Fearing a renewed uproar over tonight’s ABC News investigation of Exodus International’s role in Uganda’s kill-the-gays legislation, Exodus President Alan Chambers has informally told conservative Christian pundit Warren Throckmorton:

I am disappointed that Exodus won’t be heard in this piece. Sadly, Don Schmierer declined the interview and our request to go on record with ABC was denied. I would have loved nothing better than to share our disdain for this bill and apologize for going anywhere near such a horrible conference.

It is neither sad nor surprising that Schmierer and the rest of the Exodus board declined to talk: Schmierer had already discredited himself, on Exodus’ own blog.

In December 2009, in an Exodus blog guest article, Schmierer admitted that, since 2002, he had been working closely with antigay evangelicals in Uganda to mobilize antigay political activity.

And yet, Schmierer claims that, over the course of seven years, he was somehow oblivious to evangelical colleagues’ internationally publicized lynch mobs which were killing gay Ugandans and destroying the reputations of rival pastors with false character attacks.

Such a ridiculous claim of ignorance would be torn to shreds by ABC and exposed as a lie — which it is. Hence, Schmierer’s refusal to talk, and Chambers’ failure to follow through with his offer to express disdain or apologize, regardless of whether ABC is listening. (Read More)

African violence against the LGBT community is partially the result of American anti-gay and “ex-gay” activists stirring the pot in countries such as Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. We all know that Exodus International’s board member Don Schmierer was at a Spring 2009 conference in Kampala that helped lead to the notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

However, Truth Wins Out’s research team revealed today that another American “ex-gay” organization, Homosexuals Anonymous, had a conference in Kenya in November 2009. It was led by Doug McIntyre, HA’s Director. According to the organization’s October 2009 newsletter:

On November 3, 2009 the Director of HAFS will begin a visit to the beautiful country of Kenya.  We have been invited to begin a new work for the HA program and educate the members of a two thousand member church so that they can begin to reclaim the lost youth of the area. An invitation has been extended to teach in  15 local schools and participate in a leadership training program for nearly 200 pastors and church leaders.

While it remains unclear what happened at this particular HA event, a disturbing patten has seemingly developed. Ex-gay activists appear in African countries right before spasms of violence and persecution erupt.

Is this a mere coincidence or is the groundwork being laid for attacks on LGBT people? Are American ex-gays being used as a means to justify terror tactics and horror against innocent people? Do American “ex-gay” activists allow dangerous regimes and frothing mobs to rationalize violence by claiming, “these people deserve what they get because they can change?”

Truth Wins Out left a message this morning for HA to obtain more information on the group’s role in Kenya. They have yet to return our call.

The BBC reports that Kenyan police have released five people arrested for planning a “gay wedding” north of Mombasa, saying there was no evidence to prosecute them. But police spokesman Martha Mutegi told the BBC the men had been advised to leave the area for their own safety and to avoid angering the local community.

There are, however, those who dispute the BBC report. They claim that a gay wedding never actually took place and that the event was a fabrication in order for anti-forces to incite mob violence.

Homosexuality is illegal in Kenya and punishable by up to 14 years in jail. A BBC reporter in Mombasa says police began a crackdown on the gay community last week following anti-gay protests.

Perhaps it is time that American ex-gay activists stay home and stop creating mischief overseas. (Here is a glimpse of the type of false and destructive message that was brought to Kenya)

In new video, Frank Mugisha of Sexual Minorities Uganda confirms that U.S. ex-gay activists met with members of the Uganda Parliament and claimed that international homosexuals were out to “recruit” Ugandan children.

Hat tip: Box Turtle Bulletin

Apparently, “ex-gay” activists don’t like to work very much.

Since the temperature dropped below 50 degrees, Exodus International’s staff has noticeably gone into hibernation. Consider the evidence:

• The group’s last press release posted on its sluggish website is dated November 16, 2009. Memo to Exodus, the New Year’s ball has dropped. You can come out of your slumber.
• The “recent” Nov. 16th press release was titled “Exodus Sends Letter Opposing Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.” How nice of Exodus to get around to denouncing calls for genocide, considering the bill was introduced in mid-April 2009. It took the group 7 months to gin up the energy to crank out a single media release on Uganda. Such inaction is particualrly appalling, because Exodus played a key role in fomenting anti-gay sentiment in Uganda, which set the stage for the introduction of the “Kill the Gays” bill.
• The front page of Exodus’ website still lists an Oklahoma City event from October 2009. Um, Exodus, the leaves have changed colors, they have fallen to the ground, they have been raked up and there is snow on the ground. It’s okay to update the site before the beaches reopen.
• The only steady work from Exodus comes from its low-impact vanity blog with  infrequent posts (maybe one or so per day) from its Vice President Randy Thomas.
• There is no mention on Exodus’ front page of Love Won Out (LWO) – the “ex-gay” roadshow that Exodus recently took over from Focus on the Family. This is odd, considering the next ex-gay LWO circus is scheduled for March 6th in San Diego.

Exodus has a budget of more than $1 million dollars and a staff of more than a dozen people, yet, they can’t even update a website or write a press release?

Pathetic.

The Board of Exodus ought to launch a formal investigation to see how President Alan Chambers (pictured left, clowning around on the company dole) and Randy Thomas (pictured left, chilling out below) are spending contributions. They certainly aren’t using the money to “educate” or “inform” people on the Internet.

It seems that in 2010, Exodus has silently backed away from genuine public outreach. The group has retreated into American fundamentalist churches and taken its roadshow overseas – where people are not as informed of the groups dubious history and astronomical failure rate. All we have to do is look at the Uganda nightmare (after Exodus spoke at hate conference in Kampala on March 5 and 6) to see the disastrous results of the group’s global efforts.

Who can blame Exodus for its bunker mentality? Their lies were increasingly unconvincing to thinking people in the United States. This is why they now prefer to take their propaganda to more receptive fundamentalist churches where people are told how to think and what to believe.

In any case, Exodus’ sloth has been noticed and duly noted. The fact is, my chubby, slumbering cat seems to do more work of late than the clearly overpaid staff of Exodus International.

However, the award for laziest anti-gay extremist goes to Peter LaBarbera (aka Porno Pete). (Read More)

UPDATE BELOW

I’m fighting the temptation to type out a bunch of exclamation points and various other characters, paste the hyperlink, and hit post.

But no, let’s look at this.  Robert Knight of Coral Ridge Ministries, and former Concerned Woman for America, has written a piece in which he claims that the New York Times editorial “Hate Begets Hate,” which correctly points out that American Evangelicals Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundige and Don Schmierer helped feed the culture of hatred against gays which has led to the awful “kill the gays” legislation in Uganda, is merely a smear piece focused on “crucifying Christians.”  Well, get up off the fainting couch, Bob, because we need to have a discussion.

First let’s look at Knight’s complaints about the NYT piece:

This humdinger of a self-descriptive screed has it all: wild, unsubstantiated charges; villains; hysterical calls for action and a smug, holier-than-thou tone that would put Saturday Night Live’s Church Lady to shame.

(…)

I don’t know Mr. Brundidge, but I do know Mr. Lively and Mr. Schmierer. Both are honest and courageous men who, out of Christian compassion, dare to tell the truth about homosexuality. For this, the Times brands them as hatemongers.

While Mr. Lively has written perceptively and passionately about countering the homosexual activists’ political and cultural agenda, there is no evidence of “hate.” Trying to steer someone away from destructive, immoral, changeable behavior is an act of love, not hate.

(…)

And it is beyond absurd to label as a bigot a man like Don Schmierer, who supports AIDS ministries and reaches out to sexually conflicted people with the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ. Casting the gentle, soft spoken Mr. Schmierer as a “hater” is like calling Mother Teresa a foul-mouthed harpy.

Honest?  Christian compassion?  The truth?  Perhaps, you’ve missed the news, Bob, but we now have video evidence that your compassionate, honest friend Scott Lively, who has spent his entire career smearing gay people as serial killers, murderers, and Holocaust instigators, indeed told that Ugandan audience that gay people were responsible for the Rwandan genocide!  I don’t know in what possible world that could be considered honest, compassionate, or anything resembling the truth, but if that’s the world where you live, Robert Knight, I hope never to visit it.  In case you’re not aware, no credible historian supports Lively’s specious and evil claims.

Also specious and evil is Robert Knight’s claim that one’s sexuality can be changed through “therapy,” an idea which is condemned by virtually every authoritative body which has weighed in on the subject.  I could look around the internet for links, but there’s no need.  It’s all on this little website called Truth Wins Out.  Perhaps Mr. Knight has heard of it.

And as to Don Schmierer, the fact that he’s gentle and soft-spoken is quite irrelevant, and as I’ve pointed out before, Don Schmierer’s life’s mission of convincing hurting gay people that they have to change who they are in order to find favor with God is not love, but instead, intense hatred at its core.  Schmierer may not feel that he’s being hateful, but because he is working within the hateful, unscientific, and verifiably harmful “ex-gay” movement, he is a party to that hatred, and any blood that is spilled is equally on his hands.  Besides, people much closer to the situation than I am tried to warn Schmierer not to go.  Schmierer doesn’t seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, in general, but when he allowed himself to be associated with this, even after being warned of the nature of the event and the character of the people involved, he signed off on it.

You can read Knight’s entire bilious screed if you want, but the quote above is really all you need to know.  As he comes near to the close of his piece, he says this:

The Times’ editors need to come to terms with their knee-jerk spasms against evangelical Christians and others who defend family values. They routinely depict pro-marriage Americans as motivated solely by hatred and prejudice, never by genuine, heartfelt concerns.

Yeah, well, this isn’t about “pro-marriage Americans,” Bob.  This is about three men who went to a nation already rife with homophobia and handed them the proverbial gun needed to justify their desires to go ahead and start killing gay people.

You should be ashamed of yourself, for the hatred and prejudice you euphemistically refer to as “genuine, heartfelt concerns,” and to which you are now giving aid and comfort, is on the verge of producing a verifiable bodycount in Uganda.

I’m quite sure there were apologists for the Spanish Inquisition, and I bet they had “genuine, heartfelt concerns,” too.

UPDATE: Wayne left this comment below, but I thought it deserved to be highlighted within the piece:

I stood next to Mr. Knight in 1998 at The National Press Club in Washington. He was there to tout a million dollar Pray Away the Gay advertising campaign called “Truth In Love.” Mr. Knight called this effort the “Normandy Landing in the Cultural War.”

The press conference featured John Paulk and Michael Johnston, the two ex-gay poster-boys of this time period.

In 2000, I photographed Paulk in a gay bar. In 2003, with the help of attorney Michael Hamer, we caught Johnston having gay Internet orgies. He disappeared after admitting a “moral fall”.

The bottom line is that Mr. Knight has paraded so-called “ex-gays” in front of America before. His so-called success stories did not pan out. His track record is abysmal.

Clearly, Mr. Knight has squandered his credibility on this issue and is the last person in America who should be saying that one can go from gay to straight. His own very public activism strongly suggests otherwise.

Mr. Knight must believe people are either stupid or have amnesia. However, many of us remember the fraud he perpetrated in 1998.

To try to pull the same craven and cynical publicity stunt in 2010, suggests a man with few scruples, a capacity for intellectual dishonesty and an addiction to propaganda that neatly fits into his warped world view.

Mr. Knight, is it not time you tiptoe off the public stage before you further humiliate yourself and do more harm to your cause?

No one seems to want to touch the daunting task of defending Scott Lively** with a ten foot pole, but Don Feder thinks The New York Times should really stop being so mean to his buddy Don Schmierer.  In this piece, he quotes Larry Jacobs of the World Congress of Families regarding Schmierer’s excursion to Uganda:

Don Schmierer and two other evangelicals from the United States spoke in Uganda last March.  In the course of their remarks, they discussed the ability of individuals to mend broken family relationships, change destructive behaviors, and to leave the homosexual lifestyle.  Claiming their pro-family advocacy provoked anger, which led to the introduction of the Ugandan legislation,The Times charged, “You can’t preach hate and not accept responsibility for the way that hate is manifested.”

Jacobs responded: “Don Schmierer is a gentle counselor and an inspired teacher with more than four decades of experience in helping people overcome addictions, rebuild their lives, repair their relationships and restore their families.  Don provides wise counsel and advice for parents, with special insights on the relationships of fathers and their sons.  Because he believes in a Biblical worldview and thinks homosexuality is not genetic, The Times insists that he’s responsible for the Ugandan legislation, (a proposed law categorically denounced by every pro-family leader I’m aware of and Don himself).”

“Anyone that spends time listening to Schmierer or reading his materials, can easily see that his entire ministry is built on loving and helping homosexuals (and heterosexuals), not hating them.  As Don says himself, some of the nicest people he’s met around the world have been homosexuals.  After each of Don’s presentations, many homosexuals offer their thanks for his wise counsel and testimonies on how his guidance helped them.”

In other words, “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!  SHE’S BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH!“

Right.

First of all, it’s not Schmierer’s beliefs about gay people that we’re concerned with.  Being an American means that you are free to be as ignorant as you please.  We’re concerned with his actions.  Secondly, Don Schmierer’s entire life’s mission is directly in contrast to “loving and helping homosexuals.”  Ex-gay leaders love homosexuals like pedophiles love The Jonas Brothers.  Thirdly, did Schmierer, as quoted by Jacobs, really use the “some of the nicest people I’ve met have been homosexuals” construction?  I know that old white people can be really dumb about these sorts of things, but that statement is, in and of itself, bigoted.  Growing up in the South, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard an older white person say “I’m not racist, some of my best friends are black!”, as if it’s some sort of accomplishment.  Schmierer’s quote is the same construction, just updated for the purposes of discriminating against gay people.  He might as well have said, “We don’t think he deserves any rights, but we love our interior designer, and he’s a homosexual!”  Finally, who are we supposed to think the “many homosexuals” are who savor Schmierer’s loving guidance?  Because I know “many homosexuals,” and I don’t know one who would bear the indignity of listening to such drivel for any purposes besides mocking or monitoring the opposition.

Feder also quotes Jacobs saying this:

“The Times ugly attack on Schmierer is typical of the growing movement to intimidate and ultimately silence any who dissent from the gay agenda, including the activists working to preserve marriage.  Instead of discussing the nature and consequences of homosexuality, The New York Times says the debate is closed, and any who object, hate homosexuals and want to harm them.”

Well, the debate really is closed, at least in well-informed nations.***  When you have a struggle between opposing worldviews where exactly one side can defend its claims without resorting to age-old bigotry, discrimination, dogma and appeals to faulty translations of unprovable religious claims, you end up where we are now.  We still have to keep plugging away to correct their lies about the “nature and consequences” of homosexuality for as long as their ideas still hold sway over portions of the population, but we know, by looking at the data, that their discriminatory propaganda reaches fewer and fewer people in the West every year.  Welcome to 2010.  Put more bluntly:  We’re very sorry your ideas are laughable to rational people and, quite frankly, suck, but that’s really not our problem, and it’s not The New York Times’ problem.

Don Schmierer is a sentient being, as far as we know, and he made a conscious choice to visit Uganda with the likes of Scott Lively.  To quote a famous guy, he’s reaping what he’s sown.

(h/t GayUganda)

*Looka me, Jeremy, I made a pun before you did.

**How would you go about defending a man who handed a gun to genocidal maniacs anyway?  I wouldn’t know where to start.

*** This, of course, is why Christian Conservatives are opening so many franchise operations in the Third World.  They know, on some level, that their fight is lost among the educated.  They have nothing to offer thinking people.  So they scamper away to impoverished nations and fill their heads with their propagandistic lies in a desperate attempt to get there before modernity does.  It’s cynical, it’s manipulative, and it’s immoral, because they prey on people who actually do need their help, but instead they offer brainwashing and the distracting opiate of false hope.  Meanwhile, poverty continues, disease continues, hunger continues, AIDS gets worse (often because of the policies promoted by the Christian Conservatives).  It’s really beyond me how these people are able to claim moral authority over anything anymore.

The New York Times was late to the game. But, now that the newspaper is paying attention, they are doing an excellent job spotlighting the dire situation for LGBT people in Uganda. Hopefully, this will drive home the message to the would-be mass murderers in Uganda’s government that there will be a heavy price to pay if they continue promoting butchery and barbarism.

NYT Editorial:

Uganda’s government, which has a shameful record of discrimination against gay men and lesbians, is now considering legislation that would impose the death sentence for homosexual behavior. The United States and others need to make clear to the Ugandan government that such barbarism is intolerable and will make it an international pariah.

Corruption and repression — including violence against women and children and abuse of prisoners — are rife in Uganda. According to The Times’s Jeffrey Gettleman, officially sanctioned homophobia is particularly acute. Gay Ugandans are tormented with beatings, blackmail, death threats and what has been described as “correctional rape.”

The government’s venom is chilling: “Homosexuals can forget about human rights,” James Nsaba Buturo, who holds the cynically titled position of minister of ethics and integrity, said recently.

What makes this even worse is that three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” gays and lesbians have been widely discredited in the United States, helped feed this hatred. Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer gave a series of talks in Uganda last March to thousands of police officers, teachers and politicians in which, according to participants and audio recordings, they claimed that gays and lesbians are a threat to Bible-based family values.

Now the three Americans are saying they had no intention of provoking the anger that, just one month later, led to the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. You can’t preach hate and not accept responsibility for the way that hate is manifested.

We don’t have much hope that they will atone for their acts. But right now the American government, and others, should make clear to Uganda that if this legislation becomes law, it will lose millions of dollars in foreign aid and be shunned globally.

Michael wrote last night about the piece in the New York Times about the Uganda “Kill the Gays” bill and its American Evangelical supporters.  The piece exposes the inciting role Don Schmierer of Exodus played in the inception of this bill, and showcases his mewling attempts to deny any responsibility for what’s now happening in Uganda.  Schmierer’s statements can be summed up as “We was fooled!”  That’s right, they’re just a few innocent, sweet ex-gay activists, and they’re just trying to help!  Give me a break.  Jim Burroway handily disposed of that notion in a piece last night.  If you haven’t read Jim’s piece, do.  I’ll wait.

What I want to draw attention to, though, is Amanda Marcotte’s piece on this, because she brings in some really important historical perspective on what Schmierer, Caleb Lee Brundige, and Scott Lively did on their little jaunt to Uganda, and she also makes an important point about the weak denials and condemnations they (and Rick Warren) have issued, now that the American press is paying attention:

Right now, Rick Warren and company’s slow-moving denunciations of this law are due strictly to their desire to stay in the mainstream of American society, and have nothing to do with actual moral outrage.  After all, it’s an article of faith for the religious right that gay people “recruit” children because they can’t have their own.  There are so many assumptions bundled up in that—that gay people don’t have children, that children can be considered carbon copies of their parents, that homosexuality is something taught at the knee instead of a genuine expression of sexual desire—but I’d like to point out that what the accusation is, at its base, is a 21st century version of the blood libel. The traditional blood libel that was a big deal in medieval Europe was to accuse Jews of killing and eating Christian children.  Nowadays, the accusation has changed somewhat—now it’s that gays rape and recruit children—but the structure is basically the same, which is to say that the hated group is constructed as a cult that feeds on your children.  And the religious right believes this stuff.  (…)

The point is that the blood libel exists to justify extreme violence against the targeted group, painting them as child-thieves who inflict a society’s most dreaded crimes (molestation, cannibalism) on the children, and by doing so, take them away from the parents.  So when the people who perpetuate this myth about gays and lesbians play innocent, we shouldn’t let them get away with it.

Exactly.  I’ve said several times in the past (I’ve actually said it today) that there is no fundamental difference between religious extremists in the West and those in Uganda, or in the Middle East, etc.  They look different to the untrained eye, simply because they can’t get away with what they really want to do in the West.  Modern society won’t allow it.  So of course they’re trying to cover their lily-white behinds in the American press, for their own followers, and for the rest of the American public which still thinks of Warren as the Purpose-Driven Cuddle Monster.  These people have a narrative to uphold, and it’s a narrative that is in sharp contrast to their actual beliefs and actions:  That Evangelical Christianity is primarily about love and family and patriotism and lots of other Pollyanna BS that plays well with the Fort Worth crowd.  And for many Evangelical Christians, it is about those things.  They may be misled about a lot of things, but I highly doubt that the average Saddleback member is jonesing to kill gay people.

But their leaders?  As Amanda says in the piece, they’re not off the hook for this one.  Growing up in That World, and now analyzing it from the perspective of one who knows the language, I’ve often noticed that the people who follow these leaders are, for the most part, fairly decent human beings, but that they have no idea what their leaders are really like.  (And of course, when you point it out, most of them retreat into their shells or stick their fingers in their ears.)

The blood libel is not new.  But it’s taken far too long for the LGBT community and its supporters to realize that the tactics of Warren, Lively, Schmierer, Brundige, Richard Cohen, etc., are indeed the modern-day version of this age-old Christian tradition.  And the ex-gay element is just more delicious icing on the cake for those who promote this blood libel.  Elsewhere in the piece, Amanda puts it this way:

When an ex-gay claims that gays recruit by raping children, wingnuts can feel good about themselves, because they say, “Hey, he should know.” But of course, that’s simply not true, because the religious right has created huge incentives for so-called ex-gays to lie about their previous (and often ongoing) sexual behavior and habits, in order to keep the esteem and the paychecks coming.

Sick and sad, but true.  What a feat these religious extremists have accomplished — they have an entire “ex-gay” industry devoted to making gay people hate themselves so much that they’ll travel thousands of miles around the world to confess the sins of which they’ve been brainwashed to believe they’re guilty.

For these leaders to now claim that they couldn’t have imagined that things would play out the way they have is simply more disingenuous lying.  They know what they’re doing.

Shame on all of them.

Tomorrow’s New York Times correctly identifies the individuals who launched Uganda’s campaign to exterminate its LGBT citizenry.

Exodus International board member Don Schmierer, U.S. ex-gay activist Caleb Lee Brundidge, and U.S. ex-gay activist Scott Lively are the three evangelicals who led a March conference in Kampala to accuse LGBT Ugandans of child recruitment and pedophilia, to recommend forced ex-gay therapy, and to support Uganda ex-gay activist Stephen Langa and antigay pastor Martin Ssempa in their effort to toughen Uganda’s pre-existing life-imprisonment sentence for LGBT Ugandans.

The Times said:

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

The Times fails to point out the direct role that U.S. government aid has played in subsidizing Uganda’s antigay evangelicals. Instead, the Times indirectly points to the State Department’s PEPFAR program for HIV/AIDS prevention as a source of aid to Ugandan conservatives. And the Times identifies sources of funding for Ugandan LGBT human-rights advocates:

“It’s a fight for their lives,” said Mai Kiang, a director at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a New York-based group that has channeled nearly $75,000 to Ugandan gay rights activists and expects that amount to grow.

Despite denials of responsibility issued by the three U.S. ex-gay activists, the Times points out that “the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to ‘a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.’ Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.”

Schmierer has traveled to Uganda numerous times since 2002, and should have known that his false teachings to parents about homosexual “recruitment” would cause violence.

“What these people have done is set the fire they can’t quench,” said the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian who went undercover for six months to chronicle the relationship between the African anti-homosexual movement and American evangelicals.

Mr. Kaoma was at the conference and said that the three Americans “underestimated the homophobia in Uganda” and “what it means to Africans when you speak about a certain group trying to destroy their children and their families.”

“When you speak like that,” he said, “Africans will fight to the death.”

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.

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