Just a reminder today’s episode of the Montel Williams Show deals entirely with ex-gays and features Alan Chambers, Peterson Toscano, Lance Carroll, Richard Cohen and others. Evidently the taping was a real circus but I’ve been reserving comment until I see how the show is actually edited.
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Just saw it. Peterson was great. Felt a little sorry for Alan since I believe Exodus can legitimately claim to not have the power to change people (Montel kept calling him on that to the point of tedium.) Obviously Montel and his crew didn’t dig far to find the many legitimate examples of doublespeak and exaggeration that exist with Exodus. And there was nothing about the crazy antics and therapeutic methods of Richard Cohen.
All in all, though, a good show. Lance and Peterson were the highlights. 🙂
Did any else catch South Park’s ex-gay episode last night? Butters is sent to an ex-gay camp like Love In Action. It was hilarious (although the premise of Cartman molesting Butters crossed the line that South Park crosses so often).
There’s a clip on Comedy Central: https://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=83693
The folks at Exodus aren’t happy. https://johnstanton.vox.com/library/post/south-park.html
Just saw Mr. Chambers on Montel, and frankly I don’t get it. Exodus’ position is that change is possible, for Mr. Chambers to say it isn’t is bizarre in the extreme. It simply boggles the mind to watch the speed at which the ex-gay movement’s credibility unravels.
I think Alan only said that freedom from homosexuality is possible. That’s his point of view and I respect that.
It seems the ex-gay movement is fragmented and does not have a cohesive arguement to make. The differences between a ministry-based ‘conversion.’ ‘honest’ reparative psychotherapies, and the extreme methods some employ – electroshock, exorcisms, etc… muddles the ex-gay message. Apparently that was on the mind of Warren Throckmorton when he wrote his blog entry, “Montel Williams Show on sexual reorientation.” He had something to say about Cohen also.
I just read Mike Ensley’s thoughts regarding Chamber’s appearance on Montel Williams (https://mikeensley.vox.com/library/post/montel—hostility-without-an-agenda.html). It was apparent that objectivity is not his strong suit. But that made me wonder if any of us can look at this issue with anything that comes close to objectivity. No matter what Ensley’s take on the matter is, it is only natural that Montel would greet Chamber’s message with total skepticism…I mean get real, the message Exodus is peddling flies in the face of a majority of scientific research on this topic. BTW…interesting that Ensley put up a post and then quickly pulled it. Took a while for this revision to come up…and with a different, less offensive title.
Now I’ll sit back and wait for Chamber’s comments to be scrutinized because we all know he probably said some things on Montell that don’t jive with things he’s said elsewhere.
I just watched as well. And as the one credentialed psychiatrist said on the show, she mentioned that Chambers was about marketing, and not science. And from the mission statement of Exodus, Montel read that their objective is to treat homosexuality as a disorder, undesirable and something REQUIRING freedom for a person to be able to be considered normal and in keeping with Christian belief.
But Alan kept saying this what HIS experience, while all the while, not mentioning exactly what their reach is or is expected to be.
He left out an important aspect of what it means to live the heterosexual lifestyle and the doctor touched on it, is that one doesn’t require so much therapy, prayer, concentration…whatever, to consummate a relationship with the opposite sex if your objective is accomplished.
And the doctor called Chambers on the fact they Exodus and the others NEVER can tell a person how much a commitment this all is and for how long.
Or that other like motivated ministries or therapies ARE abusive, so distancing yourself from OTHER’s methods is cold comfort to the people harmed by them.
After all….there is hardly any differentiation that evident regarding the ex gay industry.
And this is where their inconsistencies in their own mission statement and website directives are not only frustrating to anyone investigating, but dangerous to people who are not.
Excerpts from hat Montel harped upon the Exodus Policy on Homosexuality:
EXODUS is a Christian organization dedicated to equipping and uniting agencies and individuals to effectively communicate the message of liberation from homosexuality, as well as how to effectively convey support and understanding to individuals facing the reality of a homosexual loved one.
EXODUS upholds heterosexuality as God’s creative intent for humanity, and subsequently views homosexual expression as outside of God’s will. EXODUS cites homosexual tendencies as one of many disorders that beset fallen humanity. Choosing to resolve these tendencies through homosexual behavior, taking on a homosexual identity, and involvement in the homosexual lifestyle is considered destructive, as it distorts God’s intent for the individual and is thus sinful.
Instead, Christ offers a healing alternative to those with homosexual tendencies. EXODUS upholds redemption for the homosexual person as the process whereby sin’s power is broken, and the individual is freed to know and experience true identity as discovered in Christ and His Church. That process entails the freedom to grow into heterosexuality.
Central to this redemption is EXODUS’ desire to unite and equip the church to carry out this healing process. EXODUS bridges the gap between Christians who respond to homosexual men and women with ignorance and fear, and those who uphold homosexuality as a valid, Christ-centered lifestyle. To EXODUS, both extremes fail to convey to the homosexual the fullness of redemption found in Christ–He who embodies grace and truth, and invites us to partake of Him.
______________________________________________
This “Policy” would seem to be saying that someone cann definitely be “cured” of homosexuality. It is filled with all the buzz words and phrases that indicate that to a person. To say to a person that “liberation from homosexuality” is possible, then to “uphold heterosexuality as god’s creative intent for humanity.” is to express to a person that there is a goal, heterosexuality, to be reached.
To then point to homosexuality as “one of many disorders that beset fallen humanity” and that “Christ offers a healing alternative” and that “EXODUS upholds redemption for the homosexual person” so that “the individual is freed to know and experience true identity” and “the freedom to grow into heterosexuality” – is certainly a phrasology which is meant to say one can truly change from gay to straight. I get the idea that Exodus has to say such things in order to pull in its fundamentalist Christian following so that it may impart its true policy which is expressed in that last paragraph. It is sad that on this issue – homosexuality – that at least this one side of the issue must engage in doublespeak.
Best Line:
MW: If we liberate Iraq, we change it.
Too many quests. No one got more than a few lines. Peterson did best.
Poor Alan. He was cowering in his chair when the camera left him. He was only trying to say that change is up to the individual, which is true.
Oh, well.
The doublespeak they employ is mind numbing. They’re so immersed in their own reality and language that one almost needs a universal translator to attempt a real conversation with them.
The one upside to national shows like Montel allowing Alan and the like to appear is that direct questions get asked.
Alan, Randy, Mike, etc. are so used to addressing head nodding friendly audiences who will accept their nuanced phrases without any critical thought.
I can see appearences like Montel becoming rare amongst the spokespeople for Ex-gay groups. They’re going to have to retreat to a friendlier venue to troll for donations and self validation.
The upside to all of this is it keeps their false teachings contained to a narrow audience and away from public policy.
If change is truly up to the individual, then those who courageously struggle with same-sex attraction don’t need organizations such as Exodus, which nowadays serves primarily to promote antigay laws, antiscience education, bizarre identity-labeling games, and partisan political campaigning on behalf of Focus on the Family.
Sexual strugglers need support either to be chaste/celibate, or to bring their moral, spiritual, romantic and sexual callings into a healthy and mutually supportive coexistence. Since Exodus won’t provide this kind of support, perhaps another organization should form and take its place.
Very good point, Mike!
I think we all need to keep this perspective on the role of the political Ex-gays. They are not concerned at all with sexual strugglers, except inasmuch as they can use them as cover for Focus’s anti-civil rights machinations.
They probably hurt authentic strugglers more than they help them, because of the unsustainable claims they make.
I’m likely going to get jumped on here, but the doublespeak is inherant in the religious outlook. There is a problem in understanding the reality of the human spirit and religious spirituality that is an commonly-held outgrowth our individual spirits. Thus the commonly-held religious spirituality came to hold the minority report from gay human spirits as immoral. And the only spirituality which a gay person may be expressing is demonic or satanic or broken and the person is ill and needful of healing. That healing which only the expressed tenets of a religion may provide.
In short religions don’t deal in reality on certain issues, such as homosexuality, and thus are doomed to their doublespeak on those issues. An organization such as EXODUS which seeks to fill that gap it describes in its Policy is thus doomed to its doublespeak. Maybe Mike is right and EXODUS is making itself into a dinosaur.
Alan said that he was 35 years old. That surprised me. I thought he was older.
He also confirmed on national television that he didn’t consumate his marriage for 9 months. It was rediculous to hear that he and his wife didn’t know what to do. Perhaps Alan or his wife should have invested in a library card and checked out a book on sex education….unbelievable.
Richard Cohen implied that all of his homosexual activity occurred prior to his marriage, but he was galavanting in New York with his boyfriend for several years after he got married. And when Montel talked about these gay guys getting married with the guy off here with another guy and the wife somewhere else, he had hit the nail on the head about Richard Cohen’s marriage.
John said:
Actually, same here. I’ve got nine years on him.
Lance made a comment about being in groups at Love in Action with adults that included a convicted sex offender. At the time Lance was a minor. Thinking back on the brouhaha between Peterson and Alan a few months ago about the safety of minors in Exodus programs, I wonder if this was one of the specific situations that Peterson had. Alan acted as if Lance’s experience was news to him.
Alan Chambers comments on his ‘ambush‘ on Montel.
(Lynn beats me to it!)
From Alan’s blog, in his own thoroughly dishonest words:
Then there was the issue with the statement on our website. … I vaguely recognized the statement—I don’t have the thousands of pages on the Exodus site completely memorized and I didn’t write or participate in approving a lot of the content of the site—some of which came way before my time. … I wish that I had been more familiar with that statement…”
Having looked at the statement in question, I am not sure I like the way it reads … I wouldn’t have written the statement quite like that and we will be reviewing and rewriting it.”
Far from being some obscure diatribe tucked away in the website nether regions, “that” statement is the official Exodus Policy on Homosexuality — and it was released in that wording by the organisation after he became the Executive Director in Oct 2001.
It’s his own cursed policy, and he’s “unfamiliar” with it?
He’s President of Exodus International, and he’s only just “looked” at his own official policy on homosexuality?
It’s been the official policy for several years, but now he thinks he needs to “review and rewrite” it?
I don’t think so. None of any of that is true.
Alan Chambers, you are a blatant liar.
And this is far from the first time.
I noted something else very interesting in reading Alan’s blog comments particularly in reference to Lance’s experience. Alan said the following:
I stated on air that I believe that is wrong and I will follow through on seeing that a policy is enacted and enforced within any Exodus Member Ministry that works with youth.
I was under the impression after Peterson’s communication that a policy was already enacted and being “enfored within any Exodus Member Ministry.” Did Alan fudge the truth in the communication to Peterson? And speaking of Peterson, I rather get the feeling that Alan wishes he didn’t exist. Is it just me?
j.
I thought it WAS kind of interesting that Alan didn’t mention him in his account of the show. He wrote about everyone else — and Peterson WAS a major part of the episode.
I can’t believe Alan Chambers made that claim. When I did some research for an article on the ex-gay movement last year, that policy was the first and most obvious statement of Exodus’s point of view that I found, and I quoted the exact same parts that Montel highlighted. I find it incredulous that Alan denies being aware of its existence. It only confirms my suspicion that one of the biggest problems with the ex-gay movement is not what they really believe and know to be true (you’ll most likely be struggling with homosexual attraction all your life), but the impression they try to put across in public (you can be “healed”). Rhetoric versus reality again.
Ex gays fail mightily in historical context and perspective, as do many people professing faith based reasons for their responses to homosexuals.
I grew up with older blacks, emotionally and psychically scarred by Jim Crow and the principle of white supremacy. I was, early in my life in other ways, also affected by it.
Standards of beauty, standards of competence and expectations. I knew I was a worthy, intelligent person, but my characteristics made others level harsh judgements on me without knowing me.
It’s not a done deal yet…there are still vestiges of this in society depending on where I want to go in life that cause me to wonder if I’ll have a fair opportunity.
What Chambers and all the others profess regarding the choice they made and what they wanted, were affected too by heterosupremacy. If I were confronted with people who received unconditional acceptance, whose characteristics gave them virtues and freedoms not earned by deeds, I want that too.
I’d want to have the ability to never be questioned and my motives given a non judgemental pass, even if I’d damaged those options.
Who wouldn’t want to go along, if someone stepped up and told me I could have it, if I affected a certain way of living and without anyone looking too deeply in what way I was going about it?
Now, just as to this day, there are more subtle aspects of racism that some people cannot detect on the surface, but are no less devastating to the person on the receiving end of it, Exodus doesn’t examine, discuss or admit when homosupremacist values shaped and made the choice for them.
Meaning, there shouldn’t be such acts that are as irreversably violent as what’s happened to Sakia Gunn, or Matt Shepard for the public to get the message.
The ex gay industry is working from an old and well worn message. It’s not new, it’s only something that’s effective at tapping people’s prejudices or developing them.
A violent visceral response to homosexuality isn’t natural. It’s a result of conditioning that ex gays foster.
All the other ‘sins’, really don’t require training to respond to them negatively or without acceptance.
These are firm results of one’s behavior against another.
Or there are results and profound changes in a person’s competence and abilities when it comes to addiction or mental illness.
And this is the major and unforgivable part of their outreach. Differentiation.
They don’t have any sense of differentiation from adulterty, theft, violence or addiction and mental illness.
This is why Lance was put in a group with a sex offender.
This is why the pedophilia is consistently conflated with homosexuality.
A person who demands that they be respected for ‘moral clarity’ after their sea change, would work harder to deal with those differentiations, rather than continue the information that results in confusing them.
Even here…Chambers was so weak when I confronted him with a few things and I don’t appreciate him at all.
Indeed, he treated me with a specifically flip answer that had nothing to do with the subject, but was a typical deflection.
I cannot and will not respect him, nor Chad Thompson. I tried.
I really did.
Now, I can understand when someone doesn’t want to be gay….given the circumstances, who would?
I can remember when I hated being black, sometimes hated that I was a woman and seen as weak or an easy mark to take advantage of.
However, I found the strength in myself to resist these attacks on my character and characteristics, that could only have contributed to despair and depression. I don’t consider it a matter of being ‘redeemed’ or ‘free’ or ‘morally clear’ if you give into those who attack you, whom you don’t attack.
And then VALIDATE that they have been correct to do so, and to continue to do it to others just like you.
And hiding behind religious reasons is lower still, because it’s such a powerful institution that has and will get away with abuse of that power.
They have before if anyone lets them.
So, this is why I find ex gays untrustworthy, however much they demand trust.
These are people of weak character and inability to defend their actions, and they certainly won’t defend gay people, but they defend the institutions that hurt gay people the most.
This is equivalent to a passing light skinned black supporting Jim Crow.
A Jew who no longer practices or is with his community to support anti Semitic laws or a former homosexual who disdains his former self to the detriment, not betterment of his own who shouldn’t have to change for any reason.
More’s the point, a misunderstood minority who has had so little voice, deserves to be heard and believed and to be able to come out from the shadows without threat.
Those who don’t know any gay people, are obligated to know better, because judging anyone so harshly so that it threatens their lives and basic human rights, REQUIRES it!
Chambers is now complaining, as if HIS kind of voice has never had the floor for centuries. Has to be given the floor and the microphone….and BE BELIEVED unconditionally wherever he is.
If he’s not prepared for how more intelligent people will respond to bullshit when they hear it, too bad.
It’s on him and his ilk.
You want respect, EARN IT!
And so far, that industry’s most prominent representatives are simply very weak. They’ve been conditioned to think that wearing a new coat, can’t invite skeptics and challengers.
Especially when you won’t reveal the REAL price paid for that coat.
Chad can’t handle such people, and neither can Chambers.
I don’t care about hammering them and everyone like them. They were ill prepared for life as a gay person, and their ex gay industry didn’t prepare them for leaving it behind either.
You all can correct me if I’m wrong, but if to someone like James Dobson, or Chambers….that gay advocate groups are loud or shrill…or seem to be shouting down those with differing religious values, their complaints are remarkable in their hypocrisy.
It shouldn’t take such loud, visible protest (if it happens) in the gay community for the public at large to get the message.
There is legitimate urgency that the gay community respond to suicides, and homicides and professional threat in this way.
Because for too long, there has been no reaction or response…and this is what it’s taken for the courts and media to let gay folks reveal their pain and needs and responsibilities.
And sometimes, not even then.
This is about justice and who is UNNECESSARILY hurt, by a doctrine, theory, myth and stereotype. These things should not be prevailing in a just society.
When Exodus, LWO, CWA, or FRC…or FOTF complains about their religious freedom being compromised, on can easily call them on their selective and revisionist applications regarding this.
Again, if these groups forget so easily that their chosen lifestyle isn’t required to be accepted by anyone, let alone protected as free speech or access.
But let’s just say, they have power mostly for might, not being right.
If they want to measure their complaints by not having EACH and EVERY accomodation, that’s vastly different than having the freedom to go to school in peace, protection from verbal abuse and battery and protection and justice for assault and violence and the ability to have the profession of one’s choosing, and marry and establish a family-THESE are the rights our country and government are more obligated to assure for each citizen.
Not the ability to run all over someone else’s needs and responsibility AS a citizen, BY a person of faith.
If they can’t respect even THIS basic gesture of civility and governance, then why should anyone respect these groups whatsoever?
They can complain and bitch all they want.
But THEY have a responsibility to that goes with their right to free expression (not forced indoctrination) of their religious faith.
Most of all….to respect that it’s not being done TO THEM.
After all, nobody gay is trying to force THEM to be gay, just to respect and accept that gay citizens are required to LIVE as citizens first, and what’s attendant to that.
So, if they LIVED the golden rule, and could qualify a debate with it, I’d have more respect for the sincerity of faith and Christian charity.
Wayne Besen and many others have pointed out time and time again that Alan Chambers has a problem telling the truth.
On the Montel Show, Alan stated emphatically that he never underwent reparative therapy.
However, today on his blog he states: “Through faith, the support of many caring individuals, including that of licensed therapists affiliated with the American Psychological Association, I overcame my unwanted same-sex attractions. ”
I am guessing that after the show, someone pointed out to him that he had worked with reparative therapist(s).
My own theory is that his whole life (President of Exodus, former homosexual and now “completely heterosexual” person) is a lie. The one big lie leads to all the other lies, even when there is no real reason for him to lie.
I would feel sorry for him, except that if you read the rest of his blog entry today, it is an attack on my right to live in this country as an equal citizen with my heterosexual counterparts. So, I can’t feel sorry for anyone so committed to denigrating me, my family and my fellow gay, lesbian and trangendered citizens.