
Since I work in the disability field and realize the incredible stigma people with disabilities face, I resent any implication that there is anything about having a disability that makes a person somehow ugly or unworthy. If homosexuality is a type of physiological birth defect, there is nothing to be ashamed about any more than any person with a disability should be ashamed of having a disability.
I also know that various disabilities–even inborn and immutable ones–can cause people to have different levels of impulse control or make them more likely to act in ways that are contrary to standards/etiquette accepted by society or by God. That doesn’t make them bad. It wasn’t their fault to be born that way. But, none the less certain behaviors, regardless of disability, are still not accepted.
And, if you take offense at homosexuality being compared with a disability, I can only assume you are unfairly contributing to a negative stereotype of people with disabilities.
Again, this is my understanding of the issues. I am not attempting to speak for anyone else.
Karen K and…
I think at different times in our youth, insecurity, trying to find our own way and happiness amid the pecking order that is how we have to live, makes us hate one thing or another about ourselves.
Why would a girl starve herself to death?
Why would anyone get breast implants?
Why would an Asian get surgery on their eyes to ‘correct’ the epicanthic fold?
Why do black people endure scalp burns and hair loss to not have kinky hair?
Why would a gay person seek to not be gay any more?
These are ALL illustrative of a NORMAL person trying to fit into an unrealistic and artificial aesthetic.
These are all examples of people willing to go to risky extremes to find acceptance.
Understandable, but it’s still a serious sign of how deeply that damage can go, how much someone WOULD want to heal or escape it.
However, homosexuality IS one of THE most misrepresented and misunderstood and punished of human conditions. Not wanting to be same sex attracted is no surprise, but trying to reach an unrealistic aesthetic has required incredible sacrifice on your part, expense and another level of denial of and for yourself.
I can remember a time I hated being black. Living in an integrated community, white girls swinging their hair around and no one understanding that it’s ALWAYS black people who have to get along with white people no matter how unreasonable, instead of white people EVER feeling any obligation to know how it feels to be black.
What is happening is not making those who don’t understand homosexuality have any sense of obligation to reciprocate in kind at least in understanding.
Black people have a saying: that we know more about white people than they know about us.
The same is true for homosexuals. They know more about heterosexuality and heterosexuals than the other way around.
What you do, Karen K and the other David? is it?-you relieve the opposition of any interest in knowing anything more about what it is and means to be gay,. How much irrational demand is made to conform to the heterosexual aesthetic, despite the fact that heterosexuality is no indication of virtue or character whatsoever.
There is nothing about living as a heterosexual aesthetic that’s different, the ONLY difference is in the challenge to your everyday freedoms, and basic feelings about oneself.
You’re in that twilight zone of trying too hard to be what doesn’t come naturally to you.
Accepting oneself just on the basics like appearance and professional skills is hard enough. Trying to accept that you’re ‘no longer one of them’ is something else again.
The fight is really over what’s normal for us, and is only a matter of difference and if that difference is ACCEPTED and you don’t have to explain or justify yourself simple because you ARE different.
It’s exhausting explaining your existence and yourself to people.
Black folks have had to do it too, down to the kink in their hair and width of their noses.
WE know you and what you are Karen. We know why.
And why, isn’t the healthiest of reasons as you’d like to think and it certainly isn’t healthy for those young gay people yet to realize their full potential.
Homosexuality IS normal. So are small breasts, so is a roundish body frame.
But look at what people are willing to do to conform, and for WHO?
For WHAT ideal and whose reality?
Go ahead, I’ve seen black women be self satisfied with their straightened fly in the breeze hair, and women sporting implants.
But the fact remains, that’s NOT what their hair, breasts or your orientation is meant to do.
The perception of happy, didn’t come from a root of knowing yourself and who you COULD be without all the artifice and change of aesthetic.
And so you may think you made a choice. Not hardly sister.
You only had a choice between a rock and a hard place and even then you got pushed hard to an aesthetic, not your own.
— Karen K.
And that’s how my religious family and friends think. I should just weather the storm of this life in celibacy much like someone born with a horrible birth defect or some genetic aberration that needs to be nipped in the bud.
That’s the trend lately: branding me as if I had a disability. My religious-oriented “friends” pity me and think I should be ashamed of my SSA. I will never apologize for that brief enlightenment I experienced once: unmitigated love. I’ll never consider it a disability to give and embrace true love. I will never feel one ounce of guilt for some of the relationships I had with a couple of men. I fervently believe some higher power made me this way and the joy and angst I experienced with caring and sharing this gift should never be considered a disability. I believe it insults God that someone would think my love is even an affliction of some sort.
Karen K-
Pretty simple.
You see me as disabled.
I see you as hateful and bigoted.
This is my understanding of the issues. I am not attempting to speak for anyone else.
“Bigot: a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.”– dictionary.com
Who is the one being intolerant of whose views here? I find it amazing you would label me as hateful simply for having my opinion on homosexuality. I haven’t called you hateful simply because I disagree with you. I respect that people have different opinions and don’t expect everyone to agree with me. So, no I am not intolerant of your creed, belief or opinion on homosexuality. I simply disgree with it. Disagreement is different than intolerance.
Throwing around words like bigot (usually using the term inaccurately on top of it) is just an inflammatory way to unfairly demonize an opponent in a debate or discussion.
Uh, I think you missed the point Karen. Nick’s opinion of you as a bigot is no more or less valid (accurate?) than your opinion of him as disabled. Your reaction to his view of you is just what you are objecting to in others, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
You are welcome to comment here but I’m not sure why you keep repeating the same issues in this thread. While I can’t speak for everyone, I think a majority here have expressed the same views as I have, that how you deal with your same-sex attractions is your own business, and of no concern one way or the other to me or them.
But if you keep pushing the issue over and over, then you are bound to strike a raw nerve in someone like Nick C. Is this what you are looking for?
If homosexuality is a “disability,” then why can’t we then park in the disabled zones near stores? Can we apply for government assistance then since we are disabled? Is the ex-gay movement working with the ADA to get “homosexuality” on the disablities list?
Karen K.
My being gay isn’t a disability or a birth defect. You clearly have no idea how inflammatory your comment is. That is why you seem so surprised when Nick C. called you a bigot.
I don’t think you are a bigot, because I don’t believe that a person can change their sexual orientation. I believe that you are as gay now as you have always been. I do think that describing gay people (and yourself by extension) as disabled or suffering from some birth defect contributes to anti-gay bigotry. For that you should be called out.
Since you clearly don’t understand how insulting your comments are, I would encourage you to read up on Dr. Laura and the general response to her “biological error” comment.
Give me a break.
Karen, people who are queer get upset when you call their natural sexual and romantic inclinations a “disability” because disabilities are attributes that need to be overcome or reconciled. A deaf person cannot hear and is not as able as a hearing person to go through life with ease without adapting first. A blind person must adapt to their sightless condition to be on par with sighted humans in everyday survival. Disabled people often triumph above their able-bodied counterparts because of the tenacity developed in overcoming what might otherwise hinder them.
But loving someone of the same sex does not innately hinder someone. It doesn’t make them less able to survive, and it’s not something that is necessary to overcome or “dealt with” in order to live a full life.
The only way homosexuality exists as a condition to be overcome is when people treat it like something that needs to be overcome. But it isn’t necessary. I can love another woman and it won’t make a difference in how i live a fulfilling life, so long as people leave me alone and mind their own business.
karen k
You overlook the fact that when you talk about homosexuality, you are actually talking about people. People like me. And not surprisingly, those people will take offense when you label us as disabled just because we don’t agreed with your religious precepts.
Funny thing about bigots – they’re the last to recognize how hateful their words are.
Alan S. nailed it:
I used to accept Karen K’s self-positioning as a moderate.
But here, Karen presumes to pick-and-choose which “disabled” people get special rights and which ones get higher taxes and second-class citizenship — or jail, since jail is precisely where Exodus Global Alliance wants to put “homosexuals.”
Furthermore, Karen offers double-negatives and double-talk: She does not specify what, if anything, she opposes at PFOX, Exodus, or any other member of the un-Christian, superstitious far right.
Thirty years after its founding, the ex-gay movement remains overwhelmingly Caucasian. It is increasingly hostile to constitutional rights and safety for blacks and women as well as gays:
–Exodus leaders have — speaking unofficially and out of sight of blacks — opposed ALL hate-crime laws, not just the ones that recognize gay victims of violence.
–Focus on the Family and its offspring oppose every semblance of an equal rights amendment that would equalize men’s and women’s constitutional rights.
–Exodus and Focus have asserted a blanket religious exemption to anti-discrimination laws.
No one who knows much of this can credibly claim to be an innocent bystander; apathy, neglect, and intentional ignorance are not moral options.
Nor can an informed person claim with consistency to support Exodus/PFOX and the NAACP, whose missions are in direct conflict. There are ex-gay activists who favor special rights solely based on race, and who oppose constitutional equality for all (regardless of race, religion, or gender). But I think such activists will find little agreement at the NAACP.
It appears, based on the limited information, that PFOX first deceived NAACP into allowing an exhibit, and then lied to the public about the nature of the form-letter that it received afterward.
Karen doesn’t clearly state her opinion about that lie. Everything else that she says is a sideshow.
Here’s another point regarding “disability”:
The ability to intimately love one other person is not a disability. It is, among other things, Christian.
However, a celibate ex-gay activist’s choice not to express intimate love to anyone — or, on the other hand, an ex-gay activist’s choice to fake a marital relationship for political, religious, or social approval — might well qualify as selfish and un-Christian.
How ironic that lovelessness and selfishness — so evident in the ex-gay success stories — are so commonly projected by these activists from their own lives onto gay couples whose love and selflessness is beyond doubt.
Mike A said:
The fear, of course, is St. Peter will slam the pearly gates on anyone who is gay or lesbian or homosexual or has SSA or has had a gay experience or thinks they’re gay or whatever else is PC in the ex-gay world to say now. Because somehow the message of the Gospel was warped and apparently the ex-gay movement found the missing manuscript that says, “Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven, AND IS NOT A HOMOSEXUAL, they shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.” – The Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to St. Matthew (Matthew 7:21)
It follows a pattern…since their religious community will only love and accept them IF THEY SHOW OUTWARD SIGNS OF HETEROSEXUALITY, or at least demonstrate that they ARE NOT GAY OUTWARDLY, then the logical conclusion (for many ex-gays) is that God expects the same. Afterall, the religious body is suppose to reflect the wishes of God so, if they say being gay is a “no-no” then God says it’s a “no-no” and so one has to do everything in their power to OUTWARDLY show the world they are straight.
In the Jewish Scriptures, the prophet Osee states that God declared, “I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than holocausts.” Osee 6:6 (Hosea 6:6) So why do ex-gay ministries require gays and lesbians to SACRIFICE who they are? Why are they not MERCIFUL to those whose sexual orientation differs from others? Why do they refuse to learn from the knowledge that has been brought forth by Biblical scholars FROM ALL WALKS OF FAITH who acknowledge the Scriptures that certain religious bodies use to condemn gays and lesbians are in fact not related to modern definitions of sexuality?
Were they alive during Galileo’s time they would have helped set up the bonfire to burn him alive!
Hi Karen,
You ran right past my post about natural attributes not being accepted and who has them going to great lengths to change them, not because they are unhealthy people, nor that their not wanting them isn’t understandable….but that wanting to change them isn’t necessarily something that will work or HELP society at large EVENTUALLY accept those attributes.
And actually, they have become more accepted. There is nothing wrong with accepting homosexuality. There is nothing wrong with homosexual people.
And no reason to KEEP teaching children that homosexuality is bad and dooms who is gay to whatever.
THAT’S why your disability analogy got you gobsmacked and you deserved it. You might as well have said my kinky hair and full lips are a disability.
Maybe to someone who hates those attributes that are most often in a black person….and they would be unusual in a whilte person.
But NEVER, EVER will I accept that those features are ugly, unnatural and not worthy of acceptance.
You feel me?
I can empathize with you as far as not wanting to be same sex attracted. You’re set UP to not want it.
But why would you, as I say, give any oxygen to those who think homosexuality so ugly a thing? And it’s ONLY heterosexuals with an agenda who think so?
One needs a LOT of brass if they are going to get along doing what DOESN’T come naturally to them Karen. You’re on the side that confuses and confounds and you’re going to have to live with your choice.
Your choice, Karen….wasn’t about being thick skinned, or strong. It wasn’t about being courageous or noble. Your choice is none of those things, not on any level.
Because of what happens to those who DON’T make your same choice. And because of what happens to education about homosexuality and idealization of heterosexuality.
Your choice seriously screws other people and when THEY know it, don’t complain.
You’re in no position to get defensive. You’re in no position to feel that any hostility or distrust of you is unfair.
Karen, if you can’t handle talking about the choice you made around gay people, that’s not our problem.
It’s an indirect insult, I think. And the folks here can correct me about that.
I know a lot of people that love certain things, like dancing and art. They may take classes and practice and practice…but without natural ability, it’s pretty much a solitary pursuit. Sexual orientation is like that. What comes naturally shouldn’t and doesn’t take PRACTICE, it just takes nurturing.
With the chronic mantra that homosexuality is representative of being a broken heterosexual, that’s like saying a person who can’t dance is just a broken dancer.
Which would be a useless and hurtful statement if they were talented as an artist or singer.
Gay folks are UNDERAPPRECIATED talent, but talented just the same. There’s a difference.
For a price, it’s not hard for a shark to tell someone they have talent in an area they don’t, because that person wants so BADLY to be among the exalted and accepted.
Which one are you, Karen?
I think a key point of what I was initially trying to express has been missed. I brought this up by making a comparison to the deaf and Deaf communities. My view of myself is that of little “g” gay and your view is that of big “G” Gay. You will find those in the Deaf community are just as insulted by the idea of having a disability. For them it is their identity and culture. Anyone familiar with the Deaf community will know what I mean.
I think the question for me is: Can Gays accept that there are some who see themselves as little “g” gay?
And a second question: Is it possible to simply disagree on these philosophical ideas about identity without resorting to calling someone a bigot? Even within the Gay community there are various perspectives on understanding what a queer identity is and how it is formed.
The reality is regardless of how or why someone is gay (and I think there are different reasons, not just one), the bottom line is: I do not see gay/Gay people as inferior to heterosexuals. I have absolutely no hate or animosity towards GLBT people. I do not desire to see anyone who is GLBT unfairly fired from a job or evicted from housing, or barred from seeing a loved one in the hospital.
The reality is I love GLBT people. I realize it is virtually impossible for people on this thread to understand that, but I hold to what I believe about homosexuality not out of any desire to hurt or condemn someone who is GLBT, but because I believe the ways of God bring us well-being. And it is because I desire shalom for all people, and especially those who are GLBT, that I share my beliefs even though it incurs anger.
I would have liked to reconcile my homosexuality with Christianity. I have great incentive to do so. I don’t live single and celibate because there is something particularly enjoyable about that. I do it because I trust God and after many years of soul searching believe homosexuality is not what God wants. You can hang me by my thumbs for believing that–but what can I do? Deny my own conscience? I trust God and I believe what he says about homosexuality is truly, truly for our well-being even when we cannot always understand that.
Anyway, I think we have had a great discussion here, even if heated at times. This is the reason I read ExGay Watch because by interacting with you all, my thinking is challenged. I appreciate hearing your perspectives, so thanks for taking the time to share them. Until next time . . . Take care.
(Mike A–Your comment doesn’t interact with anything I have actually said, so I can’t respond)
The “Big letter” “Little letter” concept is just a way to describe dedication to a subject, a way to describe commitment and the percentage of a person life the issue takes up.
The risk of letting yourself become a “big letter” person is you suffer for it, you risk becoming lonely or not doing the things you love or leading a full life because of the expectations of that big letter. Say when a big “R” religious persons feels forced to live lonely and celibate life or that big “C” capitalist finds his wife leaving him because he never found time for her. This doesn’t matter if you are a “C”atholic, “J”ewish, “D”eaf, “G”ay, “A”utistic, “T”rans. . .When you only identify yourself by one facet of your life you risk losing something important.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, while I make time for advocacy in my life and I engage in a homosexual love life, I am many things most of which have nothing to do with the letter “g” in my life , I’m a spiritualist, an artist, a craftswoman, a friend, a merchant, an adviser, a confidant, a community volunteer, and a relatively nifty (at least according to the people who know me) human being.
–
I’m also going to go out here and say something mean spirited and I will apologize before I say it, still I must say it.
I do not now, never have, and never will want your brand of “special” love. That strange sickening sweet love that comes out of a some deep-seated desire to “fix” someone broken and fragile. I say this as a gay person, I say this as a trans person and I say this as a person who survived a horrible accident that nearly left me for dead. All my life there where people who told me how much they “loved” me and that they only wanted to “help” me, what I discovered was most of the time they wanted to fix something in themselves or prove that they where a good person. It is demeaning to hear and receive. I don’t like and never have liked it when a person uses the term “poor dear” while telling me how brave I was.
I will accept genuine love, from damn near anyone, I am no where as bitter as this makes me sound, but I will say no thanks to the false brand of “love” you are offering with the line “The reality is I love GLBT people.” It is not real love, it is “love” to prove that you are better then those poor broken creatures you so desperately need to help.
So please for your sake and mine don’t waste any of that “love” for me. You can hate me, or feel indifferent, or treat me like everyone else on the street, but do not “love” me.
Karen,
I’m convinced Shakespeare had it right when he observed “to thine own self be true.” Having lived with what sounds like a similar struggle for 35 years, believing myself “gay” vs. “Gay” (to use your example), I came to the place where I finally was willing to question my idea of “Christianity.”
If the bible informs your Christianity, why do you get a snake, or a rock when you ask for bread. Could it be you ask amiss? Having a conscience doesn’t mean you are right. There are people willing to fly jets into buildings based on a conscience towards “God.” Courage of conviction is not proof of correctness.
You have a need Karen, “where now is the God of Elijah?” Where is the demonstration of “God” in your life vs. belief? How do you know that you trust “God” and not god? That “big g” “little g” thing can cut a few directions.
The apostle Paul noted it is better to be single than married. He also believed in a God who wouldn’t want people to “burn,” so there’s marriage. (I love his rousing endorsement “it’s better to marry than burn…”). I cannot reconcile burning with “G”od.
I cannot reconcile your god with a God of love.
Does anyone here views themselves as Big-G [G]ay? I don’t think I do. Anyone else? (E-c-h-o… e-c-h-o…) Perhaps I’m missing Karen’s point. Yes, some deaf people adopt a Deaf identity, but that situation does not apply to many gay people.
I don’t know many gay people who make their sexual orientation all-important, however, it’s clear that several Exodus leaders do.
Being honest about one’s sexual orientation does affect how one relates to people — but if I may say so, being honest and communicating openly are hardly sinful, and it does not translate into an all-consuming identity.
I’d like to clarify one of my earlier remarks: Celibacy can be done selflessly, as I’m sure Karen K does.
But in the hands of some other ex-gays, celibacy becomes an excuse to resent gays who represent the slightest temptation; to close off communication with people; and finally to wage dishonest cultural and political warfare against people. In that context, celibacy becomes loveless and selfish.
Karen…please. just. stop.
You are not authentic. There is no amount of defense you can muster for what you have rejected in yourself. The equation is ZERO in gain, and a two to one LOSS for gay people.
It. does. not. matter. how much you say you love gay people. Your actions show otherwise. The person who gets a nose job cannot say they love aquiline noses. You sound phony and are personally insincere. And admitting to your own nose job still doesn’t make a bit of difference.
What IS it with the folks who say they are no longer gay? You can’t CUT it, okay?
You can’t cut it as a strong, authentic defender of gay folks. Straight people will think you’re out of your tree, and gay folks will check your disingenuousness for what it is. It’s the work you make OTHERS do, that you can’t, Karen.
You leave a bigger mess then you can clean up.
Why is THAT so hard for ex gays to deal with? What IS it with you that you just can’t handle the truth of what you say and do?
If you can’t handle that reality, then maybe there is no place for you anywhere Karen. Sometimes we DO have to be one or the other for people to understand any of us better.
I understand you perfectly. It’s just that it’s not flattering what I think of folks just like you.
And check this out Karen.
I’ve already had to handle a lot in life. Seeing the evolution of acceptance and what that means. I RODE IT OUT. And in the meantime, represented black sisterhood with the hair, nose, lips, everything!
And folks got used to it and found they liked it.
You represent the archaic, a regression of acceptance, as I said. I bet I could handle being GAY too. I sure don’t underestimate that it takes quite a depth of character to come out stronger on the other side of it.
You have sold out gay folks, Karen. Sold them out and you’re here and elsewhere trying to call it something else. Gay children especially pay a VERY high price, that you’re not willing to help them pay WHERE IT MATTERS.
It takes guts to show some love for gay folks, without a posse, Karen. You can’t show love, until you show you got the brass ones to show YOURSELF.
For now, that’s not you. And you haven’t asked a soul here if you got what they need. You just assume it’s enough or pretty special on your say so.
Girl, please!
Karen:
I’m sorry, but it sounds like so many non-Catholic Christians I know who tell me they “love” Catholics, and then proceed to rip into to me and my faith as if they had free licence. If you really love someone, you don’t just love them on the surface. It is not a matter of “I love you, BUT or HOWEVER…”
I am always appreciative of having healthy debates about religion, but I find that most of the time it is a “I’m right, you’re wrong” dog fight for many Christians on both sides of the dividing line. Few people appreciate the true art of arguments.
And so it is with ex-gays speaking to Gays or gays or Ggays … I always hear those words “I love gay people” and then they proceed to rip into me and my life as if they had free licence.
I think the big problem is that everybody is running around with their own definition of love, as especially what “love” means in the context of how we deal with one another. For Christians, that means we have to go to our source and leader, Christ. We search his words and deeds to see what it means to truly love someone with whom we may not feel a connection, or even moreso, with someone with whom we completely disagree with on key beliefs concerning faith and morality.
In the four-fold written Gospel one finds that it was not so much that those who encountered Christ made a change but that they were transformed by Him. The mere sacrament of Baptism confirms the fact that we can’t change on our own accord but rather we are changed by God’s love for us. If we are Baptized in Christ and yet remain gay or lesbian because our core being is programmed with desires for those of the same sex, then perhaps the transformation Christ seeks in us is not that we destroy or sacrifice our natural desires but that we raise them to a level that expresses true love and respect for those with whom we entrust to share our lives, and to allow God to flow through the bond we create with the person we wish to share the rest of our lives with.
Karen, you said:
This puts me in mind of something that John Henry Newman wrote in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864):
The author of a brief critical history of the Oxford Movement commented that perhaps Newman should have considered the possibility that it was God’s will that he should spend more time in the fresh air and sunshine.
Hi Karen,
I got the Exodus Youth e-newletter and they had an article about youth coming out, being more vocal about their rights and educating the public.
Mike Ensley calls it promoting homosexuality. That’s an oft repeated misnomer. Promotion. There is nothing in dealing with the reality of homosexuality that’s promotion, it’s education. It’s VITAL education and information being offered.
Another oft repeated phrase is “struggling with same sex attraction”.
Struggle is a loaded word, and a matter of perception. Struggle with all kinds of things when one is young is inevitable.
One can struggle with ethnic identity, religious values, struggle with academic grades and with one’s peers.
And ALL of it, is normal. All of it is a rite of passage and all of it could occur over a lifetime in different ways and times.
Making one’s sexual orientation the locus of youthful existence from which almost all other problems of life flow, is exactly the wrong thing to do. Ex gay groups do this constantly. Centering acceptance on denial, not freedom. And all around you in every day life, the business of being couples and parents and having sex and being in a relationship is celebrated, the focus of nearly everything no matter where you are.
And you have to sit like a nun, without the uniform that distinguishes and exalts you as such in your community. And you have to daily give yourself assurance that you DIDN’T let all that love around you affect you deeply and that you don’t feel any less like an outsider than you did as an out homosexual person. You require assurance from the straight people RUNNING THINGS that yes, you’re doing the right thing and God will love you best for such a show of self sacrifice.
Young people confronted constantly with the message that gay youth get that’s negative, WOULD struggle. That’s the plan. That’s the calculation FOR gays and lesbians.
But there is struggle to make one strong, and struggle to make one weak and complacent and non challenging to established authority.
In the former, stuggle is a good thing. One can learn about emotional maturity and self assurance.
The latter, is more a matter of following and prescribed line of thinking and focus set ASIDE exclusively for gay people.
You don’t have the choice to marry someone else gay. You don’t have the same free options for children and family, those are powerful disincentives to challenging what are different rules for you, Karen.
As I’ve already said, it’s OTHER gay people, especially young ones who can’t be independent of the plans the adults have for them who pay a heavy price for your direction.
They don’t have a choice, really. You didn’t either, but I’m sure it makes you feel better to think you did.
And the whole point really IS to feel better. Who wouldn’t want to feel better?
But this IS about YOU feeling better. Because it sure can’t make gay folks at large feel better. So the decision you made IS essentially quite selfish.
I’ll say this though: a world of just heterosexuals, or those assumed to be or celibate…would be the most boring place.
There are some things about struggling with society the way it is about gay people that requires gay folks to develop a kind of savvy, and emotional and intellectual and creative quotient that keeps the world turning with spectacular variety and interest.
Look at the music, dance, literature and physical and mental attributes that black folks developed out of struggle.
And look at how the world is also a better place that doesn’t have racism anymore, and what could happen without homophobia.
See, Karen: Now you’re just beige, another member of the same old wallpaper. It’s exciting to be a part of struggle that CHANGES things for the better, that beats the world at it’s own game. The only way to be a REAL effective soldier, is to NOT be like the herd. Just blending in.
And Karen…that ain’t you.
Creation is full of variety, fluid forms, and more than one function for nearly each living thing. That anyone could believe so firmly there is only ONE way to have sex, and gender is so strictly defined in the physical sense, given all this diversity around us…is absurd.
The NAACP has a long history of opposing discrimination based on sexual orientation – PFOX supported legislation in Virginia a few years ago (that failed) that would have banned gay and straight alliances in the state.
On that ground alone, NAACP should not welcome PFOX’s presence at their events, despite PFOX’s claims that they are the ones who are truly inclusive and tolerant and that ex-gays are the real victims of sexual oppression.
Well said, Regan! Hear, hear!