On Sept. 29, Exodus’ resident lobbyist Randy Thomas employed admirable restraint in his personal blog by offering a politically neutral focus on the charges against Rep. Mark Foley and the victims.
By today, however, Thomas’ mood had changed. On both Exodus’ official Live Out Loud blog, and his personal blog, Thomas uncritically parroted an opinion that has become the official spin of Exodus’ primary benefactors political partners among the political religious right.
Gary Bauer, former leader of the Family Research Council, wrote a widely circulated opinion that:
- defends Republican reaction to the scandal,
- shifts blame to the Democrats,
- falsely states that the outlaw pro-pederasty group NAMBLA is allowed by gay activists to participate in marches for equal rights, and
- illogically cites Foley’s conduct as justification to ban healthy gay relationships such as civil unions or marriage.
Thomas eerily describes Bauer as a “steadfast voice of the pro-family movement.”
In his own blog, Exodus president Alan Chambers inaccurately stated on Oct. 2 that “Rep. Foley is accused of attempting to molest children.” But otherwise his comments were, by comparison with those of Bauer and Thomas, politically even-handed. Chambers acknowledged the ulterior political motives for both Democrats’ and Republicans’ reactions to the scandal.
Note: Amended as marked above to delete “primary benefactors,” per request today by Alan Chambers. XGW has previously discussed the finances of Exodus and its staffers’ and board members’ financial ties to religious-right organizations. I stand by my opinion, but Exodus finances are too complicated a subject to be included in this discussion.
It is so sad that Alan Chambers and EXODUS lost their way somwhere long ago — and decided that Christianity and partisan politics made good bed partners. We (the founders of EXODUS) fought hard to keep EXODUS neutral.
I would like to remind Alan that Jesus was not, to my knowledge, Republican OR Democrat.
Drop the politics, Alan, and get back to ministry.
From all I have read, it is the Republican / Conservatives / Exgays and family group types that are incorrectly and with malice trumpetting this as pedophilia. And then you have someone like Ruxh Limbaugh come along and call the Democrats and liberals for frelling over Foley. It makes me sick. It is the hypocrisy of wanting the cake and eating it too for those groups.
Chambers is repeating that same dry, tired mantra, “What about the children?” And then equating what Foley did to pedophilia. It’s not.
Gary Bauer conveniently didn’t mention the other half of the page scandal of 1983. Dan Crane (R-Ill.) was a married father of six who had an ‘affair’ with a female page. He held a press conference after the censure and stood beside his wife and children and wept. He also begged and pleaded for forgiveness from his electorate and his god (he pulled a “Swaggart”). While his god may have forgiven him, the voters did not. In 1984, by a wide margin, his district voted him out of office (Reagan was elected President for the second time in 1984; a Republican incumbent not re-elected says a lot).
Any “ex-gay” individual who is complicit in falsely equating homosexuality with pedophilia should be asked one question: Before you became “ex-gay,” how many children did you molest?
Chambers titles his post “What about the Children?” which is a running joke on the Simpsons. I also noted that this was his first post on his blog in a year. It looks like Dobson is getting out all of his troops.
Boo:
I couldn’t agree more!
j.