In a May 9 story about the National PTA’s differing treatment of PFLAG and PFOX, the Washington Times misquoted a key source.
This misconduct by the Times is not surprising — former editors at the Times have told me (and many other Washington journalists) that the newspaper’s front-page stories deliberately misquote key sources on a daily basis; top editors rewrite reporters’ Page One stories to change or conceal facts deemed politically inconvenient.
By distorting the news, the newspaper’s owners — the Unification Church of self-professed messiah Sun Myung Moon — give the newspaper appeal as a “news” source among allied religious rightists, including Exodus president Alan Chambers.
On May 9 in particular, the Times quoted PFLAG deputy executive director Ron Schittler as saying, among other things, “Our beliefs are superior.” The article also quotes Schittler recalling the PTA’s 2004 convention invitation to PFLAG because of the group’s campaign to “end rampant anti-gay bullying” in schools.
Schittler set the record straight about being misquoted — but Alan Chambers of Exodus declined to share the clarification with his followers.
Instead, Chambers repeated the claim that Schittler boasted of superiority, without acknowledging the dubious source of his information or Schittler’s repudiation of the claim. (Indeed, Chambers used the Times to parrot his own press release.) Chambers also omitted mention of antigay harassment as a key concern for the PTA and PFLAG.
If you use Alan Chambers'”success rate” of about 1/3 of all gays that come in to his ministry being able to leave homosexuality completely behind, saying that hundreds of thousands of people have achieved this is really hard to swallow.
Assuming hundreds of thousands means 200,000, that means 666,000 people or so people have entered their ministries. So, for the last 25 years (I believe that is about how long Exodus has been around), their ministries have counseled about 26,000 people per year. Somehow that doesn’t sound right to me. Add that to the fact that “hundreds of thousands” is a relatively new number by Exodus (before they have said thousands and even tens of thousands, even in the last couple of years). I’d really like to see Alan at least try to substantiate these claims.
Actually, the hundreds of thousands appears in a novel written by Joe Dallas. It is over 10 years old. This number has been kicking around for a while. Maybe if you include all the people who have been exposed to Exodus literature you can get this number. But that is stretching things.
Can Schittler or other misquoted individuals sue the Washington Times for libel?
It always amazes me how little regard the “godly” have for the truth.
I can’t find the P-FLAG repudiation of the quote. Anyone have a copy of this statement?
LOL…the “Moonies” run the Washington Times! That’s rich.
Someone should make sure FOTF, Hank Hannegraf, TVC and the like are abundantly aware that their rhetoric’s standard bearer is a front for a “cultic organization”.