FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Wayne Besen, Executive Director
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org
Goal of Restored Hope Network is to Replace Exodus International, Says TWO
Burlington, Vt. – Truth Wins Out strongly condemned a new network of so-called “ex-gay” ministries today that is offering clients false hope and grossly distorting the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. The Restored Hope Network’s goal was revealed today on the blog of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) when the group wrote: “This is the new ex-gay organization that has formed to replace Exodus.”
The Restored Hope Network largely consists of disgruntled ministries that have left Exodus International, the world’s largest “ex-gay” umbrella group. They became enraged after the organization’s president, Alan Chambers, offered a realistic portrait of attempts to change one’s sexual orientation – saying 99.9 percent of clients don’t transform from gay to straight.
“The Restored Hope Network is a coalition of hardcore ideologues who reject reality, mislead clients, and distort the lives of LGBT people,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Exodus President Alan Chambers told the truth – that change from gay to straight is not possible – but truth and facts are inconvenient obstacles for the snake oil salesmen that comprise the Restored Hope Network.”
Chambers recently upset the fringe of his movement by telling the New York Times:
“I do not believe that ‘cure’ is a word that is applicable to really any struggle, homosexuality included. For someone to put out a shingle and say, ‘I can cure homosexuality’ – that to me is as bizarre as someone saying they can cure any other common temptation or struggle that anyone faces on Planet Earth.”
The Restored Hope Network will be holding its inaugural conference on September 21-22 at Sunrise Community Church in Fair Oaks, CA. Speakers will include Frank Worthen, Andy Comiskey (Desert Stream Ministries), and Dr. Robert Gagnon (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary).
“Truth Wins Out will be in California to help counter the lies and misinformation disseminated by this new organization,” said TWO Communications Director John Becker. “Far from restoring hope, leaders of the so-called Restored Hope Network are fond of calling LGBT people perverse; some key members even believe that homosexuality is influenced by demons. Our job is to show the American people just how extreme and out of touch this organization truly is.”
In the coming days, Truth Wins Out will provide the full schedule of our activities countering the “ex-gay” myth in Fair Oaks. Truth Wins Out is a nonprofit organization that fights anti-LGBT extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
“Speakers will include Frank Worthen, Andy Comiskey (Desert Stream Ministries), and Dr. Robert Gagnon (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary).”
What a horrendous bunch of cranks. The sight of them should be enough to warn anyone not to touch the “Restored Hope Network” with a barge-pole.
I am not straight, I will NEVER be straight! To the christian ex-gay therapists and homophobes who have succeeded in getting in my way too many times to count to keep me from the woman I love, you have not succeeded in what you believe is saving my soul. If you recall, to even think about having sex with another man’s wife is as much of a sin as actually having sex with her. According to your perverted and biased understanding of the bible, even if you could succeed in keeping some poor victim trapped in your ideology, you can never succeed in saving them from your corrupted view of hell. One cannot lie to God for long without it damaging your spirit and your health. The Holy Spirit is within. Lying to oneself is lying to God. To be gay and lie to oneself about it, is HELL.
Galatians 5:4 Whoever tries to make themself right by the law, has been cut off from Christ.
I should point out, the logo strongly resembles the astrological symbol for Saturn. So obviously they’re not “Real Christians”(tm) if they like teh ebil pagan astrology.
They’re restoring hope for some more donations, since they are selling a service no one wants, and which is an admitted 100% failure by all previous purveyors, and so donations are falling off. Even Chick-fil-a’s got to wonder about giving major bucks to admitted failures like Exodus.
With droughts all over the world, 32,000 children ALREADY dying of starvation or related causes each day, with many more to come in the food shortage on its way, perhaps these nutheads should consider how to help that situation.
OR, they could pick something simpler, like helping left-handers become right handed. Just think how they could help President Obama.
So truth wins out counters “anti-lgbt extremism”? Really? How about posting the facts about lack of research supporting the born gay argument – or is that truth too painful to “out”. As to the use of Galatians 5 – how does that fit in with Paul’s challenge to homosexuals (Paul’s word arsenkoite literally men and marriage bed – a term for sex which is lifted from Leviticus) that “some of them were like this” but they were washed and changed by the Holy Spirit? The truth is that people, like myself, who were gay are now not – and you are not going to shut us up.
Phelim McIntyre:
I don’t have to “shut you up.” I just have to wait a few years until you get caught sleeping with a person of the same sex. Or wait until you elect to come out of your closet. It usually isn’t long.
Then we will make a survivor video featuring you. I look forward to working together one day. Until then I hope this whole “ex-gay” phase you are in does not cause you too much emotional, mental, and spiritual damage. You should know you are fine the way you are — as a gay person.
The “ex-gay” movement is really in no position to say anyone else is lacking in research, considering their own poster boys are saying there is no realistic success rate, and that those who actually work in the relevant discipline say that such mental torture–sorry, therapy, not only fails to accomplish the intended result, but often triggers such mental damage as to make the victims think about suicide. Therefore, McIntyre, you should be ashamed for wanting to harm people in this manner to suit your agenda, but I know that people like you, who care nothing of humanity, have no shame.
Show us the tumescence exams Phelim.
I find it kind of fascinating that when Alan was claiming that there were thousands (or was it “tens of thousands?”) of men and women who had changed you (plural) were all over him for his supposed hyperbole.
Suddenly (and dare I suggest “hypocritically?”) he is one of your resident experts because he’s getting a bit closer to your company line.
99.9%? Please … you really ought to exercise a bit more discernment.
Nice try Karen. However, to people with critical thinking skills there is a major difference.
When Alan made his original outrageously false claims it was in the interest of his job at Exodus and supported the political agenda of the Religious Right.
His new claims, however, were made even though they placed his job, family and financial security at risk. He had no reason to make such risky statements except to tell the truth.
Karen, we both know that the .1% left are dead enders who are desperate ideologues or grifters who want to continue profiting off the “ex-gay” gravy train.
And what about John Smid? And now John Paulk has left his wife. And what about former Brazilian “ex-gay” activist, Sergio Viula who echoed Chambers? And now Dr. Robert Spitzer also rejects the “ex-gay” myth.
Face it Karen. Your entire fantasy world is collapsing all around and you find this new reality quite disturbing. Karen, the game is over. Too many people have told the truth and the primary so-called “ex-gay” activists left are loopy charlatans like Andy Comiskey, Richard Cohen and DL Foster. I can’t wait to debate these folks on TV. I’m sure they will look entirely sane discussing spiritual warfare and exorcisms. Good luck with that.
“critical thinking skills”
Wayne, this is unfortunately what fewer and fewer Americans have anymore! Especially in the religious circles, where ignorance is a cherished part of the program.
Dave:
It does seem that our foes rarely can put 2+2 together anymore. Folks like Karen fail basic logic and aren’t even capable of coherent thinking.
I almost feel bad for these lost souls. It must be difficult to go through life encountering ideas and arguments — but not making sense of them.
Phelim, if you used to be gay but didn’t want to be, doesn’t that *prove* the born gay “theory” (here in Reality we call that a “fact,” actually)?
See, that’s the funny thing about ex-gays: The fact that anybody pretends they exist proves that they don’t exist. If sexual orientation wasn’t innate you would just be not-gay and not ex-gay.
It’s only one of several ways to prove that sexual orientation is innate (Here’s another: Ask a person if he or she chose his or her own sexual orientation. No person ever has, therefore… the conclusion here is pretty obvious).
You don’t do research to prove that water is wet or that 2 + 2 = 4. When you can prove something so simply, we just call that “a fact” or “the truth” or something.
Phelim, here’s a question for you. I hope you’ll answer it.
Are you now completely straight? Are you willing to swear your sacred oath on your bible and your god that you have no more homosexual thoughts and desires?
It requires no more than a simple yes or a simple no.
I think I understood that you are planning a trip to counter the conference in California. I just wanted to say I’m praying (hoping) safe travels for you all.
Phelim McIntyre:
You seem to be obsessed with the born gay argument. No, it hasn’t been proved that anyone is born gay. It hasn’t been proved that anyone is born straight either. No homosexual gene has been discovered, and no heterosexual or bi-sexual gene has been discovered either. The answer to the question of what causes sexual orientation is that we still don’t know. The evidence remains inconclusive. It is now generally agreed that, if there are any genetic factors, they will not be traceable to a single gene. But the case for legal and social equality does not in any way depend on whether or not people are born with their sexual orientation. And even if it can be demonstrated that a trait is not congenital, that does not prove that it is changeable. In the case of sexual orientation, the evidence indicates that it is very definitely NOT changeable, at least not by any process of deliberate engineering.
No man or woman in the world is infallible, and that includes St Paul. The very little that he wrote on the subject of homosexuality is marginal to his message and his remarks in Romans 1 suggest that he knew and understood very little about it. Whatever he may have meant by “arsenokoitai”, it is clear from the context that it referred to something or other which he believed that these people had stopped DOING; there is no suggestion that anyone’s sexual orientation had changed, or that he even thought in those terms.
As for your claim that you were gay and now are not, that is a misleading claim, and you know perfectly well that it is, since it carries an esoteric meaning which is quite different from its natural one. It means simply that you have stopped calling yourself gay and have stopped having gay sex. After proclaiming repeatedly and publicly during the early months of 2009 that you were “ex-gay” and “heterosexual”, you finally admitted in June of that year on the True Freedom [sic] Trust website that although you called yourself heterosexual, you did so because you believed that that was how “God sees me” and that you were not actually “there yet” and still “struggled” with homosexual feelings. In other words, the whole thing is just a game of make-believe between you and God.
You also claimed in 2010 on BBC Radio Sussex that “I can honestly say that I’ve not had any feelings of homosexuality over seven years.” Not only does that contradict your admission on the TFT website a year previously, it is also at variance with a claim that you made a few years earlier that you had experienced no homosexual attractions for TEN years. This means that your alleged homosexuality-free period has mysteriously shrunk by several years.
As for shutting you up, that is the last thing that I, at any rate, would ever want to do. On the contrary, Mr McIntyre, I would encourage you to speak out as much as possible. The more you spout your deceptive and contradictory statements, the more you help to show up the “ex-gay” delusion for what it is.
Philim said “(Paul’s word arsenkoite literally men and marriage bed – a term for sex which is lifted from Leviticus)”.
False. Paul’s word arsenkoite actually translates as man-bed, not “men and marriage bed”. The term does not exist elsewhere in the bible or in other literature from the time and that is why there is much disagreement about what exactly Paul meant by the phrase he made up out of the blue.
William;
slap. slap. slap. slap. slap. slap. slap.
I guess i’m not going to hear him taking his sacred oath any time soon.
But this is very interesting– not a new thing, but still interesting. You’ve caught him in several lies.
I hope he comes back to explain himself. And if he doesn’t, I wonder how he can live with himself for lying?
The levitical translation, Priya, is “sleep the sleep of a woman.” That is a far cry from “male bed”
Further, there were a number of greek phrases at the time that refered to gays but Paul chose not to use any of the common ones choosing instead to make up a word. This strongly suggests he was not referring to gays with the “man-bed” term.
http://www.gaychristian101.com/Define-Arsenokoites.html
Just a few additional comments, Wayne, and then you’re welcome to have whatever last, vile words you choose to post.
Even Alan’s closest friends and associates — Randy Thomas and Board member, John Warren — have acknowledged that Alan’s comments were “off the cuff,” “extemporaneous,” and not to be taken literally as a serious expression of his beliefs.
That you (your .1% statement) and others (on all sides of the human sexuality debate) are citing them as “gospel truth” is pretty disturbing. So I’m forced to believe you do so (as you do most things) for sensationalistic political reasons.
And if you’re going to give credence and authority to someone’s statements about their personal experience of “ex-gay” people, why not mine?
Unlike Alan, I’d estimate that about 75% of the men and women I know well have experienced fundamental, if not yet complete, change in their sexual desires and behavior. None of them have repudiated this change or returned to a gay identity and behavior, including one of the original founders of Exodus who has been free from same-sex struggles for three decades. Nor do any of them “earn their keep” in professional “ex-gay” ministry as you so often claim.
Anyway, I’m very glad that someone from TWO will be onsite at the Restored Hope gathering. We need all the media attention we can get. So thanks ahead of time for helping with that.
Karen:
Where did you get your 75% figure from? It seems that you have pulled it out of thin air. Even if Chambers had spoken off the cuff, as you suggest, there is no way that his figure can be squared with your bogus one. Personally, I’d trust the president of the group more than a desperate publicity hound like yourself.
In terms of Chambers speaking off the cuff, that is untrue. He has a history of saying that sexual orientation is not something that can be changed. So do most honest “ex-gay” activists.
Karen, here is the truth from your own spokespeople:
Alan Chambers
“One thing we can expect as Christians is a life of denial. I don’t think we’re afraid to tell people that they may have a lifetime of struggle. Freedom isn’t the absence of struggle, but the life of struggle with joy in the process.” (Christianity Today, Sept. 13, 2007)
“By no means would we ever say change can be sudden or complete.” (Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2007)
Sexual orientation “isn’t a light switch that you can switch on and off.” (Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2007)
“And so every single morning – this is a ritual for me – I wake up and I say, “Dear Lord, I can’t make it today without You. I choose to deny what comes naturally to me.’” (Love Won Out, Phoenix, Feb. 10, 2007, http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com)
Chambers told One News Now that he had never met someone who had a “sudden or complete change when it came to homosexuality.” He told the news service that he believes that God gives people the ability to overcome on a daily basis, rather than “a complete transformation in an instant.” (One News Now, June 22, 2007)
“I don’t think change is going from gay to straight. Just saying that doesn’t sound like an accurate representation of what Exodus facilitates or proclaims.” (Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth, pg. 35, Haworth Press 2003, interview taped March 11, 2001)
“To say that Exodus is a great healer and the place for people to become straight, I would think that is not right. If there are Exodus ministries that do that, we need to change that. We need to work on that.” (Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth, pg. 35, Haworth Press 2003, interview taped March 11, 2001)
“Put me in a bathhouse, would I find people attractive or would it stir me, it probably would. I’m not a raging heterosexual where I have to worry about if a lady walks in the room and I have to turn my head, while some guys are like that.” Anything But Straight, pg. 58, Haworth Press 2003, interview taped March 11, 2001)
Joe Dallas, Speaker, Focus on the Family’ Love Won Out tour
“No one has ever left therapy saying, “Wow, I have absolutely no homosexual thoughts.” (Los Angeles Times, April 5, 1990)
Jeff Konrad, Author, You Don’t Have To Be Gay
“Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t lust for women as some men do; that is not healthy behavior either.” (“You Don’t Have to Be Gay,” Pg. 280, Pacific Publishing House, 1987)
Alan Medinger, Author, Growth Into Manhood
“If an attractive man and an attractive woman enter a room, it is the man I will look at first.” (The Wall Street Journal, April 21, 1993)
John Smid, Executive Director, Love in Action
“I am not totally healed from homosexuality. It is part of my emotional, physical and spiritual history. It will not be erased as if it did not exist. I still struggle at times…I will shut down with my wife at times. I periodically have thoughts regarding men.” (http://www.stonewallrevisited.com/pages/john_s.html)
Karen, please stop lying to us. Your own spokespeople tell a completely different story that does not conform to your dishonest propaganda.
Karen said “Even Alan’s closest friends and associates — Randy Thomas and Board member, John Warren — have acknowledged that Alan’s comments were “off the cuff,” “extemporaneous,” and not to be taken literally as a serious expression of his beliefs.”.
Karen, Alan’s friends don’t get to decide the nature of Alan’s comments, only Alan speaks for Alan and he’s been pretty clear about what he now admits.
Karen said “And if you’re going to give credence and authority to someone’s statements about their personal experience of “ex-gay” people, why not mine?”.
Because when someone states something that hurts their cause or makes them look bad its much more credible than when someone makes a statement that is in their self-interest or agrandizes them. Alan has a strong disincentive to make the statements that no one has changed, you’ve got a strong incentive to claim they have – its far more likely for that reason that you’re lying and Alan is not.
Its like the situation with gayness. Gayness is widely seen to be a negative attribute so when someone says “I’m gay” its much more likely they’re telling the truth then when someone says “I’m no longer gay”. People are much less likely to be lying when they say something that makes them look bad or harms them financially then they are when they say something that makes them look good or benefit financially.
In this situation Alan is believable, you are not.
I’m a celibate gay Christian. My 2 cents-Maybe being an exgay is sinful idolatry? Worshipping the created (sterotypical stud alpha male) instead of God?
Maybe exgay is a form of BDSM fetish? You know the websites of which I speak!
[...] Restore Hope Network, the splinter group of die-hard “pray away the gay” believers who left Exodus International after its president, Alan Chambers, admitted earlier this year that sexual [...]