Actor Anne Heche’s mother, Nancy Heche, is a speaker for Focus on the Family’s antigay roadshow, Love Won Out.
Queerty found an August statement attributed to Anne on a message board of AnneHeche.com. Part of the statement is excerpted below.
The “Ex-gay” events that are going on right now make me sick. The fact that my mother is using my name to promote this movement makes me even sicker. I could not disagree more adamanty [sic] with what she and her group of unloving, unaccepting, [sic] Bible preaching hate mongers are doing. I do not believe that homosexuality is something that should be brainwashed out of someone. I do not believe that homosexuality should be anything but celebrated if that is the thing that makes an individual feel good about their life. I believe, as I have always said, that people should love who they want to love.
The source — a discussion forum — is admittedly dubious, but one assumes posts falsely attributed to Anne on her own web site would be promptly deleted. Ex-Gay Watch inquired with the site about the statement’s validity: No response yet.
Gay author and activist Wayne Besen thanks Anne for her repudiation of Nancy, and links to a New York Daily News gossip brief quoting Anne’s statement and to an earlier article by Besen recalling Anne’s allegations of abusive parenting by Nancy Heche.
Update: I emailed the WHOIS administrative contact listed for AnneHeche.com to verify authenticity. I received the following email excerpt dated 09-21-05:
Anne said through her husband that it was fine for me to confirm that she wrote that statement personally, as well as anything else on her official site that shows her name.
-Preston Bealle
Well it is her message board on her personal website and the email link seems valid.
Why not email Anne and find out if she did indeed make the statement.
anneheche@annheche.com seems pretty straight forward to me.
I will but I”m at work right now and can’t get to my XGW.com email.
It does not surprise me at all that Anne Heche would make such a comment – from the interviews I have read, including on in the Advocate magazine (last year?), she has never jumped on the “ex-gay” bandwagon. She has consistently regarded her relationship with Ellen Degeneres as similar to, if not the exact same as, her relationships with the men she had dated. Her statements have been along the lines of “I fell in love with a person, in Ellen’s case that happened to be a woman.”
I wonder if we can get comments from any of the media people at Exodus or Love Won Out regarding Anne’s statement.
It would be interesting to see how they spin it.
Maybe Wayne Besen would be interested.
I imagine that Exodus treats the crazy mom the same way they treat all the crazy moms. “God has been so good to me. He’s answered my prayers and taken my daughter from that destructive lifestyle. But the work isn’t complete, she still won’t speak to me, so please help me pray”.
Remember, they don’t have to have any basis in reason for them to take a position.
Without waiting for a response by AH to the Mike A post,the comments attributed to Heche do match what is already well known about the (poor) relationship with her mother — it’s throughout her book, for example — and what has been otherwise publically said by Heche and DeGeneres. It does seem odd that the comment would be just plopped in the blog without an apparent cause, but weirder things happen.More the point, it is interesting that Love Won Out(c) invited her mother — who hardly seems a paragon of family virtues — to speak at their blabfest rather than inviting Anne herself. I wonder why that would be the case…
Both Anne Heche and her sister have published autobiographies that detail the bizarre family they grew up in. Their father was a closeted gay church musician who was one of the first documented AIDS deaths in NYC. Drama and acrimony run deep in the family. Based on both autobiographies, I’m not surprised Nancy Heche would grab an opportunity to be spotlighted by a high-profile organization like FOtF – even if it meant further alienation from her daughter.
Actually her comment was in reaction to a question I sent to her on the forum. If you search, she first sent that post directly to me, and then also posted it as To Whom It May Concern.
Carrie, if you wish to reference a document or link in your comment then PROVIDE A URL for such a thing.
Here from Brazil, I’ll pray for Anne Heche and her mother Nancy, for their relationship become as good as it should be, mom and her kid, even an adult kid!
I met Anne when she was still with Ellen and she spoke at the event about her family.
Her father’s closeted situation and AIDS death. Her 19 yr old brother’s suicide for fear of his own orientation and it’s true, her relationship with Ellen was good and she doesn’t and won’t speak ill of Ellen whatsoever.
Her mother is EXTREMELY bitter…especially over the death of her teen son.
It’s the ferocious homphobia that killed father and son and Focus on the Family is exploiting this mother as they have exploited many ex spouses of gays and lesbians that finally came out.
When I have called FOTF, there were several people answering their phones who’d had this experience.
The invective wasn’t surprising.
But the anger was misdirected. They should be angry at groups like FOTF and Exodus for conditioning them to assume that the only cure for homosexuality…is heterosexuals.
I’m really glad to read this, actually. I was kind of horrified to think that she (Anne) might consider herself “ex-gay.” I was really shocked to find out her Mom had joined the Love Won Out circus…no wonder my Mother enjoyed going this year…probably everything she thinks about parenting and life was validated by Anne’s mom….(sigh)….
I have an older Christian student who is really homophobic and spouts off things in class. His brother was gay and died of AIDS. He has this bizarre idea that gay people made his brother become an alcoholic so that they could force him to be gay. The student says that there is no other way his brother could have been gay except that gays seduced him with alcohol.
Bizarre indeed Aaron.And I’m almost sure he’d be the type of person that could never understand that it was perhaps his, and others, negative attitudes that drove his gay brother to drink. I wonder what his brother would have to say, if he could.
Here is the link to the question that prompted Anne’s original answer.
https://www.anneheche.com/guestbook/viewpost.asp?ID=8%2F1%2F2005+9%3A02%3A03+AM224&Forum=Guestbook&Level=002&Repl=0