Former poster boy John Paulk has come out of the closet a
nd renounced the “ex-gay” industry. He is now under attack from a few dead-enders who are still stuck in that floundering movement. Unfortunately, one of the people who is leading the charge and carrying the “ex-gay” banner is John’s soon-to-be ex-wife Anne. She is a leader in the Restored Hope Network (RHN), a radical organization that hopes to supplant Exodus as the largest “ex-gay” group.
As Anne Paulk’s role in the “ex-gay” industry expands, there are five facts you should know about her:
1) Anne Paulk lied about being an “ex-lesbian”during the infamous 1998 Truth in Love as campaign. She appeared in a full-page New York Times ad where she described herself as a “wife mother and former lesbian” and explained, “By the time I hit my teens…I just wasn’t attracted to men sexually.”
However, in a book, Love Won Out, that she co-authored with John, she contradicted her story that appeared in the ad:
Shortly after high school she met a man named Mark and wrote that he, “appealed to me sexually…We were drawn together by sheer animal magnetism…I came to see that I could be physically attracted to a male, but I just couldn’t surrender my heart to him.”
One does not have to be a sexuality expert to understand that genuine lesbians don’t have “animal magnetism” towards men. Anne may help bisexual women suppress their lesbian feelings, but she certainly is not an example of a person who has gone from gay to straight through prayer and therapy, as she often claims in her misleading “ex-gay” materials.
Furthermore, Anne Paulk was never part of the out lesbian community. Indeed, there has never been a single woman who has come forth to say that she had a sexual or emotional relationship with her. According to Anne:
“It took until college to say, ‘Yes, I’m a lesbian.’ And then Jesus found me within six months. He got a hold of me and that was the end of that.”
2) She says that she went from gay to straight by diverting her sexual energy to cruising trees. According to Anne:
“I would start to experience a sexual response…So, I’d look out the car window and say something like, ‘Gosh, Lord, there’s a tree out there! That tree is green and it has leaves on it. It’s got brown bark.’ I would fix my mind on anything and everything to distract myself….Over time that process made me mentally disciplined enough to displace all lesbian thoughts, period.”
3) God used clouds to let Anne know she was pregnant.
According to Anne:
“As we stopped beside the road one day, I looked up into the sky and saw an unusual cloud formation. It looked like a baby. ‘How strange’, I thought, ‘I’ve never seen a cloud like that before. I wonder…’
Not long thereafter, I learned that I was pregnant again.”
4) Anne believes that God helped her find a contact lens.
“All at once I got down on my hands and knees and prayed, ‘God, please help me! I’ve got to find my contact.’ The next thing I did after giving up, praying, then giving up again, was to put my hand in my pocket. And there, lodged in the corner of my jeans pocket, was my contact. I was stunned! I stared at the contact in disbelief, and for a moment I felt like crying. Could it be that God had actually heard my prayer? There was no other explanation–my contact had been found in an impossible location. It never could have gotten there on its own. It had to be God.”
5) At least twice in 2012 Anne deliberately misled audiences by falsely portraying her “miracle marriage” as stable and healthy. In reality, her husband John was partially out of the closet and they were already separated. She knowingly peddled this false tale of transformation and family bliss at the Restored Hope Network’s first meeting in Sacramento, as well as at a conference in Minneapolis sponsored by Janet Boynes Ministries (another fake ex-lesbian.)
Clearly, Anne Paulk is a truth challenged individual with some bizarre views. As she takes a larger role with the Restored Hope Network, it is critical that people learn about her past, to make it more difficult for her to mislead people in the future.
