Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. visited Exodus speaker Ken Hutcherson at his Seattle-area megachurch recently and today offered observations about Hutcherson’s betrayal of his own victory over discrimination — and Hutcherson’s exploitation of “ex-gays”. (Read More)

Ken Hutcherson is selling tickets for a culture-war voyage from Seattle to Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

Hutcherson boasts:

New Encounter with God!

This time together will be an outstanding opportunity to stand for righteousness and renew our commitment to God as individuals, as couples, and as a group.

God has called us to be salt. Do you know what that really means? During our time together I will help you understand through the Scriptures what it really means.

Got [sic] wants to make sure your salt doesn’t stay in the shaker so let’s get shakin’ for Christ! Let’s run the race and reach for the prize.

Pastor Hutch

Feeling righteous? Reserve your tickets now — $659 for a deluxe stateroom — for Oct. 3-6, 2008. It isn’t clear whether unrighteous individuals are welcome on the cruise — but non-smokers clearly are not very welcome. Not only is smoking allowed in most public lounges and deck areas, it is also allowed in all staterooms — there are no non-smoking rooms.

• Exodus board member Phil Burress, speaking as the leader of Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values, says nominee-in-waiting John McCain has failed to mobilize so-called “values voters” (conservative Christians). Disappointed at the defeat of Southern Baptist former pastor Mike Huckabee in the GOP presidential race, Burress spells out what he thinks McCain must do to win support: “apologize to evangelical Christians and values voters for the way he has treated them over the years” and “strengthen his pledge to appoint strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court.”
• Exodus conference speaker Ken Hutcherson prays for God’s help to hinder a woman’s right to visit her lesbian partner in the hospital — and to deny other basic rights to certain types of Americans who do not self-identify as African-American.
• Ex-gay activist groups including Abiding Truth Ministries and Stephen Bennett Ministries have mobilized to scare conservative Christian parents into keeping their kids home from school when antiviolence advocates commemorate an annual Day of Silence. Watchmen on the Walls, an organization co-led by Exodus conference speaker Ken Hutcherson, also is joining the campaign to stop antiviolence efforts in schools. Two gay and gender-variant youths were killed last month, one of them in an Oxnard, Calif., classroom. Since then, youths and young men have been assaulted in Florida and Georgia.