Before every Love Won Out conference, Focus on the Family leases billboard space in the area where it will be held. Before the last conference, one company refused to lease space to them citing the contents did not “meet their community’s standards for appropriateness or the copy is deemed offensive towards any business, group or individual.” FOTF then announced that they would contact their lawyers even though the billboard company, Clear Channel, did not appear to be under any legal obligation to accept their business.
Last Wednesday, FOTF issued a press release that claimed another company had denied their business for billboard space ahead of the latest conference in Omaha. This time the company, Waitt Outdoor, gave no reason but simply declined to do business with them via email. That didn’t stop Melissa Fryrear, director of gender issues at Focus on the Family, from speaking as a victim on behalf of the group while making up her own reasons:
Apparently the idea of embracing a diversity of opinion is not extended to groups like ours, which offer the message that same-sex attractions can be overcome by those who are dissatisfied living homosexually.
Another company, Lamar, took the order so they got the opportunity to use the refusal for PR and have their billboards, too. I guess no one involved thought about the possibility that Waitt Outdoor was simply following advice given to Walmart and Ford by the AFA, by just “staying neutral” on this issue of the culture wars.
Perhaps this company has a policy against false advertising.
Homosexuality is NOT a gender “issue;” it is a sexual orientation “issue” NOT! (not an issue in regard to anything).
Oh, when I am just being myself, I am also “living homosexually.”
From the linked FOF press release: “There’s no disputing that the subject of our conference has captured the American interest,” (Fryrear) said. “Omaha is the 43rd city we’ve visited; tens of thousands of people have come to hear what we have to say on this subject. CNN even devoted a major special last week to Love Won Out. If the teaching and personal stories we offer at our event aren’t in the public interest, what is?
But, didn’t she see really what what was said on Anderson Cooper’s 360 show on CNN about Love Won Out? The more that their group and other Exodus Groups are talked about on unbiased news programs, the more the viewers will see the truth about ex-gay ministries.
When will these groups ever learn. There is nothing to advertise on their ex-gay persona. Common sense already states that if you are uncomfortable with homosexuality then you are not a homosexual.
If they have a mind to think, then they would know it is time from them to advertise on ‘heterosexual living’ instead of ‘ex-homosexual’ living. What is there to learn about being ex-ex-straights? After all negative X negative = zero. So they are just advertising zeroes.
Would like to know when they’re visiting my town next. I plan to be ready with an extension ladder and a gallon of black paint…
It might be more effective, not to mention legal, to simply let those billboard companies in your area know how you feel.
David is right. Why risk a fine or possible jail time over vandalism?
It seems to be something that FOTF et. al. just don’t get: not everyone agrees with them, in fact, more people are inclined to accept people for who they are, rather than trying to change them to fit their ideals of good.
I have a thought. It would be great to counter with billboards that say, “We Questioned Exodus” and have a few former ex-gays appear on the billboard. Especially those that were a major part of the movement over the years.
I wonder how FOTF and Exodus/Love Won Out would react to that?
Frank said, ” Would like to know when they’re visiting my town next. I plan to be ready with an extension ladder and a gallon of black paint…”
This reminds me of the billboard incident that occurred when I was stationed at Moody AFB and lived in Valdosta, GA circa 1970. The town had put up a billboard just north of the city on I-75 announcing:
Welcome to Valdosta
The city of friendly people
Below this the billboard prominently displayed the forearms and the hands of two men in a friendly handshake. Both men were white, of course.
Some time in the “dark” of night, someone got up there and skillfully over painted one hand with shades of black and brown. In the light of the next day, people saw a white man on the left shaking hands with a black man on the right as a representation of Valdosta, GA, “The city of friendly people.”
Wow, what an onslaught of protest occurred. People were contacting the mayor’s office, the city commissioners and the local media decrying how the billboard had been “vandalized.” Yet the work was so well done that no objective observer would think that it hadn’t been designed to show a white man and a black man shaking hands in the first place.
What to do? If the commission caved in to these complaints and sent someone up there to change it back to two white men shaking hands, it would confirm that Valdosta was unfriendly to blacks. If they didn’t, they would suffer the constant outrage of anti-black bigots. They decided to leave the changed sign as it was and not renew the billboard contract when it expired.
I’m still completely in awe of the genius of those who so adeptly made the right hand on the billboard that of a black person and the unrighteous havoc it caused.
Perhaps someone will come up with something equally clever for these anti-gay billboards.
The mischievous devil in me wants to photoshop some funny and silly variants of the billboard, but I’m a complete obsessive compulsive when it comes to working with high resolution sources and I can’t find a bigger picture of that 🙁
zortnac, it’s been done.
Haha, yeah, actually I took part in those shenanigans, maybe that’s why I’m eager to do it again 😉
Yuki, no disrespect intended, but I’ve found this blanket statement to be inaccurate:“…Common sense already states that if you are uncomfortable with homosexuality then you are not a homosexual….”I’ve observed that many of those who are ‘uncomfortable with homosexuality’ are actually heavily repressed gay or bi men who use some sort of a pious or macho, gay-hating persona to mask insecurities concerning their own same-gender attraction (in many cases, these folks conduct secretive sexual liaisons with others of the same gender. The example has been played to death, but Ted Haggard comes to mind, in addition to others who I have personally observed ). Many folks like this were raised in an environment that was very disapproving of homosexuals and most of their family & peer group espouses the same attitude, so of course they are going to try to distance themselves as much as possible from any sort of indication of their own orientation, even if it means loudly squawking about your disapproval. This may not be representative of a majority in the gay-disapproving category, but I find such attitudes to be highly suspect at best.
Randy Thomas had something up about this press release and I mentioned in a comment to him that I didn’t think this had anything to do with intollerance any more than FOTF or Exodus turning away advertising business from a company or organization that they didn’t feel met their standards. Someone should let these people know that arguments like the one that Ms. Fryrear is putting out make them look hypocritical.
j.
Nonsequitur, maybe what you say is true in some cases. But I will site another example, Pastor Edmund Smith of the ex-gay group, the Real Love Ministry in Malaysia. This is out of topic, but it is an explanation as to why I made that statement.
I had come to know him personally, and from his testimomy, to reach the conviction I stated at this point. Him being born as a boy, dressed as a girl by his girl longing mother, losing his fatherly love, confused of his sexual identity and orientation to the extent of just following anything anyone says to build the character of the person he is then.
You might be interested to know too that the 3 trigger issues of homosexuality which he always mentioned, may be similar to ex-gay groups in America’s ideas, but ironically it was invented by himself to describe his own journey to gay ‘life’.
He himself had told me that not once he enjoyed homosexual ‘acts’. He just wants to be loved. And he countlessly insisted how GAY he was. Unless he is lying.
You can check out certain conversations he had with gays around half a year back in the Singapore site http://www.trevvy.com. I feel the arguments and statements he presented somehow presents him not as a gay supressing his sexuality, but really as a straight person who actually was led to a lifestyle in which he later despises. And thinks all gays were influenced to be gays like him. And believes all gays can change like him.
What you have mentioned is in some way acurate though. But we need to overcome the idea that everyone is the same. Some are really inborn gays, but some really are influenced. It is up to the individual’s experience and convictions to figure where they stand.
I believe some articles was posted here about Pastor Edmund Smith a few years back. Perhaps you can check up on it and see what you think.
By the way, I asked the magic question to him before. Is he still attracted to men in any way. He gave me a firm NO.
In fact, he thinks I am a crossdresser ‘like him’, that I am gay (even though I like men and women), and that I can change. I said NO. Because God made me the way I am as a girl born with an abnormality and will undergo the journey a different way. He calls me foolish (he calls me that again in http://www.trevvy.com). And gay. As he was gay.
Apologies for this off topic comment. But just have to make my point why I believe some ex-gays, like him, stands as a case of one confused heterosexual.
If a guy never enjoys sexual activity with another guy, he is NOT “gay!” He’s not even bisexual nor homosexual. Apparently, Edmund Smith, went searching for unconditional love in the wrong places.
I am reminded of a woman has had her testimony published in Christian magazines. Bob Davies, retired CEO of Exodus Internation, considered the woman to be an ex-lesbian and wrote an introduction which was published with her testimony. But, in her actually testimony, she never called herself that. Like Smith, she went looking for unconditional love and they only people who offered to her were lesbians. She had been told by her mother that the way you return love to a person who loves you is to have sex with them. She was also sexually abused by men who were church leaders, one of whom claimed that what he did was “God’s will.” When she finally had a real encounter with Jesus, God the Father showed her that he was not anything like the god of those who abused her. In her healing process, she was no longer afraid of having friendships with men who treated her with respect.
In her testimony, she never said anything negative about the lesbians whom she had met.
I don’t understand the problem here. It seems like one private entity didn’t want to do business with another private entity. If Exodus doesn’t want to be forced to work with people they don’t want to work with, then they shouldn’t force Clear Channel to work with them.