Exgays huddled in the massive ghettos of Anytown, USA had better beware. The trains are rolling in. The furnaces have been tested and the ex-ex-gay, –XXtroopers– have their marching orders via the supreme commander of anti-exgay forces in America, Herr Wayne Besen.
…and so on and so forth. D.L.’s a tad pissed that Wayne has stepped up to the plate and created Truth Wins Out, to counter Love Won Out’s lies with some hard facts about the damage conversion therapy causes, and the political motivations of the leaders of the ex-gay movement. With Truth Wins Out we’ll finally have an organization dedicated 100 percent to confronting ex-gay groups and their between the lines political message, that gay people don’t need rights, because gay people either don’t, or should not exist in the first place. This is a good thing, and something the religious right cannot be happy about. They’ve had a virtual free pass to lie through their teeth in the debate about conversion therapy in the popular media for decades now. It seems now that those days are over, and if painting little Hitler mustaches on pictures of Wayne Besen, who is Jewish, is the best that louts like D.L. can do, then they have to know at some level that they’ve lost the fight.
The problem I’ve always had with Goodwin’s Law is that it stifles discussion about fascism in an age when fascism is on the rise. But D.L. makes a good case for it all the same, and you almost feel sorry for him. Reading his post was like watching a raving street lunatic walking around buck naked and babbling to everyone about the aliens in his microwave oven. You just want to scream for someone, anyone, to please give the goddamned nutcase a bathrobe and a ride to his shrink. Seriously. Just because everyone can expose themselves to the whole goddamned world in their blogs, that doesn’t mean everyone should.
This is good:
Wayne Besen’s Final solution (WBFS) Truth Wins Out (TWO) is for all accounts exgaywatch with shark teeth. Along with a 10 point plan to expose, root out and if possible imprison former homosexuals and supporters, Besen seems to have finally found the trigger to his uncontrollable desire to rid the world of exgays.
…root out and if possible imprison former homosexuals and supporters… That’s really rich, coming from someone allied with a political movement whose leadership has repeatedly called for the reestablishment of sodomy laws. But what really makes D.L.’s histrionics about trains and furnaces and prisons so pathetic, is that the bedrock theory of the ex-gay movement is that homosexuals should not exist. The very fact of our existence is proof that there is something wrong within us, and something wrong with the society we live in. If there’s any eliminationist thinking going on around here, it’s being preached from the pulpits of the religious right. And as for final solutions, the religious right already has theirs. They call it the Second Coming:
Addressing the group from the very spot where the conflict is to take place, Frazier turns to Revelation 19, which describes Christ going into battle. "It thrills my heart every time that I read these words," he says, then begins to read: "’And I saw heaven standing open.… And there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire.’"
Frazier pauses to explain the text. "This doesn’t sound like compassionate Jesus," he says. "This doesn’t sound like the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. This is the Warrior King. He judges and makes war."
Frazier returns to the Scripture: "He has a name written on him that no one but he himself knows. He is dressed in a robe that is dipped in blood and his name is the word of God."
This is the moment the Rapturists eagerly await. The magnitude of death and destruction will make the Holocaust seem trivial. The battle finally begins.
Those who remain on earth are the unsaved, the left behind—many of them dissolute followers of the Antichrist, who is massing his army against Christ. Accompanying Christ into battle are the armies of heaven, riding white horses and dressed in fine linen.
"This is all of us," Frazier says.
Frazier points out that Christ does not need high-tech weaponry for this conflict. "’Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword,’ not a bunch of missiles and rockets," he says.
Once Christ joins the battle, both the Antichrist and the False Prophet are quickly captured and cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. Huge numbers of the Antichrist’s supporters are slain.
Meanwhile, an angel exhorts Christ, "Thrust in thy sickle, and reap." And so, Christ, sickle in hand, gathers "the vine of the earth."
Then, according to Revelation, "the earth was reaped." These four simple words signify the end of the world as we know it.
Grapes that are "fully ripe"—billions of people who have reached maturity but still reject the grace of God—are now cast "into the great winepress of the wrath of God." Here we have the origin of the phrase "the grapes of wrath." In an extraordinarily merciless and brutal act of justice, Christ crushes the so-called grapes of wrath, killing them. Then, Revelation says, blood flows out "of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs."
With its highly figurative language, Revelation is subject to profoundly differing interpretations. Nevertheless, LaHaye’s followers insist on its literal truth and accuracy, and they have gone to great lengths to calculate exactly what this passage of Revelation means.
As we walk down from the top of the hill of Megiddo, one of them looks out over the Jezreel Valley. "Can you imagine this entire valley filled with blood?" he asks. "That would be a 200-mile-long river of blood, four and a half feet deep. We’ve done the math. That’s the blood of as many as two and a half billion people."
We’ve done the math… How much raw, bleeding seething hatred do you have to have in your heart for your neighbors, when you can raptly, joyfully, eagerly imagine literally billions of them being crushed to death by Jesus Christ in a massive wine press, and calculate exactly how many of them have to go through it in order for their blood to fill the Jezreel valley to a depth of four and a half feet, the height of a horse’s bridle?
Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission – both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state – especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.
Left Behind Games" has stated, on its website its hopes of getting a "suitable for ages 13 and up" or "suitable for ages 6 and up" rating for "Left Behind: Eternal Forces". Here’s a screen capture:
This game immerses children in present-day New York City — 500 square blocks, stretching from Wall Street to Chinatown, Greenwich Village, the United Nations headquarters, and Harlem. The game rewards children for how effectively they role play the killing of those who resist becoming a born again Christian.
Let it be said the game makers also give you the option of fighting on the side of the Antichrist, when you’ve had your fill of slaying heathens. By that time you could forgive a kid if they’re wondering if there’s any goddamned difference between being on the side of Christ the Savior, verses Satan the Despiser. Well…there is the fine linen.
Love God with all your heart, and love thy neighbor as thyself…and pass the ammunition! It’s not Wayne Besen who D.L. Foster and his kind have put the Hitler mustache on. It’s Jesus Christ.
I went to the protests yesterday, in front of Focus On My The Family’s so-called Love Won Out conference at Immanuel’s Church in Silver Spring Maryland, missing the D.C. Pride parade and block party, and what was even worse, Baltimore’s "Hon" Fest in Hampden. But I had to go, and it was the more rewarding experience. I met so many kind and decent people on the picket line, all ages, gay and straight, all deeply troubled by the lies being told about homosexuals and homosexuality inside the sanctuary of a church.
The first thing I noticed when I got there was how remote Immanuel’s Church actually is from the city. If Focus is bringing its circus to Washington D.C., why put it inside a church, and not all that big of one, all the way out here in the outer suburbs? I discussed it with some of the other protesters and came to think that they did it so that they wouldn’t be mobbed by an angry gay community. The thought also struck me that it was why they held the event right on D.C. Pride day…to have it happening while the city’s gay community would be busy with something else. It wasn’t until I got home that another reason occurred to me: a number of Focus supporters might not have wanted to go into the city for such an event. For all its appeals to black ministers lately, the anti-gay religious right is largely a phenomena of the well to do suburbs…the vanguards of the white flight of the 60s and 70s. They may draw support from the rural voters, they are perfectly willing to appeal to the prejudices of some in the African American community, but the anti-gay agenda is being driven largely by the rich white burbs. Dobson had to know his base probably wouldn’t want to drive into a largely black, never mind largely democratic city for his conference.
Our picket line was not huge, but according to Steve Boese of A Tenable Belief, neither was the crowd inside the conference. Steve actually went into the conference (a thing Wayne Besen is apparently no longer allowed to do) and sat through most of the presentations and his estimate of the crowd size was about 300 or so people, in a church that could hold about four-hundred or so. Lance Carroll, who protested Love Won Out when it was in St. Louis, said they’d gotten over a thousand people at their conference in that city. But the people who stood in front of Immanuel’s Church yesterday, and held their signs for the attendees to see, had strength in more then simple numbers: the strength that comes from truely loving your neighbor, and caring about what happens to them.
Lance Carroll, the 18 year old who was taken to Love In Action against his will when he was 17, was there, as was Wayne Besen. During the afternoon picket Lance spied what he thought were a group of LIA staff members and walked across the street to talk to them. Having been forced to walk the walk of shame last year on the LIA campus in Memphis, it had to have been an exhilarating feeling for him to be able to freely choose whether or not to talk to LIA staff. As it turned out only one of them was from LIA, the others were Exodus. The LIA guy was new, and hadn’t been at LIA when Lance was in the program. He told Lance that he and John Smid were the only two people from LIA there at the conference. They all chatted with Lance for a bit, and Lance asked the LIA guy to tell John he said ‘hi’. Of course Smid never had spine enough to come out and talk to him. But later the other guy from LIA come back out, by himself, and walked over to the picket line. He told Lance he wanted to hear from him directly why he was so upset over how he was treated at LIA. Lance gave him an earful. It had to have felt good to be able to get that off of his chest to someone on LIA staff.
I met many good and decent people…did a little chauffeur work for Lance and Wayne and Steve, back and forth to the Metro station, and watched so many interesting moments as the people inside the Love Won Out conference encountered people outside their doors, who were bearing witness to actual human love and compassion. I’ll be chewing on what I saw for weeks I’m sure. In the meantime, here are a few photos…
God Loves You
I just have to mention this about the image above…these folks there at the head of the picket line had just broken into a chorus of Amazing Grace when I walked over and snapped this one. Listening to their quiet, insistent voices singing that song just there, just then, nearly brought me to tears.
So I’m eating a quick dinner and watching, against my better judgment, the TV news broadcasts…and I get fed up and I flip around the satellite channels…and there’s Logo, that gay channel that very seldom has anything on it that I want to watch…and somehow the listings on the TV guide are severely truncated. The Complete Tales of the City is listed merely as Tales… Round Trip Ticket is listed as Trip. There’s a listing for Latter…that I suspect is for Latter Days, one of the few same sex romances I’ve ever watched worthy of being called a romance. So I navigate over to that timeslot and click for the program listing. Here’s what I got:
Latter Days – Romance – Steve Sandvoss, Wes Ramsey. A young Mormon missionary has a homosexual relationship after moving from Idaho to Los Angles.
Well that about sums it up, doesn’t it? And in that spirit, I would like to offer to the program guide editors of DirectTV my own set of quick movie summaries:
Casablanca: An American expatriate has a heterosexual affair with the opposite sex lover of a wanted resistance fighter.
Sleepless in Seattle: A man’s son from a prior heterosexual relationship calls a radio talk show in the hope of finding his father a new heterosexual partner.
Love Story: Heterosexuality means never having to say you’re sorry.
Wuthering Heights: Members of two wealthy families on the English moors engage in furtive heterosexual relationships and ruin each other’s lives.
Ghost: The murdered heterosexual lover of a woman comes back to haunt her.
An Affair to Remember: A woman has an affair with a person of the opposite sex.
Romeo & Juliet: Teenagers have a heterosexual relationship against the wishes of their parents.
Notting Hill: A bookshop owner desires a heterosexual relationship with a famous star who buys a book in his shop.
Never Been Kissed: A young reporter has heterosexual feelings for a teacher she has been ordered to write a negative article about.
Runaway Bride: A woman leaves many heterosexual lovers waiting at the altar.
Mystic Pizza: Three women pursue heterosexual relationships while making pizza.
Gone With the Wind: A southern man has a heterosexual relationship with a southern woman.
That ought to keep them glued to their TV screens.
Vigil Against Love Won Out Tomorrow In Silver Spring Maryland
I should have posted this earlier in the week after I got back from Memphis…but anyway…
Montgomery County Maryland is my growing up place. I’ve been waiting for these rats to stick there noses there. I’ll be at the vigil in the morning, or if not the morning one, the afternoon one. If you expect to be there please email me.
This has been one ex-gay protesting week for me…
Join Us at a "Love Won Out" Vigil
June 10, 2006
Focus on the Family is coming to Montgomery County Saturday June 10. They are presenting their "Love WonOut" conference at Immanuel’s Church in Silver Spring. We know from other similar events around the country that these conferences propagate the view that LGBT people must choose between their Christian faith and their own God given sexuality; that homosexuality is a mental disorder and that this"disorder" can and must be cured.
In other communities, citizens of all walks of life have joined together to bear witness that these statements are not true. We hope to do the same. A vigil is being held in front of Immanuel’s Church the day ofthe conference. We desire to let people know that being faithful to God and being a healthy, LGBT person are not inconsistent; and to counter the conversion therapy notions set forth by Focus on the Family, which are dangerous to the well being of those to whom it is directed. We further want to provide a friendly face of support for any individuals attending the conference due to coercion.
The morning vigil is between 7:30 – 9:30 AM in a lot across from the church. The press conference will take place at 9:00 AM. The afternoon vigil is 4:00 – 6:00 PM. Our vigil will be silent and peaceful. Respectful placards are welcome.
Immanuel’s Church is located at 16819 New Hampshire Ave. Silver Spring, MD. It is just north of Spencerville Road, 6.8 miles north of Colesville Road.
For further information about the Love Won Out conference: www.lovewonout.com
For further information about the vigil, email Rev. Sandy Dodson, Christ Congregational Church, UCC: sandy@christ-ucc.org
The Sunday before the protests, the protesters organized a wee poster making party at Peabody Park in the Forbidden Zone (the forbidden Zone being being those regions of Memphis that Love In Action inmates are not allowed to enter while in the program). It was an affair that might have stuck you as a tad carefree, given the brutal nature of Love In Action’s Refuge program. But these folks, nearly all of them teens themselves (Morgan told me to go to Peabody Park and look for a bunch of crazy teens), had a message of genuine love and courage to be oneself, to speak to the people trapped inside LIA, and there were times when the atmosphere got a little giddy with it. But I could not emphasize this enough: the message they were determined to bring to the doorstep of LIA was not one of anger and fear and hurt, but of courage and love.
I can think of no quicker, surer solvent of the hatred and fear inside of John Smid’s hollow church, then the spirit these determined teens brought to the protests. They are an amazing group.
I made it home safe and sound. Sorry not to update sooner. I’ve been home since late Tuesday, and very fatigued. I seem to have picked up a head cold on the way. Not a bad one…but you know how it is with head colds. And I had some stuff to catch up on at work. More pix from the protests later…
In January of 2005, I came out to my parents as being gay. After an initial positive and supporting reaction they began to change their minds…I was sent to several different counselors, the last of which worked for a fundamentalist Christian church. This “counselor” informed me that I was not Gay, in fact, he said no one was really Gay…and anyone who claimed to be gay was living a lie. This pastor recommended to my parents that I be sent to Love In Action’s REFUGE program for teens.
On June 6, 2005 I left Jackson, Missouri at five o’clock in the morning to make the long trip to Memphis, Tennessee. The first things I saw at the Love in Action campus were the protesters. I spent the entire summer between my junior and senior year of highschool in Memphis, against my will, at Refuge, where I underwent many forms of “therapy” that were supposed to turn me away from being gay. These so-called “therapies” included group activities where one person was singled out and made to be ashamed of very personal occurrences in their lives. I had to participate in this activity many times. Other “therapies” included isolation, where you wouldn’t be allowed to communicate—we were not even allowed to make eye contact, with any of the other participants; making the women wear skirts and makeup to help them become more feminine; and making the men play sports in an attempt to help them become more masculine.
These are just a couple of examples of the type of “program” they use to turn people straight. Though while I was there, it just seemed to make people more depressed and self-loathing than they already were. I, myself, went through several of these depressive periods. After enduring this time in Memphis I returned home, unchanged.
My parents were very disappointed and didn’t know what to do next, feeling that they had tried everything. My mom took it upon herself to somehow change me. This began with daily bouts of verbal abuse, her telling me how ashamed she was of me. After a few months of this, the verbal abuse escalated into small episodes of physical abuse, with her cornering me and slapping me, while telling me what an abomination I was.This type of behavior continued until I could no longer stand to live at home. One day I packed up all of my belongings into my car, and told my parents that I was moving out right that minute. My mother got so angry when I told her this that she exploded and beat me into a corner, ripping my shirt and giving me scratches and bruises in the process. My dad had to pull her off of me so that I could get to my car to leave.
Fortunately I am now living with a wonderful, and supportive family who are very empathetic toward my situation. They have taken me in, and made me their son-in-spirit. Now that I am in a much-improved situation, I feel that I need to speak-out against the things that I went through. Parents should not be able to force their children to attend any type of program like the one I went to. When a child comes out to their parents as gay, lesbian, or bisexual they need the love and support of their parents. They don’t need to be made to feel that there is something wrong with them, something that needs to be fixed.
That’s the gist of it, but Lance gave Morgan a more detailed account later, and as they allowed me to photograph the interview process, I was able to hear it and it just breaks your heart. Keep this kid’s experience in mind as you read this statement on LIA’s newly updated Refuge website:
God has admonished us to respect our parents. God has given them to us as vessels of His choosing to bring us into His world. Whether or not our parents are worthy of respect.
In other words, if your parents are beating the living crap out of you, then God must want them to do that. That is the kind of thing John Smid is pounding into the heads and hearts of gay teenagers at Love In Action, and time and again I have heard from survivors that the emotional effect of it is devistating. I was able to talk with Lance for a while after the interview and he’s a decent and thoughtful guy and there are parents all over this country who would gladly have given him all the love he’d ever want. But instead of healing the wounds in the families of gay teens, Smid is taking his several thousand dollar fee and making a toxic ruin of their emotional lives, and cutting scars in the hearts of teens they’ll be dealing with for years, if not for their entire lives.
I’m on the road back home today. I’ll post more photos from the protests when I get back, and settled in.
I never thought I’d find myself applauding an essay on abstinence. Most essays you read on the subject start from a strongly negative view of sex itself. But then that’s because most essays you read on the subject come from religious right sources, and the religious right considers joy anathema. You should be ashamed, ashamed of your body, of your feelings, of your deepest inner self. Otherwise, why would you want to let them take control of your body, your feelings, your deepest inner self? Most essays on abstinence start from the premise that there is something evil about sex, and especially if you’re gay, something evil about you. When people speak of abstinence and gay people, what they’re really talking about is lifetime celibacy, lifetime shame.
This generation views 16 to 17 hours of television each week and sees on average 14,000 sexual scenes and references each year. That’s more than 38 references every day.
INTERNET
This generation spends three hours a day online and is the first to grow up with point-and-click pornography. Almost 90 percent of teens have viewed pornography online at one of the 300,000 adult websites, most while doing homework.
MUSIC
More than 25 percent of teen-targeted radio segments contain sexual content; 42 percent of the top selling CDs contain sexual content.
Well no duh. Human beings are sexual creatures (its how we reproduce), and at a certain time in our lives (scientists call it ‘puberty’), sex starts becoming a pressing interest for us. So much, so goddamned obvious. Ask me if I’m happy about the commercialization of sex. Ask me if I think sex is being treated in this culture with the respect it deserves. But it’s not like any of the above are things you wouldn’t expect from human beings. The presence of sex in popular culture is as unsurprising a thing as the presence of weapons and violence. Note however, that you don’t hear a peep from Battle Cry about how frequently teens encounter violent images in popular culture. That’s probably because Battle Cry is itself dealing in violent imagery. It’s okay to imagine yourself as a warrior slaying thousands of your neighbors in blood strewn battle for all that is righteous and holy, but imagining yourself as a lover, laying down with someone and taking them into your arms and driving each other into fits of joyful sexual ecstasy is evil, and you need to have your mind washed out with soap. Jesus didn’t say love thy neighbor, he said to make war on them.
But if Battle Cry is a teen website, the teens writing for it are doing so with adults looking over their shoulders, and feeding them the words. Contrast it with a recent essay I found on Mogenic, a site for gay teens, about abstinence. It’s by a gay teen, and it’s titled, A Virgin, and Proud of it…
…gays have traditionally felt the need to identify themselves as separate from the mainstream. We have created our own subculture, and every subculture needs its own doctrines to follow. We tend to throw out religious teachings—especially Christian teachings—without fully considering their worth. We create our own beliefs, and often we choose beliefs that directly oppose those espoused who have adopted a dislike for homosexuality—like Christians, say. In doing so, we drop many things that perhaps Christianity got right. An example of this is abstinence.
The other problem in gay society is that we don’t have a point to define as the moment when abstinence should end. Abstinence traditionally means waiting until marriage to have sex. As long as gay marriage remains illegal, we don’t have that magical marker in the sky that shows us when, if we decide to abstain from sex, we can stop abstaining. Those of us who choose to remain abstinent, therefore, must forge our own definitions, such as “Once I’m in a meaningful, loving relationship, then I’ll have sex.” But there’s no sure indicator as to when that occurs, and it is easy for us to begin to have sex without infringing upon our morals.
I, personally, am a proud virgin. And by virgin, I mean Virgin, with a capital “V”. Unless you consider masturbation a means to end virginity, I am about as close to 100% virgin as they come. I intend to remain this way until I find myself in the aforementioned “meaningful, loving relationship.” It’s not that I do not find myself attracted to the idea of no-strings-attached sex. In fact, I fairly often fantasize about it. But I cannot imagine myself actually going through with such an act. There are several reasons why I believe abstinence to be the best way to go…
Okay, he gets many things completely wrong in this essay, like when he says "the sexual abandon of gays is legendary". Yeah it’s legendary…as in urban myth legendary. There’s a lot of claptrap talked about gay men and sex, most of it pushed by religious right propaganda machines using studies they’ve either distorted or produced themselves to arrive at the conclusions they were after, namely that gay people are dirty twisted sexual perverts who have sex compulsively and never experience anything like love. This kid buys into a lot of that myth, but so so a lot of us, even many of those of us who should be old enough to know better. Never mind.
And…personally…I strongly doubt that abstinence before marriage is a good idea. I think after you’ve made a vow is the wrong time to find out you’re not sexually compatible. Again…never mind.
What was so heartwarming, so thrilling, about reading that gay teen’s essay, was the self confidant conviction running throughout, that he was entitled as a human being to experience sex in a context of pride, dignity, and self worth.
That’s it. That’s the golden heart of it. Right there. You give that to kids, and it won’t matter what the popular culture says at them. They’ll take from it what they need, what validates their lives, and ignore what does not. Look at the example of the Netherlands, where sex education is frank and comprehensive, and prostitution is legal, and yet they have among the lowest of teen STD and pregnancy rates. Pride matters. And for so many years, my own teen years included, pride was such a scarce commodity for gay teens. I have seen the cost firsthand, of the absence of pride. I have experienced it. And that is why, to this day, I still fight for it.
I never thought I’d find myself applauding an essay on abstinence. And there I was, seeing to my delight, the difference, the profound life affirming difference, between an abstinence discussion based on shame, and one based on self worth. So many kids, so many gay kids especially, never get to have that discussion, because the adults talking to them aren’t really concerned about whether or not they have sex. They’re concerned that they might wake up one day, and realize that to be a human being, is not a dirty thing.
Kids start believing that, and it won’t matter what the religious right says to them, never mind pop culture. And that is exactly why the religious right does not want them to have pride, dignity, and a sense of self worth. They must be ashamed of themselves. Ashamed of what they are: sexual beings. Ashamed, ultimately, to be human.
I’ll be protesting in front of Love In Action here in Memphis tomorrow. Already I’ve heard from some of its supporters, posting on the QAC comment boards, how homosexuals have given themselves up to their base sexual urges, over a holy god. No. We have embraced life. And we are angry at those who would take away from teens, their pride, their dignity, and their self worth, in the name of the creator that gave them life.
Those of us who were following the events in Memphis last year closely knew there were other teens imprisoned in Love In Action besides Zach…
"When we drove around to the front…we saw these men and trailing behind them–four young guys, all with their heads hung, staring at the ground as they walked. They are not allowed to make eyecontact with ANYONE for the first few days.so they are forced to fucking…i’m crying now…but…they have to look at the ground as they walk, for three days it’s a walk of shame, their heads hanging for being themselves, for having the courage to stand up and say "this is who i am"…and now all these people are saying ‘no you aren’t and we will change it. and you will be punished for thinking such things.’ I will NEVER get that picture out of my head. those four guys…"
Thus began the summer of shame for at least four gay youths. One of them will be back in Memphis a year later, 18 now and free to speak for himself, to bear witness to what John Smid is doing to innocent children, in the name of love. His name is Lance Carroll…
…and this is what happened to him last year:
In January of 2005, I came out to my parents as being gay. After an initial positive and supporting reaction they began to change their minds. They had me see three separate counselors, the last of which was a Christian counselor in St. Louis who worked for a fundamentalist, evangelical church. He told me that I wasn’t really gay, in fact no one was “really” gay. He tried to convince me that the whole idea of homosexual orientation is a lie, and that I felt the way I did because of some sort of early emotional/psychological deficiency. This counselor recommended Love in Action to my parents.
On June 6, 2005 I left Jackson, Missouri at five o’clock in the morning to make the long trip to Memphis, Tennessee. The first things I saw at the Love in Action campus were the protesters. That morning began my summer as a participant in the Love in Action Refuge program.
…
I am attending the protest in reaction to my own horrendous experience last summer, and as an opportunity to voice my personal opinions concerning the Love in Action Refuge program…while I was there, it just seemed to make people more depressed and self-loathing than they already were. I, myself, went through several of these depressive periods.
And in case you’re wondering how John Smid handles these sorts of depressive periods in his clients, here’s what he told Tom Ottosen, when he was on the verge of suicide:
"I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle. In a physical death you could still have a spiritual resurrection; whereas, returning to homosexuality you are yielding yourself to a spiritual death from which there is no recovery."
"That’s exactly how he put it," states Tom Ottosen, 24, an expressive, articulate two year ex-LIA group member.
Ottosen says he clearly recalls that experience. He says it occurred in October of last year during his last one-on-one conference with John Smid, LIA’s Executive Director, who claims to be able to change gay men into straight men through a live-in rigidly controlled indoctrination program Smid calls "reparative therapy."
Ottosen says Smid clearly and emphatically warned him, "It would be better if I were to commit suicide than go back into the world and become a homosexual again. He felt that a physical death–with my soul intact–was much preferable to a spiritual death, which would happen if I were to leave the group and go back to being gay." claims Ottosen.
Ottosen further states that Smid said this at a time when Smid clearly was aware he had strong suicidal feelings and was going through periods of extreme depression, guilt and loneliness.
Ottosen recalls his depression had been building for several months during his second year at LIA, primarily because of a warm and emotional relationship he was experiencing with another group member. "It wasn’t sexual at all, but it was strictly forbidden and I was kept from even talking to him for several months."
Also, earlier in July, "Another house member, who was in his fourth year with the group and in a position of authority, became depressed and attempted suicide" and was sent away for observation. "He was taken from his position of leadership and then he just kind of disappeared." Ottosen admits that he too, within a few months was at point where he had never been before. "I couldn’t work. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t do anything."
It is bad enough that this man is counseling gay adults who go to him of their own free will. But John Smid is determined to expand his program for gay youth, dragging in more and more of them against their will, to be taught to hate themselves for what they are.
They will be kids who have already gone through one of life’s most traumatic moments – coming out to parents who have reacted in shame and anger. Smid will take these already wounded and bleeding kids, and in essence try his almighty best to rip their hearts out of them, tell them that its all their fault, make them believe that they are broken, make them ashamed and deeply afraid of their inner selves, in the hope, the earnest hope, that they will never know what it is to love another person whole heartedly. And I don’t think even the suicide of one of his teenaged clients will be enough to make him stop. Shame is for his clients. Smid is on a mission from god, and gods don’t feel shame.
We will be gathering Monday, June 5th at the Love In Action HQ on at 4780 Yale Road in Memphis, Tennessee. There will be two protests: one from 8:30am until 10:00am, and another from 4:00pm until 5:30pm. If you can be peaceful and respectful, please come. Come to support the young ones silently walking the walk of shame. Come to support the survivors bearing witness. Come in the name of love. Show the world what love in action looks like.
A few more shots from my recent road trip. I left Guymon Oklahoma and headed west to Boise City and from there to Clayton New Mexico. I picked up I-25 in Raton and in Tridadad Colorado I took 350 to La Junta, what was once a spur on the Santa Fe Trail, and then to Granada when I took 385 to I-70 in Burlington.
This is the territory I think of as the Big Empty. The high plains, where the wind is constant, the land gently swells like a calm sea of grass, and there is nothing, nothing between the little villages and towns but the random farm house here and there, and, sometimes, a line of high voltage towers that stand across the landscape in relentless single file from horizon to horizon. Driving it at night, the little towns appear out of the darkness like small galaxies, and the random house lights seem as isolated stars slowly drifting by you in the night, while overhead the light of the milky way blazes down over everything.
I love travelling through this place. I’d go nuts if I had to live in it. I hear that once upon a time many pioneers did just that. But there is a solitude within me, that only this place speaks to. Somehow, it’s good for me to visit here.
Highway 64, Near Guymon, Oklahoma
Sign – Guymon Oklahoma
Grain Elevator And Propane Tank Trailors – Boise City Oklahoma
Christian Identity is a religion based on race. It believes that the historical Jews of the bible, the Israelites of the old testament, God’s Chosen People, were the white Aryan race. According to Christian Identity, it is the white race that God created in [his] own image. It holds that other races are so-called "mud people" – descended from a race God created before Adam and Eve…I suppose as a test. The mud people are the ancestors of all the people of color of the earth. The people we now call Jews are another story however. Christian Identity holds that the Jews are an entirely separate race, created when Eve had sex with the devil in the Garden of Eden.
In short, Christian Identity holds that Jews are, literally, the spawn of Satan.
This came to mind last night, as I read (via Andrew Sullivan) the following Wikipedia entry on Nicolae Carpathia, the Antichrist in Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins Left Behind stories…
Born in the county of Cluj in Romania, Carpathia’s birth is the product of genetic engineering. His mother Marilena Carpathia, is convinced by parties who are followers of Satan, although she is kept unaware of this, to become the mother of a child who they assure her would change the face of the world. Marilena’s husband, Sorin, and his gay lover, Baduna Marius, provide genetic material to facilitate Nicolae’s conception.
Dig it. LaHaye and Jenkins are telling their readers that the Antichrist is, literally, the spawn of a gay male couple.
And some days I sit here at my computer and wonder if this is what it was like to be a Jew in 1920s Germany, watching the horror coming on the horizon. This is the kind of stuff that gets people killed. Someday, it might well get me killed. Someone with a baseball bat or a gun comes along and takes my head off, because he thinks that gay people are going to deliver the world to the Antichrist.
And LaHaye and Jenkins are hardly alone in this. Variations on this theme are popping up all across the kook pews. The Gays are in league with Satan… Just last week James Dobson was telling his listeners on the Focus on the Family radio broadcast, that same sex marriage was an attack on the family by the very forces of hell itself (via Ex-Gay Watch):
…as you all very well know marriage is under vicious attack, now I think from the forces of hell itself. Now it’s either going to continue to decline, and as I told you in my office a few minutes ago, I believe with that destruction of marriage will come the decline of western civilization itself.
What was soft peddled before the re-election of George Bush is coming out of the closet, free, free at last to dispense with the loathsome hypocrisies of Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin. Now the message is clearly and unambiguously that homosexuals are in league with Satan. Not mere sinners, we are destroyers of the world. We will give birth to the Antichrist. Next thing you know, we will be all four horsemen of the Apocalypse too. Whatever it takes, to make everyone hate us, as much as they hate us.
And then watch them wash, wash their hands of our blood…
This blog is powered by WordPress and is hosted at Winters Web Works, who also did some custom design work (Thanks!). Some embedded content was created with the help of The Gimp. I proof with Google Chrome on either Windows, Linux or MacOS depending on which machine I happen to be running at the time.
