Alan Chambers is quite adept at the semantics-dance as evidenced by a recent Exodus press release:
“While there are some who may not agree with our message, we ask for their consideration and welcome their presence at this event,” said Chambers. “We continue to share our message of hope knowing that there are hundreds of thousands of lives who have been changed by this truth [emphasis added] and there are many more who are longing to hear it.”
Take careful note of the condition Chambers adds this time; he’s a slippery one! Chambers used to claim ex-gays alone numbered in the “hundreds of thousands” but now he’s counting lives “changed by this truth.” Those lives could include ministers, desperate parents unable to deal with the fact their adult children have been out for decades and are now happily married, and various local political bigots looking to use ex-gays as justification for anti-gay legislation. I have asked Chambers to explain his previous statistical claim on numerous occasions via email and even a phone call and he continues to decline my requests for explaination. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch confirms our suspicions that few attendees at last weekend’s LWO were actually ex-gays:
Most of the audience were parents and family members of gay people, while about one-fourth were ministers.
He also doesn’t say that thousands of lives were changed for the better.
I’m sure there are many commenters here who will agree that Exodus changed their lives but in a much different way than Alan implies.
You also should note that he implies that the Love One Out events have changed hundreds of thousands of lives without quite saying it.
Yet the attendance seems to vary from a few hundred to less than a few thousand. And many of the attendees at these events are the same people. Assuming that there were 1,000 new attendees at each conference (the upper end estimate) there would have had to have been hundreds of Love One Out conferences for his numerical quote to add up.
Chambers claims “hundreds of thousands”, and this is dishonestly implied to be gay to straight — yet when push came to shove only 86 people were referred to Spitzer by exgay groups.And those failed to show any evidence that their sexual orientation had changed.The sooner it’s realised that Exodus is about pandering to anti-gay straight people, rather than anything to do with unhappy gay people, the sooner we can all go home.
As far as the makeup of the crowd, do you know how that’s being verified? Did they raise their hands at some point or fill out questionaires?
It seems like speculation on anyone’s part to pigeonhole people.
ck, I seem to recall reading somewhere that are “how many of you out there…?” type of questions asked at the LWO seminars.
(sorry, I don’t have an immediate source so take it for what it’s worth)
Also, pastors are generally “recognized” at religious conferences (“I’d like to recognize Brother John Smith from the Bigot Hills First Baptist in Tulsa and Brother Joe Dokes from Liarsville Assemblies of God in Macon. Good to have ya here with us Brothers”.)
Otherwise, it may just be guesstimation. Maybe the reporter didn’t see any guys or gals come in that weren’t in couples and so didn’t identify people who were “in the homosexual lifestyle”.
Good question, ck — the reporter should have specified the source for the crowd demographics.
Indeed CK but if Exodus felt the reporter’s assessment was incorrect I invite them to come forward with any statistics they have. 🙂
Dan Gonzales at February 27, 2006 08:01 PM
“…any statistics they have…”
he he
that is just too funny
Ministers might be IDed by collars, if they wear collars (and I would, if attending such an event).
I am not sure how they would ID gays though. I’d guess that most or all teens would be lgbtq, since no self-respecting gay or straight teen would waste a Saturday at a conference like this.
Just subsititute Jew for Gay or Lesbian in any of the press releases, laws or speeches of these evangozealots and compare with fascist literature of the 1930s. What do you have? Christ wouldn’t piss on these assholes.