J. Grace Harley was profiled by Mark Benjamin of Salon.com in 2005. According to that article, Harley — like most ex-gays — has a long history of irresponsible sex- and drug-related compulsive behavior that is completely unrelated to her orientation.
This week, Harley joined other Christian Rightists in defending a supposed right of religious majorities to commit hate crimes — legislatively defined as acts of felony violence — against people of minority sexual orientations and religious beliefs. Joining a long string of religious majoritarians, Harley used her “ex-gay” identity as if to prove to defenders of antigay hate crimes that LGBT people don’t need safety or equal protection under the law because they can change their self-label and become sexually dishonest. Just like she did.
In the video below, Harley misquotes Luke 13:13 to give a false air of legitimacy to her claim to be cured of any same-gender orientation:
And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
But that’s not what the Bible says. As Right Wing Watch points out, the verse is about a disabled woman, not a lesbian, and most versions of the Bible say the woman “straightened up.”
In video captured by Right Wing Watch, Holocaust revisionist and ex-gay activist Scott Lively joins Harley and a parade of other antigay activists who claim that they are being silenced by the federal law’s prohibition against felony violence. (It is worth noting that Lively supports the execution of all LGBT and HIV-positive people in Uganda.)
Falsification of miracles and sanctification of violent crime were once considered sinful. In the new age of the Christian Right, both are virtues.
