Of course — until Christian Rightists elevate themselves above God and say otherwise.
In her book, “Somone’s Son,” Brenda Rhodes recalls how she corrected her son (who was dying from HIV/AIDS) when he asserted belief in a God of unconditional love.
Rhodes tells the American Family Association’s propaganda arm, OneNewsNow:
“He would get of the opinion that God loves us unconditionally no matter what we do,” Rhodes explains. “I told him that that is true but when we live outside of his bounds and we do things that we know we should not then it breaks the relationship with God and we have consequences that we have to live with, and even die with sometimes.”
Rhodes should have titled her book, “God Loves Me, Not Thee” — the tale of “bounds” set by a control-freak mother who vainly claims to be God’s spokeswoman.
Rhodes’ book advises other parents how to be stubbornly vain and prejudiced toward gay sons, how to equate sexual orientation with drug addiction, and how to mangle the Bible for perceived personal advantage and control.
South African gay news site Mamba Online reports that Pastor Oscar Peter Bougardt is sending death threats via email to LGBT websites and rallying his followers to “take out [kill] lesbians and gays.”
“Lesbians and gays are a curse on any community. I believe that a man that sleeps with another man doesn’t deserve to be part of a healthy community and I will mobilise the masses to stop them,” Bougardt said.
While many people have become accustomed to reading about death-chanting mob churches in Jamaica and Uganda, it’s less common and a bit alarming to see such a development underway in South Africa.
When challenged by Mamba Online to explain this threat, Bougardt waffled.
“If I say take out homosexuals, I mean they must be removed from our communities…You interpret that I am inciting violence against homosexuals, I see it is making our people aware that their lifestyles should not be approved by any healthy community. Just as homosexuals have the right to express their views, I have the right to express mine,” he said.
Like so many antigay activists, Bougardt vainly believes that God exempts him from having to show academic or scientific support for his claims that homosexuals are abominable, child-molesting, hetero-recruiting drug addicts.
“Where I stay you don’t need academic, government or scientific statistics,” he said, adding that “homosexuality is spreading faster than HIV and AIDS.”
When Christian leaders such as renowned Archbishop Desmond Tutu reject his hatred and affirm equality for LGBT people, Bougardt vainly damns them to hell.
“Desmond Tutu will burn in hell for misleading homosexuals and for saying God don’t have a problem with them. I don’t care what Desmond Tutu have to say, nowhere in the Bible are we told to expect homosexuals. The Bible teaches they are an abomination to God.”
Meanwhile, LGBT activist Christina Engela of SA GLAAD reflects on Bougardt’s graceless idolization of hate, and the need for Christians to publicly speak out against the bigots and violence-doers in their midst. A South African constitutional rights blogger argues that equality advocates (and especially affirming clergy) should overwhelm Bougardt’s hate speech with constructive public speech and expression.
My first reaction to someone like this is to follow the money. Someone from abroad is likely to be funding this seemingly violent and irrational man and his church via his bank account, and I would like very much to know who.
Meantime, people can protest his presence on Facebook, his Blogspot blogs, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. But this wicked and irrational man is unlikely to be humbled until more U.S. and African Christians find the courage to stand up for equality, obstruct financing of such pastors, and repudiate colleagues who practice hatred and pander to the world’s wealthy antigay opportunists.
Veteran ex-gay leader John Smid recently acknowledged that, in his decades of ministry to make thousands of gay men turn straight, none had truly changed their sexual orientation, though many had changed their religious beliefs or their behavior.
Despite his own same-sex orientation, Smid plans to remain married to his wife, and he remains a Christian. Kudos, I say, to Smid for seeking to practice authenticity and congruence in body and spirit.
Longtime Exodus vice president Randy Thomas doesn’t feel the same way.
Thomas, who was nudged out of Exodus for unknown reasons this year, declares that Smid — one of his original ex-gay mentors — “renounced faith in Him.” In other words, Thomas lies about Smid’s faith and essentially condemns him to hell.
That condemnation, dear readers, is the mark of an insecure soul with little apparent grace – the most basic value of Christianity. (Read More)
Ex-Gay Watch points out that recent U.S. Internal Revenue Service filings confirm what Exodus International has long denied:
The abusive Christian Right quack-therapy network does try to change people’s sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual, despite executive director Alan Chambers’ ongoing insistence to the public that his “ministries” merely help people with “unwanted homosexuality” grow closer to godliness through a new ideological “identity” of ambiguous “holysexuality.”
Furthermore, the organization admits in its IRS Form 990 filings that it seeks to convert people’s sexual orientation against their will.
In 2006, for example, the organization budgeted more than $124,000 for “missions and other outreach projects (that) allow Exodus to reach individuals not actively seeking help who may be open to change.”
That’s Exodus-speak for “lobbying for harsh antigay laws” and “pressuring parents to detain their teen-age children in ex-gay boot-camps.”
In 2007, Exodus budgeted more than $342,000 to provide “various education programs and publications that explain how to change sexual orientation” at a time when Exodus publicly denied the existence of sexual orientation, preferring instead to characterize sexual attraction as nothing more than a label or “identity” that could easily be swapped out in favor of Exodus’ unholy redefinition of Christian faith.
On May 29, 2005, 16-year-old Tennessee youth Zach Stark announced on his MySpace blog that he had come out to his parents, and that they had reacted with shock and grief.
Shortly thereafter — apparently after consulting with their church and Exodus International — Stark’s parents told him that there was something “psychologically wrong” with him, and that they had raised him wrong. As a result, they said, Zach would be involuntarily detained at Exodus International’s flagship residential ex-gay youth program, Love In Action/Refuge, for a minimum of two weeks of shame-based ex-gay therapy.
Six years later, Stark, his friends, and other LIA and Refuge program participants are now speaking out about their experiences in Morgan Jon Fox’s newly released documentary, This Is What Love In Action Looks Like.
Friends of Zach read his blog and were alarmed by the shame and fear to which he would be subjected. Utilizing then-nascent social media, they mobilized a viral campaign of parents, youths, doctors, and counselors who affirmed dignity, unconditional love, and faith in the youths who were being detained and shamed by Exodus International.
Stark’s detention was subsequently extended from two weeks to eight, and during that time Exodus’ alleged mistreatment of youths drew national attention through the New York Times, CNN, and Montel Williams’ daytime talk show. The state of Tennessee soon sought to intervene on behalf of the abused youths, only to be pushed back by politicians and by Exodus’ assertions that parents have a religious right to “minister” to youths in this fashion.
At the end of Stark’s initial ordeal, I wrote that it was time to give Stark privacy to recover, regroup, and choose how to move on.
In the years since, Stark has built an apparently healthy life as a young adult and college student, grateful that his friends and allies were so “awesome” in affirming and supporting him and other detained youths.
In fact, the title of the documentary is not so much an ironic reflection upon LIA’s name and abusive environment, as it is a reflection of the love which mobilized hundreds of people in 2005 to rally for the detained youths, remind them that they are loved, and reassure them that Exodus’ shame and fear were undeserved.
Besides Stark, the documentary catches up with Lance Carroll, who was age 17 when he was detained in LIA at the same time as Stark, and Brandon Tidwell, who in his early twenties had voluntarily attended LIA but later joined Stark’s friends in the 2005 protests.
The un-narrated documentary allows Stark, Carroll, and Tidwell to recount their experiences entirely in their own words. Their recollections stand in sharp contrast against the rosy public assurances of Exodus president Alan Chambers to a skeptical and increasingly annoyed Montel Williams. The documentary also tracks the evolution of former LIA executive director John J. Smid from hard-core ex-gay activist in 2005, into an apologetic man who, while still advocating ex-gay as well as gay-affirming counseling, today acknowledges love and faith in LGBT communities.
Veteran ex-gay survivor Peterson Toscano provides context for documentary viewers who might be unfamiliar with ex-gay beliefs, tactics, and self-contradictions. Meanwhile, Stark’s Tennessee friends and allies — writer Chris Davis, Queer Action Coalition co-founders Morgan Jon Fox and Janessa Williams, community organizer Janelle Treibitz, blogger E.J. Friedman, and friends Eileen Townsend and Jake Casey – all offer a rich tapestry of memories and lessons learned from their campaign to support Stark.
While the motivations of Stark’s personal friends to stand by him may be self-evident, Davis explains how — as a parent — he was drawn to the campaign by his revulsion at the sight of parents and amateur preachers practicing “shame therapy” against children. Mental-health experts chime in with recollections of past harm committed by therapists in the 1960s before the mental-health community understood orientation and sexual identity, and these experts note that today’s ex-gay movement reflects an ongoing refusal to learn from decades’ worth of new facts. True to form, and despite all facts to the contrary, LIA spokesman Gerard Wellman tells us (in archival media clips) that homosexuality is about shameful sex acts, not romantic emotion, orientation, or biology — and that Christianity is all about managing “sinful” desires, and not so much about charity, grace, justice, or unconditional love.
Exodus’ method of managing clients’ desires should raise alarm, even among conservatives:
Carroll and Tidwell share vivid memories of Exodus’ “moral inventory,” a process by which LIA clients are forced to share with an audience the graphic details of their worst sexual experience. Instead of forgiveness or grace, the audience responds by reinforcing the youths’ humiliation. Carroll came away from LIA feeling “not safe”; instead, LIA was “very controlling and intrusive.” Carroll’s parents learned from Exodus to carry on the shame at home — resulting eventually in physical outbursts by his mother, and his departure.
Today, Carroll and Treibitz emphasize that they would have no strong objection to a conservative adult freely choosing to attend an ex-gay program — but they draw the line when parents seek to subject youths to a program of involuntary abuse in which shame and fear are presented as the only choice.
Changed by his exposure to the respectful and affirming tone of the protests, director Smid left LIA in 2008. Smid says he came to realize that his religious calling — outreach to the LGBT community — was not congruent with LIA and its churches’ implicit determination to ostracize and shame gay people.
LIA is still in operation today, although the Refuge youth program closed in 2007; LIA’s remnants have moved to smaller facilities. Exodus, meanwhile, appears to have learned nothing. The organization still blames parents for their children’s sexual orientation, even as it tricks the same parents into surrendering their kids to parent-bashing amateur counselors. The documentary notes that Exodus is actually expanding its efforts over the next couple years to shame and detain youths as young as 12 through its church network and renamed “student ministry.” Exodus officials declined to speak with the documentary producers.
Carroll credits the love-based protest for helping him survive his ordeal, and Davis voices confidence that, while Exodus continues to abuse, other Christians are moving past shame as a method of evangelism and social change.
Screenings of This Is What Love In Action Looks Like are scheduled in the eastern and southern United States:
August 27 at SHOUT, the Birmingham LGBT Film Fest
September 10 at the Austin Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
September 20 at ReRun Theatre, in New York City
September 29-October 6 at OUT ON FILM, the Atlanta LGBT Film Festival
November 4 at Indie Memphis Film Festival
November 3-12 at REELING, the Chicago LGBT Film Festival
Disclosure: Truth Wins Out volunteer writer/cartoonist Bruce Garrett is, independent of TWO, an associate producer for this film. Lance Carroll assists Truth Wins Out in educating the public about the survivors of ex-gay “therapy.”
In an article today for Focus on the Family, writer Catherine Snow contends that respected Christian and Jewish groups are actually “a ‘who’s who’ of Leftist, humanist, abortion and gay organizations.”
Focus warned that “liberal groups” were asking President Obama to repeal a 2002 executive order that allows Focus and similar groups to collect and abuse taxpayer dollars for the purpose of enriching favored religions and discriminating against religious and sexual minorities.
But Focus drastically shortened the coalition’s membership list: It removed most of the Christian and Jewish groups, and presented the edited result as a liberal conspiracy against Christians. To its credit, Focus offers its readers a link to the coalition‘s actual letter (PDF) to President Obama, but the link is buried in footnotes.
Here is the coalition membership list that Focus didn’t want Christians and Jews to see: (Read More)
Atlanta ex-gay activist D.L. Foster has a history of racially insensitive commentary, as well as affiliation with some people of questionable integrity. Now he is accused of some racist comments on Facebook.
James Troia participated in the following exchange with Foster on David Tyree’s Facebook page. Troia says the exchange, which he considers racist, occurred at about 9:30 a.m. yesterday.
D.L. Foster initiated the conversation with this statement:
Its really interesting and ironic that white people (the ones whose foreparents enslaved black folk) are the first ones to try to correct black folk (the ones whose foreparents were enslaved by their white slavemasters) on ‘prejudice’ and ‘intolerance.’ Correct your own family before you bark at me.
Were the replies racially insensitive? You be the judge.
Here are additional excerpts written by Foster:
Why are you so upset if this doesn’t apply to you? Guilty dogs bark loudest.
and
White racists always trying to cover up their evil by accusing others.
and
Oh time to move on now huh? Thats what you want black folk to do, forget about hundreds of years of slavery and murder? Just… move… on huh? Typical of white slave owner descendants.
and
And that’s your problem that youre a latina jackass. Personally I think you should have kept that to yourself
If Foster’s statements were less sweeping and absolute, some of them might reflect valid concern about white hypocrisy. But he directs his accusations primarily at a commenter, Nadith Schuster Werth, who happens to be Latina and non-LGBT. Furthermore, the commenters show little sign of overt racism; Foster is blaming them for the sins of their alleged great-great-grandparents.
In an e-mail message to Truth Wins Out, Foster acknowledged the exchange. (Read More)
Exodus International has given Jeff Buchanan, its director of antigay church and student activist networks, the duties that were formerly held by longtime official Randy Thomas.
Thomas, a former Texas “ex-gay” ministry leader who has worked for the Exodus national office for more than nine years, announced yesterday that he is stepping down next month.
Exodus announced Buchanan’s assumption of duties in the latest issue (PDF copy) of its Exodus Impact newsletter. (Hat tip: Ex-Gay Watch)
While Thomas was a high-school graduate with a big heart and maybe not-so-big analytical thinking skills, Buchanan is a hard-core ideologue — he has a master’s degree in theological studies from Jerry Falwell’s fundamentalist Liberty University, and he excels at giving churches rationales to turn against their gay-tolerant members and neighbors.
Unlike his colleagues who prevaricate and present conflicting messages to audiences in the vain hope of pleasing everyone, Buchanan maintains a solitary viewpoint: That libel in the service of an antigay God is a virtue. The dissemination of malicious antigay factual untruths is a fundamental part of Buchanan’s religious identity. In response to critics of Exodus’ libelous and scientifically unsound iPhone app, for example, Buchanan declared simply: “We exist and therefore, we will not always be liked.” Lacking any Biblical or factual basis for either the myth of reparative therapy or for Exodus’ antigay prejudices, Buchanan — like other Liberty University fundamentalists — simply assumes that the essence of Christian faith is meanness and judgmentalism.
In his work as Exodus church-network director, Buchanan has encouraged churches to incite confusion and conflict in member families that include someone in a longterm same-sex relationship. Buchanan has boasted that the Bible is on his side of any resulting schism, but his assertions have exposed both an ignorance of Biblical morality and a lack of Christian grace.
Buchanan defines ethics, not according to the Christian Beatitudes or robust moral philosophy, but rather according to the conventional wisdom of U.S. social conservatives. He then projects his populist definition of morality onto compassionate and better-educated people of faith, saying: “When morality is determined by popularity, depravity becomes normality and the death of that culture becomes an inevitability.” (Perhaps that is why Exodus is slowly dying?)
Given Buchanan’s fact- and spirit-challenged ideology, it is to be expected that his church network would offer so little for its annual membership fee: no professional clinical expertise, minimal grace or compassion, and merely a cherry-picking of godtalk phrases in lieu of rigorous and open-minded theological analysis.
The departure of Randy Thomas, and the consolidation of his duties by an on-staff ideologue, indicate that Exodus International remains firmly and stubbornly on course in search of a shrinking audience of hostile and spiritually underdeveloped individuals who sense a need to blame someone for the failure of God — or their revision of God — to change “ex-gays.”
As David Roberts of Ex-Gay Watch points out:
Buchanan will end up with [president Alan Chambers]’s job if Exodus survives that long. He’s a hardline spiritual gatekeeper and I’m sure he already thinks he would be better at it.
Exodus International announced today that Randy Thomas — longtime spokesman and until February the organization’s executive vice president — will leave his position in July. (Hat tip: Ex-Gay Watch)
On his blog, Thomas describes the departure as a gradual and voluntary vocational choice. But then Thomas adds: “What’s next? The final decision wasn’t made until a few hours ago so … not quite sure as of yet.”
Exodus International’s finances have been burdened in recent years by the ill-timed purchase of a new headquarters and by the impact of U.S. economic difficulties on donations.
In 2009 — the most recent year for which Internal Revenue Service data is publicly available — Exodus International reported a calendar-year decline of $60,000 in cash on hand; the organization ended the year with $280,000 banked, according to the group’s IRS 990 form.
That form lists total revenue for 2009 of $1.1 million and expenses of $1.2 million, of which salaries, wages, and employee benefits constituted about $525,000.
Through ABC Family and the Christian Broadcast Network, industrialist and Christian Right evangelist Pat Robertson (not his real name) has spent more than 30 years using Hollywood and the cable television industry to inject his social prejudices — and his failed threats of destruction against various cities — into North American households. Mind you, these are households that never asked their cable company to pollute their living rooms with his Christian cash-crazed telethons such as The 700 Club.
While Robertson used Hollywood domestically to preserve various social bigotries and to market himself as a kindly Christian gentleman, he also used his industrial empire to profit from forced labor in the diamond and gold trade in Liberia, and to support notorious African war criminal Charles Taylor.
Few Americans know about Robertson’s history of international human-rights abuses, because he has focused his television empire on other issues to distract public attention. Robertson doesn’t choose issues such as social violence, middle-class poverty, inaccurate news shows, or infidelity and divorce — issues that might enjoy broad public agreement, but which would hit too close to home among his viewers and donors.
Pat Robertson says the primary threat that America faces is from homosexuals who are using Hollywood to glamorize gay people’s rights and to pressure straight actors into accepting gay roles.
Homosexual Hollywood — it’s an alarming prospect, isn’t it? There’s just one problem: Straight actors are taking gay roles (for pay) because directors and casting agents refuse to hire openly gay actors!
Homophobia is alive and well in Hollywood — and few should know that better than Robertson, who is a product of Hollywood conservatives’ glamorization of Christian Right war criminals and human-rights violators.
Of course — until Christian Rightists elevate themselves above God and say otherwise.
“Lesbians and gays are a curse on any community. I believe that a man that sleeps with another man doesn’t deserve to be part of a healthy community and I will mobilise the masses to stop them,” Bougardt said.
Longtime Exodus vice president Randy Thomas doesn’t feel the same way.
Exodus International has given 
On his blog, Thomas 
