For the past several months, Exodus International president Alan Chambers and Exodus “women’s ministry” director Yvette Cantu Schneider — a former Family Research Council political operative — have used their ex-gay soapboxes to wage political war against California gay couples.

Appearing at events in support of Proposition 8 to eliminate the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry, Chambers has told audiences that — just as some right-wing Christians demand that Jewish school children be denied tolerance to pressure them to become fundamentalist, and other Christians demand that American youths be denied public education in order to turn them into Sarah Palins — gay people must be denied equal opportunity under the law.

Why?

Chambers is clear about the reason: Gay people, in his opinion, must be given no legal alternative to a nightmarish lifestyle of secretive hole-in-the-wall bars, unsafe encounters, and round-the-clock fear of bigoted co-workers and fellow church-goers. (Read More)

I don’t want to overstate the importance of a one-line Facebook status entry — I’ve occasionally said things on Facebook that I regretted — but I found the following ex-gay Facebook entry deeply disturbing today.

Charlene E Hios is wondering if we realize that homosexuality is a judgment of God upon the human race because we have exchanged the Glory of God for images such as ourselves!

Hios is the operator of Bridging the Gaps Ministries in California. She claims to be a former lesbian, but she reports little if any attraction to men and she is not very forthcoming about her ongoing attraction to women.

Hios has in recent months used her “ministry” to promote Proposition 8 by wagging her finger against California gay couples who wish to marry — dictating, at various times, that she and other Christians know God’s will better than the couples do, and insinuating that conservative Christian voters are somehow more qualified than liberals or people of other faiths to decide who is entitled to marry under civil law.

Hios is sincere in her beliefs, but deeply deluded — not only about her artificial ex-lesbian “identity” and her ignorance of the Bible, but also about her moral fitness to judge others and to make laws that will make others as unhappy and alone as she — unfortunately — seems to be.

Is it possible that Hios is so consumed by her own sexual struggles that she has exchanged the glory of God for her own image? Is it possible that the ex-gay movement strangles human generosity and love toward other people by crippling its adherents with obsessive preoccupation over their own minor problems?

Today is what I call Sexual Honesty Day — otherwise known as National Coming Out Day.

Sexual Honesty Day was developed by Dr. Robert Eichberg and Jean O’Leary in 1988. It was popularized with the artwork of Keith Haring.

Sexual Honesty Day affirms the decision of same-sex-attracted persons to be honest with friends, family, and neighbors. Sexual honesty makes healthy living possible: It enables informed, transparent, and responsible behavior; it allows people to obtain emotional, physical, and spiritual support; it spares heterosexual spouses the trauma of an ex-gay “marriage”; it allows same-sex-attracted people to un-closet the romantic side of their lives.

In short, National Coming Out Day events around the world the pro-equality movement a familiar face for friends and peers of those who are same-sex-attracted.

Sadly, Sexual Honesty Day is hated and parodied by a handful of ex-gay activists, who created a Dishonesty Day in response.

For years, HIV-positive ex-gay activist Michael Johnston chaired “National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day.” NCOHD was promoted annually by Focus on the Family and Peter LaBarbera — until 2003, when Virginia attorney Michael Hamar contacted TruthWinsOut.org founder Wayne Besen. Hamar had two clients who claimed to have had unsafe sex with Johnston, and one client believed he may have been infected with HIV from Johnston. After admitting a vague “moral fall,” Johnston’s “ex-gay” Kerusso Ministries collapsed in shame. Johnston later returned to ex-gay politics and finance, however, through the so-called “Pure Life Ministries” in Kentucky. Johnston has never apologized nor made amends for endangering the lives of his male sex partners.

Meanwhile, Dishonesty Day lived on, albeit feebly: Exodus International tried to resuscitate NCOHD in 2006, while the Traditional Values Coalition promotes Dishonesty Day — and Michael Johnston — on its web site. Neither organization warns readers about Johnston’s potentially lethal abuse of gay men. (Perhaps we need a Double Dishonesty Day?)

Whether one calls it National Coming Out Day or Sexual Honesty Day, today offers people from all walks of life an opportunity to reflect on their level of honesty and openness with their families and neighbors - and to think about secrets that might be eating away at their emotional or physical health.

Millions of lives are destroyed, relationships are uprooted, and fortunes are wasted in the false hope of becoming ex-gay, all because of the blatant misuse of one biblical passage.

It is well-known that the ex-gay movement is based on very faulty psychological premises.  What is not so well-known is that the biblical basis for their assumptions is equally bankrupt.  It may be good to remind ourselves that every time oppressed groups began to make headway in America they were all opposed by those who claimed to have the Bible on their side.  Eventually, their arguments were perceived as the rantings of self-serving demagogues and carry no weight today among mainstream Christians and biblical scholars.

So today we should not be surprised that the Bible is trotted out once again to keep another oppressed group under wraps.   And just as before, a careful look at their arguments finds this current effort wanting.

(Read More)

On Sept. 28, Truth Wins Out protested a Baptist Press article by ex-gay activist and longtime Exodus member Bob Stith. While mourning the sexual honesty of Christian contemporary singer Ray Boltz, the article unnecessarily and falsely quoted Human Genome Project former director Francis Collins as saying:

Homosexuality is not hardwired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality.

Collins never said that; ex-gay political activist Greg Quinlan did. Good As You made the same observation.

Collins had said almost the opposite: He told Ex-Gay Watch:

The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence.  But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved.  That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.

Collins added:

No one has yet identified an actual gene that contributes to the hereditary component (the reports about a gene on the X chromosome from the 1990s have not held up), but it is likely that such genes will be found in the next few years.

Ten days later, Baptist Press finally changed the wording of the article — without acknowledging to readers the nature of the falsehoods that had previously been conveyed, without apparent effort to correct syndicated copies of the article that were circulated around the Internet, without apology to Dr. Collins, and — most importantly — without apparent reforms necessary to prevent future errors.

The only hint of the two-week deception appears at the top the article with this brief note:

REVISED: October 8, 2008 to reflect more accurate wording from “The Language of God” by Dr. Francis Collins.

Stith’s article now accurately conveys what Collins said — but the damage has already been done among readers who walked away from the article (and more than a dozen syndicated copies) believing that a leading geneticist had declared homosexuality a purely environmental choice.

Thus far, it seems Stith might walk away from the damage with nothing more than a quiet admission of fault to one web site, Ex-Gay Watch, which his regular audience never reads. Meanwhile, Quinlan has not acknowledged any deception whatsoever. We have asked Stith for assurances of complete remedial action; he has declined to respond.

Stith’s peers say that he is a man of good character; at one time I believed that, but I became very doubtful 10 days ago and now I am nearly convinced otherwise. True accountability, transparency, and penitence require more effort and integrity than I’m seeing, at present, from a prominent Exodus speaker and policy wonk for the Southern Baptist Convention.

Longtime Exodus International member “minister” and speaker Bob Stith on Sept. 25 became the third ex-gay activist entity in recent times to falsely imply that the Human Genome Project or its director support ex-gay ideology.

In April 2007, A. Dean Byrd of the ex-gay advocacy group National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality cherry-picked partial statements by Francis Collins, Ph.D, of the Human Genome Project, for an article which falsely implied that Collins supported NARTH’s ideological position opposing the existence of sexual orientation as a biological phenomenon.

Collins told Ex-Gay Watch the following month (and repeated this on Sept. 21, 2008):

It troubles me greatly to learn that anything I have written would cause anguish for you or others who are seeking answers to the basis of homosexuality. The words quoted by NARTH all come from the Appendix to my book “The Language of God” (pp. 260-263), but have been juxtaposed in a way that suggests a somewhat different conclusion that I intended. I would urge anyone who is concerned about the meaning to refer back to the original text.

The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence. But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved. That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.

[Ex-Gay Watch’s] note indicated that your real interest is in the truth. And this is about all that we really know. No one has yet identified an actual gene that contributes to the hereditary component (the reports about a gene on the X chromosome from the 1990s have not held up), but it is likely that such genes will be found in the next few years.

Earlier this month, New Jersey ex-gay activist Greg Quinlan and the American Family Association ignored Collins’ warning against NARTH’s interpretation — and further distorted Collins’ position. Quinlan said:

When [gay Christian contemporary singer Ray Boltz] says he’s born that way, we know now for a fact that that’s false. In fact, just last year in March, the director of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis Collins, said this: homosexuality is not hardwired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality.

Collins said nothing of the sort, and a few days after Quinlan’s article, Collins repeated his earlier assertion that NARTH had distorted his position. Quinlan refused to retract his claim — turning it from a mere falsehood into an outright lie.

Despite those events, Stith repeated Quinlan’s lie to his Baptist Press audience on Sept. 25:

For example, in 2003, the International Human Genome Consortium announced the successful completion of the Human Genome Project, which, among other things, identified each of the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA. The press release read: “The human genome is complete and the Human Genome Project is over.”

While this accomplishment was widely reported, almost no one reported the words of Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the project. Collins, arguably the nation’s most influential geneticist, said, “Homosexuality is not hardwired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality.”

Somehow the major media missed that little tidbit. Collins and others
acknowledge that genetics can predispose but not predetermine. This supports other studies that clearly document the possibility of change for people who struggle with unwanted homosexual desire.

Stith is now the Southern Baptist Convention’s “National Strategist for Gender Issues.” That SBC “gender” panel is actually an ex-gay policy group within the SBC administration. It is dominated by Exodus member activists.

In other words, Stith is no longer a spiritual minister; he has become a professional spin artist.

Stith not only parrots the exposed lie of Quinlan, but also connects that untruth to an illogical assertion that if one bisexual person can “change” their behavior, then any homosexual person can “change” their orientation.

If anything good is to come from all of this ex-gay truthlessness and spin, perhaps it’s that Stith, Exodus, NARTH, Quinlan, and the AFA have become so untruthful that many concerned families of gay people are leaving Exodus and NARTH behind, and seeking help from trustworthy sources of information in mainstream therapeutic and gay-tolerant religious communities.

I invite Stith to apologize, to distribute a retraction to the same media outlets that received his original statement, and to condemn the stubborn untruthfulness of Quinlan and NARTH.

Addendum:

In 1998, Stith spoke the following in his Sunday sermon as an apology to a gay man who attended the church that day:

We have not lived in transparency. We have often cloaked our own weakness and pointed instead at the sins of others. We have settled for a form of godliness which manifests respectability but has no power to change the core of our being.

We do humbly ask forgiveness.

We have manifested more of an interest in being right than in being loving and often succeeded in being neither.

We do humbly ask forgiveness.

Forgiveness requires true repentance, and repentance requires actual change — not merely a token expression of regret followed by more of the same misconduct.

If Stith is truly penitent, then why did he not bother to factcheck — and why does he continue to abuse the word “change”?

Six months ago, Exodus president Alan Chambers declared — despite then-ongoing political alliances — that Exodus had decided months earlier to focus upon ex-gay ministry and refrain from politics.

Exodus has violated that commitment again, with Chambers and his so-called “women’s ministry” leader Yvette Schneider — a former FRC operative — entangling themselves in California’s Proposition 8.

The ballot initiative represents a battle by the state’s Republicans against freedom to marry. In fact, the initiative stands almost no chance of passage: It is a GOP ploy to draw social-conservative voters to the polls and to squeeze defenders of religious, personal, and family liberty out of the GOP.

Chambers and Schneider will take their campaign to restrict Californians’ right to marry to three simulcast rallies, which will employ hundreds of antigay churches and antigay youth groups that seem willing to turn their tax-exempt churches into GOP recruiting stations. The simulcast are scheduled as follows:

Thursday, September 25, 7:00-8:30 pm - Rally for Pastors and Church Leaders
(Rebroadcast Thursday, October 2, 1:00-2:30 pm)
Speakers: Jim Garlow, Chuck Smith, Kenneth Ulmer, Maggie Gallagher, Glenn Stanton, Jennifer Roback Morse, Alan Chambers, Miles McMcPherson, Chris Clark, Dudley Rutherford, Jim Franklin, Lou Engle, and others

Wednesday, October 1, 7:00-8:30 pm - Rally for Youth, Young Adults and Parents
Speakers: Miles McPherson, Ron Luce, Yvette Schneider, Greg Koukl, Sean McDowell, Katinas, Stellar Kart, and others

Sunday, October 19, 5:00-6:30 pm - Rally for Congregations
(Rebroadcast Sunday, November 2, 5:00-6:30 pm)
Speakers: Jim Garlow, Matt Staver, Miles McPherson, Alan Chambers, Tony Perkins, and others

Here’s a list of participating churches political party meeting rooms.

Here’s the political propaganda that will be laundered by the “churches.”

Exodus International executive vice president Randy Thomas commented today on the revelation that Christian singer Ray Boltz has always been gay.

Let me explain, I feel awful for him that he felt so isolated and suffered from shame. It’s sorrowful that he didn’t feel like he could be honest and transparent with others unless it was to embrace a gay identity and worldview.

Nonsense. Boltz did not “embrace a gay identity and worldview,” he acknowledged the truth that he has always been same-sex-attracted. Thomas’ politically correct chatter about “identity” and a nonexistent “gay worldview” is a reminder that Exodus leaders too often behave like the heads of an elitist cult — or worse, like press-release writers for a slick politician. They certainly do not present themselves as trustworthy counselors in a safe, sincere, or truthful refuge for Christians such as Boltz who are same-sex attracted.

According to The Washington Blade, Boltz tried to be ex-gay for decades:

It got to the point by the early-to-mid ’00s that keeping his homosexuality hidden had become an increasingly wearying notion.

“You get to be 50-some years old and you go, ‘This isn’t changing.’ I still feel the same way. I am the same way. I just can’t do it anymore.’”

There was some exploration of “ex-gay” therapy though Boltz never attended an “ex-gay” camp or formal seminar.

“I basically lived an ‘ex-gay’ life — I read every book, I read all the scriptures they use, I did everything to try and change.”

Indirectly, this spilled out into his songwriting. Boltz says even though he never told his fans the specifics of his struggle, it added a dimension to his lyrics that resonated.

Thomas’ current advice to same-sex-attracted Christians is the same advice that ex-gay books and therapists gave to Boltz: Hide your sexual orientation. Falsely claim to be heterosexually attracted. Only relate to people and only read books that are “Biblically appropriate” as redefined by James Dobson, Coral Ridge Ministries, or the American Family Association.

Such advice betrayed Boltz, and it continues to betray the spiritual and social well-being of people of faith. It sells out the truth for the sake of correctness, conformity, and authoritarian political interests.

Thomas presumes to pray down to Mr. Boltz and his family, but perhaps it is Thomas who needs prayers.

Exodus youth activist Mike Ensley says he frequently receives inquiries from antigay parents and youths about gay-straight clubs that unite students against violence and prejudice in schools. (Read More)