Former ex-gay Peterson Toscano tells Bay Windows that he is assisting three young men who are in situations similar to Bryce Faulkner. “It’ just stunning, these kinds of stories, they just come up all the time,” Toscano said. More often than not, Toscano said, families suffer when one member is sent to an ex-gay ministry. “…Once their kid gets involved in the therapy, the parents then get blamed often for making the kid gay, so they all suffer for it.” Toscano also warns of the difficulties of trying to leave ex-gay ministries. “Cut off from the world – friends, TV, news, etc -the teachings of the programme fills the head. You get trapped in a world within a world… an alternate universe that warns of all sorts of dangers outside, that to leave, one is also leaving God’s will for your life.” Those who leave may be cut off from their families.
Common ground? Media ignorance of ex-gays abounds – and with all due respect, HRC’s current leader might benefit from a refresher course, too. It’s news to Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News and Joe Solmonese of HRC that Exodus promotes denial of sexuality — as well as obfuscation, ostracism, and discrimination. For some reason, Gilgoff views Alan Chambers’ admission as a sign of “common ground” with critics of the ex-gay movement. Not so, says Candace Chellew-Hodge, editor of the GLBT Christian publication Whosoever. She comments at length, noting that ex-gays have whispered for years that the “change” most can realistically expect is celibacy. “While it’s true that Alan Chambers would deny my Christianity and say that I am living in sin, his opinion doesn’t make it so.”
Alvin McEwen analyzes the ethical scandals and intentional deceptions of antigay, anti-education activist David Parker — including his arrest record. McEwen also analyzes how the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family distort science and fact to misinform audiences and defame entire blocs of the human population.
Focus on the Family‘s DriveThru blog bluntly declares that minority rights should be determined by the whims of majorities. Constitutions shall be no safer from amendment than the nearest voter referendum. Most absurd statement: “We all take turns being part of a minority, depending on the issue du jour. That’ why majorities are sensitive to, and pass laws enumerating, the rights that will be protected even from an over-reaching majority.”
Live long: Ex-gay organizations say gay people die either young and diseased or old and lonely. Together for 70 years, this Jewish lesbian couple says it ain’t so — but they could have done without society’s fear of them.
Not so prosperous: Exodus leaders’ two main denominations, the Southern Baptists and Assemblies of God, continue to be overrun by popular mega-preachers teaching name-it-and-claim-it Prosperity Theology: God wants you to be a rich heterosexual, if only you pray hard enough. The result, acccording to Clint Rainey of Slate Magazine: Tens of thousands of additional home foreclosures among lower middle-income churchgoers who are too ashamed to condemn their pastors.
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