On the Oprah Winfrey Network’s “Our America” program last week, host Lisa Ling praised Alan Chambers for a soundbite in which the Exodus International president — addressing whether gay Christians go to heaven — said that all “Christians” go to heaven.

Chambers likely knew that Ling, like many previous naïve journalists, would misunderstand his carefully parsed words and inaccurately state to a non-evangelical audience that Exodus includes LGBT people within the domain of Christian salvation.

Chambers also knew that Exodus’ behind-the-scenes decisionmakers — its Christian Right investors and specific local “ministry” leaders who favor bullying, imprisonment, and involuntary brainwashing to scare youths straight — would demand a reiteration of Exodus’ spiritual judgment against political incorrectness.

That’s exactly what happened.

Today on the official Exodus blog, Chambers reminded his conservative audience that Exodus rejects the Christian salvation of people who demonstrate same-sex behavior, same-sex attraction, honest same-sex celibacy, or same-sex “identity.”

In short, nothing has changed at Exodus at all: The organization demands as a condition of salvation that “ex-gay” or “post-gay” people reject chastity that is honest about sexual orientation. Exodus further demands that people lie to the public about their orientation, and claim an artificial heterosexual “identity” when in fact they remain as gay as ever. Anyone who dares to be sexually honest is ostracized and damned to hell.

Chambers states that sexual honesty “gives license to sin.” He falsely states that, for Christians who are honest about their orientation, “gay comes first and takes center stage.  God won’t share His throne with anyone or anything.”

Even if one disregards Chambers’ previous statement that homosexuality is the opposite of holiness, this new statement makes absolutely clear that under no circumstance will Exodus share its Heaven with homosexuals.

We are reminded that Exodus’ view of God lacks grace; it is chained to a conformity which demands the daily practice of denial, antagonism against those who choose sexual honesty, and ostracism toward religious dissidents.

Chambers complains: “Entire churches and groups are ‘distancing’ themselves from Exodus and any concrete position on sexual sin for fear that they will be targeted.  I understand; it hurts to be misunderstood, judged and threatened. It’s tough to stand for something when our culture is all about standing for nothing.”

What chutzpah, given a culture of moral relativism, judgment, and mischaracterization that we have found at Exodus’ antigay conferences and in the organization’s efforts to silence antiviolence campaigns that are inclusive of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Professional journalists should know better than to accept such deceit at face value, and to parrot the deceptions despite warnings from those whose families and friends have been destroyed by Exodus.

Please sign our petition and demand that the Oprah Winfrey Network retract its documentary. OWN owes airtime to the survivors of Exodus International and to the mental-health professionals who were denied a voice in the documentary.

A new article in Scientific American explores issues of sex behavior-role labeling among men who have sex with men (a category that includes ex-gays). The article, written by Jesse Bering, refutes some assumptions among heterosexuals about what men do behind closed doors, and how they label themselves:

…Survey studies have found that many gay men actually self-identify as “versatile,” which means that they have no strong preference for either the insertive or the receptive role. For a small minority, the distinction doesn’t even apply, since some gay men lack any interest in anal sex and instead prefer different sexual activities. Still other men refuse to self-label as tops, bottoms, versatiles or even “gay” at all, despite their having frequent anal sex with gay men. These are the so-called “Men Who Have Sex With Men” (or MSM) who are often in heterosexual relations as well.

The article observes that predominantly insertive and predominantly passive partners tend to be honest in labeling their role — but not necessarily their sexual orientation.

Tops were more likely than both bottoms and versatiles to reject a gay self-identity and to have had sex with a woman in the past three months. They also manifested higher internalized homophobia—essentially the degree of self-loathing linked to their homosexual desires.

Attitudes among predominantly insertive partners appear to differ substantially from those who identify as “versatile”:

Versatiles seem to enjoy better psychological health. Hart and his coauthors speculate that this may be due to their greater sexual sensation seeking, lower erotophobia (fear of sex), and greater comfort with a variety of roles and activities.

The article cites one 2003 Centers for Disease Control study, published in the Journal of Sex Research, which observed that while labels do not directly correlate to unsafe sexual behaviors, they do reflect upon individuals’ likely awareness of safer-sex protocols:

Although self-labels were not associated with unprotected intercourse, tops, who engaged in a greater proportion of insertive anal sex than other groups, were also less likely to identify as gay. Non-gay-identified MSM [again, "Men Who Have Sex With Men"] may have less contact with HIV prevention messages and may be less likely to be reached by HIV-prevention programs than are gay-identified men. Tops may be less likely to be recruited in venues frequented by gay men, and their greater internalized homophobia may result in greater denial of ever engaging in sex with other men. Tops also may be more likely to transmit HIV to women because of their greater likelihood of being behaviorally bisexual.

Another study, published in Sexual and Relationship Therapy in 2008, warns that gay male couples “might want to weigh this issue of sex role preferences seriously before committing to anything longterm. From a sexual point of view, there are obvious logistical problems of two tops or two bottoms being in a monogamous relationship. But since these sexual role preferences tend to reflect other behavioral traits (such as tops being more aggressive and assertive than bottoms), ‘such relationships also might be more likely to encounter conflict quicker than relationships between complementary self-labels.’”

Hypersync wonders why ex-gay activists are conning Christian conservatives into yet another round of false labeling. Instead of acknowledging that persons’ sexual and romantic attractions are real, ex-gay talking heads at Exodus and Focus on the Family want gullible churchgoers to think attractions and basic personality traits are as changeable as one’s label, hence all same-sex-attracted people are no longer same-sex-attracted, they are now “gay-identified.”

Hypersync says: “I’m curious of the round-table conversation that drove them to this most recent change in terminology. What went on, what argument was made, what are the reasons why? I suspect that once again, they determined that their arguments are not winning the day, so they have to mix up things a bit.”

– The symposium will be at 2:00 p.m. on Monday afternoon (5/5/08) in lecture halls 159 A & B in the Washington, D.C., Convention Center –

Since 1973, the once dreaded American Psychiatric Association has become an ally of gay and lesbian equality. They have consistently withstood outside pressure from right wing organizations and instead chose to do what was in the best interest of GLBT mental health. Most notably, they endorsed same-sex civil marriage in a groundbreaking 2005 position paper.

In 1997, the APA first addressed ex-gay (or reparative) therapy by stating, “The potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great and include depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior…Further, APA calls on these organizations and individuals to do all that is possible to decrease the stigma related to homosexuality wherever and whenever it may occur.”

In 2000, the APA issued an even stronger statement and recommended “that ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change individuals sexual orientation, keeping in mind the medical dictum, to ‘first do no harm.’”

Unfortunately, a terribly misguided gay psychiatrist, Dr. David L. Scasta, is violating the spirit — if not the letter — of APA policy statements. In May, he will be part of a controversial symposium (Scasta calls it historic) he organized. It includes ex-gay therapist, Dr. Warren Throckmorton, who is the Sultan of Stigma and a leading purveyor of religion-based shame therapy.

Writing in the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists’ newsletter, Scasta claims this forum will seek, “common ground” on “both sides of the religious divide.” He also urges that participants keep the symposium, “scientifically and rationally based” and hopes those on stage are committed to, “avoiding rhetoric.” Near the end of his article, Scasta claims his goal is to “ratchet down the forces of polarization.”

If the seminar’s mission is to let cooler heads prevail, inviting Throckmorton is a curious choice. An unlicensed psychologist who teaches at fundamentalist Grove City College, Throckmorton wrote an inflammatory paper for a right wing website titled, “Is Sexual Re-orientation Possible?”, that compared leaving homosexuality to quitting smoking. (Read More)

“Gender identity is very important to God,” according to Exodus executive vice president Randy Thomas.

But what verses of the Bible or any other authoritative religious document refer to “gender identity”? In an interview published today by Focus on the Family, Thomas does not say.

Sidestepping specifics about the Bible, Thomas ignores a growing Christian debate about gender-variant Biblical role models and eunuchs, broadly labels gender-variant individuals as “confused,” and offers a bold generalization: that the courage to express one’s individuality is the fault of unidentified “activists.” (Read More)