Sporting a fog machine for its smoke and mirrors routine and an extravagant stage that would make The Rolling Stones blush, the “ex-gay” group Exodus International held its glitzy annual conference in Asheville, North Carolina. I was in town all week to partner with regional and state organizations to oppose the meeting and its dizzying array of distortions.

A dark cloud hovered over the Exodus event, with violent hate crimes unsettling the local GLBT community. At the very moment ex-gay televangelists were railing against homosexuals in the foothills, news broke of an 18-year old boy in Anderson, South Carolina whose father, “yelled, cursed, swung a baseball bat, prayed and tried to cast the demon of homosexuality out of him.”

In nearby Greenville, South Carolina, Stephen Moller, an anti-gay thug who murdered 20-year-old Sean William Kennedy outside a gay bar, just learned that he would spend approximately 10 months in jail for his ferocious crime. In this gross miscarriage of justice, the message was sent that murdering gay people was tacitly acceptable, if not encouraged. While in town, I spoke to Sean’s grieving mother, Elke Kennedy, who rightfully called the sentence, “a joke and a slap on the wrist.”

Meanwhile, on the opening day of the Exodus conference, an anti-bullying bill was stalled in the North Carolina legislature. Into this backdrop of brutality stepped the ex-gay activists Alan Chambers and Randy Thomas, who were determined to show the progressive residents of Asheville that Exodus did not stigmatize gay and lesbian people. Unfortunately, they kept tripping over reality and revealing the true nature of their duplicitous, deceptive and depraved ministry.

For a week, western North Carolinians were dazzled with disingenuousness. The audacity of the lies was breathtaking and the sheer nerve was mind numbing. By the end of the conference, everyone who had paid attention learned that Exodus leaders are shameless charlatans who lack even a modicum of morality. (Read More)

(Randy Thomas, Left)

Exodus Blatantly Lies In Local Media And Unveils Deceptive ‘Asheville Talking Points’ To Appeal To Progressives, Says TWO

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – TruthWinsOut.org (TWO) teamed-up with an inspiring group of state and local GLBT advocates to fight back against the “ex-gay” group Exodus International, which invaded the progressive city of Asheville, North Carolina this week with its cruel message of false hope. This Friday, TWO founder Wayne Besen will also appear on a panel, to discuss the movie “Fish Can’t Fly,” an expose on the ex-gay industry.

“I have been honored to speak out against lies and intolerance with so many incredible activists in Western North Carolina,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We are having an impact and making a difference in the lives of many people.”

The Exodus conference has been a hot topic and covered by the local mainstream media – which has generally done a decent job. However, Exodus leaders Randy Thomas and Alan Chambers have been chronically lying to the press and spinning the truth. Chambers began the mendacious marathon by claiming in the Asheville Citizen-Times that Exodus’ message is “not about fire and brimstone.” Oh, really?

Exodus leader, Alan Chambers, said in a 2005 Exodus Newsletter, “One of the many evils this world has to offer is the sin of homosexuality. Satan, the enemy, is using people to further his agenda to destroy the Kingdom of God and as many souls as he can.” (Read More)

(Alan Chambers, Left)

In typical fashion, Exodus and Focus on the Family are fooling future victims with false advertising, pie-in-the-sky promises and semantic games. In hyping the Asheville event, Focus on the Family wrote an article that claimed the following:

** For 33 years, Exodus has been spreading a message of hope and freedom to a world impacted by homosexuality.

I would agree that Exodus is spreading a message of hope. Indeed, the entire organization is all about “messages” - even if their slick words conflict with the dark reality experienced by most of the people who will attend the group’s conference. The sad truth is, anyone can offer “messages” - but are these messages backed by substance or simply empty promises that will cause needless pain and suffering? The statistic-free Exodus refuses to show whether its rhetoric matches reality - because it doesn’t. In my view, the Exodus message machine borders on consumer fraud.

** Exodus President Alan Chambers said, “There is a biblical alternative, that we can find freedom from homosexuality.”

Once again, Chambers is word-smithing to make it appear as if Exodus is offering a magical cure. Chambers pathologically denies this, but wide-eyed, new conference-goers will surely see Chambers’ words as offering a new life as a heterosexual. After all, “freedom from homosexuality” implies that the alternative is heterosexuality. Anyone who says otherwise is flat out lying and exploiting people.

** Jeff Johnston, gender issues analyst at Focus on the Family, attended his first Exodus conference more than 20 years ago. It helped him gain victory over homosexuality, and he said he wants that message of freedom to spread. “You have some churches saying, ‘Homosexuality is OK; that’s how God made people,’ ” he said. “Exodus is proclaiming (the) truth and helping people find freedom.”

Johnston is also guilty of manipulating words to make conference attendees believe they will become straight - which they won’t. He is saying that people will “find freedom” and the text supports this by saying that Exodus helped him “gain victory.” For the vast majority of people paying their hard earned money in Asheville, victory means an opposite-sex spouse that they are actually attracted to. It means that when they are at the gym and see an attractive person of the same-sex, they will feel nothing sexual.

Exodus cannot promise such a transformation, and is thus immorally preying on people by offering promises they can’t deliver. Why doesn’t Exodus simply tell people the truth. Here are few honest slogans:

1) “Marry someone you aren’t attracted to and learn to have sex with them!” (Alan Chambers, Instructor)

2) “Improve your acting skills by playing straight! Free Haircuts!” (Melissa Fryrear, Instructor)

3) “Learn the Joys of Lifetime loneliness and Celibacy!” (Randy Thomas, Instructor)

Until Exodus is honest with people, they are nothing more than immoral sleaze merchants who peddle snake oil to the highest bidder. They ought to be ashamed. And, yes, Alan, Jeff and Randy - I’m talking directly to you.

Exodus International Offers False Hope, Divorces and Ruined Lives, Says TWO

NEW YORK – TruthWinsOut.org (TWO) will join a coalition of state and local North Carolina organizations to counter a conference in Asheville (July 15-20) that plans to teach people to ‘pray away the gay.’ The controversial Exodus International symposium will sell books that promote exorcisms and encourage gay men to play touch football and lesbians to wear lipstick to become heterosexual.

“Ex-gay groups would be a farce if its failures weren’t so destructive to individuals and families,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of TruthWinsOut.org. “We plan a robust week of activities to highlight the harm caused by this nefarious right wing organization and to show the truth about the lives of GLBT people. I want to thank the Coalition for Equality for their commitment to educating North Carolinians about the dangers of the ‘ex-gay’ myth and the positive contributions GLBT people make to the community.”

Schedule of Events, July 15-20

Tuesday, July 15, 7:00–8:30 PM, Kick off Event
“Can You Pray Away the Gay?”
Firestorm Café & Books (48 Commerce St., Asheville)
Speakers: Wayne Besen, Director, TruthWinsOut.org and author of “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-gay Myth,” and Ian Palmist, Director, Equality NC

(Read More)

Who better to lead a Southern Baptist Convention panel promoting gender stereotypes than a cabal of gender-confused ex-gay political activists?

Photos of the panel show it to be dominated by Exodus International president Alan Chambers and other Exodus leaders including South Carolina ex-gay activist Tim Wilkins, Florida ex-gay activist Christine Sneeringer, and Texas ex-gay activist and SBC gender-issues czar Bob Stith.

The panel appears to be all-white — and all-male except for Sneeringer. Some members are not Southern Baptist.

None of these “ex-gays” has demonstrated academic expertise in gender issues nor a commitment to equal opportunity for women.

Instead of educating the public about gender diversity and individuality, the SBC gender panel plans to recruit Southern Baptist financial support for ex-gay activists and to confuse Christian teen-agers, their pastors, and their parents into believing they aren’t truly manly or womanly unless they mimic a 1950s-era heterosexual “lifestyle.”

Hat tip: Good As You

(A ‘Blinded’ Chambers Now On The Gay Marriage Market?)

Last year, Alan Chambers, the head of so-called “ex-gay” group Exodus International appeared in full-page newspaper ads opposing same-sex marriage. His bizarre reasoning in the ad text stated:

“By finding my way out of a gay identity, I found the love of my life in the process. Gay marriage would have only blinded me to such incredible joy.”

Well, now that marriage is legal in California, might the temptation be too much for poor, struggling Chambers? Might the sight of thousands of happy same sex couples, “blind” him and his celibate understudy, Randy Thomas? If his silly ad is an indication, Chamber’s might run off to California and marry a man any day.

(To SEE ADD scroll to bottom)

By Wayne Besen

“What is it about gay sex that makes U.S. health officials want to play Chicken Little with AIDS prevention and public safety?” Tony Valenzuela writes in the latest Poz magazine, where he criticizes, “The clueless tabloid and public health hysteria over man-on-man sex.”

Valenzuela points to “an imaginary ‘super strain’ of HIV to the sci-fi MRSA superbug.” And, he is correct that it seems the media and society seem to always take on the absurd posture that gay sex is a mysterious ticking time bomb.

It is important to remember that gay bashing is a multi-million dollar industry. There is a vested interest by fundamentalist groups to convince the public that gay people are morally inferior and diseased, thus a threat to children, society and themselves.

The notion that AIDS is a punishment from God is a staple of right wing literature. Instead of focusing on the condemnation of unsafe sexual practices, extremist groups say that the very nature of being gay makes one a candidate for an early death. For example, the so-called “ex-gay” group Exodus International uses the Bible to justify their belief in God’s wrath and fury against homosexuals.

“Those who practice these sins ‘receive in their own persons the due penalty of their error,’” writes former Exodus Executive Director Bob Davies in ‘A Biblical Response to the Pro-Gay Movement.’ “In today’s society, homosexuality is reaping a bitter harvest…homosexual involvement reaps deep devastation in the lives of many who practice it.”

The Traditional Values Coalition has published what they call a “fact-based report on the dangers of homosexuals and homosexual behavior to children and to our society.” One “fact sheet” is called, “Homosexual Sex = Death From HIV Infection.”

Focus on the Family offers that, “solid, irrefutable evidence proves that there are lethal consequences to engaging in the defining features of male homosexuality…”

Of course, blaming victims for deadly diseases is nothing new and has ushered in some of the most shameful and horrific acts in world history. In a recent New York Times magazine article, epidemiologist and physician Gary Slutkin (the article was about gang violence, not HIV) spoke of how Chinese Americans were once thought to be inherently prone to disease.

“Chinatown, San Francisco in the 1880’s,” Slutkin said. “Three ghosts: malaria, smallpox and leprosy. No one wanted to go there. Everybody blamed the people. Dirty. Bad habits. Something about their race…And people come up with all kinds of other ideas that are not scientifically grounded – like putting people away, closing the place down, pushing people out of town. Sound familiar?”

John Kelly’s book, “The Great Mortality” explains how Jews were blamed for the “Black Death” that wiped out an estimated one-third of fourteenth century Europeans.

“In January 1349, Basel burned its Jews on an island in the Rhine, while hygiene-conscious Speyer, fearing pollution, put its dead Jews in wine barrels and rolled them into the river,” wrote Kelly. “Strasbourg marched its Jews to a local cemetery and burned them…In Worms the local Jewish community, faced with death at the hands of Christian neighbors, locked themselves in their homes and set themselves ablaze.”

What I find bizarre is how the right continues to portray HIV as a gay disease when more than 80 percent of people infected worldwide are heterosexual. If God really wanted to punish the so-called “gay lifestyle” and send a message, wouldn’t He use a smart bomb – like blowing up gay bars on Saturday nights – instead of an indiscriminate shotgun blast that claims the lives of hemophiliacs and babies? The last time God was this inefficient, He placed George W. Bush in the Oval Office to carry out his will.

For reasons of political convenience and conservative correctness, anti-gay groups pick and choose who gets blame. In Washington, DC, black residents account for 81% of new reports of HIV infection and 86% of people with AIDS, though the city’s population is only 57% African-American. Based on anti-gay “logic,” this would mean that the “black lifestyle” is dangerous and should be condemned. Interestingly, they only focus on homosexuality and ignore other demographics and the largely hetero International AIDS epidemic because the inconvenient facts don’t mesh well with the right’s anti-gay storyline.

Gay people were around for thousands of years before AIDS and will still inhabit this planet long after the disease subsides or is eradicated. In the grand scheme of the universe, HIV does not define homosexuality any more than past syphilis or gonorrhea outbreaks in Europe defined heterosexuality.

Illnesses, like natural disasters, are not God’s wrath, but ordinary phenomena that affect different populations at any given time. History, however, teaches us that the most enduring disease is divisiveness in the name of the Divine, that predictably rears its ugly head at the very moments when healing is needed instead of hatred.

(Bob Davies, right)

Exodus claims to love homosexuals, but their message to those infected with HIV: “You are getting what you deserve and God is punishing you for being gay.” On Exodus’ website, there is a commentary by former Executive Director Bob Davies, “A Biblical Response to the Pro-Gay Movement.” In this screed he says:

Those who practice these sins “receive in their own persons the due penalty of their error” (v. 27). In today’s society, homosexuality is reaping a bitter harvest. Homosexual men are six times more likely to have attempted suicide than heterosexual men. Between 25 and 33 percent of homosexual men and women are alcoholics (the national average is 7 percent). Currently, 70 percent of Americans with AIDS are male homosexuals or bisexuals. Homosexual involvement reaps deep devastation in the lives of many who practice it.

It was certainly convenient for Davies to ignore that heterosexuals make up more than 80 percent of cases worldwide - so this is hardly a product of homosexual behavior. Many of the new infections are caused by right wing squeamishness to teaching comprehensive sex education - including condom use.

For political convenience, Exodus also skirts the obvious. In Washington, DC, black residents are hardest hit, accounting for 81% of new reports of HIV infection and 86% of people with AIDS, though the city’s population is only 57% African-American. Based on Exodus “logic” this would mean that the “black lifestyle” is dangerous and should be condemned. Interesting, how they only focus on homosexuality and ignore other demographics and the International AIDS epidemic because they don’t mesh well with the group’s bigotry.

The fact is, Exodus is a bona fide hate group that will say anything to smear homosexuals. Gay sex, when practiced safely, is no more dangerous than any other form of sexuality. Gay people have been around for thousands of years before AIDS and will be on this planet long after the disease subsides or is eradicated. In the grand scheme of the universe, it does not define homosexuality any more than syphilis outbreaks in Europe defined heterosexuality. It is time for Exodus to stop the blame game and act responsibly.

Stephen Black, an Exodus spokesperson, compared “ex-gay” watchdog organizations to Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Black, the leader of First Stone Ministries, an Exodus affiliate in Oklahoma City, used his personal blog to opine that “gay activists, liberal blog bullies and the liberal anti-Christ media machine…and Darwinism,” were determined to make ex-gay ministries illegal.

Exodus International is becoming more desperate and shrill as they lose their war against homosexuality. We call on Exodus to take action against Black and apologize for the group’s outrageous slander against GLBT advocates. These paranoid, mean-spirited and unfounded attacks are unethical and undermine Exodus’ claim that they love homosexuals.

“There are actual GAY hate groups who wish to silence the voices of ex-gays,” wrote Black on his blog. “These groups are like the brazenly named ‘Ex-Gay Watch’ and their klan of bloggers who use hatefully sarcastic words in addressing ex-gays.”

Black went on to compare the work of ex-gay watchdog groups to Nazis and say – without evidence – that ex-gays were somehow being “stalked.” (Read More)

Exodus Increasingly Resorts To Delusional and Paranoid Attacks Against GLBT Community

NEW YORK – TruthWinsOut.org (TWO) criticized Exodus International after Stephen Black, an organizational spokesperson, compared “ex-gay” watchdog organizations to Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Black, the leader of First Stone Ministries, an Exodus affiliate in Oklahoma City, used his personal blog to opine that “gay activists, liberal blog bullies and the liberal anti-Christ media machine…and Darwinism,” were determined to make ex-gay ministries illegal.

“Exodus International is becoming more desperate and shrill as they lose their war against homosexuality,” said TWO Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We call on Exodus to take action against Black and apologize for the group’s outrageous slander against GLBT advocates. These paranoid, mean-spirited and unfounded attacks are unethical and undermine Exodus’ claim that they love homosexuals.”

“There are actual GAY hate groups who wish to silence the voices of ex-gays,” wrote Black on his blog. “These groups are like the brazenly named ‘Ex-Gay Watch’ and their klan of bloggers who use hatefully sarcastic words in addressing ex-gays.”

Black went on to compare the work of ex-gay watchdog groups to Nazis and say – without evidence – that ex-gays were somehow being “stalked.”

“One merely need to lightly read over blogs like the “Ex-GAY WATCH” (yes, they are WATCHING and STALKING ex-gay leaders) and/or Wayne Besen’s blog and you will know we are living in very dark days….A very successful attorney friend of mine recently told me he felt it was like 1933 in Nazi Germany for Christians and Exodus type ministries in the USA.  He seriously joked with me and said, ‘Stephen it is like 1933 and your last name isn’t Black, but Bernstein. Your ministries will be on the front-line of the next demonic wave of an anti-Christ movement in history. It is coming.’  WOW! It was a sobering moment.”

Black also claimed that gay activists and the media are, “silencing their great stories about overcoming homosexuality.” He makes the bizarre case that there are so few ex-gay stories from people not on the payroll of right wing organizations because they are, “afraid to come out from fear of persecution.”

“Black must live in a delusional bubble,” said Besen. “The mainstream media has featured Exodus International countless times, even though the group provides no statistics and offers no concrete evidence of change. The reason that we see so few ‘ex-gays’ who are not on the payroll of political organizations is because they don’t exist. To say, without evidence, that it is because of persecution is a copout and a transparent excuse for Exodus’ astronomical failure rate.”

TWO also took Black to task for his dishonesty. His blog states that he is “not associated with any organization,” yet, he directs an Exodus Ministry.

“This was a radical hit piece with the intent of character assassination,” said Besen. “The question is, what does Exodus intend to do about it?”

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