Ex-gay movement: religious hate
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.
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."
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.
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.
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 through face-to-face and some phone interviews conducted annually over the course of four years.
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."
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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."
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.
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.
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 through face-to-face and some phone interviews conducted annually over the course of four years.
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."
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