Truth Wins Out’s Petition Urging Apple to Dump Ex-Gay iPhone App Hits 30,000 Signatures
If Apple Does Not Respond, Press Conference Featuring Exodus Victims Will Be Held In Front of Apple’s Offices
BURLINGTON, Vt. – 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.
“If Apple does not respond, we will take steps to ensure that Apple meets the victims of ‘ex-gay’ ministries and learns how their lives were destroyed,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “It is astounding that Apple would allow an app from an organization that promotes gay exorcisms, demonizes LGBT people, and is rejected by every respected mental health association in America.”
Surpassing the 30,000-signature threshold is important because Apple removed the anti-gay Manhattan Declaration app after only 7,730 petition signatures. The high number of participants who contacted Apple shows momentum and that the company’s customer base is rightfully concerned that Apple is disseminating a product that has ruined many lives.
“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.”
Truth Wins Out wrote an op-ed for The Huffington Post that has led to a robust discussion on this topic. Please feel free to join the conversation.
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Damn straight.
Hopefully meeting them in person won’t be necessary, but if it is, I wish y’all the best of luck and that I could be there with you.
http://www.change.org/petitions/truth-wins-out-stop-with-the-reverse-suppression-from-gays-4
The thing that worries me the most is that with it’s past track record, Apple is either promoting homophobia, endorsing homophobia, or attempting to profit off other people’s homophobia by allowing homophobic apps to be posted, selling them, and then apologising and taking them down–essentially trying to make an exploitative profit in that narrow window between posting and apologising. If that’s the case, they’re banking on the fact that once they apologise, we’ll forgive them and keep spending money with them, which is just not good enough.
You are doing great work Wayne. This is a good strategy to confront Apple at their work place with actual victims of this ‘ex-gay’ psychological rape scam. Would Apple offer an app called “JesusKillingJews” which offers them the possibly of change from the sinful and evil Jewish lifestyle? The whole thing is so sick. Shame on you Apple.
Just who are you, wayne to make the determination
of what apps I or any one else can download? what
gives you and your organization the right to deny
those who want the app to download? What’s next?
demanding apple take down any app that you don’t
agee with? Maybe I’ll start my own petition if
TWO launches an app. Fair is fair
I am shocked this is real. I am also an Apple customer and I am asking Apple to drop this Ap and make sincere apologies for any and all dangerous injuries. Do it today!
“Maybe I’ll start my own petition if
TWO launches an app. Fair is fair”
Fair is fair, eh? Instead of waiting to see if TWO’s hypothetical app actually breaks Apple’s TOS (yanno, like Exodus’s app does), you’d just petition it because TWO made it? Sounds more like blind spite, to me.
I get the feeling that most of the people who cry about TWO expecting Apple to hold to their own submission agreement don’t actually know what fairness and freedom of speech entail.
Why is no one complaining about the Grindr app? At least the Exodus International app offers help and wholeness. Grinder offers the opposite. It offers a secret place for lots of married men to hook up with other men… helping to ruin marriages and families. If someone wants to keep their family and get help, Exodus is a much better choice than the Grindr app.
I agree, David, driving kids to kill themselves is MUCH better than meeting up with new friends and having fun OH WAIT.
Oh, Makyui… when talking to David, are you referring to “fun” like the HIV positive guy I met who is hooking up with guys on Grindr and not telling them until after having unsafe “fun”?
Oh, Eric…more pathetic scare stories to serve as a smokscreen for the consumer fraud perpetrated by the child predators at Exodus and their creepy youth program.
Oh, David. Is there a better place on the planet for closet cases to hook up than Exodus. A bunch of pathetic closet cases screwing their prayer partners on the sly and whining about how the have “fallen”. Or a bunch of sexless opposite sex marriages where one partner has no attraction towered the spouse. How us such dishonesty and deciet making anyone “whole”.
The men are 1000% more honest on Grider or a gay bathhouse then they are at a biblical brothel like Exodus.
Married men were hooking up on AOL in the late 90s, and on Craigslist, adam4adam, manhunt, and gay.com since then, and in parks/adult bookstores even today. You can’t blame Grindr for something that has already been going on for years (and who the heck has unprotected sex these days anyway?).
Maybe the married men wouldn’t HAVE to be sneaking out, cheating on their wives (and I’ve had more than a few tell me “it isn’t cheating, cos it isn’t with another woman”), IF Exodus would let them be honest about their true sexual orientation.
David Ballard really? The Exodus App offers “wholeness”? Really? Leading someone to believe they can change a vital part of themselves–making them feel bad about that, giving them promises that then lead to complete dissappointment and self-hatred is “wholeness”? Only someone completely cruel or deluded (or both) would make such a stupid statement.
Eric G, I’m in a monogomous relationship so I haven’t used Grindr or many of the other similar products, but there were similar things available back when I was single and just like then it’s up to you to practice safe-sex. You can’t blame other people for your own actions. This supposed HIV + guy you met is responsible for his own but so are the people he meets.
Ain’t Grindr’s primary purpose, Eric, nor is its purpose playing nanny to full-grown men to make sure they maintain safe-sex practices. Guilting gay people into harming themselves IS the primary purpose of Exodus’s app, however.
It’s too bad you can’t see the difference, there.
David Ballard said, “. . . Grinder offers the opposite. It offers a secret place for lots of married men to hook up with other men… helping to ruin marriages and families. . . “
No, David. The thing that is ruining marriages and families is a society that encourages men to enter into dysfunctional marriages in the first place. If you want to improve the strength of marriages and families, you should be insisting on full acceptance/equality of gay people – and that includes same-sex marriage. Exodus is literally anti-family.
“Wholeness”? Thank you. Another word to add to my lexicon of nonsensical ex-gay jargon, joining “loving”, “compassionate”, “redemptive”, “healing”, “brokenness”, “authentic”, “freedom” etc.
I disagree. I think that Exodus should be able to have an app on i-Tunes just like TWO should be able to have their own app if they wish. It’s up to the individual user to decide whether they want that on their phone or not…. just like chosing to have Grindr or Angry Birds.
Justin:
Wrong you are. Your beef is with Apple, not us. They reject thousands of apps as objectionable. As long as they do this, Exodus does not make the cut.
Grindr or Angry birds will not f**k up some persons mind, lead to mental health issues, depression and possibly worse. They do not hurt anyone…or spread by their very existance the idea that I, or any other gay person, needs “fixing” (which is not possible, in the sense of becoming something other than I Am), and if I need “fixing”, I must just suffer from a “problem that needs fixing”, so, no need for me or my family to get legal rights.
No Justin Burns…it is a totally different thing, and the app has to go.
I should mention….I was not sure what grindr was…but after looking it up, if everyone is being honest and safe…that is there business.
David said “At least the Exodus International app offers help and wholeness.”.
What planet are you on?! Exodus encourages gays to live lonely lives of despair or to get into loveless sham marriages that ruin the lives of the opposite sex spouses these “exgays” deceive. There is nothing good about an organization that promotes the idea that harmless gays are evil and should be oppressed.
Justin said “I think that Exodus should be able to have an app on i-Tunes just like TWO should be able to have their own app if they wish.”
Do you also think the KKK should be able to have an app on I-tunes that promotes the idea that blacks and jews are inferior and should be denied their civil rights?
Oh wow Priya, I cannot believe I missed that!
“Help and wholeness”?
Quack science that destroys people and their sense of dignity, is “help”? The gay guy I hold as he crys on my shoulder over how unhappy he is, and how miserible the woman he married after the was declared a “success” by his “therapy” is
“wholeness”?
David, honestly….not being mean or intentionally insulting, but, are you really that dim?
Priya Lynn in her post above this one said it best. Read her and hopefully learn something!
Thanks, Gene.
I’ve found in the past that if a group uses the word “Truth” in their name its usually a smoke screen for all the lies they tell.
If someone wants to exit the “Gay” life style why not? You act like once gay always gay. Can’t believe you have gone and attacked this group for their app. Just make your own app and get approval. You want to be left alone in your Gay lifestyle so leave others alone in their decision to leave it behind.
username (such pride in who your parents named you).
ONCE GAY, ALWAYS GAY.
And there is not such things as a “Gay liufestyle”.
A lifestyle is living in Beverly Hills with a maid and a Bentley. A lifestyle is living in a trailer in WVA with a pick up truck and living in SSI with your baby momma while “bitchin’ about ‘em’grants and homos’.
Being Gay is WHO one is…not a thing that ANYONE can, or ever has, changed. That is why no respectable medical associatoon endorses such “therapy”. It hurts people. Period.
one last thing….”username”, who claims to believe in “Once gay, always gay”….why do think the millions of gay people who tell you we are born gay are lying? And why would you believe the sad fools, made guilty by mere fundamentalists into trying to be something they are not, when they say they no longer are gay, but OVER and OVER and OVER are shown to still be gay, getting caught in gay bars, with hustlers, etc. etc. etc.
Why?
No Gene. I don’t think they are lying about believing they were born gay. Its just something they hear constantly. So they start to believe it. I wonder how many kids went thru some “Feelings” for the opposite sex only to be told they were born that way. When it was just some phase and adolescent sexual experimentation. I think people confuse feelings of love for both sexes with sexual feelings (if that makes sense). To many people think Love has to include sex also. If we were born any special way it was to love each other. But that doesn’t seem to work these days. We live in a world torn by wars and hatred on all fronts. Good luck with your doctrine of Truth. Its just one of thousands out there according to the world.
Truth, when true, stands on its own.
Which is why more and more and more people, when they know Gay people, support us and our families.
I am not so sure which is the most insulting…that you will not believe people like me when we tell you we are born gay, or that you think that millions of people are so damn simple minded that we can be convinced that we are gay, most of us over the age of 40 got to grow up in a vehemently homophobic society that mistakenly thought we were “sick” especially…I promise you, I did not grow up hearing I was born gay. I grew up hearing people like me were wretched sinners or perverts.
if you were born to love me, as you say…then show it by showing me some respect and kindness, and not supporting people who want to put out apps that will hurt other people like me, and indirectly by implying gayness is a thing to overcome, that my family do not deserve the same legal protections as your own.
Thanks
More Apple hypocrisy. We submitted an app for our indie film “And Then Came Lola.” It’s a lesbian romantic comedy that’s available on iTunes. Apple rejected it due to “content.” Our app developer hasn’t had an app rejected before….
When I talked to someone at Apple he tried to tell me they were “discouraging” apps for movies. I then pointed out to him that Warner had just that week had two new movie apps approved. That kinda left him speechless.
I’ll also add that Apple offers apps for Hooters, Victoria’s Secret, Exotic (Sexual) positions and more. Our film is a comedy about lesbians that’s played in film festivals around the world and Apple rejects the app???? Ex-gays are OK, but actual gays/lesbians are not????
“I think people confuse feelings of love for both sexes with sexual feelings (if that makes sense). To many people think Love has to include sex also.”
And once again, “username” demonstrates that it’s simply all about the icky sehks. Zie implies that it’s okay to love, but when the uglies being bumpin’ are the same shape, it’s suddenly wrong.
And yet there’s no rational justification for these complaints whatsoever. Hmm…
“I wonder how many kids went thru some “Feelings” for the opposite sex only to be told they were born that way.”
Heterosexuality benefits from what is known as “social privilege”, so of course heterosexual kids don’t ponder their sexuality like non-heterosexual kids have to.
Not so coincidentally, this is also why you’re so damned clueless. Unless you grew up as a gay kid yourself, your hypothetical ponderings about gay kids and what they go through are ignorant and meaningless.
“so leave others alone in their decision to leave it behind.”
Yeah, fleecing and hurting people by using guilt and superstition and pseudoscience, why should anyone find that ethically repugnant?
Ellen: Somehow that’s completely unsurprising. I’ve found in the past that many big companies (Neopets and Nintendo, being two of them) will be totally okay with explicitly heterosexual stuff but anything that even hints at homosexuality, no matter how clean and G-rated it is, will get the axe for “questionable” or “sexual” content (in Neopets’ case, you couldn’t even say that you were gay, or you’d get busted for “sexual content”). It’s pretty telling with regards to what sort of ignorance and bigotry is still lurking deep inside. I’m sorry you had to go through that.
For the first time in a very long while I am ASHAMED to be part of th community! This is disgraceful. We constantely fight for EQUAL rights, not SPECIAL rights, yet here you are trying to take away their freedom of speech. I know what they do to people, trust me, I am an exodus SURVIVOR! I want nothing more than to close the camps, but you guys need to respect their rights. We have thousands of gay apps that they disgree with why can’t we let them have one app without protest!
nat, you have to realize that just cutting and pasting the same message on all the stories damages your credibility.
haha daniel i am only telling the truth and i want everyone to know it!
yet here you are trying to take away their freedom of speech.
Does anyone understand the concept of the First Amendment anymore? It has zero to do with Apple’s rules in their app store. Exodus’ free speech rights are healthy and intact, with a website, books, newsletters, conferences, DVDs, audio CDs, tapes, radio, TV, speaking out on the street, Randy talking to muscled dudes in the gym, newspaper quotes, and on and on.
This is about an app in a proprietary, closed system which Apple guards jealously — they are not a democracy. They do not allow a lot of things, and this is a case of holding them to their own rules. Kids seeing that app in their store, because of Apples’ well-known heavy hand, would be right to think that Apple believes it is worthwhile. That’s a bad thing.
This has zero to do with “free speech.” At least get it right before blasting out on blogs.
Nat—-One app accepts gays, Exodus rejects gays. Gays who love themselves don’t like Exodus because they pervert twist and distort homosexuality to their fairy tale demented favor. They are hence destructive to vulnerable minds. Now, I can tell how much you love it in all it’s chaos and destruction, but just like a KKK against blacks would have to go, the Exodus Apple app’s gotta go too.
Hey, here’s a hanky, blow your nose.
Just remember, if we walk all over the folks who want to be ex gay or whatever, then what ground do pro gay apps such as Grindr, Jackd, manhunt and others stand on? I’ll bet far more folks find booty call apps offensive, than some group that wants to help some people live a celibate life.
Rob, “booty call” apps aren’t defamatory toward whole groups of people.
There is a lot of media bias against groups like Exodus International. I just want to to present a different side for your consideration, even though you probably won’t agree. Exodus is all about helping people and leading them into a relationship with Jesus Christ. Their ministry is evangelical and Christian and non-denominational. They get branded by the liberal media and the pro-gay lobby that they are a “gay cure” group. That is not so.
Exodus helps people who want to leave unhealthy lifestyles. Some people are homosexual and very happy; for others it is destroying them. Some people cannot reconcile their homosexuality with their Christian faith and want to walk away from unhealthy behaviors. Exodus is not claiming that a homosexual can simply change and never have homosexual feelings and tendencies again. They ARE claiming that through faith and a lot of support, not just from their ministry but also compassionate local ministries and churches that — someone can walk away from homosexual behaviors, meaning homosexual sex.
Exodus has helped a lot of people in 30+ years. Surely there are some who started down a recovery process and went back to being actively homosexual. This can be true of any number of organizations and ministries, such as AA who help people that fully recover.
To be successful in an Exodus or Exodus-like program, it is necessary to adopt a Biblical worldview. Exodus realizes that this isn’t for everybody either. I truly believe in one of their foundational teachings — the opposite of homosexuality isn’t heterosexuality, it’s holiness. There is a difference between someone having a homosexual orientation / disposition and living the homosexual lifestyle.
Some question whether or not moving from homosexuality to heterosexuality is possible. I would like to offer up Sy Rogers, as a very bold example. He was helped through ministries like Exodus 30 years ago, ended up working for Exodus and now has his own ministry where he helps those with many different kinds of sexual brokenness.
http://www.syrogers.com/
I want to let you know that I too dealt with homosexuality for many years. I am now 30 and after getting so much rejection from churches, have come to embrace ministries like Exodus because they present Biblical truth in a loving way. For so long, our conservative churches have tried to WIN THE ARGUMENT (which was stupid because most Christian homosexuals would agree with what the Bible says on this issue) instead of helping the homosexual FIGHT THE DAILY BATTLE that will continue until they leave this earth.
If this APP was removed, I think I would definitely sell my iPad, but probably wouldn’t go as far as selling my MacBook. I know I am in the minority on this.
I just wanted to present the other side in a peaceful rational manner. This is the “other side” to the issue that is not commonly or articulately presented.
All right, Kevin, hold on to your desk ’cause you’re going to need it. You have come in and somehow led yourself to believe that we have never heard this “other side” you believe you have presented so calmly (as if your calm is a virtue). Let us now deconstruct everything you said:
WRONG! They branded themselves that way. Ask their founders, all of whom are back out of the closet, like most of their patients over the course of history. The only reason you do not understand this is because you are obviously new, and have not watched them move the goalposts over the years. Moreover, ALL GROWN-UP MEDICAL ASSOCIATIONS, as well as the mental health associations, agree that the snake oil Exodus is selling is uniformly harmful to people. Pithy oversentimental comments about leading people to Jesus are nothing but that: pithy oversentimental comments. Moreover, can you even prove that “leading people to Jesus” is a good thing, on balance? You cannot. Regardless, the way they do it destroys lives and families.
WRONG. Exodus convinces already weak people to BLAME THEIR PROBLEMS ON THEIR SEXUALITY. You will NEVER see an “ex-gay” who was previously happy and healthy. Why? The same reason it’s really hard to evangelize to Scandinavia, but really freaking easy in sub-Saharan Africa. If you can convince people to either scapegoat their problems on something else/that all their problems will go away if they pledge allegiance to a deity, you’ll make money. Hard to do that with happy gays or Scandinavians, but easy with tragic, drug-addicted lost souls who have been abused by religion their entire lives. Moreover, can you prove that no longer having gay sex, for a gay person, is a good thing? You cannot.
They have destroyed far more than they have helped, and any person who has lived to tell the tale can tell you that. Even Alan Chambers admits that he denies his true self in order to dutifully screw his wife. Baby, that is a destroyed person.
No, to be “successful” in Exodus, you have to be a unicorn, because there is no true arbiter of success in a program where EVERYTHING is a disproven lie. Sorry, baby, but you’re still failing, and not even upward. And when you say that the opposite of homosexuality is holiness, you’re using the same rhetoric that Apple needs to hear to see why this app should be banned. Listening, Jobs? Moreover, can you prove that people who are not homosexual are somehow “holier” or more whole? No, you cannot. Fail!
I’m looking on Sy Rogers’ site for the part where he proves he doesn’t get erections when he sees naked men, but I’m not finding it. FAIL!
I am so sorry that these people have destroyed you. I am so sorry that they have convinced you that you’re not worthy of the fullness of life, with true integrity. I am so sorry that you likely go to sleep each night blaming yourself for each and every guy you checked out that day, every sexual fantasy you’ve had, and that you’ve been convinced that it’s okay to treat yourself like such s**t. I am sorry that you haven’t been taught to value and truly love yourself. I’m sorry that you’ve been convinced that your “god” wants nothing more for you than to hate your true self and live a life where you never truly connect in an intimate way to another human being. Truly, I am. If you want/need our help with finding people who will actually respect you, who won’t lie to you, who won’t charge you exorbitant amounts of money in order to imbue you with a daily sense of shame, please contact us privately, and we’ll refer you to really nice people who will help you along in finding a true space to love yourself. We’re a bit harsh here, because we’re not a “bridge site” for the myriad people in recovery from Exodus programs, but there are lots of resources available.
And yet this “other side” – no matter how politely phrased, still contains hateful material. Holiness and homosexuality are neither opposites nor mutually exclusive, and HOW DARE YOU say that it is so. Gayness is the human gift given to me that makes me who I am and why I am good at what I do. How DARE you trash the sacredness of MY gay soul!
Speaking for myself, I could have saved multiple thousands of dollars in therapy recovering from Exodus-style “help.” The damage is real, it is long-term, it is malicious, it intends to harm. How else can I interpret the response of my church and my family to ABANDON me when I came out, as if they could somehow “tough love” me into choosing to live a life of desperate loneliness, isolation and enforced celibacy?
Your word may be POLITE, but they are NOT civil.
God, this thread is tiresome.
@David Roberts: No, people don’t understand the First Amendment because Civics education in the United States is pathetic. And you are 100% correct.
@Nat: I’m sorry you haven’t been following this story closely enough to understand all the details which go into the decision we made to ask Apple to remove the app. Talk again when you’ve had a chance to catch up.
@Rob: Same thing I said to Nat.
@Kevin, you get your own reply. Stay tuned, because there is too much to deconstruct.
Kevin, you need therapy…and a family that loves you enough not to allow you to be involved with brainwashers like the abusers at Exodus.
And Kevin, for implying that I need “therapy” or “recovery” for being gay, I just made a 100.00 donation to my local GLBT youth group in your honor, with the request that it be used to educate kids on how to avoid being abused as you have been by Exodus.
If your denomination or church mistakenly tells you that being gay is in of itself sinful, you need to find a real church. There are a lot out there. Raise your standards.
Kevin, the best thing you could discover is that there really is a higher power, and it’s bigger than a god. It’s a combination that includes reason, logic, and empirical evidence. Wake up. Here we are in the 21st century surrounded by a vast array of reality-based educational opportunities, and yet millions of people opt for religious indoctrination as the superior choice. Amazing.
Kevin, you’ve been duped into believing that a god created you, or allowed you to be a homosexual, but in order to please him you must live a lonely sexless life devoid of human intimacy. And apparently you have so little confidence in the validity of reason, and are so fearful of consequences, that you’re willing to submit. Are you most fearful of a god’s wrath, or of rejection by your Christian “friends” who “love” you as long as you accept that you are a piece of crap?
Martin Luther said:
“Reason is the Devil’s greatest w***e; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious w***e; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed w***e; w***e eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom… Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets.”
You know your belief system is in big trouble when you’re forced to invalidate the entire concept of reason in order for those beliefs to survive.
Kevin, I wish I had time to write, but i don’t. this will be much shorter than the kinder, gentler screed I would prefer.
You don’t know much about your religion, or you would know that for no other sin is the opposite of that sin holiness. Does that make you wonder why this one is so special? And you are still born into sin in any case and, I am sure, have a multitude of others. so in no case can you be holy, only saved.
It makes a great slogan which is quite soothing, but it is not any kind of a Christian concept. But you know, a spoonfull of surgar helps the medicine go down.
you don’t know much about homosexuality, or you would know that there is nothing wrong with you, and that all of the fantasies you have about a “lifestyle” are just that, a fantasy, whether or not you have lived them out personally. There is nothing in being gay that gives you a self-destructive lifestyle. That’s you responsibility. As Evan says, you never see an ex-gay who had a happy gay life.
And you never see a person who is happy in his life go to an ex-gay ministry.
you don’t know much about Exodus, or you would know that its messages change according to its audience. It has an abysmal failure rate, and peddles the only therapy in the world where it is the patient’s fault if it doesn’t work, not the doctor’s. It is allied with the anti-ex-gay industry– and it is an industry– that accrues billions in wealth and power by demonizing and lying about people just like you. Remember the money changers in the temple? If they truly had holiness on their side, they wouldn’t need the lies and the doeminzation.
Finally, you don’t know much about yourself. If you did, you would know that your self-hatred is your problem, and always has been, not your homosexuality. I don’t even know you, and I know that, beacuase I have never yet seen anyone in your position for whom that is not true. Exodus makes money off of that self hatred, and you pay whether they succeed or they don’t. Deal with your self hatred, and you will finally be able to decide whether you are gay or straight, and make your decisions accordingly.
Here’s how I know that. I’m a very attractive 60 year old man, married to a very attractive 50 year old man, living in a major gay area. I get approached all the time by men for, shall we say, fornication. Many are considerably younger than I am. I have no problem saying no, because i like myself, love my husband, love my marriage. The temptation is certainly there, but I can, as you put it, walk away from homosexual behavior.
Why can’t you? I put it to you that the difference is self-hatred.
Many of the people that write here have been where you are– some for decades. They came out the other side and saw what a massive fraud this is: “holiness” built out of fear, hatred, ignorance, stupidity, bad translations, political power, money-grubbing, and a unshaklable belief in a wholly (or holy) imaginary superiority.
It’s just plain old prejudice, given a thin veneer of respectablity because it is disguised as sincere religious belief. it has been going on for thousands of years, like the prejudice against women– also justified by conservative religion as normal, natural, and god’s will–and its hoary age does not make it right.
There is NOTHING good or righteous about it. alan chambers admits he is as queer as ever he was. You have no way of knowing how far that goes, and his ability to earn a pretty good living depends on you NOT knowing.
Listen to the people who write here. they know what they are talking about. What you hear, no matter what the tone, is only rarely hatred. What you hear is anger, becuase people like you keep falling for the fraud, lives are damaged, love is lost, pain is increased. The anger is not at you, it’s at the anti-ex-gay industry, and the lies and hatred upon which it is founded.
you are a kind man Ben….perhaps to kind. But, kindness has its value, and your logic is impregnable.
Thank you Gene.
Kevin, I meant to sy this, but Ihave already written far more than I should have. you see, I care.
You are 30 years old. It is far past time that you learn something which you probably would have, had these people not kept you in a state of meotional dependency.
When someone tells you that you are dirty, sick, unclean, and especially, sinful and in need to salvation (which they offer, of course, at a price, but iwthout proof) it is the biggest mistake in the world to assume that 1) it’s true, and 2) that they are telling you for your benefit, and not for their own.
The concept of sin, especially YOUR sin, becomes the expression of their will and their way of seeing the world, and if it is making you unhappy, or interfering with your life, then that is probably a good test of its truth value. Likewise, you pay the price with happiness in your life, while they reap the benefits– or, validation– and the “glory”.
“you are a kind man Ben”
Haha, Ben (in Oakland) always makes me want to hug him when he posts like this. It’s usually kind of heartwarming and a little bittersweet.
We love ya, Ben.
and kevin has gone away. I hope he is thinking.
I often wonder why they just can’t take a little heat.
Reality is such a b***h!
A little too much heat? It’s amazing to me how such fervent faith just melts.