The 700 Club spotlights the journey of one exgay man, Phillip Tucker. Can a single man’s anecdotes substantiate the exgay political movement’s stereotypes about same-sex-attracted individuals?
Tucker tells the television program’s audience that his gay civil union was loveless, but does not indicate whether he made any effort to establish and maintain love in a relationship. He blames his father for both his sexual orientation and his behavior, but gives his father and family no opportunity for a rebuttal. Sidestepping his obvious struggle with low self-esteem, Tucker instead misdefines masculinity and reinforces the myth that gay men are not good at sports.
Tucker’s testimonial continues with several more omissions and denials of personal responsibility.
Tucker acknowledges some youthful anger at the false cures of the
antigay religious movement. But he conflates that movement
with God.
In glossing over the "gay gene" issue, Tucker misunderstands, and
then misrepresents, scientists studying the multiple origins of sexual
orientation. Tucker appears to view the discussion of science as a
threat to his exgay identity — a trigger that might cause
helpless victims to become homosexual.
Tucker creates a false division between gay couples and the belief
in God. Having already accused his father and science of causing his
homosexuality, he factors the death of his grandfather, a friend’s car accident, a water-heater malfunction, and his own suicide attempt in his escape from his sexual orientation.
It is only after his conversion to born-again Christianity that
Tucker welcomes the family values and the belief in a loving God that
— had he accepted responsibility for his role in fostering these
values with his gay partner and among his friends and family — he could have enjoyed all along, while remaining honest about his ongoing same-sex attraction.
Tucker now looks back and falsely describes his particular choices of behavior and philosophy as "the"
homosexual lifestyle.
It is not until the end of the interview that The 700 Club tells us
why Tucker might be stereotyping or scapegoating gay people: He is now
an operative for Focus on the Family.
Having misdefined, caricatured and blamed sexual orientation for his
own poor judgment and romantic shortcomings, Tucker then says of the
word "homosexuality":
It’s a lie. It’s probably one
of the greatest lies that Satan has done in our century. God will
fulfill you. Christ will give you everything that you need inside.
He’ll fill everything. There’s no loneliness. There’s no bitterness.
You can have that father that you never had.
Tucker
is an antigay political activist who seems to suffer from lingering
bitterness. He redefines "homosexuality" and then accuses this strawman of
being a lie. His employer teaches that God most loves those who agree with its political leader, James Dobson. Ultimately, Tucker promises a too-perfect, painfree existence to those who adopt the ideology of employer Dobson and 700 Club chief Pat
Robertson.
(Hat tip: Aaron R., Google Alerts)
“a water-heater malfunction?” that has to be a joke, please fill me in, I don’t watch much TV
Hey why is this filed under FoTF / FRC ? Are those two organizations related?
The water-heater incident, which flooded Tucker’s kitchen, is mentioned in the 700 Club interview.
FRC was established by James Dobson and it was a division of Focus on the Family until FRC’s political activism prompted the formality of an administrative separation (for tax purposes) in 1992.
Dobson remained on the FRC board of directors afterward, however, and he is believed to be partly responsible for the departures of two FRC heads, Gary Bauer and Ken Connor.
Dobson was angered when Bauer ran for president in 2000 against fellow GOP candidate George W. Bush and subsequently endorsed John McCain; Bauer was not invited back to FRC after the election. In 2003, Connor was deemed insufficiently committed to Dobson’s vitriolic political warfare against gay Americans.
From the article: “I saw a unit there, a family unit that was close. She talked several times, and she was like, ‘I can’t judge you. I just need to know if you know the Lord. That’s all I need to know.’ I was taken aback at first. I was surprised because she didn’t try to preach at me.”
Maybe Dobson, Falwell, Perkins, and all of the others should follow that advice…
Also, it is interesting to me that in the interview, Tucker calls homosexuality one of the biggest lies Satan has over man this century. I think he is right- it is this century that for the first time, homosexuality seems to have an automatic out from many churches. The devil has found a great way to make sure the church ostracizes a whole lot of people.
One last point- it is far too often that people leave homosexuality and never turn back from these religious groups. If I were a person struggling with SSA (an Exodus member, one of the myriad SSA bloggers, etc.), I would take great offense to the public trivializing of changing from gay to straight.
I’ve seen too many of these young bloggers that are committing their lives to leaving SSA behind, but are fighting every inch of the way. This seems to be the more common struggle to leave homosexuality. I wonder why FoF or the FRC or so many other groups dont publicize these more real stories.
TA, are you saying that homosexuality was once tolerated by churches but no longer is in this century? I’m not sure what you mean.
I think most of these gay bloggers are just getting paid to pretend to be gay and turning straight. They are probably 70 year old Southern Baptist preachers. Nothing in their stories ever ring true. One in particular (that is linked from this site) is just lots of whining and boo hooing about how hard it is to stop being gay but oh isn’t he so noble and special. I notice that his comments area has fallen into almost nothing over the past months. I guess people got tired of the pity parties.
Oh, I just noticed that site is no longer linked here. Good. I always hated that guy.