I’ve unpublished three recent articles:
1. My item on the Taiwan hospital and parents that incarcerated a gay youth for 56 days on false claims of mental disorder.
2. Peter LaBarbera parody infographic
3. Whose Life Is Sacred
My question to readers: Are we doing enough to substantiate our posts, and demonstrate clear links to specific exgay individuals, groups or philosophies? We may republish the items for reasons of transparency, but I thought I would raise the issue.
Why did you “unpublish” them?
Yeah, I’m way confused too. Why did you unpublish this stuff?
I unpublised the associated comments because all you would get is a stalled link if you tried to view them right now. Don’t flip out 🙂
Well items 2 and 3 aren’t directly exgay related but since item one discusses viewing homosexuality as a mental disorder is highly relevant to this site.
I didn’t think the Peter LaBarbara parody infographic was all that useful. On the other hand, the Taiwan article, as it is based on newspaper accounts in Taiwan, appears appropriate. It deals with the idea of homosexuality as mental illness, and it deals with the idea of trying to “cure” someone who’s gay. I’d be interested in why you were inclined to unpublish that one.
I probably agree with the third article being unpublished. Like Timothy, I too feel that Bush’s veto of the stem cell research bill was terrible, but I file that in the same category as abortion. It’s not a gay/straight issue (nor is it an ex-gay issue in particular).
LGBT folks fall on all sides of issues like this one — there is no inherently “gay” angle that logically drives everyone to one predominant viewpoint based on sexuality. If we predominantly agree, it is probably explainable more by the fact that 78% of us voted Democratic in 2004, not because we’re gay. It is more of a social conservative vs. everyone else divide, not a gay/non-gay one.
I thought the incarcerated gay youth article was very relevant and was sorry that less relevant articles pushed it down. However, there doesn’t appear to be a direct ex-gay link. It would definitely be interesting ponder whether ex-gay promoters are supportive of the parents’ actions.
The LaBarbera parody was cute, but not very relevant. I don’t want to sound naive, but I assume the card was from a gay sex club. (Do sex clubs really put their members’ photos on membership cards?)
The Bush veto seemed to be a stretch in terms of relevancy.
Could the less relevant postings can be combined collected into one posting once or twice a week to avoid distracting from the more relevant posts?
I think that all three articles were relevant.
LaBarbera is a threat to our community, our rights and our lives. More awareness should be raised about his efforts to smear every gay and lesbian person because of the perception he perpetuates that all we do is hang out in sex clubs and seek out anonymous sex 24/7. This is true perhaps for a small percentage of the gay community but as for myself and most every other gay person I know it is far from reality. Keeping us up to speed on LaBarbera helps us combat against his nefarious slander.
The Bush veto story was important too, because it is part and parcel of the “sancitity of life” nonsense that the radical right has thrown at us left and right. Bush’s continual deference to the most radical of his supporters fits in with his support for the anti-gay FMA.
If something looks “irrelevant” or otherwise uninteresting to me, I simply skip reading it. I suggest that others do the same.
I agree with Jonathan. I think that the institutionalized kid story was highly relvent, the stem cells were somewhat linked, and the Peter LaBarbara was relevent because he mentioned ex gays in his original letter and because of Wayne Bensons’ awesome and ex-gay topical response. I don’t get how anyone could think that these posts were not relevent to the aim of this site.
A post about someone being committed for being gay, a post about how bush can’t even figure out enough science to get stem cells – let alone gay people, and a post where a bigot accuses a prominant ex-gay activist of luring an ex-gay back to being gay are not relevent? I don’t get that.
And if you don’t like it, you can always not read it.
Jonathon said:
The Bush veto story was important too, because it is part and parcel of the “sancitity of life” nonsense that the radical right has thrown at us left and right
I’m curious, what about the “sanctity of life” issue is anti-gay or ex-gay? Try to remember, this is not a liberal vs. conservative site, or vice versa.
The LaBarbera post was not an article, but a satirical infographic. In and of itself it did not inform us of anything. It is what it is, a joke.
This is about our own self-imposed standards. While you may tend to skip over things that are irrelevant, we would rather maintain the quality and character of the site by only posting what is relevant in the first place.
I would like to add that you could help us keep the material relevant by sending in tips of ex-gay and anti-gay related news and publications. Send them to: “editor@exgaywatch.com”
1. My item on the Taiwan hospital and parents that incarcerated a gay youth for 56 days on false claims of mental disorder.
This is the only one I felt was truly relevant. In my opinion, even though someone questioned the link to Love in Action (there wasn’t), it definitely feels related to that and the recent stories of teens forced to go there.
I think it’s important to highlight these kinds of things going on in other countries, especially since there are many here (in ex-gay leadership positions) who feel that homosexuality should be considered a disorder, and some who advocate criminalization or legislation against it.
I apologize for posting a thread that was not closely linked to our mission of honest analysis of the ex-gay movement. In retrospect, I can see that it would be divisive and end in counter-productive and partisan squabbling.
While I still believe the actions of this President in this instance were immoral and that people suffering with AIDS – including many gay people – will be direct and immediate victims of this decision, this subject is better discussed on a site dedicated to politics.
I thank Mike for catching and correcting my error.
For what it’s worth, our take:
1) The report from Taiwan — or, “the island of Taiwan”, as some would have it 🙂 — could have been very informative if, for example, we got a little bit if info about the status of homosexuality / official medical opinion / cultural aspects etc. Perhaps a ref. back to the bad old days of forced institutionalisation, forced attempts at conversion etc that did once apply; and the efforts of some to bring back such a regime in US/Eur/AustNZ etc. Otherwise it’s just an unverified news item… and we know how much we all enjoy them, not.
2) stem-cell etc, while interesting of itself, was not directly related; as Timothy has acknowledged in retrospect. Could it be made directly related? Probably, if it was providing some backgrounding for the circles that an exgay leader/group was moving in and if, say, there was a legit. concern that the ban would prevent useful research on, say, HIV research or whatever and could be linked to a “don’t care, they deserve it” attitude from, say, FOTF or some other major supporter of the exgay groups. Or if, say, the politics around the ban opened up some evidence of the obvious success of a religious group that holds “interesting” views on homosexuality etc. “First they came for the stem cells…” etc.
3) the parody membership card (and we’re at one with Norn here… do they actually put photos on???!!!) probably ended up deflecting examination of a real issue of concern — namely, that LaB does some rather weird “researching” that he then presents as typical of gay men. Whether it’s his massive collection of porn, or lurking around the darkened fringes of sex clubs; when combined with the fact he otherwise deliberately avoids boring old gay couples this is damning evidence for the distorted views of LaBabera. Jeepers, one can only imagine what one would make of heterosexuality if all you decided to “research” was XXX-rated internet porn.
I’m with the majority here and would like to reiterate grantdales comment on the incarceration article – it would have been more helpful if we could find some information on the situation in Taiwan re: medical and cultural opinions. Also, the “love in action” comment was misleading, but I think that should have been changed rather than having the entire article removed.
The LaBarbera parody struck me as below the bar. While his ‘research’ is certainly peculiar for numerous reasons, I don’t think that article was appropriate for this site. The standards here are higher and should be maintained. If it was involved in a lawsuit, like the earlier billboard parody, that would have been a different issue.
The stem cell veto isn’t directly related to gay or ex-gay issues, though we will be affected by it. I agree it follows the pattern the Bush administration has had of anti-scientific and extreme religious right positions that don’t actually reflect a reverence for life, but as others have stated, it belongs on a site focusing more on politics.
Ditto with the consensus. There’s nothing much for me to say that’s already been stated by above commenter. I think the Taiwan article is extremly relevant to the focus of this blog and am quite puzzled why it was removed. However the parody ads are a litle out of their element, since they seem to lack substace and hurt the blog’s public image.
Yeah…the article on the Taiwan youth who was drugged and incarcerated seemed very relevant to me. Was it taken down because you could not verify it? Did it turn out to be false?
Does this qualify as an ex-gay story?
Gay and Christian police in row
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/5200962.stm
“The Gay Police Association’s national coordinator Vic Codling told BBC News they are in dispute with the CPA after a gay, Christian police officer was refused membership of the CPA unless he agreed to become celibate.”
1630r,
What part of “Send them to: editor@exgaywatch.com” did you not understand? This thread is about the three articles mentioned, not an invitation for you to post your own articles under the guise of an inquiry.