The Exodus web site features a press release penned late last week by Warren Throckmorton.
Instead of explaining or defending the odd language and overly optimistic claims of the LA Times ex-gay ad, Throckmorton singles out two of the ad’s sloppiest critics — LAT columnist Steve Lopez and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Both critics trivialized the content of the ads and retreated instead to tired cliches.
I could have written better criticisms of the ad than those of Lopez and GLAAD; in fact, I did.
Instead of addressing some very real problems with the ad, Exodus takes potshots over trivialities.
Sounds like Throckmorton took a page from Karl Rove. When in doubt destroy the credibility of the other person. Like what was done to former Senator, Max Cleland. Doesn’t matter to these kind of people if its true or not!
This is more on topic to the ads themselves, not the responses, but in Randy Thomas’ ad he says that tens of thousands of others like him have “questioned homosexuality.” Is it just chance that he uses that wording than saying they have actually changed or have actually reamined celibate? Doubtful.
Yes, in reading the ad it is interesting how it emphasizes the sexual abuse, the club scene, the emptiness…. Yet if a similar ad ran with “Question Heterosexuality” on the top, featuring a woman routinely abused by her father, who ran from man to man, hung out at bars, and then “discovered” that she wasn’t really straight, but was acting out, you’d better believe Exodus would be all over it.
I have yet to see an ad featuring any of the mind-numbingly normal lives that I and my gay friends lead. You know, I figured out I was gay early on, had struggles and issues with it, dated for a while, was somewhat promiscuous in my youth, am now with a steady partner and want to get married. Oh, and now I’m questioning my homosexuality.
I don’t think so.
It is a typical cult recruitment ad. rediculous and exactly the same as all the others have ever been. My My but their stories are all so perfectly identical.
I never had an Absent father, I had a very presant redneck one, along with my grandfather. I was steeped in backwoods redneck fishing and fmaily. I’ve never been into drugs, i was never molested or abused in ANY way. I had a jealousy inciting idyllic childhood. My first sexual experience with the 3rd guy I dated at normal age of 16.
I break every single claim of “reason for being gay” they can throw up (vomit)…this however is irrelevant anyway, because for every person who experienced one trauma, you find other who experienced a different one, or the same one, and everybody reacts differently to them. Ads like this are red herrings. Every single accredited psychological, medical, psychiatric, and sociological agency in the WORLD refutes the “exgay” claims regarding sexual orientation. this FACT may go “dismissed” under the quite CONFUSED mis-concept regarding “free speech” as a blanket protection to “just say anything”, or “make any claim” regardless of its meits or consequences.
Hopefully one day, we as a society will understand the difference.
Rusty