Ex-Gay Watch

-Hate crimes based on sexual orientation increased slightly in 2007, despite an overall drop from 2006.

-Anthony Venn-Brown launches a new site for ex-gay survivors in Australia and New Zealand.

-The Ex-Gay Expose, hosted by Beyond Ex-Gay, comes to Denver November 7-9.

-Bill Hussung and Mishara Canino-Hussung’s documentary, Chasing the Devil: Inside the Ex-Gay Movement, is now available on DVD.

-Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, compares the legalization of gay marriage to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

Exodus President Alan Chambers told California’s Proposition 8 supporters last month to vote against marriage equality because it would have made it harder for him to be ex-gay.

Despite earlier this year vowing that Exodus would stay away from politics, Chambers complained that marriage equality would have made it more difficult for him to “come to the Lord,” and that young people “don’t need this obstacle in their way.”

He went on:

I’m so grateful that back in 1990 and 1991 that wasn’t something that stood in my way in coming to Christ in the way that he had me come to him. If that had been an option for me, I certainly would have chosen it …

The logic of this argument is astonishing. Essentially, Chambers admits that giving other people the choice to marry weakens his own ability to choose not to marry, and he advocates taking away freedoms – by changing the constitution, no less – in order to make his own choices easier to make. Just how weak are ex-gays if having freedom to choose placed before them makes life too difficult? Just how weak is their god if taking away people’s choices is the only way people will come to him? Read more…

Fred Phelps’ daughters to participate in a debate over Florida’s Amendment 2.

A California blogger confronts a Proposition 8 supporter’s scare tactics.

Peter LaBarbera: Banning books is “good parenting.”  Coincidentally, he says this even as the push to get ex-gay and anti-gay books into Virginia libraries is failing.

Notorious anti-gay activist Janet Porter (née Janet Folger) continues to hammer home the same old rants – claiming that should a certain Presidential candidate come to power, he would “use the bully pulpit of the white house to place vulnerable orphan children in the homes of homosexual activists.”

Meanwhile, the Yes on 8 campaign resorts to sending blackmail letters to several California businesses.

The October 23, 2008 Denver Post featured an article about Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out roadshow, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this weekend in Colorado Springs.  The article itself is well-balanced, featuring counterpoints from ex-gay survivors Peterson Toscano and Christine Bakke alongside the usual talking points from LWO spokespersons.  Unfortunately little is done to directly examine LWO’s claims, which can seem more impressive on first glance than they really are.

According to the article, “Focus says more than 50,000 gay people and family members have attended 52 conferences around the country in the past decade.”  Casual readers might assume from that statement that gays and lesbians constitute a significant percentage of those participants, when in fact the vast majority of LWO attendees are heterosexual, as Box Turtle Bulletin’s Jim Burroway learned when he attended the Phoenix conference in 2007.

Melissa Fryrear was more candid about LWO’s target audience: “We’re ministering to Christian families. They are devastated when a loved one is living homosexually. They can’t condone what falls outside biblical truth.”  As always, “living homosexually” (like its rhetorical sibling “the gay lifestyle”) is left undefined, and “biblical truth” as defined by Focus on the Family is assumed to be something so clearly delineated in the Bible that no disagreement is possible.

Perhaps the most interesting statement in the article comes from Focus on the Family’s founder, James Dobson: “Dobson said there are more than 800 known former gay and lesbian individuals who have found ‘wholeness in their newfound heterosexuality.’”  While Dobson gives no indication of where this number came from, it does seem to be considerably more realistic than the “tens of thousands” or “hundreds of thousands” (or even “millions”) of successful ex-gays that Exodus spokespersons often claim exist.

Even 800 may be a bit high, given the difficulty that Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse had in rounding up 100 participants for their ex-gay survey, and given the low success rate reported within this highly motivated group.

In any case 800 is hardly an impressive number, considering that the ex-gay movement has been around for more than three decades with over a hundred ministries (and an unknown number of private counselors) currently available to help those seeking to become straight.  And Dobson’s statement further confirms what many Exodus and LWO spokespersons have begun denying in recent years, that heterosexuality is indeed the goal of most ex-gay programs.

Left unspoken, even by Dobson, is whether those 800 have become fully heterosexual, or whether their newfound change is “ambiguous, complicated, conflicted, and incomplete.”  But then, being up front about such details would hardly help LWO’s sales pitch; the switch is best held in reserve until after the bait has been taken.

Ex-gay leader John Smid, who resigned from the controversial ex-gay ministry Love in Action in March, is now leading a new ministry from an office in or near his home church in Germantown, TN.

The specific nature of Grace Rivers Ministry is left rather vague by its mission statement:

Grace Rivers is a worldwide ministry actively stirring the body of Christ towards healthier relationships and spiritual growth by helping people become more honest and real with themselves, others and God using biblical principles, resulting in a more passionate response to fulfilling the great commission.

The “core values” are described thus:

• Authenticity in motives
• Honesty of the heart
• Non-Judgmental in response to one another
• Active Participation with one another
• Honoring one another
• Transparency with each other
• Confidentiality regarding one another
• Vulnerability about our lives
• Sensitivity with each other
• Respect for one another

And so to the question undoubtedly on everyone’s mind: Is Grace Rivers an ex-gay ministry? The young organization’s activities so far indicate it may as well be. Read more…

Ex-gay activist Greg Quinlan’s wife of three years, Cheryl Quinlan, appears to have received a decree of divorce in May of 2007, having filed the initial complaint seventeen months earlier.  XGW readers will recognize Greg from a recent incident involving distorted quotes attributed to noted geneticist Francis Collins.  The couple had no children and both considered themselves ex-gay before marriage.  Greg did not reply to our request for a comment.

This writer debated about whether or not to post this information.  Divorce is a painful, private time and we would not wish it on anyone, nor do we want to make things worse for Greg or Cheryl.  The inevitable pain of such events led in part to our request that Pam Ferguson (Willful Grace) write for XGW.  We hoped that she could help others recognize and steer clear of the ex-gay philosophy that holds heterosexual marriage as the ultimate proof of a successful “conversion.”  Too many have gone down that road in a mockery of what marriage means — a bitter irony when one considers that these same unions are held up by Exodus leaders “doing their part” in support of California’s (anti-marriage equality) Proposition 8.

The primary reason for us to report this, however, is that Greg and Cheryl first put their marriage into play by making it such a large part of their ex-gay activism.  Even more than most, they displayed it as proof of their claims that people can change from gay to straight.  And they used it as the basis of their platform to convince law makers to deny the rights of others. For example, in his testimony for Ohio’s version of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Greg said:

Tens of thousands of homosexuals have changed and more desire to change. Homosexuality is a behavior–not a genetic trait. Based on verifiable evidence, there is no justification for same sex marriage, civil unions, or domestic partnership legislation. None.

My wife and I are living proof–along with thousands of others–that persons with same-sex attraction can, and have, changed–and thereby can marry and be happy again.

We have chosen to follow the Manufactures’ specific guidelines for our lives. That means committed to one another as man and woman.

Read more…

Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern still sees homosexuals as a greater threat to the United States than terrorists.

A new poll shows that 53% of Connecticut voters support the state supreme court’s legalization of same-sex marriage.

The Our Family Matters conference takes place next week in Nashville.

A school bus driver is charged with instigating a homophobic attack against a 10-year-old boy.

David Link reminds readers of California’s pioneering role in recognizing same-sex relationships.

I recognize the guy in the costume from the now canceled CBS drama Jericho, and the woman looks like Molly Ringwald, so this must at least be a semi-professional effort of some sort.  It’s nice to see that at least one side of this debate can place an ad that isn’t literally filled with lies.  To those for whom the ends justify any means, here is hoping the people of California, Arizona and Florida will not reward such efforts, but instead decide on the facts of the issue and the fairness in their hearts.

You can view a few more in the same series here, here, and here.

In a press release full of risible exaggerations, PFOX’s Regina Griggs has claimed that ex-gays are “the most bullied and maligned group in America,” and complained that “they are not protected by sexual orientation non-discrimination laws.”

Calling on presidential candidate Barack Obama to include ex-gays in sexual orientation discrimination regulation, Griggs wrote:

Former homosexuals and their friends have been fired from their jobs, repeatedly ridiculed, assaulted, and intimidated. This harassment is most often perpetrated by the same groups who demand protection under sexual orientation laws but work to deny ex-gays the same respect.

The evidence offered for these assertions is wide of the mark. She cites the case of gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, whose appearance at an Obama rally was opposed by gay rights groups. Is Griggs sure activists attacked McClurkin “just for being ex-gay”? Perhaps it was more to do with McClurkin’s extreme, ugly and homophobic statements, such as this one:

The gloves are off … And if there’s going to be a war, there’s going to be a war. But it will be a war with a purpose. … I’m not in the mood to play with those who are trying to kill our children.

Now PFOX is suing the Office of Human Rights for not including ex-gays in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). It’s a move devoid of integrity, since PFOX has been vocal in opposing ENDA and has insisted on decrying anti-discrimination laws for gays as “special rights.” Nevertheless, this has not stopped PFOX from riding the “equality” wagon. In July this year, a mass email informed PFOX supporters: Read more…

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN
Loving v. Virginia  (1967)