Truth Wins Out has created a petition to demand that Apple remove its bigoted Exodus International iPhone app:
Exodus International, the notorious “ex-gay” organization, has just released an iPhone app that, according to its website, is “designed to be a useful resource for men, women, parents, students, and ministry leaders.” The Exodus website further boasts that its app received a 4+ rating from Apple, meaning that it contains “no objectionable content.”
No objectionable content? We beg to differ. Exodus’ message is hateful and bigoted. They claim to offer “freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ” and use scare tactics, misinformation, stereotypes and distortions of LGBT life to recruit clients. They endorse the use of so-called “reparative therapy” to “change” the sexual orientation of their clients, despite the fact that this form of “therapy” has been rejected by every major professional medical organization including the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Counseling Association. But reparative therapy isn’t just bad medicine — it’s also very damaging to the self-esteem and mental health of its victims.
This new iPhone app is the latest move in Exodus’ dangerous new strategy of targeting youth. In light of the recent wave of LGBT youth suicides, this tactic is particularly galling as it creates, legitimizes, and fuels the ostracism of LGBT youth by their families. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, LGBT teens who experienced negative feedback from their family were 8 times more likely to have attempted suicide, 6 times as vulnerable to severe depression, and 3 times more likely to use drugs (Caitlin Ryan, San Francisco State University, June 2009).
Apple doesn’t allow racist or anti-Semitic apps in its app store, yet it gives the green light to an app targeting vulnerable LGBT youth with the message that their sexual orientation is a “sin that will make your heart sick” and a “counterfeit.” This is a double standard that has the potential for devastating consequences.
Apple needs to be told, loud and clear, that this is unacceptable. Stand with Truth Wins Out — demand that the iTunes store stop supporting homophobia and remove the Exodus app.
Mark, want to know why I don’t believe you’ve read? All your arguments have been covered on this site–many of them even in this thread. If you really want a conversation or information at least take the time to see what’s come before.
If change is defined as not changed, then I suppose you are right. but if there is no demarcator, than how can they say that change is possible– especially by ex-gay methods.
Without even going to your citation, I know they also claimed that people who were experiencing some slight heterosexual interest were “changing”, and the anti-gay groups included people who claimed they were celibate as people who had changed. not the same thing.
the whole problem with the idea of changing is this. I used to be gay but now i’m straight really means I was always bisexual, but the gay part really bothered me.
I’m a thorough going, 100% big fag. I had heterosexual sex a few times, and according to the woman, made her quite the envy of her woman friends. I would never claim that made me even remotely bisexual.
I don’t deny that change is possible. in a world where carpenters can be resurrected, anything is possible. But they are going ot have
Sorry, I posted before I was finished.
They are going to have to come up with something better than complicated, ambiguous, and difficult.
BTW, the actual figure is not 15%, but 13%. I was being very kind. One of their “Now I’m really straight” people admitted that he had lied.
Now it seems to me that all of those who have responded to me have been prejudicial. I have made too claims netiehr of which makes me anti-gay in the least. I said in essence I think free speach is important and that change is possible. You gave a statisitc or two and I gave one supposedly from the same source (Yarhouse). I see zero shred of evidence that change is not possbile and some evidience that it is. Do you need to be able to say that change is not possible for anyone to say the being and acting as a homo-sexual is ok, I am not sure I follow that logic.
Daniel, are you saying that all arguments must be unique to be valuable? I would hope that discussion here could be two or more people hearing each other with an open mind, perhaps I dont do this as well as I should but I am trying.
Yes, Mark, change of sexual orientation is possible in the sense that it sometimes happens – in both directions. It happens in a very small number of males and in a rather larger number of females. There is no means of MAKING it happen; either it will or it won’t. It’s a bit like winning the lottery: either you will win it or you won’t, but you can be pretty sure that you won’t.
Exodus is an organization that tells gay people that their natural sexuality is a form of “sexual brokenness”, which it isn’t, and that Exodus can help them to change it, which it can’t. Exodus have the right to peddle this kind of trash, but no-one, including a private company like Apple, is obliged to help them in doing so. Those who signed the petition told Apple why it was best NOT to help them, and Apple, having presumably weighed the matter up, concurred and pulled the app. No-one’s freedom of speech has thereby been curtailed.
we have seen the damage that attempts (always failures) at “change” cause. We hold the “successful” examples of “change” as they cry on our shoulders and confess their guilt for what they have dont to the women they have married in an attempt to prove they have “changed”. We nearly burst with frustration when they tell us they have to keep up the charade so that their families will continue to love and care for them (can you IMAGEINE how hard it must be to think “if I am honest, dad will think I am a…pervert”?) and we know that, and I am speaking as a Christian and an ordained Elder, that such therapy ONLY leads to pain, misery, and provides bigots (we need to be honest and forthright and use that, the appropriate word more) an excuse to say “they could change if they really wanted to…so their families do not deserve legal rights” and nothing more.
I have seen the damage, destruction and misery such evil groups as Exodus causes Mark.
Your words and theories mean nothing. I have SEEN the real world destruction they cause. What you “believe” means..well, squat.
Sorry to burst your bubble…but, you do not have a logical, factual, or ethical leg to stand on here.
William, I appreciate your thoughts on Apple as a private company and how that effects the discussion on speach, I think that this is something to think about.
Gene, all I hear from you is angry rhetoic, lacking in facts outside of some poples experience. I dont deny your experience I simply say that there are people who have had other experience. I will state again, people do change, and people do change in part as a reult of therapy. Yes, they can change both ways, not everyone but some certainly can thats a fact. That is not say that every GLBT should seek to change thats another matter altogether.
If I do not have a leg to stand on here does that mean I am not welcomed here? I mean really, I have no ethical lef to stand on? As if you have a better one?
Gil said “it is also true that homosexual acts can potentially cause death and other sexual diseases.”.
Not in a monogamous relationship – same sex sex is perfectly safe in that situation just like heteroesexual sex. It is also true that heteroesexual acts can potentially cause death and sexual diseases if they involve multiple partners. That you would make such a statement about same sex sex while failing to note the same is true of heterosexual sex proves you are a bigot and a hater.
Gil said “I never said “You’ve Lost Your Temper So I Don’t Have To Listen To You Anymore”.
Not in those specific words, but you did say it in different phraseology when you said “I have already said what needs to be said in my last response but clearly you’re still keen on replacing substance with tantrums as nothing you said refutes my actual position.”.
You didn’t address Makyui’s response, you just falsely claimed he hadn’t refuted you and suggested he had only offered tantrums so you don’t have to respond.
The study by Shidlo and Schoeder found that most participants were harmed by the process.
Mark said “I find it offensive that someone would label a group hateful and bigoted which seeks to help people leave a behavior they themselves desire to leave.”.
Those people only want to “leave a behavior” because groups like Exodus have convinced them they are “broken”, “not living god’s best”, and are “tools of satan”. Exodus is accurately described as hateful and bigoted and for you to claim that accurate description is itself hateful and bigoted is simply ignorant or willfully stupid.
Priya, So you know the motives of all the people who have gone to Exodus, thats what your argument seems to presume and what it stands on. Some of them go out of fear of God perhaps and you judge that to be ignorant or worng, on what basis do you judge their interpretation of their own faith? Is every desrtie in us legitiamte because it is in us?
Mark, I can only think you are being deliberately obtuse.
Exodus says change is possible. Jones and yarhouse’s study was quite clear in its failure of methodology as well as its failure to prove what it set out to.
It may be possible for a small number of people to change, if by change we mean not really changed, but trying really hard to change. when it is quite clear– a la Empress alan– that no one changes by Exodus’s methods, and it is quite clear by J&Y that the best that can be hoped for after years of “therapy” is “ambiguous, difficult, complicated”, then maybe we can conclude that apart from wishful thinking, change does not occur.
I notice that you never really answered what I had to say in #149, 155, 156, 157. you should.
I never said that change is not possible, and one cannot prove a negative. What I can say is that change does not appear to be possible by Exodus methods, and the failure of the best study on the subject to show change in any meaningful form is a good indication that this is so.
Change may well be possible, but as far as I can tell, those who have changed were bisexual to begin with– pretty much by definition.
Here’s a portion of something I wrote to someone else here a week or so ago. Never heard back from him, not that I expected to. If he really confronted his obvious issues, it would be very difficult for him. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
“you don’t know much about Exodus, or you would know that its messages change according to its audience. It has an abysmal failure rate, and peddles the only therapy in the world where it is the patient’s fault if it doesn’t work, not the doctor’s. It is allied with the anti-ex-gay industry– and it is an industry– that accrues billions in wealth and power by demonizing and lying about people just like you. Remember the money changers in the temple? If they truly had holiness on their side, they wouldn’t need the lies and the demonization.
Finally, you don’t know much about yourself. If you did, you would know that your self-hatred is your problem, and always has been, not your homosexuality. I don’t even know you, and I know that, beacuase I have never yet seen anyone in your position for whom that is not true. Exodus makes money off of that self hatred, and you pay whether they succeed or they don’t. Deal with your self hatred, and you will finally be able to decide whether you are gay or straight, and make your decisions accordingly.
Here’s how I know that. I’m a very attractive 60 year old man, married to a very attractive 50 year old man, living in a major gay area. I get approached all the time by men for, shall we say, fornication. Many are considerably younger than I am. I have no problem saying no, because i like myself, love my husband, love my marriage. The temptation is certainly there, but I can, as you put it, walk away from homosexual behavior.
Why can’t you? I put it to you that the difference is self-hatred.
Many of the people that write here have been where you are– some for decades. They came out the other side and saw what a massive fraud this is: “holiness” built out of fear, hatred, ignorance, stupidity, bad translations, political power, money-grubbing, and a unshaklable belief in a wholly (or holy) imaginary superiority.
It’s just plain old prejudice, given a thin veneer of respectablity because it is disguised as sincere religious belief. it has been going on for thousands of years, like the prejudice against women– also justified by conservative religion as normal, natural, and god’s will–and its hoary age does not make it right.
There is NOTHING good or righteous about it. alan chambers admits he is as queer as ever he was. You have no way of knowing how far that goes, and his ability to earn a pretty good living depends on you NOT knowing.
Listen to the people who write here. they know what they are talking about. What you hear, no matter what the tone, is only rarely hatred. What you hear is anger, becuase people like you keep falling for the fraud, lives are damaged, love is lost, pain is increased. The anger is not at you, it’s at the anti-ex-gay industry, and the lies and hatred upon which it is founded.
These are one real questions for me about you. Why are YOU so heavily invested in it? How long have you been doing ex-gay therapy? How much have you changed?
Mark, if they have ONE, uno, 1, a single solitary person who could be shown to have “chagned”, and whose story could not easily be poked to pieces “well…I still fantasize about me”…”well..success for me is living alone” “Oh, I am 100% Straight!” (only the photogaphed in a gay bar soon afterwards…etc.
That person would be PLASTERED on every right wing rag, website and newsfeed in the country. But they are not….because they don’t exist.
I am not writing from anger…but from frustration at your just NOT listening, and speaking about that which you dont know, to people who have lived with it all our lives.
THINK
Another thing to think about mark.
Exodus has claimed to cure 1000′s, if not hundred of thousands, of gay people. Perhaps someone else could find the citation. Were this true, they would have access to at least 10′s of thousands of highly motivated people who could easily demonstrate the efficacy of exodus methods.
And yet J&Y could only come up with 100 people for their study. Exodus has been around for 30 years or so. Even with just 10,000 convertees, that would average to 300 a year that one could expect in exodus studies. They only found 100.
Does that make you wonder even just a little?
you may wish desperately and deeply that they are going to change you. Only you can change you. even Jesus can’t or won’t if you are not yourself willing.
You would do better to find out why you don’t like yourself very much. you would do far better to find a grown up church.
Priya Lynn,
Does ANYONE know how to ACTUALLY read here? It was a reductio ad absurdum. Look that up.
I did listen and for a while I responded but because there was no actual substance to the arguments, I declared what I saw to be the case. The argument was NOT “If a person is angry, then happily ignore them” but if a person is REPLACING substance with tantrums then it ought to be ignored and recognized as not refuting anything.
I am not surprised you think this way. You have both refused to read what I have actually said. My concluding response was intended to correct these misreadings but it is next to impossible to correct. You’ll always see what you’d LIKE to see, because well, anyone who challenges the evidence is clearly a bigot.
Several of you keep quoting Jones and Yarhouse but wont quite a page #1, makes we wonder if you have read it, I have.
And mark, you’re not answering a lot of questions either.
I did slog through J&Y. they failed to make their case. Here is why.
I tried to say this to you another way, but apparently, it didn’t make an impression. so try this.
If your heterosexuality is always difficult, complicated and ambiguous, maybe you’re not actually heterosexual.
If you say “I am heterosexual”, but your attractions are down on their knees in the mensroom at the Kwikeemart, maybe you’re not actually heterosexual.
If you are AC and say your are living a heterosexual lifestyle, and every day is a struggle to deny yourself, you have no more idea of what being heterosexual is than you have of what being homosexual is.
Ben,
Again where in Yarhouse do you get your conclusion from because they certainly got a different conclusion than the three words that keep getting posted with are an incomplete look at the research they talk about. You
Also, the reason I am not answering a lot of question us because few real questions have been asked, instead I continue receive harsh statments which presume I am ignorant on the topic. While I admitt I have ignorance, I would contest that we all have ignorance.
Mark, it seems that you have a personal vested interest in “change,” and you seem to be clinging to the hope that the potential for change is within the realm of reasonable possibility. If you would stop rejecting the evidence, I think you would have to conclude that change is a pipe-dream, and that the promoters of change are selling a myth, in part, to help bolster the choices they have made to continue the struggle. Shouldn’t the fact that the president of Exodus hasn’t changed his sexual orientation be telling you something?
Just stop torturing yourself. There is simply nothing wrong with being gay. The only thing wrong is the world around you that wants you to feel bad about yourself.
Obviously people are either born Gay or Normal,no one “chooses” to be Gay. I feel very sorry for anyone who was born gay,it must be horrible! But it’s a waste of time to try and “cure”them,they are forced to live out thier lives that way!
There is an extreme double-standard in terms of what Apple allows and disallows. Objectionable or anti-semetic content seems to be interpreted by Apple as who has a greater market share in their stock value. Offending Jews is one thing, however offending any others, for instance the gay population is a balancing act of which demographic percentage of their share price to accommodate. Fundie nuts who make these apps (and others, ie a game where you shoot Muslims; a petition is floating around to have that removed as well) would create a ban on Apple in response. Thus Apple has to decide on the lesser of the evils.
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dont u just hate gays? damn homosexuals.