It seems that Exodus International doesn’t like the attention it’s receiving lately. They were under the impression that they were going to coast through a poorly researched special on the Oprah Winfrey Network, as they grasp for relevance in a society that increasingly rejects their “work” for the junk science it is and the harm it causes. Instead, they have come under increased scrutiny as Truth Wins Out has led the effort to expose the shoddy reporting of Lisa Ling’s special, and now with our project demanding that Apple remove Exodus’s bigoted iPhone app:
Truth Wins Out today urged people to continue signing its Change.org petition to demand that Apple remove an offensive and scientifically bankrupt “ex-gay” iPhone app that was created by Exodus International, a group that believes people can and should “pray away the gay”. Truth Wins Out also released a new video today highlighting why Apple should be socially responsible and remove the app.
Truth Wins Out has reached out to Apple several times and the company has not yet responded. If Apple continues to bury its head in the sand, we will hold a press conference in front of their offices featuring sexual and spiritual abuse victims of “ex-gay” programs.
[...]
“Apple doesn’t allow racist or anti-Semitic apps in its store, yet it gives the green light to an app written by an anti-gay extremist group that targets vulnerable sexual-minority youth with the message that they are ‘sinful’ and ‘perverse,’” said Truth Wins Out’s Director of Communications and Development John Becker. “This is a double standard that should not stand.”
Now, Alan Chambers and Randy Thomas are pulling out the tiny violins, claiming on Facebook that they are “under attack.” Seasoned watchers of the Religious Right will recognize this language as a plea for sympathy, and also money. Randy is very upset that people are saying mean, terrible things to them on their blog and on Facebook. [In all likelihood, people are simply robustly telling them how wrong they are, about everything.]
As most of you are probably aware, especially if you have been on facebook or twitter, the protest against the Exodus iPhone app is escalating. As of this email the petition to have Apple remove it has grown to over 48,000 signatures. http://www.change.org/petitions/demand-that-apple-remove-ex-gay-iphone-app#?opt_new=t&opt_fb=t For some context,Thursday it was around 7,000.
Don’t worry, I will not let any ugliness develop. On the blog I catch them before anyone else sees them. That said, if your comment doesn’t immediately go through it is because I have to approve it. I can also toggle trusted friends to be automatically approved in the future. The comments I have let through that oppose our app, might be difficult but they do not represent the many more that were very hostile toward Exodus. I am hoping that a direct but loving response to these comments will be informative to all the people (literally thousands and thousands) who are being directed toward that page.
We could also use your help on the facebook page http://facebook.com/exodusinternational and our Twitter account at http://twitter.com/exodusintl. I can’t stop facebook comments before they come in and we obviously can’t stop someone from tweeting about us. Leah and I have been all over the hateful Facebook comments when they do come in so they don’t stay on the page long. Even so, ANY supportive comments and encouragement would be welcome on Facebook and Twitter as well.
Of course, Truth Wins Out readers are free to visit any of those links above. Please do not be cruel, as most of the cogs in the Exodus machine are professional victims, but feel free to robustly explain to them why they are getting this attention right now. A bit later, Randy’s whine gets really good:
Please pray for Exodus, Exodus Member Ministries, Counselors and Churches. We need your prayers for wisdom as we seek a way to answer this baseless all-out assault on our lives and beliefs. It’s much more than just an iPhone app. God’s work through Exodus is being mocked, ridiculed and stigmatized. And while we do not fight as the world fights, we can speak up lovingly and redemptively in the face of persecution. Truth never comes back void and God’s love and grace abound much greater than anything the world has to offer.
“As we seek a way to answer this baseless all-out assault on our lives and beliefs.”
Gee golly, Randall, isn’t that what the Religious Right, and their willing tools in Exodus, have been doing to LGBT people for decades? The projection here is simply unreal. Moreover, any human with Google and a brain can do a little research and see that this project to have the iPhone app removed is anything but a “baseless all-out assault.” When scientists are coming forward and asking that an app be removed [your app], because it blatantly misrepresents their work, and when that is only the icing on the cake, you’ve got a problem. The entire mission of Exodus International is based on lies, verifiable harm, and unrepentant bigotry against an entire class of people. And now you’re going to take to your computer and whine about being “attacked”? Please.
Also participating in the whining is Alan Chambers himself, who posted the following status on Facebook:
With some of the hate messages I am getting I am about ready to move my family to a gated community. Feeling a bit unsafe at the moment.
6 hours ago
OH GIVE ME A BREAK. Nobody is going to hurt you or your family, Alan! You are the one who hurts families. NOT US.
Later on, Alan asks what I find to be a very simple question, for which there is a very simple answer:
Alan Manning Chambers Do these people not listen to our message? UGH!
2 hours ago
YES. And that is why this is happening, because people are truly listening to the two-faced, dishonest bile that comes out of the spokesmouths of your organization.
Period.
At the moment, there are 96,514 signatures on our petition to have the Exodus iPhone app removed. Go here to add your name to the list if you haven’t already.
It’s getting really tiresome, especially after the events of the past few months, watching Religious Right spokespeople tie themselves up in knots over how they “don’t support bullying,” but oppose anti-bullying programs and legislation because they’re just too nice to gay people. When will these people ever understand that telling gay kids that they’re going to hell, or that they’re intrinsically disordered and sinful, for religious reasons, IS bullying? They are so used to their own Kool-Aid, and their weird, unloving version of love that they simply refuse to understand the obvious connections here.
Rebecca Burgoyne, research analyst with California Family Council, tells OneNewsNow that children across The Golden State are being indoctrinated with a pro-homosexual message. She maintains that the Obama administration and homosexual lobbyists are advancing an agenda that silences religious speech and the rights of parents.
“For many years, maybe a decade or so, gay activists in California have been making a big to-do about ‘bullying’ because of sexual orientation — or even perceived sexual orientation,” she explains. And the term “bullying,” she argues, has become the elementary-level word for “hate speech.”
January 24-28 marked “No Name-Calling Week” in public schools across the nation — a week-long observance designed for fifth- through eighth-grade and sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). While the observance claimed to be a week of educational and creative activities “designed to address bullying and end name-calling of all kinds,” Burgoyne explains that the agenda behind it contains a decidedly pro-homosexual slant.
“Nobody wants a child to be bullied,” she acknowledges. “Nobody wants a child to [be] hurt. Most people say ‘Oh, great! We’re teaching our children not to bully each other’ — which is a good thing. But it’s being used instead to push the homosexual message.”
[...]
The CFC research analyst contends that through such events as “No Name-Calling Week,” homosexual activists are seeking to make same-sex attractions acceptable to young children — while at the same time silencing the voice of other viewpoints.
You see, they simply can’t stand bullying, unless you’re trying to interfere with their ability to bully gay kids.
This has been making the rounds on the internet the past couple days, and I think it’s interesting from the perspective of showing just exactly what kind of climate can take hold in schools. Home video was taken of a football game at North High School in Eastlake, Ohio, which clearly shows students chanting “Powder blue faggots!” at the other team:
Former North High student Heather Ike took the video. “I sat there for a little bit thinking it would stop, and it happened again, and it happened three times,” Ike said, adding that she left the game after a few minutes, disgusted.
The video comes after national headlines about gay teens committing suicide because they were bullied. This video shows what appears to be acceptance of gay bullying.
“For her to catch it in the act is a major thing, because then you can actually see it, you know, it’s not just hearsay,” said a friend of Ike’s, Roger Thomas. Thomas has created an anti-gay bullying Facebook page in response to the video.
“I wasn’t surprised. It’s another incidence of hate speech,” said Jan Cline, executive director of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of Greater Cleveland.
Here’s the thing about hate speech: Half the kids doing the shouting probably weren’t remotely thinking of the way that would sound to a gay kid. Unfortunately, phrases like “that’s gay” and words like “faggot” have simply entered the vernacular for young people, and it’s going to be a steep, uphill battle to try to change that.
Meanwhile, there are the individual situations, where a specific kid is targeted with those slurs, and it is meant personally and hatefully. The thing is, for the kids being targeted, it really doesn’t matter. When they’re hearing it from a bully who means it personally, and then they hear it from an entire cheering section chanting it against an opposing team — “Faggots!” — it all begins to sound the same.
I’m sort of just thinking out loud, and typing it on the internet, right now. Feel free to share your thoughts about this in comments, about how to really combat these phrases and words that can mean such different things depending on who’s yelling them, to whom they’re being directed, etc. Personally speaking, I guess I’ve always been sort of “used to” the word “faggot,” and I, as a gay man, use it sometimes. And personally, it doesn’t bother me when a straight person whose heart I know to be pure and warm toward all things gay, uses it.
Bryan Fischer does not exist within reality. If he did, he would understand that homosexual students will always exist, no matter what kind of verbal genocide he and his cohorts try to commit against gay kids. If he did, he would realize that his words are words of malice and hatred, and that for him to suggest that “homosexuality” should be eradicated is tantamount to an endorsement of exactly the kind of bullying that drives gay kids to take their own lives. I doubt (???) he intends it that way, but seen within the context of reality, that is what these words mean:
It bears repeating: speaking the truth about homosexual behavior is not bullying. Nor is it harassment, as much as the deviancy cabal wants it to be.
It’s too bad Bryan Fischer hasn’t spoken the truth about homosexuality for one second in his sad life.
Homosexual conduct is as risky and dangerous as injection drug abuse. No right-thinking adult would encourage a student tempted to shoot up to yield to such impulses and plunge headlong into a drug-addled lifestyle. In fact, we would be highly critical of any adult who would do that, and hold him partially accountable for the destruction that would follow.
Nor should we encourage students wrestling with same-sex attractions to take the plunge. Rather, they should be helped to resist these self-destructive impulses and redirect their sexual energies in healthy and life-giving directions. It can be done; in fact, it happens every day.
If we want to see fewer students commit suicide, we want fewer homosexual students. What all truly caring adults will want to do for a student struggling with his sexual identity is to help him resist dangerous sexual impulses, accept his biological identity as either male or female, and help him learn to adjust his psychological identity to his God-given biological one.
The parts I skipped are where Bryan Fischer cries like a little baby about the fact that “homoseckshul activists” are “mean to Christians,” by which he means that he’s upset that we call his bigotry and hatred what they are: the ignorant, childish, malevolent, not socially acceptable, un-American, vile, piggish, ramblings of a miscreant whom the history books will remember with a disgusted smirk, if they remember him at all.
Pam points out something truly ridiculous: the supposedly venerable Washington Post has decided to give Tony Perkins space in their “On Faith” column to spew discredited, moronic hate speech about gay people, specifically bullied gay children.
Check out this malarkey:
The media has recently been filled with reports of several recent suicides by teenagers who are reported to have been victims of “anti-gay” bullying. Some homosexual activist groups lay blame at the feet of conservative Christians who teach that homosexual conduct is wrong, as well as pro-family groups such as Family Research Council which oppose elements of the homosexual political agenda, such as same-sex “marriage.”
The Christians and pro-family leaders I know are unanimous in believing that no person, especially a child, should be subjected to verbal or physical harassment or violence–whether because of their sexuality, their religious beliefs, or for any other reason. Such bullying violates the Christian’s obligation to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and receives no support from the pro-family political movement.
First of all, Tony pisses on the kids’ graves by putting “anti-gay” in scare quotes. Then he pisses on them and their surviving families by farting out a bunch of meaningless platitudes about how none of the “pro-family” leaders support bullying of anyone. Basically, he’s defending himself preemptively, which is always very telling. If Tony Perkins didn’t know deep down that he was a malignant bigot, he wouldn’t feel the need to issue such a disclaimer before planting a bunch of verbal crosses on gay kids’ lawns, dousing them with gasoline and setting them aflame.
Where bullying has occurred, the blame should be placed on the bullies themselves–not on organizations within society who clearly oppose bullying. I suspect that few, if any, such bullies are people who regularly attend church, and I would not be surprised if most of the “bullies” did not have the positive benefit of both an active mom and dad in their lives.
He keeps running hot water, but the blood is just not coming off his hands! His suggestion that bullies are unchurched is baseless and asinine.
[H]omosexual activist groups like GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) are exploiting these tragedies to push their agenda of demanding not only tolerance of homosexual individuals, but active affirmation of homosexual conduct and their efforts to redefine the family.
It’s very upsetting to Tony that groups which defend gay people deign to ask that garden variety bigots like Tony stop spreading messages that drive children to suicide. Where would Tony be without his soulless hatred? Nowhere, that’s where.
There is an abundance of evidence that homosexuals experience higher rates of mental health problems in general, including depression. However, there is no empirical evidence to link this with society’s general disapproval of homosexual conduct. In fact, evidence from the Netherlands would seem to suggest the opposite, because even in that most “gay-friendly” country on earth, research has shown homosexuals to have much higher mental health problems.
Perkins links to a February 2002 American Psychologist article, which reported on the “results of several breakthrough studies are offering new insights on gay men, lesbians and bisexuals.” While Perkins is right, “Several studies suggest that gay men, lesbians and bisexuals appear to have higher rates of some mental disorders compared with heterosexuals,” he’s totally wrong that these rates have nothing to do with discrimination. In fact, the article immediately goes on to report that “[d]iscrimination may help fuel these higher rates.” The article reported: “In a study that examines possible root causes of mental disorders in LGB people, [Susan] Cochran [PhD] and psychologist Vickie M. Mays, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, explored whether ongoing discrimination fuels anxiety, depression and other stress-related mental health problems among LGB people. The authors found strong evidence of a relationship between the two.” Several other studies back up this finding.
If you click that link, you will find more links in the Media Matters piece, to studies which Tony Perkins would prefer to pretend do not exist.
Media Matters also points out how utterly grotesque it is for the Washington Post to run such shameful bigotry on National Coming Out Day.
One more graf of disgusting, pig ignorant hatred, and then I’m going to go throw up:
Some homosexuals may recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal–yet they have been told by the homosexual movement, and their allies in the media and the educational establishment, that they are “born gay” and can never change. This–and not society’s disapproval–may create a sense of despair that can lead to suicide.
Great, now they’re marketing hate speech at the Wal-Mart. I understand that Wal-Mart caters to a certain, um, clientele, much of the time, but is this really necessary?
A children’s book written by the wife of anti-gay Standard of Liberty president Stephen Graham is being carried by over 100 Walmart stores. Chased by an Elephant, the Gospel Truth about Today’s Stampeding Sexuality by Janice Barrett Graham was written to “help shed the clear light of truth on today’s dark and tangled ideas about male and female, proper gender roles, the law of chastity, and the God-given sexual appetite,” according to Janice Graham in the book’s introduction.
“The number of our young people involved in sexual sins has greatly increased in recent years. Some of the most stalwart-seeming youth find themselves involved in pornography, fornication, promiscuity, homosexuality, and the like,” Janice continued.
The Grahams claim that their son, Andrew, successfully changed his sexual orientation and is now a happily married man.
And Andrew wrote a book about being in the closet too!
Whatever happened to The Poky Little Puppy, which is still, by my expert opinion, the finest children’s book of all time?
Why do these bigots feel the need to plant the idea in their kids’ heads when they’re children that, if they happen to be gay, they’re evil?
And then, as Sarah Silverman said in her video, they’re just shocked when kids start bullying other kids to death for being gay. Sarah’s right: they learn it from watching the purported “adults” in their lives. Adults like Janice Barrett Graham and her confused son.
Also, what on earth is up with that book cover? Is the elephant gay? If so, why is he not pink? And why is he so menacing? Is this what, in the author’s warped little mind, she thinks happened to her son? Why is the kid unsupervised out in elephant-land? These are important questions.
Saxby Chambliss’s office has admitted it. Here’s Joe Jervis with the latest from this crazy story that started this afternoon:
I’ve just gotten off the phone with Atlanta Journal-Constitution political writer Jim Gallaway who says that Sen. Saxby Chambliss has confirmed that the “All faggots must die” comment left here on JMG earlier today did indeed come from his Atlanta office. Galloway reports that Chambliss told him his office is now conducting an internal investigation.
“We have seen the allegations and are moving quickly to understand the facts. This office has not and will not tolerate any activity of the sort alleged,” Chambliss spokeswoman Bronwyn Lance Chester said. “Once we have ascertained whether these claims are true, we will take the appropriate steps.” The comment was posted on Joe.My.God., a blog dedicated to gay and lesbian issues. “All [gays] must die,” wrote a commenter identifying himself as “Jimmy.” Blog author Joseph Jervis of New York City used the Internet Protocol address attached to the comment to trace the slur to “the neighborhood” of Chambliss’ office in Atlanta. Readers quickly helped. “Among the fields in which gay people are over-represented is the IT field,” Jervis said. The office of U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson is in the same area. But a spokeswoman for Isakson said his staff quickly ascertained that the message did not originate with them.
Crazy, crazy.
Also: the person who did it will probably be identified by tomorrow, but let’s just go on record right now saying that whoever the person was who did it is not only a bigot, but also mindnumbingly stupid. From a Senate computer?! Really?! My god.
If you were Lou Engle, you would. He would call all of you Jezebel. In fact, he did last Tuesday night in St. Louis at a revival at the Gateway House of Prayer. As Wayne reported on Friday, Lou Engle and the team from TheCall are holding a series of revivals/schools every night from June 19 to July 12, open to the public. Thus, it was as a member of “the public” that I traveled to St. Louis on Tuesday to attend one of these sessions, alongside approximately two hundred of Engle’s faithful followers.
Most of the crowd was under thirty, and the striking thing was that most wouldn’t have looked out of place at Starbucks. They were suburban, to be sure, but there were also more than a few visible tattoos in the room. This is Lou Engle’s “Elijah Generation,” which represents a shift away from the overly coiffed, good-haired fundamentalist men of stereotype as well as reality. Quite frankly, I didn’t feel out of place, physically. However, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, it was soon made very clear that, though no one in the Gateway House of Prayer made so much as a move to speak to me or welcome me*, they considered me not only to be an enemy, but moreover one of the greatest threats to their well-being. This was disconcerting to experience as an adult, fully removed from the angst-ridden, closeted paranoia of my conservative Christian adolescence, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.
The evening began with a worship team leading the crowd in singing what some might call “songs,” for almost an hour and a half. However, they really weren’t “songs,” but more repetitive kindergarten-level chants. The praise leader would seize on a line like “I love you Jesus” or “Worthy is the lamb,” or a short, equally simple verse, and then lead the group in singing it over and over again, sometimes for more than ten minutes, before going seamlessly into another simple phrase and melody. The overall effect, I noticed, was a sort of hypnosis that fell over the crowd, as the young people in that room showed how serious they were about praising God by swaying, dancing, holding their hands in the air, and the like. Those in the front were the first to stand and sway and raise their hands, and, like a slow wave, the physical expression moved backward through the rows until it reached, and passed behind, me. The congregants would call this “The Holy Spirit,” perhaps, but really, it was just good old fashioned peer pressure. More than anything, the word that kept going through my head was “occult.” They were doing nothing less than going into ceremony, as Lou Engle’s bodyguard/bouncer kept a watchful eye from the front corner of the room, perhaps peering into the crowd for evidence of uninitiated outsiders or insiders not fully toeing the line.
Behave as a member of the tribe, or be discovered. And so I did, until Lou Engle finally stopped rocking back and forth in his seat in the front row and began to speak. I have embedded, in several segments, most of Lou Engle’s talk.** For each, I will summarize, analyze and comment on what was said, and the implications therein. If you’re pressed for time, I’m putting the most significant/egregiously awful quotes in bold print. The summary starts after the jump.
Lovely. Watch the video. Then I have a correction and a question:
Correction: Molotov Mitchell claims that the Ugandan anti-gay legislation only calls for the death penalty in cases of pedophilia, sexual abuse, knowingly spreading HIV, and “using power to coerce.” Molotov Mitchell is doing something usually referred to as “lying through his teeth.” He is likely aware that those five people in the world who respect him and view him as a trendy, macho guy are far too brainwashed to check his facts for themselves. Sadly, we have the text of the bill, and we were taught to read when we were young, so we can easily show you were Molotov Mitchell is lying. The death penalty is called for in cases of “aggravated homosexuality,” which is explained thus:
3. Aggravated homosexuality.
(1) A person commits the offense of aggravated homosexuality where the
(a) person against whom the offence is committed is below the age of 18 years;
(b) offender is a person living with HIV;
(c) offender is a parent or guardian of the person against whom the offence is committed;
(d) offender is a person in authority over the person against whom the offence is committed;
(e) victim of the offence is a person with disability;
(f) offender is a serial offender, or
(g) offender applies, administers or causes to be used by any man or woman any drug, matter or thing with intent to stupefy overpower him or her so as to there by enable any person to have unlawful carnal connection with any person of the same sex,
(2) A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality shall be liable on conviction to suffer death.
(3) Where a person is charged with the offence under this section, that person shall undergo a medical examination to ascertain his or her HIV status.
Okay. If a person has same gender sex with someone under 18, they can be put to death. Even if they’re 19. That’s #1. A person can be sentenced to death if they have same gender sex while HIV positive (even protected! even if they divulge their HIV status!). Thats #2. A person can be sentenced to death if they have same gender sex with someone they have authority over. Presumably this includes a boss having sex with one of his employees, coerced or not. That’s #3. A person can be sentenced to death for having same gender sex with a person who has a “disability.” Again, it is not stated that the sex must be coerced to merit that distinction. Simply that the “victim” must be disabled. That’s #4. Oh, but look at this one: If a person is a “serial offender,” they may also be put to death. This seems to mean that if they are caught having regular old gay sex MULTIPLE TIMES, they are subject to the death penalty. This, presumably, would put most sexually active gay people, having garden variety safe sex WITH THEIR PARTNERS, in danger of going before the, um, Death Panel. (Oh, look, death panels are real. They’re just in Africa.)
So. Either Molotov Mitchell is:
1. Stupid. (Entirely possible.)
2. A liar. (As a member of the Religious Right, this is likely.)
3. Both. (The likeliest option.)
So that’s the correction.
Now my question: When I watched the video, an advertisement for Woolite played beforehand. Woolite is made by Reckitt Benckiser. How do they feel about their name being associated with lying hate speech? Maybe you should ask them.
UPDATE: I only watched the video once, but it seems that a revolving group of products are advertising in this video, including Resolve and Dell. Jeremy Hooper and Warren Throckmorton have more on how to contact the companies involved, and Warren’s corrections of Mitchell’s lies are also thorough.
Great, now they’re marketing hate speech at the Wal-Mart. I understand that Wal-Mart caters to a certain, um, clientele, much of the time, but is 
