Exodus appears to be leaving its network of ad-hoc “ex-gay” ministries in the dust as the political organization and its primary benefactor, Focus on the Family, reach out instead to antigay churches with false messages about the struggles of same-sex-attracted persons.
Just last month, Exodus quietly laid off two key ex-gay outreach workers amid severe budget constraints and lackluster fund-raising efforts among its member “ministries” and antigay churches.
Yet now Focus on the Family boasts:
In the last six years, the organization [Exodus] has grown from 117 member agencies to 234 — including churches, counselors and parachurch ministries.
“When you call Exodus, we offer our point of view ‚Äî which is biblical (and) redemptive, but also practical,” said Randy Thomas, the group’s executive vice president. “We understand what it means to deal with same-sex attractions and have to live out our faith in light of those attractions.”
Exodus’ viewpoint is not Biblical: There is no Biblical basis for Exodus’ secular Freudian myth that sexual orientation is determined by lousy mothering or fathering or by sexual abuse. Nor is Exodus’ viewpoint “redemptive”: Exodus routinely excommunicates ex-gays from its movement when Exodus’ sham treatments and Scripture-lite prayers fail to achieve the promised “change” of sexual orientation.
Having failed (according to its own studies) to achieve “change,” Exodus has allowed its network of approximately 100 ad-hoc amateur ex-gay “ministries” to shrink in recent years, cutting services to these programs while Exodus has instead grown a sizable political network of antigay churches that are committed to prejudice, discrimination, and quack counseling against same-sex-attracted churchgoers and neighbors.
Exodus piggybacks a portion of it antigay church outreach on the marketing budget of Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out” ex-gay roadshow. Focus again boasts:
Focus on the Family’ Love Won Out team, which works alongside Exodus, is encouraged by the expansion.
“This is really exciting because churches are getting behind this movement of teaching people about healthy sexuality and teaching people that they don’t have to be gay,” said Jeff Johnston, gender issues analyst at Focus on the Family and part of the Love Won Out team.
Johnston’s unholy objective: Convince same-sex-attracted persons to call themselves heterosexual, lie to themselves and their families, deceive and marry hapless persons of the opposite sex, and conduct marriages marred by sexual dishonesty, celibacy, denial, and hypocrisy.
Addendum: It is sadly ironic that Exodus’ antigay church network makes churches unsafe for would-be “ex-gays”.
