Are You Ready For ‘Ex-Gay Awareness Month’?

On Friday’s edition of “Sandy Rios In The Morning,” ex-gay activist Christopher Doyle advertised the upcoming “Safe Exit Summit” [PDF], a Washington, D.C., event honoring “Ex-Gay Awareness Month.” Prominent Religious Right groups including the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and Liberty Counsel are sponsoring the event, which includes a congressional lobby day, speeches and worship sessions.

Doyle congratulated Rios on winning the summit’s “Friend of Ex-Gays Freedom Award” last year, which she said she has prominently placed in her office, and said that this year’s event will focus on how churches “can love those experiencing SSA [same-sex attraction] the right way.”

Rios had her own idea, saying that just as churches developed crisis pregnancy centers — faux medical offices designed to deter women from having an abortion, often by peddling misleading information questioning the safety of abortions — churches should also launch “para-church organizations” geared towards dissuading gays and lesbians from homosexuality.

She noted that one leading ex-gay organization, Exodus International, “turned out to be a train wreck” when its leaders renounced ex-gay therapy.

Later in the program, Doyle shared with Rios a story about how he is currently working to “heal” a “young man” who had “over 10,000 sexual partners in his lifetime.”