Thursday Evening Talk Will Dispel False Claims Made By Focus On the Family’ Love Won Out Conference

What: Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out (TWO), will discuss the damage caused by programs that teach people to “pray away the gay”. The presentation will take place prior to Focus on the Family’ “ex-gay” road show, Love Won Out, which rolls into Charlotte on Saturday. Besen will address the history of ex-gay ministries; what the mental health experts say; the bizarre techniques used by these programs; why they are harmful and the political machine behind these dangerous groups.

Where: Lesbian & Gay Community Center, 820 Hamilton St., Charlotte NC

When: Thursday, Feb. 19, 7:00-8:30 PM

Background: The Charlotte Rainbow Action Network for Equality (CRANE) is sponsoring the lecture. CRANE is a grassroots coalition of activists and community members working toward civil and social equality for Charlotte’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) community.

To educate the community about the harmful message of Love Won Out, CRANE will hold a press conference on Friday, Feb. 20, 11:30 AM. It will take place at the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Charlotte (234 N Sharon Amity Rd.) At the event, Truth Wins Out and Lambda Legal will unveil their new publication, “Ex-Gay & the Law,” which offers practical legal advice for victims of “ex-gay” therapies.

On Feb. 21, there will be a non-violent protest of Love Won Out, 11:00 AM-2:00 PM, in front of Central Church of God (5301 Sardis Road). The demonstration is open to all people and supporters of equality are encouraged to participate.

The pastor of Willow Creek Chicago — the city campus of the 20,000-member evangelical megachurch Willow Creek Community Church — has resigned and admitted to “sexual impurity,” a church spokesman said.

The pastor, Rev. Steve Wu, could not be reached, and the church would specify what took place.

Wu, 43, moved from California’s Silicon Valley in early 2006, hired by senior pastor Rev. Bill Hybels to lead Willow Creek Chicago, the downtown branch of the South Barrington-based church.

Willow Creek encourages gay people to “change” or remain celibate. Meanwhile, this is the kind of sexual immorality that is going on at the church, while gay people are guilted into abandoning hopes of love, affection, sexual pleasure and a healthy relationship. It is time these hypocrites look in the mirror, instead of pointing fingers at others that they do not understand.

Glenn Stanton, marriage policy pundit for Focus on the Family, is upset.

This week, “All My Children” — one of ABC’s few surviving shows in the ailing soap opera genre — belatedly recognized that thousands of U.S. gay and lesbian couples are legally married. The soap opera also acknowledged what gay people of faith have known for decades: that some churches and synagogues — even entire denominations –have affirmed monogamous life unions of gay and lesbian couples.

In its response, Focus on the Family dishonors marriage first by putting the word marriage in “scare quotes,” and then by carelessly excusing soaps’ long history of heterosexual infidelity.

What upsets Stanton the most, according to Focus, is the show’s disclosure of a simple truth: Many clergy are not as prejudiced as the pundits at Focus on the Family. Stanton says:

What is really offensive is their use of clergy to perform this genderless and unrealistic ‘marriage.’

Gay and lesbian people are not genderless, and their desire for matrimony is no less “unrealistic” than that of heterosexual persons.

Instead of encouraging TV shows to acknowledge the reality of same-sex marriage and of gay-affirming clergy, Focus is angered that the truth might “desensitize the public” to reality.

Caleb Price, research analyst at Focus on the Family, said some writers in Hollywood are working to desensitize the public to homosexuality and “transgenderism.”

“They will continue to push the boundaries of what is morally and culturally permissible,” he said, “until Americans stand up to the studio execs and advertisers that produce these programs and say, ‘No more.’ ”

Push boundaries? Far from it. No more soaps? Been there, done that.

The fact that it took a couple years for a soap to recognize the existence of gay marriages and gay-affirming churches merely reinforces the widespread sentiment that the soap genre is becoming obsolete.

Studio execs, advertisers, and viewers don’t care about soap operas — most abandoned the genre years ago. In decline as an institution since 1981, the soap opera was jeopardized first by women’s progress in the workplace, then by TiVo and reality TV, then by The Sims and Second Life, and most recently by YouTube, Twitter, texting, and other social media. Venerable soaps are quietly shrinking to skeleton casts and facilities, and the Daytime Emmys are no longer televised.

Focus has reminded us that its mindset may be trapped in a distant era when millions of people, myself included, actually cared what happened on ABC on weekday afternoons: An era when the religious right condemned soaps not for sexual infidelity or for ludicrous tales of weather machines and Ice Princesses, but for their halting efforts to educate viewers about AIDS.

Nowadays, Focus protests a soap opera for honoring marriage. That’s how backward Focus has become.

When Exodus International and Focus on the Family need to quote a medical doctor who is willing to blame fathers for family members’ homosexuality, they sometimes go to Paul Meier.

In an undated article that Exodus promoted this week in its electronic newsletter, Meier boasts that “I have given compassionate care to many hundreds of men and women who have had struggles with their sexual identities and cravings.”

That’s where Meier’s compassion ends. The remainder of his article blames fathers, and expectations of fathers, for homosexuality.

Meier’s article offers no sound clinical basis for his teaching; the proof for his philosophy rests upon a single anonymous man named “Jim.”

Gay people and former ex-gays have witnessed for decades the damage that people like Meier do — deliberately, arrogantly, recklessly — to families. Meier’s science-free advice turns mothers against fathers and sons against parents, while fathers are subjected to self-blame and denied the truths about sexual orientation that they will need to reconcile with gay family members.

Exodus International and Focus on the Family take their exgay-for-pay road show, “Love Won Out,” to Charlotte, N.C., on Feb. 21.

The event’s timing was suspicious, as it coincided with the Human Rights Campaign’s Carolinas Gala and a conference of the gay-affirming Metropolitan Community Church and Unity Fellowship.

The Charlotte Rainbow Action Network plans a series of events Feb. 14-21 to raise public awareness about the ex-gay organizations’ ongoing acts to divide families and churches and to replace school science lessons with sectarian religious rhetoric. Truth Wins Out is among the invited participants.

According to Q-Notes:

In his presentation, “Pray Away the Gay,” Besen will discuss the myths and lies of “ex-gay” organizations like Exodus International. The event will be held at 7 p.m. at Charlotte’ Lesbian & Gay Community Center.

A press conference will follow the next day. Media has been invited to the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Charlotte where Besen will unveil a new Truth Wins Out/Lambda Legal booklet “Ex-Gay & the Law.” The new publication offers resources for those who might have been victimized by unscrupulous “ex-gay” ministries and therapies.

On Saturday, Feb. 21, the grassroots group’ efforts will culminate in a non-violent, silent protest of the Love Won Out conference. Members and supporters will be present outside Central Church of God on Sardis Road from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Other invitees for the events countering Exodus and FOTF include Lambda Legal, the Human Rights Campaign and Faith in America, and local and state groups such as One Voice Chorus, Gay Men’ Chorus of Charlotte, Charlotte Coalition for Social Justice, UNCC Pride and EqualityNC.

Last week, the anti-family American Family Association and Focus on the Family protested a decision by some privately owned TV stations not to carry a paranoid antigay infomercial titled “Speechless: Silencing the Christians.”

Both organizations believe that private broadcasters should be forced to carry sectarian religious propaganda against their will, and that a refusal by private broadcasters to air wealthy organizations’ pro-prejudice advocacy somehow “silences” those sectarian groups.

This week, Focus on the Family took the opposite position regarding the Fairness Doctrine, a defunct federal policy which once required private broadcasters using the public airwaves to carry a balance of ideological perspectives.

Today, Focus on the Family argued that broadcasters should not be forced to carry liberal viewpoints with which they disagree.

It’s still perfectly OK, in Focus’ view, to force broadcasters to air its self-pitying antifamily paranoia.

In an undated article that Exodus International promoted this week via its Exodus Youth electronic newsletter, Exodus conference director David Fountain reinforces the organization’s preoccupation with a god of war and with the promotion of “fighting” — not mere “struggle” — against one’s own sexuality.

Fountain’s rationalization of conflict starts peacefully enough: He recalls a voice — which he unwisely attributes to God — “finally answering me one night after many nights of praying for God to free me of this struggle. I heard Him gently say to me, ‘David, I’ve already given you the freedom, you just have to choose to walk in it.’”

Fountain gradually proceeds to trivialize true warfare — the Iraq variety — with exaggerations of the ex-gay struggle against temptation. For example:

Yes, we may still find ourselves weak and tempted at times to give in and give up. Let’ not forget that we are in the middle of a battlefield.

Fountain thanks the voice in his head for freeing him from a “bondage of sin” — but he declines to give the Christian God credit for freeing former ex-gays from the “bondage of sin” that was imposed upon them by dysfunctional and unprofessional Exodus programs. Instead, Fountain repeatedly succumbs to the modern evangelical temptation to believe that the voices in one’s head are God and not one’s potentially dysfunctional self.

Fountain’s internal mental warfare is directed against honesty about one’s sexuality — such honesty is attributed to Satan. Fountain encourages self-denial instead:

If you’re wounded or slightly lost, return to base and recover new strength in the One who already won this war and holds the battle plans. Satan and your flesh will fight you every step of the way. However, keep pressing through, not allowing your feelings or emotions to dictate who you are or what you do.

While serving as a soldier on this battlefield, stay alert and be aware that the enemy will charge at you with lies that you are a “struggler” and that is what you will always be. God has given you an indispensable weapon, His Word, to defeat those lies with the truth.

To support that statement, Fountain falls back upon prooftexted Bible passages — one of which relates to self-martyrdom and has nothing to do with sin — or with sexual honesty.

Fountain also shares anecdotes from presumed fellow warriors. One anonymous ex-gay implies that one cannot practice sexual honesty and remain Christian:

“Fighting this fight is worth it to me because I would have no hope of a relationship with Jesus Christ or eternal life without it. It is worth it because without fighting I cannot live with a clear conscience, without anything within me questioning whether or not I’m doing the right thing. It is only by fighting the fight that I have learned to feel loved by God. I had to realize that I am in need of grace. I tried gay Liberation Theology, but it proved to be a rationalization that diminished my need for grace. I have realized that it is through my heart’ need for grace that it realized God’ love for me, which began, in turn, to satisfy the needs for intimacy that He created within me.” — Wayne

The comment by “Wayne” is ironic:

He rejects grace — unconditional forgiveness — in order to carry the emotional and spiritual burdens of 1) Exodus’ judgment against those who are same-sex-attracted, and 2) Exodus’ battle against honesty about one’s sexual orientation.

Benjamin Gresham, a former ex-gay and college student, observes:

A major ex-gay program, Living Waters, is seeking to expand across Sydney and even the rest of Australia. Led by Christian minister and ex-gay himself, Ron Brookman. Living Waters is located in Ramsgate in Southern Sydney but also runs groups in St Marys, and North West and South West Sydney through various churches and ministries. Living Waters is holding an ex-gay confernce in Sydney in February and starting up a new branch on the Northern Beaches in April 2009. Along with this, Ron brookman aims to release his autobiography in the near future as well as 2 other books which will promote the ex-gay message.

The expansion of the ex-gay programs across Sydney is a major concern as the psychological damage and pain caused by these programs is considerable. Hundreds of young gay men and women who have gone through these programs have committed suicide after not being able to change their sexual orientation. I attempted suicide twice after 3 years of ex-gay programs and I am lucky to be alive today. I have a friend who was not so lucky and after struggling with his sexuality and being told he had to change…he committed suicide back in 2007.

Read more at Gresham’s blog.

Twenty antigay Oklahoma politicians including state Rep. Sally Kern — who recently enjoyed the enthusiastic public support of Oklahoma-based Exodus ex-gay activist Stephen Black — voted to suppress the public record of the opening prayer for the Oklahoma House of Representatives. (Sixty-seven voted in favor of recording it.)

Here is the entirety of the prayer that they hated: (Read More)

Focus on the Family believes that — given a choice between having gay parents or remaining orphans, due to the unwillingness of Christian couples to adopt older kids — youths should be left in orphanages.

Focus declared Feb. 11 that California children are “best served” by ensuring that state governments favor adoption by unavailable “Christian” heterosexual parents and prevent adoption by available gay parents.

Focus does encourage Christian parents to adopt — not so much for love and family, but to make sure that stable and strong gay couples have no one left to adopt:

“One of the good things that can come out of a controversy like this is that Christians in the community can rise up and say, “We will be the families for these waiting kids,’ ” [Focus' Kelly Rosati] said.