This past Tuesday, PFOX posted some disturbing news. While innocently offering “materials on same-sex attraction and tolerance for the ex-gay community to a hungry public” at the Arlington County Fair, Arlington Va (Aug 15-19), they claim their representatives were viciously attacked, both verbally and physically, by “gay activists” who had also set up a booth at the fair.
As happens every year, gay activists disrupted our booth activities. They screamed obscenities, threw our materials from the exhibit table to the ground, insisted we recognize their same-sex “spouses,” demanded that PFOX leave, and hit a PFOX volunteer because he is ex-gay.
Clearly, this sounds like utter mayhem at the Arlington County Fair. One can only envision these helpless, innocent ex-gay volunteers, persecuted as they have been through the ages, standing in their booth with a message new to the world – that gay people should be straight – while an ugly mob of “the gays” shout them down with intolerance. It’s madness, but there is more!
The gays became infuriated when our ex-gay volunteers testified about leaving homosexuality. They adamantly refused to accept the ex-gays’ sexual orientation. One gay man went so far as to hit our ex-gay volunteer because he refused to recant his ex-gay testimony. We summoned a police officer, who ejected the gay man off of the fairgrounds. Our ex-gay volunteer decided not to press assault charges against the gay man because he wanted to turn the other check as Jesus had done.
Surely this is unacceptable; the gays have taken to physical violence against these poor volunteers, these ex-gays. If true, we simply have to speak out against such heinous acts against our ex-gay brothers and sisters. Of course, this is XGW so we trust but verify. And that’s where it became interesting.
We made a few calls and found that the only gay organization with a booth at the fair, the “local gay group [which] also exhibits there and distributes materials on gay rights” that PFOX mentioned, was Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance (AGLA). According to AGLA President-elect Daniel L. Hays, there was no incident of any kind between his organization and PFOX:
I worked several evening shifts at the Arlington Gay & Lesbian Alliance booth. I did hear one, what I would call “heated” discussion, but never saw any thing beyond raised voices. Our organization purposefully did not do anything to even interact with them, but I cannot speak to what individual fairgoers may or may not have said or done when I was not there.
Next we checked with Denise Marshall Roller, Event Manager for the fair. She told us that our call was the first she had heard of any problems of this kind associated with the fair barely two weeks prior, and she was there for much of it herself, most of the time near the officer in charge. We are waiting for her to reply with any additional information she can find.
Since PFOX stated that the police were “summoned” and that they “ejected the gay man off the fairgrounds” we decided to check with the Arlington County Police Department. Focus on the Family reports through CitizenLink that “Officers kicked the gay activists out of the fair and encouraged the PFOX volunteer to press charges, but he chose not to.” So depending on the account, we have one or more officers responding to a complaint of assault, recommending that the victim file charges, and then ejecting one or more “gay activists” from the fairgrounds. Surely the ACPD would know if one or more of their officers participated in such an action. What good would it do to eject them if others in charge were not also made aware so they could make sure they didn’t come back?
We contacted the ACPD and ended up speaking with John Lisle of the Media Relations/Legislative Affairs Office. He had no initial knowledge of such an incident. After checking briefly, he again said that no one was aware of such an incident. So we sent a copy of the PFOX statement to him at which time he agreed to check more thoroughly. After over two days of research, there was nothing he could add to his statement; no report exists and no one recalls such an incident.
So what are we left to conclude? PFOX claims to have been attacked verbally and physically on public fairgrounds by one or more unnamed attackers, yet no one we can find who is in a position to know about such an attack has any idea what PFOX is talking about. And though we tried to contact them, PFOX representatives have offered no evidence at all to support their own claims.
In spite of this, Focus on the Family has reported this story as fact through CitizenLink as has the Christian news site LifeSite. In addition, Exodus president Alan Chambers appeared on the August 29 edition of Family News in Focus (from Focus on the Family) to express his disappointment at hearing of the attack.
The full version from the FNIF site referenced above also has audio of PFOX president Regina Griggs describing the alleged attack and we recommend you listen to the entire thing.
Unless PFOX can offer hard evidence that such an incident occurred, one is hard pressed to conclude that it did, or at least that it happened the way they describe. One could speculate that a heated discussion with a fairgoer took place, as Daniel Hays seems to remember, and perhaps some literature was thrown away, but this is a long way from an attack. We challenge Regina Griggs to provide evidence to support her story. Certainly, it is in PFOX’s best interest that such evidence – if it exists – be made public.
Until such time, we must remain skeptical of this report. And we also have to ask why Focus on the Family and other Christian news organizations would report such an important story without some basic fact checking. If XGW can do this, why can’t they?
And what if it turns out this incident did not happen? Will PFOX make amends with the fair organizers, the “gay group” in the other booth, the ACPD, and even the public? Will Focus on the Family, LifeSite and Alan Chambers issue retractions and apologies? And what will it say about the veracity of such reports from PFOX in the past?
In the highly-charged pro-gay/anti-gay debate, there certainly are fringe people on both sides who cross the line, threaten and attack. I fully support the prosecution of any gay activist that threatened or assualted an ex-gay or Christian activist. However, if PFOX and Co. are going to play the ‘persecuted Christian’ victim card, why didn’t they press charges or at the very least get the “gay activists'” names? Part of civic responsibility is getting violent people off the street — not turning the other cheek or making unsubstantiated claims to the media.
So the question is, who are we to believe. How do we know who to believe? One side says one thing and another side says the complete opposite.
When it comes to something like this, or anything similiar, doesn’t your believe depend on what you want to believe? This can go either way.
How do you know who to believe? There is no magic formula!
What do you with a she said/he said type of thing? What would be great would be if someone at the fair had their video type camera going. But then, even if we see that, perhaps it was staged?
How do you really know? And I am not meaning to be one sided. I am saying this from either side.
What really happened?
Think about it.
It sounds exactly like the distortion that embodies so many Passion plays. Such distortions only cause suffering among those declared to be the enemy and the villain in the events that are being recounted. “The gays” is an epithet I can relate to very very well, and not because I’m queer.
Though I am not sure of what distortions you speak of in reference to the “passion plays” I must say that distortion is an enemy of all who fall prey to it.
So, the question then is: “Why the distortion?” And, I am speaking specifically of what seems to be a gay/anti-gay and gay/exgay distortion of each other.
Charlene,
I do not believe this is a he-said/she-said dispute between PFOX and gay activists.
There is no reason to disbelieve either the police or the organizers of the county fair.
Oh, I agree. I am not saying the disbelief falls upon the organizers of the county fair or the police.
The disbelief is on the reporting of the incident by those who have reported on it.
Nothing against ExGayWAtch/Focus meant however both sides believe what they are saying to be true. Both sides are pretty sure that what they said happened happened.
FOF, like ExGayWatch, researched the material before they spoke. So whose research is right?
Charlene, I think I can attest to patterns of distortion and outright lying by FOTF, James Dobson. Dobson’s article in TIME magazine on Mary Cheney’s pregnancy is an example. The very researchers he cited, but distorted PERSONALLY tried to contact him, and he was rude to them.
That is but ONE example, but some of the latest from several people, like Rev. Harry Jackson writing at TownHall turned the hate crimes legislation act into a screed on the victimization by law, of any Christians who speak out on homosexuality.
This has been chronic througout much reporting on this legislation.
Whenever there is ANY challenge to Regina Grigg’s and PFOX, they have turned it into something like being treated as harshly as Nazis against Jews.
They are not above exaggerating to inflame. And this sounds like one of those times.
If we consider long and hard about how gays and lesbians typically comport themselves during protests or other events, violence and threat and intimidation isn’t the modus operandi.
Some straight people are just truly strange and lose their minds about gay folks.
To them, especially straight men, interest is violation and a casual gesture is akin to violent assault.
It’s widely known that the Pope considers adoption of children by gay people ‘doing a violence to them’.
So I’m not putting exaggeration beyond Regina Griggs either.
Charlene,
I don’t understand. You are saying that this is a he said/she said situation because Focus and PFOX report this event happened, and Ex-gay Watch is questioning the veracity of the claim.
That arguement would only make sense if we did not have statements from the Arlington police (absolutely central to the whole story) and event organizers saying that they know nothing about this alleged attack on ex-gay participants in Arlington.
The most charitable interpretation would be that the PFOX activists have exagerated some sort of incident. The less charitable interpretation would be that the just made the whole thing up to garner more publicity.
Charlene said:
Do you know this to be a fact? If FOTF had checked, they would have found what we did. Do you have a statement from them detailing their research concerning this alleged incident? If not, please retract that statement as we try to deal in facts here.
According to FOF website, no charges were filed. If no charges were filed it makes sense that to the police department it was one of many entries on their logbook. Do you really believe that the police department would spend two days researching an incident in which no charges were filed? To a busy police department I would imagine it was not a priority.
I will work on getting a statement from FOF or ask them to issue one if they have not already done so and I am just not able to find it.
For the moment I will say that what would be the best verificiation would be eye-witness testimony to the actual incident.
If FOF was incorrect on anything they said I can only look at their good history of retractions.
These are the facts as I see them Dave. You presented your facts the way you see them.
That is what I am trying to say with all of this.
Each side has their own perspective. It is almost impossible, or seems almost impossible to get either group of people to agree on what truly happen.
It is the incorrect perspectives that each group has of each other that is the true issue.
Take care and please know I do not mean this to sound like an argument by any means. I am seeing it all from a different perspective than what you seem to be seeing it from. . .?
Charlene
FotF/CitizenLink lied about the ex-gay & ex-ex-gay conferences and lied about their lie (or the newswriter was so self-righteously stupid she couldn’t understand her own error), so should it be any wonder that they don’t mind lying here?
It’s about gays, anyway, so who cares but them? – I get the feeling that is their rationalization.
I am in the opinion that even if it DID happened, it only represents a small group of activists. But the way it was presented, it sounded like an organized large scale mob attack purposefully planned to distrupt their booths.
And IF it happened, my question is, which groups cauased it? Who are the ones ejected from the ground? Where are the eye witnesses? And surely, as it happened in a fair, somebody probably would be in position to videotape the incident. So where is the factual evidence?
Therefore, from what we can conclude here, and from history of such organizations, it is lie lie lie. From the mantra in the beginning of how gays come about from broken childhoods, now the lies are regenerated into this kind of probable inexistent events.
What next, I wonder?
I was tempted to think that you must be new at this, until I read the article on your site from ’02.
Which tends to explain your conflation of facts with opinion, as many, if not most politically-active ex-gays like you tend to do:
No. David presented facts, you offered nothing other than the heresay and repeated heresay that lead David to investigate them in the first place. They are not equal.
You are the story here at EGW Charlene. Just for the record, would you agree to an interview if asked?
Charlene said:
So are you now claiming that Mr. Lisle lied to us about the steps taken to check this out?
It makes little difference what I think they did. It is Mr. Lisle’s function in the Arlington PD to do exactly what he said he did. Logs and reports are computerized so searching for them is hardly tedious. Supervisors are responsible for knowing what is going on with subordinates and they were questioned. And in this day of uber-litigation, police departments are leery of taking actions such as those alleged without documentation.
You are interjecting confusion and uncertainty, as though there are no facts which are not influenced so strongly by perspective that they can be agreed upon by all. I don’t subscribe to that kind of relativism because to do so would be to assume that there is no real truth.
If the people at PFOX can provide proof of this alleged attack, which does not consist of an affiliated person making the same unsubstantiated claims, we will add it to our analysis. If it turns out to be sound, we will join them in condemning the attack in the strongest terms. But as we said, they have yet to even reply to our questions.
Charlene:
Dave presented the hard facts. They were not arbitrary feelings or opinions. He did the research that clearly Focus on the Family did not. It now appears, thanks to Dave’s hard work, that PFOX has some serious quesions to answer and explaining to do.
Charlene, what you are doing is a poor job at obfuscation – making all parties equally guilty. This just is not the case. The emerging evidence strongly indicates that PFOX may be guilty of a fraudulent complaint. I look forward to their evidence….I know it is difficult to believe, but evidence still matters in our reality-based society. Wishing or willing the truth away is not helpful to this serious discussion.
If Griggs invented this – she ought to resign immediately.
There was one gay and lesbian affirming group present during the fair, the Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance. Maybe they would know something about the attack that probably never happened?
YukiChoe, did you read my post???
With all the photo taking cell phones around, one would think several pictures would be available. Surely one of them would have taken pictures if this actually happened. If this keeps happening to them as they claim, they ought to have the cameras ready to document the activity.
Transcript of FOTF radio segment on this subject:
Dearest Alan, show me a gay activist who is willing to “tolerate” lies and hypocrisy.
And I’ll show you a man who works for the ex-gay industry.
My first reaction when I initially read about this is, “I hope it didn’t happen like that. How awful if someone actually *hit*.” I can understand anger, but not taken that far.
This said, considering P-FOX’s disrespectful tone (“the gays”, “spouses” in scare quotes), their reluctance to name names, and the quotes from the event organizer and Arlington police officer, well, I figure I can just toss this into my mind’s recycle bin now.
Biblists thing they are saints, perfected by “the blood of the lamb” because they have “accepted Jesus into their hearts as Lord and savior.” So for them, anything, and I mean ANYTHING they do is RIGHT in their minds, even if it means lying, because somehow in their twisted minds, by lying they are able to get to THE TRUTH. Biblists religions are based on deception, distortion of the Christian faith, and intimidation. They are like the boy crying “wolf;” if even what they say has any merit to it, I would not believe them.
They worship an angry god who wants them to join forces with him to be angry at the world. They have no love because their god is not a god of love but a god of fear. They can only feel good when they make others feel bad, and they can only justify their beliefs when they have convinced and converted someone.
They are some of the most annoying people on earth and they wonder why people don’t like them. Then they justify it by saying that by not liking them and listening to them, you do not like God nor listen to him. For me personally, they shame the name “Christian” and I wish they would not use that term to describe themselves as they do NOT follow Christ but rather they follow the BIble, and their interpretation of the Bible at that.
I have made bumper stickers asking, “When did Jesus say, ‘Thou shalt act like a jerk for my name’s sake’?” Y’all think I should re-issue them?
Alan said:
You are taking a lot of liberty there Alan, especially considering the wide category “biblist” can define. It doesn’t help to smear everyone who takes the Bible as the sole Word of God because of PFOX’s actions. Let’s try to stay on topic and leave that stuff for other blogs.
Perhaps the word “Bible worshipper” would be more appropriate then. It is not that someone derives their faith from the Bible that is the problem, it is that one places the Bible as a false god. For me, that is what a BIblist is, not one who derives their faith from the Bible, but rather one who replaces God with the Bible.
David, sorry! Dun know how I miss that quote… Perhaps in the state of awe on what is happening….
David, my hat’s off to you. Great job in doing the kind of reporting FOTF has had problems doing.
Charlene,
You assume that FOTF “researched” their article. I wonder if maybe they used the same researchers from last June in their reports on the numbers of people at the Ex-gay Survivor’s conference?
Well, that one is not a matter of “wanting to believe.” I actually attended the very conference they claimed to report on, and as I reported, I know for a fact that they just flat out lied. It won’t be the first time, and it’s not likely to be the last. I was there, an “eyewitness.”
Alan says:
I agree. The early church was guided by the Holy Spirit and not the New Testament (Acts 1 and Acts 2). The bible did not come into its present form until the late 4th Century and not given to laymen to read until the Protestant Reformation.
Unfortuantely, many Christians have professed their allegiance to the Bible first and foremost no matter if one’s conscience is being guided by the Holy Spirit in a different direction. To them, it is man that needs to conform to the bible at all costs. Everything else is irrelevant.
Come to think of it Ken, isn’t the very idea of the Holy Spirit gnostic in nature?
My fear is some exgay groups throughout Asia will take these stories by PFOX and Citizenlink, then use it negatively on an already misunderstood gay community throughout this region. They are not going to even bother about what XGW has to say. Here XGW is known as a progay site to be avoided at all costs, however neutral, factual and authorative it is. Whatever promotion of lies by exgay groups would be construed as fact not only to Christians, but also to the general public, because exgays are saved by God, you see. They are men of God incapable of promoting deception.
I agree with your concerns YukiChoe, and that’s one of the reasons I posed the questions in that last paragraph.
Emproph:
Christianity most likely adapted the idea of the Holy Spirit to more of a pagan view from the original Jewish idea. For Jews, the “Holy Spirit” is the presence of God.
I’m not sure that is something you could possibly substantiate Emily. That aside, let’s dissect each other’s faiths in another thread. This one is about the alleged PFOX incident 😉
Precisely. So if PFOX’s ability to recognize the importance of verifiable truth is absent, how can their ability to recognize the truth of God’s Holy Spirit be present in matters that are unverifiable?
(And yes I’m generalizing the people of PFOX for the sake of convenience.)
Well, it’s about faith, like all matters – if they believe they feel it, or see it, or know it, then they do. However, PFOX takes pains at hitting the “secular” side of the ex-gay movement, so i think they would be less likely to profess divine inspiration from the Holy Spirit than say Exodus – or Joseph Nicolosi.
The Orthodox Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit sprang from the doctrine concerning the divinity of Christ. Because the Christian faith professes to worship a single deity, the divinity of Christ possed a problem. Greek philosophy was utilized in the early Church to help explain how God could be one and yet three by explaining God as one deity with three persons. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity because Christ had promised to send it and for the early Church the words Christ spoke indicated a distinction between the Holy Spirit and the Father. Throughout the New Testament there is a firm indication of three who are involved in the ministry of Christ: His Father, Christ himself, and the Holy Spirit. As the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, began to examine and explain its teachings, using Greek philosophy and terminology, it was able to justify Christ’s divinity by stating God is in Trinitarian form: One God in three Divine Persons.
Gnostic notions of the Holy Spirit varied according to individual leaders within the Gnostic community. Many Gnostics saw the Holy Spirit the way the Jewish faith understands the term “Holy Spirit” as simply meaning the presence of God and not being a “person” within the Godhead. But the Holy Spirit is NOT an original Gnostic concept.
David, with all due respect, I don’t appreciate you telling those who wish to express their opinions or who wish to explain their faith to do that on another blog or thred. If Emily, or any of us, wish to give insight into our faith, then we should be allowed to do so. If not, then there should be a clause at the beginning of each blog stating so.
Dialogue is important for us as GLBT people of faith, no matter what our faith orientation may be, because, despite our differences, we need to communicate in order to build relationships that can allow us to love one another and unite us in our common areas and allow us to also respect our differences.
Alan said:
This is not a free for all, Alan. We discuss matters of faith a great deal, but this thread is about an incident reported by PFOX which does not appear to be supported by the available facts. If you have comments about issues other than this, you need to wait for a thread with an appropriate topic (or the occasional open thread). If you find that too restrictive, you need to find another blog where commenting is less topic based. Since you have your own blog, this should be no problem.
I don’t see anything especially problematic here, but you are welcome to handle things differently on your own site.
David,
I think my comments are on the subject because PFOX, and other organizations like them, flat out lie and my comment was mearly to point out the source of their ability to lie and to justify the reason why they lie – mainly that they believe they are ammuned to sin and that, if it is for the greater good, they have God’s permission to lie.
I applaud you on uncovering their deception and hope you continue to do so because many people are being deceived and fooled by organizations that claim to tell the truth. For every lie they speak, at least one brother or sister of the GLBT community is hurt by it.
If you pay attention to such “ex gays” as Alan Chambers and Michael Glatze, it’s obvious their #1 mission is to pull a “reichstag fire” on the gay community at large. This is just one of their many tactics.
ALAN CHAMBERS: “The activist gay community, prides themselves – so to speak – on being tolerant, and open minded, and wanting to be inclusive. And that’s really their mantra, but yet when it comes to our perspective, it seems, from this story, that they’re not willing to, um, extend the same courtesy to us.
The Christian Community prides its self on being morally superior, doctrinally sound, literate of the scripture; however they can’t help themselves but prevaricate publicly, and assist in propagating unsubstantiated rumors every chance they get.
I have been an activist since 1986 and I have never once asked for or demanded tolerance or inclusiveness for anything I have either marched, protested, or raised money. I have however lent or used my voice etc. for the purpose of re-training and reeducating fact-less, ignorant, Medieval ideologies.
Demanding facts, truthful, agenda free answers, a debate, a legal leg up in this life, etc. does not require any of the rhetoric on tolerance and inclusion Mr. Chambers offers.
Now please understand folks it doesn’t require tit for tat tolerance in this instance, I want Mr. Chambers to tell me truthfully whether or not a gaggle of gay activists factually slapped, turned the tables or tossed out the PFOX literature. He choses to comment on hearsay, and then seeks tolerance by way of an insult and expressing partnership in a lie. I’m not so sure Christ would be so inclined to back up that social ideal.
It’s interesting that this press release from PFOX was all about fundraising. It does make the whole thing a little less sympathy-provoking.
Yeah, the same thing crossed my mind as well.
When I 1st read of PFOX’s story, my crap dectector went off. Thanks ExGay Watch for doing real dectective work to contact Arlington County Government concerning PFOX’s allegations. I’ve been to Arlington County’s Annual Fair several times, but didn’t make it this year. It’s generally a good free event to attend, it’s alcohol free and the attendees are civil. I suspected FPOX LIED about the event, it’s their regular MO to promote themselved as being victumized one way or another. If there was any truth to PFOX’s allegations, The Washington Post would have picked up on the story and done the same dective work with Arlington County. PFOX is involved with plenty of controversial activities in the DC Metro area that’s not well received by the community. Billboard Signs in Montgomery County, MD, handout literature to Montgomery County, MD Public School students who tossed it right into the trash can, the school administrators put the trash cans out for easy access, PFOX was outraged! PFOX is a strange organization, their DC HQ is a PO Box in Ft. Belvoir (an ARMY Post) in southern Fairfax County, VA yet they focus on people and spots beyond VA. PFOX is often in the local news, always playing the victum which turns more people against them than to support them.
If an ex-gay hit a gay man this would be all over the news. Here an angry gay man intefers in the rights of this PFOX volunteer to go straight and everyone is all over them. Jesus said “They hated me and they are going to hate YOU!” I have been involved in the ex-gay movement for 18 years. I have been spit on yelled at, cursed, one gay tried to seduce me, I’ve been cussed at, every kind of assault possible. However I know that not one hair will be touched on my head unless the LORD allows it…Gay Community it’s time to be honest…WHY ARE SO THREATENED BY GAYS WHO ARE FINALLY TRUTHFUL ABOUT THE “DEATHSTYLE” THAT THEY WERE LIVING AND WANT OUT!!!!!
If either happened is should be in the news. If you have some evidence that the incident described by PFOX happened, please provide it. We are more than willing to listen. Otherwise, what are you adding to the discussion?
Anthony, maybe because people like you shut down the discussion with words like deathstyle. There is no discussion with words like that.
I have been to events where Christians have screamed at me, spit on me, threaten death, blocked my path and would not let me pass, called me the worst names possible. Two years ago, there was on my campus a Christian conservative who started putting names of professors around campus who are gay and lesbian (even though it is not a topic of discussion in my classes) to “target” us so that students would disrupt our classes and make it impossible to teach. The school determined it was within his right to do so, and so we were not protected in case of possible violence. I had a friend who was attacked and his eye was permanently damaged–it is always dialated.
Yet, O’Reilly did a story about how Christians are attacked in San Francisco, but gays are never attacked or bullied at events.
Yes, it is clearly wrong when gay people attack Christians, but it happens on both sides of the fence. One thing I have noticed though–it is rare for gay people to go protest at Christian functions (unless there is some anti-gay thing going on). However, I have never been to a gay event where there are not Christians screaming at the gay people. Go to Disneyland on a gay night–wow! 50 to 100 protestors yelling and screaming at gay people just wanting a fun time. Gay people tend to allow Christians to have their events. Many Christians cannot allow gay people to ever hold a function without protest.
If Christian groups would just allow gay people to do their own thing, there would be so little hassel. Calling deathstyle is a provocation. Of course people are going to fight back, and honestly, I think some people thrive on it. I know when I did ministry I loved being attacked because I thought it meant I was doing the Lord’s work. No, it was because I was the rude one doing the assaulting. However, when I believe that to be a true Christian, I have to be attacked to confirm the truth of my religion, I want that. Still–I was the one who brought it on, right or wrong.
I just received this email from John lisle at the Arlington supporting the claims made in the PFOX press release: Eat that David Robert. An apology seems to be in order:
Mr. Loewe:
Because you inquired about the alleged incident at the Arlington County Fair, I wanted to let you know that I have now spoken to two officers who are familiar with an incident similar to what has been described.
One officer told me today he was on patrol at the Fair when a woman approached him and told him a man had knocked over pamphlets at the PFOX booth and assaulted another man there.
The officer then spoke to the alleged victim. He did not want to press charges and therefore no written report was filed.
Based on the description the officer was given, he located the suspect at the Fair. Another officer escorted that gentleman off the Fair grounds.
If you have any additional questions please let me know.
John Lisle
Media Relations Office
Arlington County Police Dept.
1425 N. Courthouse Rd.
Arlington, VA 22201
703-228-4311 phone
703-524-3674 fax
http://www.arlingtonva.us/police
Apologies for what? We received the same email barely an hour ago, and will report on it as we have everything else once we can make contact with Mr. Lisle and the officers involved. We also sent yet another email to Regina Griggs earlier today asking once again for any details she can give us to help determine what this is all about.
We have gone above and beyond to make certain we report only the facts on this issue, and we will continue to do so. This is just one more piece of a rather disturbing puzzle, but we will put it together. The only important thing is that the end product is the truth.
“Eat that David Robert”
Speaking of apologies, please don’t use language like that here.
End product …? The truth! It does not seems you care much for the truth! Only as long as your so-called truth supports your anti ex-gay agendas. But in due time I hope you and the
former and present EGW authors From BoxTrutleBulletin will apologize to the victim of this hate crime. That is if you can ever humble yourself enough to realize the terrible insult you have added to this hate crime.
If you were interested in the truth why didn´t you wait to write about this until you had all your facts straight?
For more than 10 days, Ex-Gay Watch has solicited information from all parties. David Roberts was told, and dutifully reported:
1. The police and fair organizers said that they were unaware of any incident. Officer Lisle told us this more than once.
2. Some eyewitnesses saw no incident during the course of the fair.
3. Some eyewitnesses saw a brief verbal disagreement.
4. No one witnessed any felony violence that would qualify as a “hate crime.”
5. No one identified any “homosexual activists” being involved in the dispute.
6. PFOX did not respond to our inquiries.
Of the above points, all remain true except item 1. The change in the police story appears to be the due to the police failing to find any record nor any recollection among available officers — and that failing, in turn, is in part due to PFOX failing to file charges against the alleged offender. The filing of charges would have ensured a proper public documentation of an allegation that PFOX appears to take seriously enough to give national attention.
I feel it is unfortunate that the police took nearly a month — two weeks since XGW’s first inquiry — to clarify what they know. We are still requesting the following information from the police and PFOX:
1. The names or badge numbers of the officers.
2. The identity of the offender.
3. The identity of the alleged victim.
4. A factual documentation of whether the offender was acting alone, or on behalf of homosexual activists as PFOX and Exodus have vaguely alleged.
The police and PFOX still owe the public some properly documented explanations of the alleged incident, and we hope they will provide some.
As for commenter Marcus Loewe, since he has repeatedly refused requests to document his own accusations and to answer legitimate questions, he is now banned.
Moderator Action: This was posted by banned commenter Marcus Loewe and this identity has also been banned.
Hey guys,
Is there anything further to report about Loewe’s claim?
Are we to assume that the incident did occur or that it did not?
Look for a post on that, probably this evening Timothy. We’ve been waiting for replies, some of which just came in.
thanks… I’ve been curious
So have we, but it’s taken time to get any useful information. Thanks.
So there is some truth to PFOX’s claims? I look forward to more details as they become available.
Nothing about this is obvious, which is why we have been checking with sources. Let’s just wait until the next post so we have some facts to discuss.
Yes, I would love to talk with you. Trust you all had a great Christmas? Take care now.