Media Contact: Wayne Bessen, American Prayer Hour Coordinator Phone: 917-691-5118 E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org Website:www.AmericanPrayerHour.org
Multi-City Prayer Hour Offers Alternative to the National Prayer Breakfast Whose Leaders Have Apparent Ties to Uganda’s Draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill
What: On Tuesday, February 2, 2010 key religious leaders will hold a press conference to announce the formation of The American Prayer Hour, a multi-city event on Thursday, February 4, 2010, with key events in Washington, DC, Dallas, Chicago and Berkeley. The American Prayer Hour events will affirm inclusive values and call on all nations, including Uganda, to decriminalize the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The American Prayer Hour provides an alternative to the National Prayer Breakfast, which is sponsored by The Family (aka The Fellowship), a group with disturbing ties to those spearheading Uganda’s oppressive Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
When: Tuesday, February 2, 2010 – 10:30 a.m. (EST)
Where: The National Press Club (Washington, DC) Murrow Room
529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor – Washington, DC 20045
Who: Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church
Frank Schaeffer, author, “Crazy For God: How I Grew Up
As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take
All of it Back.”
Harry Knox, The Human Rights Campaign, Director of Religion and Faith
Moses, A gay Ugandan man seeking asylum in The United States
Rev. Elder Darlene Garner, Metropolitan Community Church, Vice-Moderator, Board of Elders
Bishop Carlton Pearson, Senior Minister at Chicago, Illinois’ Christ Universal Temple
Background: Uganda is considering the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, put forth by parliamentarian David Bahati and initially backed by President Yoweri Museveni. If passed, the new law would unleash a vicious campaign of persecution against LGBT citizens. Bahati and President Museveni are members of The Family and are among their “key men” in Africa. The Family hosts the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. The American Prayer Hour will show that such cruelty and extremism does not represent most people of faith.
Sponsors:
National Black Justice Coalition
Religion and Faith Program
Human Rights Campaign Foundation
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
National Religious Leadership Roundtable
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
Evidence Suggests People Can’t ‘Pray Away The Gay’
By Wayne Besen
As long as prejudice and discrimination exist, some gay men and lesbians will feel pressure to try to change their sexual orientation. Unfortunately, there are organizations, such as Focus on the Family, that exploit such vulnerable people and their fears of rejection by family, church and society. On Saturday, Focus on the Family will roll into Birmingham with its much-hyped road show, “Love Won Out,” which offers false hope and broken promises.
It is important that one realize that such efforts are rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization in America, such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The America Psychiatric Association says that attempts to change sexual orientation can cause, “Anxiety, depression and self-destructive behavior.”
In August, the American Psychological Association released a landmark report that said, “There is insufficient evidence” for therapists to claim conversion therapy works. The APA report also cautioned so-called “ex-gay” counselors not to mislead clients by telling them that their sexual orientation can be changed.
Without science on their side, Focus on the Family has taken to distorting research. In the past two years, eight scientists have accused this group of manipulating their studies. The testimonies of these experts can be viewed at www.Respectmyresearch.org.
The empirical evidence also suggests that people can’t “pray away the gay.” For example, I photographed the “ex-gay” founder of Love Won Out, John Paulk, in a Washington, DC gay bar in 2001. Two of the founders of Exodus International, Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper, divorced their wives after they fell in love. The American Family Association’s poster boy for sexual conversion, Michael Johnston, had to step down in 2003 after he admitted affairs with men he had met on the Internet. Christian singer Ray Boltz came out of the closet in 2008 after thirty years of marriage and trying to “change”.
Love Won Out does not create heterosexuals, but their misguided “ex-gay” programs do lead to broken families. Focus on the Family loves to show people wedding photos. But, it would be more honest if they showed the divorce papers, which are a common outcome of such sexual engineering efforts.
More disturbing are conversion techniques. These include exorcisms and encouraging masculinity in male clients by suggesting they drink Gatorade and call friends “dude”. Lesbians attend makeup and lipstick seminars, which highlight the superficial and cosmetic “changes” such programs offer. Sadly, these groups even take clients as young as three years old!
A recent study by Caitlin Ryan shows that gay teens who experienced “negative feedback” by family members after they “come out” were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use. Clearly, unconditional love is important for gay teens and the message of Love Won Out epitomizes the negative feedback that can produce such harmful results.
Finally, Love Won Out’s spokesperson Melissa Fryrear was disingenuous when she told the Birmingham News this week that, “Science hasn’t proved people are born gay. It’s absolutely an open question. Part of the message is to read the studies that have been done. They’ll see there’s no evidence proving homosexuality is genetic. It’s a multi-causal struggle, and there are a number of factors that may make one vulnerable.”
It is unscientific and backwards to say that people are “vulnerable”, as if homosexuality can be caught like a cold. Most gay people – just like heterosexuals – instinctively know their sexual orientation is natural and that there was no “choice” in the matter. Conveniently, Fryrear misstates the facts and fails to point out that numerous studies have shown that sexual orientation likely has a genetic or biological basis.
However, there are no modern studies that show sexual abuse or poor parenting cause homosexuality, as Love Won Out falsely claims. While confusing parents by creating a fake cause and effect for homosexuality is good public relations, it simply is not true and dishonest for Fryrear to push such outdated and disproven theories.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual and trangender Americans come from every type of family imaginable. We grow up in liberal homes and conservative homes, non-religious and orthodox Christian families. How people are raised or if they believe in God has absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of their sexual orientation. This is just common sense supported by the hard and indisputable facts.
Love will truly win out when gay and lesbian people can live out of the closet with the unconditional acceptance, love and support they deserve.
Carol struggled as many spouses do when their loved one realizes the necessity of sexual honesty and integrity. Their private struggle was made tougher by the need for Ray to eventually go public and be honest with his Christian fans.
Toscano says:
Recently Carol launched her own blog, My Heart Goes Out. Please take a moment to visit the blog and share with Carol a word of support, a word of encouragement, a word of affirmation. She is a courageous and beautiful woman.
Antigay youth activist Mike Ensley — along with his “ex-gay” colleagues at Exodus International — has spent years encouraging same-sex-attracted persons to stay in the closet, refrain from calling themselves “gay,” and falsely tell their churches that they are “heterosexual” people with an attraction issue that, surely, some prayers and reparative therapy can fix.
So when an ex-gay tells his youth pastor that he’s still “struggling,” Ensley feigns shock that pastors respond with feelings of betrayal. Ex-gay activists have made churches unsafe for persons who experience predominant and persistent same-sex attraction, and now Exodus needs someone to blame.
I thought that stunk. In fact, I was pretty ticked that Josh even had to be a part of my little group over at the Exodus ministry where I volunteered. Not that he wasn’t a good guy to have around — always has been — but all he needed was a safe place to be transparent and find acceptance and support. It saddened me that he felt his church couldn’t offer that. Knowing that a real community was what he needed, and not a special ministry group, I often encouraged him to open up to someone in his life that he felt was safe. Maybe just the youth pastor to start.
When Josh finally did tell his youth pastor about his secret struggle, things drastically changed for him. He wasn’t allowed to be in student leadership anymore, or participate in the worship band. For some reason, the youth pastor felt it necessary to enact almost every level of church discipline on Josh, despite that he wasn’t in rebellion and didn’t want to be. Worst of all, he added insult to injury by asking Josh to refrain from any contact with children on church premises.
Through misleading marketing about “change” and “freedom” — not to mention the parroting of far-right hate propaganda about homosexual child molesters and about uppity gays who dare to protest votes against their freedom — Exodus has made celibate gay Christians unwelcome and feared in the nation’s conservative churches. (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.
When contemporary Christian music singer Ray Boltz recently acknowledged the truth that he has always been same-sex-attracted, and that years of poor ex-gay advice failed him, ex-gay activist Greg Quinlan and Exodus national speaker Bob Stith responded with falsehoods and ostracism.
Former ex-gays are familiar with that sort of response: For decades, ex-gay organizations have cast out members who acknowledged the truth that ex-gay “therapies” almost never succeed and often harm counselees.
The Our Family Matters conference Oct. 22-25 in Nashville will bring together former ex-gays, gay people of faith, their families, and supportive clergy. Tennessee’s Out and About newspaper says:
Launched as a live version of Kim Clark’s acclaimed documentary, God and Gays: Bridging the Gap, the conference will address questions related to the relationship between God and the GLBT community. The event will include a film festival, live concerts, national keynote speakers Jack Rogers and Rev. Deborah Johnson, and three days of workshops.
Presenters will include Boltz, Exodus Love In Action survivor Peterson Toscano, Colorado ex-gay survivor Christine Bakke, Mary Lou Wallner (a mother whose ex-gay attitudes contributed to her daughter’s suicide), and former Exodus leader Darlene Bogle.
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.
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.
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.
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”?
On Sept. 28, 
Former ex-gays are familiar with that sort of response: For decades, ex-gay organizations have cast out members who acknowledged the truth that ex-gay “therapies” almost never succeed and often harm counselees.
