As a mobile app, the quality of Exodus International’s iPhone app is below average.
It downloads as easily as any other free apps via iTunes — but from there, the user experience feels less like Steve Jobs, more like an AOL dialup account.
Speed and readability
Nearly all of the Exodus app’s menu options load remote full-size pages from the slow and bloated Exodus International web site. None of the content is streamed, preloaded, or customized for iPhone display. As a result, the print is tiny unless one repeatedly zooms in. The overall effect is that of looking into the Exodus web site from one’s phone through a periscope.
The only direct-loaded, iPhone-optimized content is a single video promotion — and that video happens to be mislabeled.
Layout
Like too many apps made on the cheap, the Exodus app does little more than take a web site and put it on a phone, in a manner that purposely discourages people from leaving the web site to find related or opposing viewpoints.
Despite links to Exodus’ Facebook page and recent Twitter entries, the app does not help users share articles.
The app features five main menu options that have been borrowed from the same framework that is used by a thousand other free iPhone apps:
- Home (links to Exodus International, Exodus Youth, and the Exodus donation page)
- Latest News (current blog posts)
- Events (current antigay religious events)
- Video (one untitled video with a cryptic .mp4 filename)
- More
All the controversial guts of the app are hidden under the More tab, which Apple frequently overlooks in its rush to approve apps on the basis of minimum functionality.
This tab is where Exodus makes the most use of clever language to disguise the organization’s well-documented antigay bigotry.
Under the More tab, there are several topical sections. They are easy to link to here, because (again) the app merely displays Exodus web pages.
Read on for detail about the specific prejudices that are fostered by this app.
And if the app is permanently removed from the App Store, here is what you missed:
In the “Responding to Bullying” section under More, Exodus downplays its official opposition to anti-bullying programs that mention LGBT people, while explicitly encouraging relentless antigay proselytization and religious stigmatization. Harassment, it seems, isn’t legitimate unless it’s physical.
In the “Real Stories” section, Exodus asserts through a series of anecdotes that homosexuality is caused and recruited via molestation, pornography, faithlessness, and bad parenting.
- In a web-hosted video, the daughter of longtime Exodus leader/employee Tom Cole boasts about homosexuality in a manner that even Exodus spokesman Randy Thomas half-apologizes for. Thomas says: “There are parts of the video that in my previous life I would have bristled at and been angered by. And even today I would want to clarify some of the things she says. But hello, this is a teenager taking the bold initiative of sharing something close to her heart with her own resources and skills.” The fact remains: Teen-age ignorance about sexuality and religion is hardly appropriate for an Apple-hosted iPhone app — or for an organization such as Exodus which seeks to operate a reputable youth ministry.
- Another article taunts gospel singer Ray Boltz over supposedly unanswered questions about his gay life that Boltz has actually answered with sincerity and integrity: answers that Exodus has declined to disclose to its audience.
In the “Real Answers” section, Exodus:
- refers parents to off-app resources that foster parental misunderstanding and political action against their gay children who “come out” during the holidays
- accuses watchdog organizations of refusing to acknowledge Exodus “testimony” when in fact the testimony has been thoroughly analyzed by watchdogs, mental-health professionals and reputable clergy
- accuses anti-AIDS organizations of “muzzling” antigay Christians
- cautions people not to trust “secular” professional mental-health counselors, and to trust only those who accept Exodus’ claim that Jesus as the sole cure for homosexuality
In the Student Blog section,
– Exodus refers 21st-century youths to the 1987 book “You Don’t Have to Be Gay” by Jeff Konrad. The book harmfully advises families:
“Homosexuals detach from their fathers to prevent further hurt and/or not to identify with them. For some this may have been an unconscious, subtle detachment. But for others, it was an overt vow not to be anything like their father” (p.46)
and
“Behind these homosexual temptations…behind these homosexual ‘orientations’…is a root problem of envy…Men who are unaffirmed in their masculinity often don’t see their own masculine traits. They see only their undesirable traits, or they’re so consumed with what they want that they don’t recognize what they have” (p.81 & 82).
In the FAQs section under More,
- Exodus’ “Senior Director of Church Equipping & Student Ministries,” Jeff Buchanan, misdefines homosexuality and gender identity, and then swiftly changes the subject of his articles and advertises Exodus’ antigay political activities.
- Exodus author Joe Dallas ridicules all religious affiliations that tolerate LGBT people under the misleading label “gay theology“
- Buchanan perpetrates research fraud by mischaracterizing the work of Dr. Gary Remafedi
Conspicuous by their absence from the app: the Exodus’ FAQ which calls laws against violent hate crimes “thought crime laws,” and the FAQ that smears same-sex parents as a class.
In the Find Help section, users are denied referrals to reputable professional mental-health counselors. Instead, users are steered toward Exodus’ networks of uncertified amateur Christian activists and churches, none of whom are monitored for compliance with standards of ethics and patient safety. Users also are referred to live-in boot camps, some of which allow parents to commit their teen-age children to involuntary detention. These referral networks practice a mix of ex-gay therapies (reparative, reorientation, and aversion therapy) and prayer.
Featured Resource
The app’s More section concludes with a Featured Resource: “The Complete Christian Guide to Understanding Homosexuality” by Joe Dallas and Nancy Heche, for sale from Exodus. The book is a collection of antigay political rationales and bitter recollections by two prominent speakers on the “ex-gay” conference circuit. The book is sold via exodusbooks.org, so that app users won’t be exposed to the reviews of the book on Amazon.com. ExodusBooks also charges $6 more than Amazon. The authors are adamant in their support for reparative therapy and antigay prayer.
Nutshell
The Exodus International serves its purpose:
- It soft-sells antigay bigotry and antigay political activism
- It offers no accountable offers of a cure — only vague promises of happy chastity
- It confines users to a small, politically filtered sphere of ideas where Christian Right prejudices against homosexuality, gender variance, tolerance, and religious diversity are protected from differing opinions
- It misrepresents professional research (and expert authors) that Exodus dislikes
- It stereotypes people on the basis of orientation and gender identity; gay and lesbian parents; victims of violent hate crimes; and religious groups that disagree with Exodus ideology.
- It carries the Apple seal of approval.
The app functionally falls short of user expectations through its cheap web-hosted design and its failure to honor Apple terms of service which prohibit apps that denigrate entire classes of people.
I’m almost tempted to just let them have the rope with which to hang their own clueless selves. However, it distresses me that Apple seems to see nothing wrong with the rhetoric and ideas contained here.
I should have mentioned that the Exodus app isn’t (wasn’t?) even a full-blown iOS application.
It is a relatively inexpensive generic wrapper for a collection of web pages that could be freely added or removed.
Exodus could easily have submitted the app to Apple — and then added the bigoted articles after the app was approved.
It’s been removed. The damage this app could have caused had it not been removed would have been horrifying; even if it was a single LGBT person who prescribed to their derogatory and hateful lies, it would have been one too many.
I’m glad to see Apple realized what they were supporting and had the sense to remove this piece of crap.
Michael said “cautions people not to trust “secular” professional mental-health counselors, and to trust only those who accept evangelical ideology about Jesus as the sole cure for homosexuality.”
That link to the Jesus cure now goes to a blank page.
I have a son who struggled with homosexuality and was able to start living a BIBLICAL lifestyle thanks to similar ministries to Exodus. The app was not damaging, the people who suggest that their opinions on “alternative lifestyles” are right and that al;l other opinions are wrong are the ones causing the damage regardless of whichever side of the fence they are on. If a truly unbiased person does the research, there is no actual empirical evidence to prove a genetic cause so that argument is invalid. If there were such evidence I have to ask, do we tell alcoholics to go ahead and drink just because they are genetically predisposed? I suppose there could be a society where drunkeness is encouraged, not just tolerated even as it destroys lives. We are forced as straight people to put up with the “in your face” attitudes of LGBT people and their lifestyle choices and told to accept not just them, but their opinions and values even when we believe that they are wrong. It is not hateful for us to believe that it is wrong, and just because we disagree with other religions, or other viewpoints, it doesn’t makes us the enemy. For a Christian believer who accepts ALL of the tenets of the Holy bible, there isn’t anything much more disturbing than homesexual temptations. Being drawn to something you truly believe is wrong at it’s depest level is sheer torture. Why don’t you believe that they deserve to have tools available to deal with that struggle as they see fit? Instead you believe you should be able to impose YOUR beliefs and values on them? Do you know what a hypocrite really is? Instead a minority, yes LGBT folks are still a minority or there wouldn’t even be people to make those choices, A MINORITY is telling others what is right or wrong based on what they find offensive. I find gay rights parades offensive but I don’t challenge the rights of people to have them. Get a life that doesn’t push your beliefs and standards on the general public!
Deacon, you son is as Gay as he ever was. In time, he will end up crying on the shoulder of someone like me, just as my “successfully recovered” Gay friend, married to a women he does not really love (he likes her a lot, and feels terrible guilt for marrying her, but hid FATHER made it so clear that if he wanted to remain truly a part of the family, he had to “change” (sic) ) and going out on her behind her back despite not wanting to hurt her.
This is his future Deacon. This is what you have done to your son.
When it happens, grow up, truly love him, and be there for him, as he is, and God made him.
You truly believe being gay is wrong? There is an solution for that; find a better church. Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, United Church of Christ, there are a LOT of them. RAISE your standards, and LOVE your GAY son.
ALL the tenents of the Bible you say? As an Elder in the church I would point out that you just sadi yo can’t eat pork, shellfish, it is ok to stone certain people, and you better go throgh your closet and get rid of any cotton and linen blended cloth. WHY do you think the oldest and most educated denominations are changing on this issue, oftne at great cost to them? They do so because the same high quality scholarship that lead people to go “oh..slavery is allowed in the Bible, but…it is wrong, it goes against the message of love and grace” and who did the same with womens role in the churcha and society, had to face the fact that a loving reading of the Bible leads to acceptance of people who are Gay….because it is who we are…NOT who we choose to be, and because we CANNOT choose to be otherwise.
A minority that is right, is still right by the way.
And your so called “Choice” is a ruse. It never works, much as the men who founded Exodus and later denounced it told the world. Its existance is only used as a sad cover so people can say “See, its a choice…I am not giving any respect or rights to people who CHOOSE to be so damaged they need ‘reparative therapy’.
That is all it is.
And that is all your son will find.
Oh, and deacon…if you have not looked at the polling of the public, there is a reason corporations like Apple remove such offensive materials when they are fully aware of them.
The public is solidly on our side on this, and growing more so by the hour. There is no pushing our standards (though we would be right to do so if it were). It is Apple responding to the public, and their offense at an app that most would see as highly immoral, and damageing.
Good luck to you Deacon. YOu wont like much of what I wrote. But, deep down, especially as relates to your son…you know I am right.
Don’t abandon him, or think less of him, when he admits fully who he is. And dont make the mistake I and my dad made…each pretending I was something I was not, until….he was gone. He is gone…and, he never really knew me.
Oh Deacon, I beg of you again, a thing I don’t do often, especially in a public space… and pray for you, Don’t make the mistake I, and my father did, our of a literal reading of scrpture, that in the end only served to make me a liar (for a long time) and kept him in the dark, but, he confessed to me near the end, of always knowing deep down, but unable to face it due to the prejudices of his upbringing and poor dogma, of who I really am.
Don’t make our mistake.
Well said Gene.
Deacon said “I have a son who struggled with homosexuality and was able to start living a BIBLICAL lifestyle thanks to similar ministries to Exodus.”.
In other words he suppresses his same sex attractions and lives a life of lonliness and despair due to bronze age bigots pretending to speak for a god.
Deacon said “The app was not damaging, the people who suggest that their opinions on “alternative lifestyles” are right and that al;l other opinions are wrong are the ones causing the damage regardless of whichever side of the fence they are on.”.
It is very damaging to suppress a core part of your being and to sucker an opposite sex partner into a marriage where one’s heart is not into it. The APA acknowledges that those who positively accept their gayness are much happier and better adjusted than those who do not.
Deacon said “If a truly unbiased person does the research, there is no actual empirical evidence to prove a genetic cause so that argument is invalid.”.
There is a great deal of evidence that points to gayness being genetic/biological. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest it is caused by upbringing or sexual molestation.
Deacon said “If there were such evidence I have to ask, do we tell alcoholics to go ahead and drink just because they are genetically predisposed?”.
What determines whether we accept genetic predispositions is harm. Excessive drinking is harmful while gayness is not. There is no reason to suppress gayness and suppressing it is destructive to the gay individual and society and therefore a very bad idea.
Deacon said ” We are forced as straight people to put up with the “in your face” attitudes of LGBT people and their lifestyle choices and told to accept not just them, but their opinions and values even when we believe that they are wrong.”.
You’re so used to your heterosexual privilege that you don’t recognize the hypocrisy in what you’re saying. LGBTs are no more “in your face” with their sexuality than heterosexuals are with their’s. When gays do as heterosexuals and talk about their partners, hold hands in public, discuss who they find attractive you pretend that is “in your face” when its exactly what you heterosexuals do. When you start hiding your heterosexuality in the closet then you’ll have some grounds on which to suggest gays do the same, but certainly not now as it is.
Deacon said “It is not hateful for us to believe that it is wrong, and just because we disagree with other religions, or other viewpoints, it doesn’t makes us the enemy.”.
It is hateful to think anything that is harmless is wrong. You do everything you can to crush the spirit of gays and deny them equal rights – you are the enemy.
Deacon said “For a Christian believer who accepts ALL of the tenets of the Holy bible, there isn’t anything much more disturbing than homesexual temptations.”.
Stop and re-read what you wrote, look at how CRAZY it is. Being same sex attracted is more disturbing than wanting to steal, rape, or murder?! Are you insane?! Gayness is harmless, there is nothing disturbing or immoral about it,
Deacon said “Being drawn to something you truly believe is wrong at it’s depest level is sheer torture.”.
And being brainwashed into thinking a harmless orientation is wrong is a grotesque injustice.
Deacon said “Why don’t you believe that they deserve to have tools available to deal with that struggle as they see fit?”.
If a black person feels inferior because they aren’t white, do you feel they should have the tools available to bleach their skin, dye and straigthten their hair, cosmetic surgery to “caucasian” their face? No, the problem is that they are made fo feel that harmless characteristics are a struggle, its the people who say they are unacceptable who are in the wrong, not the black or gay person. It is the society that must be changed, not the gay or black person.
Deacon said “Instead you believe you should be able to impose YOUR beliefs and values on them? Do you know what a hypocrite really is?”.
Yes, we know what a hypocrite is – people like you. You’ve imposed your beliefs on your son, told him to feel bad about himself, something which would never have occurred to him if you had left him to his own devices to decide what is right or wrong for him without the interference of you and your bigotted religion. You ARE the hypocrite.
Deacon said “A MINORITY is telling others what is right or wrong based on what they find offensive.”.
You’re under the false impression that a lot of people believing something makes it right – that’s a logical fallacy.” At one time most people believed slavery was right and that women were inferior to men just as people now falsely believe gayness is a bad thing.
Deacon said “* find gay rights parades offensive but I don’t challenge the rights of people to have them. Get a life that doesn’t push your beliefs and standards on the general public!”.
Wake up man. No gay person is trying to tell straight people they should become gay. It is YOU who’s telling gay people they should vainly attempt to be straight. Bigots like you have pushed your beliefs and “standards” on gays for millenia. It would never have occurred to any gay person to feel bad about their gayness if it weren’t for bigots like you telling them how to feel. It is YOU who’s cramming your beliefs down the throats of innocent gay people like your son, not vice versa. You doom him to a lonely life of despair and heartbrake for no reason other than to satisfy your selfish desire to have him live according you your whims rather than according to what is best for him and his happiness. You are a heartless, evil, evil man.
Deacon, you’re an unsupportive, unloving parent, and you need to check yourself.
[...] across the Internet, people who have not even seen the app — nor taken one moment to review the antifamily, antifaith, and antiscience advice on [...]
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Deacon,
Why do you guys have to keep trying to push your chosen religious lifestyle on others?
A lot of masturbatory justification for why we’re nazis and we hate freedom of choice. Real convincing, TWO. Sieg heil!
” For a Christian believer who accepts ALL of the tenets of the Holy bible, there isn’t anything much more disturbing than homesexual temptations.”
And there isn’t a more unBiblical statement than that.
I can’t remember who said something about the two greatest commandments being love god and love your neighbor. Probably somebody unimportant.
And that John fellow talking about “whosoever believeth” in something or other.
Honey, ya got issues. your attitude may make your son sorry he is gay. But if he ever stops hating himself, for sure, it’s going to make him sorry that your his father. And isn’t that just too sad?
Ben,
Are you trying to make a case from the Bible that Homosexual behavior is good or netural based on the love command?
No. what the bible may or may not have to say on a subject which may or may not be homosexuality, at least as it may have been understood by a culture 2000 years, 9000 miles, and a completely different universe of thought away, and translated by people who may have had an agenda or information vastly different from that day and our own….
well, that is a whole different issue.
This one is just what i said it was.
Deacon said, “I have a son who struggled with homosexuality and was able to start living a BIBLICAL lifestyle thanks to similar ministries to Exodus.”
I’m sorry to hear that. Your son almost surely faces a bleak future. If “Biblical lifestyle” means celibate, then your son will likely have a loveless/lonely life. If “Biblical lifestyle” means marrying a woman, then the odds are that your son will not only damage his own life, but the lives of his wife and any children they may have. These marriages are destined to be dysfunctional.
Most people don’t realize that the world is littered with broken marriages where a man desperately wanted to be straight, deceived a woman (and himself) into marriage, and then later it all fell apart. The world is also littered with dysfunctional marriages where men take every opportunity to go out cruising for homosex on the side. I personally know (and know of) a staggering number of men in both categories. Just because you are able to achieve some minimal level of heterosexual functioning doesn’t mean you are not a homosexual.
And, yes, some people are bisexual to varying degrees, and that would change the dynamics. But I’m convinced there are not nearly as many bisexuals as there are people who would claim that status on a survey. To a great extent I think “bisexual” is a transitional self-identity adopted by people on the journey from believing they are heterosexual to accepting the reality that they are homosexuals.
I feel sorry for your son. The problem in your lives isn’t homosexuality, it’s obsessive religion. While one of them should be easy to change, the other is virtually impossible to change, and you have them reversed.
Richard– back in my single days, before i met The Perfect Husband, I was appalled at the sheer number of men who said they were straight, living with wives or girlfriends, but who were always looking for something on the side, and that something was not female.
My best firend has had a ten year affair with a guy who is married with kids. It’s strictly sexual and romantic, but only within the confines of my friends apartment. He’s not the mistress, they don’t go out in public together. theoretically, we don’t even know Straightboy’s name (but we do).
That seems to be what I’m Not Gay means to so many men.
Ben,
Then why do you make reference to passages from a book that you deem irrelevant and which you seem to be fairly unfamiliar with? What does that prove?
Ben, Thanks for adding to the anecdotal evidence on this matter. This whole scene has been a major surprise to me as I’ve become older. Well, I’m not surprised about the married guys seeking homosex on the side – I’ve always been aware of that. But the number of guys I see who finally had the courage to walk away from dysfunctional marriages in recent years just blows me away.
This is all part why I say that full equality and social acceptance of gays has major benefits for straights. It will ultimately eliminate these dysfunctional marriages that damage everyone involved.
During voter referendum campaigns, I never seem to see our side articulate how equality has benefits for everyone. And I think that is one of our problems. Voters need to be educated about how equality can benefit them, too. Otherwise, NOM’s TV ads scare them into believing that maybe, just maybe, there kids can be taught to be gay. And then it’s all over.
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