Excerpt from David Benkof:

In the process of writing Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View, the most important (really the only significant) full-length study of homosexuality and Jewish law, Rabbi Chaim Rapoport asked Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) if he could speak to some “success stories” – and he was unsatisfied with its meager response.

I have had much the same experience; while I have spoken to about two dozen JONAH men on the Internet, on the phone and in person, I have never encountered a single Jew who was gay (not bisexual) and became straight (not bisexual) due to the techniques recommended by JONAH. If its approach was effective, shouldn’t there be at least five or 10 men and women I could speak with who say that JONAH did for them what it claims to be able to do?

Melissa Fryrear, the clownish so-called ex-lesbian from Focus on the Family who cakes on make-up, pretends to have crushes on red headed men (although we’ve never had a report of an actual date) and admits that she is “not the sharpest knife in the drawer,” has changed the term “ex-gay” to “post gay” in Focus on the Family’s latest newsletter.

In the letter, she describes the process of becoming post-gay:

“Thus, for any feeling, thought, belief, identity, behavior or action that is not characteristic of and resembling of the Person of Jesus Christ, God’s intention is to change it so that it is.” (sounds like brainwashing)

Of course, Fryrear admits that her ministry has the potential to cause great damage, saying, “It is a process – often a very long, difficult and painful process.”

Actually, it is a destructive dead end. The people who throw their money at charlatans like Fryrear do go through the painful process described, only to find that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. This exacerbates the pain and can lead to depression and self-destructive behavior.

I’m not sure why loneliness, pain, celibacy, depression and thoughts of suicide qualify as “post-gay.”

In recent decades, some concerned critics say, portions of U.S. conservative Christianity have been overrun by an army of little so-called antichrists.

These “antichrists” are said to be smug and willfully ignorant people who worship a god of warfare and death. When they aren’t justifying wars, obsessing over demons, and rejecting the scientific method, they vote for egocentric autocrats and special interests who favor Armageddon-like living conditions — deteriorating seas, poisoned skies, melted ice caps, runaway ethnic cleansing, no privacy, and large-scale religious conflict. Some of these would-be antichrists — doomsayers Timothy LaHaye and Hal Lindsey come to mind — have earned tens of millions of dollars by writing best-selling books that call other people “antichrists.”

In promoting sales of his own new book, ex-gay activist Anthony Falzarano this week decisively associated himself with this supposed army of believers in a god of death.

Falzarano’s latest message to a sexually-honest former Exodus leader is basically this:

Falzarano’s god is a sadistic tyrant that kills individual people with cancer in order to punish other individual people for petty reasons — and in order to bolster the wobbly egos of Biblically illiterate and impenitent ministers like Falzarano.

I won’t repeat the full text of Falzarano’s latest meme here. It is linked above; it has been repeated by other major bloggers; and we at TWO have already allowed Falzarano to spout his memes here in the past week.

Right-wing religious demagogues spread these memes, sugar-coated with godtalk, for the following reasons:

1. to make money when they are ill-qualified for productive employment

2. to inflate their unstable egos by degrading and bullying other people

3. to intimidate practitioners of traditional, modest, and minority religious creeds, replacing those faiths with egocentric, cynical, and authoritarian cult-like movements that are insulated from any dangerous persons who might express faith in a genuinely loving, graceful, life-affirming, self-sacrificial — or non-existent — higher power

4. to promote conflict, bloodshed, and destruction in a “fallen” world that they admittedly hate

5. to victimize other people, putting them perpetually in a defensive position

It’s a bit difficult for me to imagine anything more anti-life, or antichrist-like, than the culture of death and defamation that Falzarano affirms in his recent messages to TWO and to a former Exodus ministry leader.

But I’ll try: (Read More)

Focus on the Family Promotes Culture of Death, Says TWO

NEW YORK — TruthWinsOut.org (TWO) condemned Focus on the Family today for distorting Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics on HIV and encouraging the very sexual behavior that spreads the disease. By doing so, Focus on the Family is promoting a culture of death and encouraging sexually active people to act recklessly and irresponsibly, says TWO.

Last week, the United States acknowledged it had underreported new cases of HIV. It revised the statistics from approximately 40,000 new infections in 2006, to 56,000 – a 40 percent increase. Focus on the Family spokesperson Jeff Johnston shamelessly exploited the revised data to oppose safer-sex practices, which would have prevented nearly all of the reported infections. Instead, he implied that gay men should marry women they did not find sexually attractive:

“Outside of a faithful marriage between a man and a woman, there is no ‘afe sex,’” said Johnston. “It is irresponsible to teach people that you can have ‘afe sex’ or ‘afer sex’ outside of marriage.”

“It is undeniable that safe sex works and has saved the lives of millions of people,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “Contrary to Focus on the Family’ death-promoting dogma, there is no HIV crisis for gay or straight men who practice the very safe sex techniques that they have irresponsibly dismissed. Furthermore, how is a gay man in a relationship any more at risk than a heterosexual man in a relationship? Focus on the Family’ propaganda defies science, logic and common sense.”

It is also odd that Focus on the Family presumes that marriage is a panacea that makes teaching safe sex unnecessary. Mike Trout, the longtime co-host on Focus on the Family’ radio program, said on Oct. 17, 2000 that he had an inappropriate relationship with a woman other than his wife.

“Right wingers should learn about condoms too, so when they cheat on their spouses, they do so safely and not bring STD’ into the home,” said Besen. “This is particularly true in Bible Belt states which have the highest divorce rates in the nation. It is never helpful to promote ignorance over education — and that is precisely the sex education paradigm embraced by Focus on the Family.”
(Read More)

A very fascinating Box Turtle Bulletin post you may find interesting. A discussion on curing homosexuality from a 1913 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Techniques mentioned include castration, bladder washing, and — get this — prostate massage.

Also included was a rejoinder that was some 60 years ahead of its time, which boils down to a simple question: “If we accept homosexuality as a condition which has as much right to exist as heterosexuality, why should we address ourselves to the duty of treating it?”

Exodus International, the North American network of so-called “ex-gay” activists, is steadily building a network of affiliated churches even as the organization’s ex-gay membership declines.

But, despite a $50 annual membership fee, Exodus appears to offer these churches little besides false promises.

Exodus Church Network director Jeff Buchanan tells Ministry Today:

If we’re honest, the issue of homosexuality intimidates most church leaders. It makes us feel helpless. When someone pulls us aside and confides in us that he or she struggles with same-sex attractions, we diligently put on our “leader face” while we shrivel on the inside, feeling absolutely incompetent to address the situation.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If you believe God’s Word to be true, then you automatically have the needed tools for effective ministry, since all Scripture is “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16, NIV). Therefore, we are equipped as the church to minister to anyone who walks through our doors‚Äîhomosexual or not.

With the exception of the introductory, cherry-picked verse that is cited above, the remainder of Buchanan’s article fails to cite a single Bible verse that would provide church leaders with guidance in addressing someone who struggles with their sexual orientation. Buchanan fails to justify the central thesis of his article — the dubious notion that the Bible is all that one needs to become a counselor to a gay individual in distress.

Of the three vague tips offered by Buchanan — that a person needs 1) compassionate truth, 2) discipleship, and 3) community — none has a stated basis in “God’s Word,” nor are any explained with useful examples. Indeed, this trite list of needs is unworthy of serious ministerial discussion: Exodus is touting tips that appear to have been borrowed not from a Bible or a professional guide to pastoral care, but from fortune cookies or a second-rate horoscope. (Read More)

In a CitizenLink press release issued today, Focus on the Family misdefined and distorted the proportion of reported HIV infections in 2006 that were attributable to men who have sex with men.

Focus falsely equated men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) with “homosexuality” and then inflated the percentage of cases in 2006 that were attributable to these men. The Centers for Disease Control reported that 53 percent — barely half — of new HIV infections in 2006 were attributable to MSM. Focus on the Family inflated this statistic to “almost 60 percent” and falsely attributed this exaggeration to the CDC.

The category of MSM includes men who claim to be ex-gay while closeting their sex with men, as well as ostensibly heterosexual men living on the “down low,” and bisexual men. The category does not include homosexual men who are incidentally or purposely abstinent. Nor does the category distinguish between sexually active men whose practices put them at very low risk of infection, and men who place themselves at high risk.

Focus recklessly lumps all these categories of men under a “homosexuality” banner and implies that all are at equal risk due to the honesty of some regarding their orientation, and not due to very specific high-risk behaviors. (Read More)

Georgia-based ex-gay activist D.L. Foster is something of a leader within Exodus Global Alliance.

In recent years, Exodus has given Foster an international soapbox from which Foster affirmed violence and imprisonment in Jamaica and Barbados as tactics to coerce local gay people to closet themselves and pretend to be heterosexual.

At his blog Gay Christian Movement Watch today, Foster berated Canadian ex-gay advocate Wendy Gritter of New Direction for a comment yesterday here at Truth Wins Out. Gritter said:

I would go to a close friend’ gay wedding and yup, I’d bring a gift. I know that all of my close friends know what I believe about sexual ethics and would not assume my beliefs had changed but that my attendance was a sign of my love and friendship. I’m sure I would get some serious flack for this decision – but at the end of the day, I believe loving people is what God asks of me.

Unlike Jesus of Nazareth, Foster disapproves of — in his words — “hanging out with sinners.” Even though Foster has exploited the Exodus global network, Foster now warns antigay clergy not to support Exodus’ North American operation, Exodus International:

Pastors should not refer people to the organization until it can solidify its message and practice into one which is faithful to the Word of God not science, polls, surveys and people like Wendy Gritter.

Foster’s demand spotlights an apparent difference in approach, between the global alliance’s support for antigay violence and imprisonment, and the North American operation’s approach of hiring professional ex-gays to distort science and create appealing soundbites at ex-gay roadshows and ex-gay support-group meetings. Unlike Exodus in North America, Foster rejects science and critical thinking outright — advocating blind obedience to his selective and brutal reinterpretations of the “Word of God.”

So long as Exodus International affiliates with Exodus Global Alliance — thereby aiding ungracious and politically correct thugs like Foster — it puzzles me that relatively gracious moderates like Gritter bother to affiliate with Exodus International.

Surely there are effective and ideologically consistent ways to draw referrals and to promote one’s message, without sacrificing individual, intellectual, and religious freedom?

Leaders of the largest world-wide advocacy and support group for gay Mormons announced today that they intend to keep their date to be in Salt Lake City to discuss ways in which they and the LDS Church can work together to better minister to church members who are gay and to their families. In February of this year, leaders of Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons had invited the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to meet with them to discuss areas of mutual concern. LDS President Thomas Monson accepted the invitation, and, in early April, the meeting was set for Monday, August 11, in Salt Lake City. On July 24, the church declared in an e-mailed letter that they were postponing the meeting until next year.

Executive Director Olin Thomas has confirmed that the Affirmation Executive Committee members scheduled to attend the historic meeting have secured a meeting location and will be in Salt Lake City, ready to meet with President Monson or any other General Authority of the Church at 9:00 AM Monday morning as planned. Thomas, who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, noted that Affirmation has no paid officers or staff and that leaders travel at their own expense, using vacation and leave time from their regular jobs.

The group has called a meeting with members of the press for 10:00 AM, Monday, August 11, at which they will present the material that would have been presented in the original meeting.

Utah holds one of the highest suicide rates in the United States. Affirmation has documented over 30 suicides of gay Mormons, and Affirmation leaders believe the LDS leaders have contributed to these tragedies by the way they talk about and to gay people. Tonight, a gay teenager will be thrown out onto the street by his or her LDS family, contributing to an above-average homeless rate for adolescents in the Mountain West and Northwest states. Throughout the church, families are being broken apart, often forever, because family members don’t know how to deal with a loved one who tells them that he or she is gay.

“In recent years, the Church’ view towards gay and lesbian people has changed, and Church leaders now recognize that being gay is a biological characteristic,” noted David Melson, Affirmation’ Senior Assistant Executive Director. “The items that we had planned to discuss all focus on education and on toning down some of the rhetoric. Nothing that we will be proposing requires any change in doctrine.”

“We are concerned at the Church’ decision to not attend the meeting on August 11. The deaths, the homelessness, and the grief that occur because of well-intentioned but misguided practices are real, and they must all stop, now.”

Some people decide, for a variety of reasons, that they are morally opposed to expressing their own personal same-sex orientation. However, they refrain from the lie that anyone can “change” their sexual orientation.

In fact, some of these people acknowledge that no significant change of sexual orientation occurs in most (if any) so-called ex-gays.

Depending upon the context, a lifetime of celibacy may be depressing, self-defeating, a bit selfish, or even unloving. Do we at Truth Wins Out strongly encourage it? Not especially. But what people choose to do (or not do) with themselves is their business.

However, when celibate gay people present the public with celibacy as an honest alternative to the fraudulent healings of the ex-gay movement, some politically correct ex-gays are bound to retaliate. (Read More)