Update on my sister-in-law's response. In reply to my somewhat angry e-mail, she sent me the following link to "Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays."
http://www.pfox.org/asp/newsman/anmviewer.asp?a=175
I give up.
Cara
Ah, PFOX. Scary scary people.
This is the "compassionate" face of the anti-gay movement and, as best I can tell, consists of about three people. One of them is Richard Cohen, a complete loon, who was featured on Penn and Teller's
Bullshit. If you ever get a chance, see it and you'll know what I mean.
The face of the group is Regina Griggs. They claim to be parents and friends of Ex-gays (people who used to be gay and now are not). However, Regina is not the parent of an ex-gay but rather the mother of a gay man who is now unable to wield control over the life of her adult gay son and so instead is campaigning to take away the civil liberties of other gay men and women.
The "successful" ex-gays themselves seem to only consist of a handfull of very religious people who all work for anti-gay political or religious organizations. Although they call themselves "former homosexuals", nearly all of them admit that on the inside they still have same-sex desire; they've just decided to try to not act on it. Which is fine, of course. However, they don't stop there. They insist that everyone should be forced to deny their orientation and either live celibate the rest of their life or find some woman (like Alma or Lureen) to marry.
I've corresponded with dozens of people who survived these groups and they tell horror stories.
Just this week some 17 year old told his story to the news. He was dragged to one of these ex-gay camps by his parents in handcuffs, drugged up, and physiologically abused. After several weeks he escaped.
http://www.wreg.com/Global/story.asp?S=4454613What is evil about this movement is not just the damage they do to the unsuspecting. But they also do two things that are contrary to the teachings of Christ:
1. They lie. A lot. They claim that gay people become straight, but only after the person is into it do they discover that they are only talking about labels. If you claim to be ex-gay that simply means you changed what you call yourself. These poor participants go in expecting that their same-sex desires will be replaced with opposite-sex desires and it just never happens. They lie about a "homosexual lifestyle". They tell young kids "if you live a homosexual lifestyle, you will die of AIDS" and a bunch of horrible bogus real-sounding "statistics" to fill them with fear. And it's all a sham.
2. Rather than feed the hungry and visit the sick, they seek to take away health insurance and get people fired. They are political anti-gay activists. They go before legislators and say "people have changed" (without telling them they only changed a label) so therefore it's OK to discriminate against gay people and pressure them to "change". They pass out literature with bizarre claims that have no basis in fact (such as the average lifetime of a gay person is 42).
PFOX actually tried to get school boards to stop anti-bullying efforts. Yes - they actually campaigned to try to get schools to no longer say it is wrong to beat up gay kids.
Fortunately - thank God - most decent people aren't willing to go that far. When real Christians find out what these people are all about, they just can't reconcile the deception, cruelty, and plain evil with their relationship with God. But most people just don't know. Some preacher tells them about this pack of lies - usually he doesn't know any better - because the filthy-rich televangelists have figured out that if you attack the "gay agenda" then money comes pouring in. And because these charlatans care nothing about truth or the harm they do, they push this vitriol and some 18 year old goes into a gay bar in Massachusetts with a hatchet and a gun this week to start a killing spree. I wouldn't want to be Dr. Dobson when I stood before God in judgment.
Quite some friends your sister-in-law has.
(OK, I'll climb back down off my soapbox now)
