Exodus president Alan Chambers has just notified members that Alan Medinger has passed away. Medinger was once himself executive director of Exodus International, and president of ex-gay ministry Regeneration. Medinger was an established figure in ex-gay circles. He authored the familiar title Growth Into Manhood and believed that homosexuality was a disordered condition which could be healed.
In an article written for Exodus in 1995, Medinger wrote:
Homosexuality took form out of our response to pain — most often the pain of rejection, abuse, or low self-esteem. The patterns of behavior and thinking that led to our homosexuality were patterns of self-protection from these pains. Having experienced pain early in life, we became determined never again to allow ourselves to be in a position where the painful experiences could be repeated.
This is basically reparative theory as championed by Joseph Nicolosi. In another article (PDF), Medinger wrote:
We don’t choose homosexuality, but I am convinced that most of us made wrong decisions—often sinful decisions — that set us on the path towards developing same-sex attractions.
And as XGW writer Emily K has written, Medinger left the Episcopal Church in part due to their opposition to the evangelizing of Jews.
“We don’t choose homosexuality, but I am convinced that most of us made wrong decisions—often sinful
decisions—that set us on the path towards developing same-sex attractions.”
Truth, falsehood, wishful thinking, unclarity of thought, lack of logic, unprovabuility– he’s got it all.
The leader of the ‘ex-gay’ group that I used to attend also died recently. Alan Medinger was one of the group of ex-gay writers that he regularly quoted in his meeting notes.
Perhaps these two men are representative of a generation that bought into the whole ex-gay cure, and did their best to live their lives on those lines (though at what cost?), before the internet revolution exposed all the cracks and faultlines in that pseudo-psychology.
I’m hoping that future generations will be better informed.
I won’t celebrate this man’s death. But what would be the point? The damage he’s done is already indelible.
Does anyone know the cause of death?
I read somewhere that he had complications from pneumonia…
His writings were laced with hate group propaganda.
Medinger cited Paul Cameron in at least two of his articles:
https://home.messiah.edu/~chase/h/articles/regenera/6.htm#5
https://home.messiah.edu/~chase/h/articles/regenera/9.HTM
His most famous book, _Growth into Manhood_ cites Lively and Abrams’s _The Pink Swastika_
That I did not know. Can someone send a scan of the relevant pages to david@exgaywatch.com?
David,
The reference to their book is on page 40 in Growth into Manhood (in the chapter titled “What Went Wrong in Our Lives?”) where Medinger presents a typology of homosexual men.
The paragraph begins… “Another type is the man who exalts manhood to the extreme…This phenomenon was seen in the ancient Greeks and Romans and more recently in the Nazis.” This is marked by endnote #7
#7 appears on page 255 where it cites Lively’s book and adds this text: “The strong homosexual influence among the early Nazis, especially the brownshirts, is documented by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams in …”
Hope this helps – I don’t have a scanner.
““Another type is the man who exalts manhood to the extreme. At the same time, he denigrates womanhood, and as an outgrowth of this, he sees a man (usually a younger man or teenage boy) as a more desirable sexual partner. This type of man seldom shows any deficit in manhood. To the contrary, he may be the warrior or super-man type. ”
So when we’re not silly, weak limp wristed pansies flouncing around, we’re hyper masculine super bullies who don’t like women. It seems they have all their bases covered, and by describing everything, they are describing nothing.
It reminds me of a psychologist– and I think it was bieber or cameron– saying 35 years ago that it is understandable, nay normal, that men in all-male enclosed situations should turn to each other for sexual release. In other words, when heteros have gay sex, it’s normal, but when gay people do it, it’s a problem.
When hetero men are hyper-masculine and don’t like women– something that is extremely common to the point of farce–that’s normal. but if gay men are that way, it’s an indication of our pathology.
Do these people ever think?
Obit or not, that’s really disgusting to find out. Not that I’ve ever found Medinger to be reasonable, but Scott Lively and Paul Cameron are in a category of their own when it comes to perverting the facts to disparage GLBTs.
i know that the lies he espoused were – are – horrible.
but i did meet the man, and truly, he was not what some might paint him to be.
he had cancer, and had been battling serious illness for a long time.
@e2c
Thanks for the information. When you say that “he was not what some might paint him to be,” could you explain that a little? Some facts have been presented here concerning his beliefs and work, i.e. he believed in the reparative model of causation (Nicolosi), he referenced some of the most rank and discredited in his own book, considered a gay person disordered and sinful by virtue of their sexual orientation alone and even blamed them for the decisions that caused them to be such.
The term “might paint him to be” carries, at least for me, the suggestion that one is imposing false attributes on him. Yet the facts seem to speak for themselves. I’m genuinely curious about what you mean with that statement. Do you mean that he had a kind demeanor or do you have knowledge of retractions he might have made concerning some of these issues? I would need a little more to go on to understand what you are saying.
Look, I didn’t know him well, so there’s not really much I can say. At one time (many years ago), I supported Regeneration, which he founded.
I think it might be helpful to understand that the time at which he experienced his conversion (to Christ, something he documented) was … well, the palmy days of the charismatic renewal in the Roman Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran churches. The charismatic renewal (late 60s-early 80s, roughly) was heavily influenced by Pentecostal “name it and claim it” beliefs, coming (AFAIK) partly from “the Fort Lauderdale Five” (Bob Mumford, Derek Prince, Don Basham and others). They promulgated the “discipleship movement” – which, unfortunately, swept through the charismatic renewal and through other churches (Protestant evangelical) and did a very great deal of harm.
Please understand that … decent people can get swept up in things whose longterm consequences they don’t foresee, or even think about. It happened to me (being involved in both the charismatic renewal as well as ending up as a member of more than one church that was heavily influenced by the discipleship movement).
Long story short: a *lot* of people got hurt by it, and most were sincere and decent.
other long story short: Alan believed that he was instantaneously “healed” of homosexuality at the time of his conversion. (he wrote about it; am just paraphrasing published work by him.) He honestly believed that he had been set free from an intense spiritual oppression – even though he also admitted upfront in many Regen. newsletters that he still felt tempted to fantasize about men.
it’s very hard to describe the weird dichotomy of that kind of thinking when you’re in the midst of it, and even when you’ve left it behind.
I never read his book, so I cannot speak to anything published there.
All I can – and will say – is that the man wasn’t – in my opinion – a hatemonger. I have come to the conclusion that his beliefs about homosexuality were wrong, and that he himself was caught in a Catch-22 that was partly of his own making. So were many other people I met, back when I supported ex-gay ministry in general and Regen in particular. (“Supported” = thought their goals were good, and that there really was some kind of miraculous way to be “healed” of homosexuality – and many other things that just don’t work that way – drug addiction, for example.)
I believe it is important to understand the social and theological background of the time in which he believed that God gave him a “vision” (an idea, not a literal vision) for ex-gay ministry. There was a Pentecostal fervor about divine healing of all sorts at that time, in the midst of the charismatic renewal. (Impossible for me to explain in such a brief reply – and I’m sure others can better document that time, and its excesses and errors, far better than I can. I just happened to be there, and as i was a very young person at the time, I took a lot of things as writ that I later came to question.)
btw, Alan died of leukemia. His widow had a stroke last year and is quite ill. Their family has been through a lot over the past several years.
Ultimately, my request is that people try to see the human faces and hopes and lives behind the words. I realize that might be difficult, even impossible for some.
I have very mixed feelings about all of this… because I’ve had to go through my own years of questioning and rethinking. This blog has helped immensely in that process. (I think there are lots of weary, battle-scarred people out here who came through the same ways of thinking – applied to other aspects of life – that many of you have experienced within the ex-gay movement.)
as a tag on my very long reply, at the time I knew Alan (early-mid 90s), Regen did *not* say that homosexual orientation was innately sinful – quite the contrary. (for supporting quotes, you would have to dig into their newsletter archives and talk with former staff members – can’t help you there, I’m afraid.)
And that was in marked contrast to what a lot of other people were saying. I know of at least one D.C.-area church (now dissolved) that wouldn’t even let Regen speakers in the door because they were gay, period. Now that’s closed-minded and hateful, imo.
@e2c
I would agree. I hope my comment to you didn’t seem like an angry challenge — I really did want to understand what you meant. Thank you for the thoughtful reply.
I started my experience with XGW trying to understand the nature of the ex-gay equation. There are plenty of blogs where bashing outweighs debate and I did not find that helpful. Some of those may well serve a purpose, as there are those so hurt that venting amongst a choir of like voices is therapeutic for a time. I think most of us here have gone through a similar period of raw pain and I’m not going to judge how others deal with that.
Some confuse an attempt to understand with agreement, as though recognizing the gray makes us weak in our resolve. I’ve written a few things that may have been motivated more by that same fear than a desire to understand. Then there are times where I believe actions are so heinous, or positions so blatantly injurious to the rights of others, that they deserve to be called out strongly now, with possible dissection at a later date.
Then there is the powerful effect of the personal relationship — something we rely on to gain the understanding and respect of others for GLBT people. It can work both ways, making it harder to be dispassionate concerning those we know have struggled with their own lives.
This is why I wanted to know what you meant, because I think it important to think these things through. Many people are sincere and wrong, but they are still wrong. What they do can still hurt others. But if we do not recognize their humanity as well, we risk shutting out the very people who might need to understand the harmful elements most.
This blog, through it’s various iterations, has been an attempt to bring the facts to light concerning ex-gay groups and efforts, comment on them in context, and still recognize the humanity of those involved. And through that process, we hope to gather others in various stages of distress and understanding, to help us do just that. That anyone has found participation in all this helpful to their own lives is extremely gratifying.
David – thanks so much for your thoughtful response!
I didn’t mean to sound defensive (and likely did). And I do hear the questions you asked, believe me.
fwiw, I had no further contact with folks at the Baltimore Regen office after the mid-90s, and was saddened and dismayed to see the increasing politicization of both Exodus and Regen during the years after that – especially since the time of Bush’s 2nd presidential campaign. That was part of the wake-up call re. ex-gay ministries in my own life; another part was hearing what some walkaways said about their experiences. (Peterson Toscano’s accounts of his attempts to “de-gay” himself were the clincher, though disputed mutability’s look at a FoF weekend also played a big part in it.)
I appreciate the fact that the posts here are both forthright and very low-key. (No rant, hype, et. al.) That Alan Chambers and others characterize you folks as “militant activists” just amazes me – but I guess they’re more or less living in the parallel universe (where Pres. Obama consorts with Muslim terrorists and is trying to create an Americanized version of Stalinism, and… so on ;-)).
Religion can be a force for good or ill. Why would we cut anyone any slack just because they were caught up in some particular fad that was sweeping through their church. We are each responsible for what we do and don’t do. I don’t see any evidence that this man ever did anything to make up for the hate and lies that he promoted. Therefore, I am disinclined to to ignore the picture that he painted of himself that will be well preserved in his writings.
Also, Medinger, by his own admission, never went through any “miraculous conversion” to heterosexuality. His ongoing “temptation” issues are less than miraculous. They are in fact normal for a gay man. This silly ex-gay excercise of pretending that the King isn’t naked as a jaybird is old and tired.
@John No “excuse” for any of Medinger’s published statements intended. It’s about context and history – and it looks like those who were there (caught up in other aspects of the same movements), know. Those who weren’t apparently don’t.
The things Medinger are what they are, but they (to my mind) admittedly do make more sense given that particular context. There’s a lot of upside-down and backwards thinking there, and definitely *not* just about homosexuality.
I can’t blame you for being outraged at what he wrote. It makes me angry (and I’m a straight woman). But having known some of the people behind the words (at Regen, back in the day), I guess I can’t help but see the strange dichotomy between who they were – as basically decent human beings – and what they advocated.
Regen was light-years off from organizations like PFOX during the 1990s. (And yes, I have met Anthony Falzarano…. and will not defend anything he has written or said.)
RE the comment about hatemongers… I believe that a lot of violence is perpetrated by very well-meaning, sincere people who really believe what they are doing is protecting themselves or others against what they have (wrongly) come to believe is a dangerous, menacing threat.
We’ve seen this throughout history.
@Christine – I believe you’re right about that. (Sadly.)
I really wish I’d qualified that sentence, re. saying that I think the hatemongering there was unintentional, and (perhaps) more self-directed than anything else. (Which doesn’t make it any less wrong, of course.)