Ex-Gay Watch follows up on a previous post that…er…Questions PFOX…
As a follow-up to our previous post on this matter, we have gathered more information in our investigation of claims made by Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) here.
Yesterday, we spoke with Jackie Abrams, Vice Chair of the Arlington County Fair. According to Abrams, no physical altercation occurred, police were never called and no one was ejected from the fairgrounds – she was emphatic and certain. “I was in radio contact with the other board members during the Fair, and definitely would have known if the police had been summoned. It did not happen [her emphasis],” said Abrams. She added that her calls to PFOX, and specifically to PFOX president Regina Griggs, had gone unanswered.
They got it out there…why on earth would they want to help anyone prove that it was bullshit? The faithful now have something to bark about…that some wicked militant homosexual activist had attacked their peaceful respectful effort to educate people about the truth of homosexuality…and just you never mind that it never actually happened. Since when does an organization that was born on lies, built on a bedrock of lies, and does nothing but lie through its teeth about homosexuals and homosexuality constantly, meticulously, relentlessly, suddenly stop lying?
???
Of course they lie. Does a bear shit in the woods? Is the pope Catholic? Does PFOX lie? Yes…it’s good, it’s necessary, to expose their lies whenever, wherever they pop up. But on the other hand if by now it’s surprising you that someone from PFOX would make such brazenly false accusations about something involving homosexuals, then I guess it must also be a constant surprise to you that the sky is blue and water is wet.
Meanwhile…via Ex-Gay Watch, Truth Wins Out has some food for thought for all you parents out there, thinking about sending your gay kids off to ex-gay camp…
Truth Wins Out is reporting that Chris Austin, a longtime ex-gay counselor from Irving, Texas, was convicted today of sexually assaulting a client. Austin, a previous speaker for both Evergreen International and the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), has been accused of sexual assault on a client before. In 2001, Mark Hufford made similar accusations:
Hufford accused Austin of engaging in improper sexual behavior that included “oral copulation and fondling” during counseling sessions that spanned more than a year. The psychologist, who also teaches in the church’s Sunday School, had convinced Hufford to participate in “touch therapy.” The therapy gradually progressed to nude sessions and physical intimacy, he said.
I’m assuming the victims in both cases were legally adults, but it’s worth bearing in mind that outfits such as Evergreen and Exodus and Love In Action all claim to be ministries so they don’t have to submit to the licensing and oversight regulations that real hospitals and doctors must. Literally Anyone can claim to be a professional in the treatment of Same Sex Attraction Disorder. It’s like being a palm reader, only you get to make your customers tell you their sexual fantasies and participate in touch therapy…
Lifted from Peterson’s comment to his own blog post Here…
Peterson now wants to help others that are referred to the clutches of Exodus. He invited all ex-gay survivors, as they call themselves, to a conference in opposition to the ex-gay movement. They can learn how one can be gay and nevertheless lead a godly life. Michael Bussee co-founded Exodus 30 years ago but came back out of it because he found the methods of the organization questionable. Today he participates in the ‘counter’-conference: “One day a young man came to me. He explained that he’d had anonymous sex and felt so guilty afterward that he mutilated himself. At that point I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t preach against homosexuality anymore if it causes such damage.”
Emphasis mine. You folks who say "love the sinner, hate the sin"…? There’s your love.
We’re Not A Political Organization…We Just Lobby Against Any And All Gay Rights Legislation…
Some weeks ago, Timothy Kincaid over at Box Turtle Bulletin noted this comment from Exodus’ Mike Ensley on Warren Throckmorton’s website…
Mary, honestly I don’t think you understand Exodus’ political involvement at all. Do you think all (or even most) pro-homosexual activist groups are adopting a “live and let live” policy toward people with different beliefs? Hardly.
My focus is entirely on youth and education, and believe me, the lobbying in that field is nothing like “live and let live.” In California, for instance, pro-gay advocates have exclusive rights to what children are taught in public schools regarding these issues. Parents are explicitly kept out of the loop–and if they somehow get in the loop, they have no right to opt their children out of instruction that undermines their values.
As for “ending people’s rights,” I would just like to know what rights Exodus is helping to end, and for whom?
Your comment about a “you must live our way” stand really doesn’t have any basis, either. Opposing thought-crimes legislation and education law that excludes every view except a gay-centric one is hardly forcing others to live the way we do.
…which was in response to this one, directed at Randy Thomas:
Randy,
I can say that Exodus’ “policy” or “position” has not helped. Had they taken a live and let live stand rather than a you must live our way stand then perhaps this would not be happening?? Politicking against a group has certianly thrown smoke into a hornet’s nest. We should not be trying to end anyone’s rights and instead be working towards an agreement that respects both sides. Even when threatened now, I can say – I understand how gays have become so angry, defensive, and strong. I don’t like the idea that my rights are threatened – but that does not mean I would agrue to destroy the rights of others with whom I disagree.
Well…no. I mean…yes Exodus’ political activism probably factors into it…but that’s not where this is coming from. Where it came from was all the attention the ex-gay movement got after a gay teenager who was content just the way he is was seen being dragged into a horrific reparative therapy program by the entire fucking world. That one incident got the attention of a lot of people, and without a doubt it radicalized many against the ex-gay movement. The increased scrutiny that reparative therapy suddenly came under was eminently predictable. That’s what has brought this all on.
Throckmorton in his post raises the specter of reparative therapy doctors quacks being tossed into the slammer after the gay militants who dominate the APA have reparative therapy banned…
AOL’s GLBT community blog Queersighted has an article by Richard Rothstein this morning that marks tomorrow’s first meeting of the APA Sexual Orientation Task as an important date in gay history. Why? Because he hopes the task force will suggest to the APA that all reparative/conversion therapy should be banned. And what if the APA bans reparative therapy (never defined in this piece)? Well, round up the posse, boys, Mr. Rothstein has the answer:
If the APA does in fact ban reparative or conversion therapy, we will at long last have a solid legal argument for shutting down such groups as Exodus International and Homosexuals Anonymous. This will also mean that under standard and existing malpractice laws, psychologists and therapists who continue to advocate and practice such therapy would be subject to license revocation, hefty fines and even imprisonment.
So if Mr. Rothstein’s vision is realized, reparative therapists and maybe the Exodus crew will be answering questions like: “Hey, doc, what are you in for?”
And maybe the other guy is in jail for selling capsules full of dry cleaning fluid to people as a cure for insomnia. Or maybe he was selling crack cocaine to teenagers. As a matter of fact, doc, people who harm others for money really do need to be held accountable for that. People who sell cures that don’t really do anything at best, and do terrible harm to the patents at worst, really do need to be held accountable for that. It’s not religious persecution to hold people accountable for the harm they do to others.
To his everlasting credit, Throckmorton condemned the practice of giving ex-gay therapy to unwilling teens when the protests at Love In Action broke out a couple summers ago. And there were others like him in the ex-gay movement who were absolutely appalled at what they saw being done to kids in these so-called ministries. But there were many others who doggedly defended the practice and you best believe that I’d like to see every one of those mother fucking bastards that pushed sexual self loathing and fear of intimacy into a gay teenager’s heart locked up for a long, long time, with all the other sex offenders. Because that’s exactly what it is…child sexual abuse.
Now, as predictably as the rising sun in the east, the priests of the ex-gay movement are bellyaching that their sincere religious beliefs are under attack. The problem is, it’s hard to reach a place of mutual respect with people who constantly lie through their teeth. The leaders of Exodus may claim their actions are only motivated by their sincerely held religious beliefs, but their word on just about anything isn’t worth spit. They lie about homosexuals. They lie about homosexuality. And they lie…brazenly…about themselves.
Banks described the process they go through in deciding which political issues to get involved in. The chief consideration was “policy proposals that would infringe on the ministry that we do.” And in deciding whether to get involved, she said they ask themselves two questions: 1) Does the issue affect our ministries or members, and 2) Do we have an opportunity to offer a unique perspective and opportunity to influence? And on this second point, the role of Exodus’s “door to our stories” becomes very clear: if “change is possible” then laws granting equality and protections for gays and lesbians are unnecessary.
Banks also talked about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which she falsely claims would require religious organizations to hire people who would threaten their mission. In fact, section six of the bill specifically exempts religious organizations from the act.
You need to read Burroway’s post to grasp the scope of Exodus’ interest and involvement in anti-gay politics. I’ve been saying for years now that these groups, and Exodus in particular, are only ex-gay as a facade. They are, in fact, Anti-Gay political groups, nothing more, nothing less, that only exploit ex-gays and reparative therapy in order to score political points and provide the religious right with moral cover for gay bashing. Gays choose to be gay…therefore they also choose to be discriminated against… We are not discriminating against homosexuals…it is the homosexuals who choose to be discriminated against, because they could always choose not to be homosexuals if they wanted to… In fact…there is No Such Thing as a homosexual…so how could we be discriminating against them…
You have to understand the agenda here is anti-gay political action, not saving souls for Christ, not freeing people from the chains of homosexuality, not curing people of their homosexual addictions, not healing people of their same sex attractions. Exodus, and other ex-gay ministries like them, are about one thing and one thing only: waging the political war against gay people. That’s why there is no follow-up when people leave counseling and therapy. That’s why they keep no statistics on success and failure rates, do no quality assurance activity, don’t…let’s be honest here…give a rat’s ass about whether they’re doing their clients any goddamned good at all. That’s not what they are about. The clients are the window dressing. The real work is the anti-gay political activity.
Historically and linguistically, being left-handed has long been associated with the mark of the devil. In Latin, the word "sinister" means "left." In French, it is "gauche" – a far worse sin in France than being sinister, no doubt.
There is the left-handed compliment, which is no compliment at all; the bad guy was made to sit at the left hand of God; and there has been a higher than average number of left-handed, insane villains like Jack the Ripper and the Boston Strangler.
-Beth Quinn – Good News From The Left-Handed Liberation Front
Sin. Sinister. Left-Handed. We don’t have to imagine a religion that regards left handedness as a mark of the devil, because it existed. Perhaps in some corners of the human world, it still exists. And some of us of my generation don’t have to imagine what reparative therapy for left-handedness would look like, because we have seen it with our own eyes.
The myths and superstitions surrounding left handedness were almost completely dead, at least in the United States, when I entered grade school back in 1959. But they hadn’t died out completely. I’m old enough to remember watching two teachers tie a classmate’s left arm to his side after he was caught writing something with his left hand.
They did it at the kid’s parent’s request, and they were not brutal about it. It wasn’t like they were binding him tightly or anything. The thinking was that if you just train a kid to use their right hand early enough, it would take and they wouldn’t be left handed anymore. It was a bit like putting something bitter on the thumb of a small child that won’t stop sucking their thumb. They just lightly tied a small strap around the kid’s waste and left arm, to prevent him from reflexively using his left hand to write with. The kid did not resist, he just sat there crying, humiliated, because he knew he’d done something wrong.
Except…he hadn’t. Put aside for a moment that their model of how handedness works was all wrong. That it was something like a bad habit which, if caught early enough, you could correct. Even if handedness was a completely chosen thing, there is nothing wrong or evil or harmful about using your left hand over your right. Unless that is, you believe that it’s a sin. Left-handed. Sinister. Sin. Or you believed the few remaining mental health professionals of the day who said that left-handedness leads to a host of mental and psychological problems. Didn’t you know that a higher then average number of serial killers are left handed?
It isn’t hard to picture how an ex-leftie ministry might work to suck the pride and joy and love of life out of a young guy, a kid maybe who keeps having these…urges…to use their left hand. Every time he gets that urge he believes he is being unfaithful to God. He believes this, because his church is telling him this. The Devil baptizes his followers with his left hand… His peers either ridicule him, or bath him in suffocating patronization. He has this…condition. He can’t help himself. There is something tragically wrong with him. His parents are profoundly ashamed that their son uses his left hand. The kid is deeply ashamed of himself. And every time he feels the urge to use his left hand, the shame deepens.
But there is one final hope. Reparative therapy. Thousands have found freedom from left-handedness. Question left-handedness. There are stories of hope and redemption. This one has been living as a right handed man for over a decade, and is now a successful painter who, he says, never feels the urge to use his left hand to pick up a brush. That one has been in a successful relationship with another ex-leftie and they are raising a healthy, godly family of right handed children. This one has been freed from left-handedness through the power of faith. That one abandoned the left-handed lifestyle, and all its self destructiveness, the drugs, the booze, the litany of health problems, and has been living a clean and sober life ever since.
So he checks himself in for a round of ex-leftie therapy. Perhaps he misses the fine print on the form that says he will never be completely cured of this left-handed urges. Perhaps it is not in the fine print. Perhaps, full of all the stories of hope and cure and…redemption…he decides not to notice.
So he spends months…then years…and thousands of dollars in the ex-leftie world. He abandons school, career, the life he had, the life he could have had, on his quest to rid himself of his urge to use his left hand. But he can’t. He’s left handed. After a long struggle he eventually becomes adept at using his right hand to do simple chores. He can write…sort of. An accomplishment he’s proud of. Now he can write with a fountain pen and not smear the ink. He can use scissors with his right hand. He can pitch a ball with his right hand…sort of. But the urges never go away, and maddeningly after years of adapting to a right handed life, he…falls…again and again.
Sometimes its unexpected, like when his neighbor’s kid playfully tosses a ball at him and he catches it in his left hand. Sometimes it happens when he lets his guard down, and he catches himself doodling something with the pen in his left land. It seems the devil won’t let go of him. But it’s not the devil. It’s just his biology. The model of handedness he’s been fed is all wrong, and no amount of sincerely held religious belief can change that any more then it could change the fact hundreds of years ago, that Galileo and Copernicus were right. And yet, it moves.
All his life this left handed man has been fighting his nature. And…for what? To please a lot of right handed people who have bought into, for whatever reason, a model of handedness that is not true, and which…surely only coincidentally…elevates them above their left handed neighbors. His own nature has been used against him since childhood, to implant shame, self loathing, disgust. To make him accept his lowly status. He has been denied a wholesome and nurturing spiritual life, being made to feel himself alienated from God Every Time He Gets An Urge To Use His Left Hand. Which he keeps getting, Because He’s Left Handed.
He is either condemned, or at best, patronizingly offered help for his…condition. When he is not being told that his sin is the worst sin of all, he’s being patronizingly told that well…we’re all sinners in the eyes of the Lord. But this sin seems woven into his very being, like a taint on his very soul. He just can’t stop the urges. His body fights him every time he picks up a pencil or pen. It reminds him constantly that, somehow, he is fundamentally wicked, in a way no one else seems to be. No one else except other devil marked lefties.
He has been denied wholesome and nurturing relationships with his peers, with his community, with his family, because every time he catches himself using his left hand for something, or even feeling the urge to, he is ashamed, and so he withdraws, feeling ashamed, unclean, unworthy. He has been denied the career he might have had, the friends he might have made, and all the joy and fulfillment they might have brought.
Who knows…perhaps he was even denied the love of his life, because he was taught from such an early age, that there was something innately unclean about him. A feeling of shame and despair that was reenforced, again and again within him, every time he had that perfectly natural urge to use his left hand. Sin. Sinister. Left-handed.
The devil baptizes his own with his left hand… He sees himself as someone profoundly, horribly tainted. Unworthy. He gets on his knees nightly and begs God, tearfully, to take the urges away from him. But they don’t go away. He’s Left Handed. It isn’t something you can pray away.
He pays therapists thousands of dollars to talk him into being right handed. Perhaps it was an overly dominant mother. Perhaps when a boy uses his left hand to write with, he is subconsciously rebelling against his manhood. Left is associated with the feminine isn’t it? Whereas right is associated with the masculine. Perhaps his father was too distant. Perhaps he isn’t getting enough masculine activity. But therapy doesn’t work either. He’s Left Handed. You can’t psychoanalyze it away. It wasn’t his mother. It wasn’t his father. It’s his biology. It’s perfectly normal. Not average. Not common. But nonetheless, normal.
But he is never told that. There are nights when he wonders why God even allowed him to be born.
There is nothing wrong with him. Nothing. He’s just left-handed. It neither harms him, nor his neighbors, that he uses his left hand. And it doesn’t separate him from God, because if God is the creator then God made him that way. If anything, it is trying not to be what he so clearly is, that is separating him from God. It is also separating him from his family, and from his community. It has separated him from the whole life he could have had.
Reality matters. Existence exists. When the bird and the bird book disagree, believe the bird. You would think that someone of a deeply religious nature, wishing to be faithful and devoted to God almighty would instinctively grasp how the hand of the creator has the final, absolute say over all our human pretensions. However we might wish reality to be, reality is what it is. There is a lesson on standing humbly before the Creator in that, which you’d think the religious conservative would find completely agreeable. You’d think. But if that were so, then there wouldn’t be a movement to teach creationism to school kids, let alone a movement to teach homosexuals to hate themselves, and to teach their peers, their neighbors, their country, to treat them with contempt. The problem with standing humbly before the creator, is that its…well…humbling.
How About We Discuss Our Differences Over A Nice Glass Of Get The Fuck Off My Back?
I have this love/hate relationship to the books of Robert Heinlein. When he’s good he’s pure gold. But there are times he makes me want to hit the roof. And I suppose he’d be delighted to hear this. He always said he wanted first to make a living as a writer, second to be entertaining, and third, to make you think.
Anyway…there’s this passage in Stranger In A Strange Land which I could forgive Heinlein anything for writing. It’s the scene where Jubal Harshaw introduces a friend to Anne, who is a "fair witness". I’m doing this from memory here, but as I recall it, Jubal and his friend are by the pool with some others, and the friend remarks that he’d never met a fair witness before and Jubal says of course you have, Anne is one. Oh really, asks the friend. And Jubal calls over the Anne "Anne, what color is that house on the hill over there?" And Anne takes a look and immediately replies, "The side that’s facing me is white."
That’s not only a beautiful illustration of what it means to tell the truth, but also how telling the truth has to work in the human context. We are not gods. We do not have the god’s eye view of reality. So we have to be careful to understand, really understand, what it is that we know, and what it is that we don’t.
I’ve heard religious fundamentalists say that the most important question facing us is where will we spend eternity. No. There is another question that is more important then that one, more important then any other question you can ask. Because it’s the question you have to know the answer to, before you can answer any other question: What do I know, and how do I know it?
I suppose a fundamentalist would reply with some form of "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it." But that’s still not answering the question. How do we know that the Bible is an authoritative source? How do we know what the Bible says? At some point, we all have to make judgments, and those judgments are always personal. It helps to make them honestly and sincerely. But it also helps to do that with a little humility. You only know the side that’s facing you. And it goes without saying, that its helpful not to misrepresent the facts that we do know, to kind of…nudge people…in the right direction. For their own good.
We should always behave such that what is true, can be verified to be so. -Jacob Bronowski.
But that’s been something of a problem for the ex-gay world, hasn’t it?
So I’m reading the back and forth between the ex-gay blogs and the survivor’s blogs in the wake of the Survivor’s Conference. Seems the very word ‘Survivor’ is controversial. One writer in the comments on Peterson’s blog says that using the term survivor is provocative. As provocative as a million dollar billboard campaign designed to make people think that their homosexual neighbors’ most intimate sense of self is something akin to a blackboard that they could just wipe clean and redo for the pleasure of their heterosexual neighbors whenever they wanted to, if they weren’t so selfish, or so…trapped…in homosexuality…I’m not so sure. How would a heterosexual be expected to feel upon laying eyes on a billboard that featured a handsome, happy gay man asking them to "Question Heterosexuality"? Ah…but it’s not provocative to assert that there is no such thing as a homosexual…only people trapped in homosexuality.
An anonymous ex-gay blogger asks if the ex-ex-gays are survivors, does that mean she’s a mortally wounded victim, or a corpse, or a zombie. Well let me just answer as a gay man, who keeps hearing homophobic jackasses bellyaching about how we stole the word ‘gay’ away from decent society, that what other people call themselves doesn’t make you anything. As a gay man who has heard himself labeled a symptom of social decay, if not a walking signpost of impending Armageddon, ever since he was a teenager, let me say that how other people live their lives doesn’t make You anything. As a gay man who has walked among my fellow gay folk in many places and many scenes, from the sublime to the ridiculous, let me say that even when other people assert their identity with you, in ways you may find completely nonsensical if not utterly bewildering, That does not make you anything. It’s your own experience in this life that makes you something. It’s the fact that you lived it, or are still living it, that gives you the right to name it.
But of course, this isn’t about what people call themselves, it’s about what they call others. And I can appreciate how the ex-gay movement can take the use of the word ‘survivor’ in this context as an attack, considering that the religious right has made an art out of applying labels to themselves, as a way of back handedly pasting labels onto others. So they say they’re pro-life, as a way of saying the other side is pro-death. So they say they’re pro-family, as a way of saying the other side is anti-family. So they say many thousands have found freedom from homosexuality, as a way of saying that homosexuality is a prison, or an addiction. But that’s not what’s going on here, and if the word ‘survivor’ has any meaning, then just reading the stories on Beyond Ex-Gay is all that’s necessary to see how the word applies to these people.
Of course, those stories are pretty damming, whether the survivors intend that or not. Mortally wounded? How about, Part Of The Problem. A name on the knife in someone’s heart? Someone you may have never even laid eyes on. Perhaps some helpless teenager. Delivered with love. Yes, it would be nice if we could all just get along, regardless of what we call ourselves. Yes, it would be wonderful, peaceful, happy tranquility if we could all just live our fucking lives, find our happiness in this life, make our way for ourselves in this world, reach for the dream within our hearts, to the best of our ability, to the best within us. But that’s, let’s face it, just not in the cards. Righteousness forbids it.
The answer to how we all manage to get along despite our differences, is simple, in the way all impossible answers are simple. You let leave us alone and let us live our lives, and we leave you alone and let you live yours. But that is just not to be. You are called to save us from ourselves, because you have the ultimate truth, and we are all merely trapped in sin, and never mind that you only see the side of the house that’s facing you. Salvation has given you the God’s eye view. So you’ll keep twisting that knife marked Salvation into people’s hearts and those of us trying to find and have and hold that someone to love in this poor, angry world, that intimate other, that soul mate, or as you might say, Trapped In Homosexuality will keep trying to get you The Fuck Off Our Backs, even if that means we have to be rude about it. Because, you are taking what should be one of our life’s most perfect joys, and making it your offering to God and our hearts are not yours to offer.
I was content to ignore the ex-gay movement until the day I watched it try to drive a knife into the heart of a gay teenager who was perfectly content with who he was. And then I took a closer look at what was being done to many other innocent hearts in the name of God, and even more obscenely…in the name of Love. Most of them adults, some of them just kids. I listened to one gay teenager talk about being forced through Love In Action against his will, and then how his own mother beat the living crap out of him because he was still as gay when he came out as when he went in, because the religious right had taught her to loath her own flesh and blood, and the ex-gay movement taught her that he didn’t have to be gay if he didn’t want to be, that his sexuality was an addiction, a false image, a renunciation of manhood, proof that she was not a good mother, and I don’t think the day will ever come when remembering his words and the look on his face as he told the story of the day his own mother started pounding her fists into him won’t make me want to put my fist through a wall. It could make a stone cry. But not the righteous.
So…I’m all about dialogue. Considerate and transparent dialogue is a Good Thing. But it’s a bit like dialogue between Israel and the Arab states surrounding it: A prerequisite to talks is that you recognize my right to exist. And see…that’s the problem. Because there is just no way I can ask you to do that, ask you to get off our backs, ask you let us live in our communities, in our country, as full and equal citizens, no way I can even suggest it, that you will not hear me demanding of you that you renounce your faith. We have to bleed, so you can be righteous.
So…maybe instead of calling ourselves gay, or ex-ex-gay, we all should just cut to the bottom line, and call ourselves Scapegoats.
We Are Always Open To Considerate And Transparent Dialogue. Not That We’ll Engage In It…
Dialogue anyone?
PRESS STATEMENT
July 17, 2007
Love In Action received no formal notice of Mr. Toscano’s arrival, not did he invite us to participate in today’s proceedings, though it is apparent he did take the time to invite media sources…
Blah, blah, woof woof… And you took the time to prepare a statement for the press and have a bunch of them printed up with with your logo and web site address and attach a tasteful little business card with your Communications Coordinator‘s name on it to every one. So you knew it was happening, and in fact, Peterson has been talking to you John Smid.
But then…you knew that. The wall is yellow John.
More on the Survivor’s Initiative at Love In Action last Tuesday, and Peterson’s response to the LIA press statement Here. In the meantime, I have some photos…
David Christie (right) and Brandon Tidwell display the collages of their
life journeys they would later present to the Love In Action staff.
At their request I’ve blurred out the details in the artwork.
Some of the local folks who came out to support the survivors…
Brandon and David return from delivering their collages
to the LIA staff. The only point at which anyone from LIA
came out to talk to anyone was to deliver copies of their
press statement. I’ve no idea what was said at the door to
LIA, but the meeting was short.
Brandon gets some artwork to take back home with him.
One of the protesters gave Brandon her poster and I’m
a tad jealous because that was a real good one. I’d watched
them making it and a bunch of other good ones just before
the first anniversary protest last year.
LIA’s Press Statement
Someone had put them there, to keep them from blowing
away I guess, and I thought it made a good shot. I think
that’s one of Morgan’s tripods.
It’ll be lite posting for a while here because as of…er…Right Now…I’m heading out to the big highways to visit some friends, attend the Open Source Developer’s Conference in Portland, and do some exploring along the way. I’ll be on the road most of the day today, but I’m heading for Memphis and I’ll stay there for a while to see some friends, and…stand with Soul Force in front of Love In Action. Via Peterson Toscano…
Ex-Gay Survivor Initiative Heads to Memphis
What: Gay men visit Love in Action to tell of the psychological and spiritual harm that they experienced there and in other "ex-gay" ministries. Three survivors of the controversial residential program will present Love in Action with personal artwork depicting the damage caused by the message that gays and lesbians can and should change their sexual orientation.
When: Tuesday, July 17, at 10:30 a.m.
Where: Love in Action, 4780 Yale Road, Memphis, Tennessee
Who: David Christie is a former Love in Action client who spent 13 years in ex-gay therapy before accepting himself as a gay man at the age of 28.
Brandon Tidwell completed Love in Action’s adult residential program in 2002, but ultimately rejected the organization’s theology and reconciled his sexual orientation with his Christian faith.
Other participants: Jeffrey Harwood, Lance Carroll
Why: Love in Action (LIA) is a Christian residential program that claims to help clients "break out" of "homosexual attraction and behavior" at a cost of $7000 for 3 months. In 2005, the facility was under investigation by the state of Tennessee for operating a mental health facility without a license. LIA has since changed its operating procedures to avoid state regulation. Most recently, LIA closed its controversial Refuge program for teenagers and replaced it with "Family Freedom Intensives," a 4-day, $600 per person. The program is for parents of gay or questioning teenagers.
Love in Action is part of a larger "ex-gay" movement, which continues to thrive in spite of Americans’ growing conviction that sexual orientation is not subject to change and despite a growing willingness on the part of faith communities to accept gays and lesbians as whole and valuable members.
This event is part of the Survivor’s Initiative, a national campaign to share the stories of "Ex-gay Survivors"-men and women who feel that ex-gay messages and programs did them more harm than good.
If you are in or near Memphis, come and show your solidarity. Also, spread the word. It’s been two years since the summer protests sparked by Zach Stark’s blog entries. No matter how LIA words it, Refuge is no more. Even so, the voices of their former LIA clients need to be heard as a witness and a warning.
If you can be there to stand peacefully in witness and solidarity with the survivors, please come. The ex-gay movement cynically pleads tolerance for religious diversity and freedom of choice but they have none to offer themselves for gay people. They instill shame where there should be joy. They teach fear where there should be love. They build walls of shame and fear and mistrust between parents and their children. All so that our hearts may bleed, so that they can feel righteous. If there is such a thing as Sin in this world, Capital S, then to put a dagger of shame into a person’s heart and take away the possibility of finding that intimate other and building a life together, must surely be a big one. For years the ex-gay ministries have claimed that thousands have changed. Now another voice is making itself heard: that of the ones who tried, and who learned after great hardship and pain that to finally become whole persons, they first had to accept themselves, in the words of the old spiritual, "Just As I Am."
Come, stand with us if you can, in witness and in solidarity. Just as you are. Just as we are.
While you all claim in websites, protests, in organizations, or coalitions, to want to help people who are “trapped in homosexuality,” you seem to be more concerned with sticking your nose in my business, and telling me the way you think I should live, along with who I am.
Whoops! Sorry. What this guy actually wrote was…
While you all claim in websites, protests, in organizations, or coalitions, to want to help people who are “trapped in the ex-gay movement,” you seem to be more concerned with sticking your nose in my business, and telling me the way you think I should live, along with who I am.
Sorry about that. Really. Meanwhile (again via Ex-Gay Watch…), PFOX is still battling the Montgomery County Maryland Board Of Education to insure that the only things taught in sex education classes about homosexuals and homosexuality are what the ex-gay movement wants taught. Not that they want to be telling anyone how they think they should live mind you…
Theory and experiment alike become meaningless unless the scientist brings to them, and his fellows can assume in him, the respect of a lucid honesty with himself. The mathematician and philosopher W. K. Clifford said this forcibly at the end of his short life, nearly a hundred years ago.
If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done by the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may even prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that it should loose it’s property, but that it should become a den of thieves; for then it must cease to be a society. This is why we ought not to do evil that good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are made wicked thereby.
This is the scientist’s moral: that there is no distinction between ends and means. Clifford goes on to put this in terms of the scientist’s practice:
In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous.
And the passion in Clifford’s tone shows that to him the word credulous had the same emotional force as ‘a den of thieves’
The fulcrum of Clifford’s ethic here, and mine, is the phrase ‘it may be true after all.’ Others may allow this to justify their conduct; the practice of science wholly rejects it. It does not admit the word ‘true’ can have this meaning. The test of truth is the known factual evidence, and no glib expediency nor reason of state can justify the smallest self-deception in that. Our work is of a piece, in the large and in the detail; so that if we silence one scruple about our means, we infect ourselves and our ends together.
-Jacob Bronowski “Science and Human Values” 1956
Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin and Mike Airhart over at Ex-Gay Watch react positively to a blog post by Exodus affiliated minister Karen Keen, about her experience attending some of the events at the Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference. Jim calls it “…a very lovely and grace-filled post.” Mike says of it that it is an “…accurate, balanced and thoughtful account.” Allow me to be the grouch here. Accurate it may well have been. Balanced, perhaps. Graceful…well it depends. It was certainly polite. But I wouldn’t go so far even as to say it was respectful. What it was, was patronizing. There is a spiritual sense of the word ‘grace’ that speaks to unconditional loving and caring and unless you think that looking for better ways to put innocent people through unmitigated hell out of a thoughtless devotion to dogma amounts to grace I’d have to say grace filled, along with thoughtful it was not. When people say things like this you need to take it seriously for what it is…
As we munch on bok choy and shrimp, Scott, Sonia and I listen to stories and concerns regarding ex-gay ministry. Our goal is not to criticize or argue, but to take the concerns seriously and learn how ex-gay groups can improve their ministries.
Emphasis mine. She was there to observe the broken ones, and try to figure out some better ways of fixing them. To take the concerns of the people she sat down to dinner with seriously is a mutually exclusive proposition to learning how ex-gay groups can improve their ministries, because if going into it the assumption was that the people she was sitting down to eat with were broken and needed fixing, then the degree to which their concerns needed to be listened to was limited from the get-go. Clearly, the only thought she was willing to entertain throughout the course of her interaction with the people at the Survivor’s Conference was how to fix the fixing process. But that the fixing process could not not itself be fixed because it was based on a flawed and disastrous premise was never, Could Never be considered…er…Seriously. Which meant that she wasn’t so much listening to her dinner companions, as filtering what they were saying to her through the main preconception she brought to that dinner with her. This isn’t somebody who came to listen. But then she couldn’t.
When she says that the raw expressions she witnessed during the survivor’s chalk talk moved her more then she expected, I’m sure that was genuine. But that’s not to say it moved her very much, because what it should have made her was ashamed. Deeply, gravely, severely ashamed. There, right before her eyes, were the raw, anguished torn from the gut expressions of the suffering those people needlessly endured at the hands of the likes of her, simply for being homosexual. And even that was not enough to make her question change. But it couldn’t have. In the end, she writes…
I realize I was drawn to the Survivor Conference because I love these people. In some impossible way, I long for camaraderie and unity with ex-ex-gays with whom I have shared so many of the same life struggles and pain. Yet, at the end of the day our roads lead us apart, and I wish it wasn’t so. I leave the Survivor Conference knowing it will be my last ex-ex-gay conference. I feel an ache in my heart—the kind of sadness that comes when breaking up with a lover. Even when irreconcilable differences are clear, and parting is the most honest thing to do, the loss is still felt. I want to take my friend by the hand and walk her down the same life path I am traveling, but I know I can’t.
And in the comments at Ex-Gay Watch she elaborates…
Another clarification–when I talk about how the two groups (ex gay and ex-ex gay) are on separate roads that lead apart, I did not mean to infer that I will not engage in dialogue anymore. I am always open to hearing people’s thoughts and stories. I comment on this a bit in response to someone’s comment on my blog. What I was describing is that the two movements have different goals that cannot be reconciled. I am all for church unity, but there are some things that cannot be unified without comprising our own personal integrity.
Integrity. I happen to believe that the so called “clobber passages” of the bible don’t actually say what a lot of homophobes think they say. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that they do. So what. In addition to calling on the faithful to put homosexuals to death, the bible also insists that the faithful not suffer witches to live. Innocent people died once upon a time in Salem Massachusetts because of those passages, and you best believe that the people who put them to death did so in good conscience, and prayed afterwards for God to have mercy on the immortal souls of those poor devil possessed witches. But it is not integrity to put theology above the observable and knowable humanity of the old woman whose head your are putting into a noose. The word for that is fanaticism.
It is not at the end of the day that Karen Keen’s road diverged from that of the survivors. It was at the beginning, at that point along the way where we all decide whether we will walk down the path before us with our eyes wide open or not. That the survivors eventually came to the conclusion that their treatment at the hands of the ex-gay ministries was not only not working, but could not be made to work, and then that it was unnecessary to begin with, doesn’t mean that they had fallen back into “the lifestyle” but that at least after some horrific measure of pain and suffering they were willing, finally, to let the evidence speak for itself. When you embrace a religious faith that insists its written dogmas have to count for more then the observable facts, more even, then your own first hand experience, more then the witnessing of pain and suffering, your personal integrity is the first thing you give up.
As Jacob Bronowski wrote in Science and Human Values…
The state of mind, the state of society, is of a piece. When we discard the test of fact in what a star is, we discard in it what a man is.
Likewise, when we discard the test of fact in what a homosexual is, we also discard in it the human being that they, and you, are. Integrity.
Peterson Toscano writes It’s About Heterosexism, Silly on the International Day Against Homophobia, and Alan Chambers’ post on the Exodus blog about how he is all in agreement that violence against gay people shouldn’t be tolerated. Chambers writes…
Today is the International Day Against Homophobia. And, you might be surprised to learn that I support this effort. Homophobia does exist. Irrational fear of those who are gay or lesbian is a real problem in our culture. While I believe we have come a long way, I still see true homophobia at work each and every day.
What a swell guy, eh? Almost makes you wonder why they’re all so uptight about hate crime laws over at Exodus. Peterson responds that the lives of gay people are less impacted directly from violence, so much as the premise of heterosexual superiority…
While homophobic attacks happen daily, heterosexism happens by the nano second. A young child gets the message over and over again in books, TV ads, teacher’s examples and even heterosexually paired salt & pepper shakers, that anything other than heterosexual pairing is just not right. Growing up in such a world, with virtually no positive examples of same-sex couples, queer and questioning young people begin to develope a negative sense of self and can even grow quite isolated and suicidal within a society where they do not see themselves reflected or accepted.
Just so. I’ve often wondered of late, how different my own life might have been had I the chance to grow up in a culture as accepting of same sex pairings as opposite sex ones. Maybe I’d have found my soul mate by now. Maybe I did find him long ago, once upon a time, only to loose him due to that relentless hostility toward same sex pairings.
Once while I was working as a stock clerk at a catalog retailer, I met this really nice guy from one of the branch stores who’d come to the warehouse on an errand. I think my jaw dropped a little when I caught sight of him, he was so drop dead beautiful. He saw me looking and flashed a wonderful smile at me. Some weeks later I had a chance to go to the store he worked at on an errand of my own and the look he gave me when he saw it was me was thrilling. We didn’t have any time to talk that day, we were both so busy with work related chores. But I vowed to get his name and phone number the next time we met. Which should have been the following week. But his supervisor caught us sharing a smile and I guess she didn’t like the look of it because the next day we were both fired, me ostensibly because my hair was too long. I never learned why exactly they’d canned him. I only found out when I tried visiting his store afterwords and was coldly told he wasn’t working there anymore.
I never saw him again. I don’t even know his name. It is one of many junctions in my life that I’ve always wondered about since, wondered about what might have been had they left us alone. He was real nice. And that is not the only time something like that has happened to me.
Not one to let a suggestion that gay people be given a measure of human dignity go by without spitting on it, Mike Ensley commented on Chamber’s blog thusly:
The fact is, heterosexuality is innately superior. Only heterosexual partners enjoy the complimentary aspect of their physiology, and only they can produce children.
Ensley is a jackass. Dr. John Corvino in this lecture on the morality of homosexuality , hilariously addresses that The Parts Don’t Fit argument, with the simple retort that, yes the parts Do fit, and that ought to be obvious since if they didn’t, people wouldn’t do that. This isn’t rocket science. It shouldn’t take a micro-watt of brain power to figure that if sex wasn’t gratifying and fulfilling for same sex couples then they wouldn’t do it, let alone take all the risks that same sex couples often have to take, even in this day and age, let alone back when sodomy could still land you in prison, in order to do it. The trick is…well…you have to be gay in order to find it fulfilling. If you’re heterosexual, then you won’t.
Because heterosexuals mate to the opposite sex, it’s easy for them to mistake the complementary nature of their relationship for gender. But the complement isn’t the gender, it’s the person. What people like Ensley are doing in reality, is denying gay people that intimate, body and soul complementary relationship with another person. Then they point to how miserable gay people often are as proof of the innate superiority of heterosexuality. It’s called, building yourself up, by putting other people down. Ensley is doing a little dance there, over corpses of gay people’s dreams and hopes, as a way of demonstrating the superiority of heterosexuality. And he has no idea how ugly it looks to anyone with a conscience.
And thus prejudice, eventually, destroys the destroyer.
They say, like a bunch of Johnny One Notes, that the "Gay Agenda" is an assault on families. They say it with the utmost sincerity, while driving their knives into the hearts of families of gay children.
On a recent road trip with my dad I asked him what it was like when he and my mom came to Memphis for the Family and Friends Weekend at LIA, a concentrated family encounter. Here is some of what he said.
We went to the meeting and had no idea of what we were going into. We met a lot of parents in the same category. Lots of kids had no parents there.
Everything seemed to be on the up and up at first. Yeah, but we found out these things aren’t so. I said to them, "You can’t change a zebra’s stripes." They didn’t go along with me, and they were very aggravated with me for saying so. Some people go through two colleges and they don’t have common sense. I hate when people keep things locked up.
They made me feel that I failed you. That’s how I felt after they got through with me. That’s how they made all the parents feel.
Years after I left LIA and I began to write my play, I interviewed my younger sister, Maria, about that time. What she told me broke my heart. She said that when our parents returned home from the Family and Friends Weekend, they were devastated. They didn’t eat right or look right. They acted sad and depressed. This went on for weeks. My sister felt so concerned that she actually called Love in Action and asked, "What did you do to my parents?!" She felt frustrated by the lack of concern or comprehension she encountered from the staff.
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.
Of course John Smid was nowhere to be seen while all this was going on in Lance’s family. It isn’t just the kids John is heart-wounding. He puts his little mark on the hearts of vulnerable parents too, and other family members, and leaves a wreckage strewn landscape behind he doesn’t even bother looking back on as he walks away from it. Perhaps he’s afraid of turning into a pillar of salt.
This article has been removed due to the inaccuracies surrounding the research of Paul Cameron.
This statement from the web page of Exodus International was the result of intense work of the web page www.exgaywatch.com
The web masters of the site noticed that Exodus International was using Cameron’s work, so they made it known.
Exodus International removed the information and the head of the group, Alan Chambers, also said:
I appreciate EGW’s tremendous research skills. I saw your post on Exodus using Paul Cameron’s research and was embarrassed. We do not support the work of Paul Cameron nor desire to use flawed research. A member of my staff will remove these articles today and post a retraction. In the coming months we will be doing a survey of the content on our site to determine what if there are other articles or links that need to be removed.
Forgive me for being cynical, but I am not sold.
I can’t imagine why not. A. McEwen goes on in his post to list the various folks in the ex-gay/anti-gay movement who use, and keep on using, Cameron’s junk science, and who have helped its zombie lies (because they seemingly cannot be killed no matter how many times they are refuted) become part of the political discourse surrounding homosexuality and the rights of gay people. He ends the post with this:
In using Paul Cameron’s work, Exodus International helped to create a monster; a cottage industry of groups and spokespersons who used his studies to stroke the egos and prejudices of people against the gay and lesbian community and hinder the passage of pro-gay laws.
Exodus International owes the gay and lesbian community big time. And if it is serious about its repudiation, then Exodus International should take more of a key role in killing the monster it helped to create.
Meanwhile, over at Ex-Gay Watch, they’ve just posted several examples of NARTH’s use Cameron’s junk science. NARTH, some of you may recall, positions itself as a purely secular organization of mental health professionals in opposition to the APA on the issue of homosexuality. But they can’t claim the mantle of science for their work, and willingly and deliberately make use of the work of a fabulist like Cameron. When you see crap like this, you have to know they know full well that they are spreading lies…
For our first example, NARTH member Ross Olson sent a letter to the Pediatric Annals, a letter that was published on NARTH’s web site (I don’t know if that letter was ever published by Pediatric Annals). In that letter, Olson criticizes an article that described a thirteen-year-old transgender MTF. Because the original article described the teen’s sexual activities, Olson jumped to the conclusion that the teen was being sexually abused, and that allowed him to bring up the familiar charge that ties homosexuality to pedophilia. For support, he cited Cameron’s “research” as though it has been presented in a professional journal. Here’s the screen-shot of that paragraph:
This citation is one of the more amazing ones I’ve ever seen. The Journal of the Family Research Institute? It doesn’t exist, at least not as Olsen implies. The link actually goes to a quasi-monthly newsletter that Cameron published for several years called the Family Research Report (hence the “FRR” in the URL). It’s not a journal by any stretch of the term, let alone a peer-reviewed one. Maybe Dr. Olson aspires to be the Dr. Cameron of pediatrics.
But NARTH, claiming its opposition to homosexuality is not religious, but only based on the science, would find it far more difficult to walk away from Cameron then Exodus could. Exodus at least, can at least plausibly stand pat on its religious fundamentalism. NARTH insists it is only following the science. But ever since the APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, NARTH has been nothing more then a refuge for reactionary anti-gay gasbags, who keep insisting that homosexuality must be harmful, because their bar stool prejudices keep telling them it must be. They can’t repudiate Cameron, because without his junk science, all they have left is their animus and contempt. At least Exodus has its religion.
However, to address the actual claims of early demise, I asked Morten Frisch, Danish epidemiologist, to review the Cameron’s paper “Federal Distortion Of Homosexual Footprint (Ignoring Early Gay Death?). Morten is the lead author of a recent report on environmental influences on marriages decisions among heterosexuals and homosexuals. I wrote about this study here and blogged about it here. He very kindly agreed to do so and replied earlier today. As I suspected, he did not find their arguments compelling, or use of data appropriate. Here is his brief analysis:
Cameron and Cameron’s report on ’life expectancy’ in homosexuals vs heterosexuals is severely methodologically flawed
It is no wonder why this pseudo-scientific report claiming a drastically shorter life expectancy in homosexuals compared with heterosexuals has been published on the internet without preceding scientific peer-review (http://www.earnedmedia.org/frireport.htm). The authors should know, and as PhD’s they presumably do, that this report has little to do with science. It is hard to escape the idea that non-scientific motifs have driven the authors to make this report public. The methodological flaws are of such a grave nature that no decent peer-reviewed scientific journal should let it pass for publication.
As a measure of gay individuals’ average ‘life expectancy at birth’, Cameron and Cameron gathered information about age at death from obituaries for homosexual people in the U.S., and they obtained Scandinavian data regarding the average age at death among homosexually partnered persons who died within a period of up to 14 years after the introduction of laws on homosexual partnerships.
Due in part to reports like the present homosexual persons remain subject to stigmatization. The majority of homosexual people, even in comparatively liberal countries like Denmark, are not open about their sexuality in public. Particularly older homosexuals who grew up in periods when their sexuality was either a crime or a psychiatric diagnosis tend to remain silent about their homosexuality in public. Therefore, the higher prevalence of self-reported homo/bisexual experiences and feelings in younger than older age groups most likely reflects that young gays and bisexuals are less hesitant than older ones to provide honest answers in sex surveys.
The majority of homosexual individuals in the report by Cameron and Cameron were presumably open about their same-sex preferences. The groups studied comprised homosexuals who had entered registered partnerships in Denmark or Norway, and homosexuals in the U.S. whose relatives considered homosexuality to be such an integrated part of their deceased loved ones’ personalities that they felt it natural to mention in the publicly available obituary. Since, as noted, age is a strong determinant of openness about homosexuality, the study groups of deceased homosexuals in Cameron and Cameron’s report were severely skewed towards younger people. Consequently, the much younger average age at death of these openly homosexual people as compared with the average age at death in the unselected general population tells nothing about possible differences between life expectancies in gays and non-gays in general. All it reflects is the skewed age distribution towards younger people among those who are openly homosexual.
To further illustrate Cameron and Cameron’s methodological blunder, imagine a country that sets up a new register to record all cases of sexual harassment against women. After 14 years of operation the register is contacted by an advocacy group who gets access to the data to examine how sexual harassment influences women’s life expectancy. Among those women who died during the maximum of 14 years of follow-up, few women will have died after the age of 50, simply because most sexual harassment cases occurred among young women. Using the same logic and methods as Cameron and Cameron, this advocacy group could arrive at the conclusion that sexual harassment reduces women’s ‘life expectancy’ by 30 years or more. Needless to say, this would be as pure nonsense as the conclusion reached by Cameron and Cameron that heterosexuals outlive gays by 22-25 years.
(Emphasis mine) Throckmorton, to his everlasting credit, denounced forcing gay teens into reparative therapy when the Love In Action protests hit the news during the summer of 2005. He has moderated his stance on ex-gay therapy since then, retired I Do Exist, split with PFOX and the Ex-Gay movement, and now says his work "…does not emphasize changing sexual orientation as much as it does achieving congruence with chosen beliefs and values (which may or may not lead to change of attractions)." So I guess he’s not in a playing along mood.
Daniel Gonzales, formerly of ExGay Watch has created a little video about the anti-gay counter attack on the Day of Silence. Cynically named “Day Of Truth”, it seeks to legitimize harassment of GLBT kids in school by their classmates, in the name of freedom of religion. The problem is, as always, that the religious right isn’t on speaking terms with Truth, or anything even remotely resembling it. Their website, as the video shows, helpfully provides kids with cards printed up with informational resources on homosexuality that all link back to Ex Gay ministries and their usual myths, lies and superstitions. The party line is that this is all supposed to give gay kids “the other side” of the story. But as always this “other side” is actually a message directed not at gay youth, but to their heterosexual peers. The resources handed out to school kids are nothing less then a collection of handy excuses for them to treat their GLBT peers with disrespect, if not outright contempt.
We see in the video the t-shirt their poster child got tossed out of class for wearing on a previous Day of Silence, which tells gay kids to “Be Ashamed” and that God condemns them. On its face then, this is not a message of love directed toward gay youth, but an exhortation to their peers to treat them like human garbage. It is incitement that at some point is certain to result in outright physical assaults. And when that happens you can bet that like Pilot the grown adults who are instigating this will wash, wash their hands of the consequences. But you don’t paint a bulls-eye on children, tell everyone that those children are condemned by God, and not expect violence to result.
Peterson Toscano, Ex-Gay therapy survivor himself, has teamed up with Christine Bakke and SoulForce to create a set of resources for other ex-gay therapy survivors. There is a new website he’s co-hosting with Christine, BeyondExGay.com. And there will be a gathering of survivors, The Survivor’s Conference–Beyond Ex-Gay which will be in Irvine, California from June 29 to July 1 this year. I’ll let the SoulForce press release take it from here…but this is good. This is great. People who have been through that horrible wringer should be able to find safe spaces here on the net, and offline, where they can talk to each other.
SOULFORCE PRESS RELEASE: April 2, 2007
For Immediate Release
Contact: Paige Schilt, Media Director
Cell: 512-659-1771 paige@soulforce.org
Peterson Toscano, Beyondexgay.com
Cell: 860.680.0639
email: peterson@petersontoscano.com
(Austin, TX)-Survivors of ex-gay programs can take advantage of two new resources this week. Beyondexgay.com, an online community for those who are healing from ex-gay experiences, will go live today. Simultaneously, online registration will begin for The Survivor’s Conference: Beyond Ex-gay, a face-to-face event scheduled for June 29-July 1, and sponsored by beyondexgay.com and Soulforce.
Online registration is now available for The Survivor’s Conference: Beyond Ex-gay, a face-to-face event scheduled for June 29th through July 1st, sponsored by beyondexgay.com and Soulforce.
Recent events have brought national attention to the existence of programs intended to modify same-sex desires. While much of that attention has focused on whether sexual orientation is subject to change, beyondexgay.com and The Survivor’s Conference are the first efforts to move beyond that debate in order to focus on the community of "survivors"-people who feel they have experienced more harm than benefits from ex-gay programs.
"We use the term ‘survivor’ because we want to emphasize the very real psychological trauma that these programs can cause, and also because we want to highlight the strength of the men and women who, in spite of enormous pressures, come to accept themselves as they are," says Jeff Lutes, a practicing psychotherapist and Executive Director of Soulforce (www.soulforce.org).
The creators of beyondexgay.com (www.beyondexgay.com), Peterson Toscano and Christine Bakke, talked to hundreds of fellow ex-gay survivors. What they heard, again and again, was that ex-gay experiences brought inner turmoil, confusion and shame.
Many survivors acknowledge that some good came of their ex-gay journey. "We grew to understand our sexuality better and in some cases even overcame life-controlling problems," says Toscano, but he is quick to point out that the harm most survivors experience far outweighs the help they receive. The consensus of the major medical and mental health organizations is that homosexuality is not a disorder and, therefore, does not need to be cured. The American Psychological Association identifies "depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior" among the possible risks associated with ex-gay therapies.
Toscano spent 17 years and over $30,000 on three continents attempting to change or at least contain his unwanted same-sex attractions. He ultimately endured two years at the Love in Action residential ex-gay program in Memphis, TN.
"In the end I was still very gay, but also depressed, isolated and nearly faithless," he says.
Toscano, now a Christian Quaker, has since created a one-person comedy about his ex-gay experiences and has presented Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House and his other work throughout North America, Europe, West Africa and the Caribbean. In spring 2005, Bakke contacted Toscano after attending one of his performances.
Christine Bakke herself spent more than 4 years trying to change her orientation. She moved to Denver in 1998 to become ex-gay and participated in a program affiliated with Exodus International, the largest network of ex-gay ministries. In 2003 she realized that while she had changed in many areas, her sexual orientation remained the same. Bakke’s story will be featured in the May issue of Glamour, which hit newsstands April 10. Toscano will appear as a guest on the Tyra Banks Show on April 12.
Bakke and Toscano continued to dialogue, and last spring they decided it was time to reach out to more ex-gay survivors through the Internet. Together with assistance from their friend, Steve Boese, they form the perfect team: Bakke-a graphic designer, Toscano-a writer, and Boese-a web guru and founder of MyOrgHost (www.myorghost.net).
Beyondexgay.com currently features diverse narratives from ex-gay survivors. It also provides an array of resources, including original articles and art by survivors, as well as links to other sites. Soon survivors will have the option to join the community and create a profile. Through an on-line form, they will document and share their own ex-gay experiences. Their responses will then be added to a database that will track the variety and scope of ex-gay experiences endured by survivors.
"The ex-gay experience is unique in many ways. No one understands it better than those of us who have been through it. Creating a communal space for ex-gay survivors to tell their stories allows us to share what led us into an ex-gay lifestyle and ways we have been able to recover from it," says Bakke.
Creating a space for survivors to come together and share their stories was also the impetus behind The Survivor’s Conference: Beyond Ex-Gay. The conference, which will take place June 29th through July 1st at the University of California-Irvine, is co-sponsored by the LGBT Resource Center at UC Irvine.
"We chose Irvine because the annual Exodus Freedom Conference is coming to Irvine that week," says Lutes. "For Soulforce, beyondexgay.com, and the LGBT Resource Center at UC Irvine, it is very important to provide a positive response to the Exodus message that gay men and lesbians are sinful and disordered."
If you want to stand in peaceful solidarity to lovingly confront the damaging consequences of the ex-gay movement – this conference is for you. If you have ever been through an ex-gay experience or been damaged by the message that God does not love and affirm you – this conference is for you. If you are confused about the Bible and homosexuality, currently in an ex-gay program, or thinking about trying to change who you are – this conference is for you.
Schedule of Events
Friday, June 29, 2007, 7pm – 9pm, Crystal Cove Auditorium (free and open to the public): Doing time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House: How I survived the Ex-gay Movement – a performance by Peterson Toscano, www.homonomo.com
Jason and deMarcoSaturday, June 30, 2007, 9am – 5pm. Registration online is highly recommended. Registrations at the door will be accepted as space allows.
7pm – Crystal Cove Auditorium (free and open to the public) Jason & deMarco in Concert! www.jasonanddemarco.com
Sunday, July 1, 2007 – Optional worship at a local welcoming & affirming church.
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