I hope you’ve all been catching Salon’s four-part series on the work of ex-gay ministries. In Part I, they cover PFOX’ efforts to prevent anti-bullying measures in schools. In Part II, a straight reporter goes undercover into a “reparative therapy” session.
Today’s installment is about the Rev. Grace Harley, who:
…used to be a lesbian who posed as a man to marry a woman. Now she has overcome cocaine and “little hot-to-trot women” and is speaking out to save homosexual sinners.
The series is definitely worth reading, regardless of one’s perspective on the legitimacy of ex-gay ministries. I found today’s installment troubling, in particular this quote:
Politically correct people do not understand that gay people “taint” others around them, she [Harley] says, and so gays should be barred from the Boy Scouts of America. “Birds of a feather flock together,” Harley tells us. “It’s not in the Bible, but it’s true. You can’t have a homosexual buddy and think you are going to be buddy-buddy and nothing [will get] off on you. You will become tainted and corrupted.
As gay blogger John at By the Bayou notes:
This is a call for social shunning of gay people. We have bad gay cooties that will leap off of us and get on you, so you better run, and lock up the women lest they become lesbians.
Indeed, it is hard to read Harley’s message any other way.
Yes indeed, I have been reading the series and spreading it around to as many friends and other concerned parties.
The therapist, Barry Levy approaches therapy with outmoded gender bias and of course the also outmoded course that homosexuality is a disorder or whatever kind of ‘unnatural’ way to be or behave or use your sex organs.
This is a rote method, which also, rather than acknowlege how a gay person person would emotionally and socially respond to threat and stigma, he justifies the threat and stigma.
And as the previous post states, this basket case of a woman is suddenly expert on the ‘gay is catching’ stigma.
I bet if you asked her what ‘catching it’ meant, she might admit to her first experience of being seduced by a woman (whether she was the instigator or not).
But she could have also (as many females are) been seduced by a man, lived as a heterosexual her whole life and still have engaged in promiscuous and drug addled behavior.
Millions do after all, don’t they?
This isn’t mentioned often in XGW, but it’s usually true.
People who are addicts are a certain personality type that ranges in degree.
They start out being reckless and selfish people and the drugs tend to amplify this trait.
They rarely care or want to take responsibility for their behavior or treatment of others.
If you inject another way to displace blame (homosexuality) or make risky behavior like using
street drugs, indistiguishable from gay sex (something they believe that one can do without as it serves no more ‘purpose’ than using drugs.)
Then this confuses the entire issue of what is healthy and does serve a purpose to one’s happiness and fulfillment.
Barry Levy’s pontification on what parts of the body are supposed to serve what, hardly squares with universal ethics and health.
This kind of goes back to several kinds of analogies I’ve brought up concerning unrealistic and unnecessary standards and the requirements of who must live up to them, regardless of peril or impossibility.
Ms. Harley, and Dr. Levy…clearly don’t know what the hell they are talking about when it comes to generalizations, the only mode they are working in.
They make claims and conclusions without substance. It boggles my mind that a whole political movement is served by and based on something that doesn’t demand substantiation or justification beyond theory and conjecture.
Now that we can only go to court on equality in some states, a court should demand this substantiation.
That IS the law…isn’t it?
The ex gay movement are the accusers, so the burden of proof is on them.
If they don’t have it….well that’s just too bad.