Ex-Gay

Channeling Pat Robertson, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality’s Peter LaBarbera said that it is an “insult to God” to argue that gays and lesbians have an innate sexual orientation when God can change “murderers” along with “the most vile criminals, rapists, alcoholics [and] drunks.”

LaBarbera appeared Friday on The Janet Mefferd Show to criticize John Paulk, the onetime poster boy of the ex-gay movement who recently left the movement. He was appalled by Paulk’s claim that “you can be homosexual and still faithful to God” and argued that “it’s weird” to think Paulk believes “he’s become a better person after renouncing this ex-gay life.”

He says, “My relationship with the Lord is more real and authentic than ever before. My beliefs about the Bible are the same. I have not gone off the deep end having become a freakishly liberal gay Christian.” But he’s not a conservative. He gave up the part about not, you know, he says he didn’t want to continue the ex-gay life but he says he’s more real and vulnerable, he says: “Because of God’s recent work in my life I have become more loving, tender, vulnerable, and hopeful.” It sounds like he’s become a better person after renouncing this ex-gay life, it’s weird. This is John Paulk saying that he is “more loving, tender, vulnerable, and hopeful” since he’s basically renounced this part of his life where he’s overcome homosexuality. He’s trying to say that you can be homosexual and still faithful to God.

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How dare anybody say Jesus Christ can’t heal homosexuals and help them overcome. Jesus forgives murderers; he restores the most vile criminals, rapists, alcoholics, drunks; yet we are going to say that Jesus can’t change homosexuals, people trapped in homosexuality? That is an insult to God himself.

Jerry Newcombe of Truth In Action Ministries is upset that ex-gay leader John Paulk has renounced the movement and announced that his marriage to his wife is ending. While Newcombe didn’t explicitly name Paulk, the former poster boy of the ex-gay movement made news recently for recanting his past activism.

Newcombe said that Paulk is like an “ex-ex-smoker” who “for whatever reason, they lit up again, and they no longer try to fight these urges,” adding that the rejection of the ex-gay movement is nothing short of “blasphemy.”

Well, it’s happened again. Another prominent person in ministry has apparently fallen away from the faith, and he renounces what he once was a part of.

This isn’t a story like the supposed apostasy of Joel Osteen. That was a false story foisted on the world through computer hacking. What a strange time we live in, where such hackers could invade the Associated Press’ website and plant a false story about the president getting injured---causing the stock market to temporarily drop, until the truth came out.

The moral of the story is: Don’t believe everything you read or hear in the news, until firmly established by two or three witnesses, to use the biblical standard.

But this story about a prominent man in ministry falling away is verified from multiple sources. His particular sin happened to be homosexuality, to which he has now returned.

As Christians, how are we to understand it when people seem to get converted but fall away, presumably for good? Like they say, the Bible will keep us from sin or vice versa.

Perhaps this man will eventually get back right with the Lord. Perhaps not. When people say, “Once saved, always saved,” I prefer to add two qualifiers: “Once truly saved, always truly saved.” Obviously, temporary setbacks are on a different level than permanent ones.

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What’s interesting about this fallen away man who is currently in the news is that he claims he never was changed. Fair enough, because only he and God know his own heart. But what he now says is that you can’t change---that is, no one with such a struggle can change. Excuse me?

As the wife of an ex-gay once told me in an interview, “To say that people can't be transformed is to say that God cannot transform people, and that's blasphemy. Nothing less.”

Granted, some sinful backgrounds may be harder to work through than others. But God can and will transform those willing to submit to His will. He wants us to be free more than we do.

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I actually know some ex-ex-smokers. They gave up smoking---for a while. In some cases they became fanatical against smoking. But eventually, for whatever reason, they lit up again, and they no longer try to fight these urges. Does that mean that no one can quit for good? Of course not. Yet that’s sort of implied in some of the media stories about our fallen away friend. …

Every Christian is described by Paul as a “living sacrifice.” The problem is that sometimes we living sacrifices can crawl off the altar. We should pray for such people to crawl back. When they do, they’ll see that God waits for them with open arms, like the father of the Prodigal Son.

Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver has been spearheading efforts to strike down a California law barring ex-gay therapy for minors. Today, he chatted with Mike Huckabee about Liberty Counsel’s case before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Staver warned that if the law stands, minors will be forced to turn to harmful, back-alley ex-gay therapy rather than to “licensed professionals.” Huckabee compared this to having an untrained person trying to set a broken leg.

Of course, Staver and Huckabee both support personhood laws that would criminalize abortion in all cases and dramatically increase cases of unsafe, back-alley abortions.

Staver: They make the premise that this counseling is harmful, it’s harmful if it’s engaged in, they say, by licensed professionals that have training and education. Well guess what? If this law passes and it goes into effect and the court doesn’t stop it, then if it’s harmful to have this by licensed professionals, what’s the next step? It’s even more harmful to have it done by people who are not licensed or trained, but that’s where it’s going.

Huckabee: It’s almost like saying that if you set a broken leg as a medical doctor and you don’t do it a certain way, you’re in trouble. Obviously, if you’re not even a medical doctor, I think you’d clearly be clearly under a greater level of trouble, that’s the point you’re making.

Later, Staver made the case that survivors of child abuse would not be able to receive counseling under the law and described the law as “dangerous.” Huckabee, meanwhile, wondered about the plight of a young gay man who “decided” to be heterosexual.

Staver: If this client comes in and the parents say he was molested by the likes of a Jerry Sandusky and abused, now after that several months later he started to have these acting out behaviors and he doesn’t like it, nor do we, can you help him? The counselor would have to say, ‘I can’t, you’re going to have to just accept that, that’s who you are, that’s natural and normal, I can’t give you counsel to ultimately help you eliminate those kinds of attempts that you want to act out, the kind of behavior that you were abused by.’ This is just an absurd situation; it is politically motivated.

Huckabee: I mean this really is the courts stepping in and telling the clinical practitioner the limits of his or her practice to a level that would seem unprecedented. Mat, let me pose a question, let’s say a young person comes in and says, ‘you know I’ve always believed I’m homosexual, believed that since I was seven-years-old, but now that I’m seventeen, I’ve decided that I’m not, I’m heterosexual’ and goes to a pro-homosexual counselor. Would that person be at risk? It looks like some of those folks would be nervous that they couldn’t say, ‘oh no, no you are homosexual all right because you thought that when you were seven and therefore you have to stay that way.’

Staver: The interesting thing the way the law is essentially written is if you are trying to give them counsel, even for somebody who say for example they say they’re bisexual, they’re attracted to both sexes, if you are trying to counsel them to primarily be heterosexual as opposed to homosexual that would be a clear violation. If you are trying to move them away, however, from heterosexuality to bisexuality, transexuality, asexuality, whatever sexuality you come up with, questioning, confused, then that is personally fine as long as you affirm them in that situation. But if you move them back towards heterosexuality, nope, that’s simply not permissible. You can see really where this law is coming from, this law is a political statement; it’s dangerous.

Religious Right groups have been promoting a boycott against Starbucks ever since the company announced its support for a marriage equality law in its home state of Washington. Now an ex-gay activist is warning the company to prepare for a divine reckoning after Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz rebuffed the head of the Corporate Morality Action Center, which opposes gay rights.

In an interview with the Chrisitan News Network, ex-gay preacher Robert Breaud, who is best known for his hit song “It’s Not OK To Be Gay,” said that Schultz has taken a “Christ-hating position” and is “helping to destroy young people’s lives.”

“God will not bless your business in the long run if you consistently thumb your nose at Him and support things He calls sinful,” Breaud said. An ex-homosexual who now serves as an evangelist states that he has decided to join the boycott against the coffee king Starbucks following recent remarks made by CEO Howard Schultz regarding the company’s support of homosexual “marriage.”

“It’s an unGodly, Christ-hating position,” he said of Schultz’s comments. Robert Breaud of Wisconsin told Christian News Network that he had been involved in the homosexual lifestyle until his 30′s, but has served Christ now for nearly 20 years.

“I basically got my fill of the emptiness of sin,” he said. “I was never happy, never filled, never satisfied with male-to-male relationships.”

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He said that if he could sit down with Schultz, he would urge him to do what is right.

“[I would tell him,] if you want God to bless your business, run it in accordance with His law … with His revealed will in Scripture,” Breaud stated. “You’re promoting sin. You’re helping to destroy young people’s lives. … God will not bless your business in the long run if you consistently thumb your nose at Him and support things He calls sinful.”

Breaud urged others to join the boycott as well.

“There’s really no good reason not to join the boycott,” he said. “There’s only excuses.”

“Who do you love more, Christ or your coffee?”

Still outraged by Sen. Rob Portman’s reversal on marriage equality, Ohio-based Religious Right activist Linda Harvey of Mission America used her radio bulletin today to urge people to pray that the Senator’s openly gay son will become “a former homosexual” who will “exercise the option he has right now” of marrying a woman.

Harvey dubbed Portman’s endorsement of marriage equality “a betrayal of the first order” and lamented that conservative Ohioans are stuck “with a Senator who has caved because apparently he believes things that just aren’t true.”

The highest court in the land this week is hearing arguments to overturn man-woman marriage and if that wasn’t heartbreaking enough, families here in tomorrow just experienced a betrayal of the first order by U.S. Sen. Rob Portman. Because his own son is involved in homosexuality, Sen. Portman has rationalized away his former objections to same-sex marriage; he now says he wants the same opportunity for his son. Are you as frustrated by this as I am, friends? First of all, his son already has the right to marry now, he can marry a woman and someday when he is, we can all pray, a former homosexual, perhaps he will choose to exercise the option he has right now. I do hope you will join me in praying for this young man.

Rob Portman had obligations beyond his family however, when you’re a public figure you have enormous influence over public opinion by the policies you support or refuse to support. People in this state worked for Rob Portman and not for a candidate with liberal social values, one more like Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown, for a reason. People thought they could count on Portman if and when the going got tough on these issues. Well here we are with a Senator who has caved because apparently he believes things that just aren’t true.

Yesterday, Religious Right broadcaster Janet Parshall hosted ex-gay activists Joe Dallas and Nancy Heche, actress Anne Heche’s mom, to discuss their new book “The Complete Christian Guide to Understanding Homosexuality.”

A caller, John, said that based on his personal experiences with gays and lesbians he doesn’t consider homosexuality to be an “emotional or choice-oriented kind of decision” as they seem “compelled to be this way.”

Heche responded that gays and lesbians might seem different from straight people because they are trying to conform to the norms of the gay community, much like “when teenage girls start wearing makeup then they all want to wear makeup and if the in-group is wearing frilly skirts and ruffle t-shirts then everybody is going to wear a ruffle t-shirt.”

Caller: Their behavior doesn’t seem to be affected, it seems to be genuine and it seems that they are compelled to be this way. I don’t know if it’s hormonal differences or whatever chemical differences in the endocrine system in the body that affect the brain and the body but there is something going on that’s more than just emotional or choice-oriented kind of decisions that these people make.

Heche: What I think is that oftentimes once one associates herself or himself with a gay community or a gay fellowship group they settle in and want to make a distinction from others — others in the heterosexual world — they want to make a distinction and a statement about who they are. I’m just saying this might be 1 percent of the people you’re talking about or 99 percent, but sometimes I think people make a point to adapt and adopt to the community that they are associating with. It’s kind of like this when teenage girls start wearing makeup then they all want to wear makeup and if the in-group is wearing frilly skirts and ruffle t-shirts then everybody is going to wear a ruffle t-shirt. That might be very oversimplifying it but I think it is maybe a tiny explanation for a small group of people that you’re talking about. Does that make sense? Do you understand what I’m saying?

Dallas, meanwhile, said that even if it becomes scientifically proven that homosexuality is not a choice, gays and lesbians should suppress their sexuality in the same way that individuals who have predispositions to violence must suppress their violent urges.

Parshall: Let’s just say for discussion sake that we come out with a peer-reviewed, vetted, highly-scrutinized study that says: Tada! Definitively there is a gene, you are predisposed. God is not the author of confusion, He tells us in His word ‘don’t frustrate your children,’ so would God then say, ‘I’ve designed you that way and then I’m going to turn around and say that if you act on that behavior I’m going to call it a sin’? This is an argument all three of us have heard many a time, so how do we respond to that?

Dallas: First of all, even if we are born with something it does not mean that God designed that something. There are many external and internal inborn realities that God never intended. So I would not presume that if something is inborn that God ordained it, whether we are talking about something as serious as a birth defect or if we’re talking about, as you said Janet, a predisposition. I do think that for that individual who has a predisposition, whether it is to violence, or addictive behavior or homosexuality, that will be an area of weakness in their life and if they want to live an obedient life they’re going to be called to deal with that area of weakness in their life. But the fact that it may even be inborn would not be an excuse to indulge it.

William Murray’s far-right Government Is Not God PAC has some harsh words for Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), who today revealed that his son is gay, and he now supports marriage equality.

The Religious Right organization in a blog post today warned Portman that homosexuality is “a sexually destructive behavior,” and is “accepting a behavior that may eventually kill his son from AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, or oral cancer.”

“Homosexual sex is ultimately just as destructive as cocaine use,” GING-PAC said in the post. “Would Portman suddenly call for the legalization of cocaine if his son had announced that he was a cocaine addict?”

Portman put his son into ex-gay conversion therapy, saying that “a person with a same-sex attraction has a treatable condition” and “there is hope for those who want to overcome these destructive behaviors.”

Ohio Senator Rob Portman has announced that he supports so-called “gay” marriage. Why? Because his son told him he was “gay” two years ago.

According to Portman, he talked this over with former Vice President Dick Cheney (who has a lesbian daughter) and his pastor and has concluded that “love” and “compassion” taught in the Bible compels him to accept homosexuality and his “gay” son.

Portman has conveniently ignored the warnings against the sin of homosexuality in both the Old and New Testaments – and is accepting a behavior that may eventually kill his son from AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, or oral cancer.

Homosexual sex is ultimately just as destructive as cocaine use. Would Portman suddenly call for the legalization of cocaine if his son had announced that he was a cocaine addict? Would that be “loving” and “compassionate”?

Will Portman support “group” marriage – which is the next phase of the gay agenda?

What if his son had announced that he’s really a girl trapped inside a boy’s body – and wanted a “sex change” operation? Would Portman support his son’s mutilation of his male body to become a fake female? How would that be loving?

Or, what if his son had been involved in insider trading and ripped off thousands of investors? Would he support his son’s behavior and call for the legalization of insider trading?

What sort of core values motivate a U.S. Senator to change his mind about a sexually destructive behavior simply because his son is involved in it? What will happen to Rob Portman’s belief system when he discovers that his son is infected with HIV or throat cancer?

A person with a same-sex attraction has a treatable condition. No one is “born gay” and there is hope for those who want to overcome these destructive behaviors.

Pastors Kevin Swanson and Dave Buehner of Generations Radio are no strangers to using harsh and inflammatory anti-gay rhetoric, and so it came as no surprise that in their latest radio show Swanson claimed that homosexuality is “destructive to the family, to sexuality, to life itself and it destroys civilizations.”

During his introduction of an ex-gay activist named Brian, Swanson claimed that homosexuality is part of “the curse of God [that] has come down upon our land” and is like a “high-tension bear trap that grabs onto young men and young women.”

The incidence of homosexuality is seven times, ten times worse than it was twenty-five years ago. There were forty homosexual clubs in high schools back in 1995; today, thousands and thousands of them, an increase of a hundred times what we saw just fifteen or twenty years ago. The breakdown of the family in the Western world means the breakdown of sexuality, it means the increase of aberrant forms of sexuality like homosexuality and it is of course a massive infringement of the laws of God. Of course, this also means the breakdown of society and the breakdown of civilization, birth implosions, etcetera. These are indications that the curse of God has come down upon our land when we give way to these grotesque forms of morality, immorality and sexuality.

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The sin of homosexuality is far more rampant today than it was in 1990, 1980 and 1960. Ladies and gentlemen today what makes this sin so rough, it’s so destructive to the family, to sexuality, to life itself and it destroys civilizations, social systems eventually. But what makes the sin really, really, really tough is that it’s hard to pull away from it. Now some make it out but many, many don’t. It’s one high-tension bear trap that grabs onto young men and young women when they make their way into the lifestyle of homosexuality. The way in may be easy but the way out is tough. Now today, we’re going to interview somebody who made it out.

Swanson and his guest discussed the “pro-homosexual” bent of the culture and how homosexuality is like a bear trap that “has got its claws into these people.”

Guest: Something about it depressed me, that lifestyle, it felt very I guess almost enslaving in terms of becoming a part of it unwillingly and it becoming a controlling factor in my life. If I could I wanted to turn it off and get rid of it but I felt that I couldn’t.

Swanson: Now the educational systems, the media, the culture, the movies, I mean you name it, they are all out their waving the flags: go, go, go! They are very, very pro-homosexual; they are doing what they can to encourage young people in that lifestyle. Did you get a sense of that at all?

Guest: I think that I was involved in the arts and media in terms of working in the television industry and acting so even back then, even though this is going back ten or fifteen years, nowadays I think it is more prevalent in the mainstream even more than it was back then. Back then it was already prevalent in the arts more so, I did get the essence that it was almost kind of trendy to be in that lifestyle, almost kind of cool in some ways, not necessarily to my family but to be in the arts.

I was hanging around different celebrities and would find out that a big celebrity that everybody would recognize the name find out that they were gay or at least had those tendencies and they would hang out in certain clubs and be spotted and things and I was like, ‘oh wow that’s kind of cool, I’m hanging out in the same place that that person’s hanging out as well.’ So definitely the media and the systems were definitely glorifying that lifestyle even back then and definitely I can see much more now.

Swanson: You think it’s appropriate to liken the lifestyle as a bear trap? I mean it just really has got its claws into these people.

Guest: Oh my gosh, yes. Definitely. It just kind of encompasses you to the point of where you feel like you can’t break free.

Later, Swanson described gays and lesbians as being “up to their elbows in muck” as they “are in a stinking, stinking bog” that has put them “in the utmost bond slavery.”

They create a fantasy land but they are really in a deep, deep bog of despair and they don’t know it. It’s just a fantasy land the way it’s presented and the way it’s maintained in their minds. They try to create that fantasy, in truth they are actually up to their elbows in muck and they are in a stinking, stinking bog and they need to get out of it.

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I think the irony of it all is that they sought freedom by going into this lifestyle and found out that they would be in the utmost bond slavery in the lifestyle that they chose, and what you found is freedom indeed.

Swanson also introduced Brian’s wife, who insisted that they have a very good sex life!

Guest: He’s told me in the past when you know he’s talked to somebody and he’ll admit, ‘I found that person attractive,’ he’s so open about it that I could never think that he could be keeping something from me. I totally trust him.

Swanson: And your relationship, your intimacy is good?

Guest: Oh yeah.

Swanson: Amen. Amen. That’s what it’s all about.

Guest: Is it too much detail?

Swanson: Oh no.

Earlier this week, we looked at the slightly conflicted amicus briefs that the Family Research Council submitted to the Supreme Court ahead of its consideration of two major marriage equality cases. Today, Warren Throckmorton alerts us that the “ex-gay” group Parents and Friends of Gays and Ex-Gays (PFOX) has submitted its own brief to the Court.

The PFOX amicus brief [pdf], unsurprisingly, argues that gays and lesbians should not be a “protected class” under the law because homosexuality “is not an immutable characteristic.” As evidence, it presents the stories of four self-proclaimed “ex-gays” whose lives purportedly show that “sexual orientation can shift over time and does so for a significant number of people.”

One of the stories the brief presents is that of “Richard Cohen, M.A…an ex-gay who is now married with 3 children. He struggled for much of his life with unwanted same-sex attraction. Richard is the founder of the International Healing Foundation (IHF) and the author of Coming Out Straight, Gay Children Straight Parents, Let’s Talk About Sex, and Alfie’s Home.”

As it happens, Cohen is one of the most prominent purveyors of reparative therapy, the harmful process of trying to “cure” homosexuality that was recently banned for minors in California. And his book Alfie’s Home, cited in PFOX’s Supreme Court brief, is the most horrifically disturbing children’s book we have ever seen. We know, because we are unlucky enough to have a copy in our research library. Here is some of what the Justices have in store if they check out Cohen’s work:

Alfie’s Home was published in 1993 by Cohen’s International Healing Foundation. It starts out with a picture of the protagonist on a boat with his dad.

But it goes bad fast, going right for the right-wing myth that homosexuality is caused by childhood sexual abuse…

…and by insufficiently attentive parents:

Eventually, Alfie seeks help and takes part in the “touch therapy” advocated by Cohen…

…which leads him to “realize that I’m not gay” and start dating a woman:

You can see Cohen’s “touch therapy” in practice in this 2006 CNN interview:

He also made a cameo on the Daily Show.

For their own sakes, I hope the Justices don’t look too far into Cohen’s story. But if they do, they’ll get a revealing glimpse of the world that is trying to sink gay rights laws across the country.