Exodus and Focus on the Family made prominent use of ex-gay advertising at the so-called Values Voter Summit today.
Courtesy of People for the American Way Foundation and Flickr, here are some snapshots:
(Ex-Gay Watch reviewed the above ad here in 2005.)
Note that, for the moment, PFOX has dropped “and Gays” from its name.
Finally, I noticed this photo from Bishop Harry Jackson’s High Impact Leadership Coalition. In all fairness, I’m not sure what kind of “change” it’s referring to. Political? Spiritual? Sexual? But the anger and fearmongering are obvious.
Also prominent in the images: Posters and brochures for the abstinence-only movement.
Taken together, PFAW Foundation’s images suggest a summit preoccupied by sexual issues to the detriment of other, arguably more urgent matters facing the United States. If others have more objective information about the summit, please feel free to post your observations or links in the comments.
In related news, Exodus executive vice president Randy Thomas commented on his blog about the summit:
It’s been an amazing day and it is only a little over halfway done! OH … and if you hear about ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) on the news… I might be on it. I participated in a press conference today concerning the matter and all of the major cable news and MSM were there. It was an amazing opportunity that will have it’s own post!
Yesterday, Thomas commented:
This is the event for the “social conservatives” of the Republican party. The registration packet had all kinds of stuff ranging from a ten commandments bookmark, to our Exodus brochure, to an EXCELLENT program book, to a rubber wristband with “ouramericanvalues.org” on it (Gary Bauer is the President.) Rubber wristbands are the new “ribbon” for symbolic cause jewelry.
The Exodus booth that Brad and David had set up earlier looked great. They, with Caryn on Publications, did a great job. We also have prime real estate in the exhibit hall … amazing traffic flow.
“Change or die” sounds to me more like a threat. As in “change or I will kill you.”
I’m looking at all this stuff. The photo ad that implies that gay people by law ARE or will become more valuable than an ex gay.
First of all, how arrogant is that?! If you’re no longer gay, you got that way BECAUSE the ex gay industry advertises that gay people and homosexuality IS less valuable to society.
And that heterosexuals deserve MORE value than any other human being they are sharing the planet with.
I thought that a human being’s value was in the fact that they are HUMAN, born free and that our gift is that we love and desire to BE loved.
I thought that treating another person the way YOU’D want to be treated WAS the most valuable rule of civilization, not that you’re not of value until you’re EXACTLY like we dictate to you.
Now that’s the XGW I know, present various part of the truth, speculate with disclaimers … but still speculate, parse out what works with your brand of stigmatization, tie it in with as negative as possible description and then present your view of us as our total message.
I was wondering if things had changed over here… apparently not.
Hi, Randy,
Ummm, what exactly are you disagreeing with, in the content of this post? And how does your (mis)characterization of XGW differ from what you do regularly in your own descriptions of gay people? Judge not, lest…. (I read that in the Bible. I encourage you to read it, too, sometime.)
Thanks in advance for any clarification.
that was a cold shot randy, and i really do wonder what “ex-gay” material is doing at a political conference. Particularly one such as this.
It illustrates (yet again) how the so-called “ex-gay” movement is just a dodge propagated by the anti-gay industry to undermine the lives of lgbts.
The “Change or die” shirt is probably an out-of-date play on P. Diddy’s (or whatever name he was going by at the time) whole “vote or die” campaign, which was pretty silly in itself.
And I get a kick out of what would term the “it’s just a phase” bookmarks (“Feelings change”).
It’s seeing stuff like this overall though that makes me glad I waited until I was 23 before I came out to my parents and they no longer had any parental or financial power over me. Lord knows what of this dreck would have been foisted on me.
As a step toward refuting PFAW’s interpretation of the summit, I invite Randy or other attendees to please document the issues were discussed at the summit — and more importantly, how much time has been devoted to each issue.
I also invite Exodus officials to explain their reuse of ads that have embarrassed Exodus in the past. This Christian writer happens happens to believe that 1) Christians should not pity themselves, and 2) Christians should tell the truth. Unfortunately, the anti-hate-crime-law ad does portray conservative Christians pitying themselves, and the ad told several untruths that were discussed here back in 2005.
“change or die”?????? You’ve GOT to be kidding me. Where’s all the “love” that Exodus claims to pour out over gay people? You would never have seen this stuff during the ’98 “summer of hate.”
Even if by “die” you mean “spiritual death” or “death by emptiness that gayness brings” it’s still a complete lie, and one that undermines any “love” agenda that these crooks have or may have once had.
Oh, and by the way, ex-gays who are afraid of being valued as less than homos b/c of hate crimes legislation: those of you who still appear to be gay or come off as gay – and many of you do – hate crimes laws would protect you from anybody who attacks you for that reason. It protects victims of crimes committed because of the PERCEPTION of homosexuality, not homosexual acts. So let’s say, for example, as a struggling ex-gay you still can’t get that lisp out of your speech or that prance out of your walk. If somebody lunges at you from behind for thinking that you’re a ‘mo even though you’re just an EX-‘mo, you STILL get that protection because the guy THOUGHT you were a full-blown, flaming rhymes-with-maggot.
oh, and you get protections as a Christian if they kill you for being a Christian, too.
Like I said, “Change or Die” was not Exodus’ message and might not have been an exgay-related message. I simply thought it was ironic, and possibly indicative of the smug contempt that some summit-affiliated groups express toward people who are different from them.
Randy Thomas accuses Exgaywatch of being biased and only portraying part of the truth.
Randy’s criticisms would make far more sense if he directed them at himself, Exodus and Focus on the Family, particularly their completely dishonest attack on ENDA.
It used to be that people living in glass houses were afraid of throwing stones, but in the current political climate, it is a common practice to accuse your opponents of doing what you are doing yourself. Whether your opponent does the same or not isn’t really material. I suspect this is out of the Rove playbook.
Good job, Randy, in making your attack without pointing out one specific error, lie or misrepresentation. Karl Rove would be proud.
Randy,
It would be useful to the discussion if you could be more specific about your issues with the post. If there is another side, present it, but simply disparaging XGW doesn’t help.
Substitute your own name for XGW in your comment above and tell me how you might wish to respond.
I cannot help but ache for these people. I realize that i as a homosexual man am not perfect, or perfectly pure. But i do know what i’m attracted to, and that wont change.
For all the young gay kids out there, i’m so sorry that you have to go through such horrible peer pressure and social and spiritual stigmatization.
Yes there are kind former homosexuals, but honestly i’ve only met one man that i wouldnt question his sexuality now, and even that is held aloft mearly by appropriate gender reinforcement.
In the end we (the homosexual community) needs to build a bridge to the ex gay community. I think it would be a good token of honesty and love. Lets, in the meantime, show that we can be pure and live healthy lives. That homosexuality isnt a dissorder or something to fear.
Just a thought
-Mike
Occam’s Razor
Randy — things “change over here” about as much as your sexual orientation does.
Sure, we alter our appearance at times — but most are all still (mostly) gay.
Sorry, gay identified.
Sounds just like a typical 4 year study of Exodus’ outcomes, right?… 😉
More seriously — on the subject of anti-gay abuse and the need for hate crime laws — have you had an opportunity to mention the behaviour of “my dear friend” Ken Hutcherson and his nazi buddies with Alan Chambers?
We bought Ken’s activities to Alan’s attention, some months ago but, sadly, Alan was just rude to us rather than addressing the questions. Perhaps you may be more successful.
I believe grantdale is referring to Hutcherson’s Slavic, violently antigay co-leaders at Watchmen on the Walls:
https://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=809 (see page 2)
https://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2007/10/14/885
https://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2007/10/18/907
The Watchmen, co-led by Hutcherson, Scott Lively, and Slavic antigay bigots, refuse to condemn the murder of a Sacramento gay man by Slavic skinhead followers. Their claim to “not promote or condone violence” is not a statement of emphatic opposition to violence, but rather an abdication of responsibility while their followers go ahead and kill people in the United States or, in Latvia, pelt same-sex-attracted persons with bags of excrement.
The “Change or Die” T-shirt is a reference to Harry Jackson’s call to action against radical Islam and against multiculturalism, which he blames for the growth of radical Islam.
So it seems the summit did peripherally cover a few issues other than sex. Whether anyone at the summit addressed such issues in a manner that was respectful to individual liberties or civil society (including respect for nonviolent religious perspectives besides Christianity) remains to be seen.
“Change Or Die” is still a terrible, terrible motto to be carrying around on your shirt and it just wreaks of fascism. “Vote or Die” implies at least freedom of choice is involved. “Change or Die” leaves us begging the question, “what KIND of change? Change to WHAT?”
Randy, what is it exactly that you do with your orientation….when you think no one is watching?
I can see what you do when you know someone is…
Mike,
is harry jackson serious? in the past, when some folks claimed to speak out against multiculturalism, it usually meant that they were hinting that African-American culture was inferior.
Hinting, I say because they were too cowardly to be open with their racism.
I guess Mr. Jackson doesn’t care. To him, adopting the language of those who would oppress him for his racial heritage means nothing.
Change or die ironically sounds a lot like evolution. If a species does not change and adapt to changing circustances, their species will become extinct.
Just guessing, but in view of his other known beliefs, he just doesn’t seem like someone with a Darwinian world view.
Both the far left and the far right seem to enjoy accusing each other of being too cozy with radical religion and demanding that anybody change, except themselves. Flinging mud and telling others to change is a lot easier than changing oneself.
I hope that people like Wayne Besen (as well as People for the American Way, etc.) are not only photographing and filming these events but submitting it to news media so that this information can be submitted to the general public via National Television and radio. CNN, MSNBS, etc. need to show this outrageous bigotry and hateful political propaganda to the general public. All of this information will stand as a witness against psychotic and rabid organizations like PFOX and Focus on the Family especially during the 2008 elections. The more they persist in their efforts to malign and hate the more mainstream America will not only distance themselves from them but will look at these people as the crazed lunes they really are.
It is through constant and relentless educating and raising awareness that these creeps will be placed in the public view with their real agenda of bigotry and hate completely exposed.
The first photo was quite hillarious.
The second one, *shrug.
The third one, whatever happened to gay ppl? Ah, i see… they ALL CAN and DO go straight. Not to mention that they should and must.
Poor Alan and Randy, they have their hands full now that under their leadership the numbers at the Exodus National Conferences have dropped off terribly. When I was involved with Exodus the numbers were going up. If you both don’t get your acts together and you keep removing people from the ranks of Exodus that God used for the grwoth of Exodus you won’t have many people left and eventually the protection of the Holy Spirit will be removed from Exodus. Look at AA Mr Chambers and Mr Thomas when they fell off their vision and became so inclusive (in the wrong ways) that the message became dilluted and powerless! I’ve been warning Exodus about this since I decided to jump ship before it sinks. I sacrificed myself voluntarily. I knew that I would have been asked to leave Exodus but I couldn’t stand where Exodus was going. You guys needed a stiff rebuke and you are getting it. The thought that you would attack an ex-gay leader on a gay website is outrageous (even if you no longer agree with him) People like myself and Dr Elizabeth Moberly won’t have anything to do with Exodus or its leadership. Until you apoligize for the outrageous way that you have treated us, we wouldn’t think of coming back and supporting you. Your pride will kill Exodus if you don’t repent. The next thing we will hear about is you Mr Chambers being found in a gay bar in Washington, DC just like your predecessor John Paulk if you continue to become arrogant and prideful. “Remember pride cometh before a fall” Imagine that Dr Elizabeth Moberly one of the greatest people who helped form Exodus and one of the most faithful activists of Exodus and proponents of its works won’t even have anything to do with you. Keep making an ass of yourselves Mr Chambers and Mr Thomas and I’ll give ex-gay watch a total assessment of just how much Exodus is fading… You are messing with the wrong person Mr Chambers. Remember I am now heterosexual because of the greatness of (the early) Exodus International. I am no longer a weak person who might have feared your “public attempts at shame”. My family has paid dearly for the sin of Exodus however God has watched over us through it all. Look at Parents and Fiends of Exgays and Exodus since I left, they are shadows of what they used to be!!! I still love homosexuals and I still have been called by God to help them whether I carry the name of Exodus or not! May God have mercy on you for your outrageous comments! AAF
oh wow!
The Bat DooDoo Crazy Wing of the ex-gay movement in a throw down with the Dobson Is My Pimp Wing!
I gotta go make some popcorn for this.
It’s about time that Exodus starts accounting for the unspeakable ways that they have treated some of their leaders. Many of us in the early years of Exodus gave up precious time away from our families to spread the Good News that God can heal the homosexual. That message still stands. I have never deviated from it. God can and still uses Exodus and Homosexuals Anonoymous and the other 2 ex-gay networks to reach out to the gay community when they are hurting.
Many of you in the gay commmunity accused people like me of “being in bed” with the Dobson Camp and Reclaiming America Camp. My wife and I lived on less than $30,000 a year in Washington, DC to keep Transformation Ministries going. The ex-gay movement used to laugh at the gay activists when we used to hear statements like PFOX and Exodus has the Christian Right in their back pocket and that they were giving us millions of dollars. Organizations like this were using the ex-gay movement to push back the gay poitical agenda (and I still belive that the gay political agenda is wrong for America) however when we asked for financial support, we were often overlooked
That is why I get so upset with orgs like “Ex-gay Watch”. The ex-gay movement is a necessary organization for born-again Christians who follow the Holy Scriptures and believe that the gay lifestyle was killing us (physically and spiritually). The ex-gay community will still continue to help homosexuals…that is our mission from Almighty God. As much as Alan and his henchman Randy might try to embarress me publicly (as they have attempted this for the last 6 years) they know that God used me to bring hundreds of gay people to the ex-gay side.
I have fought for 18 years in this movement; attempting the balance act between the “hate of the gay community towards us” the gay political ativists like Wayne Besen who has tried to destroy my reputation for 10 years, and the Christian Church who genuinely didn’t understand how to begin to minister to the struggling homosexual. I’ve had to “bite my tongue” in regards to alll 3 camps. I saw many leaders have to close the doors of their ministries, quite a few ex-gays return to the lifestyle because we didn’t have the financial means to hire the proper staff to deal with the plethora of issues that an ex-gay brings to our groups. I cry for the young men and women who come to us for help but give-up and return to their addictions because we (the ex-gay movement) don’t have the proper finances and stffing to help them. I am the one that called James Dobson and D James Kennedy and other large Christian Family orgs to accountability.
You can’t tell women not to have an abortion if you are not going to offer her and her child proper care if they do the right thing and not have an abortion and in the same vein,you can’t ask a gay person to leave the gay lifestyle behind if your not going to assist him/her.
So when I had the audacity to really ask most of the Christian Family organizations to help, that’s when I was dragged into a room at Exodus and was read the riot act. Don’t let Exodus leadership deceive you, I knew exactly what I was doing and by my own choosing “sacrificed myself” politically in hopes that someone in the Christian right would begin to listen to our needs. When I was on the Dobson show…Jim Dobson shocked me when I asked him if we could tape 3 shows instead of one since I had flown all the way to Colorado for the tapings and his reply was; “Frankly Mr Falzarano, most of my listeners are going to find this broadcast (about homosexuality) quite distasteful. And then when Dobson insisted that I be “in studio” and not do the interview by phone from Washington, I had to listen to his producer tell me that I had to also PAY FOR MY OWN AIRLINE TICKET out to Colorado!
I still obeyed God and did the show and Dobson was so interested, he did wind up taping 3 shows but the great news was that over 4,400 people called for help that afternoon Dobson and his staff were astonished. I think that they were under the impression that homosexuality “just didn’t touch” good Christian families such as those who listened to his radio program.
Exodus is still a wonderful organization. God still uses it however some of its leadership such as Mary Heathman, Anita Worthen and (my replacement) Regina Griggs should have been booted from leadership years ago. They are unhealthy woman (the kind that creates a gay son) and may I note all three HAVE gay sons! they should have stepped down. The new male leadership has been so concerned with the new (and younger) recruits that they forgot about the people that were there already that needed them.
Exodus also teaches a “once saved always saved ” theory on Christian salvation in direct contradiction to chapters 2-5 of the Book of Hebrews. I believe that it is very hard to lose your salvation, that noone can “rip you out of the hands of Jesus” but that by our own choice we can choose to walk away fro God. With the danger of Exodus’ erroneous teaching on this matter that’s why certain people aren’t making it out of homosexuality. That’s why there are so many ex-ex-gays because Exodus isn’t teaching its members the whole gospel. And if they don’t turn from this soon, I see more hard-times coming for Exodus. The Words of Jesus are clear; “he who OVERCOMES will sit on the throne with Him…
Anthony, XGW has never accused you of selling out to the religious right.
FRC kicked you out of PFOX and named Regina Griggs as a puppet/figurehead after you protested the takeover of the ex-gay movement by the religious right. So I’m surprised that you would deny now that Exodus is addicted to Focus on the Family’s publicity machine, PFOX is dependent upon FRC and the Thomas More Center for leadership and political/legal access, and Stephen Bennett is dependent upon the American Family Association’s own publicity machine. NARTH is dependent upon all of the above, since it has repeatedly destroyed its mainstream scientific credibility with its leaders’ advocacy of slavery (Gerald Schoenewolf), sexism (Joseph Nicolosi), child abuse (Joseph Berger), and neo-Nazi “researchers” (Paul Cameron and Scott Lively).
Anthony, you can “re-imagine” your past criticisms of ex-gay entanglement with the vanity and corruption of the religious right if you wish. But God gave some of us strong memories.
Tell me Anthony, what problem would you have with homosexuality if it were not a sin?
After several years of just not caring to participate in discussions like this, it’s sad to see, Anthony, that folks like you have managed to squeeze yourselves into ever smaller rhetorical boxes. Instead of “reach(ing) out to the gay community when they are hurting,” you “still believe that the gay political agenda is wrong for America.” Which part of that agenda is wrong? The part that provides protection from discrimination? The part that provides an avenue for justice at the federal level should local/state justice systems fail to address a wrong? The part that allows freely chosen adult same-sex relationships the rights and responsibilities we have always provided to freely chosen adult opposite-sex relationships?
Anthony, when
yourthe ex-gay version of reaching out to help the gay community no longer includes doing so with clubs (rhetorical, legal, psychological, or physical), then I might agree that you have something to say that might be worth the time it takes for me to listen. But I wasn’t created by an unhealthy father or an unhealthy mother (you know, Anthony, the kind that produce gay sons). I don’t suffer from an addiction to same-sex behavior. I suffer from the addictions of others: their addictions to attention, money, power, mob validation, and faith.The scorpion you tried to float across the pond stung you. I get it. What you need to understand is that you tried to float a scorpion across the pond on your back.
A is A
Anthony’s appearances are getting stranger, and there is a serious martyr fight going on. Keep it up–it is jaw-dropping.
Dear Michael, Here is another opportunity to clear up another fallacy that you believe. It was The Family Research Council and mainly Bob Knight who constantly went to bat for the ex-gay person. Just like me that shot their own warrior (Gary Bauer) who loves homosexuals and just agrees with the gay political agenda. It was under Gary and Bob Knights watch that Transformation Ministries and PFOX grew. They honestly believed that it was hypocritical of them to fight the gay political agenda without showing the compassion of Jesus Christ towards the homosexual person and/or ex-gay. I don’t know much about the new guard at FRC but the old guard TRULY cared. You really need to give credit ti Bauer and Knight for their compassion. One year when the staff of FRC knew that Dianne and I were going to have a lean Christmas, the entire staff made a collection and gave my family a complete Christmas. They called Dianne to see what the kids wanted fo Christmas. They even presented us with a decent check and told us to go but something frivolous.
When Pat Robertson asked me on his show. At first he didn’t even care to do the interview. I remember him sitting off camera as Terry Musiel interviewed me HOWEVER afterwards he walked up to me shook my hand, thanked me for coming and then turned to me and said, “You have changed my entire understanding of the homosexual person. Two weeks later when he realized that we were running the ministry on such a tight budget, he mailed Transformation a check for $10,000.00. So please be careful when you began to judge the Christian right. Many of them were truly concerned. FRC raised over $225,000.00 for TCM and PFOX but that money was used to hire a proper pastoral staff for ex-gays to get help. Now we did meet the right-wing lunatics who couldn’t care less about gay people. That wanted them to just go away. These hypocrites were the ones that I stayed away from.
In regards to Michael Johnston…I warned everybody about him. Here was a man who just renounced his homosexual lifestyle without getting help from Exodus. I warned Bob Knight, “You better not put him out front, he is healed, he is just white knuckling it! So when he had a sexual fall, I wasn’t surprised…I feel badly for him however he slandered my good name all over the place. People in the movement used to tell me some of the things he would say about me. He was not a nice person.
Emproph,
In regards to your question to me, I refer you to the comments Sy Rogers (who was a role model to me as I exited the gay lifestyle). He appeared on the Phil Donahue Show in 1989. Phil asked him on national TV, “If you weren’t Christian, would you have left the gay lifetyle” We were all at the Exodus National Conference when this show aired. There were tons of ex-gays at the conference watching the broadcast. We all couldn’t wait for his answer. He finally said, “No I would not have left the gay lifestyle behind. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do” I also received a lot of support from my gay friends, but I had to leave it behind because that’s what God requires of us”. Sexual purity and chastity is what God requires of all Christians whether you are straight or gay!!! He holds all His people to the same standard!
I also left homosexuality behind because I saw what AIDS had done to my friends. I lost over 40 frinds and three ex-boyfriends to AIDS. It was devestating to me to bury 40 of my friends. Most of them were under 38 years old. I also wanted to get married and have a traditional family (which I now have). The other reason that I sought healing from my homosexual orientation was that I began to see the emptiness of the gay male world. Lesbians tend to have longer-term relationship however, especially in the pre-AIDS days. Most gay male relationships were short lived
Dear Joe, You forget that I was gay for 9 years. You are never going to convince me that the gay world was great. The gay world offers us hamburger when Jesus Christ offers us filet mignon. When did you learn to settle for second-best. When are you going to wake-up and start being honest with yourself about just how screwed-up the gay subculture is. Do I need to remind you of the dark-side of the gay lifestyle. If you don’t see it then you must truly be blind.
I am know married with two children. I have a caring wife of 24 years but most importantly, I am right with God. i can sleep at night! The even greater news is that I can be a role model to other CHristian gay man and woman who REALLY KNOW what the bible says about homosexuality and want out. If you are truly not a believer in Jesus Christ, then there is no motivation to seek healing from a homosexual neurosis,however if you believe (as the bible says) that practicing homosexuals WILL NOT enter the kingdom of God you can see where many of us are glad that Exodus and Homosexual’s Anonymous exist! AAF
After watching a video where Mr. Falzarano was all but conducting a verbal S&M session with a bunch of wide-eyed, young boys looking up at him with liquid eyes — and after watching Mr. Falzarano obviously excited at his position of power over them, that’s when I knew what his true story was. It’s not unlike Porno Pete’s frequent visits to sex clubs. When one pushes down one’s sexual orientation, one doesn’t change. One merely finds a new way to scratch that itch.
I have to confess, though, after guffawing at the over the top picture with my good friend Randy Thomas doing his Blue Steel model face, the fact that they’re using rubber bands around the wrists at these events is fabulous irony. (Just snap the rubber band when you feel tempted! — the Liberty University method).
Anthony, it seems to me that in your comments about gay male relationships, you make generalizations.
I am a gay male and I have seen bad relationships involving gay men. However, I have also seen and continue to see loving, caring relationships that last for a long time.
What it all comes down to is 1. personal responsibility and 2. no attempting to use a relationship to validate yourself as a person.
It is always incredible to me that many “ex-gays” blame the orientation for their own personal bad behavior. I do not have a bunch of sexual partners, I do not drink, I do not partake in drugs.
So here is the question, Anthony; am I the standard gay male or do you view me as an anamoly?
If there is any emptiness in the gay male world as a whole, a lot can be contributed to folks like Robert Knight and company standing in the way of our sociological, psychological, spiritual and economic maturation.
Rather than fighting us, how about fighting them, huh
Anthony,
Then your standard of sin is not based on discernable harm.
Mine is.
Steve, You seem to be such a cynical person. You would consider someone that is acting as role model for other ex-gays, someone that has gone through the pain of recovery that is trying to help others as on a S?M trip? What kind of porno do you watch that you would say suvh a thing. Would you consider someone that is at AA that has been sober for 8 years speaking at a meeting of new AA members in an attempt to encourage them as on that same S/M trip Steve the bible says that the strong will lift up the weak. I was weak once and got help from Sy Rogers, Joe Dallas, Elizabeth Moberly, Jeff Konrad, and LeAnne Payne. Know that I have recovered my hetrosexuality and have had 18 full years of sexual sobriety don’t I have the right to be a role model to them. Have you ever once (even from the very cynical Wayne Besen) have you heard of one inuendo of sexual impropriety concerning me??? Gay political orgs in DC sent “plants” into my Transformation ex-gay group to try to discredit me but they never were sucessful. They just couldn’t get it through there head that I was healed… You call that fair?
Describe in detail what you mean by discernible harm???
Discernable = recognizable
Harm = bad
Discernable harm = recognizable bad
Mr. Falzarano, far from being cynical, I’m the most fabulously positive person you’ll ever meet. I’ve met quite a few exgays and if you want to know the definition of a “sad lifestyle,” that’s it. I cannot tell you the numbers who have contacted me through my website — even though I am not a minister nor a political person, but merely a songwriter and blogger — telling me the real truth about what you’re selling to those innocents you claim to love so very much.
It’s your theology, your church and your political agenda that makes life difficult for otherwise healthy LGBT persons. It is irrelevant to me and my life whether or not you’re able to function as a heterosexual, even as you fight off your persistent gay-aholism. Still, I’m glad you are able to live consistently within your belief system.
If only you and yours would allow us the same privilege.
Dear Steve,
No one is shoving ex-gay ministry down your throat. As I mentioned we are a group of organizations that help bible believing homosexuals who are sick and tired of being gay and want out. If we had some decent capital we could be ministering to twice as many people. Some day when you’re an older gay male who might be on his 10th relationship and you have come to the end of your rope and that you might want to turn to God instead of the bottle this organization will be here for you (with no questions asked). I hope that I might be able to minister to people like Wayne Besen one day. I think that what he is attempting to do right now in his great hatred towards the ex-gay movement is comparable to when Paul started out killiing the early Christians but wound up being one of the greatest Christians to ever live. God not only forgave Paul his sins, he even allowed him to write 2/3 of the New Testament. That’s the kind of God I want to serve. A forgiving loving God. Jesus is now the love of my life! AAF
Dear Emphroph,
All sin harms someone. the ex-gay movement backs someone who “just might have gotten in a little too deep” the opportunity for forgiveness and restoration. I don’t consider myself a person who has become heterosexual AGAIN! I consider myself to have become a heterosexual for the first time and until you have taken this journey, its jsut too hard to describe. Please consider reading Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth by Dr Jeff Satinover…it just blew me away…It’s one of the most honest books on sexuality that I have ever read….Thanks, AAF
Anthony, the site Exgay Watch would not exist if it were not for exgay groups shoving it down our collective throats. If exgays did not fight to deny gays political access, I doubt anyone would be criticizing any exgay. However, when exgays go to Republican political conventions to hurt us, we cannot be silent. Also, I do not know what you mean by gay subculture. I have a 15 year relationship; I don’t drink or use drugs; I don’t have sex outside of my relationship. Am I an anomoly? You were part of a certain group of people in the 80s–your experience should not be generalized to include all of us. The fact that you were associated with Roy Cohn suggests a group of self-hating, dangerous gay people that are far removed from the rest of us.
Steve, what video are you talking about?
How can a book about politics be the most honest book on sexuality you’ve read? Sexuality is sexuality and politics are politics. It’s people like the professional ex-gay/heterosexuals that politicize sexuality. We’re forced to retaliate politically (that is, on THEIR terms).
“All sin harms someone.”
Indeed.
But how does my homosexuality harm?
My homosexuality has never hurt anyone, and it is not a sin.
Anthony, you miss my point entirely: the words that come out of your mouth are conflicted. On the one hand, you are trying to “help” the gay community when they are “hurting.” On the other, you paint the gay community with a wide brush: we are the products of unhealthy parents, addicted to our sexual behaviors, undeserving of equal protection under the law, unable to achieve eternal life in heaven. So which is it? The rhetorical boxes into which you (and, to a great extent, the ex-gay activist community) have been hemmed are no longer sufficient to contain your double-speak.
I haven’t settled for second best. I have embraced my reality, my dreams and aspirations, my wants, desires, and needs. I have never been dishonest with myself about the nature of the gay community. As in any community, there is a wide diversity of players and roles, including those who pursue their interests at the expense of themselves and others. While you lived a gay life that saw you lose 40 friends to AIDS, I know only a few people with HIV. While many ex-gays paint the gay lifestyle as one of drugs and raves and sexual narcisism, my gay lifestyle is devoid of drugs and wanton sex, and includes a rewarding career, a large collection of friends (straight, gay, and bi), a karaoke habit, and a growing collection of adopted little brothers (straight, gay, and bi) who need nurturing and attention and occasional help from an older adult that they can go to without fear of being manipulated and used.
The ex-gay community could make great progress in relations with the gay community simply by recognizing and acknowledging the fact that your stories are not necessarily ours; that your unhealthy gay experiences are not universal among gay people; that your needs for validation from god and man are not necessarily ours; that contributing to a culture that stigmatizes homosexuality makes you co-conspirators in the dark-side of the culture in which so many ex-gays seem to find themselves.
I’m not trying to tell you that being gay is great. It’s as challenging-if not more so-than being christian or straight or black or female. It can also be as individually rewarding for some of us: we don’t all feel that life would be better if we were different. I don’t want to stand in the way of anyone who wants to be straight. By all means, go in peace to love and serve yourselves, as we all should. Just, don’t keep trying to do it at someone else’s expense.
Mr. Falzarano,
I’m happy to see you coming here and personally responding to the posts here. Sadly, as is usual with “exgay” ministers, you don’t seem very interested in actually responding to the actual posts addressed to you. Your non-responsive “preaching” is precisely the sort of evasive doubletalk that is the hallmark of the exgay script.
There are quite a number of “Bible-believing” Christians who realize that anti-gay theology is based on bad theology, bad tradition and misinterpretation. I’m sorry you’re stuck in a medieval mindset which is both cruel and deceitful to LGBT persons.
Aaron, the video of Falzarano in front of those boys was from some news story about the exgay lifestyle a few years ago. It told me everything I needed to know about people who think they’re heterosexual simply because they have been able to avoid having gay sex. This is precisely how Sen. Larry Craig is able to assert that he’s “not gay.”
P.S. Anthony, my relationship has lasted 23 years. As soon as your marriage has lasted as long as mine, then you can lecture me about how much better a human being you are.
Mr. Falzarano,
I and Pam Ferguson are exceptions, we are heterosexual, formerly married women. She was married to a gay man, I wasn’t. But I was in an interracial marriage.
I’m black, my husband was white.
Here’s what I know about being in a minority, barely a generation from institutionalized discrimination.
1. It is EXHAUSTING and a wasteful preoccupation trying to justify, explain and determine yourself among a group in power who barely sees you as human, let alone as talented and compassionate.
2. It’s takes too much away from other pursuits, and simpler pleasures ARE sacrificed, just to live in peace.
3. As a woman, I know that it’s hard to maintain dignity when catcalls, harassment and other forms of intrusions on your personal peace are part of every day life.
I can understand growing tired of being gay. It’s hard to be a woman, it’s hard to be black….it’s hard to be anything that the majority feels they have a right to dictate to you, instead of respecting your individuality and the hills and valleys that made you.
However, I also know when someone has CAVED to the exhaustion. I know what the ex gay industry promises, and most often they FAIL and badly. Because they require MORE exercises and disciplines and exhausting you with what you’re running from.
Only THIS time, making heterosexuality look easy, God driven and unchallenged in the law….isn’t so hard.
You’ve witnessed straight people get away with whatever all your life.
Where a gay person can’t marry even once, a straight person can over and over again no matter how many times they screw it up, nor how many children are damaged, they can make more…unchallenged.
Anthony….you had NO CHOICE. You NEVER did….you were set up the moment being gay was a revelation to you and not only did YOU know it, all the straight people around you KNEW too.
They always know when to strike a vulnerable gay person.
Sure, say all you want about how happy you are and how lucky you feel having the wife and kids.
You weren’t lucky….it was a calculation and expectation from birth that you not fail as a heterosexual.
However, to fail as a gay person is a lifelong career for a lot of straight people.
And you getting tired of it, is understandable.
However, some of your brethren working to maintain the very discriminatory institutions that exhausted you is unforgivable.
I hate light skinned aunts that passed for white, only for certain types of access and minor convenience. But they would have DIED first before they’d ever go along with or tell a white person that Jim Crow was a rightful institution and their passing was worthy of praise. They didn’t pass for praise, but for FREEDOM.
Ex gays pass for that also. And at the same time, do not want even the option of freedom that would keep straight people from making and maintaining the huge mistake of discrimination from happening. Even truth in public education is interfered with and young gays and lesbians set up for intervention before they can realize themselves in full.
Ex gays are an example of people who CAVE. Lose themselves in the majority’s dictation on the majorities terms, NOT their own.
And that option is kept from gay people who either refuse to cave, or are stronger than you ever were.
It takes a VERY strong person to come out of such trials by fire with their real selves intact.
Fear is a powerful tool, and easily detectable and to exploit, Mr. Fazarano.
And the ex gays have already shown their hand to use fear, and isolation to get their way.
When the prey is exhausted enough, their open arms look like a safe harbor.
And maybe it is.
But it still took your exhaustion, something they engage in maintaining….to make that happen.
There is no need for gay people to change. There is no medical urgency, no rendering of mental and emotional dysfunction that a job or other life choices can’t be accomplished and brilliantly.
No, to BE the unloved minority is tiring, and convincing people you belong and you can do wonders without changing isn’t helped by people who not only insist that changing is necessary….but necessary to offer anything else of merit to society.
When your very existence offends….not offending would be the logical thing to do.
But the offense straight people take is as irrational, stupid, wasteful and violent as the irrational feelings that anti black emotions did during Jim Crow.
Same irrationality, different group of human beings to legally direct it to.
You gave over your God given power and identity to fools who don’t appreciate your sacrifice.
And plenty of gay people already know and won’t give into such a sacrifice. The straight folks who demand it, aren’t worth it.
Who ARE they anyway? Nobody but overseers.
Nobody who entitled themselves to tell you who you are and what you’re to do with it.
I say I’ll take it up with God, then…NOT THEM.
While we’re all still dancing on this mortal coil, they have to come up with a better excuse than what they have so far.
They’ve got nothing on you Anthony and never did.
Sorry, you’re NOT one of US anymore. The us being the folks who endured whatever prejudice, scorn and snobbery, and we’re still who we ever were and were meant to be.
That is deserving of respect, and it will be us, finally who will teach the truth about who belongs and how we were made and where we come from.
What you espouse, Mr. F….is that you were ok being TOLD, you hid out, you’re doing it still.
So that you don’t know what to do and how it’s done, to get through to the other side, you know what straight people do.
But not what GAY people do.
So live as you like, just don’t you…or any other ex gay think that it’s brave or strong to be what you are now. You’re being accepted for another reason entirely, and we know what that is…and know it’s not what’s meant to or should be.
Oops, typos!
Correction: I HAD light skinned aunts.
Correction: And THAT gay people fail is a lifelong career pursuit for some straight people.
Sorry for the errors.
As usual, beautifully said, Regan.
And congrats on 23 years, Steve.
STEVE, my love. I really, REALLY want to see you and Jim soon.
I love you two so much. Is Jim going to perform “The Zero Hour” again locally?
Hope so, I want to see it again!
Hugs…
Regan, Jim will be performing Zero Hour in San Francisco beginning next month. The details are on my blog. Or will be soon. It’s also been optioned for New York. Hopefully, we’ll open in the Spring.
Steve,
For your own information, Dianne and I have been married for 24 years. I couldn’t keep a relationship with a guy for 6 months especially in the pre-AIDS days. I was young and believed in having a relationship with a gut buying a house with a white picket and living happily ever after…Unfortunately I was a dinosaur…my gay friends told me to wake up and smell the coffee. I was young, educated, a body builder and attractive. I couldn’t understand why male gay relationships didn’t work (and I wasn’t the only one crying the lament). I eventually did become one of the typical gay zombies of the early 80’s. I slept around, Studio 54, Fire Island, The Hamptons. i also was the kept-boy of the McCarthy era Roy Cohn. So I had the opportunity to meet the upper echelons of New York society. And to be honest with you, it was pretty depressing. Then AIDS hit and about that time Jesus saved me. I wasn’t looking for Him. He pursued me. A troubled gay man that I met through a personal ad introduced me to Jesus after sex one night. He informed me that God didn’t want him to be gay and then he turned to me and said, “and God doesn’t want you to be gay either”. Can you believe that he actually brought a bible that night and showed me the scriptures that condemened homosexual behavior (NOT HOMOSEXUALS) He told me that God loved me and that I didn’t have to be gay. That there was a difference between being homosexual and being gay.
Well you can only imagine how this got my attention. Well here I am because I listened to the voice and warning of God that night…and the same Good News is available to whomever wants to obey God’s call to sexual purity….Thank, AAF
Anthony,
I am glad you brought up your past.
There have been extreme issues regarding the truthiness (thank you Stephen Colbert) of your version of events. Wayne Besen talked about contradictions in your various stories. However since you will probably attack Besen’s credibility, I will use another source.
According to the Independent Gay Forum, you have told three different versions of how “God saved you.”
I see that you have tried to incorporate them all in your answer. But I am confused by something:
But then there is this one:
and finally this one:
By the way, Anthony – intentionally telling a lie is a sin.
Anthony, you did it again. You say you were a typical gay zombie during that period, but then you talk about how atipical your situation was. Your situation is so far removed from most of us that I don’t think you can speak in generalizations. The fact that you were the kept-boy of Roy Cohn, one of the most self-hating gay people ever, tells me a lot. Everything in your posts tend to be about self-interest, and you even say Jesus pursued you (again establishing how it is all about you). Still you take everything about you and blow it up to everyone’s situation. You situation is so particular that I suspect almost no one on the site could say they share similiar experiences.
Regan, you make a good point about caving and passing. In my exgay situation, they “taught” us how to be more masculine (I had nothing to change) or feminine. To do what? Pass among people who would be uncomfortable with us as gay.
Regan,
If you don’t know it, I am nota shrinking violet! I am an Italian from greater New York and an ex-gay activist. I have had to stand up to gay activists in DC, Gearldo on TV and James Dobson. I had to endure a betrayal by Exodus International (an organization that I had supported for over 10 years. I don’t take c#@p from anyone and I can’t stand phonies. So don’t think that I was a mild gay man that the Christian Right took advantage of. You think being gay is tough. Try being an ex-gay. We are the new minority!!!
Anyone in gay political circles will tell you that I have not “hid out”. I have been called by Almighty God to come up against the gay political activist (Goliath)
I have been called by God (to be used by Him) to set captives free from the bondage of homosexuality by truth. The gay political activists are lying to you. There is no gay gene! (well maybe Levi 501’s) The gay community has been lied to and a small group of courageous ex-gays have been called by God to let the gay community know that there is freedom from homosexuality and that NOONE IS BORN GAY! Check out the 3 “fake studies” that have been planted by the gay activists in the media. The SECULAR scientific community had discredited these studies have anyone of you taken the time to read Dr Satinover’s book “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth” to see if I am telling the truth?
Anthony,
I suppose now you will talk about the lie of “gay bowel syndrome” and how gay men have a “short life span.”
and isn’t dr. satinover a member of NARTH, the group that freely uses the work of discredited researcher Paul Cameron?
mcewen, all three accounts are accurate. If you do the math you will realize that all three are on a time line. AAF
Anthony said:I have been called by God (to be used by Him) to set captives free from the bondage
All due respect, Mr. Falzarano, but I used to say stuff like this too when I was a part of the cult of conservative, literalist Christianism. See, I was raised in your religion. You happened upon it when you were sick of living the life of a pointless, loveless, plaything of a segment of the rich and famous. If I had reached your point and had been approached by someone at just the right time, I might have had the same emotional reaction that you had.
But then, I got saved. 🙂
Since you’re an admitted warrior in the culture war, do you ever get tired of your role? Do you ever consider being a maker of peace? Do you ever, in your secret and private heart, wonder if waging a culture war is really a Godly action? And if so, do you ever wonder if there’s a better way that we can, as people of integrity, deal with our differences?
Anthony,
There are many contradictions in your version of events.
Including:
Did you feel “empty” about the supposed gay life style or were u happy?
Did AIDS being widespread scare you or was it not a widespread disease at the time you became “ex-gay?”
Was your “conversion” the result of getting a negative HIV test result or God talking to you on the street?
If you can’t get your own story straight, how do you suppose you can tell gays that they can be straight?
Dear Aaron,
Noone is shoving the ex-gay movement down anyone’s throat. Isn’t the gay political movement in America shoving homosexuality down their throats? Most of the gay people I have known jsut want to be left alone. It is the highly paid gay political activists that are victimizing gay people/ Most of America would just leave gay people alone if they didn’t feel that they were being lobbyed by the gay political movement. America thinks that you are coming after their children and they’re not going to take it anymore. They have had enough. You will never get conservative Judeo-Christian America to accept homosexuality! That’s why the gay community is being rejected. You have allowed yourselves to be exploited by HRC and other orgs like them. When people feel that they have been forced into a corner they will come out scratching…
Anthony,
based on the presence of the “ex-gay” movement at this supposed Values Voters event in Florida and based on past actions by ex-gay organizations, including speaking at hearings against pro-gay ordinances (yourself included if I am not incorrect – I apologize if I am), I would say that your claim of ex-gays wanting to be left alone is a stone cold lie.
“Ex-gay” organizations are an extension of the anti-gay industry in that they undermine the rights and lives of gays and lesbians.
And by the way, a HUGE number of lgbts are raising children in this country. They aren’t just your children, they are our children too.
You see, you folks lie while appealing to emotion. You attempt to make us look like the outsiders, the oppressors, the invading forces. And that simply isn’t true.
mcewen,
I ahve just finished my first book on recovery from homosexuality which of course includes my personal testimony. It would take an hour to explain everything in context but I will take a second to try to put this in context
1. Around 1979-80 met a guy through the personal ads that was unhappy being gay and he was the 1st to plant the idea in my head that I wasn’t born gay
2. Early 80’s left NYC and moved to Boston to escape from the crazy NYC gay subculture and strted to look for monogamous gay relationships
3. Was on my way to a pornographic bookstore near the Public Garden in Boston when God’ the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “Anthony, I have been patient with you long enough, if you don’t leave the gay lifestyle now…you will die of AIDS (1982)
4. (1983) married Dianne thinking that if I got married that the gay part of me would just “go away”
5. Christmas 1985 Ed Burns (my former boyfriend) called me to tell me that he was dying of AIDS and that I should be tested. i the promised God that if He gave me a negative test result that I would never sleep with another man and get psychological help for my homosexuality
6. (1986-1989) Began to gather research on the ex-gay movement and then found out about Exodus International I hope this gives you a better timeline!
Steve, of cousr I get tired of this battle. i wish that I could just disappear into the lilly white suburbs and live happily ever after however “to much that has been given, much is expected” Now I devote my entire life to trying to raech as many people (gay or straight) that might be interested in leaving sexual addiction behind. That’s what God has called me to and most of the time I enjoy my work. especially when I get invited to the wedding of someone that I ahve helped!
Steve, of course I get tired of this battle. I sometimes wish that I could just disappear into the lilly white suburbs and live happily ever after,however “to much that has been given, much is expected”
Now I devote my entire life to trying to reach as many people (gay or straight) that might be interested in leaving sexual addiction behind. That’s what God has called me to and most of the time I enjoy my work. especially when I get invited to the wedding of someone that I have helped!
Good Night All, I really have enjoyed this dialogue. Will try to catch-up with everyone tomorrow. Please checkout our website. It might answer some questions that you might have.
Best regards, Anthony
anthony,
your explanations of your contradictions are still faulty. you didn’t answer all of the questions I have about them – especially whether or not you were happy being a gay man or felt empty.
And forgive me if I don’t go by your webpage.
You see I take personal responsibility for myself and don’t blame my orientation for any faults of my own.
Anthony said:
I knew it! There just had to be a tangible reason for you to have dredged up so much of this old manure recently, making the rounds on the blogs with a reinvention of yourself. A BOOK is in the works. I told Mike if I let you rattle on long enough you would tip your hand — you did not disappoint.
I suppose that also explains the link spam to your site which you continue to post despite my request that you stop. Your link is in your sig, people can find it if they want it, but stop using us for Google bait.
Anthony, if I had lived the life you seem to have, I would want to change as well, but quit blaming your own extremely lousy choices on being gay. And if you think you are a good witness for God, stop and ask yourself, in all honesty would anyone really want to be like you?
And yet it’s people like you that so many times are the face of God to others, and then the rest of us have to endure the legitimate hatred for all things Christian which you and others like you have instilled in them.
You’ve used up all the slack you are likely to receive from this editor Anthony, don’t expect any more.
I do not subscribe to any religious belief… and ‘revelations’ are as relevant as buddah’s, mohammed’s, st paul’s and the scientologists….
I definately cannot see how having sex with anything or anyone, anywhere, causes civilization’s decline. And even though it might not seem relevant to the topic at hand, How do ‘moral high-ground’ gay ppl or the ‘divinely morally superior’ say NO to public nudity or public sex ? Sex is like any other action, as long as you do it right it causes no harm… what’s the use of condemning it?
I also fail to see how homosexual, heterosexual or zoo’philia’ are on different ‘moral’ grounds.
Dear Anthony,
“Now I devote my entire life to trying to reach as many people (gay or straight) that might be interested in leaving sexual addiction behind. That’s what God has called me to and most of the time I enjoy my work. especially when I get invited to the wedding of someone that I have helped!”
At face value that seems like a good thing. One lil’ detail is you dont just try to reach out to the sexual addict if they are gay. It doesnt really matter if their sexually addicted or not, because as you recall, “The other reason that I sought healing from my homosexual orientation was that I began to see the emptiness of the gay male world”. In other words, gay=empty life, end of story, God assured Anthony so. Sadly for you, that isn’t necesarrily true for others or even most.
In conclusion, to purify the world as God would have it, “the ex-gay movement is a necessary organization for born-again Christians who follow the Holy Scriptures and believe that the gay lifestyle was killing us (physically and spiritually).” That isn’t a reason to deny gay ppl the right to marry or to have the right to not be discriminate against in the workplace. Why?, because AIDS=/=gay. And by the way, last I heard, the AIDS epidemic has been largelly controlled, i suppose due to the people creating awareness and explaining the importance of safe sex. Someone find me the link where I read that ^^.
I dont see the gay activists ‘reaching out’ to ex-gays UNLESS they do what you do. Vilifying(what do you want to call it?) and coercively forcing them to subscribe to your belief of homosexuality or else their this evil culprit of the talking snake which should be repelled and energetically but passively, fought against, no?
LOL. What a perfect little nightcap for a gay little weekend! Have fun polishing that turd, Anthony.
Thanks, XGW, for the necessary (if insufficient) round-up of the summit.
As for the “change or die” slogan, sure, out of context it’s a bit stark. That’s why this is called a culture war.
And “silence = death” – which for decades promoted the promiscuous profanity of “AIDS activism” – isn’t coercive and idiotic? Please….
Moderator Action 10/22: Long, rambling, off-topic comment deleted after repeated warnings to commenter.
Jeremayakovka, this wasn’t a round-up of the summit — just a couple of snapshots. Unless ex-gay themes were more prominent, it isn’t the responsibility of XGW to provide a full round-up of political summits.
Although I have found Anthony Falzarano’s comments quite amusing, a little does go a long, long way. Whether he is complaining about how he’s been mistreated by Exodus and PFOX, or inveighing against basic civil rights protections for gay people, or now preaching the end times, Anthony seems incapable of sticking to any one train of thought. It’s quite pointless for anyone to attempt to engage him in a discussion. His only purpose seems to be to hijack this site and make it all about Anthony.
However, I cannot leave unchallenged his remarks (maybe on another post) about how we’ll all come running to the ex-gay groups for help once we get old. Because, of course, being old and gay is such a miserable experience. THEN we will regret that we didn’t follow Anthony’s example and leave gay life and get married and blah, blah, blah.
As I read his remark, I thought of last Sunday afternoon, when I was together with a group of eight friends, all of us gay men in our 50s and 60s. We were at one man’s lovely home in the Virginia countryside, playing croquet, watching the sunset over the Blue Ridge Mountains, enjoying dinner on the deck as the stars came out. As couples, our histories ranged from the two life partners who’ve been together almost 30 years and raised a daughter, to our host and his boyfriend, who just recently met and started dating.
There was one trait we all had in common: we had all been married, three of us for over 25 years. Most of us were genuinely happy in our marriages as well, at least for some time. Yet all of us came to realize that we were trying to ignore or deny our true identity, and finally chose the path of honesty and self-acceptance.
Do we each have our individual problems and issues? Sure we do. But no more than all of my heterosexual friends and relatives of the same age. I can tell you one thing: whatever our problems, not one of us regrets living openly as gay.
So please all of you ex-gay “leaders”–whether Anthony or Randy or Alan. Stop trying to scare younger people with that specter of the miserable older gay man. I’ve lived the life you live right now, and I’m living the life of an older gay man, and I know which life is more open, more honest, happier, and healthier.
NickC,
Your post is great. I just turned 54 and my partner is 60. Most of our gay friends are seniors or near seniors. Many of them have been in long term relationships and some are newlyweds. We are all deliriously happy. Poor Mr. Falzarano. The only gay mentors he had were a crowd of drugging, self-loathing acolytes of the most infamous self-loathing, political animal of all — the detestable Roy Cohn. If my early gay life had been as nothing more than Mr. Cohn’s meat garage, I think I would have joined ANY religious cult that could got me out of that, including Scientology.
I think the irony is lost on Anthony that he basically became his idol. He is now the Roy Cohn of exgays, living in the closet, pretending to be straight, sublimating his homosexuality through his power exchange S&M-lite meetings with doe-eyed young men, which no doubt give him just enough of a sexual charge to go home and give it to the wife. It’s a perfect closet. (In S&M scenes, actual sexual intercourse is secondary or not even a factor).
Ignorantly, he thinks being gay is about sex. He thinks the fact that because he isn’t in bed with these willing, young participants that he’s not having a sexual encounter with them. I dare him to take another job and see how long his marriage lasts. Oh, but he can’t. GOD called him to rescue us all from the chains of whatever he thinks being gay is.
And we know what he thinks being gay is: a trophy prostitute for sick, closeted, gay-hating rich politicians. Yeah, that’s a life all of us have led.
You know, most of these “exgay” leaders came from the gay world of 25 to 30 years ago. They never bothered darkening the door of an MCC or finding a healthy group of people to hang around. They were all druggies, prostitutes and boytoys. And when they got used up, suddenly they found Jesus and it was the GAY’S fault that they were thrown on the side of the road and left by the garbage.
Falzarano claims that he knows Jesus, but his words, actions and behaviors betray him. The Church that he belongs to is the Church of St. Anthony Falzarano. And he worships at the image of himself with more enthusiasm than any supplicant I’ve ever witnessed. He is a sad bookmark to history still trying to be relevant.
Meanwhile, the gay world has passed him by. We have grown. We have become strong. And we are not the world he inhabited. He doesn’t know us at all.
I just wanted to add that Mr. Falzarano makes the same mistake that most other exgay leaders make: They have a bad experience in their gay life so ALL GAY PEOPLE ARE LIKE THEM and WE HAVE TO BE RESCUED. Then, after becoming immersed in the cult of conservative American Christianity, they lose any sense of reality.
Notice how in his last post, the right to be married is suddenly a “special right” for gay people, but for straight people, they can go do it as many times as they like.
Notice, also, that his fixation is on the political leadership of the gay world. Somehow he thinks that when they fight to keep us from being beaten, discriminated against and forced out of society, they’re somehow betraying us. He’s still got his rusty Roy Cohn armor on, ready to take on the homosexual hordes, just like his idol, Mr. Cohn.
His is a world of deceit, closets, backroom politics and strange men with Bibles getting him saved in a hotel room because THESE ARE THE LAST DAYS. Well, if the Religious Right continues to destroy this planet and goad us into war in the Middle East, these will definitely be the last days, but it won’t be because Jesus floats back. It’ll be because their apocalyptic drive to get us into a nuclear war will succeed.
Mr. Falzarano, you can be saved from this cult. And you don’t even have to leave your wife to do it. But if you think your cult has the Truth of the Universe in it, you’re more brainwashed than you realize. I know. I used to be where you are. Married and saving souls for this version of Jesus.
But then I had my own conversion experience that saved me FROM it. God can save you, too. But first you have to rid yourself of vanity of this form of literalist fundamentalism. If you can pull yourself away from that mirror, that is.
Anthony Falzarano wrote:
So in addition to his self-promoting ex-gay rants, he has to toss some gratuitous racism into the mix.
Attention whores don’t disappear into suburbs. They start ministries in order to turn others into mirror images of themselves.
Furthermore, Jeramayakovka, my original post pointed out that PFAW is a biased source of information, and I invited people like you and Randy Thomas to contribute broader perspectives regarding ex-gays at the summit.
For whatever reason, neither of you has done so.
Dear Mr. Falzarano,
My point was hardly about your being mild….but that you supplanted your original identity to be among the favored multitudes who are in control, where you as a gay man, wouldn’t have any such freedom.
And how ridiculous it is for you to even mention that there no gay genes, when MY genetic normalcy as a black woman never protected me or any other person of color from racism or discrimination.
There is no heterosexual gene either. And one’s genetics don’t have to be a requisite for equality. The only one is one’s HUMANITY.
I’m not impressed by you showboating your piety. You supplanting your orientation is a FACT.
You doing it to have greater freedom is a FACT.
And you standing in the gap between your motive and the motives of the straight majority to control who you were is a FACT.
I don’t need to be brainwashed by gay people and you insult my intelligence, and every gay person that ever lived with that cheap shot.
I have no reason to deny gay people exist. I have no reason to deny that gay people know who they are.
There is no reason for me to think a straight person would know what being gay is about better than a gay person.
I know you haven’t a clue what it’s like to be a black woman, but you wouldn’t dare lecture me on how I’m supposed to feel about it, or my experience as such.
The insult that straight people keep asserting is that they have all the knowlege, truth and inside track on the motives, abilities and realities of gay people…and clearly there are too many contradictions and hypocracies to count on that.
I have no reason to trust a heterosexual OVER a gay person on this issue, any more that I would think a man knows better than a woman what it’s like to be pregnant or get cramps.
The world is very ignorant about gay people, and FOTF, FRC and all the others should be embarrassed at all the money and political capital they are spending to mess up gay lives, when it’s not safe for an AMerican child to walk the streets or go to school in peace without fear of being shot.
And some Christians would have you believe that no culture EVER in the world has accepted gay people or the transgendered, when I know that’s also not true.
That only happened after colonization and their influence on other cultures. Sometimes brutal influence at that.
I don’t care what your religion is, you’re still called to treat your neighbor as you’d want to be treated. And straight folks don’t have dominion over anyone, let alone gay folks.
I don’t appreciate most religious people using every day and supporting every day our 21st century lives, but still want our culture to have a medieval attitude about homosexuality.
YOU took a step backward and tripped on your own doorknob…some of us are more surefooted in ways we don’t have to wear piety all over ourselves.
Capice?
I stand by this, it’s also a FACT. Straight people’s offense at gay people IS irrational, thoughtless, violent and incomprehensible.
Reactions can be entirely TOO out of proportion to reality, and inflammatory language used against gay people to incite fear and loathing.
And what really has come of doing so that is so remarkably positive that such actions should continue?
1. The destruction of relationships between gay young people and their families?
2. Abandonment or the threat of it?
3. Emotional blackmail and withdrawal of parental respect and love?
4. Harassment or violence at school so brutal, children as young as eleven years old take their own lives?
5. Words like faggot and other epithets used against youngsters who are percieved as weak, or gay?
6. Just the suspicion of being gay has destroyed many splendid and courageous careers, such as among military personnel. We’re at war, with an all volunteer military. How stupidly wasteful of valuable resources and training.
7. Children arbitrarily taken from their gay biological parents?
8. Children of gay parents expelled from school.
9. Children languishing in temporary homes or no home at all because of prejudice against nurturing gays and lesbians who want to love them?
10. Hedging civil laws with religious values YOU chose, when no one in this nation is to be compelled to follow a religion, especially at the suspension or sacrifice of their civil or HUMAN rights.
11. Nurturing isn’t exclusive to heterosexuals, and heterosexuals, were they such model parents wouldn’t HAVE so many of their children abandoned out there or abused or killed in the first place!
12. The Pope using inflammatory language like ‘violence to children’ to describe a gay person adopting a child.
13. The murders, brutal torture and unique ways in which gays, lesbians and the transgendered…even gay CHILDREN under age 16 have been murdered, are not perceived but ACTUAL.
Violence against gays and lesbians isn’t a theory, but a reality.
14. Gays and lesbians as a threat to all that we hold dear is a common, fear mongering tactic…that’s cost gay people much and threatens much more in their lives.
That gays protest this treatment, won’t stand for it…and urge the public to adopt policies that REDUCE this is called ‘the homosexual agenda’.
Well, frankly, why NOT have such an agenda?
Gays and lesbians are accessing due process of law, the courts, their right to free speech and peaceful assembly and trying to tap compassion among their family and peers to make their stand.
And doing so, in a world where some resolve their anger with violence.
Mr. F…..you have lost your sense of proportion like all the rest.
And shame on you.
Mike, I didn’t attend. I wasn’t aware that there was going to be an “ex-gay” presence there until reading about it on this site. So thanks, truly, for making some information available. I see also that Randy has posted at length about it on his blog. Whatever the cause, committed or partisan bloggers often call their opponents dumb, deluded, insane, cruel, cult-members, etc. That’s the nature of the medium….
Imho, the lead pic, with the foursome making a poster-child point about “hate crimes” laws, is savvy. While here at XGW you critically engage the “ex-gay” movement, that image does not specifically argue “ex-gay” vs. “ex-ex-gay” claims. It makes a critical point about gay identity politics and about law — with “MORE VALUABLE” meaning more exploitable and expendable politically, not necessarily more loveable. That it’s not specifically evangelical makes the point more forcefully, imho. Those older gay couples (of a recent comment, above) could have gathered for dinner and affirmative reminiscences while also weighing the claims the t-shirt makes.
Speaking from my experience, it’s not just hate crimes laws that would make me “more valuable” to the gay community. It would be continuing to participate (uncritically) in the gay subculture, period. I find that not being “in the church” means most gay men want little or nothing to do with me – it’s just not as much fun, is it?, to take people like me seriously when we’re not interested in playing innuendo-laden verbal games or in being the object of male vanity and insecurity, or worse.
Imho, the lead pic, with the foursome making a poster-child point about “hate crimes” laws, is savvy.
If, by savvy, you mean “misleading.” The hate crime laws are about people who are PERCEIVED to be gay or lesbian. I have been to exgay meetings and never have I met more effeminate men or masculine women. The exgays would benefit from hate crime laws at least as much as glbt persons.
Their fight against hate crime laws is nothing but political posturing to give the political right a reason to give them more money.
The “More Valuable” poster is deceptive in at least two ways:
First, it ignores that ex-gays are currently covered under the hate crimes law. The federal law, as it already exists, allows the federal government to help investigate and prosecute violent crimes targeting people specficially for their religion, among other categories. So if ex-gays suffer violence for expressing their religious beliefs about the immorality of homosexuality, that can be prosecuted as a federal hate crime.
Second, it ignores the fact that the extension of the hate crimes law to sexual orientation is not limited to homosexuals, but covers anyone targeted for violence due to his/her orientation–whether gay, straight, bisexual, or something else. If a gang of gay men decided to beat up some straight kid to get vengeance for past mistreatment, they would also be subject to federal hate crime prosecution. And if ex-gays are targeted for harrassment or violence because they have chosen not to follow a homosexual orientation, guess what–they too would be covered.
Ex-gays have no legitimate claim that they will be somehow “less valued” under a law that would actually extend them added protections. They are only interested in denying the protections they already enjoy to those of us on the other side of this divide.
Jeremayakovka said:
I would have to disagree. By their nature of allowing spontaneous response, blogs may facilitate a less civil atmosphere for the debate, but that still depends on the participants. Your statement seems more like apassive-aggressive swipe at those you are debating here, i.e. “your statements are biased, opinionated crap but I won’t hold it against you because you can’t help it — it’s the nature of the medium.” Gee, thanks.
Again with the passive-aggressiveness. Have you read your own blog lately? Do you think it might be possible that your attitude toward gay people could be a big part of the problem, rather than your disagreement on issues? I know people from both sides of the ex-gay equation, liberal and conservative, faithful and not, and as long as there is civility and respect for the other person, I enjoy discussing issues; iron sharpens iron.
We have commenters here as well who disagree on many fundamental issues, but their input is valued because they add to the discussion without demanding submission in return. Heck, even some of our writers disagree on important issues. So I can’t go along with your assessment on this point either.
Try analyzing your attitudes, like the ones coming through between the lines above, rather than blaming some nebulous gay brotherhood for having rejected you.
David Roberts makes a great point. The wide range of posters here on this site is one of the reasons XGW is such a valuable resource. It manages to play host to some very devout Christians and equally devout atheists. It is also invariably FAIR to the exgays when it reports on their activities, even if it leans toward the pro-gay side. That’s one of the reasons people enjoy this site.
I have been in close dialog with exgays and conservative Christians for over ten years using the Internet, and I have noticed that exgays are simply incapable of handing a fair conversation with out, mature, happy, centered and emotionally stable, spiritually developed gay people.
The exgays do not respond to specific points made in posts. They resort to preaching and making huge generalizations. They do not listen. They are intimidated and scared of facing mature, happy gay people. They prefer the shelter of conversations with emotionally disturbed, unhappy gay people who come to them first.
That’s why this thread will never amount to anything. However, it has been wonderful getting to know and read the intelligent, thoughtful posts from the non-exgays here. Thank you all for your wonderful, rational posts.
Steve,
You are a master at manipulation. Congrats! Don’t be smug enough to think that we don’t know exactly what you’re up too. Your earthly book-intelligence has been “trumped” by the wisdom of God and you just don’t know how to handle it. The bible says, “God has taken the simple people of the world to shame the wise”
Before God saved me, I thought I was smart (just like you) but know I am wise. The 1st Proverb of the Bible says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom and knowledge”.
Steve the problem with many of you on this site is that you have no fear of God left in you or you never had it in the first place. The fear that is mentioned here is not the kind that fear describes (that we should be afraid of God) because God is Love, but that we should be aware of just how AWESOME He is.
I always wondered why God saves some people and not others. Holy Scripture says that only God the Father can draw us to His Son Jesus. One day in 1983 God told me that if I did not leave the gay lifestyle NOW that I would die of AIDS. He literally scared the HELL out of me. He had been patient with me long enough and that if I didn’t start listening to Him I would be lost. That’s why I made it out of homosexuality. I learned a healthy respect for my maker and His awesomeness! And by reading the scriptures I was introduced to my Savior and ANYBODIES Savior who decides to obey His commands. “Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord and He will lift you up” Until you stop being so full of yourselves you will not be able to see past your arrogance. Your personal pride is blocking your view of the Savior of the world! AAF
Mr. Falzarano,
You just proved my point. Trust me. I was raised in your religion. I know everything you’re going to say before you say it. The brain-washing you’ve undergone has driven you far from reality. So far, you’ve not addressed a single issue put to you. Instead, you’ve merely fallen back to preaching the same tired “you people don’t know God like I do which is why I’m so much better than you are” sermon.
As for “fearing God,” if you actually read scripture, you will know that love is the opposite of fear. I no longer have a need to fear God. But you, apparently, do. You are living a life of deception, warmongering, lying and self-delusion. That is not the message of this Jesus you so proudly proclaim to follow.
What would happen to you if you decided to put down your weapons and became a man of peace? Do you think your version of Jesus would approve? Do you?
Sorry Steve, He’s on moderation now. He isn’t paying attention to any request made of him so the only step from there is banning if he can’t quit preaching with his ears closed and stick somewhere near the topic.
Ah, so my post makes no sense now. But I loved being called a master of manipulation by a man who has made manipulation and deception into an artform. C’est la vie.
Nick,
To many citizens the premise of a “hate crime” law is absurd – that the motivation or emotions behind a crime create for it a special category deserving of special punishment.
David,
There was nothing uncivil and disrespectful about my last comment.
Steve,
Being “out, mature, happy, centered and emotionally, spiritually developed” doesn’t shield you or anyone else from someone else’s critical opinions or judgments.
Unfortunately, just like sexual orientation, just saying so doesn’t make it so 😉
Not agreeing with the idea of bias (hate) crime laws is certainly a valid position. The hypocrisy is in selectively objecting to them. When Exodus or FOTF, etc, scream in horror over the idea of adding perceived sexual orientation to existing bias crime laws, but do not also lobby just as hard (or even at all) to recall those currently recognizing religion or race, that is hypocritical.
I wonder. Do any of these citizens complain when the penal system does the same thing for, say, murder? Or is it only absurd when trying to protect a class of people historically subject to abuse?
And Steve didn’t say it did. He said that ex-gays don’t seem capable of handling a conversation with such a person. Instead, they
David,
Whether one categorically opposes “hate crimes” laws is an important point (although it doesn’t surprise me that “ex-gay” activists take an interest in how gay activists perceive and characterize them). As for saying what’s so or not necessarily so, oh well, I can only tell you what I think.
Thanks for the spirited discussion.
Steve, I put Anthony’s comment up that you replied to so it would make sense, but don’t expect any more of them 😉
At the risk of sounding snarky, I want to make a comment. Anthony’s response pattern, whether it’s conscious to him or not, is typical for the exgays who do not wish to continue in dialog with healthy queer people. They will purposely break the rules so that they will be either moderated or thrown off the board. Then, they can convince themselves that they actually tried. But in the end, it’s just another way of running away.
It’s sad because he doesn’t yet know that we are not the enemy.
All he has to do is make a reasonable effort to interact with people instead of preaching at them, and discuss the topic at hand and he can keep commenting. Unfortunately, you may be right about the pattern as we’ve gone through this with a few others and they never seem to get it.
In this case, he figures that saying some magic words from scripture to the heathens will have us all tossing and turning at night because of course we are all on the wrong path because we aren’t just like him.
I don’t know how he could ever hear God with all that noise coming from his own mouth all the time. The sad thing is that I was once taught some of the same tactics, and it took me years to figure out why I hated sharing my faith with anyone. I didn’t mean to, but I had learned to treat people like mindless idiots and everything inside me said that was wrong.
Perhaps the saddest thing anyone can do is to close their minds and stop learning. The beginning of wisdom is to realize that one really doesn’t know all that much, and will always need to learn more.
There’s a reason for this. In their belief system, we don’t exist. When they realize that we DO exist, they’re afraid it would challenge every assumption they’ve made, and possibly the entire foundation of their theology.
Jeremayakova says:
Obviously enough American citizens do see the need for special sanctions on hate crime that we already have both local and federal laws on the books. Why is that the case? Because most of us recognize that crimes motivated by bigotry target not only the immediate victims, but the larger community of citizens in a particular group.
When a synagogue is burned specifically because it is a Jewish place of worship, the arsonists seek not only to harm that institution, but to intimidate and terrorize all Jewish citizens. When a man is beaten and killed specifically because he is a black man, the attack is intended to send a message of fear to all black citizens.
Violence that targets gay people only because they are gay is one of the most common forms of hate-motivated crime in the USA right now. These crimes are intended not just to hurt their immediate victims, but to intimidate and terrorize all gay people, and make us afraid to be visible. These are crimes against our rights and freedoms as American citizens. That is why they deserve the weight of federal as well as local prosecution and punishment.
One other point on the hate crimes issue:
There is a big difference between the federal hate crimes law, which addresses violent crime motivated by bigotry, and hate speech laws, which seek to govern objectionable speech.
Ex-gay organizations that object to including sexual orientation under the federal hate crimes law deliberately confuse the two. They use examples from Canada or Sweden, of a minister who runs into legal trouble for preaching against homosexuality, and claim the same will happen here under an expanded hate crimes law.
What this ignores is America’s very strong protection of free speech. In this country, you can use words as hateful as you wish, as long as you don’t use or directly threaten violence. The hate crimes law does not prohibit neo-Nazis from marching in Jewish neighborhoods, and it does not prohibit the Klan from publishing racist literature.
If the hate crimes law is extended to cover sexual orientation, Fred Phelps and his church will still be free to proclaim that “God hates fags.” And Exodus will still be free to pretend that it can change people from gay to straight.
Exiting homosexuality does not mean exiting sexual orientation.
Self-identified former homosexuals still have a sexual orientation, even if they are evasive about saying what it is.
If “former homosexuals” are targeted as a class by a specific violent criminal act and the offender is convicted, then they are covered by the federal hate-crimes legislation which provides for enhanced sentencing for that crime. We’ve discussed the wording of the actual legislation before. It’s reasonably straightforward.
Jeremayakovka said it himself: He doesn’t want to discuss the wording of the actual legislation, he “can only tell you what I think.” Hmmm.
If the ex-gay ad were to assert that violent crimes targeting (as a class) ex-gays, heterosexuals, homosexuals, blacks, whites, Hispanics, Jews and Christians are undeserving of enhanced sentencing and unworthy of federal aid to state/local investigators, then a credible case for the ad could be made, in association with the actual wording of the legislation. But the ad and its defenders are not making that case. Instead, they lie about the legislation’s wording — falsely stating that it singles out one particular sexual orientation for special treatment.
Lying is a serious sin. Ex-gay political activists should ponder that.
That t-shirt basically says, “Look how much the world hates us and how much they love fags. If I was still a fag, they would love me. But now I’m one of you and, by extension, it means they hate all of us.”
This is what happens when ministry and politics mix. Politics trumps ministry. The t-shirt, hilariously absurd on its face, is clearly deemed to be an effective weapon or they wouldn’t have had them out. Look at poor little us. Look at our sad but determined facial expressions. The world hates us for who we are. It’s war. War. War. War. Fight the homosexual elites.
What if they think that pondering is an even more serious sin?
This posting is instructive on so many levels.
It exposes the malignancy of the political ex-gay movement; and, the willful opacity and mendacity of its putative leaders. The sin of purposeful lying is very much to their account; but more-so the sin of presumption – that no one’s story could possibly be different than theirs; and because of that they know better the path others should take. They compound this sin by then resorting to the police powers of the state (the sword) to enforce their vision.
Regan, as usual, you cut clearly to the chase and spell out things plainly, freshly and correctly. (another thing the ex-gay movement is responsible for is for intentionally destroying glbt relationships, by taking advantage of the vulnerability of one partner. If someone did this to heterosexual relationships, there would be bloodshed!)
I admire the postings of Mike and Steve and the other moderators and regulars here for their clarity and focus.
This is why I keep coming back to XGW!
What if they think that pondering is an even more serious sin?
I started to chuckle at the ridiculousness of this… then I realized that “questioning the TRUTH of God” would be considered a greater sin. Sadly, much fundamentalist doctrine requires that the believer accept that the fundamentals of the faith are true – unquestionably, inarguably, irrevocably true. Any “pondering” is opening yourself up to the lies of Satan.
Not all fundamentalists are like this, of course. I have family members who question, ponder, and think. But I do know that for many in the more conservative end of the fundamental evangelicalism, questioning the declarations of your cobelievers – especially those in authority – are equal to open defiance to God.
And – not surprisingly – this is the language often employed by such people when they discuss us: defiant, rebellious, haters of God.
To many, yes, pondering is sin.
Mr. Falzarano,
The most common break between the what’s happening here is CREDIBILITY. And ex gays lack credibility in so many ways. There is only so much piety, patriotism and sanctimony you can hide behind.
When thoughtful people try to question ex gays, there is a pattern of behavior that presents itself over and over again, mostly DENIAL that gays and lesbians are individuals who don’t all or will have the same experience and that their orientation isn’t going to lead inevitably to all negative, bad, life threatening or unsatisfying experiences.
You could talk to a myriad of black women and hear them complain about the amorphous ‘man shortage’. The social phenom that makes finding a satisfying and long term relationship, especially in marriage, very elusive for black women.
The statistics would seem to make such options impossible.
Black women, like gays and lesbians are part of a minority that’s had war declared on them by their own country. And the result is abysmal numbers on relationship success with black men.
Why would it be surprising that gays and lesbians have similar troubles?
Mores the point, why would you fall into such hopelessness for your own success with another gay man?
Because there has been a calculated war that you DON’T have such relationships.
Hello?!
It’s not like gay people are INCAPABLE, but have a harder time getting there because society won’t let them.
Hope changes people and how they order their lives. The hope of marriage, if not to another black person, gives my black sisters a little more hope that they will have someone someday.
However, young gay people having NO HOPE of marrying another gay person to whom they would be most compatible is taken away, so why arrange your life around what you can’t have?
Whatever it is?
You are an example of someone who took the bait, and took the ONLY option left to you.
But going around speaking as if gay people are unworthy of longtime commitment and heroic child care is reckless, untrue and hypocritical.
It GETS DONE, regardless of no hope for marrying.
It didn’t take long for a lot of black women to jump on the myth that so many black men are on the down low, it is those black men responsible for the rise in HIV infection among blacks.
When it’s really the same sexual irresponsibility of having unprotected sex (adulterous or promiscuous) that also created the huge out of wedlock birth rate.
Just another example of blame the gays, instead of taking responsibility.
You’re doing the same all over again by using your piety to cover your lack of success as a gay person.
You couldn’t cut it. So it’s easier to put down other gay folks, or pretend that successful ones don’t exist.
And you bought into the myth that living heteosexually would solve all those inconvenient issues on being gay.
Well, heterosexual relationships aren’t any easier. Especially among minorities under siege. I’m onto you Mr. F
I don’t have any reason to fear God, I don’t have to believe in God at all, and their isn’t a thing you can do about it if I don’t….is there?
What’s it to you if a few of us don’t.
The real deal is since you chose that path, it’s on YOU to do and exercise it to your best, not mine.
And the rule still goes: you are charged to treat your neighbor as you’d want to be treated. Period, end of question.
If you can’t follow through or don’t REALLY want to follow that rule, it’s STILL on you.
Blaming gay people because you can’t or don’t want to, won’t fly either.
Cred is as cred does.
Anthony’s comments illustrated something valuable and which we should consider: his experiences cannot be dismissed as some non-representative anomoly.
In the 70’s and early 80’s, the gay community that Anthony experienced had the beliefs and values he describes. As those of us who have been around a while can testify, there was an emphasis on sexual hedonism, the literature glorified sexual exploration, and the politics were that of extremism.
I doubt that this represented the majority of same-sex attracted persons – or even of those who considered themselves gay – but it was the accepted thought. There was not a lot of social support for relationships and a desire for monogamy and tradition was publically decried as heterosexist and conforming to the oppressor.
Those days are gone. And, I believe, even without AIDS they would be gone. They were the attitudes of a community that was not yet in its teens and had not yet learned what to toss out and what to value.
I do caution that while it was the prevailing and most public image and attitude – there were always those who disagreed and quietly lived a life of committment and devotion. I was priveledged this past week to be where two men chose to “make it formal” and pledged their vows… after 50 years together.
And those quiet pioneers eventually won. Their brand of responsible gay citizenship has now become the gold standard of gay activism. Many don’t yet live up to it, but the evolution of thought is in place. Hedonism was abandoned for sex buddies. And sex buddies were replaced by open relationships. And open relationships are now transitioning into monogamy.
Nonetheless, I cannot fault Anthony for his impressions of the community as fickle and sex-driven and shallow. It was. And truthfully, to some lesser extent, still is.
But here is the great irony:
In the past 25 years the heterosexual community has placed less value on matrimony and committment. The gay community has placed more.
In the past 25 years the heterosexual community has increased its rates of HIV infections. The gay community has decreased.
In the past 25 years the heterosexual community has become more secular. The gay community has become more religious.
In the past 25 years the hetersexual community has held its civil, religious, and political leaders to lower and lower standards. The gay community has raised its standards.
Anthony, its time to see the world has changed since you were last gay.
I also came from a fundamentalist background and find Anthony’s comments unsurprising.
Their worldview precludes anyone who isn’t a “born again” Christian from being emotionally/spiritually healthy and satisfied with their lives at all – it isn’t just gays.
These people are saturated with years and years of testimonies of non-born agains “realizing” they are spiritually unsatisfied and only finding “real” joy, happiness and fulfilment as “born agains”. So that is their expectation when they talk to anyone. They are never going to believe you may be operating out of a spiritually satisfied position. It can’t exist outside their framework.
They believe that deep down, you are fighting the truth and lying to yourself, as well as them. Therefore NOTHING a non-fundamentalist says is going to have value. Heck, even a devout believer who doesn’t use the correct lingo and buzz-phrases is suspect.
They aren’t going to dialogue, just preach. As far as they are concerned, there is nothing they can learn from a non-believer.
Sadly, I found this to be true within fundamentalist circles. Unless you not only make the exact same profession of faith but also use the exact right vocabulary, then you are not worthy of being heard. You are part of the Enemy.
It is why I refer to conservative American Christianity as a cult. And it’s not that good people aren’t a part of it — or that good people haven’t been indoctrinated into it — but this sheltered cult-like behavior is a foundational part of this religious sect.
Unless you not only make the exact same profession of faith but also use the exact right vocabulary, then you are not worthy of being heard. You are part of the Enemy.
In the Pentecostal Church of God congregation of my childhood, it wasn’t the athiests, the agnostics, the Catholics or even (shudder) the Baptists that were the most frequent illustrations of compromisers with sin. It was that liberal Assemblies of God church across town.
And by “liberal” I mean that they didn’t preach against the evils of television and women wearing pants.
Timothy, I love it!
The Ex-Gay Movement: Stuck in the ’80s!
Would you gentleman please be kind enough to post my final message. I think we all have said what we need to say and now I wipe the dust from my sandals. In the Love of Jesus Christ, AAF
Reference for “wipe the dust from my sandals”:
Matthew 10:
5These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ 8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy,[b]drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. 9Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; 10take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff; for the worker is worth his keep.
11″Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave. 12As you enter the home, give it your greeting. 13If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. 14If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. 15I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. 16I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.
This reference shows up in various wording in each of the gospels.
Ironically, for this scripture is a problem for biblical literalists who want to believe that homosexuality is a worse sin than others and who also want to believe that the Sodom story is about homosexuals.
If Scripture is taken to literal extremes and if the Sodom story is about homosexuals, this scripture says that the act of not welcoming preachers is a far worse sin than homosexuality. So if they are going to worry about passing laws in accordance with gospel, they should pass laws requiring Christian conversion (bring back the inquisition) before passing anti-gay legislation.
But somehow literalists are seldom literal when that approach would contradict their previously held beliefs.
Tim, well said!
Can I get a witness?
Mr. Falzarano,
I am really a neophyte at XGW. For a relatively short time I have come here to XGW to enjoy reading the latest news and sometimes make a comment; if sometimes a feeble attempt to inject some levity. I have been rebuked/rebuffed once or twice by the hosts here and eventually I have come (hopefully) to understand the nuances and primary purpose of this website. For example: There is not the gratuitous snarkiness you might find elsewhere. There is a genuine interest in developing a constructive dialogue here.
I know nobody personally here. I have no allegiances to anyone here.
I never even knew who you were/are until reading this thread this past week.
But, let me say in all humility and trying not to be condescending in the least: You really need to step back and reflect on what you have said here. I’m not perfect. I’m not sure I am mature enough to give you any advice. But…please seek some help. The part of wiping the dust from your sandals is just over the top and childish. Life is too short to be obsessive about something. Find some friend to go fishing with, take a walk on the beach or even shoot some hoops. You are being consumed by something…something I can’t put my finger on. Be the life of the party.
If Anthony truly believes in God, then he would wonder if possibly God didn’t send him to this forum for a reason — and not just to teach us “heathens” something.
A crime is a crime is a crime. People for whom equality under the law as citizens is not good enough are not good enough citizens.
A cheap slogan is a cheap slogan is a cheap slogan. People who substitute cheap slogans for actual dialog aren’t actually saying anything.
“Hey, what’s the problem? You fags got the local police to protect you. Who ever heard of a small town cop ignoring the plea of some innocent little queer gettin’ beat up? Never happen in the good ol’ U S of A. We love our fags.”
*snort*
*spit*
No, armchair psychologizing (which someone did about me in the Jim Phelan marathon thread) and personal slander (which commenters have done at my site) are cheap.
The problem is your belief that, because some people think of you as anything less than a citizen, you feel entitled to be recognized as something more than just a citizen. You are a citizen deserving of equality under the law, just like any other.
If you have a problem with that, then I have a problem with you. (Not because you’re gay, but because of your attitude towards citizenship.)
Randy Thomas said it well at the press conference: “Don’t pass bad public policy out of good intentions.”
But, do you believe that non-gender conforming exgays will also be protected under this law?
The point of the law is to assure that when violence is visited upon us, that we have more recourse than the local tubakky-chewing deputy dawg. Making it a federal crime gives us the full weight of the law, something you clearly don’t have to worry about.
But this isn’t really about that. The exgays aren’t opposing this out of some legal principles. They are opposing it because it has to do with gay people. And if it has to do with gay people, you’re against it. Be honest here. Please.
With LGBTetc. people being able to vote? to own real estate? to teach elementary school children? No, I’m not against those (although I’m aware that many early “anti-gay rights” activists, in the 70s, were against even that latter issue).
…get married (to each other)?
The lie that people like Randy Thomas and Jeremayakova constantly spread is that non-discrimination laws provide “special rights” for certain groups, beyond the rights of the average citizen.
Yet in fact the “special rights” protected by non-discrimination laws are nothing more than the basic rights of an American citizen. It is just a sad fact that, given the reality of bias toward various groups, it often takes legislation to ensure that all citizens can enjoy their basic rights.
Thus, it has taken special legislation to ensure all citizens of their right to vote without impediments. It has taken special legislation to ensure that citizens can’t be restricted in where they live or shop or eat. And it has required special legislation to ensure that every citizen has the the right to get and hold a job purely on the merits of his work, without being subject to the personal bigotry of an employer or coworkers.
“In the late 70s” oh that’s rich. My former partner, an outstanding, dedicated Junior High teacher, was fired and blacklisted in this county’s school system for what we later found out was simply a suspicion that he was gay. Some of the staff had seen me dropping him off at school a few times early in the morning, and the witch hunt started from there. He was able to find work again but had to leave the area to do it. That was about 7 years ago, not 30.
I have to agree with Steve, cute slogans are not helpful. Too many people here have lived this stuff. If you want to say that you think employers should be able to fire people because of their sexual orientation, perceived or otherwise, then just say that. But please don’t pretend everything is hunky-dory out there.