Exodus International President Alan Chambers jubilantly noted on Facebook this morning that a lesbian couple of 22 years had finally broken up in response to prayers:
Heard from a couple this morning who have been praying for their daughter and her partner to come to Christ for 22 years. Both accepted Jesus, broke off their relationship and are pursuing a life in Christ. God is faithful and answers prayers. Be encouraged no matter your circumstances!
This rejoicing should tell you all you need to know about Exodus’s family values, and those of the Christian Right. They proclaim the importance of monogamy, faithfulness, commitment and love, but those values end when families fail to fit their narrow mold.
Alan’s fans are equally happy with the news, describing it as “amazing,” “awesome,” and testimony to Exodus’s ex-gay mantra that “change is possible.”
Pre-empting an obvious (but misguided) criticism: This screenshot is from a public website, Alan Chambers’s “fan page” on Facebook. Everything we posted here is publicly viewable – in fact, Alan even tweeted the link to share his excitement with his Twitter followers.
With this Alan and company also continue to emphasize the false dichotomy that says one cannot be gay, and also be a believer. While Alan has made statements from both sides of his mouth on this, there is no doubt at this point how he really feels. Unfortunately, it has become all too obvious that what Exodus says outwardly, and what they practice and believe, are two entirely different things.
There is a word for that.
It is entirely possible that this lesbian couple either doesn’t exist, or if they do exist, their break up had nothing to do with turning to Alan’s form of Christianity. Alan has a very poor track record with telling the truth…about anything!
As an aside, I have noticed that Alan has chosen lately to emphasize his middle name. I have seen him listing himself as AlanMChambers and Alan Manning Chambers now. I don’t recall him doing that in the past.
It should be noted in Mike Haley’s 2004 book “101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality” he advises parents of gay children that they should pray God will make their lives miserable, thus pushing them back into the
closetarms of ex-gay programs.https://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2010/05/19/22805
“After 22 years we are breaking up” somehow has never led me to erupt with, “thank you, Jesus”
But, then again, my heart isn’t full of evil.
Exodus rejoices when others they don’t approve of come to misery. They did this during the 2008 elections when our equality was voted on several times.
https://exgaywatch.com/2008/11/ex-gays-show-their-political-colors-post-election-day-others-show-great-insight/
I imagine after George Rekers they had to have a pyrrhic victory of a sort to soothe themselves.
@Daniel Gonzales
This is consistent with the belief in a god who’s a pretty good stand-in for a child abuser or spouse-beater. e.g., “I sent lightning to burn your house down for the same reason your partner knocked half your teeth out — because I love you.” Every weekend, sermons are preached about how a sociopathic god sends the faithful crap “in order to draw you closer to him.”
This does not pass the smell test– a 22 year relationship breaking up because of prayer pressure? Either the couple does not exist– like the thousands of people Nellie Manning has letg to his brand of heterosexuality– or the situation is far more ocmplex and nuanced than we’re being told.
Apart from the smelliness– yeah, I think the schadenfreude blows dead dogs.
For ‘Prayer’ read ‘Harassment.’
Whenever some sort of religious factor is introduced into the equation, the credibility score drops by 80%. Being honest is just not their forte.
Ben, let’s avoid calling people names like “Nellie,” ok?
I know for a fact that people pray regularly for my partner and I to break up. One long-ago friend upon hearing of my coming out wrote to my ex-wife (who she didn’t know) and let her know she was praying I would be miserable in my sin and return to my marriage (post-divorce.) I continue to be stunned, though, by reports like this. I expect the ignorant masses to speak as they often do, but Alan Chambers should know better than to rejoice in a broken committed relationship. I agree that this shows the truth re: his other statements that it is possible (though not ideal) to be Christian and gay.
Do people really not see the problem with this kind of thinking? If the only way to get people to come back to “godliness” is to pray that their “ungodliness” is miserable, what does that say for “godliness”? Does their idea of “godliness” really suck that bad?
Just a couple of weeks ago, we had Alan’s blog post on the George Rekers scandal, where he took the gay community to task for “reveling over what must feel like a victory beyond their wildest dreams in their campaign to prove that people affected by same-sex attraction cannot and should not do anything but embrace a narrow view of their same-sex attractions by adopting and celebrating a gay identity.”
Now we have Alan reveling in the breakup of a 22-year relationship, just because it involved two women. Guess that must seem like a “victory beyond his wildest dreams” in his campaign to force his own narrow view of “same-sex attractions” on gay people who have found love and contentment in self-acceptance.
Nauseating. Absolutely nauseating. But that’s the problem with people of the “Exodus persuasion”. They have a blind spot that prevents them from seeing just how contemptible their attitude is.
It’s hard for me to see in Chambers’ brief remark anything like the supposed schadenfreude that is being alleged here. Since Chambers doesn’t acknowledge the possibility of genuine happiness in a same-sex relationship, how can he recognize pain and suffering in its breakup?
This, I believe, is substantially different then those who, like Mike Haley recommends, actively pray for the misery of those in same-sex relationships. In order to do such a thing, you would have to acknowledge the possibility of happiness originating from a relationship that is evil. This is paradoxical to Christian thought, since good emanating from evil is possible only when God is involved (e.g. the crucifixion). In praying for such a couple’s misery, what a person making this prayer is doing is wishing that God remove Himself further from the people in the relationship. This is spiritually dangerous, irrespective of whatever you think of same-sex relationships.
David– you are quite irght. I apologize. I was reacting to both a somewhat re-calcitrant husband and an encounter the other day with an anti-gay that just made me want to take a bath. This combination of fervent belief with a sociopathic personality– the worst kind of con man– is beginning to owrk on my gay nerves.
Imagine the support and good advice the lesbian couple in question received from their family and friends who were praying for them in this manner. Any wonder that they broke up? I am frankly surprised that they lasted 22 years in the face of such constant undermining!
Now imagine if the couple was heterosexual. How would the advice and support differ?
eff-bags!
It’s an answer looking for a problem.
Unfortunately, some religious folk are so twisted in their thinking that they replace a thoughtful logical carefully considered faith with trite phrases and religiousy adages. Their relationship with the Divine is formatted and cookie-cutter and, in reality, shallow, meaningless, and without any connection.
Christian: Come to Jesus and you will have peace and happiness.
Non-Christian: I have peace and happiness right now.
Christian: Well then I’m praying that you become miserable so that you will need to come to Jesus to get peace and happiness.
Non-Christian: Why would you do that?
Christian: Because I love you and don’t want God to send you to Hell.
Non-Christian: Why would God send me to Hell? That doesn’t sound very loving.
Christian: God loves you and doesn’t want you to go to Hell, but he has to send you to eternal punishment if you don’t come to Jesus. Those are the rules. So that’s why I’m praying that God will make you miserable.
Non-Christian: And just who made those rules? Hmmmm?
It seems to me that God, who apparently has all the time in the owrld to listen to prayers and imprecations about harming people who have done no one any harm, but no time at all to deal with oil spills and tornadoes and hurricanes and wars and pogroms and starvation and child sexual abuse by his called priests… but I digress…
It appears that their version of god is to make you as miserable as possible either in this life or in the next, unless you happened to catch his memo on what you ought to be doing.
It doesn’t seem that there is much of a way to win this. sort of like playing against the black jack machines in Vegas.
Was it voltaire that said, “God created man in his own image. and man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment?
If that’s true, I’m sure those two will be back together (or at least with other women) once they realize Jesus can’t fulfill their natural needs.
By the way, doesn’t that strike you as familiar with the “Diane” story in thisarticle?
^^https://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/ex-gay.html
From William King Clifford’s essay, The Ethics of Belief (1876):
In the same way, if there really is a god who forbids gays to form gay relationships and who will send them to eternal misery if they do, then it is wrong to worship him.
Sorry, the name should be William Kingdon Clifford.
The deep offense so many of us take from Chambers’ remark is that he clearly views the breakup of a 22 year relationship in itself as a cause for thanks. Nothing could make clearer his profound animus toward gay people.
I can’t help but wonder what other sorts of misery on the part of LGBT people would make Mr. Chambers ecstatic like this: death, poverty, disease, suicide?
If this statement makes Mr. Chambers a good Christian, I’m glad I’m not a Christian….
This attitude should not be surprising to anyone.
If it is, you haven’t watched Exodus close enough. Their “advice to parents” pages are full of such recommendations, and blatantly so. At random, first two articles selected…
If “God is faithful and answers prayers” why did it take 22 years for Him to finally answer? Was God busy with other tasks? Is God deaf? Does God take pleasure in having people plead, beg, and grovel for 22 years? If I wasn’t an atheist already, this would be just one more story that would push me in that direction.
@Timothy Kincaid
amen, Timothy! Well put.
I am guessing that God isn’t anywhere near as petty as Alan Chambers.