In a dramatic move, University of Florida’s legendary football coach, Urban Meyer, abruptly quit the sport on Christmas Day. His decision came after a hospitalization for chest pains and a realization that he had nearly worked himself to death building a championship team. Meyer’s prodigious work habits included neglecting his family and e-mailing recruits in church.

“I’m a person of faith and I wanted to make sure I had my priorities straight,” said Meyer. “A lot of times, coaches do not have their priorities straight. You put business before God and family, you have a problem.”

Of course, this is wishful thinking. If Meyer had actually prioritized God and family before the pigskin, he’d make a fine deacon and a great father…..and a mediocre Division II coach. Those who reach the pinnacle  in sports have a rare combination of natural gifts and an obsessive need to win. For example, the two most successful basketball players in my lifetime are Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant – both of whom are pathological competitors. Their need to win likely crosses over into a disorder – but that is what it takes to be a champion.

For all his talk about God, it was the text messages and e-mails from the pews that catapulted the coach into sainthood in Gainesville. The choice was to worship on Sunday or be worshiped by adoring fans each Saturday – and Meyer chose the latter. This is not a criticism, just a reality check on Meyer’s message that he could have reversed his priorities and still had the same successful career. I doubt he could have.

When Meyer announced his retirement, his 18-year old daughter hugged him and said, “I get my daddy back.” The coach said that he was retiring because God had told him to quit and his daughter’s reaction was confirmation of this divine intervention.

Two days later, following an afternoon on the practice field, Meyer changed his mind and switched his retirement status to a “leave of absence.” He expects to coach next fall.

So, did Meyer misinterpret God, confuse God’s voice with his own desires or is the coach defying His will by returning to the sideline?

In sports, it seems, God is always on the winning side, ready to snatch victory from the presumably heathen team, and deliver the game to the good guys. However, the notion is quite offensive and in some ways ruins the game. Why even watch, after all, if the sport is fixed and a victory is already preordained by God?

In any case, I think that athletes and coaches should get back to scoring touchdowns or drawing up plays on chalkboards. The whole “catch a ball for God” routine is getting quite stale. Just once I’d like to see an athlete say, “I dropped the ball because Jesus doesn’t like me.”

Why not?  Does He not get the credit for touchdowns, with an increasing number of spoiled, solipsistic athletes pointing towards the heavens after each score?

It is also outrageous to think that God gives a damn about football when children are starving and wars are raging. On my block in New York City, there are about a half-dozen hobos who are exposed to the harshness of winter. I’d like to think that a just deity would end such injustice before traipsing off each Sunday to the New York Giants game.

For selfish reasons, as a University of Florida alumnus, I am glad Meyer is returning. I like to win and gator chomp and it makes me feel good to marinade in victory. It was exhilarating to crush Cincinnati 51-24 in the Sugar Bowl.

But can we finally keep God off the goal line and have a separation of sports and Scripture? Can former Gator quarterback, Tim Tebow, an incredible athlete and a seemingly decent person, complete one sentence without mentioning Jesus and turning it into a prayer?

The fact that an athlete is gifted, does not mean he is God’s gift to the universe. Fundamentalist athletes and coaches alike aren’t special and should stop acting like Moses, just because they get to appear on ESPN’s Sports Center.

Although, after watching Tebow pass for a career-high 482 yards and three touchdowns while rushing for 51 yards against Cincinnati, I wouldn’t rule out that he could part the Red Sea.

(Weekly Column)

A February 2008 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 16 percent of America’s 225 million adults are unaffiliated with any religion. According to the report, “When ‘childhood religion’ is compared against ‘current religion,’ the unaffiliated show a net increase of 8.8 percentage points, compared to a 7.5 point loss among Catholics, for example, or a 2.6 percent loss among Protestants.”

It is my belief that outrageously hypocritical behavior by conservative religious authorities is directly responsible for the surge in non-believers or those who shun organized religion. The ubiquitous scolds who dominate cable TV and Republican politics are too often conservatives of convenience, who believe they are exempt from practicing the strident rules that they preach.

For example, South Carolina’s First Lady, Jenny Sanford, filed for divorce last week after her husband, Gov. Mark Sanford (R), admitted an affair with a woman from Argentina. Until the scandal broke, Mark and Jenny posed as a beacon of Christian family values.

I can understand Jenny’s disgust with her husband, who left his four sons to cheat with his mistress on Father’s Day. But one can’t masquerade as a Bible-thumper when it comes to gay rights and other issues, and then say that the Bible is suddenly irrelevant when it comes to divorce.

Both Jenny and Mark profited from their charade, yet jilted Jenny wants to conveniently abandon biblical absolutism and utilize liberal divorce laws because her feelings are hurt. Sorry Jenny, but a mistress does not negate your marriage vows. Anyone can embrace the “sanctity of marriage” in good times. A true person of fundamentalist faith stays with the vows even when the relationship sours.

To highlight such hypocrisy, John Marcoa, a Sacramento Web-designer, has drafted a 2010 parody ballot measure that would ban divorce in California. Tellingly, the right wing organizations that fought to save marriage from gay couples have not lined up to support it.

From mega-churches to suburban strip mall ministries, fundamentalist youth rail against the secular culture, even as they ape it. They sport gaudy tattoos of Jesus, wear earrings in their noses and play imitation rock. On their fingers are silly chastity rings, when they really need chastity belts.

A recent New York Times magazine article points out that “More government money has been spent on the cause of sexual abstinence in Texas than any other state, but it still has the third-highest teen birth rate in the country and the highest percentage of teen mothers giving birth more than once.”

Former beauty queen Carrie Prejean is the perfect spokesperson for liberal bashing libertines. She moralized over same-sex marriage, but expected forgiveness and understanding when, thanks to tabloid pictures, America got to know her in the biblical sense.

Perhaps the most amusing part of studying conservatives is their absurd claim that America is a Christian nation, which is impossible, because no two people can define what it means to be Christian. A new Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report entitled,  “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths,” concludes that people are now choosing to “blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs”. Who knew crystals and Christ went so well together?

Last month, Watergate felon Chuck Colson joined a batch of wing nuts to write “The Manhattan Declaration”. This supposedly conservative manifesto began by shamelessly co-opting historical liberal successes. The Declaration reads:

“It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery…Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement…The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians…

It is true that Christians played a role in these movements. However, it was non-believers teaming up with liberal Christians to overcome the opposition of conservative Christians. The anti-gay signers of The Manhattan Declaration are the ideological heirs to those on the wrong side of history. It was remarkable how efficiently they scrubbed their own embarrassing past and replaced their monumental failures with liberal accomplishments.

Social conservatives are a loud bunch, but their power is slipping. I think back to Middle school, when I attended a Houston Rockets basketball game with my father. During a time out the “Voice of God” announced that a gay rights measure had been crushed. The enthusiastic crowd burst out in to loud cheers, which was quite devastating to a thirteen-year old coming to terms with his sexual orientation.

On Monday, Houston voters elected openly gay Annise Parker as mayor. Unlike my youth, I watched a Houston crowd cheer for progress instead of prejudice. No doubt there were countless social conservatives across the city slamming beers, ogling women who weren’t their wives and betting on sports – while bemoaning the city’s fallen values.

This is the lifestyle of today’s conservatives of convenience. They are all creed and no deed.

(Weekly Column)

Earlier this week, extremists within the Republican Party proposed a 10-point checklist of principles that GOP candidates would have to sign if they expect to receive Party support. Like a deranged “Social Issues Santa”, the enforcers of doctrine are descending in their sleighs to slay Republicans who are naughty and not considered nice.

According to their puritanical plan, Republicans would be required to sign 7 of 10 radical resolutions, such as, “opposing Obama’s socialist agenda.” By far the most reckless part of this pledge is the demand that Republicans agree to, “Support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troops surges.” I wonder what such pandering politicians might say to families if these wars took a turn for the worse: “I’m sorry your son died on the battlefield, but I had six campaign pledges and needed a seventh to get a windfall of dough from the Republican Party.”

Ironically, the Republican governors gathered last week and ran away from such extremism. According to The New York Times, “There was little talk of the divisive social and political issues that Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove embraced as a way to attract independent and moderate Democratic voters and build a lasting Republican majority.”

The right wing chest thumping seen in the GOP checklist was echoed in a manifesto signed by 145 religious activists and clerics called the Manhattan Declaration. This document basically said that religious people were above the law and did not have to obey it if they deemed it unholy. Tony Perkins, the President of the Family Research Council, hailed the radical manifesto by calling it a “line in the sand” and vowing that the malcontents “will not be moved.”

Of course, growing up on the lovely beaches of Florida and Hawaii, I’ve learned that there is nothing more temporary than a line in the sand. These arrogant preachers are badly overreaching and will be surprised to find that their sinister sandcastle will succumb to history’s high tide.

The Catholic Church, in particular, is entering politically perilous territory it will soon regret. For most of American history, many voters were concerned that Catholic politicians were beholden to Rome. John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic President, won by assuring people that he was independent of the Vatican.

This week, however, Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin scolded another member of the famous clan, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), and told him he was unworthy of taking part in communion because of his pro-choice views.

Amazingly, Tobin told NBC News, “To receive a sacrament you have to be in union with the church.” To voters, this can be interpreted as: “Bow to Rome or go home.”

If the Church continues to push these boundaries, it will become toxic. It will force office holders into making a decision between voting with the Vatican, or risking nasty public spats, like the Tobin-Kennedy spectacle. In an era where people are quite fickle with faith, aspiring Catholic politicians may find it easier to avoid this dilemma and switch religions. In the future, the only remaining Catholic politicians may be hardliners, such as former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).

In fact, this backlash is already underway. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine criticized the Archdiocese of Washington this week for threatening to end contracts to feed Washington, DC’s homeless if the city allows gay couples the freedom to marry.

“I’m Catholic and I think it’s wrong,” Kaine said. “If you look at the church through history, the church will stand in tough situations and continue to do good. I think the strategy of threatening to hold back, it just doesn’t seem like the church I’ve come up in.”

Kaine was seconded by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who also is Catholic.

“I don’t understand how they can possibly do this,” O’Malley said. “I have a hard time believing that the nuns and priests who taught me about the Corporal Works of Mercy would agree that this is an appropriate response for the church.”

Inside their adoring mega-churches and towering Cathedrals, these conservative clerics are powerful demigods. Such adoration blinds them to the sobering reality that millions of people view them as power hungry demagogues. The Religious Right is still one of the strongest special interest groups in America, but they keep forgetting that they represent an immoral minority, not the Moral Majority they once fancied themselves to be.

Raging with dictatorial ultimatums and mutinous manifestos, these extremists are too far-gone to realize they have gone too far. As the “Social Issues Santas” shimmy down the chimney to deliver their dogma, it is unclear if they are simply blowing smoke or gift-wrapping future elections for the Democratic Party.

(Weekly Column)

It is time to admit that the gay community has a gigantic Pope problem. Under the leadership of Benedict XVI, the Vatican has become an implacable foe of liberalism, modernity and basic rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Rome has eagerly jumped with both feet into America’s culture wars and is working on a global scale to punish or purge ideological dissenters within the church. This aggressive activism presents a formidable new front in the fight for parity – one with considerable political clout and financial resources.

Last week, a coalition of totalitarian religious activists and radical clerics joined forces to unveil the “Manhattan Declaration” at Washington’s National Press Club. This rambling manifesto, written by former Watergate felon Chuck Colson, called for “Christians” to disobey laws they didn’t fancy and to ignore civil rights laws that protected GLBT people from discrimination. It was a dishonest document filled with historical revisionism that promoted theocracy, encouraged anarchy and supported the dissolution of the rule of law. It falsely portrayed right wing Christians as victims, even as they pledged to work tirelessly to deny equality to those who would not adhere to their sectarian church rules.

An extreme manifesto of such breathtaking cynicism and insincerity is no surprise coming from what passes for “leaders” in today’s evangelical circles. It was striking, however, that more than 15 key American Catholic leaders signed on to the “Manhattan Declaration”. Signatories included heavyweights such as Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, DC. This was clearly a call to arms and a powerful signal that the Roman Catholic Church is taking the gloves off to fight political battles in America.

This hands-on involvement from Rome has passed the “trend” stage and appears to be official policy. Consider the significant involvement the Catholic Church had in stripping marriage rights away from GLBT couples in a Maine referendum held earlier this month.

In the same manner, on June 11, the Washington, DC Archdiocese threatened to abandon the homeless and quit charity work in the District if it had to comply with anti-discrimination laws. Catholic Charities had the audacity to believe it was entitled to collect $8.2 million in tax dollars meant to serve all DC residents, and then still get to handpick whom it deems worthy of assistance.

Catholic involvement with arch-conservative politics is growing by the day. In May, Catholic groups tried to stop President Barack Obama from speaking at a Notre Dame commencement ceremony because of his pro-choice position.

Earlier this month, Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin put the clamp on Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), banning the lawmaker from communion because he is pro-choice. This was reminiscent of The St. Louis Archbishop refusing to give communion to John Kerry during his presidential campaign.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has suddenly begun to steer GLBT Catholics to 12-step programs that promise to “cure” homosexuality or support them in a lifelong celibacy. The Catholic Diocese in Sioux Falls, South Dakota urged its 128-thousand members to oppose an attempt to bring legalizing embryonic stem cell research to a public referendum. (I guess the sacrosanct “people’s right to vote” on controversial social issues only applies to same-sex marriage)

In fighting back, we must remember that the Vatican is launching these attacks from a position of weakness. It has yet to recover its moral authority from public exposure of rampant child sexual abuse scandals that cost the Church billions of dollars in legal settlements.

The Vatican appears to be acutely aware it is losing its worldwide market share. It is basically defunct in the Middle East, where the religion began, and on life-support in Western Europe, where it once prospered. In Africa, Rome competes with Islam and Anglicanism for a shrinking slice of the pie. (Who can forget that while in Africa the Pope said condoms could make the AIDS crisis worse.) South America, one of its few remaining strongholds, is losing Roman Catholics to evangelical faiths by the millions.

Instead of competing against the conservative evangelical brand, Pope Benedict has decided to embrace it, shaping a conspicuously political Catholicism that embraces extremism and drives out dissenters. The Vatican has become so doctrinaire that it recently launched an invasive probe into the lives of America’s 60,000 nuns to enforce anachronistic rules. In January, Benedict welcomed back excommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson who denied that millions of Jews died in Nazi death camps.

Fortunately, Benedict is a cold, unsympathetic figure and the majority of American Catholics often ignore his edicts. The strategy for the GLBT community should be to stand up to Rome and help mobilize mainstream Catholics to fight back against an authoritarian Pontiff who is hell-bent on making the Catholic Church as unpopular and unappealing as His Holiness.

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is a discredited  “ex-gay” fringe organization that peddles fraudulent “cures” for homosexuality. Sadly, a lucrative market still exists for anti-gay stereotypes disguised as science and the greedy ideologue “therapists” eager to profit from unnecessary pain. They take advantage of vulnerable people who want to “fit in” and exploit suffering families who are desperate to believe they can cure a loved one.

Here are 10 Key Facts to know about NARTH:

1)    NARTH recommends “treating” males as young as three years old, referring to them as “pre-homosexual boys.” In our view, this is consumer fraud since parents are unlikely to see results, despite expensive therapy sessions. We also believe forcing children to undergo traumatic, shame inducing “therapy” is child abuse that may cause lasting psychological scars. (Read More)

The Birmingham News
November 4, 2009

Evidence Suggests People Can’t ‘Pray Away The Gay’

By Wayne Besen

As long as prejudice and discrimination exist, some gay men and lesbians will feel pressure to try to change their sexual orientation. Unfortunately, there are organizations, such as Focus on the Family, that exploit such vulnerable people and their fears of rejection by family, church and society. On Saturday, Focus on the Family will roll into Birmingham with its much-hyped road show, “Love Won Out,” which offers false hope and broken promises.

It is important that one realize that such efforts are rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization in America, such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The America Psychiatric Association says that attempts to change sexual orientation can cause, “Anxiety, depression and self-destructive behavior.”

In August, the American Psychological Association released a landmark report that said, “There is insufficient evidence” for therapists to claim conversion therapy works. The APA report also cautioned so-called “ex-gay” counselors not to mislead clients by telling them that their sexual orientation can be changed.

Without science on their side, Focus on the Family has taken to distorting research. In the past two years, eight scientists have accused this group of manipulating their studies. The testimonies of these experts can be viewed at www.Respectmyresearch.org.

The empirical evidence also suggests that people can’t “pray away the gay.” For example, I photographed the “ex-gay” founder of Love Won Out, John Paulk, in a Washington, DC gay bar in 2001. Two of the founders of Exodus International, Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper, divorced their wives after they fell in love. The American Family Association’s poster boy for sexual conversion, Michael Johnston, had to step down in 2003 after he admitted affairs with men he had met on the Internet. Christian singer Ray Boltz came out of the closet in 2008 after thirty years of marriage and trying to “change”.

Love Won Out does not create heterosexuals, but their misguided “ex-gay” programs do lead to broken families. Focus on the Family loves to show people wedding photos. But, it would be more honest if they showed the divorce papers, which are a common outcome of such sexual engineering efforts.

More disturbing are conversion techniques. These include exorcisms and encouraging masculinity in male clients by suggesting they drink Gatorade and call friends “dude”. Lesbians attend makeup and lipstick seminars, which highlight the superficial and cosmetic “changes” such programs offer. Sadly, these groups even take clients as young as three years old!

A recent study by Caitlin Ryan shows that gay teens who experienced “negative feedback” by family members after they “come out” were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use. Clearly, unconditional love is important for gay teens and the message of Love Won Out epitomizes the negative feedback that can produce such harmful results.

Finally, Love Won Out’s spokesperson Melissa Fryrear was disingenuous when she told the Birmingham News this week that, “Science hasn’t proved people are born gay. It’s absolutely an open question. Part of the message is to read the studies that have been done. They’ll see there’s no evidence proving homosexuality is genetic. It’s a multi-causal struggle, and there are a number of factors that may make one vulnerable.”

It is unscientific and backwards to say that people are “vulnerable”, as if homosexuality can be caught like a cold. Most gay people – just like heterosexuals – instinctively know their sexual orientation is natural and that there was no “choice” in the matter. Conveniently, Fryrear misstates the facts and fails to point out that numerous studies have shown that sexual orientation likely has a genetic or biological basis.

However, there are no modern studies that show sexual abuse or poor parenting cause homosexuality, as Love Won Out falsely claims. While confusing parents by creating a fake cause and effect for homosexuality is good public relations, it simply is not true and dishonest for Fryrear to push such outdated and disproven theories.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and trangender Americans come from every type of family imaginable. We grow up in liberal homes and conservative homes, non-religious and orthodox Christian families. How people are raised or if they believe in God has absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of their sexual orientation. This is just common sense supported by the hard and indisputable facts.

Love will truly win out when gay and lesbian people can live out of the closet with the unconditional acceptance, love and support they deserve.

By Wayne Besen, TWO Executive Director

There is “no evidence that sexual orientation change efforts work.” This was the American Psychological Association’s verdict on “ex-gay” therapy after an appointed task force of experts studied the issue for two years.

The conclusion did not surprise those of us who work with people who have been harmed by such programs. For example, I just interviewed Patrick McAlvey, who entered therapy to change his sexual orientation at the age of 19. His counselor, Mike Jones, is the director of Corduroy Stone, an affiliate of Exodus International.

McAlvey says that his sessions included prolonged hugs, the suggestion that he use handyman tools to increase his masculinity and questions about the size of his genitalia. There was also an episode of “holding therapy” where he reclined into the lap of his supposedly “ex-gay” counselor for an hour. The goal, according to McAlvey, was to get comfortable with his own manliness by “feeling the strength” and “smelling the smell” of another man.

What Jones and other ex-gay counselors routinely call “therapy” can seem a great deal like foreplay to the rest of us.

“I think it does a lot of damage to peoples’ mental health,” said McAlvey. “If I had had a fair representation (of gay life) I could have avoided a lot of suffering.”

Of course, such therapy and ministry programs can only exist by grossly distorting the lives of gay people. For example, in a recent radio interview, ex-gay activist Charlene Cothran claimed that gay people do not want legal equality and are really only interested in the “freedom to be a homosexual in a park with no clothes on.”

The APA deserves credit for taking ex-gay therapists to task for twisting the truth and holding them accountable for their scare tactics, such as claiming that there are no happy gay people.      (Read More)

(Brown’s ‘Red Shirts’ march toward Charlotte Pride)

Also read at The Huffington Post

By Wayne Besen

On Sunday, The New York Times featured a chilling article on how fundamentalist Christians stalked, harassed and ultimately murdered Wichita abortion provider George Tiller, who they taunted with the nickname, “Tiller the Baby Killer.”

A lone gunman, who used the e-mail name “ServantofMessiah”, shot Tiller while he ushered at Reformation Lutheran Church, where he and his wife were active members. Prior to Tiller’s assassination, the “loving” faithful had put bullets in his arms and bombed his clinic.

Unfortunately, with Tiller’s controversial clinic finally out of business, the lesson for the loony may be that lethal force is more effective than lobbying. In the Times article, Mark Geitzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life, expressed this sentiment when he said during a phone conversation, “God has his own way…but you can’t say our prayers weren’t answered.”

Tiller’s death vividly illustrates the danger posed by the violent language and imagery used by fanatics, who believe they are personally entrusted to enforce God’s will. What concerns me is that the aggressive tactics used against abortion providers are slowly seeping into the anti-gay movement.

As the wider culture becomes more accepting, homophobes are growing increasingly frustrated, which has led to bolder and more confrontational actions. Are anti-gay leaders egging on unstable followers to attack gay people or provoking gays to defend themselves so they can manufacture martyrdom and justify retaliation?

At the Dore Alley Fair in San Francisco last weekend, a number of muscular Christians wearing Jesus shirts reportedly tried to march through the event thumping Bibles and waving signs.

In Charlotte, Dr. Michael Brown, (pictured left) the founder of the Coalition of Conscience, organized several hundred followers in red shirts to descend like uninvited locusts on Charlotte Pride last week under the banner, “God Has a Better Way.”

Aside from the pompous name of their demonstration, the protesters confronted gay people and browbeat them with cherry picked Bible verses. Brown’s ostensible reason for marshaling the troops was to introduce Pride attendees to his angry version of God.

But, of course, the notion that gay people in conservative North Carolina needed Brown to educate them about religious fundamentalism was farcical. Indeed, many of the people at Pride had only found personal acceptance after long journeys to reconcile their spirituality and sexuality.

No, Brown was really there to besiege Charlotte’s gay residents with his hostile hordes. His group’s in-your-face presence was designed to disrupt peaceful assembly and make Pride attendees feel guilty and uncomfortable so that they might skip future gay events.

Fortunately, the pious proselytizers were on their best behavior after the militant writings and actions of Brown came under intense scrutiny by local Q-Notes editor Matt Comer. In his research, Comer found that Brown started his FIRE School of Ministry to “raise up a holy army of uncompromising spirit-filled radicals who will shake an entire generation with the gospel of Jesus by life or death.”

In a vacuum, such religious language may be viewed as a relatively benign rhetorical flourish. However, when followers are portrayed as holy warriors in a life and death struggle against a minority group that is falsely accused of working to undermine freedom of religion, the seeds of potential disaster are intentionally being sown.

In advertising his rally, Brown proclaimed that the “hour is urgent” and that Christians must “turn back the tide of homosexual activism.” In a written statement following his intolerance invasion of Pride, Brown wrote, “Enough is enough to the destructive goals of gay activism…we say it stops in Charlotte.”

Most alarming are these charlatans’ deliberate perpetuation of paranoia by trumpeting alleged religious persecution that exists only in their warped minds. For example, in his statement Brown accused gay people of “trying to put Christians in the closet.” And, he capped it off by saying that gay people are “tampering with the foundations of human society.”

Brown tries to cover his tracks by sprinkling his apocalyptic rhetoric with calls for non-violence. Good orators, however, understand the principle of “layering” messages. If in one sentence you speak of violence and in the next of non-violence, the listener will almost always embrace the words that support his or her belief system.

Dr. Brown isn’t naïve and surely understands that the GLBT masses will not retreat into the closet unless events conspire to make coming out a blood sport. Short of extreme bullying and brutality he’ll never accomplish his lost cause of “stopping” progress on gay rights in Charlotte.

Brown, of course, doesn’t actually have to make an overt pitch for mayhem. Simply by inciting his flock he is setting the stage for future tragedy. It is time for Brown and his comrades to abort their increasingly hostile and combative tactics before it leads to more wanton death in the name of abundant life.

It was unusually satisfying to watch beauty contestant turned Bible-thumper Carrie Prejean crash and burn. In the bat of an eyelash, she went from Christian role model to wannabe underwear model after racy pictures of her surfaced. “They were quite inappropriate and certainly not photos befitting a beauty queen,” Alicia Jacobs, a Miss USA judge, told NBC’s Today Show.

The verb “strip” is the one most associated with Prejean’s name these days. She stripped her clothes, may be stripped of her Miss California crown and was certainly stripped of her moral authority as a spokesperson for marriage. In her brief stint as America’s scold, she forgot to memorize one Bible passage: “Judge not lest thou be judged.”

What’s amazing is that the circus-like antics of Prejean are the rule, not the exception for today’s anti-gay activists. There has clearly been a brain drain among our opponents – with the conservative intelligentsia largely running from GLBT issues. Filling the vacuum, are the vacuous – with little to offer, other than comedic relief. (Read More)

Delaware Online
By Doug Marshall-Steele

Despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, many religious conservatives insist that gay people can and must become heterosexual, since they think homosexuality is a sinful choice rather than a human variant.

Ex-gay “reparative therapy” or “conversion therapy” proponents assert that counseling, prayer and sometimes aversion therapy, exorcisms, fasting and lipstick-application seminars for lesbians are sufficient for flipping sexual orientation.

The scientific community, however, resoundingly agrees that sexual orientation cannot be changed, and such “therapies” may in fact be harmful.

The American Medical Association stated, “Most of the emotional disturbance experienced by gay men and lesbians around their sexual identity is … due more to a sense of alienation in an unaccepting environment. For this reason, aversion therapy … is no longer recommended.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics warned, “Therapy directed at specifically changing sexual orientation is contraindicated, since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving changes in orientation.”

The American Psychiatric Association went further: “There is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of ‘reparative therapy’ as a treatment to change one’s sexual orientation.” And again, “The potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior.”

The American Psychological Association agreed: “Medical and mental health professionals also now know that sexual orientation is not a choice and cannot be altered. Groups who try to change the sexual orientation of people through so-called ‘conversion therapy’ are misguided and run the risk of causing a great deal of psychological harm to those they say they are trying to help.”

The “ex-gay ministries” answer these bristling position papers by carefully parsing their definition of success. Rather than sexual orientation transformation resulting in, say, heterosexual marriage, they define success as the ability to resist homosexual urges. Critics see this as temporary suppression of one’s sexuality, nothing more.

Also, these groups curiously keep no long-term follow-up records to scientifically validate their success rates, relying only upon anecdotal evidence. That has been problematic, though, as many founders, successive leaders and clients of these organizations have first claimed to be sexually reoriented and then reverted to homosexuality. Such persons often denounce “conversion therapy” as quackery.

But there is evidence that “ex-gay” proponents are becoming even more extremist.

Exodus International, the largest of these groups, was represented by board member Don Schmierer at an anti-gay hate conference in Uganda this month. The conference promoted such human-rights abuses as forced “ex-gay therapy,” life imprisonment for people convicted of homosexuality and the creation of an organization designed to “wipe out” homosexuality in Uganda through police action, forced re-education, life imprisonment and vigilantism. The conference also featured one Scott Lively, who blamed both the Holocaust and the 1994 Rwandan genocide on gays.

Neither Schmierer nor Exodus International president Alan Chambers spoke up at the conference, to protest any of the recommendations, nor did they denounce the Holocaust revisionist.

Another increasingly shrill and extremist proponent is James Dobson, co-founder of Focus on the Family, a conservative religious ministry. Over the years, Dobson has become obsessed with gay people and believes that one can simply “pray away the gay.”

But according to “ex-gay” watchdog group Truth Wins Out, “In the past year alone, Dobson has conflated, purposely misconstrued or cherry-picked research from at least six esteemed academic scholars, who have publicly condemned him for misusing their work.” In October 2004, he actually told the The Daily Oklahoman, “Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth.”

Yikes! Not only are they unscientific, these people are downright scary.

I would especially implore the parents of gay kids everywhere to heed the advice of respected, science-based professionals and avoid exposing your child to the psychologically dangerous “reparative therapies.”

Your child may differ from you, but is not broken and does not need repair.