After Exodus International apologized last week for its past practice of blaming parents for homosexuality and ostracizing people who were no more sinful than they, the New York Times followed up with a report on Andy Comiskey, a co-founder of the hardline ex-gay Restored Hope Network. RHN continues to scapegoat parents and to accuse survivors of ex-gay therapy of not praying hard enough for God to make their sexuality disappear.
The Restored Hope Network, which was founded last year after Mr. Chambers’s announcement, will hold its own conference this weekend in Oklahoma, competing with the annual Exodus conference.
Andrew Comiskey, a Restored Hope board member, wrote on Twitter, “How merciful of God to shut down Exodus, which under Alan Chambers leadership had completely veered off the course of its mission.” The Restored Hope Network did not respond to requests for comment.
Aaron Bitzer, a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging California’s ban on gay conversion therapy, said that Exodus’s closing would do nothing to diminish his faith that such treatment can work, as he said it had for him. A Christian who said he had been attracted to men all his life, he still hoped to one day marry a woman.
“Will the orientation change completely? I don’t know,” Mr. Bitzer, 36, said. “I don’t think any organization should ever promise 100 percent change. But I have noticed changes in myself. I am satisfied with what I’ve experienced so far with reparative therapy.”
Further anti-Exodus commentary is available on Comiskey’s blog.
Gay activist Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out reported this weekend from RHN’s second annual conference:
I am now in Oklahoma City where the group is holding its event. In spite of all the media swirl surrounding the downfall of Exodus and the launch of this new hate group, the Restored Hope Network only drew an estimated 100 participants. By the way, this number includes media and conference speakers. This paltry number is far below the heyday of the “ex-gay” myth, when Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out road show brought in thousands of people.
RHN may find it difficult to win additional support with blame games and anti-parent propaganda that has no basis in the Bible.
100 participants . . . yeah, we’ll be awaiting their apology and closure within the year (one can only hope)!
ridiculous, they haven’t changed a bit. This is proof they are just opening a new one under a different name with the same goals, exploiting people to gain dollars.
With all due respect, that’s really an uninformed and unhelpful comment. Obviously much has changed, at least with Alan, and one can expect those who have remained with him rather than jumping ship. He has made some rather honest comments about the harm they have done, has admitted in major venues that “change or conversion” does not work, and he has closed or is closing the largest organization which has been peddling such ideas.
Granted, only time will tell what the new organization will be up to, but it seems unlikely they are going through all this just to lose the name and keep on business as usual. Either way, much has changed.
On the money note, there are many players out there which I believe are in this strictly or mainly for the money. However, the salaries at Exodus have never been exorbitant. While technically yes, they did make money of misleading others — something which is bad enough on it’s own — that could not have been the reason they did it. There just wasn’t enough money being made to support the argument.
If what we say is to be trusted, we have to be honest. Credit where credit is due, things have definitely changed with Alan and Exodus.
Michael S.,
To be fair, the new one opened a year ago, as hardliners were horrified by the prospect of Exodus not only NOT imprisoning and killing sexual minorities, but actually allowing them anywhere near conservative churches and abusing them little more than other “sinners.”
Since then, the remaining Exodus affiliates have been reorganizing and repackaging themselves — some more moderate, some more hardline. The “closure” suggests that a substantial minority of affiliates and donors sided with the hardliners — enough of them to make Exodus financially non-viable.
Whether the moderate successor to Exodus evolves away from its past language of spiritual and sexual shame remains to be seen.
Let’s not pretend they well. The message that gay intimacy is wrong, sinful, or an abomination, an aberration, mistake, sexual brokeness, or a ‘cross’ leads to one thing = harm. It will hurt people. This type of repression can never be reconciled, it should be discouraged. Completely and utterly, wiped out from the face of civilized society.
It doesn’t matter how they peddle the belief- it hurts people. They’ve admitted nearly as much.
God bless Mr Comiskey.
I’m a brazilian protestant-christian and I think that we have to fight against the sin!
Or you could do as Jesus bade you and deal with what I am sure is a rainforest full of logs in your own eye before you concern yourself with the alleged motes in other people’s eyes. Or would hat just be too Jesus-y for a Protestant Christian like yourself?
Well,
I’m only a very, very, very poor and the first of all sinners brazilian Protestant Christian from the amazon jungle, but I think that sexual sins are more worst than others sins, says St. Paul (1st.Corinthians 6:18-20).
Ex-gay Watch leaders and you too Mr. Ben needs to believe in God.
Soli Deo gloria!
JOÃO EMILIANO MARTINS NETO
If you are the first of all sinners– not just a little bit of the sin of pride in that one, my friend– I think that you give yourself way to much credit in your effort to be humble. I assure you there are far worse sinners than you in Brasil right this very moment. But even assuming your are even a third or fourth place sinner, you are still commanded by Jesus not to be concerning yourself with other peoples’ sins until you yourself have achieved moral perfection. By your own admission, you haven’t. And if sexual sins are to you the worst of sins, then I suspect you have never read a history book. have no moral compass whatsoever, and don’t understand a thing about that which you presume to lecture us. You just have a lot of hangups about sex, and are mistaking that for righteousness.
All of us may be sinners. apparently, only some people are qualified to throw stones.
____________________________________
Se você é o primeiro de todos os pecadores – não é apenas um pouco do pecado do orgulho em que um, meu amigo – Eu acho que você dá a si mesmo a maneira a muito crédito em seu esforço para ser humilde. Asseguro-vos que somos pecadores piores do que no Brasil neste exato momento. Mas, mesmo assumindo que o seu é mesmo um terceiro ou quarto lugar pecador, você ainda são comandados por Jesus não ser a respeito de si mesmo com os pecados de outras pessoas até que se tenha atingido a perfeição moral. Por sua própria admissão, você não tem. E se os pecados sexuais são para você o pior dos pecados, então eu suspeito que você nunca leu um livro de história. não tem bússola moral que seja, e não entendo nada sobre o que você presume que nos palestra. Você só tem um monte de hangups sobre sexo, e são dúvidas que por justiça.
Todos nós podemos ser pecadores. aparentemente, apenas algumas pessoas estão qualificados para atirar pedras.
Maybe faith in Lord Jesus more psychotropic drugs will save some gay souls.
By the way you don’t know nothing about my country. Brazil is the worst land of all the world. America is the best yet. A blessed biblical land.
Sorry by my very poor English. I’m a really very terrible sinner… LOL!
Soli Deo gloria!
JOÃO EMILIANO MARTINS NETO
ERRATA:
Maybe faith in Lord Jesus and* psychotropic drugs will save some gay souls.
If Jesus can’t save some gay souls, I suspect drugs won’t work either.
As for Brasil being the worst country in the world? Sounds like you have a lot of work to do there, as Jesus commanded, instead of worrying about what gets MY penis excited.
But you won’t, because this is far easier and way more fun.
Well,
Psychoactive drugs may help gay people – because drugs were created by men, even if they are wicked with their erect penises when they are sodomized by greed in the real, concrete or in thought – because God gives common grace to all his children.
About my country Brazil I’ve done what I can and always according what my weird people wants about his salvation.
Soli DEO gloria!
JOÃO EMILIANO MARTINS NETO
You are entitled to your opinion, but presuming that no one here “believes in God” (I’ll assume here you mean the Christian God) is quite a leap.
Paul does seem to have had a lot of hangups about sex and women in general. After all, he is the only writer included in the Christian scriptures that has to delineate between his own opinion and “inspired words.” If even he recognized this about himself, you might want to question how much of his obsessiveness over sexual issues were his personal problems and not those of God.
But Paul warns when he speaks as a man and / or inspired by God.
Psychiatric treatment, it may be a good solution to put a brake on sexual desires more compelling.
Soli Deo gloria!
JOÃO EMILIANO MARTINS NETO
The fact that he had to delineate should already give one pause. Does it not concern you that Paul may not have known for certain whether he as speaking for God or for himself on something he felt passionately about? If you accept the idea of inspiration of the Christian scriptures, then you must realize that it was not thought to be dictation — elements of the writers come through. And remember, these were letters to churches. Paul may have been more careful if he had known they would be collected and considered the “infallible word of God.”
Scripture is infallible, even meaningful to you because you have chosen for it to be. Others have their own views.
I believe in god. I don’t agree with a gay lifestyle. I shouldn’t be demonized for not agreeing with you. Don’t speak badly about Paul just because you don’t agree with him. I’m happy that emiliano posted and find myself agreeing with him even about shrooms because I was awakened spiritually by them. God bless everyone here.
First you would have to clarify what you mean by “the gay lifestyle.” That’s a rather nebulous and usually useless term. If you simply mean the idea of two people of the same sex having loving, intimate relationships, then what is there for you to agree or disagree with? Extrapolating further, if you mean that you believe that to participate in such relationships is to commit a sin, then you have only one person over whom to exercise control to avoid that — yourself.
That said, I don’t believe I demonized anyone. I tend to give people space to determine matters of faith on their own. But for those who would think badly of you for your opinion, consider this. Not that many years ago, scripture was being used to justify slavery, and then segregation, lynchings, and all manner of evil against African Americans. To those who held/hold the opinion that such things were commanded by scripture, would you say it was just their opinion and should be respected?
Likewise, I don’t think I spoke “badly” of Paul, and it really doesn’t matter whether I agree with him or not. I simply made the observation that even he had to admit that he got carried away at times when writing those letters to the Church. And much of what he has to say about women, and sexual relationships in general seems a bit obsessive, even for biblical writers. It seems conceivable that Paul might have had a few personal hangups concerning sex. In fact, it seems rather obvious that he did.
Concerning the “shrooms” I now find myself wondering if I should have even bothered with the previous, as you are probably reading this through an aphasic haze anyway.
You’re right. you shouldn’t be demonized for disagree with the gay lifestyle, whatever “disagreeing” means, whatever “lifestyle” means.
But if you’re going to claim that your purely theological beliefs about homosexuality should hold dominion in civil law over my life, then I’m going to be “disagreeing” with you very heartily in order to defend myself, my life, and my loved ones. And if you make up a bunch of sh*t about me, my life, and my loved ones, in order to justify your ill treatment of me, I will be demonizing you as a bigot, a religious bigot, and an antigay bigot.