Debbie Thurman, of Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church, has founded an ex-gay web site: theFormers.com.

What, one might wonder, qualifies Thurman to mislead people into joining ex-gay political groups?

Almost nothing, apparently — she has no professional training in counseling or mental health. Her autobiographical sketch cites a college degree in English and a stint as public affairs officer in the Marine Corps. Despite her lack of competence, Thurman has spent years profiting from shell “ministries” that inflict her ignorance upon Christians who suffer from clinical depression.

Thurman’s site is well-designed, but it offers little if any original content. TheFormers.com seems to be merely another in a family of religious-right linkfests for Exodus International, Focus on the Family, NARTH, and PFOX — a pricey method of inflating the Google PageRank of these organizations. (Read More)

Focus on the Family denies the existence of former ex-gays — a growing movement of hundreds of people who have discovered through personal experience that ex-gay activists’ claims are not only false, but toxic to families and communities.

Former ex-gays gathered this weekend in Memphis, Tenn., at the same time as Focus’ ex-gay roadshow, Love Won Out, which appeals to antigay pastors and parents of gay persons with sales pitches for ex-gay propaganda and political appeals to deny equality to gay couples.

According to Peterson Toscano, a survivor of Exodus International’s flagship live-in program Love In Action: “They [Focus on the Family] basically tell parents of lesbian and gay kids that it’s bad to be gay, and they give testimonies about how awful people’s lives were while they were gay. They say they can change and save you.”

In promoting its roadshow, Focus on the Family on Feb. 20 described former ex-gays (who were to come from as far away as California and Connecticut) as “local activists” who advocate “a revisionist view of the Bible.” Focus concealed the central fact that the “activists” included former ex-gays.

Love In Action has similarly shielded its participants from survivors and allies who have held vigils nearby. Jacob Wilson, now 22, was an ex-gay participant in LIA in 2005. According to the Memphis Commercial-Appeal:

After Wilson left LIA, he found out what the protesters had wanted him to know.

“These people weren’t doing it to be activists, they were doing it to show that we weren’t alone, that we were loved … It crushes me that that message was cut from us.”

(Read More)