Ex-Gay Watch

Peter Sprigg, the family values activist, has said that homosexuality should be criminalized.

From The Advocate:

Sprigg, a senior fellow for policy studies at the antigay [Family Research Council (FRC)], appeared on the program [Chris Matthews' Hardball] to debate the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

As Sprigg mounted an increasingly illogical defense of the policy based on discrimination, Matthews pressed him on the question: “Do you think we should outlaw gay behavior?”

“I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly decided,” said Sprigg. “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.”

“So we should outlaw gay behavior?” asked Matthews again.

Yes,” said Sprigg.

In 2008, he said in an interview that the United States should export homosexuals.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association (AFA) is another US Christian who revealed the depth of his intolerance for gays this week:

[We should] impose the same sanctions on those who engage in homosexual behavior as we do on those who engage in intravenous drug abuse, since both pose the same kind of risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. I’d be curious to know what you think should be done with IV drug abusers, because whatever it is, I think the same response should be made to those who engage in homosexual behavior.

If you believe that what drug abusers need is to go into an effective detox program, then we should likewise put active homosexuals through an effective reparative therapy program.

Fischer felt unjustly accused by “the leftwing blogosphere” of wanting to imprison gays, so issued this clarification:

My position is that homosexual behavior represents a severe threat to public health, and is even more dangerous to human health than intravenous drug abuse. Because of the health risks involved, curtailing homosexual behavior should be as much a public policy concern as curtailing intravenous drug abuse.

Fischer doesn’t want to lock up homosexuals (necessarily). He just wants to force us into reparative ex-gay therapy.

And then there’s Colorado-based Andrew Wommack Ministries, whose Uganda representative defended the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill by promoting the myth that its measures are aimed solely at protecting the young and vulnerable:

If you will read CAREFULLY you will see that this bill is aimed the ACTIONS of people that are endangering the lives of innocent people.  This bill proposes accountability for actions that cause harm, especially to children and minors, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. In addition, I believe it is clear that the main aim of this bill is to protect children and minors (with an emphasis on males) that have no protection against sexual crimes under the current laws.  Further, it is aimed at upholding the moral and ethical fiber of family-rights in THIS country.  Finally, this Bill is dealing with the issues that are related to a Third-World Community. These issues are so very different from the Globalized mold Western activists and the press are trying to suggest that Uganda squeeze into.

Many US conservative Christians may appear moderate compared to the overtly violent, institutionalized homophobia of Uganda, but when the surface is scratched away, the truth shows.

Working with the New Jersey Family Policy Counsel and speaking to the American Family Association’s (AFA) One News Now, ex-gay Greg Quinlan made statements on behalf of noted geneticist Francis S. Collins that were untrue — specifically that his work on the human genome project had led to the “fact” that homosexuality was 100% nurture, with absolutely no genetic component.  This echoed a similar distortion made by NARTH’s Dean Byrd earlier this year.  See our recent post for details on this.

As noted in that previous post, we contacted Dr. Collins last May and printed, with permission, his correction of what was falsely being credited to him by NARTH.  In this latest challenge, Quinlan has accused XGW of fraud, claiming that quote was not accurate.

While this accusation is absurd at best — XGW has never been seriously accused of fraudulently posting anything, let alone has this ever been shown to be the case — it seemed prudent to seek public validation of the quote’s veracity.  To that end, we posted the entire email exchange from May with headers intact.  We also wrote Collins again and asked that he confirm to a third party that what we were reporting was accurate and that his quotes were true.

Collins has now confirmed this to Warren Throckmorton, who has posted about it on his own blog.  Throckmorton is known to others who discuss these issues and understands the debate, yet has a worldview closer to that of Quinlan.  His confirmation should be enough to dispel any genuine question of validity concerning our quotes.  For the record, here is a message I received from Collins yesterday, after making him aware of the challenge to what we had quoted:

Dear David,

Thanks for the heads up. I am truly sorry to hear that there is a continuing effort by Mr. Quinlan and others to distort this information about genetic factors in homosexuality. The facts have not changed since the e-mail message I sent you on May 20, 2007.

Regards, Francis Collins

And then the cc’d comment after I asked that he confirm all this to Throckmorton:

Hello David and Warren,

I am happy to confirm that these e-mail communications from May 2007 and yesterday are indeed authentic, and represent my best effort at summarzing what we know and what we don’t know about genetic factors in male homosexuality. I appreciate your continuing efforts to correct misstatements that seem to be circulating on the internet.

Regards, Francis Collins

We hope this demonstrates our desire to expose the truth without deception, and of course the validity of our previous quotes from Collins. Would that we could apply an equal level of scrutiny to our ex-gay friends and expect a reply! We are still waiting for retractions by both Quinlan and One News Now, not to mention the genesis of this distortion, Dean Byrd at NARTH.

So far, this is all we have heard:

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Greg Quinlan was once a prominent ex-gay activist.  He founded the Pro-Family Network in Dayton, Ohio in 1998, and appeared in I Do Exist, the ex-gay video by Warren Throckmorton, in 2004. It appears he left Ohio in the last year or so and now works with the New Jersey Family Policy Counsel in an unknown capacity.

In an interview concerning the recent coming out of contemporary Christian singer Ray Boltz, Quinlan attributed false statements to one of the nations most respected geneticists, Francis S. Collins.  Speaking to the American Family Association’s (AFA) pseudo-news site One News Now, Quinlan responded to Boltz’ contention that he had been born gay:

I’m absolutely shocked. I’ve got some of his CDs and cassette tapes –- tells you how long it’s been around. When he says he’s born that way, we know now for a fact that that’s false. In fact, just last year in March, the director of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis Collins, said this: homosexuality is not hardwired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality.

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The original source for Quinlan’s comments appears to be this article posted to NARTH’s website last year.  In it, NARTH President Dean Byrd quotes a few lines from the appendix of Dr. Collins’ book, The Language of God: A Scientist presents Evidence for Belief, in such a way as to make it appear that his findings support NARTH reparative doctrine — specifically, the contention that homosexuality is entirely based on nurture. Read more…

In a recent article from the AFA‘s pseudo-news outlet One News Now, attorney Mat Staver of the anti-gay Liberty Counsel claims that students today, during the Day of Silence (DoS), will refuse to answer questions from teachers in class and otherwise disrupt the operation of the school day.

‘Number one, if students will not speak up in these classes when they’re called upon, that’s disruptive — and they [the schools] don’t have to tolerate students who will not speak because of the Day of Silence,’ he suggests.

One News Now writer Jeff Johnson also chimes in:

The Day of Silence is an allegedly student-led event designed to highlight purported suffering of homosexual students. Throughout the day, students who participate in the protest refuse to talk, even when teachers or administrators ask them to respond to questions.

First of all, there is nothing “purported” about the suffering and death of Lawrence King. And denying that goes way beyond an ideological disagreement. Secondly, the ACLU has made clear that students are required to speak in class when called on by a teacher, etc. There is no ambiguity here so one has to ask why Staver and Johnson are pretending this is so. Read more…

The American Family Association (AFA) continues to sing in the chorus of propaganda against the pending Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HR 1592). Their email pleas have become so numerous and shrill that Snopes.com has added one of their recent Action Alerts to it’s database of Urban Legends.

For those not familiar, Snopes.com investigates the various wild emails you may get, more often than not forwarded to you from that particular friend or relative who seems to believe everything is a conspiracy. They research the claims, try to determine their origin and list them on their website with a determination as to their accuracy. They’ve been at it for years and are highly respected as the place to go before you mail your old sneakers to Nike with the expectation of a new pair in return or protest a bill that is supposed to add a tax of 5 cents for every email sent or received.

The AFA claims about the Hate Crimes Prevention Act are so absurd they  have landed in Snopes territory with the other urban legends:

A California lawsuit which is now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court would make the use of the words “natural family,” “marriage” and “union of a man and a woman” a “hate speech” crime in government workplaces. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has already ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.

CNN and The Washington Post both reported that General Peter Pace, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, was fired because of his publicly expressed moral opposition to homosexual behavior.

A bill now before Congress (H.R. 1592 / S. 1105) would criminalize negative comments concerning homosexuality, such as calling the practice of homosexuality a sin from the pulpit, a “hate crime” punishable by a hefty fine and time in prison. This dangerous legislation would take away our freedom of speech and our freedom of religion.

Snopes lists all three as false.

Read the full report here.  Watch the AFA backtrack at high speed in their rebuttal here.

Prior to the recent Love Won Out conference in Phoenix, Focus on the Family tried to purchase space on billboards owned by media communications company Clear Channel. The billboards were to bear the organization’s familiar drumbeat “I questioned homosexuality: Change is Possible, Discover How.” Clear Channel declined.

Speaking on behalf of Focus on the Family, Melissa Fryrear said “the advertising company had turned down the business, but as of Monday, its lawyers had not received an explanation for the decision.” Clear Channel is a publicly traded company, and while they do own TV and radio stations, the Focus ad request was for billboard space. Billboards do not involve publicly owned airwaves, nevertheless Focus has apparently involved their attorneys in the matter.

Read more…

In 1988 Michael Johnston became ex-gay.

Almost immediately he became visable in the conservative anti-gay Christian movement. The following year he started his own ex-gay vehicle, Kerusso Ministries through which he put himself as an example in churches, schools, and on religious programming on radio and television. Eventually, by 1999, his profile had reached the place where Jerry Falwell used him as an example to Soulforce that gay people could become heterosexuals.

Johnston was the darling of anti-gay religious powerhouses. He was awarded by the Southern Baptists and helped write the Assemblies of God’s position paper on homosexuality (for those unaware of the AoG’s positions, let’s just say that they are not charitable).

But Johnston’s purposes were not limited to religious appeals to convert gays to his brand of Christianity. He also participated in the political anti-gay campaigns attempting to use sexual orientation as a criterion to deny fellow citizens equal treatment under the law.

Johnston was the face to a campaign called Truth in Love* in which he and his mother appeared on television telling the country that he had “walked away from homosexuality” but not before he contracted HIV. Johnston was also featured in the American Family Association’s 2000 video It’s Not Gay** and served on the steering committee for the National Campaign to Protect Marriage.

Johnston was not inconsequential in his ex-gay and anti-gay advocacy. He founded Americans for Truth (currently Peter LaBarbera’s AFTAH) and the National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day – coinciding with National Coming Out Day.

Johnston was at the top of his game when reality kicked in.

In June 2003 a reader reported to XGW that Kerusso Ministries seemed to have disappeared and that references to him on AFA and Family Policy Network seemed to have disappeared. Then in August of that year an attorney contacted Wayne Besen and told him an amazing story.

Johnston had been going by the name Sean and had been cruising men online. More surprising, he had been organizing unsafe sex parties and lying about his HIV status.

Besen interviewed the witness and verified the story before releasing the news to the media which, so closely following John Paulk’s gay bar sighting, caught attention. Religious conservatives who had once championed his testimony now scrambled to explain that though they knew Johnston was struggling, they were unaware of his deliberate exposure of HIV to unsuspecting others. The ex-gay leadership downplayed Johnston’s involvement and distanced themselves as best possible and those who couldn’t simply went on the attack against “homosexual activists”. But this scandal took its toll on the credibility of certain anti-gay efforts.

Johnston immediately disappeared into Pure Life Ministries, a rural Kentucky residence program and that was the last we heard of the ex-gay ministry’s most lauded success story.

Until now.

As Wayne Besen noted on his website, Johnston has now returned to public life as part of Pure Life, his refuge at the time of his scandal. He now serves as the Director of Donor Relations for the ministry. Pure Life describes the refurbishment of his once bright star this way

Since coming to Pure Life Ministries, God has accomplished a wonderful transformation in Mike. Through a series of spiritual breakings and heart-wrenching repentance, God has systematically stripped off the many masks he has worn over the years and brought down the heavily fortified walls that protected his heart from others for so long. For the first time in his life, Mike has gained a genuine understanding of what it really means to be a follower of Jesus and God has given him a fresh vision of helping others find real freedom; this time not for the purpose of self-promotion but to glorify Christ.

We will be watching with interest to see to what extent Johnston can recover from his scandal. The political operatives that drive the public face of the ex-gay movement may be hesitant to take a risk with a proven liability. Or, alternately, it may be that the depths of despicable behavior to which he sunk during his “fall” will only further titillate his audience and demonstrate greater evidence of his redemption.

* “Truth in Love” (often in capitals) has become a code term for extremist religious anti-gay activism, often accompanied with unapologetic theocracy advocacy.

** This video remains available from AFA without any explanation or clarification that their star witness was later shown to be a fraud.

It looks like you can go to your local Wal-Mart this weekend and not worry about running into Don Wildmon.

Really now, who uses the term “sodomite” anymore except maybe Fred Phelps? The AgapePress, that’s who:

Hartline says last year the not-for-profit San Diego Pride organization was under investigation for employing numerous pedophiles as volunteers and staff during its yearly parade and festival. He believes these pro-homosexual events are generally pornographic and that they are frequented by militant sodomites.

Keep in mind, that’s in the author’s voice, it’s not a direct quote. Also did I mention San Diego pride was July 29th. That’s almost a full month ago and Hartline and the Agape still aren’t over it.

And yet Nancy Brown over at Exodus’ blog links to and reprints Agape stories regularly.

From Jim Brown over at the Agape today:

Transgenders are individuals who have changed their sex through surgery, or at least have tried to.

Hmm… Let’s surf on over to the dictionary at the National Library of Medicine which offers a more accurate and less… how shall I put this? less-madeup definition than Jim.

Read more…