Charlene Cothran, the editor-in-chief of Venus Magazine who came out as an ex-gay earlier this year and proceeded to alienate her readers by turning her magazine into an ex-gay promotion piece and aligning herself with DL Foster and Peter LaBarbera, is back in the spotlight after an appearance on Pat Robertson’s CBN Network Thursday.
Some quotes of particular interest:
She’d grown up in a Christian home, and had come into the lesbian lifestyle at 19, after several bad relationships with boys.
“I didn’t want anything to do with men anymore,” she said. “I was away at college and that was a whole new world, and in that world there were many, many women who were attracted to me, and, of course, I was attracted to them. And these women were nurturing, wanted to get to know me intellectually — they were organizers whom I found a lot of comfort in. It felt good, it felt right.”
In other words, Cothran was originally heterosexual – or at least bisexual – before joining the lesbian community. No wonder, then, that she seems to regard same-sex attractions as a choice that one can walk away from, as she strongly implies in a recent article in Venus Magazine.
Regarding her current attractions, Cothran merely says “I’m living a celibate life. I’m so focused on the spirit right now, that I have no urges for anyone — man or woman.” It may have been more honest if she had announced her intentions to become celibate in the first place, but then would she be telling her story on the 700 Club?
Regarding the community she’s left behind:
“In order to fill up this empty space, they pretend to put on this wonderful face, ‘how gay and happy I am,’ when in fact — there’s a lot of loneliness in the gay community that’s not talked about, and it’s real.”
Apparently Cothran has not yet spent enough time in the evangelical community to realize that one could say the exact same thing about a large percentage of the people who sit in the pews of any given church on Sunday, simply by substituting “Christian” for “gay.” Nobody – gay or straight, married or single, Christian or otherwise – is immune from experiencing feelings of loneliness from time to time. The fast pace of modern American society may exacerbate the problem, but it’s still one that transcends all other social boundaries, and “finding Jesus” doesn’t by any means make one exempt.
Hopefully, once Cothran comes out of the honeymoon period of her conversion experience, she will learn to temper her claims and to develop a degree of respect for those whose experiences differ from hers.
Jeremy from GoodAsYou.org provides the entire interview here.
I have a better explanation. Judging from her age, it appears that Cothran has reached menopause, and has had a cessation of her libido,. Ergo she’s more asexual than anything else. That’s certainly no miracle.
Ahh, the empty space concept. If you’ve been around evangelical Christian teaching, you’ll hear the idea that all you need is for God to fill that ’empty space’. But there is a problem with that: it simply is not true. And proof of that is found in the lives of those who spread this message; the vast majority of them are married heterosexuals. People who are not foregoing sexuality in their pursuit of spirituality. Think about it, people who witness with their own lives that God is not enough; who have life and sexual partners, have the audacity to tell gays and lesbians that a life alone with God will meet their needs. Even Ms. Cothran has bought into this fantasy and as Mr. Wagner points out it is no doubt because she’s in the honeymoon period of her new religious experience. As someone who is not in some religious honeymoon, who has actually on an extended basis tried the life alone with God solution, I can tell Ms. Cothran and others, it does not work as advertised. And the least that the 700 Club and others can do is admit what is actually true: that the life that Christian teaching demands for gays and lesbians is a life of celibacy and aloneness, if such a thing can be called life at all.
In my head I’ve nicknamed this woman “Paula of Tarsus” b/c St. Paul in his letters emphasized his joy in celibacy, and how it was well not to touch a woman, and how he was closer to God because of it. Now, channeling your sexual energy into being closer to God is not limited to Christianity, and I absolutely believe that a celibate life, when led properly and with the right intentions, can be fulfilling spiritually. However – leading a celibate life because the alternative is so unacceptable that you don’t even have a choice of being sexually active – That is not healthy. Celibacy should be a conscious decision made for positive reasons, not because you hope to avoid falling into “sexual sin.”
It is also obvious that Ms. Paula is bisexual. Some people go through times where they love women exclusively, then they love men exclusively – I’ve mentioned my one Aunt on here a couple times; she fits this description. It can seem that someone has actively “converted” orientations, but this is untrue and misleading. For those of us who were attracted to the same sex as far back as they can remember, “VENUS” and “Paula” are of no help. Charlene seems to be a woman of extremes – so i’m curious as to where her extremes will take her in 5 or 10 years.
Wow. This takes me back to my own appearance as a new “ex-gay” on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” — over 30 years ago. This was prior to the creation of EXODUS. Jim Kaspar and I had just formed our two-man “EX-gay Intervention Team” (EXIT) and had only started calling ourselves “ex-gay” a few months before.
You could tell that Pat Roberton was very uncomfortable with the “gay” subject — and with us. He kept staring nervously at Jim Kaspar with his huge “afro” and quiet yet flamboyant style. Jim had come out of the Hollywood street scene and knew all about being gay. Pat Robertson kept squirming in his seat.
I was barely out of Junior College — with no real gay experience (just some experimentation in High School). Neither one of us had any sort of formal psycholocal training. How were we the experts? Heck, I had never even been to a gay bar! Pat Robertson kept talking about “leaving the gay lifestyle” — and I had never been “in”. What did either of us really know about helping gays to “change”?
Every time we came back from a commercial break and the cameras panned the studio, the “phone counselors” would act real busy — as though praying or taking pledges I kept absent-mindedly peeling the contact paper off Pat Robertson’s expensive (plywood and contact paper) walnut desk. And Pat kept asking, “So…Do you think it could be DEMONS?” He didn’t seem very happy when we both told him “no”.
Hey Michael, quick question – is Jim Kaspar still around? Is he still involved in Exodus?
As I transitioned, MtF, my hyper-spiritual mom told me over the phone that she had actually spoken to the demon in me… a demon of homosexuality [meaning male on male homosexuality]!
Yup, uh-hum!
Then I told her I was still attracted to females.
I heard her jaw hit the floor from 800 miles away, courtesy of AT&T long Distance.
I ceased taking a lot of her supposed “words from god” seriously about that point.
Are you saying that she expected that you were going to be attracted to males instead of females because of your transition – and that would make you homosexual because you were still male in her eyes?
Sorry, I’m just trying to wrap my brain around it.
I lost contact with Jim Kaspar years ago — I have not spoken to him since 1979. I hope he is doing well.
Hi SharonB,
On a practical point, I still believe in the thought that sexual identity and sexual orientation is different. I guess what you shared here shows that. I had been bisexual all my life, and it has nothing to do with whether I am a boy or girl to my mom.
In a different but related story, my mom would go bonkers if a guy spends a night with me, but would rejoice if there is a girl in my room at 3am Malaysian time! I really do not know what she is expecting of me.
David:
Righto! She just knew I was transitioning because I wanted to have sex with men.
The fact that my orientation to women did not change when I integrated my gender identity blew her poor little construct away.
Sharon:
this reminds me of an episode of Will & Grace where “uber-gay” Jack is turned on by a female stripper. Grace finds out and says “well he can’t be straight.. so, now what, he’s a lesbian?” (later on it turns out the stripper was transitioning, so she was male on the bottom still but female on the top.)
Also, my best friend has often described himself as a “lesbian in a man’s body” but I know he’s joking. However, there are certain aspects of his mannerisms that could be construed that way, were he a female! Funny how humanity works sometimes.
Well, people leave the priesthood and the veil too….
A path to God, is a path….period. It’s exhausting to keep hearing that the ONLY real path is heterosexuality to get you to the real prize.
Heterosexuality is fraught with the same relationship problems, but without one’s orientation….or rejection of God, to blame.
And once most of us enter middle age, especially those who are divorced or who hadn’t found the special one yet….the exhaustion is even more profound.
And when you’re the most vulnerable to people…whether you’re gay or not, who say they can offer you the moon.
My widowed step mother, with financial stress and a lack of supportive relationships in her life….nearly joined the People’s Temple, when recruiters came to our door.
That’s a good point, Regan. Maybe Ms. Charlene is in this position.
This is interesting, especially the part about not feeling urges for either gender. When I first read Darlene Bogle’s narrative on the beyondexgay.com site, I remember being particularly drawn to this statement:
I think it was the first time that I had heard someone admit this in such a forthright manner. I fully believe that is where I was for several years. I turned off my creative side, my expressiveness, and my sexual drive during that time. In many ways, I was also a non-feeling person. I think a number of former ex-gays might identify with this. I assumed that the fact that I was no longer attracted to women as much (even though I had no attraction to men) was indication of my further “healing.” Now I believe that I had walled off a very important part of me.
I think sometimes wanting something to be so, can, for a short time, make it so. The problem is maintaining that over a long period of time.
I don’t know if this is the case with Cothran, because I’m not her and not in her head, but reading this certainly rang a bell with me.
Even before I had any faith in God I did this with work. I became asexual because it seemed like the only safe choice (late 70s early 80s). While even later I found it impossible to change the direction of my attractions and desire for intimate relationships from male to female, I found it at least possible to avoid sexual issues entirely for a time.
When I opened that door to my feelings up once again, I had a tiger by the tail and had to deal with it.
This is why I believe respect must be paid to individuals and the things that inform one’s fears, insecurities or fatigue.
Whether you’re gay or not, as I said…these things will happen. They might even be hardest on women, You go through menopausal symptoms that could compromise your libido. Or sometimes professional issues require more focus than relationships for a while.
All of this is just life.
Not a matter of orientation. And sometimes it wouldn’t be surprising to give up hope as a gay person. If there isn’t enough AS a gay person to satisfy you.
Ex gay ministries exploiting it as a sign of orientation changing, is misleading on so many levels. And a dangerous misrepresentation, of course.
In more mature people it’s somewhate inevitable.
But this rarely peaks in young people. Who tend to be more brash, hopeful and normally more aware of their possibility.
The repression of this in the young, isn’t healthy. I noticed that in very young people who aren’t experienced one way or the other….they don’t really have much insight into their also ran sex lives and aren’t too qualified to know what levels are supposed to be reached, but are trying to perform well with the opposite sex because they are made to feel it’s their duty.
Well, it’s been said that being true to oneself is one of the greatest things you have to know and learn.
How could it possibly be good and right that such a thing is repressed in young gay folks?
This is interesting, because in my discussions with Chad Thompson, he has often said he hardly has any feelings for men anymore – although he NEVER speaks about any attractions to women. Mike Ensley will claim that he has had “legitimate attractions to women”, but he never says defines this.
There’s nothing like living alone in a closet to make one lonely. Take a whole group of people forced to grow up in a closet, then when they manage to escape the confines of that structure, stare and ask in wonder at the “empty space” they now have to figure out how to fill. Idiots. It’s a wonder gay people are not all raving lunatics, having endured such.
“In other words, Cothran was originally heterosexual – or at least bisexual – before joining the lesbian community. No wonder, then, that she seems to regard same-sex attractions as a choice that one can walk away from, as she strongly implies in a recent article in Venus Magazine”.
Sorry, on what grounds do you think you have the right to define this woman’s sexuality. Honestly, there are gays and lesbians who are as proscriptive and bigoted as the worst right-wingers.
Sexuality is objectively and substantially defined by attractions and behavior.
Sorry, Anon, but while I support individuals’ privilege of self-labeling within certain bounds of subjectivity, I also think it’s fair to request accurate and objective language from Cothran and other ex-gays. To be blunt: I am not a stalk of broccoli just because I call myself one.
Given her public profile and her activism, the public can be reasonably expected to require accurate and objective labeling of Cothran’s attractions and behavior.
Thanks for your response (I appreciate that this post has been up for some time).
“Sexuality is objectively and substantially defined by attractions and behavior.”
Yes, but sexuality can be complicated and messy and difficult and changing. It interests me that some women who “become” lesbians after previously having relationships with men often say that their current inclination was hidden or repressed. Perhaps, but perhaps they weren’t interested in women previously. It’s the politics of some in the lesbian community that almosts coerces people into making such declarations.
The conversions of Ms Cothran and that young man who became a Mormon also expose some truths that the queer community seem unwilling to face. There is a lot of superficiality about the “lifestyle”. Making an absolute commitment to God can seem much more deep and meaningful in comparison.
When I was a teenager I was worried I was a lesbian, but I think there were factors (eg family violence) that influenced my troubled identity. Today I think I can transcend those concerns.
Oh and I am not a born again Christian; I am quite a liberal person who believes in something beyond the here and now: God if you will.