My friends Peterson Toscano and Morgan Jon Fox are helping to organize an event in Memphis, coinciding with yet another Focus On The Family/Exodus “Love (sic) Won Out” conference they’re holding there on On Saturday February 23rd 2008. The events will be held under the banner, Deconstructing the Ex-Gay Myth—A Weekend of Action Art, and will be held from February 22 to the 24th, and will include Peterson, giving a farewell performance of Doin’ Time In The Homo No-Mo Halfway House and the premiere of his new play Transfigurations–Transgressing Gender in the Bible, as well as an exhibit of art by survivors of ex-gay therapy, which promises to be a very moving experience in and of itself. And Morgan’s documentary on the events of the summer of 2005, when a gay teen was dragged into ex-gay therapy against his will, and the world responded with outrage and action, will finally have it’s premiere. This Is What Love In Action Looks Like.

Here’s a short promotional video for the weekend events…

I plan to go, and I urge everyone who can to come to Memphis and participate. The ex-gay movement, funded and operated by right wing theocratic radicals for purely anti-gay political ends has done enormous damage over the years, to many innocent hearts, young and old. In his blog, Peterson writes…

As a Christian and lover of God, I know this to be true–God desires truth in the inmost part. We need each other. We need deep and meaningful relationships and that human touch—emotionally and physically. We need to depend on friends and lovers and loved one and have them depend on us to supply each other with the things only humans can give to each other.

As a Christian I recognize that this is how God set it up. Sure ultimately I know that God supplies all my needs, but just like God supplies my nutritional need through healthy veggies, legumes, fruits and grains, I receive God’s love through other people. God provides me so much of what I need from the emotional and physical intimacy I share with others.

In fact, in regards to these teachings, I see the ex-gay movement as an Ex-Human Movement. In some ways it mirrors what the modern world pushes on us, that we can make it all on our own, except instead of God, the modern world provides us with materialism.

No, we need each other, and when we don’t have our emotional and physical needs met, we mourn, we feel the loss and the pain of detachment, of emotional solitude.

I know that pain of loss and detachment intimately…for a somewhat different reason then the survivors, but nonetheless as part of the experience of gay people in America. It is hard in the best of worlds to find your other half, and make a life together. And in large measure my anger toward those who preach fear and self loathing to gay people, and unforgivably to our families, comes from knowing full well that I might have had a better chance to find my other half in this life, were it not for them. I might have been able to talk to my own parents when I was a teenager, struggling as teenagers do, with first love, and first heartbreak. I might have had a much closer relationship with them then I was allowed to have, because they just didn’t want to know, and the thought of telling them simply terrified me. I had to bottle up so much inside myself back then, and it damaged my relationship with them, and in particular with my mom. We have to bleed…gay children and parents alike…so the haters of humanity can be righteous.

If there is such a thing as Sin, capital ‘S’, in this world, then suffocating the ability to love, and trust in another, must surely be a big one. Our hearts are not blackboards that anyone can scribble their will upon. Our hopes and dreams of love are not their stepping stones to heaven. Please, if you can, come to Memphis and raise a voice for love. Show them what love in action looks like.

More details on the events in Memphis can be found at Beyond Ex-Gay.