Ex-gay, ex-Exodus leader Anthony Falzarano believes God may have caused a lesbian’s partner to die of breast cancer in order to chastise her.
Falzarano, the founder of PFOX, told former ex-gay Darlene Bogle that God may have been trying to teach her something by taking away her gay partner of 15 years, Des. In a comment posted to the Beyond Ex-Gay website, Falzarano wrote:
Darlene, I’m glad I ran across your blog. I still miss you. I am sorry to hear that your lover died of breast-cancer. Darlene is God sending you a message? Please consider coming back to Exodus. You are loved and missed. Why would God call you back to lesbianism, give you a lover and then take her away. I’m sorry that you are going through this. My heart is breaking right now but I believe that you belong to the Lord and “He chastizes [sic] the one’s that he loves”. I believe He is calling you back. If you want to talk I am here to listen. Please call me at [number removed] if you want to talk. May God Bless You, Anthony Falzarano
What kind of mind tells a person they are “loved and missed,” before suggesting that the tragic death of her lover was a message from God? Someone who believes in a very manipulative God. But this is just the first of Falzarano’s odd beliefs. From the above comments, he apparently also believes he is still part of Exodus. Not so, according to Exodus President Alan Chambers, who told Ex-Gay Watch:
Falzarano was removed from Exodus in 1998 [and] was banned from our conferences. I allowed him to come to one in 2005 and he was kicked out and will never be allowed back. His check also bounced for that conference.
Having firmly disassociated himself from Falzarano, however, it must be said that Chambers’s attitude towards Darlene Bogle hasn’t always been gracious, either. When Bogle publicly apologized for misleading others in her days as an ex-gay leader, Chambers was quick to accuse her of hurting him by her “decision to go back into homosexuality,” and called on her and others to apologize to him and other ex-gays who were made “disappointed and mad” by her exit.
Hat-tip to Peterson Toscano, who writes more about Bogle’s response here.
His check bounced?? LOL!
This unctuous “loving the sinner” approach must be Mr. Falzarano’s stock in trade. Part of the self-validating approach to life.
If someone you approve of experiences a tragedy, well then, it came from Satan, and God is there for you.
If a tragedy comes to someone you disapprove of; then God is sending them a message.
The interpretation all keys around one’s approval / disapproval.
All part of the smug self-certain lifestyle.
Too bad he just didn’t leave out the “Darlene is God… …is calling you back” part. It might have been authentically Christian and caring if he had left out all the Prophet-as-interpreter-of-God’s-motives presumptive posing.
We all know that “true” Christians don’t die or get sick.
What is missed here is the idea that the one person is more important than the other, so God uses the partner as a pawn. I have heard this idea so often by many Christians–the death of one person is used to instill some kind of virtue in others. This is a very problematic idea about God, but I believe a lot of people adhere to this belief system. When my sister passed away, many people told my mother that it was done to bring my mother closer to God. People from church would say that God was trying to teach my mother a lesson and used my sister as a teaching tool. Since my sister died in a strange manner (possibly suicide–not clear), people would say she abandonned God and was a symbol of apostacy. When my mother was still in mourning months later, people would say God does not want her to be in mourning anymore since the lesson should have been learned. Anthony is not the only person taught in this type of theology. I suspect it is very common.
You know, that little comment from Alan sounded practically like a lover scorned. Ok, I get that Alan/Exodus has had issues with the guy and disassociated themselves from him. I even get allowing him to come back after many years gone (that’s what a Christian does, right?!). But to say “his checked bounced” totally sounds like something you’d hear after the messy breakup of two lovers.
As for Falzarano, something is off-putting about that guy. I mean, besides the fact that his supposed God allegedly killed off someone to teach someone else a lesson. I wonder if some of these people even study the Bible.
j.
Why was he banned from Exodus?
OMG!!
Are you KIDDING me?!
Don’t MAKE me take off my earrings!!
When I think of all the women, all the friends I’ve had who had breast cancer and I was so SCARED for them.
One precious friend of mine was gone six months after diagnosis. She left behind two wonderful daughters 12 and 17 and she herself was only forty!
My youngest friend diagnosed was 28.
I could STRANGLE that guy!
Really…..I could…
As I observed here, I believe that:
1. Falzarano worships an egocentric god of death
2. Exodus makes no effort to warn prospective ex-gays or concerned parents away from people like Falzarano. There is no public blacklist, no list of guidelines that would enable people to avoid being scammed or abused.
3. Chambers, Andy Comiskey, Phil Burress, and Ken Hutcherson worship a similar god of egocentrism, warfare and death
4. Exodus members who stand by and allow Exodus leaders to promote a culture of death may be guilty of cowardice and neglect, which I consider worse than what Falzarano does
My Mother survived a radical mastectomy and my Sister is still dealing with her two lumpectomies and the grueling chemotherapy. Her friend is being memorialized tomorrow after battling and then losing the big “C” war. I never did think God was punishing them for something. I blame mankind. I blame the idiots that tested nuclear bombs above ground in Nevada and then reassured everyone not to fret the resulting cloud or being downwind in rural Utah.
I find it quite telling that many of these leaders of the exgay movement are raging out of control sex addicts like Falzarano.
They may not know that sexual addiction goes in both directions.
A sex addict can either compulsively and excessively act out physically, or they can do the opposite, compulsively and excessively deny oneself sex, both creating similar guilt and confusion. Both extremes can be abusive and addictive and both come from the same unhealed core, a distorted sexual matrix.
The best category they could hope to achieve is, Recovering Sex Addict. But for sure, recovering is better than not. I hope it works well for some.
OK… let’s be QUITE clear about the timeline here… Chambers History(R) not withstanding, people can do their own reading of the sequence.
> 1996: Falzarano together with Robert Knight (then at FRC) invent PFOX. Falzarano heads Transformation Christian Ministries (Virginia), an Exodus affiliate.
> 1998: large campaign by anti-gay Christian organisations — dreamt up by Janet Folger, spearheaded by Kennedy’s Coral Ridge — uses ex-gays as centre piece. The cheques start arriving: $4 million, a typical quoted figure. Falzarano thinks the gravy train is heading down the line, and awaits eagerly on the platform clutching his Exodus-affiliated ticket to board.
> Oct 1998: Earle Fox announces Falzarano has asked him to step in and help at TCM due to the increasing workload at PFOX. Falzarano still involved, TCM still Exodus.
> March 1999: Falzarano makes his vile comments about Matthew Shepard’s murder at the PFOX “Reclaiming the Rainbow” Conference. Earle Fox, TCM Exodus, as opening speaker. Conference underwritten by FRC, as stated by PFOX material.
At this point, Falzarano is still waiting at the station for that gravy train. It appears that some station master has pulled a switch and sent that train down another track. Shockingly… Coral Ridge et al seem to think they’ll keep that $4 million all for themselves! Falzarano making increasingly pointed “inquiries”.
> July 1999: mysteriously, Falzarano finds himself — and PFOX — shut out of the Exodus Conference (Wheaton IL)
> 17 August 1999: Falzarano announced as fired, as of 7 Aug, in a letter by PFOX’s Jerry Brown (Pres. of PFOX Board). TCM connection cut too.
> 1 Sep 1999: Falzarano himself goes public in an extraordinary (even for him) froth-mouthed press conference during which he bad mouths all and sundry. Theme in common: “those anti-gay Christian groups used us ex-gays for their campaign and then never sent us any money.” Foolish boy, he names names.
It should be fairly clear exactly why Falzarano and the rest parted company… and it nothing but a sordid, squalid squabble about MONEY and all done with the good grace, wit and style we’ve come to expect of Falzarano.
He wanted it for himself, to be channeled through his PFOX. What was he thinking???
Exodus, you may be wondering, fits in how? For one, they didn’t bite the hands that fed, and continues to feed them. Indeed, Falzarano’s self-obsessed blow-up gave them a perfect opportunity to slip right in and take it all, easy as a seal in a sewer.
For another… perhaps this 1997 quote from Falzarano might give you another clue about the growing antagonisms over the years, the clash of ego and ambition…
Wait until Falzarano finds out that EVERYONE dies! He’s going to have a hard time working out who’s being punished for what.
Falzarano:
So when a straight person’s partner dies, is God trying to tell them to go gay?
When someone’s parent dies of cancer does that mean God is trying to tell them they should have been raised in an orphanage?
I thought according to Chambers and Exodus that “homosexuality” doesn’t exist, so in a sense she didn’t return anywhere nor to anything. Chambers really expects people to apologize if they decide to not deny and to accept what and who they are? Does Chambers have a separate office at Exodus for his ego?
OK, one more thing. Chambers mentions:
Is it all about money? If someone can’t afford to attend a conference, isn’t it the right thing to do to help them? And isn’t it wrong to tell the world that so-and-so’s check bounced? And why are they charging for conferences anyway? I thought the Gospel message was free. On second thought, they are NOT preaching the Gospel so it only makes sense to charge an admission fee. Nevermind.
My parents were married in 1962, when marriages between Protestants (Dad) and Roman Catholics (Ma) were very rare. In fact, most Catholic diocese would not perform an inter-religious marriage in those days. Dad decided to convert to Roman Catholicism to ensure the marriage could happen.
Flash forward 35 years, when Ma died of pancreatic cancer – a horrible death I would not wish on anyone. I am trying to imagine any of my Dad’s relatives, who remained Protestants, telling him that her death was a sign he should renounce his religious lifestyle choice and return to Protestantism. I can assure you that, if any of them had tried it, they would have found themselves thrown bodily out of the funeral home, probably by several of my relatives.
“We love gay people” = “If I manage to appear loving, I don’t have to feel guilty about my efforts to disadvantage gay people and their families.”
It reminds me of when my former boyfriend was dying of AIDS. His ‘christian’ sister came out to visit. She left after a few days, and when Dewey died, I called her to tell her. She said that she hoped i would leave the gay lifestyle, because it her brother’s death was clearly a message from god.
This from a woman who had had more than her share of men before her marriage, whose daighter was illegitimate (but the husband didn’t know she wasn’t his), and which daughter was also involved with a series of bad actors to whom she was never married.
My response: “Ursula, if God was busy passing out diseases to people as punishments for sexual immorality, both you AND your daughter would be first in line at the VD clinic.”
Didn’t hear from HER again.
After I blocked him from disrupting discussions at Truth Wins Out, Anthony Falzarano continued to send comments including this one:
This was after I pointed out that Falzarano was violating the very same Bible verses that he falsely accuses gays of violating.
It has been clear to me for many years that Anthony is a deeply unhappy and bitter man. No one but Anthony knows why, and I’m sure he goes to extreme lengths to convince himself that all his problems are somehow the fault of the vast majority of gay people who are honest about their orientation and who are sincere, dignified and ethical in conduct.
If Anthony were ever to make a sincere effort to know me, he would know how laughably inaccurate his accusation about “miserable queens” is, and if he were ever to listen intently to his targets, he would reconsider whether he and Chambers have ever really “reasoned” about anything.
Falzarano has spent decades shouting at people in order to drown out not only their voices, but his own spiritual doubts.
Can you imagine Jesus ever saying something like “because of miserable QUEENS like you.”?