The St. Louis Post-Dispatch follows up on yesterday’s “Love Won Out” exgay road show. The newspaper counts more than 350 vigilers peacefully protesting the conference from outside.
(Previous XGW coverage, including photos by Colleen Keating.)
The Post-Dispatch notes that a handful of career exgays dominated the stage inside — and some charged distraught parents an exorbitant $50 (in addition to the $50-60 admission fee) for a few $7 exgay books [see addendum below]. According to the Post-Dispatch, there were few if any exgays apparent among the 1,700 attendees:
Most of the audience were parents and family members of gay people, while about one-fourth were ministers.
Focus exgay activist Melissa Fryrear told this audience of family members to reject invitations to attend their gay relatives’ civil-commitment or marriage ceremonies:
“We suggest you decline an invitation to a civil commitment ceremony,” Melissa Fryrear told a group of parents. Some busily took notes; a few others wiped away tears. “So many Christians are yielding on this part.”
Fryrear also told parents not to blame themselves for their children’s homosexuality — even as she proceeded to blame them:
She told parents in the crowd not to blame themselves for their children’s struggles with same-sex relationships. Sometimes, she claimed, lesbianism can be traced to “an inner sense of emptiness and longing,” a fractured mother-daughter relationship” and some type of sexual abuse. “Ever wonder why some lesbians look mannish?” she asked. “It’s a vulnerability to be a woman. That suit of armor to keep you from being hurt.”
Focus on the Family vice president Bill Maier advises parents to be nice — to discriminate with a smile.
Bill Maier, a psychologist and conference speaker, said the talk isn’t fire-and-brimstone as churches did in the past. Organizers stressed that parents should be nice to their children’s gay partners. They shouldn’t bring it up in every phone call or the kids will stop calling.
While the Post-Dispatch once again fails to report that Exodus and Focus support antigay discrimination in housing and employment, and criminalization under sodomy laws, the newspaper at least acknowledges that some attendees found the conference corrupted by a conditional, manipulative and exploitative sort of “love.”
Not everyone inside the church supported the conference’s message. Critics came, as well – paying the same $50 or $60 admission fee to take part. One was Meredith Anderson, a student at Eden Seminary and a member of the United Church of Christ. She said the tone at the conference was far from any feel-good message of love that promoters claimed.
“What I’m hearing instead is, ‘We’ll really love you more if you will change,’” Anderson said. “What makes me so angry is that a lot of clergy and straight folks aren’t speaking out about this.”
Love Won Out‘s next stop: Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in May. The event will be hosted by the Rev. D. James Kennedy and his Christian Patriot organization Coral Ridge Ministries. Numerous critics link Coral Ridge to the Christian Reconstruction movement, which calls for fundamentalist rule over America and the enforcement of a “Biblical” death penalty against homosexuals.
While a fundamentalist federal government is unlikely in the short term, in the meantime Coral Ridge’s Center for Reclaiming America lobbies for the reimposition of sodomy laws which imprison homosexuals for 20 years or more.
Addendum: I should have been clearer in this article that, according to the Post-Dispatch, conference speakers were offering (among other options) small box sets of exgay books for $50. “Coming Out of Homosexuality” is available from Amazon.com for $7 (used) to $10 (new). “You Don’t Have to Be Gay” is available for $11-14. How many books would have to be boxed to justify the $50 cost? The Post-Dispatch does not say.
Wasn’t Coral Ridge the church that God sent a mighty hurricane and tore the roof off to display His displeasure?
(sarcasm)
Pretty much confirms my original statement that “Love Won Out” has nothing to do with reaching gay people, it has everything to do with reaching confused parents who’ll spend any amount of money to “fix” their already well adjusted gay children.
Boy am I jaded now. I’ve tried to post some corrections onto Randy Thomas’ blog–he distorts the number of protestors present–and mention how we were trying to have a positive presence. Deleted. Nice. I didn’t use any profanity or disrespect him. On the contrary. Why the deletion??
The commentary I’ve seen on the ex-gay sites so far focuses on the negative and ignore any balanced and reasonable discussion from those of us who are trying to enter into a respectful dialogue. Like this one, which focuses on the drinking habits of one of the attendees of the vigil.
According to Dr. Throckmorton, Nicolosi was there and repeated the joke about dropping babies on their heads.
Prof. Throckmorton comments that Fryrear added a lot of qualifications to her speech that were not recorded by the reporter.
That would not surprise me — the Post-Dispatch’s coverage has been shallow all around.
Where is the bottom with these people?
They are so bent on seeing a “homosexual problem”, where there isn’t one.
Taking a tiny grain of truth and bloating it with lies is a scary process to watch in this group.
What Fryear tried to explain about lesbians and their clothes wasn’t totally stupid.
It was prejudiced and general, and worthless.
But it’s hard to be a woman in a man dominated society.
Where you can’t trust that men will protect you, so much as work harder to control you directly or indirectly.
Where there might be little control for a woman to have in her physical world, clothing at least FEELS like a sort of protection.
But as we see in Muslim countries the body covering bags ALL women wear doesn’t protect them politically, socially or economically, where protections matter the most.
After a while, all the ex gays sound alike and walk and talk alike…a sure sign of a brain washed culture who ‘escaped’ one prison and were received into another.
Or course their respective prisons are lonesome, thus all the calls for lots of company.
I don’t understand people that work harder to have their prejudices validated, than work for the relief that having that prejudice refuted brings.
All I know is the web site Good As You has a hysterical quote about Melissa’s speech.
Good As You
You’ve all heard the quote..”don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.”
What the hell do you do with people who don’t know what broke is?
And see broke where it isn’t and try to fix what isn’t?
Don’t normal folks call that ‘delusional’?
Not to mention, wearing pants is certainly more comfortable in 30 degree windy weather!
Just making note of my addendum/clarification. See above.
Hmmm..
Usually you get a discount on books if you buy them in a set. Barnes and Noble doesn’t offer the “Buy two books for the price of six” special.
Mike, thanks for the clarifications. I wasn’t at the conference, so I’ve been relying on scattered sources, many of which are contradictory. The number, makeup and personal beliefs of the protesters present outside as well as the number, makeup and personal beliefs of the people inside just aren’t available to us as cold, hard facts. We know people ebbed and flowed outside throughout the day. We know that there were about 1700 people inside (that fact can be verified through Exodus), but I don’t think we’ll ever know just where they are on their personal journeys.
Likewise, those standing outside had various reasons, from getting an email invite to stand with other gay people, to having a religious perspective, a scientific perspective, or a personal experience which put them at odds with what was going on inside.
Further, I would say that there were varying degrees of “agreement” outside. Many of those of us standing outside wanted to show “options”, not condemn people for choosing a different path. Probably others did have an element of cynicism and even hate for the people inside.
All of this is to say that I spent (wasted?) a great part of my time and energy today following blog coverage of this event–from ex- and pro-gay cites. I’ve been accused of misrepresenting people, had my comments withheld because of my differing perspective, and generally been (what I perceive to be) attacked. And all because I thought this would be a good time to reach out and say, “Hey, we tried to be positive–compare our actions to Boston, and our press coverage to the facts.”
I give up.
I am going to continue to post on gay-friendly sites and my own blog. But no more reaching out to Christians, people who I used to believe were full of grace and compassion. Maybe they are in person–or maybe I’ve just found a whole slew of them who aren’t good at communicating it.
But it is not worth it for my mental health to continue to try to interact with them in this forum.
/End Rant
Timothy,
The report didn’t say how many books were in the set. Probably more than two, but enough to total $50?
Commenters at DL Foster’s web site claim these books were worth a minimum of $20 apiece. Sorry, not at reasonable street prices, they’re not.
CK, CK, CK…Did you honestly believe being polite to them would alter how you will be treated by them???This is not a criticism about being polite BTW. (On that, good.) But you sound dissappointed, and shouldn’t be.I’m just waiting for the first spin on the politeness shown by the your mob to be offered as proof of “the feminised girly-man behaviour of gays”. When we’re not hyper-masculine leather men who attack children… of course, that means we’re masculinity-confused hair dressers who molest children. (and, as always, lesbians ignored).Geez, what to wear to the office today?The harness, or the muu-muu?
ck
I know it’s a frustrating day and it probably seems like Christians are not full of grace and compassion. If it helps any, remember that there are Christians who are full of grace and compassion, they just don’t spend much time on anti-gay websites.
“Geez, what to wear to the office today?
The harness, or the muu-muu?”
When in doubt I wear them together.
Of course that may explain why they had the walls of my office padded.
Does it help that one is outside the other?If I wear the muu-muu outside, one cannot see the harness. I’ve been previously warned about hoicking the muu-muu up from time to time (just to give everyone a peek).If I wear the harness outside I get unsightly scrunching up of the muu-muu. And it takes forever to iron after that.I tell you, it’s quite a dilemma.
“Commenters at DL Foster’s web site claim these books were worth a minimum of $20 apiece. Sorry, not at reasonable street prices, they’re not.”
It reminds me of those commercials on TV for cleaning products. Ya know the “you also get” ads. They always seem to be offering some products “valued at $70 for only $19.99”. They just make me wonder who does the valuing.
ck, the LNNC organisers took head counts during the morning and the afternoon. I saw them walking up and down the line, and one (Ken Haller) said he was head counting. So I think that there is a semiaccurate headcount out there (you can never be 100% accurate because people move around some). So this is as close to COLD (!!!!!) hard fact as you can get. Ask Ken, Perry Nelson, Gail Elble, AJ Bockelman, Kathy Carmody, or other organizer.