Ex-Gay Watch

There has been a lot of buzz lately about an apparent collaboration between charity minded Tom’s Shoes and the virulently anti-gay Focus on the Family.  It appears that the average Tom’s Shoes customer finds FoTF’s work against equal rights for LGBTs offensive and many of them let Toms’ founder, Blake Mycoskie, know about it.  This prompted the following clarification and apology.  FoTF then countered with their own response.

“It’s perplexing to think that the same voices who champion ‘equal rights for all’ seem so intent on limiting our opportunities to help children in need through wonderful programs like TOMS,” he said. “How distressing that Christians seem to be the only ones not tolerated in our culture of tolerance.”

Daly agreed.

“This is an unfortunate statement about the culture we live in, when an organization like ours is deemed unfit to help children in need simply because we hold to biblical beliefs about marriage and family,” Daly added. “It’s also a chilling statement about the future of the culture we live in. We have to wonder: What will someone decide we’re unfit to do next?”

I noticed the CitizenLink response after reading a Tweet by Exodus President Alan Chambers:

Free #Slurpee day at 7/11. Apparently, it is also cave in on what you believe day @TomsShoes cc: @BlakeMycoskie

The response from FoTF is basically the usual “mean old gay activists made them change their minds” with the addition of “all we wanted to do is help the children.”  Let’s pretend for a moment that a truck just came by and shoveled in all the B.S. and carried it away.

What we have left is a lame attempt by FoTF to launder some of their considerably soiled reputation by drawing from the generally positive reputation of another.  They were just using shoeless children in Africa as the detergent.  It’s disgusting and it’s wrong.

If FoTF had really wanted to help shoe these children, they had other avenues to consider.  Knowing how toxic their organization is, and the likely effect it would have on the effort, they could have done all this in secret, behind the scenes.  Isn’t there something in the Bible about not doing your good deeds in public so people can see you?

Since Toms gives away a free pair of shoes to these kids for each one purchased, why couldn’t FoTF have simply sent out one of those famous direct mailings, the ones they routinely use to scare grandmothers into thinking the world will soon end because gays this or that. Instead, just ask their followers to buy shoes from Toms.  Nice, simple, effective and no grandstanding.

Or here is a thought, they could have taken just a fraction of the millions and millions of dollars of donated funds they have used to denigrate LGBTs, to lobby against their civil rights, and prevent their marriages, and just given that to Toms to send an entire boatload of shoes to needy kids.

If all you want to do is help the kids, then why all the fanfare, Mr. Daily?  You’ve spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars of other people’s money to make that bed, now there is nothing left for you to do but lie in it.

There is no tolerance for the intolerant.

Focus on the Family has taken the helm of the Day of Truth, which was spawned by the Alliance Defense Fund to oppose GLSEN’s Day of Silence. It was adopted by Exodus International this past year. Exodus relinquished custody of the DOT not long after several kids committed suicide as a result of anti-gay bullying.

Focus has decided to rename DOT the “Day of Dialogue:”

“We’re trying to raise awareness that more than one side needs to be heard on the issue of homosexuality, and we’re helping to ensure Christian students have the chance to express their viewpoint,” said Candi Cushman, a Focus on the Family education analyst, in the release. “What is freedom of speech, after all, but a guarantee of the right to have dialogue?”

Their website is still a shell, but DOD clearly misses the mark as much as DOT did, and completely misses the point of the DOS. The DOS doesn’t exist to further the acceptance of homosexuality by every person, it exists to make people aware of a specific type of bullying suffered by certain individuals. Not every victim of anti-gay bullying is indeed gay. By focusing on “God’s design for sexuality” and “sharing faith-based viewpoints” concerning homosexuality, not only is the topic of bullying avoided, it fosters the silence endured by people shamed into thinking they are outside of the correct “godly” design.

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.

The gay escort at the center of the George Rekers scandal says Rekers paid him for nude massages.

On Tuesday, the Miami New Times reported that Dr George Rekers, a long-time anti-gay, ex-gay Religious Right activist and scholar, had taken a vacation with a 20-year-old male prostitute he had met through the sexually explicit website Rentboy.com.

Rekers first claimed “Lucien” was a travel assistant, employed to help him lifting luggage, following recent back surgery. He later added the incredulous story that he was evangelizing Lucien in an attempt to persuade him against homosexuality.

Lucien said there was no sex between them, but he has now admitted there was sexual contact, and told Miami New Times that Rekers paid him for daily body rubs during the European vacation:

Rekers allegedly named his favorite maneuver the “long stroke” – a complicated caress “across his penis, thigh … and his anus over the butt cheeks,” as the escort puts it. “Rekers liked to be rubbed down there,” he says.

Dr George Rekers was co-founder of the Family Research Council, a board member of NARTH, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus Professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. The latter disassociated itself from Rekers today by removing his profile from its website. Expect other organizations to follow suit.

Meanwhile, Exodus International President Alan Chambers has written about the situation, calling out the “gay community” for throwing stones at Rekers and for failing to extend any “compassion or care” to Lucien, whom he invites to call Exodus.

Sure, the coverage has been tacky at times, and frankly, I didn’t see a lot of concern for Lucien in some of the reports I read. But Alan’s own attempt to use Lucien as an opportunity to smear gays for offering “counterfeit” community, promote Exodus and its message, and exalt the virtues of his own compassion is hardly much classier – and very transparent.

Religious Right scholar, anti-gay activist and NARTH officer Dr George Rekers has responded directly to blogger Joe. My. God following the report that he took a vacation with a male prostitute he’d met through the sexually explicit website Rentboy.com.

Wrote Rekers:

I have spent much time as a mental health professional and as a Christian minister helping and lovingly caring for people identifying themselves as “gay.” My hero is Jesus Christ who loves even the culturally despised people, including sexual sinners and prostitutes. Like Jesus Christ, I deliberately spend time with sinners with the loving goal to try to help them. Mark 2:16-17 reads, “16When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the “sinners” and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” 17On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” In fact, in a dialogue with hypocritical religious leaders, Jesus even stated to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him. ” (Matthew 21:31).

Like John the Baptist and Jesus, I have a loving Christian ministry to homosexuals and prostitutes in which I share the Good News of Jesus Christ with them (see I Corinthians 6:8-11). Contrary to false gossip, innuendo, and slander about me, I do not in any way “hate” homosexuals, but I seek to lovingly share two types of messages to them, as I did with the young man called “Lucien” in the news story: [1] It is possible to cease homosexual practices to avoid the unacceptable health risks associated with that behavior, and [2] the most important decision one can make is to establish a relationship with God for all eternity by trusting in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins, including homosexual sins. If you talk with my travel assistant that the story called “Lucien,” you will find I spent a great deal of time sharing scientific information on the desirability of abandoning homosexual intercourse, and I shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him in great detail.

According to the Miami New Times, an anti-gay activist and NARTH officer took a vacation with a rentboy he met through the sexually explicit gay hookup website Rentboy.com.

George Rekers, PhD is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, and has been lurking behind the scenes of the Religious Right and the ex-gay movement for decades. In 1983, he co-founded the vociferously homophobic Family Research Council with Dr James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and – among other political activities – he testified against gay adoption in the state of Florida, in 2008. He has written extensively against LGBT persons, as a search of the NARTH website will show.

But now the academic who has worked tirelessly for discrimination against gays has reportedly vacationed with a gay male prostitute he met through a gay website. The Miami New Times reports:

Rekers said he learned [travel companion] Lucien was a prostitute only midway through their vacation. “I had surgery,” Rekers said, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.” (Though medical problems didn’t stop him from pushing the tottering baggage cart through MIA.)

Yet Rekers wouldn’t deny he met his slender, blond escort at Rentboy.com — which features homepage images of men in bondage and grainy videos of crotch-rubbing twinks — and Lucien confirmed it.

There would appear little doubt that Rekers met Lucien by deliberately trawling the explicit website. As the article points out, users must manually agree to to enter the site in the knowledge that it contains graphic sexual material.

Dr Rekers is the second NARTH officer this year to be exposed by the media. In February, the pseudo-psychiatric organization’s Executive Secretary Arthur Abba Goldberg was revealed to have been hiding a criminal past. Goldberg, who also co-founded and co-directs the Jewish ex-gay organization JONAH, was found to have been convicted and jailed for his part in a major Wall Street fraud during the 1980s.

Goldberg subsequently resigned from NARTH – but not before blaming the LGBT community for his failings.

We can expect Rekers’s name to be quietly removed from NARTH’s list of officers in the coming days.

Christian radio host and family values guru Dr James Dobson is not yet ready to give up his campaign against gays. Despite resigning from Focus on the Family last year, he has now announced that he is launching a rival organization and radio show.

Dobson told fans that “the institution of the family continues to be in deplorable condition, and children are growing up in a culture that often twists and warps their young minds.”

He will launch his new ministry, James Dobson on the Family, with his son, Ryan. Religion historian Randall Balmer told the Colorado Springs Gazette he thought Dobson was setting up the parallel organization because he wanted to “pass the mantle on to his son.” A divorce in 2001 reportedly ruled out Ryan from working for Focus on the Family.

The ex-gay “Love Won Out” conference in Birmingham went underway Friday, the final one led by Focus on the Family before they relinquish control to Exodus International amid financial troubles.

Truth Wins Out’s Wayne Besen organized a protest of the conference and spoke at the University of Alabama, Birmhingham on Thursday. This has prompted Exodus V.P. Randy Thomas to call for prayer:

I (Randy) won’t personally be at this particular event but having been to about 20 of them, every single one had some sort of protest and every single time the LWO team responds lovingly.  Would you add praying for Wayne and his friends to your prayers for the conference? We’d greatly appreciate it.

There is a promo video, a Twitter account, and a Facebook group for the conference.

LWO’s website says that they have no intention to “cure” gays:

Are you here to “cure” gays?
Absolutely not. The only time you’ll ever hear the word “cure” used in relation to our event is by those who oppose Love Won Out.  They also like to claim we want to “fix” or “convert” gays and lesbians and that we believe people can “pray away the gay.” Such glib characterizations ignore the complex series of factors that can lead to same-sex attractions; they also mischaracterize our mission. We exist to help men and women dissatisfied with living homosexually understand that same-sex attractions can be overcome. It is not easy, but it is possible, as evidenced by the thousands of men and women who have walked this difficult road successfully.

However, official statements of purpose give another impression.

From 2000:

Focus on the Family is concerned about the message that’s being silenced to our     youth today. We want them to know that individuals don’t have to be gay. That’s why we’ve developed a one-day conference for those who have a heart for youth and are concerned about the growing tragedy of homosexuality.

From 2001:

Focus on the Family is promoting  the truth that homosexuality is preventable and  treatable, a message routinely silenced  today. We want people to know that individuals  don’t have to be gay.

From 2006:

Focus on the Family is promoting the truth that change is possible for those who experience same-sex attractions — a message routinely silenced today. We want people to know that individuals don’t have to be gay and that a homosexual identity is something that can be overcome.

From 2007:

Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out ministry exhorts and equips the church to respond in a Christ-like way to the issue of homosexuality. And to those who struggle with unwanted same-sex attractions, we offer the Gospel hope that these desires can be overcome. By offering conferences, education, counseling and research, the Love Won Out team strives to uphold God’s design for sexuality in a way that transforms lives.

Before, Exodus could always defer to Focus on the Family with complaints, but now that they will be running the show, we’ll see if anything changes. Perhaps there will be an attempt to transform LWO from an ex-gay conference into a “Christian on a post-gay journey” conference.

James Dobson, the evangelical founder of Focus on the Family, is cutting ties with the organization after more than 30 years. He stepped down as Chairman earlier this year, and last Friday announced that he would also be quitting as host of its flagship radio show.

Dobson has led the attack on LGBT families in the US by falsely depicting gays and lesbians as a threat to the family. Through Focus on the Family, he has been at the forefront of political and religious efforts to deny gays dignity and basic rights. He has shown himself to be not above fabrication and distortion in pursuit of victory in the “culture war.”

Despite having a PhD in Child Psychology, Dr Dobson has been a fervent supporter of the ex-gay movement, whose psychological and therapeutic approaches are not supported by the American Psychological Association or any other major psychological or psychiatric association. Focus on the Family had its own ex-gay ministry, Love Won Out, until August this year.

So while he will be missed by his 220-million-strong global audience, he will not be missed by the millions of gays and lesbians whose characters, lives and families have been regularly assaulted by his homophobic rhetoric.

PFOX stands for ‘Parents and Friends of Ex-gays and Gays’–despite the fact that the organization is not run by ex-gays, and repeatedly and openly expresses a vituperative disdain for all things gay.

One of their more outlandish claims is that there are twice as many “ex-gays” as there are gays. In census terms, that’s about 18 million ex-gays.

You can read about their latest escapade below (For recent coverage, see Google):

Shareholders ask Walt Disney to Include Ex-Gays in Company’s Non-Discrimination Policies:

“It is about time Disney treated ex-gays with the respect they deserve,” said Bobbie Strobhar, the stockholder who submitted the shareholder resolution. “Former homosexuals are true models of courage who have been vilified by gay activists.”

Dr. Michael Brown weighs in on the matter via Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink, to assert that ex-gays are some of the most discriminated against in America:

Disney Stockholders Mull Resolution to Protect Ex-Gays
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“If you’re going to have these discrimination laws in policies, then by all means include these as a special class of people,” Brown said.

I think it’s worth noting that Brown refers to those who identify as formerly-gay as “these.”

That succinct little bit of bluster is in light of an email in which he steers readers to an article—written by NARTH’s Prof. Robert Gagnon—that Brown describes as “exposing the very real dangers of the [then] proposed “Employment Non-Discrimination Act””–>

Gagnon’s article on the evils of ENDA is dated Oct. 23, 2007.

<–Brown’s Coalition of Conscience email (no longer in service), is dated 10-25-07, two days later.

The screen cap of the cached email above would seem to concur with those dates.

Here’s a snippet of Gagnon’s article that Brown links to:

Don’t ENDAnger Your Liberties in the Workplace

The bill will virtually codify you as a bigot so far as the federal government is concerned if you oppose homosexual practice on moral grounds.
–
If you are not convinced that this will be the outcome, try including “pedosexuality” (i.e. pedophilia), a sexual orientation toward children, under the rubric “sexual orientation” [emp mine]

Given that Mr. Brown is still a fan of Robert “pedosexuality” Gagnon, yet supports the inclusion of “ex-homosexuals” in anti-discrimination policies, are we then to assume he also supports ex-pedophiles being included in anti-discrimination policy?
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Further, and on a much lighter note, if Disney’s “ex-gay” employees are afforded non-discrimination protections, will they then hold ex-gay days?

The celebration of Gay days at Disney is traditionally marked by the wearing of red.

So what’s the color of ex-red?