While 2009 will be remembered for the worldwide economic recession, for the ex-gay industry, it will be known as The Great Moral Depression. It was a dreadful year for such programs, as they showed themselves to be a global menace run by reprobates, such as Exodus’ Randy Thomas and Alan Chambers, who combined a dangerous dose of arrogance and incompetence. Much like the Roman Catholic Church, these men ignored a credible allegation of abuse for more than six months and engaged in a dangerous game of denial.

Whatever shard of credibility this industry had was stripped away in 2009. It was a year where such programs were harshly rebuked by the mental health establishment. An important new study showed that their retrograde methods of shame and blame harmed LGBT people. The old, outdated research that they stubbornly latched onto for dear life seemed to betray them and then vanish into thin air.

Several “ex-gay” heroes turned out to be zeros and slithered away into the mist.   The past 12 months, if anything, unmasked the facade of “love” this industry cynically showers on potential clients and an often gullible media. In 2009, the world saw ex-gay programs for what they are: A sugar coated excuse for homophobia.

Exodus was revealed as a front for international hate groups, who used the group’s credulous leaders as pawns in an international struggle for theocracy. PFOX stepped forward and showed, time and again, that it was just plain nuts.

NARTH put out an embarrassingly shoddy “study” that was so pathetic it was virtually ignored by the media. By the end of 2009, NARTH had solidified its place as a cabal of embittered and irrelevant quacks on the far outer fringes of psychology. Homosexuals Anonymous was, well, anonymous. The Catholic ex-gay group Courage also had a meager profile and had little impact on popular culture. And, JONAH, the Jewish ex-gay group, continued to humiliate itself through its affiliation with crackpot Born Again sexual reorientation coach Richard Cohen.

May 2010 bring the same abundance of truth and light regarding the ex-gay fraud we had in 2009. Here are the Top 10 ex-gay related stories of the year. Please feel free to comment on any major items I may have missed.

10) The Passing of The Old Guard

Focus on the Family co-founder James Dobson announced that he was stepping down. He was an arch-homophobe who once claimed allowing gay people to marry would end the earth. Under Dobson’s leadership, this mega-ministry started the ex-gay roadshow Love Won Out. Dobson’s retirement represents the winding down of the old guard. This includes the passing of other ex-gay proponents or anti-gay preachers such as Rev. Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy and Oral Roberts. A new generation of Evangelicals will hopefully join the reality-based community and break with the past. However, there is reason to be skeptical, considering the leader of the pack is Rick Warren, who isn’t too much better than his predecessors.

9) The Fizzling Out of Michael Glatze and Stephen Bennett

Michael Glatze (left) was formerly co-editor of XY Magazine and YGA Magazine, publications directed at LGBT youth. He and his partner of ten years, Benjie Nycum, also co-authored the book XY Survival Guide.

Glatze’s ventures went belly-up and he seemed to disappear from LGBT activism. He reemerged in July 2007 with a disgusting op-ed on the extremist website WorldNetDaily, where he announced he was “ex-gay” (although he had no experience with women)

Glatze alleged sexual conversion seems, in part, to have come from a sort-of nervous breakdown. He reported that he suffered from frequent panic attacks and that he obsessed about death.

In late September, Glatze contacted me, hoping that I would interview him and reinvigorate his  flagging career as an “ex-gay”.  I refused to oblige his publicity stunt, and so did LGBT advocates at other sites.

Glatze’s downfall came when he opened an incoherent vanity blog and wrote:

“Have I mentioned lately how utterly *disgusting* Obama is? And, yes, it’s because he’s black. God, help us all….It’s a shame Obama is black. He could end up setting back race relations decades.”

Condemned for his idiotic comment about President Obama, Glatze sent out a rambling e-mail announcing his  career as an ex-gay spokesperson had fizzled and he was retiring. Chalk Glatze up to a pitiful  flash in the pan.

Similarly, 2009 was the year that big haired ex-gay activist Stephen Bennett (left) completely vanished from the scene. And, Anthony Falzarano’s (founder of PFOX) attempted return to the spotlight also petered out.

8) The Lisa Miller Kidnapping and Abduction Case

Lisa Miller broke up with partner Janet Jenkins (Right) after becoming a born again “ex-gay”. In a fit of holier-than-thou zeal, Miller went on the lam and absconded from Vermont with their child, Isabella, that the couple was raising together after having a Civil Union.

As a result of Miller’s poor parenting and criminal behavior (she was cited for contempt of court), a Vermont court transferred custody to Jenkins (after a five year legal ordeal that will surely leave emotional scars on their child Isabella) and refused a motion to delay transfer, as requested by Miller’s law team.

People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch reports that the location of Miller and 7-year-old Isabella Miller are presently “unknown”. This is highly problematic because the court order takes effect on New Year’s Day.

Janet Jenkins filed a missing person report in Virginia on Wednesday in hopes of finding her 7-year-old daughter, according to her lawyer. Unfortunately, Miller’s outlaw behavior has been cheered on by ex-gay activists who want to pretend they are martyrs, rather than criminal miscreants.

7)  The Caitlin Ryan Study

The January 2009 issue of Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics reported on a new study by San Francisco State researcher Caitlin Ryan. Her research concluded that, “Teens who experienced negative feedback (when they came out as LGBT) were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use.”

This definitive study was hugely important because it contradicted the claim by “ex-gay” activists that homosexuality was the root cause of such problems. Indeed, it was ex-gay programs – the epitome of negative feedback – that led to the destruction of LGBT people.

6) Exodus Bungles Corduroy Stone Scandal After TWO Exposes Abuse

Exodus International officially cut ties with its Lansing affiliate Corduroy Stone after charges were made by an ex-gay survivor that the sessions included harmful and bizarre therapy.

In August, Patrick McAlvey made the charges against Corduroy Stone’s Mike Jones in a Truth Wins Out video. At the age of 19, McAlvey, who came from a religious background, was terrified that he might be gay. Feeling vulnerable and desperate to change, he placed his trust in Mike Jones and Corduroy Stone.

“He asked how large my penis was,” McAlvey explained of Jones’ therapy. “He asked if I shave my pubic hair. He asked what type of underwear that I wore.

He wanted me to describe my sexual fantasies to him and the type of men I’m attracted to. On one occasion, he asked me to take my shirt off and show him how many push-ups I could do, which I did not do.”

Tragically, it took Exodus until December to take action and cut ties with this renegade ministry. Exodus’ dithering in the face of scandal cost precious time and may have placed additional youth in harm’s way. This was a key episode in 2009 because it underscored how Exodus has little control over its satellite ministries and each one is an independent fiefdom with its own rules and techniques. Exodus is no more than a Wild West and an unprofessional hodgepodge of fundamentalist pop-psychology combined with spiritual warfare and efforts to pray away the gay.

5) Ex-Gay Charlatan Matthew C. Manning Unmasked As A Fraud

A report by the website, “Ex-Gay Watch” cast a dark cloud of skepticism over “ex-gay” activist Matthew Manning’s tale of being “delivered” from homosexuality and AIDS. According to the report, Manning has been repeatedly dragged into court for allegations of inappropriate behavior and was even banned from a popular gym after improper sexual advances were made on a 22-year-old heterosexual male. Manning, a frequent television guest and the founder of Lighthouse World Evangelism Inc., based in Santa Rosa, California, has yet to comment on the allegations made in the investigative report.

(Read More)

In recent decades, some concerned critics say, portions of U.S. conservative Christianity have been overrun by an army of little so-called antichrists.

These “antichrists” are said to be smug and willfully ignorant people who worship a god of warfare and death. When they aren’t justifying wars, obsessing over demons, and rejecting the scientific method, they vote for egocentric autocrats and special interests who favor Armageddon-like living conditions — deteriorating seas, poisoned skies, melted ice caps, runaway ethnic cleansing, no privacy, and large-scale religious conflict. Some of these would-be antichrists — doomsayers Timothy LaHaye and Hal Lindsey come to mind — have earned tens of millions of dollars by writing best-selling books that call other people “antichrists.”

In promoting sales of his own new book, ex-gay activist Anthony Falzarano this week decisively associated himself with this supposed army of believers in a god of death.

Falzarano’s latest message to a sexually-honest former Exodus leader is basically this:

Falzarano’s god is a sadistic tyrant that kills individual people with cancer in order to punish other individual people for petty reasons — and in order to bolster the wobbly egos of Biblically illiterate and impenitent ministers like Falzarano.

I won’t repeat the full text of Falzarano’s latest meme here. It is linked above; it has been repeated by other major bloggers; and we at TWO have already allowed Falzarano to spout his memes here in the past week.

Right-wing religious demagogues spread these memes, sugar-coated with godtalk, for the following reasons:

1. to make money when they are ill-qualified for productive employment

2. to inflate their unstable egos by degrading and bullying other people

3. to intimidate practitioners of traditional, modest, and minority religious creeds, replacing those faiths with egocentric, cynical, and authoritarian cult-like movements that are insulated from any dangerous persons who might express faith in a genuinely loving, graceful, life-affirming, self-sacrificial — or non-existent — higher power

4. to promote conflict, bloodshed, and destruction in a “fallen” world that they admittedly hate

5. to victimize other people, putting them perpetually in a defensive position

It’s a bit difficult for me to imagine anything more anti-life, or antichrist-like, than the culture of death and defamation that Falzarano affirms in his recent messages to TWO and to a former Exodus ministry leader.

But I’ll try: (Read More)

Anthony Falzarano – the founder of Parents and Friends of ‘Ex-Gays’ (PFOX) – was a leading “ex-gay” spokesperson in the late 90’s. His media-friendly story was quite unique, in that he claims he was Roy Cohn’s rent boy and partied each night like it was 1999.

Falzarano’s entry into the ex-gay scene in the early 80’s has always been a little murky. In one version of his tale, God told Falzarano to go straight before the AIDS crises hit. In another version, after many of his friends had passed away, God told him to become ex-gay. In yet a third version, one of his sexual conquests felt guilty after their encounter and introduced him to Christ. Obviously, these colorful versions are contradictions and they can’t all be true.

If there is one thing about Falzarano – he is not opposed to telling a good story, the facts be damned. So, his fictional book, “Such Were Some of You: One Man’s Walk Out of the Gay Lifestyle,” is sure to be entertaining and certainly much better than Exodus’ Alan Chambers depressingly trite tome, “God’s Grace and the Homosexual Next Door.”

Falzarano holds to the empty and unsupported belief that homosexuality is caused by a young person being molested – and he pulls bogus figures out of thin air to bolster his case. Indeed, he is known to invent new percentages on the number of gay people molested from one interview to the next. The man has no scruples and honesty is just an inconvenience in his bizarre universe.

He is also a proponent of spiritual warfare, once telling CBS News, “AIDS comes from the devil, directly from Satan. He uses homosexuals as pawns and then he kills them.” Another time, he called hate crime victim Matthew Shepard a “predator to heterosexual men.” (Read More)