I have long suspected that the primary motivation behind the championing of the ex-gay movement by religious conservative groups has more to do with justification of anti-gay discrimination than it has to do with concern for same-sex attracted individuals.
This agenda appears to be evident in the positions taken by Exodus and many other “ex-gay leaders”. While they consistently claim sympathy with “those stuggling” or “those who choose to leave the homosexual lifestyle,” they show no interest in those who do not make that choice. Take for example this sentence from Randy Thomas about Christians and same-sex attracted persons in Iran: “I pray that those who want to find Christ will and those who want to overcome homosexuality will be allowed their right to self-determine that path for their lives as well.” You’ll notice who is not included in the right to self-determinatation of their lives.
In an effort to appear less intolerant, PFOX often claims that they “do not encourage change among homosexuals who are comfortable with their identity.” Of course this claim is a little difficult for us to believe, considering the extent to which they make claims about “health risks.”
On April 19, The Breeze, the student newspaper of James Madison University, published an article about PFOX and Liberty Counsel’s campaign to tell school children that “change is possible”. In it, Rena Lindevaldsen, senior litigation counsel for Liberty Counsel, made a statement that confirms my suspicions and the motivation behind this campaign:
“If you want to change, you can,” she said.
In other words, if you are gay, you are to blame. And therefore anything done to you is justified. Because you didn’t want to change.
Behind every smiling face on their little brochure is this same underlying position – anything dehumanizing, unfair or cruel done to those who are “in the homosexual lifestyle” is justified. Because if they wanted to change, they could.
Their message is not only gives a false hope to some poor kid that wants to be attracted to the opposite sex, but it demands that he blame himself for his same-sex attraction. And worse, it recruits him to join a campaign against the equality under law of people just like himself.
And all based on the lie that if he just wanted it enough he would become heterosexual.
This is ultimately why I believe the “ex-gay” movement is doomed to failure. Their entire position seems to be 1. being gay is a choice. 2. gays have the same rights as heterosexuals so long as they fall in love with a heterosexual 3. heterosexual women should not marry homosexual men (or the converse presumably). 4. Family values are important but it is important to reject the loved ones of your gay or lesbian child. 5. “freedom from homosexuality” comes if you’re able to totally refrain from sex, all celibate men and women are heterosexual because homosexuality is a state of mind.
The more you hear from ex-gays the more incoherent and illogical their beliefs seem and the more the public will hopefully begin to reject them.
I think the claim that gays can go straight if they really want to it is true. Gays who fail to go straight don’t really want to, whatever they think they want or claim to want.
Sexual preference has so many cultural values associated with it that people get the preference confused with the values. When people say they want to be heterosexual, what they really mean is that they want whatever is associated with heterosexuality – masculinity, virility, respectability, morality, or whatever.
It is interesting that you point out the “truth” behind these organizations – I have just finished perusing the “Day of Truth” pamphlet put out by “Mission America” and endorsed by all the usual anti-gay/”pro-family” suspects. If you look through the pdf manual (https://www.dayoftruth.org/resources/default.aspx), it has the same slant – being gay is completely incompatible with being “Christian,” the schools are in league with “homosexual activists,” and are trying to convince kids to “experiment” with being gay – and on and on. It is clear that their action is not about defending “Christian” kids, but ensuring that the argument that gay people are normal human beings is completely countered.
The ultimate goal of the ex-gay movement and their religious right masters is to force gay and lesbian people back into the closet and to recriminalize same-sex consensual sexual acts.
They’d love nothing more than to roll the clock/calendar back to 1950. But as long as we don’t acquiesce to this outrageous and very political agenda, as long as we have a voice and use it, they’ll have at best (or worst, depending on one’s point of view) a very difficult time. I, for one, don’t plan to go quietly back into the closet.
Ideally, and hopefully someday in our lifetimes, they’ll be viewed in the same light as the racial segretationists of the 1950’s and 1960’s are today.
If memory serves me correctly (okay, I’m showing my age), vocal support for segregation became pretty much passe, except for the real nut jobs, after the early 1970’s.
Phil – I wish the ex-gay movement would die in our lifetime and I think it WILL be discredited, but on a slightly off topic point – Segregation is reappearing at least in one state.
I think these things move in cycles and as long as there is a stronger reason opposing things like segregation and anti-gay policies I think the public will rally around it. But that doesn’t mean the policies themselves won’t come back again even if the underlying reasons change.
Remember, this is an election year. The anti-gay rhetoric ramps up every spring every even numbered year.
ab, what would make you think gays can go straight if they want to? Do you think you could turn gay if you wanted to?
It seems you’re suggesting that people choose whether they are gay or straight depending on whether they want to be associated with heterosexual or homosexual symbolism. That being the case, what features associated with homosexuality do you feel gays want? How would you account for people “choosing” to be gay during a time like the 1950’s when the image of a gay person was overwhemlmingly negative?
I think my computer’s dying so I may not be able to respond.
AB, I think your claims that gays can change if they just try hard enough is pretty off base. There has no peer reviewed study to prove this. Even many of the people in high level ex-gay organizations either claim not to be completely straight or have been caught not being completely straight.
As for your claim about the desire to be straight really being a desire to be more masculine, I have to disagree again. I’d put myself pretty high up on the masculinity scale. In fact, one of the harder aspects of my being gay is that so few people in my life suspect I am gay unless I tell them, so I end up coming out of the closet (to very shocked people) over and over. I realized some time ago that my respectability, morality, masculinity, etc. has nothing to do wtih my sexual orientation. I just wish other people in this country would also put aside blind prejudices and realize it too.
…been sayin’ it for years: Political ex-gays are kapos. They are being used to give a fig leaf to the naked aim of the anti-gay RR to make every GLBTQ person in America an institutionalized (imprisoned), felonious sex-offender. Forget the closet; it’s into the KL camps for us, if they have their way!
How many of the RR antigay leaders or their ex-gay kapos have been vocal about the plight of GLBTQ folks in Iraq? (Al Sistani – “Kill them in the most horrible ways,” Iraqi religious leader speaking of LGBTQ persons)
Their silence is damning. They are cut from the same cloth.
I don’t know what is more evil, the anti-gay RR, the willing kapos, or a political party that cynically uses anti-gay rhetoric and promises to the RR as an election winning tactic.
Ditto with SharonB.
I’ve stated it first that the political ex-gays have a sad kapo mentality. This isn’t an insult, but a true fact. Also their ‘masters’ wouldn’t think twice in sacrificing them (Anthony Falzarano), if it served their cause. What does that say about their cause in the first place?
Beyond Falzarano, they threw John Paulk under the bus the second the spotlight was off of the whole Mr. P’s incident.
They said hi minded things like “we don’t shoot our own” but the minute nobody was paying attention they gave him a one way ticket to Oregon and a catering license.
As a straight person, I don’t know who ex gays think they are fooling. Little is said on it’s own merits about being, or living as a straight person.
“A gay person can change if they really wanted to.”
I hate this statement. It means so many things.
1. That gay people should change.
2. That it’s more important to STRAIGHT people that gay people change, instead of the other way around.
3. And if they don’t change, what will straight people and other ex gays do about it or push the odds towards their favor?
This isn’t has NEVER been about the comfort of gay people, but that of straight people.
Ex gays can buy all the hubris that ministers and therapists give them to make them believe straight life is just peachy.
But what defines a straight person, in life OUTSIDE of their sex lives?
Or what is generally assumed about straight sex lives?
This is so imporssible for me, to defend ex gays who have put themselves in the forefront of being experts ON ANYONE’S sex life, gay or not.
When it gets down to it, there is nothing superior or especially wonderful and precious about being straight.
What’s really important and benefits everyone is being true to oneself, staying healthy and committing to being educated and happy.
The ability to be honest and truthful without resulting in a violation of one’s progress and freedom.
I don’t like ex gay supporters taking me for granted that I should support their efforts to increase hetero numbers.
What the HELL for?!
Heteros are already a majority and throw their weight in numbers around like being hetero is more important than character.
And lying about gay people, shutting off the opportunity for anyone else to judge for themselves, is a case in point.
They often remind me of children who are compulsive liars. . .who become so wrapped up in their web of deception that they can’t even work their own way out any longer. I believe their contentions about the gay community are merely projections of their own utter confusion and innate deception – after all, these are people hiding behind the veil of chosen religious beliefs. Using them as a whip to terrorize others into change as an “act of love” is about as genuine as Lorena Bobbitt clipping off that penis as a lesson to male behavior. . .
They don’t care about gays who don’t want to change – they resent any idea that any gay person could be happy, productive, adjusted and a generally more congenial and engaging citizen than THEY can be. . .and their demands for social punishment, even when based on their “choice” delusion, fails to take into account that they don’t expect sanctions themselves for “choosing” their religious beliefs.
I think more and more Americans are catching onto this charade – and are wondering why these people are obsessed with gays and abortion.
“I don’t like ex gay supporters taking me for granted that I should support their efforts to increase hetero numbers.
What the HELL for?!”
Come to think of it… straight guys should opposed ex-gay therapy. Take the gay stereotype and subtract “the gay” and look at what you get.
What do they think is going to happen if a bunch of sensitive guys with good sense of style, education, and gym bodies suddenly enter the dating pool? Any sensible straight guy is going to say “ummm… you sure you don’t want to stay gay?”
AB, hmmmm, masculinity and heterosexuality are not synonymous. In some cultures, homosexuality was seen as hypermasculinity. In Greece, homosexuality was valued in the military.
I don’t associate masculinity and heterosexuality at all; in fact, when I was doing the exgay thing, it wasn’t working out much since the therapists were so focused on gender identity. I never cared about gender myself, but those who know me have always thought I was fairly masculine. In class, I have been called a bootcamp instructor (because I am a barker). I can be one of the most aggressive people ever when I want to be. My spouse is a top mechanic who comes home everyday a greasemonkey. We don’t care or even think about gender, but we are pretty masculine in definition (not that that is a bad thing).
I have always said that much homophobia comes from gender fears more than anything else.
Aaron, Brady,
I too can’t imagine where AB gets the idea that heterosexuality represents masculinity. I mean heterosexuality means female just as much as male and its just as much about feminity as masculinity.
Last time AB was here he called all gays liars for saying they didn’t choose to be same sex attracted. Then when I asked him to describe in detail the decision making process he went through to “choose” his sexuality suddenly it was too “sensitive” a topic to talk about.
“What do they think is going to happen if a bunch of sensitive guys with good sense of style, education, and gym bodies suddenly enter the dating pool? Any sensible straight guy is going to say “ummm… you sure you don’t want to stay gay?””
Ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho, hee, hee, hee.
Oh my gosh. The truth is often funnier than fiction. Hope the uproar didn’t wake the neighbors.
I think ab’s attitude — baseless, we might add — reflects several years of deliberate campaigning by Focus et al:People don’t chose to have these homosexual feelings. They have them because they’ve been damaged in some way.Regardless, they do chose not to become heterosexual because…Any homosexual could be heterosexual if they decided to be. They need “healing” to do this. Hence…Because they refuse to chose to become heterosexual, they deserve no respect. All people deserve respect, so…Society should do what it can to encourage homosexuals to chose to be healed.
Yes… Timothy. But I’m reminded of Paulk’s book, and those other “changes” apparently required to be straight.(Cannot link to book, obviously, but Blair mentions it…)
So I’m not sure there will be a collective intake of breath from currently straight men when a bunch of (now) fat, badly-dressed and still remarkably queeny men walk into a bar full of babes…
I’ve sent Timothy the link (because I think this is worth a post all of itself, and own comments string) but we just trawled an official Exodus conference that should leave nobody in any doubts.https://www.exodusglobalalliance.org/files/FLYERS2_62.jpgAny one care to guess what jumped out?
Any one care to guess what jumped out?
Holy cow! Have they no shame?
David
I notice DL’s bio on the flyer says God reached him, but for some reason they don’t say it was through the tv.
I thought Exodus was out of the business of straightforwardly claiming that change is possible. I’ll have to go look back at some of Randy’s blog, because I could have sworn he said that.
Curiously, Brady, Randy is claiming he’s been “called to celebacy”.
Odd position to take for a straight person.
What struck me is the flyer header. It says “Some say decriminalize homosexuality…We say let’s offer solutions.” Rhetorically, this disturbs me big time. If you read it right, it is suggesting that homosexuality is a criminal offense. They offer an “alternative”, but ti si apparent that they want it still to be against the law. Why would any homosexual want to attend such a meeting based on the flyer?
I thought Exodus was out of the business of straightforwardly claiming that change is possible. I’ll have to go look back at some of Randy’s blog, because I could have sworn he said that.
Well, Brady, if you look at the FAQs Exodus apparently created for the “Day of Truth” misinformation campaign, they are still pretty much on track to at least implying that total change is possible (including using “statistics” from Masters and Johnson that have to be 40 years old and probably discredited by now – there are no footnotes to determine the source, however).
https://www.dayoftruth.org/docs/dayoftruthhomosexualityfaq.pdf
You can see all the “Day of Truth” misinformation here:
https://www.dayoftruth.org/resources/default.aspx
Given Alliance Defense Funds support of Chase Tyler’s T-shirt condemning gays I thought this quote from Alan Sears of ADF in the below article was show-worthy hypocrisy:
“While making their case from a Christian perspective, the “Day of Truth”ers will confront with compassion — not condemnation — and restrict their discussions to the periods before, after and between classes.”
https://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpcolumn.asp?ID=2224
Bingo Aaron (and maybe David? Was that what caused the religious bovine?)“Some say decriminalise homosexuality……we say lets offer solutions”The rest of the flyer is all the same, same rubbish — but…Barbados is in the middle of several years of increasingly unpleasant — no, downright vicious, campaigning against decriminalisation.Front and centre in Barbados has been one Roger Marshall — someone who thinks it’s “unfortunate” that moves to decriminalise has arrived in the Caribbean. For the irony impaired “He also called for people to reach out to homosexuals instead of bashing them.” Oh, how very Nice and Exodus of you Roger — but how does sending people to prison square with that exactly?And in the middle of the debate… who should pop up but Pat Lawrence and DL Foster on an official Exodus junket. They were invited by Roger Marshall. The same Roger Marshal who made it perfectly clear a week ago that Exodus were arriving to support the continued criminalisation of homosexuality.This, I suppose, is what Pat Lawrence really meant when she said Exodus “are delighted” to be invited because
*** Sorry only a paper copy as ref: it’s Exodus Global Alliance World News 2005 #2 p3 (Oct 2005). The same edition that announced DL Foster has joined the Board, and that Exodus was working with Marshall’s PROBE Ministries to establish a new Exodus group in the Caribbean — and no, that’s not a mistake name. ***It appears Pat and DL see God’s truth and grace for homosexuals involves the spending of 10 years in gaol. Anyone still find these to be a decent, if confused, group of people?You’ll also be pleased to know that DL may continue to work on his tan a little longer than Pat, as he swings past Jamaica — a place also in the middle of the same decrimialisation debate and recently mentioned in Time as virulently and violently anti-gay. (see also Besen’s blog or, better yet, a mind-bending article in the Jamaica Observer). For those up to it, a honker of a 81 page report is available from Human Rights Watch.Like a moth to a flame, DL, like a moth to a flame…-And does this mean we win “Trawler of Week” for finding an obscure piece of info in a pissant island paper that, once we continued through, has now categorically linked Exodus directly with campaigns that criminalise gay men and women?(And, obviously, we all need to read Barbados Nation News more often.)
Randi – While I still disagree with you on the merits of the Harper case I do agree with you that claims its not a “condemnation” but some sort of “love crusade” (as Fred Phelps of “godhatesfags”.com maintains HIS venomous invective is) are truly ridiculous and laughable. But I’m almost glad they do stunts like that – it seems to end up making them look more and more foolish and extreme.
Grantdale – That’s EXTREMELY interesting indeed. In fact, its somewhat similar to Fred Phelp’s own position on homosexuality.
godhatesamerica btw is apparently an official offshoot of godhatesfags both owned and controlled by the “good” “reverend” Phelps. Interestingly I suspect that Phelps cited Zimbabwe as being closest to his view of god because of a past speech Robert Mugabe, their president made. . I suspect from his commentary a country like Sudan is closer to his view. Its interesting though that on this issue at least to some extent Exodus and Phelps agree. What does Exodus believe the criminal penalty for homosexuality should be? a fine? 6 months in jail? 5 years in prison? 20 years? life? the death penalty?
“What does Exodus believe the criminal penalty for homosexuality should be?”.
Yes, Kendall, a fine question indeed.
“I notice DL’s bio on the flyer says God reached him, but for some reason they don’t say it was through the tv.”
Posted by: Boo at April 25, 2006 09:30 AM
Boo, I had space aliens (or maybe it was God) reach me like that once. The medication seems to be helping.
I agree this needs its own post and thread. I’ll try to get to it later today if Mike, Daniel, or Robert don’t beat me. I have some thoughts.
Robert?
David
LOL
OOOPS… of course I meant David Roberts
[blush]
Grantdale said “I think ab’s attitude — baseless, we might add — reflects several years of deliberate campaigning by Focus et al:
People don’t chose to have these homosexual feelings. They have them because they’ve been damaged in some way.
Regardless, they do chose not to become heterosexual because…
Any homosexual could be heterosexual if they decided to be. They need “healing” to do this. Hence…
Because they refuse to chose to become heterosexual, they deserve no respect. All people deserve respect, so…
Society should do what it can to encourage homosexuals to chose to be healed.”
Grantdale, I think that’s a perfect example of “specious”…or is it “fatuous”? ‘Spose it all depends on how smart you are.