Christian 'Ex-Gays' Brainwash Thousands
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Christian 'Ex-Gays' Brainwash Thousands
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Alternet - Dec 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/70491/
Christian 'Ex-Gays' Brainwash Thousands
By Casey Sanchez
Intelligence Report
John Smid has a high school diploma, a minister's license and five
acres of land outside Memphis, Tenn., where he "cures" homosexuals. For
most of the past two decades, Smid's residential "ex-gay" program was
known as Love in Action. The majority of the young men who entered the
program came from the kind of conservative religious upbringing where
being gay is a sin that will cast a person out of church, family and
home. To rid themselves of "unwanted same-sex attractions" they paid
$1,000 a month, with some staying at the facility for years.
At LIA, as it was known, staff would lead clients in group sessions to
trace out childhood trauma alongside lessons in throwing footballs,
changing motor oil and learning how to cross their legs in a manly
fashion. In much of the world of ex-gay ministries, same-sex
attractions are thought to result from childhood sexual abuse or
parents who failed to instill masculinity in their sons. Since the goal
is to rewire parent-child dynamics, LIA clients were forbidden to call
their families. Those who worked in Memphis while living on the LIA
compound had to navigate around a "forbidden zone" that covered nearly
half the city, keeping them miles away from its handful of adult book
stores. They were ordered to drive straight to and from work without
speaking to strangers.
"On our way to work, we saw two cars get into an accident. We actually
debated over whether we should stop," said Peterson Toscano, who lived
at LIA for two years in the early 1990s and now helms an ex-gay
survivors' movement. They didn't stop. "Looking back, I see how
brainwashed we were. We were sick the whole day. We could have helped
the people."
Toscano still has the 374-page LIA handbook that governed every day he
spent trying to become heterosexual. Tom Otteson, another former client
of Smid's, said he was told that "it would be better if I were to
commit suicide than go back into the world and become a homosexual
again." In 2005, Smid tried to clarify those comments to a reporter
from the pro-gay Memphis magazine Family & Friends: "I said [to
Otteson], 'It would almost be better if you weren't alive than to
return back to the life that you have struggled so much to leave.'"
Unlike his clients, Smid was not isolated from the world. In 2005, when
Tennessee officials investigated LIA for dispensing psychotropic
medicine and treating minors without a license, it seemed certain the
place would be shut down. But Smid kept his operation alive by
countersuing the state of Tennessee with the help of senior counsel
from the Alliance Defense Fund, the powerhouse legal arm of the
Christian Right.
Today, Love in Action is part of a booming phenomenon that is also
known as the "sexual reorientation therapy" movement, an effort that is
reflected in the hundreds of programs attached to religious
organizations across the United States. Although the stated aim of the
movement is to turn gays straight and bring them to God, it actually
now has as much to do with battling the gay rights movement by trying
to prove that sexuality is not an immutable characteristic like race or
gender. Ex-gay ministries began as redoubts for men and women trying to
reconcile their faith and sexuality. But in the hands of the anti-gay
Christian Right, they have become full-fledged propaganda machines
depicting gays as sex-addicted, mentally ill, and stunted heterosexuals.
A Flourishing Movement
Love In Action no longer describes itself as therapy but as a
"ministry." It ditched its residential program in favor of a $2,000,
four-day "intensive" encounter for families and teens called Refuge.
Focus on the Family, the largest and wealthiest Christian Right
organization in the country, now hires Smid to appear several times a
year on an ex-gay lecture circuit called Love Won Out, where he speaks
on masturbation and "healing homosexuality."
Residential ex-gay treatment centers like LIA was in the 1990s are still
rare. There are currently just three in America -- one in northern
California, one in Kansas and one in Kentucky. But ex-gay "ministries"
like Refuge are numerous. There are at least 200 such programs among the
country's churches, religious counseling centers and religious college
campuses. Smid serves on the board of Exodus International, an umbrella
group representing 150 ex-gay ministries in 17 different countries.
Most of the people who run ex-gay ministries are not hatemongers and see
their activities as a labor of love and compassion. "[They're] sincere,
well-meaning people who are not in it for the money," says Toscano. But
in recent years, the ex-gay movement has been co-opted by virulently
anti-gay groups who routinely refer to homosexuality as an evil force
that threatens to destroy America. These groups increasingly are hiring
ex-gay activists as spokesmen, funding ex-gay research and establishing
ex-gay ministries.
Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs, Colo., now runs its own
traveling ex-gay ministry, Love Won Out, which has drawn crowds of
several hundred in more than 50 cities since 2001. Christian Coalition
founder Pat Robertson finances studies on ex-gay "conversion
therapies," and the late Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell, who once
infamously claimed that gays, lesbians and other agents of liberalism
spurred the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was a keynote speaker at a 2006
ex-gay conference. In Lynchburg, Va., both the church and the
university Falwell founded have ex-gay ministries.
The American Family Association, another Christian Right group,
distributes "It's Not Gay," a video that uses ex-gay testimonies --
including that of a man who has since admitted to holding gay sex
parties -- to claim that 95% of gay couples are not monogamous.
Separately, the AFA employs anti-gay junk science to claim that gays
die very early and are far more likely to molest children than
heterosexuals. (These claims, made by propagandist hatemongers like
Paul Cameron of the Family Values Institute, are completely false and
have been discredited numerous times by legitimate scientists.)
Leaders of Watchmen on the Walls, an international anti-gay group that
blames the Nazi Holocaust on homosexuals, tell audiences that "one of
the most important things you can do is start an ex-gay movement here."
One of the Watchmen's members serves on the board of the Exodus
International and was a keynote speaker at its recent conference. The
Traditional Values Coalition, a major California-based organization
listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group for its
virulent anti-gay activities, and Florida-based Coral Ridge Ministries
have even created their own ex-gay holiday, National Coming Out of
Homosexuality Day, falling one day after National Coming Out Day.
"Indifference or neutrality toward the homosexual rights movement will
result in society's destruction," the American Family Association
declared in a press release. "A national 'Coming out of homosexuality
day' provides us a means whereby to dispel the lies of the homosexual
rights crowd who say they are born that way and cannot change."
'New Creations'?
Reparative or sexual reorientation therapy, the pseudo-scientific
foundation of the ex-gay movement, has been discredited by virtually
all major American medical, psychiatric, psychological and professional
counseling organizations. The American Psychological Association, for
instance, declared in 2006: "There is simply no sufficiently
scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.
Our further concern is that the positions espoused by NARTH [the
National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality] and Focus
on the Family create an environment in which prejudice and
discrimination can flourish." The powerful American Medical
Association, for its part, officially "opposes the use of 'reparative'
or 'conversion' therapy that is based on the assumption that
homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori
assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual
orientation."
Jim Burroway, who runs Box Turtle Bulletin, a website that tracks the
ex-gay movement, says a key theme in ex-gay ideology is the idea that
"there's no such thing as gay." Instead, gays and lesbians are
described as "sexually broken" or heterosexuals who suffer from
"same-sex attractions."
Sexual brokenness, according to ex-gay doctrine, usually occurs early in
childhood, the result of an overbearing mother, an emotionally distant
father, or sexual abuse. Focus on the Family ex-gay lecturers routinely
and flatly declare that all gays and lesbians are victims of childhood
sexual abuse.
About the only time the word "gay" appears in the ex-gay lexicon is in
the phrase "gay lifestyle," which is largely seen as describing a
hedonistic mix of one-night stands and sexually transmitted diseases
that culminates in early death or abandonment when youthful beauty
fades. The ex-gay movement has little language to describe the real
world in which lesbians and gays hold elected office, appear on TV
shows and raise families. At best, people like U.S. Rep. Barney Frank
(D-Mass.) and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres are labeled as
"gay-identified." Exodus President Alan Chambers and other, harsher
ex-gay leaders call them "militant gays," simply because they are not
actively working to renounce their same-sex attractions. Churches that
accept gays are branded "false churches."
Still, even many ex-gay proponents admit that total conversion to
heterosexuality is at best an elusive goal. Frank Worthen, who runs the
ex-gay residential program New Hope out of an apartment complex in San
Rafael, Calif., writes in his curriculum workbook Steps Out: "Our
primary goal is not to make heterosexuals out of homosexual people. God
alone determines whether a former homosexual person is to marry and
rear a family, or if he (or she) is to remain celibate, serving the
Lord with his whole heart."
'Ancestor Sin' and 40-Day Fasts
Exodus, which has a $1 million budget, and NARTH both provide referrals
to ex-gay programs and therapists that offer a bewildering array of
techniques and philosophies.
Exodus has over 150 evangelical ministries throughout the U.S. and in
Australia, Canada, China, Europe, Japan, Latin America, the Philippines
and Singapore. Most of the ministries are locally run but remain under
the Exodus umbrella. A few of them target Latinos and African
Americans, as well as the deaf. In the U.S., coordinators for 14
different geographic regions make sure that local ministries have
Exodus accreditation and trained staff. Despite that, Exodus ministries
seem to have as many approaches to ex-gay work as they do regions.
Exodus makes referrals to ministries like Living Waters, a popular
neo-Pentecostal ex-gay program that treats homosexuality as a spirit
that can be induced by "ancestor sin" and pushed out through exorcism.
"We had pretty much a whole day dedicated to going through our entire
genealogy and asking for forgiveness for the sins of our ancestors,"
said Eric Leocadio, who went through the 30-week program in his early
20s. He says he was also told to keep "certain boundaries in your
friendship, never connecting with someone emotionally because you might
fall in love with them."
During his time with Living Waters, Toscano said a pastor had him fast
for a week at a time. "He said it was a matter of breaking through
physical appetites related to lust. There were others who fasted,
sometimes for up to 40 days."
Secular ex-gay therapies, even if less physically demanding, are no less
bizarre. On Ex-Gay Watch, a watchdog website, a woman named Pamela
Ferguson describes the reparative therapy her ex-husband underwent as a
last-ditch attempt to save their marriage. "I was once told to hold [my
ex-husband's] penis in my hand as we fell asleep. After a week or two
of this, [he supposedly] would be suddenly and inexplicably inflamed
with desire for me." The couple declined the suggestion.
At "ex-gay barbecues" held at her house, Ferguson says she met several
men who said they were asked to measure their penises and report the
results to their group. All of them refused.
The longtime president of NARTH is Joseph Nicolosi, a licensed
psychotherapist who teaches that any man who thinks he's gay simply "has
failed to enact his masculinity." NARTH, based in Encino, Calif., is a
referral service for its more than 1,000 members, who are both
religious and secular ex-gay counselors (NARTH does not require members
to be licensed or accredited). NARTH was founded by Charles Socarides,
whose openly gay son later served in the Clinton administration as the
first-ever liaison to the gay community.
One of Nicolosi's own former ex-gay patients, Daniel Gonzales, said
most of his therapy sessions took place over the telephone. "Whenever I
found myself attracted to a guy, I was supposed to befriend him and
demystify him," said Gonzales. "It never occurred to [Nicolosi] that
some of the guys I'm attracted to weren't straight." After spending a
year in the $250-an-hour sessions, Gonzales didn't feel any less gay.
He says he quit the therapy after realizing that "I would have to do
these mental gymnastics for the rest of my life."
Wayne Besen, a former researcher for the pro-gay Human Rights Campaign,
spent four years looking into ex-gay therapies for his 2003 book
Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the
Ex-Gay Myth. At one ministry that he attended undercover, gay men were
instructed to keep rubber bands on their wrist and snap them any time
they felt themselves "watching someone erotically or engaging in
fantasy." In another ministry, he held hands with other "strugglers" as
they read an anti-masturbation prayer: "I build high dikes on the right
hand and on the left hand and in Jesus' name I command that it shall
not overflow to the left hand or the right hand, but it shall flow
quietly in its normal channel."
Emphasis on the alleged link between masturbation and homosexuality is
widespread in ex-gay therapy. Exodus board member and family therapist
Jayson Graves, for instance, teaches on his call-in radio show that
masturbation is a gateway to "same-sex attraction" because "it is a
form of sex with yourself."
When Moms Go Bad
One of the most controversial ex-gay therapy techniques is "healing
touch," which involves men striving to become ex-gay cradling and
rocking other men in their arms. Last January, Richard Cohen, a
licensed psychotherapist who claims to be personally ex-gay,
demonstrated healing touch on CNN's "Paula Zahn Now" and Comedy
Central's "The Daily Show." Cohen also demonstrated "bioenergetics,"
which involves beating on chairs with tennis rackets and screaming,
"Mom, Mom, why did you do this to me?" When Cohen appeared on ABC's
"Jimmy Kimmel Live!" one month later seated next to George Foreman, he
demonstrated healing touch therapy by putting his arms around the
former heavyweight boxing champion and explaining, "You comfort him and
love him like he's your own boy."
After his disastrous TV appearances, both Exodus and NARTH scrubbed any
mention of Cohen from their websites and released statements publicly
disavowing healing touch therapy. Yet both organizations continue to
promote healing touch through a program called Journey Into Manhood,
whose leaders are featured at Exodus conferences and highlighted on
NARTH's website. Journey Into Manhood is a nominally secular program
founded by Catholic, Jewish and Mormon counselors. The counselors
operate weekend outdoors retreats throughout the country that require
men to bond with one another through wilderness adventures and holding
each other in "non-sexual healing touch."
Alex Liberato went through 10 weeks of the Journey Into Manhood
curriculum after he was outed as a gay man while a student at highly
conservative Brigham Young University in Utah. Much of the curriculum
centered on recovering early child-parent memories. But men were also
required to hold one another. "It just seemed like it allowed guys to
touch each other without there being sex," said Liberato. The thought
of spending a concluding weekend in the Utah wilderness, having to
uncomfortably touch and be touched by male strangers repulsed him. He
says he was made to understand that nudity might also be involved. "I
was in the parking lot. I just [back] got in my car and drove off,"
said Liberato.
Just this September, Texas ex-gay therapist Chris Austin was convicted
of two counts of felony sexual assault on a patient and sentenced to 10
years in prison. (A judge later reduced that sentence to seven years of
probation but fined Austin $2,500 and stripped him of his counseling
license.) The charges were based on a complaint filed by Mark Hufford,
a client of Austin's for over a year. Hufford testified that Austin
held healing touch sessions that progressed to include nude massage and
oral sex. Hufford originally sought treatment while married to a woman
but has since accepted his gay identity, divorced and begun dating a
man. In addition to his own counseling practice, Austin also operated
the Renew homosexual recovery program at South MacArthur Church of
Christ in Irving, Texas.
Austin was a member of NARTH and had written a treatment curriculum
called "Cleaning Out the Closet." His wife ran a program for the
spouses of "husbands who struggle with homosexuality." Austin's
criminal conviction is the first widely known case of a therapist being
convicted of sexual assault in conjunction with ex-gay therapy.
Arousing the Extremists
In the late 1990s, the most powerful anti-gay groups of the evangelical
right underwent their own version of ex-gay therapy. It was an unlikely
conversion -- most churches at the time held ex-gay ministries at arm's
length, with their noses pinched. While many preached that
homosexuality was a sinful choice, few wanted the stigma or controversy
of hosting an ex-gay ministry.
Ethnographer Tanya Erzen spent a year observing New Hope Ministry, an
ex-gay residential program in operation since the late 1970s, for her
2006 book, Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the
Ex-Gay Movement. The program's director told Erzen: "Initially, all our
opposition came from the Christian community, rather than the gay
community. It will take the church about one hundred years to really
understand what we're doing."
Actually, it only took about 20 years. In 1998, two dozen of the
country's leading Christian Right groups convened in Colorado Springs,
Colo., at Focus on the Family's sprawling headquarters complex. Led by
Janet Folger of the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, the
coalition of anti-gay groups called themselves "Truth in Love." They
decided to spend $600,000 on advertisements in the New York Times and
USA Today to try to make "ex-gay" a household word.
Folger spelled out the new strategy in an NPR interview, saying, "That
ex-gays exist shatters the foundation of the homosexual movement." On
ABC's "Nightline," she admitted to wanting to imprison gays through
enforcing anti-sodomy laws that were later thrown out by the Supreme
Court as unconstitutional. Regardless, Truth in Love officials
maintained that their message was one of hope and compassion.
Initially, ex-gay therapists and ministers were elated at the money and
attention from the wealthy and powerful Christ Right groups that had
shunned them for decades. In 1999, the Family Research Council, created
as a political arm of James Dobson's Focus on the Family, gave $80,000
to fund PFOX, or Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays. In return, PFOX
president Anthony Falzarano -- a former male prostitute and confidante
of closeted prosecutor Roy M. Cohn, the rabid anti-communist who
persecuted homosexuals before dying in 1986 from complications of AIDS
- -- lobbied to keep anti-sodomy laws from being repealed in Louisiana.
But Falzarano quickly realized that the new money infusion was really
for lobbying against gay rights rather than expanding ex-gay
ministries. Before the year was out, he had called a press conference
to denounce anti-gay leaders. "Many of us in the ex-gay movement," he
said at the event, "feel we're being used."
A Reach for Power
Today, PFOX is headed by Regina Griggs, the mother of an openly gay
son. The group's goals have as much to do with transforming public
schools as they do with changing people's sexual identities. In a move
its officials aim to replicate nationally, PFOX, with the help of
Alliance Defense Fund and the Thomas More Law Center ("Christianity's
answer to the ACLU"), sued the Montgomery County School District in
Maryland for the right to operate a high school ex-gay club. PFOX lost
the suit but continues to distribute ex-gay literature in Maryland
schools.
Exodus, which for decades had been an apolitical ministry, has
transformed itself into a lobbying apparatus seemingly at odds with its
nonprofit status as a ministry. This August, Exodus hired Amanda Banks,
a lobbyist with Focus on the Family, to direct lobbying in the Congress
and the U.S. Senate. Since her hire, Exodus says it has met with 55
national lawmakers. Banks claims that one unnamed U.S. senator
regularly consults with Exodus to learn "how to talk about gay issues
without sounding like a bigot."
A new spin-off organization called ExodusRoots sends out daily alerts to
readers, telling them how to contact their local congressmen to testify
against hate crime laws that would protect gays and lesbians.
Incredibly, Exodus Vice President Randy Thomas uses his own experience
being assaulted and gay-bashed at a Thanksgiving party in 1988 to argue
against legislation that he calls "thought crimes laws." Thomas says he
was rescued from the attack by a "pair of angry lesbians" but
nonetheless insists that hate crime laws would make his life "as a
former homosexual less valuable now than when we were living as
homosexuals."
Other heavy hitters on the Exodus board include Phil Burress, a star
organizer for the Christian Right who tapped into a personal database
of 1.5 million voters and raised more than $3 million in a few weeks to
support Ohio's 2004 anti-gay marriage initiative. Exodus Chairman
Melissa Coffey headed the ex-gay Regeneration Ministries while working
as an aide to U.S. Rep. Rich Boucher (R-Va.) and a staff assistant to
the government's 9-11 Commission. She now travels as a guest lecturer
and speaks on "The Journey Through Lesbianism."
Both Chambers and Thomas, the president and vice president of Exodus,
met with President George Bush in the summer of 2006 as part of a
delegation to lobby for a constitutional amendment barring same-sex
marriage. And James Holsinger, Bush's current nominee for U.S. surgeon
general, founded a church in Kentucky that operates an ex-gay ministry.
In 1991, Holsinger submitted a white paper to his church --
"Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality" -- that argued that gays and
lesbians can alter their sexuality through prayer and willpower.
Holsinger has since changed his views and now runs workshops on lesbian
health issues.
But enthusiasts and ideologues of the ex-gay movement haven't given up
hope that science will confirm their view.
Playing With Numbers
To back up their claims that homosexuality is purely a deviant lifestyle
choice, ex-gay leaders frequently cite the Thomas Project, a four-year
study of ex-gay programs, paid for by Exodus, that recruited subjects
exclusively from Exodus ministries. It was conducted by Mark Yarhouse,
a psychology professor at Pat Robertson's Regents University, and
Stanton Jones, provost of Wheaton College, an evangelical institution
in Illinois. Both are members of NARTH. The study was conducted
entirely via 45-minute telephone interviews conducted annually over the
course of four years. Results were published this September.
Of nearly 100 people surveyed, only 11% reported a move towards
heterosexuality. But no one in the study reports becoming fully
heterosexual; according to the study's authors, even the 11% group "did
not report themselves to be without experience of homosexual arousal,
and did not report heterosexual orientation to be unequivocal and
uncomplicated."
The researchers had originally hoped for 300 subjects but, according to
an article in Christianity Today, "found many Exodus ministries
mysteriously uncooperative." Over the course of the four-year study, a
quarter of the participants dropped out. Their reasons for quitting
were not tracked.
Nevertheless, the study was hailed by Exodus, Focus on the Family and
the Southern Baptist Convention as "scientific evidence to prove what
we as former homosexuals have known all along -- that those who
struggle with unwanted same-sex attraction can experience freedom from
it."
Even more remarkably, Focus on the Family cites a 67% success rate. It
came up with that number by counting as "successes" subjects who
practice chastity or were still engaged in homosexual acts or thoughts
"but expressed commitment to continue" the therapy.
Despite its rhetoric that "freedom from unwanted homosexuality is
possible," Exodus officials seem quietly aware that few, if any, of the
thousands of people who participate in their ministries actually change
their sexual orientation. Exodus pamphlets with titles like "My
Fianci(e) is Ex-Gay: Are We Ready for Marriage?" and "Women & Ex-Gay
Men: Establishing Healthy Boundaries" present ex-gay status as
essentially an act of faith.
"Why do ex-gay men pursue women?" one pamphlets asks. The answers
offered describe the ex-gay movement itself: "Social Expectation
Self-Reassurance Blind Faith."
Wink and Nod
One of the first things to strike a newcomer to any Exodus conference
is how much it seems to play to stereotypes of gay men. At Revolution,
the name Exodus gave to its conference this June at Concordia
University in Irvine, Calif., the young men attending wore designer
jeans and tight-fitting T-shirts. They had pierced ears and expensive
haircuts. Burroway, the gay man who tracks the ex-gay movement for Box
Turtle Bulletin, describes Exodus conferences he's attended as "one of
the gayest things I have ever been to."
At the June conference in Irvine, which promised "complete, sudden,
radical change," Exodus Vice President Randy Thomas, the master of
ceremonies, dangled his wrists as he made self-conscious jokes about
how much he likes the Seattle Seahawks since Tiger Woods took them to
the Stanley Cup. Announcing a free Friday afternoon for conference
attendees, his voice grew high-pitched when he told the audience,
"There's plenty of shopping."
In short, Exodus attendees were free to nod and wink at their gay pasts.
After all, as many ex-gay leaders say, "No one chooses to struggle with
same-sex attraction." But a glance at Exodus seminars reveals that the
road to "healing" is paved with plenty of self-hatred.
Seminars at the Irvine conference boasted militant-sounding titles such
as "A Hero's Journey: Fighting the Battle of Your Life." One of the
featured speakers was Michael L. Brown, author of Revolution: The Call
to Holy War and a millennial Jew who once described the red T-shirts
worn by his ministry students at a gay rights march
counter-demonstration as "the shed blood of Christ flowing toward the
gates of hell."
On Exodus' opening day, Brown's comments were no more reserved. To
stand-up applause, he quoted from the Black Panthers and told the
thousand members of his audience that the fight against gay civil
rights is a "cause worth dying for."
Before the four-day Exodus conference came to an end, Focus on the
Family and Exodus spokesman Mike Haley showed a final video clip on the
gargantuan multimedia screen. By that time, the audience was in a
weakened emotional state. Over the past four days, they'd been
repeatedly told they had failed as parents, failed as boys and girls,
failed as husbands and wives, and that their failure to change may lead
them to fail God as well.
The video showed a local evening news segment from a town in the
Midwest. A soldier is granted an unexpected furlough from Iraq. He
makes a surprise visit to his son's first-grade classroom. The boy
curls up in his father's arms, crying uncontrollably. Most of the
audience was soon doing the same.
"I want you all to have the strength of that little boy," said Haley.
Harm? What Harm?
The same weekend as the Exodus Revolution conference, just a mile down
the road at the campus of University of California-Irvine, 100 men and
women gathered for the first-ever Ex-Gay Survivor's conference,
subtitled "Undoing the Damage, Affirming Our Lives Together." For some,
it was a space to heal. Scott Tucker, another alumnus of LIA who is now
openly gay, said that for years he faulted himself for failing to turn
straight until he realized the programs had the opposite effect,
isolating him in a "ghetto" of gay men trying to become straight.
For others, it was a place to challenge Exodus and turn its message of
"change is possible" upside down. "Yes you can pursue change. But at
what cost?" said Toscano. He and other ex-gay survivors invited Exodus
President Alan Chambers and other ex-gay leaders to an off-the-record
dinner. "From knowing quite a few of you personally, we know that you
have a heart to help people and to serve God. You meant to bless us,"
read the invitation. "Too often once we leave your programs, you never
hear about our lives and what happens to us."
Exodus officials declined the invitation.
Shawn O'Donnell, who spent a decade in ex-gay ministries beginning when
he was 15, chalked up his experiences on a blackboard at the Ex-Gay
Survivor's conference. "I see now that going through these ex-gay
experiences caused harm in my life. I heard the message loud and clear
that I was a horrible person. I began cutting on myself at such an
early age because I just couldn't deal with the fact that I was gay,"
wrote O'Donnell. "I grew to hate myself and tried to take my life a few
times."
O'Donnell later posted the same comments on his blog, receiving a
stream of supportive comments. Exodus' Chambers, who frequently
challenges the posts on ex-gay survivors' sites, wrote back: "Harm?
Come on, Shawn. No one is being harmed by Exodus offering people a
choice. You KNOW better."
Behind closed doors, though, Exodus' president admits to struggling with
homosexuality every day of his life. "Every day, I wake up and deny what
comes naturally to me," Chambers told a private audience of about 75
"strugglers" at an ex-gay conference held in Phoenix last February.
If there's any doubt where the ex-gay leaders are taking the movement,
Chambers clarified it this September, speaking to a Who's Who of the
anti-gay Christian Right at the Family Impact Summit in Brandon, Fla.
"We have to stand up against an evil agenda," Chambers told his fellow
hard-liners. "It is an evil agenda and it will take anyone captive that
is willing, or that is standing idly by."
[Emily Brown and Janet Smith contributed to this report. ]
(c) 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
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