WXIA-TV, Atlanta, televised a report tonight (Windows Media video) about former ex-gays, clergy, doctors, and parents who are protesting against Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out” ex-gay roadshow:
Excerpts from the report:
“I spent countless evenings on my knees begging the Lord to make me straight. And he never did.”
–Daniel Gonzales, former patient of Joseph Nicolosi
“I have compassion for people. I simply want to say that I believe that God didn’t make us that way.”
— Roy Blankenship, First Baptist Church of Woodstock (host of the ex-gay conference)
“I am holy. I am gay. And just for the record, I was born that way.”
–The Rev. Antonio Jones, Unity Church
“These groups offer promises they can’t deliver, and deliver disasters they never promised. They destroy families in the name of family values.”
–Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out
Patty Ellis, whose 25-year-old son is gay, has a message for parents who might be considering ex-gay “therapy” for their same-sex-attracted children:
“Don’t do it. If you try to change your child, you will lose your child. You will break their spirit, and you may never get them back.”
Here are some issues that regrettably were not raised by WXIA’s report:
1. Focus on the Family’s costs and revenues for the conference and related billboard ad campaign.
2. Focus on the Family’s political battles for discrimination and orientation-specific sodomy laws.
3. Roy Blankenship’s political role as a board member of Exodus International.
A second WXIA report details how Focus on the Family’s conference divides one family. While her adult son joins a PFLAG protest outside the conference, an antigay mother seeks help from none other than… Joseph Nicolosi.
I viewed the television news segment in Atlanta. I was distressed at that billboard in the video. Much like radical conservatives took the John Kerry joke and intentionally obfuscated the meaning behind the message we now find ourselves saddled with a huge task at informing the public that most all homosexuals cannot become straight. That’s not exactly what the billboards says but some driving hurriedly past this billboard will, no doubt, reconfirm their attitudes towards gays…i.e. it’s okay to discriminate because “they can change”.
Then, of course, we have the FoF people who have unlimited resources to erect such a billboard. So, when will we see a billboard proclaiming gays cannot change and are fine just the way they are? It will take years to ameliorate the damage done by one billboard.
Much like radical conservatives took the John Kerry joke and intentionally obfuscated the meaning behind the message we now find ourselves saddled with a huge task at informing the public that most all homosexuals cannot become straight.
I’m not sure I get that particular connection, but I agree that it’s a tall order countering such ideas. Perhaps someone should clue us in on how to get our share of the vast resources the gay activist organizations are supposed to have. While they are at it, help me get some of that excess disposable income I am supposed to have as a gay man with no wife or children.