Ex-Gay Watch

Joe Dallas, former leader of Exodus International and self-professed “ex-gay,” was on the Janet Mefferd Show to express his disapproval of Christians who support equality and of Christian members of the Queer community. Dallas, long an opponent of so-called “gay theology” (that is, Biblical exegesis that is affirming of the benign reality of homosexuality in humanity), declares that Satan has a clear role in leading people “astray” to homosexuality in his book When Homosexuality Hits Home.

Satan’s strategy is leading humans astray, whether the arena is doctrinal or moral, is to deceive an individual into thinking that what God has forbidden is not really wrong or destructive, but is, in fact, life enhancing. So it was I the garden when Satan tempted Eve; so it may well be with your loved one. The sin of homosexuality is human nature, but the belief that sin is not really sin comes not from human nature alone but from an ancient and evil messenger.

He is especially concerned for openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, whom he “trembles for,” and worries about how “young people” will be affected by the Gospel that Bishop Robinson preaches -  fearing that they will be told that “homosexuality is legitimate” and can “embrace their homosexuality and do so with God’s approval.”

I suspect that it will be a message to young people stating that homosexuality is legitimate, therefore they can embrace their homosexuality and do so with God’s approval. I am reminded of the warning to those who call good evil and evil good and darkness light. There is a particular judgment, and this is the heart of the matter, there is a particular judgment that is placed biblically on leaders who teach falsehood, it is of course serious when any Christian goes into error, whether moral error or doctrinal error, but you remember James said, ‘my brethren let us not be many teachers because we will receive the greater judgment.’

Dallas also invokes Godwin’s Law while unironically warning people that the Bible can be used to justify just about anything, if you twist it enough:

And as you know, if you took the Bible hard enough you could make it say whatever you want it to, cults can do that, Nazis did that and I’m afraid it’s being done today under the guise of civil rights and gay liberation.

Comparing gays to Nazis and indeed blaming National Socialism on gays is nothing new, but it is still amazing when such hyperbole is spouted by prominent ex-gay figures. His own ministry, Genesis Counseling, claims to help people who are struggling with sexual addiction and homosexuality by having them reclaim their “Godly sexuality.”

Hat tip: Right Wing Watch

A gay New York Times journalist recently caught up with a former friend and colleague, Michael Glatze, the conservative Christian activist who, in 2007, renounced his homosexuality and claimed to have become straight. Benoit Denizet-Lewis wrote about the reunion, with background on Glatze, in the NYT story “Going Straight.”

Following his ex-gay conversion, Glatze, a one-time LGBT youth activist, wrote an editorial for World Net Daily, in which he called homosexuality “neurotic” and “abornmal,” saying it was “lust and pornography wrapped into one.” He also appeared to question whether homosexuality should even be legal:

Homosexuality allows us to avoid digging deeper, through superficiality and lust-inspired attractions – at least, as long as it remains “accepted” by law. As a result, countless miss out on their truest self, their God-given Christ-self.

He’s since made a habit of homophobia and misogyny. In 2009, for example, he called Barack Obama “the world’s first official girl-man president” and decried anti-bullying policies in schools as the result of hysteria from “victim-minded whiners.”

Read the NYT story in full here. A related NYT article this week addressed reparative therapists who “help God-fearing people stay in the closet.“

Exodus’ Freedom Conference began yesterday and goes until the 11th of June. Touted with the motto “The Reality of Grace,” attendees come to hear “a message of Biblical truth and Christ-like compassion to a world impacted by homosexuality.” Watchdog group Truth Wins Out is holding a counter-conference through June 10th.

Exodus couches their rhetoric with words like “truth,” “love,” and “Christ-like compassion,” but their true core beliefs are much less kind.

Ex-Gay activist Christopher Yuan will speak to an audience of Yale students at the Af-Am House this Friday at 7:00, at the invitation of campus Christian organizations. Yuan’s claim to fame is his “deliverance” from some rather bad habits which, as is a common practice among ex-gays, he associates with being gay.  He attributes his behavior change to God, and his mother’s prayers.

What many would consider their worst nightmare has become a reality for Christopher Yuan. While attending dental school, he began living promiscuously as a homosexual and experimenting with illicit drugs. Within a few years, he was expelled from dental school, imprisoned for drug dealing and discovered that he was HIV positive.

Yuan espouses the tired if convenient Exodus line “the opposite of homosexuality isn’t heterosexuality, it’s holiness.”  Yale seems like a rather enlightened place for this type of thinking, so this news surprised us.  Yuan’s website reflects his movement toward making his ex-gay narrative a source of income, complete with speaking engagements and a book or two.  His ideology tracks closely with Exodus and he defends them when questioned.

Anybody from Yale out there?

He’s not joking, the book is You Don’t Have to be Gay by Jeff Konrad.  If you want to get a copy, look no further than the Exodus bookstore — not that Exodus has anything to do with gays going straight or anything.

I tend to agree with one commenter from the Amazon listing:

He [the author] says that in high school, he had a big crush on a girl but was too shy to do anything about it or was hurt by her. He then got a boyfriend and, at first, was “disgusted” at the idea of kissing him. This tells me that the author was either bi-sexual, heterosexual, or 90% heterosexual to begin with. As a gay man, I have never had an attraction to a girl, and the idea of kissing a man I loved was wonderful to me and still is.

Whatever Konrad was, it doesn’t sound like he was gay.  Yet he’s giving advice that gay men are supposed to follow to become straight (something which is either extraordinarily rare and unpredictable, or just impossible).  This illustrates in a nutshell a significant avenue of damage caused by these organizations.  Most are painfully unprofessional and unscientific, which leads to a buffet of recommendations consisting of every amateur idea and “therapy” one can imagine — just about anything will do.

Exodus must think a lot of Konrad’s ideas, as they don’t just sell his book but highly recommend it.  From a review in their newly renovated student (youth) section:

I strongly encourage any male struggling with homosexuality to read this book.  It is not only educational; it is transformational and filled with hope and optimism.  Konrad does a fine job by utilizing support from well-known psychologists and scholars on homosexual issues to address the root of the matter and provide an alternative to the world’s view of what to do with this attraction.  As a struggler himself, he pulls from a life of experience to provide heartfelt wisdom to a man that is in desperate need of answers.  Reading this book will truly bring great insight and healing for the homosexual struggler, and enlightenment to those who don’t struggle.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Aaaaaaand it turns out to be more of the same. Literally.

2011 = Simplify, Amplify and Intensify — Letter from Alan Chambers for November 2011
Nov 17, 2010

First, we are reminded of the mission of Exodus:

Mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality.

Implication: Homosexuality is a negative impact.
—
The agenda…

He [God] has impressed on our entire team the need to do 3 things with what we already have: simplify, amplify and intensify.

~Simplify:

We want to be clear about what we do and don’t do at Exodus. [emphasis added]

Clear:
definition: understandable, apparent
antonyms: ambiguous, indistinct, mysterious, obscure, unintelligible, vague

To use it in a sentence: Clearly, “change” is possible, “temptation” may last a lifetime and “the opposite of homosexuality isn’t heterosexuality, it’s holiness.”

Everybody clear on the meaning of clear now?

~Amplify:

[T]he greatest area of need in our culture is outreach to young people. We will be changing the name of Exodus Youth to Exodus Student Ministries in order to encompass middle school thru [sic] college age students. [em orig]

As the article says, that means a messaging that’s more internet savvy, as well as “short to the point booklets.”

We also want to amplify the specialties that our member ministries provide

["We now have a variety of ways that parents can help their homosexual children decide which indoctrination service ministry is best."]

~Intensify:

We also want to strengthen our communication about the true point of this ministry … Staggering numbers of young people are abandoning their faith because they cannot reconcile their homosexuality with their Christianity.

And who better to intensify that increasing faithlessness than an organization that promises — by calculated implication — heterosexuality.
—
This is a scene from a movie called Disgrace. I watched it months ago and didn’t really care for it, but I had to rent it again so I could write this part down. It nails it.

Dad: When you were small, our next door neighbor had a dog. A golden retriever, remember?

Daughter: Jimby.

Dad: It was a male, and whenever a bitch went passed, it got excited, unmanageable, and with Pavlovian regularity, its owner would beat it so that at the mere smell of a bitch the dog would run around the garden with it’s ears flat and it’s tail between it’s legs, whining and trying to hide.

Daughter: I don’t see the point.

Dad: Well, you can punish a dog for chewing the slipper. The dog can accept that, but it’s desires are another thing.

Daughter: Is that the moral, that males should be allowed to follow their instincts unchecked?

Dad: No, that’s not the moral. What was ignoble about the spectacle was that the poor dog had begun to hate it’s own nature. It no longer needed to be beaten, it punished itself. At that point it would have been better to shoot it.

Fortunately the dog didn’t have a gun, or fingers to tie a noose. So the dog’s mother didn’t have to experience the HORROR of walking in on the sight of her son’s dangling or beheaded body.
—
So, it would seem that Exodus’ 2011 agenda is, in effect, a finessing of the message that one’s nature is something to be rejected — for life — in order to escape the eternal clutches of God’s loving wrath.

Sammy Davis Jr. “I Gotta Be Me”

___
patrick.fitzgerald@exgaywatch.com

Direct link here. (JiM is second segment, about 6:30 in)

Patterned after the equally bizarre Mankind Project, Journey into Manhood is nothing new to those who keep up with pseudo-therapies which make wildly unscientific claims of success in changing people from gay to straight.  JiM’s founder, Richard Wyler, doesn’t even try to claim a professional background that would qualify him as a therapist or a researcher.  Claims made by the organization have as much factual weight as those made on behalf of “male enhancement” pills on late night cable — anyone can claim anything.

Yet in spite of all this, and the dearth of any credible evidence that sexual orientation can be changed as an act of will, gay men still pay the $650 to spend a weekend with the boys, chanting about manhood, elevating males to mythical positions, hugging and holding each other (while naked en masse according to former attendees).

Since JiM invited Nightline cameras into the normally secretive reunion weekend, things were probably less intense.  Also, this was a reunion, not an actual weekend — JiM refused entry to those.  Even so, it gets rather strange.  And inevitably the question arises, as it does with many of these groups, are these people — leaders included — simply fulfilling their needs for male intimacy through the activities created to drench the weekend in maleness?  Is this really a wink wink, nudge nudge farce, where most everyone knows what’s really going on, but uses the pretext because it is a safe way to experience the intimacy without guilt?

If so, not everyone plays along.  Nightline also talks to a couple of men, Ben Unger and Chaim Levin, who were steered to JiM through JONAH, the group known mostly now for the criminal record of it’s founder, Arthur Abba Goldberg.  These two men expected some semblance of professionalism, and instead found themselves asked to do things they were unprepared for and unwilling to do.

And what of the “successes?”  The wife of the person they highlighted and who seemed most positive about his “change”  later said that they often look at men together, but his type is different than hers.

Update: The ABC piece isn’t really investigative journalism, as they took whatever JiM spooned out to them.  Check out a more thorough undercover piece here.

Edit 11/10: Replaced expired promo video with full version from Hulu.

Scott Lively, the anti-gay activist whose conference appearance precipitated Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, is fighting back against the media’s “character assassination” of him.

In an email sent to supporters this week, Lively wrote:

Friends,

I’m looking for a good Christian media source to interview me on film on the Uganda issue for posting online.  I intend to get off defense and counter-attack the false witnesses with hard facts about Uganda and the dishonest way the media has addressed the story.  Please forward this to any pro-family journalists you know and ask them to contact me at sdllaw@gmail.com.

In the mean time, I have created a new category of news stories at DefendtheFamily.com under the title “Uganda.”  There are about 20 stories there now, going back to about 2003 which show the growing problem of pro-homosexual activism in that country, long before my 2009 seminar which is now being blamed for creating a climate of “homophobia” in Uganda. There are also numerous examples of liberal media propaganda about the anti-homosexuality bill.

If you happen to hear someone criticize me based on the intense, global anti-Scott Lively character assassination by these media, please refer them to our website, both to read the material there, but also to download Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the “Gay” Agenda which was the source of all of my comments and teaching in Uganda.

Thanks for standing with me through the firestorm,

Dr. Scott Lively

The media hardly needs to assassinate his character. His own testimony is sufficient: he is in favor of the criminalization of homosexuality, and opposes the death penalty only on pragmatic grounds, not on principle, as Dr Warren Throckmorton points out. Lively’s preferred solution is “rehabilitation” – in other words, forced reparative therapy for homosexuals.

Scott Lively’s ugly words speak for themselves – and for his character.

Exodus International President Alan Chambers jubilantly noted on Facebook this morning that a lesbian couple of 22 years had finally broken up in response to prayers:

Heard from a couple this morning who have been praying for their daughter and her partner to come to Christ for 22 years. Both accepted Jesus, broke off their relationship and are pursuing a life in Christ. God is faithful and answers prayers. Be encouraged no matter your circumstances!

This rejoicing should tell you all you need to know about Exodus’s family values, and those of the Christian Right. They proclaim the importance of monogamy, faithfulness, commitment and love, but those values end when families fail to fit their narrow mold.

Alan’s fans are equally happy with the news, describing it as “amazing,” “awesome,” and testimony to Exodus’s ex-gay mantra that “change is possible.”

Dr George Rekers has resigned from the board of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), following allegations that he received nude, erotic massages from a male prostitute.

Rekers, who has been an anti-gay activist for decades, took a 10-day European vacation with Jo-Vanni Roman (at first identified only as “Lucien”), a gay escort who says they met through the explicit website Rentboy.com. Rekers faced humiliation in the media after denying the accusations, claiming he he hired Roman to help carry his luggage while he recovered from surgery. He said he only found out Roman was an escort partway through the trip, and responded by evangelizing him and warning him against homosexuality.

Stepping down from NARTH, Rekers wrote:

I am immediately resigning my membership in NARTH to allow myself the time necessary to fight the false media reports that have been made against me. With the assistance of a defamation attorney, I will fight these false reports because I have not engaged in any homosexual behavior whatsoever. I am not gay and never have been.

NARTH responded:

NARTH has accepted Dr. Rekers’ resignation and would hope that the legal process will sufficiently clarify the questions that have arisen in this unfortunate situation. We express our sincere sympathy to all individuals, regardless of their perspective, who have been injured by these events. We also wish to reiterate our traditional position that these personal controversies do not change the scientific data, nor do they detract from the important work of NARTH. NARTH continues to support scientific research, and to value client autonomy, client self-determination and client diversity.

Earlier this week, there were premature reports of some websites and organizations (Focus on the Family’s Family Research Council, for example, which Rekers co-founded) deleting mentions of Rekers from their history. Today, Dr Warren Throckmorton reports that the purge has begun.