All of these quotes are from Alan Chambers: [hint, watch the bold text]
While the news is being touted in the homosexual community as another sign that homosexuality is genetic, the focus instead should be on the thousands of former homosexuals who have experienced freedom through Christ, the head of Exodus International said.(*) (2003)
I am one of tens of thousands of people whom have successfully changed their sexual orientation.(*) (2004)
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(*) (2005)
I pulled out my hand ExGayWatch pocket-calculator and did some work. Sustaining this amazing trend increasing by a power of 10 each year, the entire world population of 10 billion people will all be ex-gay in 2010. I bow down to fellow Long Beach resident Scott for sending me these gems.
Awww, no need to bow down to me. I just thought the numbers were funny.
I also had noticed those trends, but when I brought up the question, i could not find the quotes to back them up. Nice work.
Ah, you just gotta love Alan. The more he says, the less credible he gets.
Here’s his smug little response to the United Church of Christ endorsing gay marriage and why Exodus opposes equality to gay people:
“Alan Chambers, a former homosexual who served as an associate pastor before becoming President of Exodus International, says he agrees that the church needs to do more to reach out to homosexuals who feel alienated and excluded, but that the United Church of Christ’s recent decision is not the answer.
…
Chambers added, “Our existence as ex-gays is additional proof that homosexuality is not an immutable trait and therefore, marriage is not a civil right to be extended to any group of individuals who demand it. Preserving the public purpose of marriage sets a higher standard for future generations and defines its biblical intention to those who are confused and questioning their sexuality. As a former homosexual who is now happily married, I am grateful for the laws that protected and esteemed this life-preserving, authentic union.””
To the “love the sinner while you stone him” crowd this might make sense.
But too much more of this bizarre juxtaposition, strange math, and general nuttiness, and decent folks will look at Alan and think he should put down the crack pipe.
Poor guy; since he sold his soul to anti-gay militant political activists (and I do mean that literally) he seems to really be losing his grip on reality.
https://www.dakotavoice.com/200507/20050705_8.asp
Does Alan currently use thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands interchangeably when giving speeches/statements, or is it definitely something that has grown over the years?
From what I can tell its been growing. I googled [“Alan Chambers”, change, thousands] (remove the brackets and copy that search exactly). This gave me pretty specific hits on his past statements.
This is funny as heck.
It appears Alan has problems with numbers. This ‘hundreds of thousands’ has rattled around since Joe Dallas used it long ago. It looks like they reach this number, well somehow they come up with it.
Somehow this remains as a number tossed around. Along with the truly mysterious notion of just what exactly ‘exgay’ means. My impression is the Exodus is not composed of people particulary skilled at Western Intellectual type activities. Like making sure all your numbers jibe.
Example. If there are in deed ‘hundreds of thousands’ of exgays. And that something like 2/3rds of all people who attempt this path fail. Which seems to be an Exodus admission, sort of kinda. This would mean that there are even more ‘exexgays’, like on the magnitude of a million or more.
But wait, other right wing data, to which Exodus subscribes, maintains that there just are not all that many gay people to begin with. Something like at most 2% of the population. Or in the neighborhood of 4 to 5 million people.
Which would lead Pagan Western types like me to then conclude that either 20 to 25% of all gay folks have traveled down the exgay path, which I suspect is not true. And this can be verified empirically. Or the whole thing is bunch of hooey.
What Alan is not realizing here is that he can not increase the number of exgays without correspondingly increasing the number of exexgays and evergays. If the figure I have heard somewhere, shows that the part of the gay world open to exgay ideation runs somewhat like 1%, then Alan is in even deeper doodoo.
Because if ‘hundreds of thousands’ equals 1%, then ‘tens of millions’ must equal the whole of the gay world. Which I do not think is plausible. Rather, it seems to me, the figure for the gay world is around 14 million per marketing studies. And the figure for the exgay world is about 20,000. Which statistically is zero: the number of gays who become exgay is 1 in 700, or zero percent.
The only other solution I can see for Alan and his numbers, is to have people entering and leaving gay life at a truly dizzying pace. Which again is not plausible. The exgays must be replaced as they leave the gay world. By newly out gays. If something like one fourth of all gays are going to become exgay, then either there is a constantly shrinking gay community, which I feel is demonstrably false. Or there is an ongoing rush of new recruits. Neither of which seems like a plausible scenario.
The failure here is that Alan does not move his numbers through time. If there are so many exgays, then it must be shown how they move through the gay world. Which can be shown to exist and to have grown over the years in which he claims so many were leaving.
Where I feel there is a disconnect for Alan, and all the exgay commentators, is that they can not show a gay world with a large audience for the whole Evangelical Christian message. If you look at published works by gay people for gay people on religious topics, almost none of them are written by anyone who might be termed ‘traditional or orthodox Christian’. Nor do they deal with gay issues in such a fashion.
Rather, we can see a large and vibrant literature by religious and spiritual gay people who are outside the confines of traditional Christianity. Even most of the professedly Christian gay authors are not particularly orthodox or traditional.
Because of this, I wonder where Exodus could find gay people open to its message. In my admittedly limited and provincial experience, I have met far more gay people interested in past life issues and Karma than in salvation. And those Christians I have known were always more into social and justice issues than personal piety.
Anyway, my other take on the subject is that evangelical Christians who are also gay are invariably a young group. Something about being both out and eC produces an unstable identity. By the late 30’s, these people have moved away from the eC.
Dear Alan
I come in contact with many different from many different walks of life; how come I have never come in contact with an ex-gay in my life?
Ex-gays are like born agains, trying to look an excuse for their past stupid behaviour; isn’t it interesting that EVERY ex-gay blames their homosexuality for promiscuity, an STD or drug taking.
If these people were adult about it, they would be blaming themselves; THEY made the choice to consume drugs, THEY made the choice to be promiscuous, THEY chose to have unprotected sex. But of course, that would be too hard for these people; why do that, when they can blame homosexuality for all their problems.
The sad part about this; these ex-gays will continue on, living a lie, and everytime something goes wrong, they’ll blame something rather than taking it on the chin, and getting over it.
RE: Dalea
The sad part about the Evangelical Christian movement is this; they show the very worst of Christianity and religion in general – the net result of this, young adults/teenagers are turned off religion – the net result of that, they lose focus and perspective in their life – religion provides that focus and meaning.
What needs to occur is for more gays to step up and say that you can be gay AND have a spiritual outlet/view in life; the two aren’t mutually exclusive – it would first counter the crap that the EC scream, that every gay is an abortion supporting atheist, and also show to gays and their supporters/friends that religion and homosexuality aren’t mutually exclusive.
One might seriously ask, how long will “ex-gays” remain “ex-gay”? And how can one verify that the purported “ex-gays” don’t engage in homosex?
I’ve known people who have engaged in homosex with 100 men and one woman, and claim to be straight. It’s hilarious.
The problem is the political/financial nature of the “ex-gay” movement, as I’ve noted here before.
RE: raj
The only good measure is by the number of high profile ex-gays to have been outed by members of the public – either caught ‘cruising’ public toilets, exiting gay bars or ‘having a really close friend who lives with them’.
As for the success rate, there was a study a while back putting the success rate at 3% – thats below the margin of error, and thats only looking over a time period of, IIRC 12-18months, based on a ‘honesty’ phone survey.
Its pathetic how these people ‘claim to be cured’, and yet, they don’t have the backbone to just bloody well come out, admit they’re as queer as a two bob watch, and all the mystic, tree hugging, tambourine playing, gospel music crap won’t change that simple fact.
The sooner they simply accept they’re gay, the sooner this snake-oil industry can close down and finally admit failure.
Our existence as ex-gays is additional proof that homosexuality is not an immutable trait and therefore, marriage is not a civil right to be extended to any group of individuals who demand it. Preserving the public purpose of marriage sets a higher standard for future generations and defines its biblical intention to those who are confused and questioning their sexuality. As a former homosexual who is now happily married, I am grateful for the laws that protected and esteemed this life-preserving, authentic union.
Let me rephrase that to really make it clear.
Background: My father was raised in the Congregational Church, and converted to Roman Catholicism when he married my mother – this was not an overwhelmingly approved-of “lifestyle choice” for him, and one of his brothers took the opposite route and became an ardent Southern Baptist. Imagine my father saying, in regards to the legal recognition of his brother’s marriage, which the Catholic Church does not recognize:
“My existence as a Roman Catholic is additional proof that ahering to a heretical religion is not an immutable trait and therefore, marriage is not a civil right to be extended to any group of individuals who demand it. Preserving the public purpose of marriage sets a higher standard for future generations and defines its biblical intention to those who are confused and questioning the one true religion, Roman Catholicism. As a former Protestant who is now happily Catholic and married, I am grateful for the laws that protected and esteemed this life-preserving, authentic union, which is only possible in the Catholic Church.”
Is there really any difference in sentiment?
“What needs to occur is for more gays to step up and say that you can be gay AND have a spiritual outlet/view in life; the two aren’t mutually exclusive – it would first counter the crap that the EC scream, that every gay is an abortion supporting atheist, and also show to gays and their supporters/friends that religion and homosexuality aren’t mutually exclusive.”
It’s already out there but doesn’t seem to get much press. For example, did anyone here know that every year the largest entry into the Los Angeles gay pride parade is always the Episcopal Church?
Also, I think it helps us when there are the ongoing debates in the Episcopal, Lutheran, and Methodist churches about gay clergy. It’s good to have people recognize that for a long time gay people have been an active part of the more liberal Christian traditions. Additionally, I think we will begin to see more gay visibility from the UCC and Quakers as it seems that those churches are pissed off and want to fight back.
And then there are all the gay churches. And, at least in LA, there are A LOT of them.
It’s not that gay folk aren’t spiritual or Christian, it’s just easier to stereotype.
I agree with this:
The sad part about the Evangelical Christian movement is this; they show the very worst of Christianity and religion in general – the net result of this, young adults/teenagers are turned off religion
But not this:
– the net result of that, they lose focus and perspective in their life – religion provides that focus and meaning.
There are hundreds of millions of people all over the world who find focus and meaning in their lives without religion.
RE: ndt
True, I should have put, “religion can be used as a way of getting focus and perspective in life – it isn’t the only way, however”.
I’ve been thinking about this post a bit. It somewhat reminds me of the 1960s, shortly after IBM came out with their System 360 computer line. That caused a sharp increase in the number of programmers, such that there were predictions that the number of programmers would exceed the estimated population within a couple of decades.
Chambers’s estimated number of ex-gays sounds similar.
Has he actually ever identified any of these ex-gays he’s referring to? I’m referring to: prove your assertion.
Hey everyone, I’m a newbie here at XGW so if this post violates any rules, please forgive my ignorace.
I’ve noticed that some anti-gay “ministries” are against the common theory that the population is 90% heterosexuals and 10% homo or bi sexual.Saying that there really arent that many gay people. If the they want us to believe that there arent that many homosexuals then how can there be hundreds of thousands of “ex-gays”? dont they have to have hundreds of thousands of homos to convert?
The tail can only wag the dog for so long. Poor confused nutty fundie chrisitans. Sadly I watched a close freind go down the tubes because of religious brainwash. Ontop of being deadly afraid of his family finding out being he would be completely shut out of their lives, he due to his idealistic conditioning as he grew up had a horrible time comming to terms with his own feelings. After fighting himself for about 5 years he was found in the garage with the car on and a hose in the tail pipe, going into the window. His mother found his dead, we were so angry at his family for their ignorance and the state it finally drove their son to.
I’m sure I’m not the only one that has seen the horrible results of these ignorant creeps. Trying to justify their lie to their self by nuerotically trying to guilt other people into *acting* a certain way. Personally I want these people held accountable for those that end up killing themselves due to their “therapies” of guilt, shame and idealistic “wag the dog” BS!
Psyche