While researching the above post I came to learn the former Exodus board member who said:
“Today with God’s abundant grace and His miraculous power to heal, I walk totally free from the AIDS virus.”
Died in 2004. His name was Michael Steven Lumberger and his testimonial no longer appears on the recently redesigned Exodus website. Randy Thomas blogged about it and later deleted his post but that’s why we have google cache! Here’s the obit. No cause of death is given in either link.
Update 07/26/06: After this post was initially published I had several leaders within the exgay movement email me to tell me Lumberger’s cause of death was something unexpected and heart related. All the exgay leadlers’ said the same thing about the cause of death and since I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist I’m inclined to believe it was the truth. Some people who emailed me were all worked up in a tizzy that I had dared to write about Lumberger at all and others genuinely wanted to understand why many gay people (myself included) found his testimony so offensive and insulting.
First off, I’d like to make it clear I never said he died of AIDS. But, when you have a guy who’s well published testimony includes claims about “walking free from” HIV and then dies without a cause of death given, and blog posts about the matter are deleted, people are going to ask questions. If a public figure (Exodus board member) makes unnatural or bizarre claims, the public has a right to know the truth. That’s the purpose of Ex-Gay Watch.
Exodus leadership is well aquatinted with dancing around semantics and Lumberger’s choice of words is no exception. You’ll notice Lumberger said “I walk totally free from the AIDS virus” which is clearly designed to make people think God cured him of HIV. “Walking free” could technically mean other things but I believe that’s deceptive and HIV-uneducated Evangelical audiences read it as “cured.” I believe that is designed to be deceptive and wrong.
Now let’s say “free from” means something other than “cured.” Simply because one has a high T-cell count or an undectable viral load does not mean one is “free” from HIV. Once you’ve contracted the virus and know you’re positive, it’s a part of your daily life till the day you die. One can never go back to being “free of HIV.” For Exodus to say otherwise is phenomenally offensive to many gay people because of the gay community’s collective experience with the epidemic and to those people who live every day reminded of the fact they have HIV.
Predictably the aforementioned exgays who emailed me offered explanations of Lumberger’s claim along the lines of T-cell counts and viral loads. Even if Lumberger had a high T-cell count or an undetectable viral load, Exodus, the organization that paraded around his testimony never backed it up with a damn bit of scientific proof.
Ex-Gay Watch editor Mike Airhart had this to say:
Tales of miraculous healing require factual substantiation and, in the interest of public accountability, should not be accepted without thorough investigation and documentation. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, requires years of intensive investigation before it will accept a miraculous claim.
I don’t know what sort of fantasy world Exodus operates in but even when I got a simple HIV test I posted proof of my result online.
I was also accused of unnecessarily revisiting an old issue since Lumberger died in 2004. Might I remind you his testimony remained on Exodus’ website till at least October 2005 when I did a post about their collection of testimonies. It’s unclear exactly when Exodus removed his testimony. Lumberger’s testimony remains to this day (July 2006) on the website of the Exodus Global Alliance without explanation.
So in the end, Lumberger never publicly clarified his deceptive testimony or offered any form of proof. This didn’t seem to bother Exodus since they continued to publish his testimony for at least a year after his death and his testimony remains to this day on the Exodus Global Alliance website. Exodus has a history of ignoring inconvenient questions and clarifying the claims of Lumberger will likely fall victim to that.
Aha…..information omission. How very interesting.
Good call Daniel.
Hiding the truth…now why would they want to do that?
Do we know how old he was when he passed? I know another guy who has been associated with Exodus who claims to be free from AIDS after being diagnosed 22 years ago. When I’ve tried to get more information regarding his status (while I believe God can do anything, I’m a bit of a skeptic when confronted with zero proof) I’ve gotten no good answer.
Also, is there any indication why Randy would have taken down his post…and…why Exodus no longers has his testimony on-line?
j.
I read the following with some dismay:
“beloved husband of Benita Bolling Lumberger; father of Charity, Michael, Jr., Aaron and Amy Lynn”
I didn’t know this man. And I don’t know if these are his natural children and whether they were born after his reorientation and declaration of victory over HIV.
But if this man knew that he was HIV positive and had unprotected sex with his wife then he was truly selfish. A desire to “be normal” cannot justify the possible transmission of this horrible virus. And if by such irresponsibility his wife or children are now seropositive then he is evil.
Whooops… I should have done my research first.
His testimony says his children were all born before his HIV status was detected.
YIKES!! sorry about that
Do we know how old he was when he passed?
A high school sophomore in 1968. So that would make him in the neighborhood of 52 when he died.
And his testimony appears on the Exodus Global Alliance website:
https://www.exodusglobalalliance.org/walkinginthelightp83.php
Although I understand the effort to question Lumberger’s outrageous claim that God cured him of AIDS, I think it’s disrespectful to him and his family to question the cause of his death. Obviously, the family does not want the cause of his death released and we should respect their privacy. Even if the cause of his death was AIDS-related, does EGW really want to publicize a dead man’s lie?
As someone who grew up in an evangelical Christian environment, I know that many Christians (including some well-meaning ones) have this bizarre tendency to exaggerate personal testimonies, as if God’s work in our lives must always be along the lines of a thrilling spy drama. (I think it’s because our culture is addicted to entertainment, so within the four walls of the church, one’s personal testimony becomes a form of dramatic storytelling, designed to hold the attention of an easily bored audience. As a result, the mundane truth of the story takes a back seat or is ignored entirely.)
I say all that, because Lumberger’s claim of being “free from the AIDS virus” could be the evangelical version of “undetectable viral load.” I know a number of people who fall in the latter category, but they would never claim to be cured. Rather, the anti-viral drugs happen to be working very well at that point in their lives. If you notice, Lumberger didn’t claim to be cured, either, but in the minds of an evangelical Christian audience–which is predisposed to miraculous stories of healing–that leap will be made without Lumberger having to actually say so. But, as the esteemed Jean-Luc Picard would say, “a lie of omission is still a lie.” Most evangelical Christians are pretty ignorant of the facts of HIV transmission and its medical management, so Lumberger’s exaggeration–in the absence of any evidence–has far greater resonance than it should.
The scary and dangerous part about this “testimony” is that, like any good anecdote, it will continue to be repeated from pulpits long after Lumberger’s death. It unwittingly gives license to unsafe sexual behavior, since young, impressionable Christians will assume that if their pastor said that God healed someone from AIDS, they, too, can ask God for, and expect, the same result if they “fall victim to temptation” and seroconvert.
Norm, I have to disagree. If someone makes unnatural or bizarre claims, the public has a right to know the truth. Respect is earned not granted freely. For example, if a person advocates a certain miracle diet, but then he or she dies, the public has a right to know if the diet contributed to the death/illness.
In this case, I think it is even more important. How many people used this person who claimed to be free from HIV for political or religious purposes to deny gays rights? How many times was someone converted to religion or followed because they thought they could also get rid of HIV or AIDS? Reason and rationality should always be superior to respect.
It’s no surprise that Exodus deleted Lumberger’s testimonial and Randy Thomas deleted a post about him. I personally discovered similar actions several years ago by the American Family Association and the Family Policy Network:
In early 2003 I was wondering why “exgay” poster-boy Michael Johnston’s Kerusso Ministries web site had suddenly disappeared, so I Googled his name and found a number of links to articles at AFA and FPN. But those articles contained no references to, or quotes by, Johnston. However, Google’s cached version of the documents did. Obviously AFA and FPN had carefully purged all mention of Johnston from their archived articles. Of course, I still didn’t know why, but assumed he was no longer quite so reliably “exgay.” This was all before the story broke later in 2003 that Johnston, who is HIV positive, was participating in bareback orgies, while still promoting himself as a professional “exgay.”
These examples illustrate one way that religious fanatics deal with inconvenient things such as evidence, reason, and reality in general. Since Lumberger and Johnston were no longer compatible with their belief system, they simply erased them.
Either the publisher or the author of the exgay book “Portraits of Freedom” apparently didn’t believe that Lumberger walked totally free of HIV:
Several Christian bookstores such as Parable.com and bookschristian.com identify Lumberger as HIV-positive.
Tales of miraculous healing require factual substantiation and, in the interest of public accountability, should not be accepted without thorough investigation and documentation. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, requires years of intensive investigation before it will accept a miraculous claim.
Given the extremity of his claim to have been healed of AIDS, I believe those who continue to market Lumberger’s story owe the public the following information:
1. Medical documentation that Lumberger was HIV-positive over an extended period of time. (One HIV-positive test result is insufficient to claim one has HIV/AIDS, as the test result could have been false.)
2. Medical records or physicians’ written assessments of his HIV status up to the time of death
3. Lumberger’s cause of death
4. Whether the actual cause of death may have been related to other medical conditions or medications that Lumberger may have been taking.
5. A rundown of all illnesses suffered during the final two years of Lumberger’s life
“Tales of miraculous healing require factual substantiation…”
Yep. Just like tales of miraculous reorientation.
I guess if you get in the habit of claiming cures and miracles about less immediately identifiable things like reorientation, it isn’t too long until you make claims of cures about medically verifiable things like HIV.
While I might accept a lower level of accountablity than Mike’s 5 points, I agree that at a minimum if you claim to be “free from the AIDS virus” then it needs to be clairified whether HIV was still present in the body and whether it played any role (immunity deficiency or drug side-effects) in early demise.
During the course of the last three years of blogging for Exodus International I have come across hundreds of news articles revealing the deaths of prominent men and women in the gay community. I have never chosen to use their deaths as a source of affirmation or support for Exodus. I have instead respected the fact that here was person that God took the time to create and Jesus loved enough to die for and therefore out of that respect ignored those articles.
However, you cannot imagine how appalled I was when I read the following quote from Daniel Gonzales, a regular blogger on Ex-gay watch.
“While researching the above post I came to learn the former Exodus board member who said:
“Today with God’s abundant grace and His miraculous power to heal, I walk totally free from the AIDS virus.”
Died in 2004. His name was Michael Steven Lumberger and his testimonial no longer appears on the recently redesigned Exodus website. Randy Thomas blogged about it and later deleted his post but that’s why we have google cache! Here’s the obit. No cause of death is given in either link.”
I am sure by now someone has clued Mr. Gonzales into the fact that Michael Lumberger had in fact died alone, while on a business trip, in a hotel room, of a heart attack.
How petty and cold hearted of you, Mr. Gonzales, to try to spin this sad, two year old, event in an attempt to discredit the ex-gay community at large and Exodus International in particular.
Were the tables turned and Michael here discussing the your demise, Mr. Gonzales, I can assure you he would not be using it to promote his personal beliefs. He would instead be praying that your friends, family and all who loved you would find comfort and peace in the Lord.
With that in mind, I think it safe to say that you, Daniel Gonzales, have effectively been ‘hoisted on your own petard” as the saying goes.
Nancy,
You only answered one of my five questions — and as I’ve indicated, the cause of death is of only marginal interest.
Please spare the public your bluster for a moment, and simply answer the questions.
Was Mr. Lumberger HIV-positive — contrary to his and Exodus’ public claims — or wasn’t he?
Was he taking HIV medications or suffering from HIV-related conditions that might have contributed to the heart attack?
I regret Mr. Lumberger’s death. I understand he was a nice person, loved by his family and friends. I also wish he were here to answer the questions that Exodus sidesteps. And I wish he were here to champion the need for improved funding and research to prevent and safely treat HIV/AIDS.
Also, Nancy, you have in fact deceived Exodus blog readers numerous times about the health, moral and spiritual values, and differing lifestyles of gay men.
This is a very different situation: Whereas you have parroted the already disproven propaganda of Paul Cameron’s institute and various other religious-right hate groups to stereotype gay men in general, XGW is simply asking Exodus to provide relevant facts about the illness and death of a prominent exgay activist.
Former Exodus leader Bob Davies’ book acknowledged that Lumberger was still HIV-positive — that he had not walked “free of the AIDS virus.” Why won’t you?
Ms. Brown,
I’m certain that you enjoyed your self-rightous lecture. However, the time may have been better spent by doing a few moments of research into the usage of certain terms. But considering that you write for an organization that frequently misuses the words “change”, “truth”, and “former”, I suppose it would be too much to expect you to know the meaning of the phrase “hoisted on your own petard”.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/hoist%20by%20your%20own%20petard.html
Further, Daniel was not using the questions about Mr. Lumberger’s death “as a source of affirmation or support” for anything. He was questioning whether claims made by Mr. Lumberger and championed by your organization were based in fact. You continue to avoid answering that underlying question.
Exodus has a long history of ignoring inconvenient questions. This is particularly disconcerting because you claim to be a Christian organization. As a representative of Christ you do not have the luxury of making claims and then when they appear to be false pretending that you know nothing about it.
I know that Exodus does not believe that it has to answer to us for the claims that you make. And, ultimately, you’re right. We can only question and hope you answer truthfully. The one you will eventually answer to already knows whether you choose to deceive others, hide inconvenient facts, spin a story, and plead rightous indignation when a humble mea culpa is more appropriate.
Nancy Brown?
You mean the Nancy Brown who seens to spend her days trawling for any negative article she can find — no matter how absurd or scurrilous — about The Gays(R) and posting them, and them alone, on the Exodus blog?
You mean the Nancy Brown who makes a career out of frightening people into straightness?
Need we even ask why her ministry is called “Lifeguard”? (No need to ask. They’ve already explained. “Guard my life” … more deliberate use of death and stuff to scare the pants off, sorry, onto people.)
Urgh, whatever.
Back to what the issue is:
Nancy, was Michael HIV+ or HIV- when he died?
And we note, note, that despite the recent kerfuffle…
The venomous opinions of He-who-likes-to-photoshop-moustaches-onto-people remains a direct link from the Exodus blog.
The same Nancy Brown from Lifeguard who wrote a fictional account of what a mother should tell a child when their father comes out:
“Maybe someone bad hurt him when he was small and made him believe that he got hurt because he was gay. Maybe Satan just lied to him and told him that his father never liked him.”
You guys should read all of Nancy’s essay. It’s a lovely example of how to warp a little kid’s mind after a parent comes out.
https://www.lifeguardministries.org/parents/wheresdaddy.htm
“We want to go tell Benjie and Molly that their real daddy is still right there with them. That God Himself is their real daddy and He is going to take care of them!” said Tyler.”
As a gay dad with kids, that little snippet from Nancy Brown makes my blood boil. How dare she suggest a gay father isn’t a ‘real’ daddy.
When a claim is made of a medical miracle…it has to be proven. This cannot be, but the unproven claims will be used by dozens of preachers to support their claims.
Too bad they will have forgotten the parable about foundations built in shifting sands…
As for Nancy Brown…we have to love people who print do’s and dont’s guides that contradict each other.
In her Dont’s for parents, it says: 7. Do not get “Fed Up” and turn your back on your child.
But that’s only after telling parents: 2. Do not enable your child homosexually by supporting him/her financially in that lifestyle.
So don’t turn your back on your child but don’t pay for their college education? Isn’t that a little contradictory?
Okay, I followed a few of the links on their link page…and I’m going to be sick. Literally, how do we as a society let these sick sociopaths lie and misdirect people so much?
While someone’s death is indeed a private matter on one hand it is a public matter inasmuch as they have made themselves a public figure and marketed themselves as saviors for “fallen” “sexual deviants” via a claim of being free from a disease. This person is like it or not a rolemodel and has the responsability in life and in death to be honest. When one makes such an outlandish claim and then falls ill and dies the people who trusted this person as a rolemodel deserve to know the truth. Can the claims of this person be trusted after they are gone – or is their legacy a sham? That is what this is about. Is the hope offered by this person’s alleged triumph actual hope or a mere pipedream? That is what this is about. If one is bold enough to offer a cure that will prolong life, yet dies, that brings and obligation upon the person and their estate to people who saw this person as a form of spiritual healer. If the healing was real – wow – if not people deserve the truth. Trasparancy is the word.
It does not mean that those who ask for answers devalue the loss of loved ones, it does mean that we deserve answers. One cannot offer a cure without an expectation that people will want to know that the cure is for real. This man offered such a cure, and naturally people want to know if it was real.
This is for Nancy Brown. Sorry guys…got a real need to vent here!!
So you think that people who believe in equality and dignity for all people are un-Christian and un-American? WRONG!!! Real Christianity is about love, respect, understanding and forgiving…..all which are apparently unknown to you!! The loving God that I know and worship is far above those types of petty human bigotries!! Your type of “loving Christianity” is a farce. You and your kind love to talk about how loving, dutiful and compassionate you are, yet I have yet to meet one like you who is not a hypocrite. Your willful ignorance of the Bible combined with your two faced idealism to preach it is disgusting. For nearly two thousand years people like you have been lecturing to the world on the importance of adhering to the Bible’s teachings on ethics, manners, and morality. You love to quote Jesus and Paul profusely, with a liberal sprinkling of Old Testament moralism. The problem with your approach lies not only in your failure to practice what you preach, but an equally pronounced tendency to ignore what the Bible really preaches. Your type of Christianity practices what can only be described as “selective morality”. What you like, you cling to and shove down other’s throats; what you don’t like, you ignore vehemently. That which is palatable and acceptable is supposedly applicable to all; while that which is obnoxious, inconvenient, or self-denying is only applicable to those addressed 2,000 years ago. Your hypocrisy is so blatant that even the validity of calling yourself “Christian” is in question. I see so many people like you who enjoy quoting the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and some of Paul’s sermons, but don’t even PRETEND to heed other, equally valid, maxims.
And as far as homosexuality is concerned, you and your kind really take the prize when it comes to selective reading!! The Bible mentions same sex relationships (mostly in Leviticus) a few times, but condemns divorce as a MAJOR sin many, many times!! I am quite sure that if not yourself, many in your family and “congregation” have been divorced at least once! How do you justify that!!!
While it is true that the Levitical code forbids homosexual relationships for Jewish Holy men (only) it is also true that the same code forbids eating shrimp (Lev. 11:9-12), cheeseburgers (Exodus 23:19), or a ham sandwich (Lev. 11:7). And it contains the same condemnation for a man who cuts the hair above his side burns (Lev. 19:27) or wearing blended fabric clothing (Deut. 22:11). Also, the preponderance of Biblical witness regarding marriage is in favor of polygamy, even implying that the more wives a man has the more he is blessed by God. It has always been understood that the Levitical code was intended to protect tribal Israel from syncretism and to encourage their numerical growth.
And as for marriage in the New Testament, Paul did say that we just shouldn’t do it if at all possible. Many point to Paul’s reference to homosexuality in the first chapter of Romans. Here the apostle presents a list of sins which includes both idolatry and murder and concludes with such things as envy, gossip and talking back to your parents to demonstrate that everyone on earth is guilty of sin and that we all must trust in God’s grace:
“Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things” (Romans 2:1).
How about slavery and racism? In the past people like you used the Bible to justify to most horrible of injustices. Slavery is rampant throughout the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. The Bible clearly approves of slavery in many passages, and it goes so far as to tell how to obtain slaves, how hard you can beat them, and when you can have sex with the female slaves. However, intelligent people are able to see that these things, as with most things in the Bible, must be taken into the context into which it was written! Are you capable of that? If the VAST MAJORITY of directives in the Bible are no longer relevant to the modern world……why do you people cling to the condemnation of anyone different than you?? YOU CAN NOT PICK AND CHOOSE WHAT YOU BELIEVE!! EITHER BELIEVE AND FOLLOW IT ALL..OR SHUT UP!!
Another thing about your kind of Christianity is that you all act as though there are no other significant moral issues that needs addressing. I never hear you people say anything about the ethical questions revolving around health insurance, wages, or other social issues. It’s as if these topics don’t involve serious ethical questions at all. But of course with liars and crooks like George Bush running the country, love and compassion are secondary to money, greed and lying!!!! There may be something to be said for denial, at least at times, but placing denial so far above indulgence is a sin in its self, especially when those practicing denial also practice denial about how often they actually indulge. You all are able to make yourselves feel superior without doing anything to truly be superior. Why go through all the work when you can experience the benefits for free?
Jesus was the great teacher of compassion, love and understanding. You really need to embody that compassionate spirit in dealing with people who are different from you in race, national origin, sexual orientation or class. I am sure you firmly believe that people like me are going to hell. Well guess what….. I don’t care what you think!!! You need to shut up about how Christians are persecuted in this country, as you obviously have no idea what persecution really is. Until you have walked a mile in the shoes of a Black or any other non-white man and have tasted REAL bigotry and discrimination…then you have NOTHING to say!! Your bitching reminds me of a whiny teenage girl who feels “persecuted” for not being allowed to buy an expensive outfit. Better yet, it reminds me of all those white Germans who felt they were being “persecuted” by Jews before WWII. You feel wronged because you can’t have everything you want all the time and force it on the rest of us? You want women to stop taking the pill and start popping out little Christian boys and girls to send to war against the A-rabs? You want everyone who doesn’t think just like you to submit to your bigoted control! You complain about the erosion of the Constitution by secularists, and yet you want the chance to erode it yourself, just according to your version of “Biblical Principles” or whatever the crap that means? Guess what, you were not appointed by God to run the world, you are not persecuted, and you have to defer to the wishes of the rest of society just like the rest of us.
What you need to do is educate yourself on the REALITY of true Christian principles instead of relying on bigotry, hate, falsehoods and lies….because that’s all I hear coming from your mouth!!!
John,
Please do not direct personal attacks against anyone.
Also, please use paragraphing.
While certainly it was a heart attack, we do know that there are various viruses which may attack the heart. It is possible that a weakened immune system from HIV, allowed such a viral attack on the heart to occur. Heart attack is but a superficial cause of death, the point is what caused the heart attack.