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Will Ex-Gay become an ex-phenom?

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out is reporting tonight that Exodus international may be on the verge of collapse, for financial reasons—chiefly a bad real estate investment. The hidden story, apparently, is that this “ex gay” ministry has not been able to continue to raise funds effectively enough, and is struggling to repackage or re-brand itself.

In light of the continued shift of some mainline denominations toward full inclusion of sexual minorities, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada a few months ago, and the Presbyterian Church USA a few months before that, it would seem plausible that the donor base for the anti– and ex–gay organizations may be shrinking if not imploding. More and more people who still don’t really “approve” of gay/lesbian folks, are resigning themselves to the shift of contemporary culture, and are less committed to funding every effort to block civil rights or offer alternative psychiatric methods to erase same-gender sexual orientation.

The “ex-gay” movement, characterized by the derisive slogan “Pray Away the Gay” is especially troubled in that its anti–gay message clashes with the core Christian Gospel that proclaims the unconditional love of God for all people. Their only “yes but” to the open-hearted love of God in Christ is to continue to insist that being a sexual minority is a terrible, wicked sin. That view stuck, of course, for generations. But people today are wise enough to realize that 100 years ago, or 500 years ago, everything was a terrible wicked sin. People today see the honest lives of lesbian and gay couples, transgender individuals who are calmly and rationally asking for understanding, and bisexual persons who are “whoring after” both genders. They see ordinary people who have jobs, homes, relationships and contribute enormously to society. They see married same-sex couples in 6 states, and the U.S. military having opened itself to transparency and honesty with regard to the humanity and sexuality of its service personnel.

So characterizing lesbian/gay people as extraordinarily evil, or crying continually that we will all go to hell is about as convincing as a tattered old Fred Phelps sign and a cranky voice behind a megaphone. Fewer and fewer people pay attention.

Read Besen’s entire posting here: http://www.truthwinsout.org/pressreleases/2011/11/20563/ where he also has links to every fact or rumor he cites.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Doctrine, Ex-Gay, Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian, Recovery, wingnuts | No Comments »

Touch us gently.

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

As many of readers of Indwelling Spirit may realize by now, I scribble little “Notes to Self” and don’t get back to them right away. They clutter my desk and brief case and bedside table. Sometimes, months later, these notes take some deciphering, and as I get back to this blog after many months of being overwhelmed by other responsibilities, I am evaluating some of my own scrawled notes:

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Each of us probably remembers this feeling from a doctor or dentist visit: We have pain. The “spot” is very sensitive. We know that this needs the attention of a professional, perhaps even a specialist, but we brace ourselves against what might be careless or overzealous medical attention. “Please be gentle!” we scream under our breath just before we are touched, poked, probed —or drilled!

When someone tells me about a pain they are having, or their story of a recent doctor visit, I am thinking, “I know exactly how you feel,” because I have had similar experiences where a pain was deep or sharp and I found myself pleading for gentle treatment.

Spiritually, there is an important parallel here. We may be living with a lot of pain, spiritually. It takes awhile for it to build up to the point where we recognize its symptoms, or are ready to talk about it. Yet we are really reluctant to take our inner emotional/spiritual pain to a specialist—to a counselor, confessor, pastor or spiritual director.

Why do we avoid getting spiritual help when we are in pain?

I suspect that often the reason is that we don’t expect we will be treated gently, either by a counselor/pastor or by God. Many people have experienced so much judgmentalism, rejection, and threats of punishment from religious figures —and told they can expect the same from Almighty God!—that they avoid taking their spiritual symptoms to them.

All of us have been poked, probed, drilled, scolded, and pushed away at some point—at a very sensitive point in our lives—when what we really needed was a gentle touch or a hug, not a lecture, scolding, ultimatum or damnation.

Time and time again this has been especially true for LGBT people. We have symptoms of emotional and spiritual distress. We hurt. It has taken a lot of time for many of us to bring this pain to the surface, and to recognize the symptom of our deep discomfort. We’re not sure of ourselves let alone sure of our relationship to God.

But because of either our own experiences or those of friends, we avoid seeking counsel or guidance for our spiritual lives, because we cannot take any more harsh treatment. Some of us just go on living with the pain rather than seeking a specialist that can help clear it up, because of the risk of spiritual mistreatment or harm. The so-called Ex-Gay campaign, for example, has been unmasked as an effort that subjects gay people to immeasurable pain and mistreatment.

Often I try to explain to non-gay church people what the significant pastoral and spiritual issues are for LGBT people. Some of these people are sympathetic enough to recognize the prejudice and rejection that lesbian/gay people especially have experienced. But because they are in the sexual majority, not sexual minority, they do not fully understand or fully feel the pain that we talk about.

Yes, there are many other Christian people out there who are not sympathetic at all. They continue to finger the same few “clobber” passages in the Bible, and point to them with a sharpened index finger, like a doctor thumping on a medical manual at the possible diagnosis. And because they are so certain of their allegiance to God as they understand him, they almost aggressively attack the wounded or the hurting with this “immutable” word of the Lord. An old saying expresses this pretty well: The church is the only army that shoots its own wounded.

God does not approach us that way. If anything, God touches all who are in pain, all who have open wounds, more gently. God’s approach to our pain or suffering is an embrace, not a probe or poke or drill. From the Lutheran rite for Confession and Forgiveness (Summer 2011), “As tender as a parent to child, so gentile is God to us. As high as heaven is above the earth, so vast is God’s love for us. As far as east is from west, so far God removes our sin, renewing our lives in Jesus Christ.”

If we would simply look again at even a handful of the stories in the Gospels about how Jesus approached people in pain, we would clearly see this gentle approach: the woman caught in adultery, the woman at the well (who had already been married 5 times), the rich young ruler, Nicodemus, Zaccheus, Thomas the Doubter, Judas Iscariot, the soldiers who crucified him, and the thief on the cross.

To be sure, Jesus often does challenge people to put greater trust and faith in him, or to turn their lives around (“Go, and sin no more”). But his spiritual approach is always gentle. I might even speculate that Jesus had heard of the Hippocratic Oath (5th Century B.C.), to which this classic phrase is often traced: primum non nocere, “first, do no harm.” It certainly calls for reflection for those of us who are spiritual guides, counselors, confessors and pastors, and especially for those who are LGBT people of faith.

I have a definite sense of what God’s gentle touch means. (See my essay, “About Jesus,” for example.) Obviously, a lot of rock-hard conservative clergy and laity wouldn’t agree with me, and they can drill their forefinger into the pages of the Bible to “prove” it. But as I’ve said before, “God’s Word for us is always an invitation, not an ultimatum.” And you can quote me on that.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Coming Out, Doctrine, ELCA, Ex-Gay, Fundamentalism, Gay Catechism, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, Ministry, Spirituality | No Comments »

A Sad Season for Teens

Monday, October 11th, 2010

Today is National Coming Out Day, and it’s no reason to celebrate this year. Gay teens are dying, and it would have been better by far if they could not be out until they were older and a little better to defend themselves or get away from the hostility of their teen peers or hateful parents.

The suicides of several gay youth in the last several weeks, because of relentless bullying they experience, causes me dismay and deep sadness.

It never seems to end. Fifteen years ago Leroy Aarons published his book Prayers for Bobby about a gay teen —harassed by his own fundamentalist mother about his sinfulness until he jumped off a freeway overpass to his death.

A few years ago, in the film The Bible Tells Me So, which traces the stories of five families trying to cope with the coming out of a gay child, one mother must also cope with the fact that her lack of acceptance of her daughter led to her daughter’s suicide.

If you’re really young and you know you are a sexual minority, where can you hide from the evil, the physical abuse, the taunting and bullying? When public schools have become such dangerous places, where can you run to? Is the church a refuge, where a lesbian or gay teen can feel safe? Not yet.

In the Washington Post recently Debra Haffner, the Executive Director of the Religious Institute, reported a startling figure about gay teens:

“All of us have teens and young adults who are gay or lesbian in our congregations, many who are suffering in silence and are at risk. A study done by my colleagues at the Christian Community, found that 14% of teens in religious communities identify as something other than heterosexual. Almost nine in ten of them have not been open about their sexuality with clergy or other adult leaders in their faith communities. Almost half have not disclosed their sexual orientation to their parents. And nonheterosexual teens who regularly attend religious services were twice as likely as heterosexual teens to have seriously considered suicide. Our young people are dying because we are not speaking out for them.”The 14% figure startled me but doesn’t surprise me, since so many young people, who begin to discern they are “different” or “don’t fit in” with their peers—coming up in Christian households and churches—may be drawn to the genuine message of love and acceptance which the Christian faith has always proclaimed. Gay kids may be more likely to “stick around” seeking that love and acceptance when their heterosexual peers grow bored with the message because they don’t have the same self-doubt or self-esteem issues.Or maybe they used to. When I grew up, the Lutheran Church was so repressed that nobody talked about sex at all, period. I didn’t hear negative messages or positive ones, so I didn’t internalize any homophobia from my church. But today, it seems every evangelical pastor (not really, but it seems so) continually rants about homosexuality, and so the message of love and acceptance has qualifications, “fine print” that clearly excludes the teens who are bright enough to figure themselves out at an early age.Seth Walsh, 13, hung himself. Asher Brown shot himself in the head. Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington bridge into the Hudson. Tyler’s suicide cannot be attributed to bullying, even cyber-bullying, which figured into the tragic deaths of four other teens. Tyler was publicly shamed. But from the dark days decades back when homosexuals were considered a security risk because of the likelihood of blackmail—playing on the same dynamic of shame—bullying, intimidation, blackmail and shame have been almost one continuous spectrum from gray to black. For the love God, this must stop.The church of Jesus must stop promoting homophobia, and stop profiting by selling its own self-righteousness by being vehemently anti-gay. I am glad to say that more and more congregations are becoming open-hearted if not open-minded, realizing that while they may still have huge issues with homosexuality, it is not something for which any teenager should be driven to suicide.

However, as the welcoming movement grows in many Protestant denominations, for too many of them it is a very lame and generic welcome that now includes gay and lesbian people as long as there’s no real risk to the congregation. But there is some risk to openly saying that gay teens are welcome —not the least is the sense of “recruiting” the young to “the gay lifestyle.” The only way the church will get past that one is to work harder at educating their own members and the community around them that recruiting is a dangerous and cruel myth.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bullying, Coming Out, Ex-Gay, Fundamentalism, LGBT Rights, Ministry, Public Affairs | No Comments »

More professional misleaders.

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

These are threads of dialogue based on an article link forwarded by Billy Glover from the Bilarico Project.

Posted: 07 Apr 2010 12:00 PM PDT

“With the far right and the professional Christian set all in a dither about the possible upcoming vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, I guess it is no surprise that the faux experts at the American College of Pediatricians (ACP) – a Christian right affiliate intended to dupe the unwary – are stepping up a new campaign based on the old “choice myth” as I call it. Desperate to convince voters – and more members of Congress – that sexual orientation is a choice and changeable, a new webpage with purported ‘facts’ has been trotted out that regurgitates the same old worn out lies. In a letter to school superintendents ACP endeavors to frighten school administrators into resisting any sort of gay affirming policies or programs. The propaganda piece starts out in part as follows:

Continue reading The Only “Choice”: Coming Out of “Situational Heterosexuality” …

“In this regard, former ‘ex-gay’ evangelical minister Anthony Venn-Brown calls it like it is. Brown, now one of Australia’s leading LGBT activists, has a much more honest approach to the issue of changing one’s sexual orientation. Namely, that it is impossible unless one is engaged in ‘situational heterosexuality’ which he equates with gay men in heterosexual marriages. The phenomenon is the opposite of the situational homosexuality found in prisons and other all same gender settings.”

Nice phrase, “situational heterosexuality.” As a “vocational extrovert” I can testify that people can fake pretty much anything —including sexual attraction and even sexual performance. After generations of homosexuals who, when entrapped or blackmailed would vehemently insist they were not homosexual, is it any wonder than social conservatives would take that at face value because it would seem to confirm their prejudice that everybody is/has to be/should be heterosexual? One comment posted in response to the above quotes:

I will say that while I think sexual orientation as well as gender identity are not changeable for most or at least many of us (neither were or are for me), I do think it is a mistake to think that LGBT rights should stand or fall on the mutability / changeability issue. Religion is mutable / changeable, clearly a “lifestyle choice,” yet is protected.

To me the mutability issue is an utter red herring and it would be a serious mistake to frame the debate in those terms.

very respectfully, ~mina

Mina [who posted the comment April 8] is absolutely point on! This “change/can’t change” argument was something I always tried to engage sincerely until somebody pointed out the obvious that religion is a choice. Why should “choice” be considered a deal-breaker for civil rights? Need we be reminded of the First Amendment to the Federal constitution?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [Wikipedia has a good solid entry on this amendment and all its legal case history; see especially the gay angle under Freedom of Association.]

Religion is a personal choice in America. Freedom of religion in this country is therefore freedom of choice. Speech is also a choice, and free speech is protected. Ditto on freedom of association. If the constitution protects these freedoms to choose, why should not gender identity and sexual orientation — indeed sexual preference be another choice that one can make with complete freedom and enjoy the equal right to make that choice?

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The American College of Pediatricians, by the way, seems to be a bonafide organization of doctors, established only 7 ½ years ago.  (See the Right Wing watch Infopedia page above.)  It is not a sham organization or front for social conservatives. It’s just a bunch of social conservatives who view the world through lenses twisted sharply to the right. And yes, it seems as if the ACP’s professional label was calculated to confuse and co-opt the name of the more highly respected American Academy of Pediatrics. Certainly, the ACP letter to educators seems calculated to deflect professional educators from doing their own search for authoritative facts and research on homosexuality.

The ACP is not in step with the mainstream of professionals who know and work with children. For example, Pediatrics in Review has an abstract of published research that would completely counter the right-wing view (but we knew that already) that children raised by gay parents are not going to come out as well as with heterosexual parents:

There are no data to suggest that children who have gay or lesbian parents are different in any aspects of psychological, social, and sexual development from children in heterosexual families. There has been fear that children raised in gay or lesbian households will grow up to be homosexual, develop improper sex-role behavior or sexual conflicts, and may be sexually abused. There has been concern that children raised by gay or lesbian parents will be stigmatized and have conflicts with their peer group, thus threatening their psychological health, self-esteem, and social relationships. These fears and concerns have not been substantiated by research. Pediatricians can facilitate the health care and development of these children by being aware of these and their own attitudes, by educating themselves about special concerns of gay or lesbian parents, and by being a resource and an advocate for children who have homosexual parents.

Sadly, the ACP’s “fact sheet” called “What You Should Know About Sexual Orientation of Youth” is a one-page bulleted list of unsubstantiated opinions and misrepresentations. The worst three: the homosexual lifestyle, especially for males, carries grave health risks; sexual reorientation therapy has proven effective for those with unwanted homosexual attractions; regardless of an individual’s sexual orientation, sexual activity is a conscious choice.”

Again, we’re all entitled to our own opinions, but we’re not entitled to our own facts.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Ex-Gay, Health, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Ignorance is death.

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

When did the gay rights movement run out of gas? Yes, it did run out of gas. I’m only asking when did it happen to us. Last week I passed my 40-year mark as a gay/Christian activist. Didn’t get a pin or a T-shirt, though.

When did the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender rights movement run out of gas? One answer is that it was when we had buried about half of our activists who died of AIDS.

Or is that we ran out of energy when we got half a loaf? When people were able to have some quality of life in some of our larger cities, and when we could use Damron’s guide to clubs worldwide or take gay or lesbian cruises and sail the seas under our own flag?

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Clearly, we need a source of renewable energy to replace the gas we used to have. And that really means recruiting. Not recruiting straights to become queer. If you’ve ever tried that, with a “bi boy” or “straight-but-curious type” you probably had your heart broken within a few weeks. Recruiting no more works than praying-away-the-gay or getting reparative therapy.

No, we need to recruit the young who are already out and LGBTQ. What they need to be recruited to is to get off the couch, unplug the latest iPleasure, and zoom in from outer cyberspace. We need fresh recruits for many things, including the gathering of signatures to repeal Prop 8. But, even more basic, we need recruits to pay attention to what our right-wingnut enemies are doing out there.

American society may appear to be relatively tolerant right now (if you live in the coastal zones or in a city bigger than, say, a quarter million people). The 20-something generation, in most bigger communities, do not have homophobic issues with “the gay thing.” Everybody under 30 seems to know somebody who is gay or bi or trans or queer. It’s become a non-issue.

But at the same time, extremely backward and weird neanderthals are organizing, marching, writing, phoning, blogging and amassing money that could completely yank away the few civil rights we have patched together.

I have talked repeatedly about Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, and the case could be made we’re at the tipping point now. LGBTQ rights could win the entire culture war, or the entire war could be lost because social attitudes, homophobia, and small-mind electoral muscle simply tip things backward again.

The late Dr. John Boswell researched and lectured persuasively that Europe was relatively tolerant up to the 11th century or so. And then a lot of medieval factors including fear, xenophobia, war and disease began to “tip” the needle on social tolerance against homosexuals (and I think Jews and Gypsies, etc.) The visceral attitudes of an entire continent began to look for someone to blame for current social ills, a scapegoat. Gay people became the scapegoat. And within about a hundred years’ time, social tolerance for gay people not only evaporated but the death penalty for same-sex acts became the law all over Europe.

Given modern communications, what took a century 900 years ago could take only a few years in our time. Think Uganda, think Fred Phelps, think Sarah Palin and other tea party boobs.

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I am not Chicken Little here, crying that “the sky is falling!” When I look up, in fact, I am hopeful. But the muck at my feet is likely to pull me under if I do nothing.

Thanks to Ali Davis on 365Gay.com for alerting me to a Washington Monthly article on how simpletons from small town Texas have hijacked the entire national system on what goes into our nation’s textbooks. The article, “How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids’ textbooks” by Mariah Blake is more horrifying than any Hollywood horror film.

People in the upcoming generations are not being dumbed–down by inattention and electronic toys alone. They are being dumbed-down by the already-stupid who have been conspiring in plain sight to make sure the young will not be able to think.

I wish I remembered who said this to me a few years back: “There are uneducated people and there are ignorant people. The problem is that the ignorant are teaching the uneducated.”

In the meantime too many of us are doing white parties, etc. If we are not vigilant, the next Burning Man event may be staged by the Hateful Right.

—Pastor Dan

Posted in Ex-Gay, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Violence, wingnuts | No Comments »

Alternative gimmicks and vaporware.

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Karen Ocamb’s blog, LGBT POV, carries Wayne Besen’s revelation that a Jewish “ex-gay” enterprise is headed by an ex-convict. Read: “Ex-Gay Icon exposed as an ex-con.” Arthur Goldberg is the co-founder of Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) and president of Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality (PATH). According to Ocamb and Wayne Besen this Arthur Abba Goldberg, according to investigators was “the Wall Street criminal mastermind who was convicted in 1987 and went to prison for ‘fraud of spectacular scope’ that included ‘bilking poor communities with complicated bond schemes.’”

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The amateurish web site for “PATH” (“Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality” and “Change is Possible”) has no “About” page. It looks like a transparent front for the organizations in its sidebar full of links. Among them is the notoriously wing-nutty NARTH which has been discredited repeatedly as quack anti-gay psychology. But its home page is full of “we” talk to tell you its views. Examples, “We support personal choice | we support the individual’s right to know | we support individual self-determination | we advocate compassion and respect | we advocate policy neutrality . . .” But who is we? On the News page are only two items, one an undated NARTH release, and the other a release about PATH’s launch on July 8, 2002, or is it July 8, 2003? Apparently you can find out by following up with them.

Media Contacts:   Arthur Goldberg, 201-433-3444   Richard Cohen, 301-805-6111

Ocamb’s column further identifies Goldberg as Executive Secretary of NARTH, which is based here in Southern California, and from TWO and South Florida Gay News reports, also President of Congregation Mount Sinai, a temple in Jersey City. Apparently Goldberg has found a way to be in two places at once, or his temple in Jersey City doesn’t need him around much, or neither does NARTH.

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The plot thickens if you follow threads on the web. Wikipedia’s article on Goldberg has several markers on it, such as “being considered for deletion,” “flagged for rescue,” and “may not meet notability guidelines.” Will the real Arthur Abba Goldberg stand up? Well, no. He apparently dropped his middle name when he started JONAH. Is he trying to distance himself from his past? Goldberg was once an attorney, but was disbarred in 1995 too.

As for the International Center for Gender Affirming Processes (what does that mean anyway?), it is either too new or too vaporous to have its own web site. It is mentioned on several sites including NARTH in connection with Goldberg where he is named a “Principal”, but for an “international center,” shouldn’t it have some actual or even virtual existence?

And why would an ex-con con artist care about homosexuals? Apparently Goldberg has a gay son living in New York, so maybe we have some of the parental tension going there that we did with the late Pete Knight, the California state senator who gave us Proposition 22, who finished out his life not on speaking terms with his gay son.

We see this going on and on and on. Any pretense that the ex-gay phenom really has well-intentioned moral and religious people behind it keeps getting blown with the reality that opportunists are running these programs. Add that to the fact that the founders of Exodus, and others who have worked through the “ex-gay” programs admit that it simply doesn’t work, and you have an enormous sham. When will both the gimmick-mongers and religious control freaks leave this issue and move on to something else more profitable?

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Ex-Gay, Go figure!, Public Affairs | No Comments »

Things are not always as they seem.

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Thanks to my friend Jay who runs this quote at the bottom of his e-mails.

“If God is telling us he can’t do anything about starving kids in the Sudan, but he has the time and energy to make gay people straight, then God is one hurting buckaroo.” — Colin McEnroe (according to the Connecticut Forum), well known Connecticut personality, witty and opinionated radio talk show host, columnist, author, social commentator, and playwright.This quote messes with our sense of God— long enough for a quick chuckle —but it really should mess with our sense of ourselves and for quite a long time. The starving kids of Sudan have fallen off the front page, but the homeless and orphaned kids of Haiti are on the front page. Human disasters are not God’s fault (like an earthquake is an “act of God”!) The disasters of humanity are human-caused disasters. Human beings generally have a weird sense of blaming God for tragedy and expecting God to deliver a miracle for human-made events over which we have control anyway, if we would accept responsibility, stop passing blame, and share our resources.Earthquakes would not harm people if humans hadn’t constructed the dangerous buildings that we live and work in. If we were all still living in the shade of big trees or thatched huts, the trees and huts might shake, we would say “wow” and that would be the end of it.People who are starving are hungry because this bountiful earth is either being pillaged or destroyed by sociopathic greed, fear, ego on the part of other human beings. There is plenty of good soil, but we allow water and land to be controlled by the rich and powerful. There is plenty of food in the world, and the human know-how to grow more. In the United States food is so over-plentiful that we have porked out — one third of all Americans are obese. Yet we want to seal our borders to keep the hungry from coming here to eat or work, and we pretend to be are completely in the dark as to why other peoples would despise Americans so much they would become our enemies. there are probably well–meaning Christians who pay to God for protection from our enemies, without realizing our own role in making enemies.

Laws and rules — the things that make criminals and sinners out of us— are humanly determined. Yes, I know about the Ten Commandments, but they don’t’ say a word about, for example, “controlled substances,” the age of majority and statutory rape, moving violations, or derivatives and securities. We have made our society so complex that it creates both the crime and the occasion for wrong-doing. Our human complexity amplifies the human tendency to be greedy and inconsiderate.

There are a higher percentage of people in U.S. prisons than any other nation. Are those people all better people , more moral, less criminal than we are? Or have we criminalized too many things? Or have we made our fat and greedy nation a magnet for bad human behavior. There are more Catholic marriages annulled in the United States than the rest of the world combined (according to an AP report in late January). Could it be that our holy rules about marriage and divorce are the real cause of this? Or do Americans have more ridiculous expectations, which contribute to failed relationships, out of proportion to most other countries?

Human rules, constructions and expectations about sexuality cause our strange expectations and constructions about the divine. Somebody, or the entire aggregate of cultural attitudes reinforced by despicably false religion, has insisted that homosexuality is a choice, so therefore a bad choice. False religionists have deduced from those false premises the idiotic ideas that gay and lesbian people should and therefore must unchoose what they have chosen (even when lesbian and gay people overwhelmingly insist they didn’t choose their sexual orientation); and have created a whole industry set up to fake this un-choosing and re-choosing of sexual orientation.

They have the nerve to call this “reparative therapy.” Therapy is a word that means the treatment or curing of a disorder. But genuine therapists have been saying for 30 years that being gay or lesbian is not a disorder, and yet “pretend-therapists” steal the word and slap it on to something which isn’t broken, doesn’t need fixing, and can’t be changed anyway. Then those same screwballs attempt to put the monkey on God’s back, supposing that if lesbian and gay folks really turn to God, God will make them straight.

Go figure. Is it any wonder that 20-somethings want little to do with the Christian faith when it has already been hijacked? If only we could realize that the fundamentalist agenda is not genuine, that it has little to do with being Christian and nothing to do with Jesus. And that the monkey is on their own backs.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Doctrine, Ex-Gay, Public Affairs | No Comments »

The Cause of it all.

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

I am constantly surveying the news and opinions of the Religious Reich and the conservative milieux in the hopes that they are getting wiser. Alas but this process is not making me an optimist. The old saying is, “people see what they want to see.” Or as Jesus put it, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” (John 9:41)

Several years ago, I tried to give systematic thought to the problem the Right has with sexual minorities. It all comes down to “the cause of it all.” Here is the reasoning: As long as conservative/heterosexual people are determined to follow a preconceived mental outline, they will force its logic to a conclusion that supports their determination. This can be outlined quite plainly:

1. There is something terribly wrong with homosexuality.

2. When something is wrong, there must be a reason or cause that “normal” sexuality “went wrong.”

3. If it can be found what went wrong, then a way to fix it can and must be found.

Ergo, in response to this logic, organizations that operate “ex-gay” ministries have created a formula, a service, an entire industry geared to working with people who are unhappy with being homosexual, or are motivated to change.

Most often, however, the unhappiness and motivation to change are the result of family and societal pressures to be heterosexual, to “appear” to be heterosexual, or at least behave heterosexually in a heterosexual world. The emphasis on the “fix” in these ministries is an emphasis which firmly believes that sexual behavior can be successfully re-directed, like turning someone who is blindfolded around and pointing her/him in a new direction.

In some cases, “ex-gay” leaders will quietly admit that an inner change of sexual orientation may not or does not happen. they are content enough if somebody replaces the “homosexual lifestyle” with a “heterosexual lifestyle,” whether or not any fundamental psychosexual change has actually taken place.

However, many young people who come to these “ex-gay” therapy operations do not come because they are unhappy or motivated to change, but because their parents or families are unhappy or highly motivated to make them change. It is often said that a sweater is what a child puts on when the child’s mother is cold! The pressure on young people to conform comes not only from peers but from parents. As more and more people come out to their peers and families, peer pressure to be heterosexual is literally disappearing. But parental pressure is another thing.

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Wayne Besen, in his preface to his book Anything But Straight, tell the story of coming out to his own parents. His mother bought a motivational tape for him titled “Gay and Unhappy” which, he said, tried to create a problem in his relationship with his parents and make it the cause for why he is gay.

“The problem was, I always had a very close relationship with my parents—at least until I came out. I listened to the tape twice and realize that there was absolutely nothing in it that applied to my life. It was trying to establish a cause and effect relationship that did not exist. It actually seemed like the tape was trying to create a wedge between my parents and me by having me manufacture a traumatic event from my past that did not actually occur.”Besen describes the scene at the breakfast table the next morning, after listening to the tape twice and trying for the third time. “‘So, how did it go with the tape last night?’ my father keenly asked while my mother’s eyes glowed with anticipation.‘Dad, it was great. All I’ve got to do to become straight, according to the tape, is figure out when you and Mom became lousy, distant parents.’That was the last subliminal ex-gay tape they bought me.The reactionary defenders of “cause” thinking, of course, often try to tie it to molestation. That is, homosexuals are homosexual because they were seduced, drawn, led or somehow forced into homosexual behavior against their real nature by some other homosexual.So in the federal Proposition 8 case going on right now in San Francisco, right-wingnut pro-8 witness Hak-Shing William Tam still insists that homosexuals are child molesters.

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(Tam is one of the defendant-intervenors in the case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, who later wanted to withdraw from the case entirely.  See “The likely real reason for Hak-Shing William Tam pulling out of Perry v. Schwarzenegger” on the Box Turtle Bulletin site.)

Here’s a summary of an Associated Press story posted January 21 on Newser:

(AP) – A proponent of California’s same-sex marriage ban testified today that he thinks gays are more likely to be pedophiles and that allowing them to wed would lead to efforts to lower the age at which teenagers can legally have sex with adults. Lawyers seeking to overturn Proposition 8 called Hak-Shing William Tam in their efforts to prove that bias toward gays fueled the campaign to pass the measure.Prop 8 sponsors have tried to distance themselves from Tam, even though his name appeared alongside ballot arguments for the measure in voter- information pamphlets during the 2008 campaign. Tam is secretary of a Chinese-American evangelical Christian group whose site contained a link to another article claiming gays were 12 times more likely to molest children; under questioning, Tam said he agreed with that view though he could cite no evidence to support it.Well, that kind of nails it for me.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Ex-Gay, Fundamentalism, Ministry, Public Affairs | No Comments »

Blows me away.

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Wayne Besen makes, as usual, some excellent points is his column critiquing the Ex-Gay industries, especially Exodus International and Focus on the Family. (See: “What’s Their Point?” What they spread as love is narrowly focused not to love the homosexual they supposedly want to help, but only themselves.

Besen, who is Jewish and I believe not particularly religious, nonetheless has the integrity and intelligence to question whether the religious motivation of Ex-Gay ministries is genuine. He reminds us that if the Christian faith wants to spread the love of God, they are doing a strange job of it by alienating tens of thousands of LGBT people, not only from “evangelical Christianity” but from religion in general.

For every guilt-ridden homosexual who temporarily falls under their spell, they lose hundreds, if not thousands, of gay people who view their conversion program as intolerant. If your ministry causes many gay people to write off not just Christianity, but all religion, by what measurement can you consider your evangelizing a success?

If these ministries want to love homosexuals and save them from a homosexual life-style, more often they drive young people to depression, abject despair, and suicide. Despair often contributes to self-destructive behaviors as well, so Besen cites a recent Emory University Study suggesting a link between banning same-sex marriage and HIV infection rates! (News: Georgia Political & Policy Digest; Emory News Release.)

Is this what a loving God would really want? A lot of guilt-ridden, repentant, dead homosexuals? For once I am glad that someone form outside the Christian community can publish a critical look at the Ex-Gay expression of beliefs and tell them directly, “you are not being persuasive.”

It reminds me of the scene in Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All For You, in which the good sister carefully determines that one of her former catechism students, who was homosexual, had gone to confession for his sins and not done any other same-sex acts since his last confession.

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GARY. Yes, Sister?  SISTER. You still believe what you do with Jeff is wrong, don’t you? I mean, you still confess it in confession, don’t you?  GARY. Well I don’t really think it’s wrong, but I’m not sure, so I do still tell it in confession.  SISTER. When did you last go to confession?   ALOYSIUS. This morning actually. I was going to be playing Saint Joseph and all.  SISTER. And you haven’t sinned since then, have you?  GARY. No, sister. (Sister shoots him dead.)SISTER. (Triumphantly.)  I’ve sent him to heaven! Christopher Durang’s play was screamingly funny, but when I saw it live in Los Angeles years ago, I also remember that my chest was pounding when Sister Mary pulled out her revolver. There is something just too real about homophobic hatred even when it is disguised as love or prayer or good intentions.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Ex-Gay, Gay Catechism, Homophobia, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights | No Comments »

Watch out for grace!

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

The Daily KOS (thanks for the link, Sarah), has a whole list of wacky readers’ comments about the first days of gay marriages in Iowa. These three jumped out at me:

“straight people don’t want gays to be promiscuous but they don’t want them in a legal committed relationship either…”

Somebody else wrote: “That’s because they don’t want us to exist. Their ideal world doesn’t have gay people in it at all – we’ve all been exterminated. Fortunately, cooler heads are prevailing on this issue. Mostly. “

And somebody else replied: “For people who don’t want us to exist… they certainly think about us a lot.”

They certainly do! The reactionary movement coming from the (mostly Religious) Right seems obsessed with us! For example, the blog at Gay Christian Movement Watch (“Because God has called us to holiness”) is an extensive and persistent rant about homosexuality. The “About” page states that it is “a cutting edge Christian ministry whose mission is to monitor, analyze and publish (MAP) the activities, leaders and public theological positions of the ‘gay christian movement.’”

To me, it may be the cutting edge of a very dull knife.

The blog and other materials there seem to be the work of one man, an African-American in the Atlanta area who touts his escape from homosexuality. He markets his e-book this way: “a man who lived to tell, Touching A Dead Man traces the path of a young boy’s life through childhood rejection, growing up black and COGIC and the pain of his darkest secret: homosexuality. With courage, the book paints a moving portrait of life at its best and worst: sexual violence, longing for fatherly relationship and eventual self destructive living as a gay man.”

Acronym: Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal holiness movement – pretty serious, no-wiggle-room, don’t-screw-up, guilt-rich theology. Yep, that would be a tough place to grow up gay.

Can somebody help DL Foster with the rest? It seems he is a self-made poster child for the ex-gay ministry crowd. I certainly empathize with the other pains and sorrows he may have experienced: childhood rejection, growing up black (in our racist society), sexual violence, longing for fatherly relationship and eventual self destructive living.

But, excuse me, Rev. Foster, none of that stuff is inextricably or directly linked to being gay or lesbian (or bisexual or transgender) and none of it is linked to being LGBT/Christian. I haven’t written my book, yet, but I can share here that I didn’t grow up with childhood rejection. I am of European not African extraction (but I am of parentage tainted enough that Hitler would have hunted me down). I have never been a victim or perpetrator of sexual violence. My relationship with my father was just fine, and with God even better. And I haven’t gone through any self-destructive living, probably because I didn’t have a moralizing, guilt-inducing church to teach me to hate myself, doubt my own good judgment, and obsess about whether I would burn in hell for having my mostly-vanilla flavored hopes and desires to love someone and be loved in return.

Instead of all Foster’s drama, I remained steadfast with Christ, in a church (Lutheran) that totally ignored all sexuality when I was a child, was terrified of it when I was a college student, and has been dancing around homosexuality ever since. I discerned that I was gay (did not choose to be) while in seminary, respectfully stayed in my closet for more than a dozen years, came out gradually, avoided drugs and promiscuity, and met my life partner with whom I am still closer than ever more than three decades later.

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“Look! Oh my God, no!  There’s another gay Christian!! I can’t believe it!”

So the implied argument of this minister, who is obsessed with keeping a “watch” on the Gay Christian Movement, is that living the homosexual life is a disaster, which he characterizes as that of a “dead man.” I can’t speak for him, but I can speak for my homosexual life: I have grown emotionally and spiritually. I have found incredible strength, character, love and compassion from all kinds of LGBT people, both religious and not religious, which I believe to be the work of God’s spirit active in our world. I believe that my chance meeting the man with whom I have shared my life, home, and faith was truly a gift from God. And I know, as the Gospel clearly says over and over, that God’s love has been here for me, and for countless Lesbian/gay, bisexual and transgender Christians, all along even if we didn’t notice it. I know that we are justified, reconciled, or “saved” not by our good works or by painful or melodramatic episodes of repentance, nor by total sexual abstinence, nor by profound guilt or shame, nor by self-loathing, nor by trying to change our orientation, but only by the grace of God. I will stand by what I read in the New Testament:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God— not because of works, lest anyone should boast. . . . But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinance, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thus bringing the hostility to an end.” Ephesians 2:8–9, 13–16

Here’s the core of the “Gay Christian Movement” —and let me paraphrase that passage:

  • We claim this grace as being given to us, too, as it is to all Christians and all other human beings.
  • It is not our doing—not the accomplishment of any Christian— that we are loved by God for Christ’s sake. So there is no boasting about making the “right” moral choice of heterosexuality (because we know perfectly well that you can’t choose to be heterosexual any more than you can choose to be Lesbian/gay, bisexual or transgender; one can only choose to make peace with our sexuality as one of God’s gifts in our life).
  • Heterosexual Christians, especially right-wing conservative ones, may think that we who are not heterosexual are “far off”—wandered, lost, estranged—but we, like they, have been brought near to God. Do you get that? We don’t approach God. God comes our direction in Christ, and brings us near.
  • And this is accomplished not through our efforts or our self-denial or self-doubt or self-hatred, but through Christ.
  • Many ultra-conservative voices, like Rev. Foster, insist there is a “culture war” ( a thinly veiled view of a religious war, an Armageddon) going on which they must win. But, hello!, Christ is our peace. It’s a done deal. Christ has already ended the culture/religious war for us, making all Christians one.
  • He has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, so don’t even try to put up another one, okay?
  • How did he do this? By abolishing this constant appeal to commandments and ordinances (they only appeal to the commandments and ordinances which they cherry-pick out of the Bible because they self-righteously think they are obeying all those things but we aren’t!).
  • There is one new humanity now, folks, not just one new Christianity: there is one new humanity because God, in Christ, unilaterally decided to accept us, love us, and be reconciled with all of us, and bring all this stupid animosity and hostility to an end. The so-called culture war ended on the Cross!

In other words, Reverend, get over it. There are thousands, millions, countless LGBT Christians out there who keep faith with God even while you continue to “watch” what we’re up to! There are countless numbers of us out there who praise God, love Jesus, and do what he commands us to do:  love one another, show compassion and mercy, feed the hungry, visit the sick, welcome the homeless, and go to those in prison. While you are busy “watching” what we’re up to, we simply try to do what Jesus would do.

And when it comes to the Christian lifestyle (yes, that is a lifestyle! a choice!), it really doesn’t matter which gender someone happens to be capable of loving. There is no commandment to “get heterosexual,” Rev. Foster. And while you may think we are called to holiness, I know we are called to faithfulness. We are not justified by any feeble version of “holiness,” yours or ours. We live by grace alone!

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in "The Closet", Bible & Interpretation, Coming Out, Doctrine, Ex-Gay, Faith, Fundamentalism, Gay Catechism, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace | No Comments »

Conversion and/or Convergence?

Monday, April 13th, 2009

I’m not sure what it means to convert from one faith to another. Philip Jenkins’ article “The Sufi next door,” in the current (April 21, 2009) issue of Christian Century, by Philip Jenkins, again brushes on this sensitive issue of Christian–Muslim relations. He begins:

Many excellent scholars study Islam. Many other scholars explore the changing face of global Christianity. Rarely do those experts look at the two worlds— Muslim and Christian—side by side, which is a pity: when we do, we see some remarkable parallels and connections that shed light on both.

In truth, it is “side by side” that makes both sides nervous, because when we see parallels and connections, we are less likely to be absolutely sure of our own faith. Its uniqueness is usually a prop to help support its truthfulness. But if there is another religion out there, or another world view, which closely parallels our own but interprets things just somewhat differently, how can we be absolutely sure that we are right?

I am sure that, since long before the Crusades, Christians and Muslim both had little interest in understanding the other deeply. Certainly the Taliban in our own times, and the American Religious Reich, have no desire to dialogue.

In recent months I have had occasions for preliminary dialogue in my own community with Jewish people, specifically with a local Chabad rabbi, and with Jewish laymen. Several of my own Lutheran community members have Jewish spouses. It’s idiotic to avoid dialogue if it’s so easily at hand.

Of course, my insights won’t topple any millenniums-old barriers, but if those barriers are inside my own head, wouldn’t it be a good idea to listen, discuss, grow and mature on such matters? This year I was invited to a home Seder that sounded extremely fascinating (but sadly, it was held on our Christian Maundy Thursday, so we couldn’t attend).

On the Protestant side of the Catholic/Protestant divide, of course, entirely new forms of faith continue to emerge, attracting those who were perhaps uncomfortable in or bored by their received (upbringing) tradition. To some extent, there is convergence which was launched by the ecumenical movement several generations ago. Convergence may happen when two things are similar and each affords advantages. But it is far less likely that we will ever converge with what we fear.

In the LGBT community, of course, we already good at bridging chasms and knocking down prejudicial walls. Ethnic, religious and economic lines are more easily jumped once you have already crossed the no-man’s-land or the DMZ of sexual taboo.

But like Christians and Jews in dialogue, or Christians and Muslims in dialogue (Google: 270,000 results, oh my!), who find more in common than they do which separates them, heterosexuals and lesbian/gay people who dialogue find they have more in common than not. It seems scary, and a lot of fundamentalist/ heterosexist types don’t want to risk their strident certainty about masculinity or sexuality by actually talking with a sexual minority one-to-one.

It is tempting to smirk about their small–mindedness or inflexibility. But how many gay or lesbian people have risked building a bridge with a transgender person? What are we afraid of? After all, we may have more in common than we have that distinguishes us.

If we expect the general public, for example, to stop battling same-gender marriage with the argument that our marriage does not hurt anybody else’s heterosexual marriage, then what is it about our own lives that we think we might endanger if we get to know transgender people ?

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Yet conversion is not that likely in the sexuality area. I’ve never known a heterosexual who was somehow tempted to experiment on the other side unless the homosexual disposition or orientation was there from early on. Right-wing Christians who push those “change”or “reparative therapy” ministries insist that gay people all suffer from some gender confusion.

But frankly, those of us who are Kinsey 6′s aren’t confused at all. No amount of dialogue with a transgender person is likely to prod me to change my gender. Ditto with straights. None of them have been able to recruit me, no matter how much they’ve tried, prayed or threatened. Most of my dialogue has always taken place with heterosexuals, and I’m still not drawn to “convert” to heterosexuality.

What converges through dialogue is the common will to understand, to set phobias aside, and to walk alongside others whom we used to loathe and fear.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Catholic matters, Ecumenical Issues, Ex-Gay, Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Sex | No Comments »

Obama, the Whirlwind and the Serenity Prayer

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

Rick Warren to give an invocation on the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a.k.a., Inauguration Day. But I am just as mystified as the next gay.

Wayne Besen (www.truthwinsout.org), who is usually insightful and on target, has ventured that maybe Obama is smarter than the rest of us, since he is well known already as turning conventional wisdom on its head and succeeding. “This olive branch to evangelical Christians, who largely supported John McCain,” writes Besen, “felt more like poison ivy to gay and lesbian voters, who overwhelmingly cast ballots for Obama.” (“The Rick Warren Whirlwind“.)

Typically, I ignore mega-churches as personality cults on steroids, if I don’t vilify them entirely. Mega churches also seem to blossom in the rich soil of America’s obsession with success —the suburban accumulation of wealth, power and prestige. The mega churches with which I am familiar are all rooted in upwardly mobile suburbs, or in places where the people who passionately desire that lifestyle can get to them.

Yes, wealth, power, prestige and mega-anything are all matters of lifestyle. No wonder the religious right uses that term on us. The very word must be on their lips all the time.

In October, I sat down at the same table with some evangelical Christian leaders —all representing independent Christian ministries (beware those who label themselves “non-denominational.” Read: not accountable to any larger entity), and some heterosexual non-judgmental types. They are exploring the building of bridges between the evangelical churches on the right and the welcoming/reconciling churches on the left.

I am still trying to be sympathetic to their reconciling offer, but the days after the November 4 “Yes on 8″ victory, I was sorely tempted to cut off any conversation. What was especially bitter is that a representative of Rick Warren’s Saddleback Country Club was in on the first meeting I attended. If she hadn’t been such a sweet young pastor’s wife I might have gotten testy on the spot.

It is clear that Warren’s Club is “the Unwelcome Place”, as this blog quotes/summarizes for you:

“Finally, a word about being judgmental. It’s not judgmental to say that what the Bible calls a sin is a sin, that’s just telling the truth. Not being willing to talk to someone caught up in sin, or not believing that they can be forgiven, or thinking that you are not just as much in need of Jesus as they are … that’s being judgmental.Because membership in a church is an outgrowth of accepting the Lordship and leadership of Jesus in one’s life, someone unwilling to repent of their homosexual lifestyle would not be accepted at a member at Saddleback Church. That does not mean they cannot attend church – we hope they do! God’s Word has the power to change our lives.”

Well, yes, Rick, it does have the power to change our lives. God’s Word has changed my life enormously over the years. But God’s Word, like worrying, has not changed a lot of things that I used to sincerely pray about. God’s word has not made me one inch taller (Matthew 6:27) for example, nor one point straighter on Alfred Kinsey’s scale.

I am frequently in conversation with God about my shortcomings, my failures, my limitations and the darkness that sometimes lurks in my psyche. With the power of God, I think I am gradually becoming a better human being, but I am not so foolish as to suppose that whatever I do I am somehow able to shine it on with God. In fact, my conversation with God have led me more each day to realize that I am on God’s good side purely and only by reason of grace. Not self-denial, not abstention, not self-hatred, not spiritual warfare, not loneliness or lovelessness.The truth is, being lesbian or gay or transgender or any of a thousand other measures of human variety and distinctiveness, seem to be the work of a diverse and creative God who is not nearly as upset about our human variations as fundagelicals are.

If I were to take on another prayer campaign with even greater confidence in the power of God’s word, I would have to use the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

If I were a little more mean-spirited, I would ask Mr. Obama if he had ever tried praying away his black skin. After all, the power of God’s word can change our lives, right? But maybe Mr. Warren can make that suggestion to Mr. Obama in person.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Ex-Gay, Fundamentalism, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Living by Grace, Public Affairs | No Comments »

Scientific Distortion and Four Lies

Friday, November 14th, 2008

In late October Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out that another researcher has announced that the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) “grossly and deliberately distorted” her research regarding sexual orientation. I have mentioned Besen’s own research and credentials in this blog several times, and his book Anything But Straight here).

Dr. Lisa Diamond, Associate professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah, is interviewed by Besen here (5 minute video).

Diamond also comments in the video interview about so-called “reparative therapy.” “The [reparative] therapists are saying, “We can change your orientation,’when in fact all of the data—all of the data suggest that that’s not the case.” She is also particularly blunt about the willful misuse of published scientific findings by organizations who rely on the public’s gullibility. 

“There are a lot of scientists who would say, ‘you know what? I just produce the data, and then how it’s used is not my problem.’ But I think knowing that we have a culture that actually treats scientific findings very seriously in terms of support for public policy, that would be inappropriate. We have to be very vocal about what constitutes an unscientific use of the data and, that’s why I think it’s important to speak out. … I’m pretty accustomed at this point to the fact that these sorts of distortions will occur. My hope is that by doing something like this we can hopefully have a more scientifically-literate society and consumer culture that will get better at recognizing distortions when they occur, and will not simply take the citation of a scientific paper as evidence that that paper has been appropriately used.”

Besen has another web site which is very helpful, www.respectmyresearch.org, which names the distorters of scientific research. Among them, says Besen, are Dr. James Dobson who heads Focus on the Family (a multi-million dollar power house of right-wing rhetoric) and Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, former president of NARTH. “Nicolosi recently stepped aside after a member of his “Scientific Advisory Board” penned an article for NARTH’s website that justified slavery.”

Alongside the willful distortion of scientific research, NARTH has been known to use pseudo-science to prop up its persuasions. Although entirely discredited for his unscientific science, the views of Dr. Paul Cameron still pop up in NARTH’s archives. For example, Dr. Ross Olson cites a Cameron winner, “Gay Foster Parents More Apt to Molest,” by Paul Cameron, Journal of the Family Research Institute, Vol. 17 No. 7, Nov 2002, ). According to Respect My Research, Cameron “was dropped from the American Psychological Association for his shoddy and anti-gay work, such as claiming mosquitoes spread AIDS and gay people should be exterminated.”

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Cameron and Nicolosi

(A week ago, NARTH held a convention. For one view of that, see Daniel Gonzales’ article, “Hair You can Straighten, Gays Not So Much” in the Box Turtle Bulletin here.)

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It is to easy to suppose that the right wing nuts are simply crazy. There is a chilling consistency to their logic, a consistency for which they keep finding ways to misuse information and scientific studies. The consistency is what I called the Four Lies.

A few years ago I started writing a longer paper—but the longer research required and longer hours at my day job stopped me from finishing it—about the Four Lies I see behind the right-wing manipulation of public attitudes and public policy about homosexuality. The Four Lies are these: that we are child molesters, that we “recruit”, that we “choose the gay life style, and that we can simply change. These are not merely misunderstandings, they are Lies.

Change is the underlying issue, because it implies that there is a “right choice” and a “wrong choice.” Sexual reactionaries have themselves convinced that the chose heterosexuality, and take credit for making the “right choice,” in spite of the fact that credible academic research has yet to find a cause of heterosexuality or homosexuality, and increasingly supports the idea that no one chooses his or her sexual orientation.

The screwball doctrine that people choose be lesbian or gay supports the idea that impressionable young children must be protected from our influence. They encourage the public to fear the “bad influence” we supposed exert on the young so that they will seek to control us. Homosexuality must never be “taught in the schools” for example — which figured prominently in the “Yes on 8″ television ads in California. Conservatives in the African-American community, during the same Proposition 8 battle, insisted that black people do not choose to be black, but that homosexuals choose to be homosexual, and thus ours is not a civil rights issue. For conservatives who buy this Lie, since homosexual behavior is a choice, then we deserve no protected status and no civil rights.

The Lie about child molestation—which has been responsibly refuted over and over—is that any kind of an “experience” between a homosexual and a young person could influence that young person to become homosexual, as if it is such an attractive “lifestyle” that impressionable kids would choose homosexuality the way some kids choose to join a gang or get their navels pierced or their biceps tattooed. The whole thesis of “reparative therapy” is to fix the supposed damage to a young person’s gender identity to keep him from slipping or jumping into “the gay lifestyle.” On the so-called “gay lifestyle,” see my brief article “Two Gay Lifestyles” here.

After a while, I get so tired of arguing for truth over b.s. that like many others I tend to just make jokes about them. For example, the reason that heterosexuals have children is that since they can’t recruit they have to reproduce. But making jokes does not make Lies and misinformed public opinion go away. The Yes on Proposition 8 victory is evidence of that.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Ex-Gay, HIV and AIDS, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights | No Comments »

Shall we overcome? Part 1

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

All human beings are unique. Every body is different. Each of us has a unique life experience which results from what we have been given from birth onward (both our genes and our birth-family environment, etc.). Some are born to privilege, others in dire circumstances, some with physical challenges, others with extraordinary physical “good luck” — no genetic time bombs, etc.

The variety of human beings is endless. The stuff of literature, however, is fairly finite, and one of the recurring themes used by writers (whether novelists, essayists, or those who craft screen plays) is the story of someone who overcomes great difficulties or obstacles. For example, the heroic figure who rose out of poverty, or broke free of slavery, or overcame ignorance, racism, disease, handicaps, physical hardships — you name it.

In films, this “overcoming obstacles” is one of that limited number of story ideas. I had some fun with this in my earlier blog, “Everybody knows there are only five basic plots.”

It set me thinking whether we are so conditioned by popular literature and especially the movies that we have trouble with people who accept the circumstances they are in, rather than struggling against them and overcoming them. And I think of St. Paul’s advice, in 1 Corinthians 7, that “each of you lead the life that the Lord assigned, to which God called you.” He begins by talking about marriage, singleness and virginity, but when he comes to these verses (17–24) he also includes circumcision and slavery. Slaves, he counseled, should be willing to accept their enslaved condition, knowing that they are “free in the Lord.”

This is of course one of those passages that gets St. Paul in trouble with modernists, feminists, liberations, etc. But I have thought of this passage as it might be understood by lesbian and gay people — or for that matter, but transgender persons. Are we asked to accept the condition or circumstance in which we find ourselves, make the best of it, and just try to be spiritually free in the Lord even if we feel trapped in what life has dealt to us?

The story of transgender individuals tests this interpretation. Individuals who are born with a male body but perceive themselves to rightfully be female, or the other way around, suffer from gender dysphoria. There is a lot of debate right now about whether this or another label even belongs in the diagnostic manuals of mental health. But if we try to apply St. Paul’s advice — on a parallel track with being single or being married or being a slave, we would have to counsel a transgender person not to seek to change genders, through hormonal treatment or gender reassignment surgery. “Let each of you lead the life the Lord has assigned.”

But then what of the situation for those who discern themselves to be lesbian or gay? Shouldn’t we just accept the fact that we are homosexual, accept our sexual orientation as a given, as part of what life has dealt us?

The rub comes not within ourselves but from others, who weigh in with strong opinions about what it means to “accept.” Conservatives and fundamentalists quickly counsel a transgender person not to change genders but to accept their birth gender and to live (present themselves) as that gender, but take the opposite point of view on homosexuality. They do not believe that we should accept ourselves as gay or lesbian, and live the life “assigned” to us. The conservative would argue that being gay or lesbian was not “assigned” by the accidents or vagaries of human diversity, but chosen as a willful act of human disobedience and sin.

It makes for a fine, coherent systematic view for conservatives. The only problem is, it’s not particularly truthful. Most of us cannot remember choosing to be heterosexual or homosexual, and we don’t discern our sexual responsiveness (arousal, emotional attraction, and even love) as willful acts. We can suppress and stifle our true humanity and human experience—with enough social pressure and internalized shame brought about by the disapproval of others—but that is far from accepting our “condition” and claiming our “freedom in the Lord.” In fact, it’s quite telling that in the very same discussion in 1 Corinthians 7, St. Paul also advises those who are single “It is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.”

Taken as a whole, Paul’s advice is quite mixed. He strongly counsels those who are unmarried to remain unmarried and to accept their circumstances. He counsels the slave to remain content in his “condition” of enslavement. Yet he suggests that it is not a sin for the single person to marry after all, rather than to be aflame with passion. And he stops short of advising the slave that it’s not a sin to seek freedom rather than to be aflame with anger and resentment.

What rule would Paul give to a person who is lesbian or gay? Are we to be content with being lesbian or gay, and so go ahead and “lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you”? Or to attempt to remain celibate and abstinent, even if constantly aflame with passion? Or aflame with bitterness, loneliness and resentment?

Or as the conservative Christians insist, can a lesbian or gay man overcome the sexual orientation she or he has discerned, through great heroics and with great triumph. Conservatives want to believe the latter, because they have a whole “ex-gay”industry riding on it which they seek to protect from the ridicule of both the LGBT community and of health professionals.

I don’t think I’m through with this one, at all. I’ll get back to this.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Coming Out, Ex-Gay, Fundamentalism, Hollywood, LGBT Christian | No Comments »

Spiritual death, redemption and grace

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

Recently I’ve been to see Confessions of a Mormon Boy by Steven Fales. We’re trying to get a group together to go see it while it’s at the Elephant Lab Theatre in Hollywood (through September 30).

Mr. Fales’ true story is funny, sad, moving and in some ways overwhelming. It is fair to say that Fales is also a strong and capable actor, since in a solo performance he must keep his audience’s attention for 90 minutes. “Mormon Boy” never bores—or even slows down, for that matter. It will leave you laughing, gasping, crying, stunned.

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Why the story is most compelling is that Fales was caught in the same web in which many other fundamentalists of other religious stripes have been caught. It might as easily be entitled “The Best Little Boy in the World.” It is a life that many of us might have lived, or actually lived.

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But the darker side is what happens to Fales after he is expelled from his church, and his marriage crashes and burns. This too raises the usual existential questions for someone of faith who, discerning one’s sexuality, becomes unhinged from all the connections and supports of life-before-coming-out. “If anything and everything I do as a gay man is horrible and offensive to God, and I’m going to burn in hell for it anyway, then I might as well have the biggest fling I can.”

That absurdity has wrenched spirituality out of the hearts of so many LGBT people. Lives become pointless and aimless in an unchecked progression of promiscuity, alcohol and substance abuse, disease, cynicism and spiritual death. It might sound as if I am joining sides with Pat Robertson or James Dobson here, but the truth is, what causes the downward spiral for so many people is not being who they are: being lesbian or gay or whatever, it is society’s knee-jerk rejection, fear and phobia. Because of prejudice and bigotry, whole classes of people are thrust out, kept on society’s margins, until they find other ways to survive without respect or restraint.

I don’t believe, of course, that virtually any intimate sexual expression earns God’s wrath, just because of the gender of one’s partner, any more than I would say “anything goes” is just fine. It falls to each of us to work out our own ethics in regards to sexuality, so that our sexuality is integrated in our whole lives in healthy ways. Fales’ story can be described as a tale of “fall and redemption.” What makes it most compelling is that it is a true story, and his own redemption is not a dramatic device. He teaches us a lesson for life from his own life education.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Coming Out, Ecumenical Issues, Ex-Gay, Faith, Fundamentalism, Hollywood, LGBT Christian, Spirituality | No Comments »

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