Ex-Gay Watch

Source: Exodus

After statements by Exodus President Alan Chambers at the recent GCN conference, some have been persuaded that Exodus may be headed in a more tolerant “congruency” direction.  We’ve been around this block more than a few times before and remain skeptical of the sincerity of any such change.  Having published information late last year linking an upcoming stunt such as this to a need for funds and a way to save Exodus from ruin, we are doubly cautious.

Curiously lacking, however, has been any commentary from other Exodus leaders on this new found direction.  How do people with their lives and livelihoods invested in “change is possible” react after Chambers seemingly pulls the rug out from under that position?  Today we have our first look in the form of a post on the Exodus blog by Exodus VP Jeff Buchanan, “The Absolutists of Change.”  Buchanan has always come across as somewhat of a hard-line spiritual gatekeeper.  One would not expect all this to sit well with him and he seems to make that clear.

Is change possible?  Yes!  Is it perfect? Not on this side of heaven.  While various behaviors may change on the surface, this is not the core of change. Change happens when Christ transforms our hearts so that we can become more like him.  These other traits are simply reflections of what is transpiring within.  Has God changed my sexuality?  Yes, but it is not perfect or absolute.  I don’t believe any man can claim perfection in this area.  But God has changed me and shown me that his change involves every aspect of who I am.  And in that sense, His change has been absolute.

Doubts about sincerity aside, Buchanan is clearly painting a picture at odds with Chambers’ recent statements.  Is this the “two steps back” we have come to expect after every glimmer of enlightenment expressed by Exodus?  Or is there confusion among the leadership?  It seems unlikely that Buchanan could post to the official Exodus blog without some sort of approval, which would make this a confused message at best.

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).

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…

A psychologist and one-time Exodus* counsellor has told the Brisbane Times, Australia, has denounced the ex-gay movement, saying he walked away 25 years ago because it forced gay men into “living an even greater lie” that hurt themselves and their families.

Paul Martin, now an equal rights activist and head of the Centre for Human Potential in Brisbane, spoke out after Queensland Member of Parliament Fiona Simpson was criticized for her ex-gay views. The politician had lent public support to Exodus in 2002, praising the organization for giving homosexuals “the freedom to grow into homosexuality over time.”

Here are Paul Martin’s own words, from the Brisbane Times article:

“We’d parade men who went through the program and got married around like they were champions, and they’d all say their lives were better since they committed to God and enjoyed the sort of relationship God intended – with a woman, having children,” Mr Martin said. “But you’d then have a conversation where they admitted their lives were far more painful now they were living this even greater lie – they were burdened with guilt because they were hurting the woman they were married to, or engaging in desperate sex acts in public toilets or bushes that were even further from their belief system [than committed same-sex relationships].”

Mr Martin said such interactions, coupled with his own struggle to meld his fundamental Christian beliefs with his homosexual orientation, eventually gave rise to his decision to walk away from the ministry, its church, and move to Brisbane.

Read the full article here. An accompanying video features an interview with Paul Martin.

* Exodus Global Alliance is the worldwide branch of (the confusingly named) Exodus International.

Correction: Fiona Simpson was incorrectly identified as “Australia’s Community Services Minister” in an earlier version of this article.

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…

A 2007 study of sexual orientation change is back in the news following its publication in a scientific journal. But despite conservative Christians’ championing of the research as proof that gays can change, the article presents nothing new.

Stanton L Jones of Wheaton College, IL, and Mark Yarhouse of Regent University, VA, followed 61 subjects over about seven years of ex-gay therapy to assess whether homosexuals could change.  It was published by Inter-Varsity Press in 2007 as Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation.

Interested readers can revisit Dr Patrick Chapman’s three-part review of the study to see clearly why it fails — there’s no need to rehearse the flaws again, because what’s presented in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy (Volume 37) is essentially the same. Its negligible results offer little hope for gay Christians who want to do anything more than change their behaviour

The conservative Christian LifeSiteNews.com has already latched onto this old news with the grossly misleading headline “Major Study: Changing Sexual Orientation Is Possible,” but even the authors’ own press release downplays this claim:

In short, the results do not prove that categorical change in sexual orientation is possible for everyone or anyone, but rather that meaningful shifts along a continuum that constitute real changes appear possible for some.

To bolster its optimism, LifeSiteNews.com also throws in mention of NARTH’s 2009 report on sexual orientation change, a mere literature review falsely touted as a new milestone study. Robert Spitzer also gets a nod for his 2003 study, which has been used to prop up an ex-gay, anti-gay message, but the article fails to mention he has since denounced conservative abuses of his findings and says orientation change is rare.

An increasingly desperate Christian Right will try to milk this latest publication for all its worth, but don’t be fooled: Same study, same results, same flaws.

Update: Warren Throckmorton reminds us to mention Mark Yarhouse’s other recent study, which demonstrated that “ex-gay” men in mixed-orientation marriages change their behaviour but not their sexual orientation. Ex-Gay Watch also commented on this here.

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?