Last week, TWO’s Director of Communications & Development John Becker did a last-minute interview with progressive talk phenom David Pakman about Alan Chambers’ confusing statement that it’s impossible to pray away the gay. Unless you’re Alan Chambers, who was able to… err, what was that? As David and John discussed (and as Wayne wrote in the latest TWO Special Report), it will be interesting to see how Chambers and Exodus spin this going forward, both at next week’s Love Won Out conference in Atlanta and beyond.

In light of news suggesting that Exodus is discussing its reorganization, Box Turtle Bulletin’s Timothy Kincaid wrote this open letter to its director, Alan Chambers, to “propose a few recommendations.” Highlights:

Surely you would not go about the country telling people about Mount Everest and the success that Sir Edmund Hillary had in conquering the mountain and encourage them to fly right off to Nepal and start climbing. That would be cruel and irresponsible and result in disappointment, wounded bodies and disillusioned spirits.

Yet Exodus has for many years testified of the reported success of some people who have struggled with unwanted same-sex attraction in terms that suggested that this could also be reality for those listening. It has been a cruel and irresponsible behavior and has resulted in disappointment, wounded souls and disillusioned spirits. It needs to stop.

…an increasing number of churches – including conservative evangelical churches – are reaching the conclusion that ones sexual orientation is not, in and of itself sinful or wrong or flawed or even intrinsically disordered.

It’s time for Exodus to join the rest of the world.

It would be ridiculous and offensive to tearfully lament a poor soul “trapped in an Asian American lifestyle.” And you would feel petty for doing so.

It is no less offensive or illogical to talk about being “trapped in a homosexual lifestyle”. There isn’t such a thing. And using language such as “trapped” implies that one can “change” into a heterosexual lifestyle. It shames and demeans a person for what they are. It’s “sissy boy” and “look at that pansy” and “why are you so girly” all over again, just repackaged as “Christian concern”.

When Exodus repeatedly denies the evidence in favor of the biological origins of homosexuality, it places your organization further in enmity to the mind. It build a dichotomy in which objective study, scientific research, and thoughtful analysis are pitted against unsubstantiated dogma and “faith”.

It is unnecessary and even blasphemous to insist that faith – real faith – needs to denounces the senses God gave us and to ignore what is evident. And, ultimately, it isn’t a battle that Exodus can win.

Exodus members should just accept their orientation and get on with finding out what to do about it.

So, in closing, I’d advise you to give Exodus a purpose that is theologically consistent, demonstrably possible, and which celebrates the Exodus member without trashing others.

An article in yesterday’s Washington Post reveals that, due to a ruling which requires schools to distribute materials from any non-profit organization, Regina Griggs has decided to abuse high school kids directly with fliers from PFOX: (Read More)

Behold the power of Fundamentalist Christian delusion.

Jacob, I don’t know who you are, but these people are predators. Your sexuality is part of you, and it has nothing to do with your drug addictions. And you don’t beat addiction to drugs by exchanging it for a dependency on profit-based faux-spiritual experiences proffered by people who use your life as a way to get rich. (See note.)

Note: It’s been brought to my attention that the leaders of IHOP live “modest lifestyles” and whatnot. This is, of course, anecdotal, and I have as of yet little knowledge of the group’s finances. What I do know is that whatever these people are selling is costly, because they deliver nothing real. They deliver empty promises and opiates for the masses. They also deliver real harm and dishonest counsel to people like Jacob. As you can see in the video, they are bolstering a young man with lies, and passing off as true testimony the preposterous idea that God has “healed” him of homosexuality. When your first exposure to a group is to their snake oil and lies, it’s not beyond the pale to suggest that someone, somewhere, is profiting off of this. But as I don’t know for sure, I wanted to amend this post to point out that these people could very well just be zealots. So there you go. Regardless, the video is painful to watch, because so many of us have been scarred by the people who perpetuate this sort of false worldview.

Shame on them.

Reading this article in Charisma by Exodus International’s Alan Chambers, I was struck with a realization: these people really are misogynist pigs. In the piece, Alan is announcing the arrival of Gayle Haggard’s sadly misguided book Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made In My Darkest Hour. Under the guise of encouraging Christians to more openly and honestly minister to the wives of gay men (excuse me, “men struggling with same-sex atttraction”), Chambers lays out a philosophy that holds women hostage to their gay husbands, out of a desire to “serve the Lord.” It’s very twisted:

Having personally struggled with feelings of same-sex attraction, my heart is always burdened when I hear of such heartache. The truth is that while Mrs. Haggard’s circumstances are unique, her situation is not.

Alan is probably moreso burdened because, as a gay man, he has remained married to a woman, thereby hijacking her life and her opportunity to be with a man who truly wants her, all of her. But yet, instead of taking his inner conflict and at least keeping it to himself, Alan has chosen to use his perceived victimhood to victimize another. The fact that his wife may be oblivious to this is irrelevant. These men have simply taken the normal patriarchal control over women to a new, sick level, but it’s part of a theme that’s been running through religious ideology for centuries: women are not viewed as whole, valid sexual beings on their own. They are captives to an idea of “male headship,” and their needs — emotional, physical, mental, spiritual — are secondary to those of their husbands. Put simply, these women are caught up in a lifestyle where their husbands are the final arbiters of their needs.

There is no credible evidence that men like Alan can change their inherent sexuality. It goes against everything we know about biology, about sexuality, about men’s sexual responses to stimulus. The fact that men like Alan Chambers and Randy Thomas have chosen lives which consist of abject denial in the service of that which they wish were true, and have profited handily from it, does not in any way negate reality. They’ve admitted as much, as they’ve constantly moved the goalposts over the years. These days, only the most ridiculous liars on their side suggest that gay men actually become heterosexual. Most have changed the official message from “you can become straight!” to “Jesus will fill the hole in your life where men are supposed to be!” So they go about their lives, staying on message with the daily flare-ups of their chosen stigmata, and yet, the wives? They’re mostly ignored. Some are likely brainwashed fully into the belief that their husbands are truly attracted to them. Others are held in captivity like orcas, content to do tricks because they’ve been taught over the years that their actual feelings and needs are simply unimportant, desires to be squelched just like their husbands’ desires for men. Still others likely live in a silent hell because they know, instinctively, that everything they say they believe about their marriages, about their husbands, is simply not true.

I personally know many who have struggled with homosexuality as married men and women, sought help and like Gayle Haggard, witnessed powerful, albeit hard-fought, healing in their marriage. One of them is my good friend, Mike Goeke. Mike grew up in the church, buried his struggle with homosexuality for years and eventually married his wife, Stephanie, with the hope that it would squelch rumors about his sexuality and help ‘fix’ him. After two years of marriage, Mike left a letter on the door of their home telling his wife that he was gay and wanted a divorce. He jumped headlong into a gay life style and left the church in bitterness and anger. Even so, Stephanie courageously told him, “God put us together and I don’t know how, but I know He can repair this situation.” Over time and through a book his father gave him, he heard truth and though he argued with God, he heard only one response - I love you.

Eventually, Mike gave in to the call of the Lord and returned to Stephanie and they began the long and arduous process of rebuilding their marriage. The church that Mike had once resented became an integral part of their healing when godly men helped him find his true identity as a man and a child of God. The Goekes now minister to couples who find themselves in similar situations and hold a marriage seminar at our ministry’s conference each year.

Poor Stephanie. Snowed under by a fundamentalist lifestyle that devalues knowledge and information, she relied on “God” to “repair” something that biology tells us is not in need of repair. It’s sad that she ended up married to a gay man (then and now), but we all deal with sad things from time to time, and what we need in those times is not dogmatic brainwashing, but honest counsel and support.

These women may or may not believe, in their hearts, that their marriages are “repaired.” But they’re not, because their husbands are committed to an ideology that states that their wives are not important enough, as human beings, to be treated honestly. Their husbands are committed to an ideology that states that sex is shameful in the first place, so the idea of their wives experiencing true sexual fulfillment is simply not on the radar.

Yes, these women do need support. They do need love. They also deserve the potential to experience the fullness of life, and as long as they allow themselves to be tied up in the basement by their ideology and that of their gay husbands, fed the occasional table scrap of attention and encouraged to pray about the rest, they will not fulfill that potential.

PFOX* is at it again. Jeremy has the scoop:

What sort of silly shenanigans are the PFOX-ers up to now? Well, they are taking one minor procedural determination from The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) and acting as if it has lent some kind of validity to their cause.

Here is the breathless press release from PFOX, replete with exaggerations:
(Read More)

In this video, a friend helps a friend who is terrified of kitty cats with some old fashioned immersion therapy.

Richard. Randall. If we see you trying to modify the techniques in this video for use in your “therapy,” we are going to very disappointed in you, even moreso than usual. And Randall? If you see this video and feel you MUST raid your kaboodle and put on kitty cat whiskers for the rest of the day, keep it to yourself.

(h/t The Awl)

I mean it, boys.