In responding to comments on the thread below about whether the use of the term “the homosexual” was intentionally offensive, Alan Chambers said the following:
I imagine that I have and will continue to offend you and others with my beliefs, but I do care about being untruthful.
Alan is to be commended for his care about being untruthful. My greatest concern about the ex-gay movement is how it seems at times to have little care about its untruthfulness, so any declaration of care about this matter is received with joy.
Alan has shown that he has some ignorance about the gay community and gay-identified people. In particular, he is unaware that talking about “the homosexual” is offensive.
Perhaps we should assume that much of what he and Exodus have said since he took its helm in 2001 has also been based on ignorance and that any untruthfulness has been unintentional. I’m sure Alan will appreciate any efforts we make to provide to him – in one easily accessed location – a quick reference of untruthful statements he can avoid in the future.
Alan, I dedicate this thread to just this use. Please consider this your personal reference.
This means, fellow readers, that we should limit the comments to specific instances of examples. Let’s not pontificate or opine about what we find objectionable of offensive about Alan, Exodus, or ex-gay ministries. This thread is solely short examples of misstatements, inaccuracies, and deceptions. Let’s keep it brief and easy so Alan can use it. I will be removing violations.
Here is an example of one such deceptive statement. It is from Alan’s new book.
…many gay activists who are encouraging Christians to accept homosexuality as normal have a better working knowledge of biblical arguments against homosexuality than most Christians. And these activists have their own answers against those arguments.
Some of these gay promoters may themselves have flirted with Christianity in the past and may even have made professions of faith, only to return to their fleshly desires when the going got tough. Or perhaps when they found no firm support in a local church of from Christian friends when they struggled, they gave up on Christianity.
Alan makes no mention here of the huge number of gay people who did not “give up on Christianity” or “return to fleshly desires when the going got tough” but have reconciled their orientation with their stong Christian faith. Many of Alan’s readers will not know about MCC or the thousands of gay Christians who worship in the reconciling congregations of Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, UCC, and other Christian churches.
To deliberately limit “gay activists” to those who are not Christian does nothing to help his readers who may wish to witness to “the homosexual next door”. In fact, the unprepared reader may be surprised when the gay couple next door invites them to church. However, Alan’s description does stigmatize gay people and sets up an “us v. them” dynamic which, while useless for witnessing Christians, does support anti-gay political activism.
This statement is deceptive and untruthful.
Here’s one BIG “un-truth” on EXODUS Global Alliance webpage under “our history”: Frank Worthen organized the first EXODUS conference in 1976. BIG FAT LIE and Alan knows it.
I would refer people to Exodus’ use of a photo including Mr. Shawn O’Donnell claiming that everyone in the photo was an “ex-gay”.
Shawn requested that they remove his image several times and Exodus flatly refused. The photo only recently was removed after the Exodus site was redesigned.
Recently, O’Donnell asked Exodus president Alan Chambers to take his photo off the Exodus Web site. But Chambers, O’Donnell says, told him that Exodus owns the picture and it still signifies that people can change. “I said, ‘How can you say that is true when I know there are at least three people in that picture who have not changed?'” Exodus did not return my calls seeking comment about the photo.
https://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/07/21/ex_gays/index.html
Personally, I believe that incident was dishonest.
Alan,
You were quoted in CitizenLink on 8/26/06 saying:
“They have written position papers and made it very public that they’re opposed to people being able to choose the path that I, and hundreds of thousands of other people like me, have chosen, and that is to overcome their homosexuality.”
https://www.family.org/cforum/extras/a0041796.cfm
Alan, as you well know, “hundreds of thousands” of people have not chosen to overcome their homosexuality through psychotherapy. It isn’t mathematically possible. Not unless you are claiming persons from centuries past before there was even the concept of psychotherapy. Or perhaps you are counting those who tried the ex-gay way but now loudly disavow Exodus, NARTH, and other reorientation efforts.
Sorry, Alan, but this statement is untruthful and should be avoided in the future.
Alan,
In this statement you claim:
“The organization has been in existence for 30 years and offers help to the more than 400,000 people who contact the ministry each year.”
https://www.exodus.to/content/view/533/37/
I believe Exodus has a staff of 8 people (if I remember correctly). Taking calls from 400,000 people each year would add up to about 1096 inquiries per day.
You’re welcome to explain how a staff of 8 can handle this kind of volume. Where does this number come from?
And perhaps Alan would like to defend his comments in today’s Focus on the Family News:
“…according to the National Violence against Women Survey, 39- percent of homosexuals report being raped, physically assaulted or stalked by their partners.”
Come on, Alan. Did you read the report? I did, and it’s not as you described.
Another False Witness…
The ‘hudreds of thousands’ numbers (as quoted on LifeSite):”Embracing homosexual unions, but abandoning the very truth that could change lives may be politically correct, but it is not true compassion,” said Chambers. “Homosexuals need to know they are welcome at their local church, but they also need to know that hundreds of thousands of us have found freedom from the isolation and emptiness we experienced in gay life through the power of Jesus Christ.”Equating Jesse Dirkhising’s murder with Matthew Sheppard’s murder“Hate crime laws erase the inherent worth and dignity of each person by choosing to grant more protection rights to some and not others,” said Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International and former homosexual. “As former homosexuals, we are calling upon the Senate to ensure that our value as individuals and our rights to equal justice are preserved as well.”Such a law means that the two straight men who killed Matthew Shepard would receive a harsher sentence than the two homosexual men who raped, tortured, and killed 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising,” states Exodus. “There is no moral difference between these two crimes, but under new federal ‘hate crimes’ legislation, one would be punished more severely than the other.'” – Christianpost.com, Dec. 21, 2005Quoting the response of Prof. Kim Pearson (Kim Pearson having taught journalism, professional writing and humanities courses at The College of New Jersey since 1990)
Alan has frequently perpetuated two disingenuous arguments: that gay and straight people currently have entirely equal rights, and that civil rights legislation would entail giving gay folks “special rights.” The following quote is from February of this year, at https://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2006/02/live-from-cpac-all-hate-all-time.html
“…The truth is we all have the same rights. No one has more rights than the other. The fact is the issue of marriage and hate crimes and those types of things seek to make certain people more equal than others and that’s something that we’re trying to rally against.”
Now I can follow the tortured logic that he uses to suggest that we all have the same rights currently (although it doesn’t make it any easier to stomach the fact that my partner of seven years has no health insurance, and my colleague’s wife of three days is already listed on his excellent company policy). I disagree with him, but logically, I understand the ploy.
However, I think it is fundamentally dishonest (not just misleading) to suggest that somehow permitting same-sex marriage is making gay people “more equal” or giving them “special rights.” Using the same logic of Alan’s first argument, permitting gay marriage would retain equality all around the board. Alan Chambers, George Bush, Don Wildmon, and I could all go out and marry men tomorrow if we wanted to (they’d have that nasty little problem of a divorce to attend to first, of course). The simple fact that the others don’t WANT to marry men shouldn’t keep them from it. No one is “more equal” than anyone else in such a situation.
Truth is that the current situation is blatantly unequal, and Alan is deliberately distorting BOTH arguments in an attempt to maintain it that way.
Incidentally, I neglected the “hate crimes” issue he raised in the same quote. Any relevant “hate crimes” legislation I’ve ever seen protects folks based on “sexual orientation.” It doesn’t protect only gay people.
If gay people were roving in packs, beating up straight men and women on a regular basis because of their orientation, the legislation could be applied to them, as well. It doesn’t make anyone “more equal” than anyone else. The only reason it sounds that way to Alan is that it’s kind of hard to imagine that straight people would be beaten because of their orientation. Thus, it seems to him that it would only protect gay folks.
I’m not a huge fan of hate crime laws myself, but I am even less a fan of Alan’s prevarication on the topic.
This is from Wayne Besen’s blog:
https://www.waynebesen.com/index.html
Trying to save face in light of this professional disgrace, “ex-gay” groups are now desperately trying to spin their New Orleans boondoggle as if it were actually a boon for their cause. Their historical revisionism starts with their failed petition asking the APA to endorse conversion therapy. NARTH gathered a paltry 75 signatures out of an APA membership of 155,000, with an embarrassing number of the signatories actually belonging to NARTH. This floundering flop had the side benefit of placing NARTH’s claim of 1,000 members under deep suspicion, considering they were unable to round up even one-tenth of their membership to sign their ballyhooed document.
Nonetheless, in the typical serial-exaggerating and comically hyperbolic style that defines the “ex-gay” myth, Alan Chambers, the leader of Exodus International, celebrated this petition disaster and claimed that the vast majority of APA members were supportive of conversion therapy.
“What we found at the protest, is that 80 percent of the attendees – people that were coming off of the buses and walking into the convention center – were supportive of what we said,” Chambers told CitizenLink.
I’m not a rocket scientist, but 80 percent of 155,000 does not equal 75. It seems the only busload of people Chambers may have talked to, was one he rolled in on, filled with professional “ex-gay” lobbyists.
We could suggest what specific words etc that Alan should avoid in the future. But think that will be a waste of time until he overcomes a basic personal with the way he — and Exodus others — personally deal with
public statements. I’m talking about “adjusting” what you say when you talk to different audiences, and in ways that fundamentally alters the message.
And all it for one purpose — to always make gay men and women look bad.
And typically for political purposes. And envariably contradictory to what has otherwise been said.
A calculated risk that the audience will not be aware of what has previously been claimed, or are so anti-gay that they simply do not care even if they were aware.
Just for the heck of it, here’s a few snippets from something we’re working on…
About his sexual abuse when a 9 year old (or sometimes 10) We go from the clear:
To the less clear, hiding the identity of his cousin and stretching the possible age band:
And finally, what get’s said when he’s in the middle of an anti-gay campaign
Get it? Pure scare tactics in a political campaign: the bogey man of molestation. The abuser is no longer a 14 year old cousin — now he’s some mysterious older man. And no doubt a gay one, right?
14 year old cousins are not older men. Alan lied in an anti-gay political advert.
Interviewed for a puff-piece about the Exodus conference …
Jump forward a few years, only now he’s looking for a reason to shove exgay viewpoints into schools under the banner of “inclusion”…
Right… so this counselor was also the same person who took your alter call? Or is one or both statements a lie?
Hence, sorry Timothy but we cannot agree with your claim that “Alan is to be commended for his care about being untruthful.”
He doesn’t give a flying fig about being truthful. Not even about himself.
Then, there is the deliberate deception of the term “ex-gay” that EXODUS so rigorously defended over the past 25+ years — and which Alan Chambers now wants to “do away with entirely and see to it that it is never used again.” You can “change” ANYONE by changing the definitions, Alan.
“Ex-gay” is (and always has been) FALSE advertizing. It implied that the person was no longer homosexually oriented and was now straight instead.
Even Robbi Kenney of EXODUS (while she was still involved with EXODUS) admitted as much when she urged other EXODUS leaders: “know that you are promising. You are not offering heterosexuality but the power to come into celibacy…” Robbi also admitted: “EXODUS has ALWAYS had a problem with definitions…”
Oh, by the way, none of the original leaders of EXODUS (including me) and most of the current leaders had any legitimate psycholoical training, credentials or licensure even though they present themsleves as “counselors” skilled in “reparative therapy”. VERY misleading.
OK, some of you are going to be annoyed… but I told you that this is a site to briefly document mistakes and inaccuracies so that Alan could quickly find them and not repeat the same untruthful claims. I did say that I’d remove other comments.
So I have.
Not that they weren’t great comments, but they dont serve the purpose of this particular thread.
Sorry if I have repeated myself or gone on too long about the same old complaints. Just wanted to let you know that Alan Chambers just contacted me and told me he does intend to correct the untruthful history on EXODUS Alliance’s webpage under “our history”.
He said they put down that Frank Worthen (not me, Jim or Gary) organized the first EXODUS conference because they “didn’t know the truth”.
Here is Alan’s promise that EXODUS will be truthful from now on about their history. Lame excuse, but at least he says he will correct it:
From: Alan Chambers [mailto:achambers@exodus.to]
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 1:26 PM
To: Micheal Bussee
Subject: RE: Hi friend
“I am currently looking through the rewrites that Exodus Global Alliance has sent me regarding your objections. Know this is in process—they didn’t mean to lie, they just didn’t know what the truth was. As soon as I look over what they wrote they will change their site. Sit tight”
OK, Alan. I am sitting.
Michael