Behold, Exodus International’s ministry to persons afflicted with Same Sex Attractions…

…or Was at least, if you take their word for it.  You know you can take them at their word don’t you…?

In August, 2007 after a lot of prayer, deliberation and listening to friends and critics alike — but mostly the Lord — we decided to back out of policy issues and our Director of Government Affairs took a position with another organization.

–Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International to Ex-Gay Watch. 

Jim Burroway has more Here.   Peterson Toscano notes the shift in Exodus policy in his blog post Lovely Shifts And Dramatic Changes.  Allow me to be the grouch here.  Take another look at that anti-hate crime laws poster.  It’s a damn lie.  And they knew it was a damn lie while they were creating it.  And in that, it is eminently typical of the quality of Exodus International’s relationship to honesty with regard to…well…goddamn near everything.  Homosexuals… homosexuality… Teh Gay Lifestyle…  ex-gay therapy…  They have lied in the past.  Brazenly.  Ingeniously.  Unashamedly.  Unhesitatingly.  But we can trust them now, can’t we?

Um….no.  Let’s look at what’s being said here.  Really look…

It may sound nuanced but we weren’t really involved in “politics.” We never worked for the direct election or defeat of a candidate.

No Alan…that doesn’t sound ‘nuanced’.  It sounds duplicitous.   Never mind that lobbying politicians and voters on policy issues is politics too, observe the telltale adjective…the Direct election or defeat of a candidate?  I’m laughing in your face Alan.  Exodus has always been a republican tool in election campaigns.  Why have so many of Exodus’ "Change Is Possible" billboard campaigns been waged in swing states, with relatively small gay populations?  You know goddamned well why.  The republican candidate bashes the democrat over their stand on gay rights issues.  You folks come along and tell the voters that homosexuals don’t have to be homosexual if they don’t want to anyway, thereby allowing the republican gay basher to blame gays for their own persecution, and the voters to tell themselves that by voting against gay rights they’re not hurting anyone, because the gays can always stop being gay when they’ve had enough. 

The primary function of Exodus has always been to make political gay bashing palatable to voters.  I mean…look…you don’t actually Change very many homosexuals do you?  If I ran a corporation whose main product failed miserably so often I’d have gone out of business long ago.  But Change isn’t your product.  Animus toward homosexuals is your product.  And by that measure, you’re still worth the money the religious right spends on you, if not quite as much as before.

Ever since John Smid had that brilliant idea of dragging gay teenagers into ex-gay therapy against their will, you folks have had to endure a lot more critical scrutiny then before, and one fall out of that is that people are starting to notice all the political activism you’re doing tends to contradict your ersatz message of love.  You’re more effective for the anti-gay right when people really believe that all you’re trying to do is help all those poor victims of Same Sex Attraction Disorder who hate themselves because…well…because of all the goddamned lies your kind likes to spread about them.  Hence, the costume change.  And notice how it went from "We are not a political organization" to "We are not a political organization Anymore."  Nice.  But…yes…you are…

One area that we found to be incredibly beneficial was simply sharing our stories with lawmakers. If and when there are opportunities to do that we will.

The word for that is Lobbying Alan. 

I know…I know…it’s So Hard to remember what words really mean after spending so many years as a mindless cog a lie factory…isn’t it.  But they Do mean things, existence exists, reality is real, and when all is said and done that’s the enemy you’ve been fighting all your life right there, not teh gay, not teh liberal, not teh secular.