Gadfly ex-gay activist, Steven Bennett, has issued a press release stating his firm stance “in direct opposition to his State’s new law legalizing homosexual civil unions.”
He describes himself thus:
Stephen Bennett is a man who once engaged in homosexuality for 11 years with over 100 male partners. He completely left the homosexual lifestyle in 1992.
Here at exgaywatch, we are still waiting to find confirmation of the existence of any of those 100 male partners.
Bennett goes on to clarify that his real objection is something other than civil unions:
“This is a very sad day for my home State of Connecticut. While all human beings deserve to be treated with love and respect, all behaviors do NOT need to be tolerated. Just because a State legalizes something, does not make it morally right. Contrary to my State’s beliefs, homosexual behavior is far from “natural and normal.” You better believe we will now even be more fervent in educating people in Connecticut and around the country about the truths and dangers of the homosexual lifestyle.”
It’s quite clear that Bennett objects to the toleration and legality of “homosexual behavior”. This attitude is extreme for ex-gay activists.
He concludes with:
Stephen, his wife Irene, along with a group of other former homosexual men and women, will be begin a statewide tour of Connecticut in a series of Public Town Meetings called “Straight Talk About Homosexuality” beginning this month. The talks will also feature medical and psychological experts on the issue.
Anyone in the Connecticut area may want to observe this dog and pony show to see what claims Bennett makes and who he produces to support his often bizarre positions.
“Contrary to my State’s beliefs, homosexual behavior is far from “natural and normal.” You better believe we will now even be more fervent in educating people in Connecticut and around the country about the truths and dangers of the homosexual lifestyle.”
Is this some sort of threat to the people of Connecticut and/or the lawmakers threre? Who says things like this in a press release?
I really hate liars and obfuscaters and all manner of other folks who don’t like to make the important distinctions between what is criminal behavior, what is ethical, what is moral and what is normal and non threatening or indistinct within and between human perameters.
As someone in another post pointed out recently, there was never any reason to consider homosexuality abnormal or a sickness in the first place.
And now that we do know better, anyone that doesn’t want to know better, well THEY are the ones who should just move on and leave everyone else alone.
Even if Stephen Bennet was NEVER gay…I’d still think that his promiscuity and drug use and lack of the ability to have an enduring relationship was a matter of self realization issues and ego problems.
He’s just a superficial ninny that still hasn’t really owned up to what a failure of a person he was.
It’s just all too easy to blame homosexuality, and not his weaknesses as a HUMAN BEING, period.
The things that these ex gay people all have in common is the need for attention.
It’s almost pathological.Just like other aspects of their lives that blew up in their faces.
For once, just once, I wish they’d all just look at how many HETEROSEXUALS are in the same damn boat and they don’t have their orientation to use as an excuse, and they aren’t ALLOWED to.
Being hooked on religion can get just as damaging as on other things too.
It’s just how addictive people are. They just move from what is illegal and more expensive, to what is legal and usually accepted without much question.
He’s still an addict, just in another way. And like those with addictions who need to feel accepted, he wants someone else to share it, to bring them into the same fold to further validate him.
I have always found his decription of himself as a homosexual and sleeping with over 100 men funny. How many people go out and say that they slept with so many people? I don’t put it on my CV. I don’t introduce myself that way. It is like that shows he is really homosexual or something.
Re: “It is like that shows he is really homosexual or something.”
Some wags would say that it doesn’t show that he’s homosexual, just that he’s a slut.
But of course, I would never say that because not only is calling people names like that wrong, but it would go against Ex-Gay Watch’s standards of conduct. 😉
I’m sure Mr. Bennett makes the rest of CT so proud of him – NOT.
I can understand why a purported guy (Bennett) who had only (probably) a little over 100 sex partners in 11 years (that’s only about 10 per year) might have been despondent about his gayness. He obviously wasn’t very successful at picking up people.
Some of us were–successful that is.
/sarcasm
Just to let you know, it was precisely because I was successful that I met my (same sex) partner in 1978. And we’ve been together ever since. I’m getting tired of the prattling moralizing of these “ex-gays” who were obviously failures at being gay.
… assuming picking up people is a measure of success at being gay.
Since I have had far, far, far fewer than 10 partners per year, I guess I’m a failure too. A dismall one. Sorry to let all of the pundits down.
Funny. I don’t feel like one.
I don’t see why having fewer sexual conquests is somehow a failure as a gay person.
I remember from college that there were guys in my fraternity that thought the more girls you bedded, the greater stud you were. I know too that some young gay guys (and some of the older early-stonewall types) think that being gay means having sex with somone new every weekend.
However, I think most folks – gay or straight – agree that maintaining a relationship with one person based on love, trust, and respect is more “successful” than bed-hopping. And, for that matter, the sex is better with someone you love and know well than it is with a stranger.
Perhaps what raj meant was that IF Bennett was one of those guys who didn’t value relationships but instead wanted as much sex as possible with as many guys as possible, THEN he wasn’t particularly successful. But we don’t know that to be the case.
Actually, Timothy, I think raj was being sarcastic. However, the “ex-gay” movement does often describe gay male sexuality as being a form of addiction – the need to continually go out and gain sexual conquests. But 100 men over 11 years is fewer than one man a month – hardly the “go-out-every-night-and-get-laid” stereotype often peddled by some in the “pro-family” movement.
raj was just being his usual witty self, and I responded in kind. 😉 I just didn’t include the /sarcasm tag in mine.
I didn’t mean to pick on him specifically. Just commenting on the strange impression some people hold of what constitutes a “successful” gay.
I, however, simply overreacted 🙂
Just to let you know, I can only conclude that some here don’t understand HTML coding.
“/sarcasm”
means, like other “/” HTML codes, “end of.” Yes, I was being sarcastic in my post.
If Mr. Bennett wants to engage in a heterosex relationship, he should just do it. Big frigging deal. What is it to him that I have been engaging in a homosex relationship for probably more years than he has been sentient? Other than it helps him in his gig to make money?
I’ll be blunt. Running through some estimates, about 10 sex partners a year in one’s (presumed) 20’s doesn’t sound like he was very successful. Maybe that’s why he became bitter against gay people. I was quite successful in the 1970s: I was probably involved with 10 sex partners in a couple of weeks when I was living in DC. And, you know, I’m not ashamed to admit it. That was pre-HIV/AIDS, of course.
I’ll also be blunt: if I had not been a little slut in the late 1970s, I never would have met my partner. And we’ve been together ever since.
Bennett’s faux-moralizing is getting to be a bit boring.
Timothy at October 5, 2005 02:25 PM
No problemmo.
Sometimes it gets boring just reading straight text. I found long ago that other forms of rhetoric (sarcasm, tongue in cheek, pulling chains, whatever you want to call them) are often more effective than direct argument.
The problem is that with text over the Internet it is difficult to determine when one is being sarcastic, tongue in cheek, etc. To correct that, some of us have introduced new HTML-like tags “/sarcasm” and “/tic” to indicate the fact that we are posting sarcasm or tongue in cheek. We don’t know how else to do it.
It appears that the American English language is losing its wonder for irony because you–over the Internet–could not hear the sarcasm or humor that would be evident in my voice when I make a comment to you over a table. Over the Internet, you can only read my text. Interneters have to figure out a way to convey these other emotions, lest the wonder that has been American English goes down the tubes. And I am not joking. I am seriously not.
I heard Stephen Bennet speak one morning at a Baptist Church – during a worship service and an adult class. During the course of the morning, Bennett threw out his “I slept with over 100 men” line three times. I think it’s worth noting that “over 100 men” could mean 110 or 10,000. ‘Over 100’ confirms the stereotype of promiscuity he is trying to sell but doesn’t make him seem so unbelievably slutty that he won’t be heard and respected by those impressed by his heterosexuality (confirmed by the pretty blond wife and perfect kids he parades on the platform.)
Sexual conquests and notches on the bed posts, is a GUY thing…not just a gay guy thing.
Look at the boasts of Wilt Chamberlain and other sports and entertainment figures.
Magic Johnson was the same way until HIS HIV infection brought the issue of promiscuity and it’s consequences to the forefront of those testosterone enriched environments.
And still, Kobe Bryant learned nothing, despite the safe havens of a beautiful wife and baby girl.
Notice how lesbians and female victims of priest abuse are given short shrift in the media and religious discussions on sexual malfeasance.
Heterosexual men are considered powerful, virile studs when their sex lives are extremely active. And Viagra isn’t restricted nearly as much as women’s contraception.
No matter how many men have abused it or even died from it.
But contraception for women is still relegated to the belief that only unmarried women with active sex lives should be detected through their use of it in order to keep it from them.
The politics and social stigma of gender and sexuality is so primitive here in America too.
Gay men, to the political heterosexual majority bear the burden that women on birth control do.
Weak and incapable of being in control of their own sexuality, so the government steps in and restricts it for them through political exclusion.
Stephen Bennett is or was… typical of lots of men. He’s just too weak in character to admit what that really means for men in general.