Ex-Gay Watch

Exodus International President Alan Chambers has published his reflections on what he said to a conference of gay Christians last month.

Speaking to the Gay Christian Network in January, Chambers enthusiastically greeted GCN leader Justin Lee as his “brother in Christ”:

I honestly trust [Justin Lee], and I honestly like him, and I honestly believe that he loves Jesus and that we are brothers in Christ and that we will spend eternity together … and because of that, the thing that brought me here first and foremost is: We’re Christians, all of us. We may have diverging viewpoints … but the thing that brings us together, the thing that causes us to even want to have this dialogue, or need to have this dialogue, is the fact that we all love Jesus. We all serve him. We serve the very same God and believe very different things.

Now Alan Chambers wants his constituents to know he wasn’t endorsing the faith of gay Christians. While he told Lee he viewed him as someone who loved Jesus and served him, he is now at pains to assure Exodus’s conservative evangelical Christian supporters he still regards gay Christians as sinful people who have turned their backs on Jesus:

As an adoptive father, my children are irrevocably mine.  They may disown me, stop talking to me and sin against me, but that does not change the fact that they are mine and always will be.  I believe the same is true of God with His adopted children.

Thus, I believe that people who sin (all of us) can be Christian if they have accepted that free gift of salvation. If someone ever knew Christ, they still do.

In other words, he doesn’t really believe gay Christians love Jesus and serve him, an impression he unmistakably intended to create at GCN. He believes they may have once been saved, and therefore, because of a theological loophole, they may still go to heaven. But essentially they’re wayward children who have disowned God, stopped talking to God and are sinning against God. He said one thing at the conference and another thing today.

As I pointed out immediately following the controversial GCN panel appearance, Chambers has a habit of doublespeak on this issue of gay Christians, as he did last year when he told the Oprah network he expected to see gays in heaven. It was obvious to me that he would have to do the same backpedalling after the GCN conference; it was only a matter of time.

He goes on to downplay his remarks that “99.9 percent of the people I know have not changed their sexual orientation.” He meant that “complete orientation change occurs very rarely” [emphasis mine].

I or one of my co-contributors will unpack more of these statements next week. For now, I’ll offer one more observation about what Alan Chambers did and didn’t say at the GCN conference, which some bloggers lauded as a sign of progress for Exodus. Chambers failed to take responsibility for Exodus International’s actions.

Asked about the message “Change is possible,” he claimed Exodus had always meant something more nuanced than America heard (it was a misunderstanding after all); asked about the dubious practices of Exodus member ministries, he protested he was unaware of any problems; confronted with the story of a gay teen coerced into treatment by an Exodus ministry, his first instinct was to question the integrity of the report. Pressed for an apology for his organization’s past promises of sexual orientation change, he said he was sorry Exodus had been “ambiguous.” His tired excuses were that “we serve a messy God,” and that Exodus hasn’t always been great at communication.

Things will start to change when people who wield such power over the lives of others accept full responsibility for the harm they cause and take concrete steps to undo the damage. Alan Chambers and Exodus International have yet to come close.

Justin Lee, the director of the Gay Christian Network, has published an official statement concerning the unscheduled appearance of Exodus President Alan Chambers’s at the GCN conference in Orlando, FL, last week. Read this initial post and the ensuing comments thread, as well as this follow-up thread, for the backstory. Justin has given Ex-Gay Watch permission to reproduce his apology here in full:

Official Statement from Justin Lee

By now, many of you have heard about a public meeting I had last weekend with Alan Chambers, the president of the world’s largest ex-gay ministry.

The meeting generated a lot of controversy for a lot of different reasons. That controversy, in turn, spawned a lot of rumors.

Among the rumors I’ve heard:

• That I invited Alan Chambers to be a surprise speaker at the GCN conference.
• That GCN has softened our stance against ex-gay ministries in the name of “bridge building” or “reconciliation.”
• That the GCN conference team and I planned an ex-gay event with no regard for the safety of ex-gay survivors.

None of these are true.

There are, however, reasonable and fair concerns being expressed about what happened, and I believe it’s important for me to acknowledge and apologize for the mistakes I made throughout this process. But it’s also important for you to know that I would never do some of the things I’ve been accused of.

So before I explain the mistakes I made, I want to put the rumors to rest by explaining exactly what happened and why. Then I want to talk about where I screwed up, and what I’m going to do to make it right. Read more…

Exodus International President Alan Chambers is happy to affirm LGBT Christians as his brothers and sisters in Christ, at least according to his opening gambit at the GCN conference last week:

I honestly trust [GCN leader Justin Lee], and I honestly like him, and I honestly believe that he loves Jesus and that we are brothers in Christ and that we will spend eternity together … and because of that, the thing that brought me here first and foremost is: We’re Christians, all of us. We may have diverging viewpoints … but the thing that brings us together, the thing that causes us to even want to have this dialogue, or need to have this dialogue, is the fact that we all love Jesus. We all serve him. We serve the very same God and believe very different things.

He received applause for the comments. Yet in an interview with Christian radio host Janet Mefferd only the day before, Chambers failed to challenge a series of remarks that characterized gays and lesbians as people in darkness, who don’t know God and belong to a community at emnity with the community of God.

First, Mefferd said:

One of the things the LGBT world does not understand, simply because they don’t know the Lord, is, as you said, we all struggle with sin, we all struggle with temptations to varying degrees, but when you know Christ, and when you are a new creation in Christ, what changes in you is the “want to.” All of a sudden you go from loving sin, embracing sin of all kinds, to not loving it. … This is, I think, a hard thing to communicate to the people who are just still in darkness. [Emphasis mine]

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While a little over 24 hours later Chambers told the GCN conference he believed they did know the Lord, he allowed Mefferd’s offensive statements to go unchallenged. She later said:

You’ve been on both sides. You’ve been a part of the homosexual community, and then you’ve been delivered over to the kingdom of God as a Christian and now have left that lifestyle behind.

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Again, Chambers failed to challenge the assumption that “gays” and “Christians” are two opposed, mutually exclusive communities and that you must be “delivered” from one to join the other. On the contrary, he played into the assumption by recounting how, six years after he “left the homosexual lifestyle,” he looked at a group of gay men and realized, “I’m not one of them any more.”

Playing to both sides on this issue of gay Christians is not new for Exodus International. In March last year, Chambers enthusiastically affirmed the existence of gay Christians in an interview with the Oprah network’s Lisa Ling, only to water down his statements when challenged by his conservative evangelical constituents. What is new is that some gay Christians are now taking him at his word.

The audio clips above contain Mefferd’s remarks with Chambers’s responses, to give some context, but you can listen to the entire interview here (starting at about 20 minutes in).

There has been a lot of discussion lately over the attendance of Exodus President Alan Chambers at a recent Gay Christian Network conference (GCN).  Chambers participated in a panel discussion with former Love In Action director John Smid, Courage UK founder Jeremy Marks, and  Wendy Gritter, Executive Director of New Direction ministry in Canada (a former Exodus affiliate, now gay affirming).  This was Friday evening, January 6, 2012.

Controversy exists over a number of issues.  Among other things, GCN serves as a refuge of sorts for gay Christians who had bad experiences with ex-gay ministries or who have simply reconciled their faith and their sexuality and seek a place to fellowship with others in similar circumstances.  This is a simplistic and incomplete description but more detail will come with subsequent posts.

The purpose of this post is to provide a copy of the email which was sent out to conference attendees on December 29, 2011.  You may have heard this discussed as you read over accounts of the event.  It has been claimed by some that this email was sufficient to warn those attendees who might be traumatized, hurt or made uncomfortable by the presence of any of those mentioned above and therefore give them a chance to avoid the conference.  The email was sent after registration was over and travel arrangements had been completed.

We provide this for those wishing to evaluate the facts surrounding this incident to judge for yourselves if this email constitutes sufficient warning.  Since we have not seen it posted in any other convenient locations, we are doing so at XGW.  Please feel free to discussion your opinions.  Keep in mind that it was certain long before this email went out that at least some if not all of the panelists would be in attendance.  Also, we were told that no one contacted GCN as a result of this email.

The entire email is available in PDF format here..  Or you may read the germane section below:

AN IMPORTANT NOTE

The vast majority of the attendees of the GCN conference are typically in agreement with GCN’s mission, purpose, and values. However, GCN’s conference has always had an open-door policy, so you may encounter people at the conference whose beliefs, values, and views differ markedly from your own and/or from GCN’s.

Because Orlando is also home to the world’s largest “ex-gay” organization, there may be people affiliated with the ex-gay movement who decide to register and attend part or all of the conference this year.

Our policy remains unchanged: Anyone is welcome to attend the conference, even if they don’t agree with GCN’s mission, but we do ask them to respect the conference’s purpose and behave accordingly. As always, we reserve the right to remove anyone whose behavior, in the sole discretion of GCN’s conference team, is distracting from or working against the stated purpose of the event.

What should you do if you encounter someone whose views are different from GCN’s? Whether that person is a concerned Christian parent, a curious non-Christian, or a member of the ex-gay movement, we encourage you to welcome them with generosity and compassion. The GCN conference is a life-changing experience for many, and it just might change that person’s perspective.

However, in the unlikely event that you encounter someone who is making you uncomfortable or engaging in inappropriate behavior (seeking sexual contacts, advocating a message contrary to GCN’s, etc.), please notify a member of the conference team immediately.

We are also aware that some members of our community have strong emotional reactions to the topic of ex-gay ministry, due to their own painful experiences. If you are concerned about the possibility of encountering someone who might trigger something painful for you, please contact our office in advance of the conference, and we will work with you to address your specific needs and ensure that you are able to attend the conference safely and happily.

In all of our interactions at this year’s conference, let us continually strive to embody our theme, “Ambassadors of Reconciliation,” seeking out ways to build bridges and change lives without compromising our faith or our integrity, as we share Christ’s light and love for all.

We have learned that Exodus president Alan Chambers will be attending the Gay Christian Network conference this evening in Orlando, Fl.  He will be participating in a panel discussion with Jeremy Marks, John Smid, and Wendy Gritter at 8:30 EST.  This is all the information available at the moment.

From the GCN website:

The Gay Christian Network (GCN) is a nonprofit ministry supporting Christians worldwide who happen to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT). Our mission, “sharing Christ’s light and love for all,” is carried out in 5 primary directions, to impact individuals, families, communities, churches, and the world.

GCN has acted as a refuge of sorts for some gay Christians who have become disillusioned with ex-gay ideology and seek a community that shares their faith and experience.  There are two major groups in GCN, called Side A and Side B.  From Wikipedia:

Members of the Gay Christian Network have expressed a wide variety of opinions concerning gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender life and how it should be lived from a Christian perspective. For instance, the site is committed to being a safe haven both for members who believe it is okay for gay Christians to enter into healthy, committed relationships (including sex) and for those who believe that the Bible prohibits such behavior and requires chastity. On the site, these two positions have been nicknamed Side A, i.e., those members who believe that homosexual activity is not sinful, and Side B, i.e., those who believe that God does love gay people but does not accept homosexual activity.

It is not clear what motivates this or what can be accomplished, but certainly it must be difficult for some who have been deeply hurt by Alan’s ministries to know he has been invited.  We have certainly heard from many who are upset so far this morning.  Apparently he will only appear on the panel and that is an optional event.  No doubt more is to come.

Could this be a venue for Alan to effect some of his promised “re-branding“?  He was impressed by the positive press John Smid received from his recent pronouncements.  Good or bad, watch this one closely.

World Magazine has awarded Exodus President Alan Chambers their 2011 Daniel Award.  With this award, Alan Chambers joins the ranks of Kenneth Star, John Ashcroft, Phillip E. Johnson (“father” of Intelligent design), Peter Akinola (rabidly anti-gay Nigerian priest), and Stephen C. Meyer (Intelligent Design), among other past recipients.

In an article which appears in the December 17th edition, Chambers and Exodus are painted in glowing, courageous terms.  Many of Chambers’ key talking points are covered nicely, while any opposition is portrayed in a one-dimensional fashion.  This website is said to have “whole sections devoted to condemning Chambers and other ministries to homosexuals.”

We would like to think it is the facts which “condemn these groups, but then World Magazine hasn’t exactly attempted to cloak their own bias when it comes to Exodus.  They have written this type of PR piece for Exodus in the past (the same author, Jamie Dean), and one has to ask if this is more of a corroborative effort than journalism.  Could this be the first volley in the effort to re-brand Exodus International, or at least it’s president?  If so, it seems skewed into the conservative space, heavy on “change is possible” rhetoric.

The World Magazine article contains several factual errors.  Let’s give them a brief review of a couple:

Self-denial isn’t a new concept to Chambers. The 39-year-old president of Exodus International—a Christian ministry that helps people struggling with homosexuality—grew up in a Christian home but embraced homosexuality as a teenager. But through years of an active gay lifestyle, Chambers couldn’t shake the biblical conviction that what came naturally to him was also sinful. He didn’t want to be gay. [emphasis added]

According to an early account written by Chambers in 1999, there is no way to say that he had been through “years of an active gay lifestyle.”  Even if one overlooks the generalization of “gay lifestyle,” (assuming that means open and sexually active for this purpose), Chambers could not be said to fit that description for more than a few months in 1990-1991, when he was barely eighteen years old.  He says he had a couple of sexual encounters in Middle School (essentially experimentation during overnight stays), and one in High School.  But all this ended when he was “outed” by the latter, which indicates he was not open before that. Read more…

Exodus International - 190 N Westmonte Dr Altamonte Springs , FL

Exodus President Alan Chambers called a meeting together this past November 16.  The subject was quite simply how to keep Exodus International from social and financial oblivion.  In attendance were Exodus leadership, prominent religious leaders (such as Gabe Lyons) and lay people.  The latter were mostly those who once counted themselves in the ex-gay camp but now are either in the process of changing their views or are fully gay affirming.

We had been following odd activity at Exodus for some time.  It was clear that something was up but only after being contacted by some of those directly involved did our speculation clarify into fact.  The past couple of years have seen Exodus cut it’s staff, lose key alliances, and suffer from a general moderation in American views toward homosexuality.  So difficult has this been for them that they have increased efforts abroad where there exists less formal opposition to their message — that living a gay affirming life is sinful, wrong and unhealthy, and change is the only way to truly please God.

Three years ago, Exodus purchased a building for a little over $1.1 Million.  This was at the height of the real estate bubble and it’s value must have decreased significantly since.  While they seem to have shed as many of their obligations as possible, debt service for that building must be a great draw on their meager resources.  According to IRS documents, they burned through $200,000 of their savings in 2010 alone.  In short, if they continue on their current trajectory, there seems little doubt that Exodus will fold in the near future.

Knowing this, Chambers called the New York meeting together and posed the question, “how can we save Exodus?”  Unfortunately for those of us who might have a glimmer of hope to the contrary, this plea does not seem to be based on any deep, inner change of heart or ideology.  According to first person accounts, the emphasis was on how to make Exodus more “donor accessible.”  The meeting was filled with the modern lingo of those who advise on the solicitation of charitable funds.  This is about money. Read more…

Image: Exodus International

Exodus International President Alan Chambers has decided, over a year after the launch of the It Gets Better project, that he should support the campaign instead of condemning it.

In May, the ex-gay leader was livid that Toy Story character Woody was being used to promote the message that things get better for bullied teens. We figured out what enraged him so: The message and ministry of Exodus International depends on the opposite message — according to Exodus, it only gets worse until you submit to its religious agenda, renounce your “gay identity” and try to change your sexual orientation. Put simply, as long as gays are oppressed and miserable, Exodus remains in business.

Now, five months on, Chambers has realized he was wrong:

A few months ago I went on record criticizing the “It Gets Better” campaign that has gone viral with an anti-bullying message for LGBT teens. My criticism was over the use of “Woody,” the fictional star from the box office smash Toy Story trilogy. I reacted because I hate when iconic children’s heroes are used to further what I perceive to be adult causes. With further reflection and thought, though, I have to admit that I was wrong to question their marketing strategy without expressing my full support for what is the heart of their campaign – encouraging LGBT teens to choose life.

This slowness is nothing new to Exodus. In March 2009, Exodus board member Don Schmierer participated in a conference that fanned the flames of homophobia in Uganda. An announcement of the Ugandan “Kill the Gays” bill swiftly followed. Yet it was eight months before Alan Chambers weighed in to denounce the bill, a year before Exodus made an official statement and 15 months before Exodus issued a mea culpa taking some responsibility for Schmierer’s role in the conference.

Always too little, too late. If you’re a Christian leader and it takes you a year to realize that executing homosexuals is an idea worth fighting against, or that the lives of kids are more important than your religious agenda, it’s probably time for a radical reassessment of your values.

The former leader of Exodus International’s oldest ministry says you can’t repent of homosexuality — and he now publicly admits he is homosexual himself.

John Smid, who resigned as Executive Director of Love in Action in 2008, has made his strongest statements yet disavowing the message he preached for years as the head of a ministry that promised gays they could change. Writing on the website of his new ministry, Grace Rivers, Smid says being homosexual (he generally uses this rather clinical term rather than “gay”) is an intrinsic part of a person’s being, not a behaviour he can repent from:

One cannot repent of something that is unchangeable. I have gone through a tremendous amount of grief over the many years that I spoke of change, repentance, reorientation and such, when, barring some kind of miracle, none of this can occur with homosexuality.

He also makes a confession you won’t hear from Exodus (except Exodus President Alan Chambers in an off-guarded moment, although he later backtracked) — he’s never met a real ex-gay person:

I also want to reiterate here that the transformation for the vast majority of homosexuals will not include a change of sexual orientation. Actually I’ve never met a man who experienced a change from homosexual to heterosexual.

Smid goes on to address a hypothetical question: Which is worse, two gay men in a 30-year faithful, committed relationship or a heterosexual married five times? He commends the gay couple for an “amazing feat” of faithfulness and sacrifice, and suggests they “could be more faithful in their walk with Christ than the person married five times” (and vice versa). Basically, he seems to say, it doesn’t matter — and Jesus is the judge of the heart.

He also talks about the change in how he defines homosexuality. The Exodus line is that, essentially, homosexuality is a behaviour and an “identity,” both of which must go. Smid now has a different take: Read more…

Exodus International has relaunched its online bookstore at Exodusbooks.org, but some key titles are missing from the shelves.

In particular, there appear to be no books by the notorious Dr Joseph Nicolosi, the father of ex-gay reparative therapy and former president of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.

Nicolosi’s seminal work Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality (1992), in which he articulated his view that distant fathers and overbearing mothers cause homosexuality, is no longer listed. Also missing are Nicolosi’s A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality and NARTH’s Handbook of Therapy for Unwanted Homosexual Attractions, although I can’t confirm if those two were previously in the catalogue.

So is it an oversight, or has Exodus made a conscious decision to disassociate from NARTH and its promise of a gay cure through psychiatry? If the latter, I can’t help but note that Exodus chief Alan Chambers has harsh words for apostates who try to distance themselves from his own organization.

Anyone notice any other glaring omissions from Exodus’s new bookstore?