Truth Wins Out reported last week that the “ex-gay” organization Exodus International plans to target Middle School age children in 2011. In response, we revealed Exodus’ profoundly disturbing record in its work with youth. TWO also published an op-ed by Exodus Survivor Patrick McAlvey who strongly urged the discredited “ex-gay” group to stop focusing on children and teenagers.

Instead of looking at its perverse history and rethinking its dangerous 2011 strategic plan, Exodus announced this week that it was intensifying its teen and pre-teen efforts, beginning at an upcoming Exodus Leadership conference in Orlando, which is scheduled for January 24-26. According to Exodus President Alan Chambers in a flier promoting the event:

I am so excited about spending the week with you all and learning how God wants to use each of our gifts, talents, brains and uniques [sic] styles for His glory and the building of His Kingdom.  I am thrilled that our dear friend, Kathy Koch, is here to lead us, encourage us, rally us and mobilize us to reach greater heights in ministry!

Who is Kathy Koch? (Aside from someone who can’t spell in her own bio. Or maybe Exodus staff is responsible for the incompetence?)

Dr. Kathy Koch:  As the founder of Celebrate Kids, Inc., Dr. Kathy is dedicated to helping parents, educators, adn [sic] children of all ages meet their core needs of security, identity, belonging, purpose, and competence in healthy ways. She teaches these important truths nationally and internationally in various venues. Dr. Kathy is known for her down-to-earth, upbeat, humorours, [sic] and forthright style.

Wow — this is nauseating. At Exodus’ first big shindig of 2011, they bring in a speaker from a group called “Celebrate Kids, Inc.” As I have detailed, Exodus has a creepy history celebrating kids in a very unsettling way. Koch’s presence at this conference is further proof that Randy Thomas and Alan Chambers are going after vulnerable children, who may not be old enough to have the critical thinking skills to see through the group’s self-hatred and propaganda.

Perhaps LGBT activists in Florida should protest this despicable conference and save the children from the slimy clutches of Exodus.

If you have been a victim of Exodus International, please read our publication,

“Ex-Gay & the Law”.

Glenn Stanton, marriage policy pundit for Focus on the Family, is upset.

This week, “All My Children” — one of ABC’s few surviving shows in the ailing soap opera genre — belatedly recognized that thousands of U.S. gay and lesbian couples are legally married. The soap opera also acknowledged what gay people of faith have known for decades: that some churches and synagogues — even entire denominations –have affirmed monogamous life unions of gay and lesbian couples.

In its response, Focus on the Family dishonors marriage first by putting the word marriage in “scare quotes,” and then by carelessly excusing soaps’ long history of heterosexual infidelity.

What upsets Stanton the most, according to Focus, is the show’s disclosure of a simple truth: Many clergy are not as prejudiced as the pundits at Focus on the Family. Stanton says:

What is really offensive is their use of clergy to perform this genderless and unrealistic ‘marriage.’

Gay and lesbian people are not genderless, and their desire for matrimony is no less “unrealistic” than that of heterosexual persons.

Instead of encouraging TV shows to acknowledge the reality of same-sex marriage and of gay-affirming clergy, Focus is angered that the truth might “desensitize the public” to reality.

Caleb Price, research analyst at Focus on the Family, said some writers in Hollywood are working to desensitize the public to homosexuality and “transgenderism.”

“They will continue to push the boundaries of what is morally and culturally permissible,” he said, “until Americans stand up to the studio execs and advertisers that produce these programs and say, ‘No more.’ ”

Push boundaries? Far from it. No more soaps? Been there, done that.

The fact that it took a couple years for a soap to recognize the existence of gay marriages and gay-affirming churches merely reinforces the widespread sentiment that the soap genre is becoming obsolete.

Studio execs, advertisers, and viewers don’t care about soap operas — most abandoned the genre years ago. In decline as an institution since 1981, the soap opera was jeopardized first by women’s progress in the workplace, then by TiVo and reality TV, then by The Sims and Second Life, and most recently by YouTube, Twitter, texting, and other social media. Venerable soaps are quietly shrinking to skeleton casts and facilities, and the Daytime Emmys are no longer televised.

Focus has reminded us that its mindset may be trapped in a distant era when millions of people, myself included, actually cared what happened on ABC on weekday afternoons: An era when the religious right condemned soaps not for sexual infidelity or for ludicrous tales of weather machines and Ice Princesses, but for their halting efforts to educate viewers about AIDS.

Nowadays, Focus protests a soap opera for honoring marriage. That’s how backward Focus has become.