Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is a logical choice of venue for the exgay Love Won Out roadshow: the church and its authoritarian leader, D. James Kennedy, support the enforcement of sodomy laws that would imprison the nation’s homosexuals.

Naturally, given the choice between the imprisonment of same-sex-attracted men and women who (with few exceptions) can’t change, and the pretense of ill-defined “change” offered by roadshows such as Love Won Out, rational individuals might choose so-called “change.”

That is the hope of LWO hosts Focus on the Family and Exodus International, both of which:

  • support sodomy laws;
  • support antigay discrimination;
  • deny the reality of healthy gay relationships even as they seek to make such relationships illegal;
  • suppress all sexuality outside of marriage through the abstinence-only movement

In an article published May 6, a Miami Herald headline promised to compare Love Won Out with a rival meeting titled Love Welcomes All.

Unfortunately, the ensuing news story neglected to inform readers of the explicit political positions of Focus and Exodus, and the story gave minimal attention to Love Welcomes All. Instead of comparing and fact-checking the exgay and ex-exgay claims, the Herald offers a lengthy reprint of antigay fundamentalist propaganda.

Tthe Herald parroted unnamed “[p]eople who support Love Won Out [who] said no one will be pressured at the conference” but failed to balance Focus’ ridiculous claim with the fact that Focus does indeed use sodomy laws, civil-union bans, and discrimination in housing, employment and government services to force homosexuals to undergo poorly defined “change.”

In a passing reference, the Herald notes that “most people who attend are parents with adult-age children who are homosexual” — but the reference is so brief that readers could easily overlook that, in fact, few exgays run the roadshow and almost no exgays are to be found among the relatives of those who attend the program.

The Herald parrots a quote by Focus on the Family antigay activist Melissa Fryrear: “You can’t make people want to overcome their sexuality. It must be an individual decision,” again ignoring the simple fact that Focus does seek to force change upon homosexuals. The Herald again parrots Fryrear: “Thousands of people have made that decision, though” — the Herald fails to ask Fryrear for any documentation of her numbers.

The Herald parrots the antigay organization’s definition of homosexuality as “a destructive way of life” without offering any counterpoint.

The rival meeting, Love Welcomes All, is given just four brief paragraphs at the end of the story. While LWA showcased local ministers and professional researchers, just one local minister is given barely two sentences to unravel an article’s worth of parroted antigay propaganda.

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