The Gaytheist Agenda

As you might have been aware, Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out went to Anchorage, AK to counteract the lies being foisted on the city by Love Won Out, Focus on the Family’s traveling “ex-gay” roadshow. His visit got a good deal of attention including a large feature story in the Anchorage Press

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Except that outside of these ex-gay ministries, virtually no one agrees that homosexuals can be turned straight, or that the “reparative therapy” these ministries offer is anything but damaging.

“There is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of reparative therapy as a treatment to change one’s sexual orientation,” states a report by the American Psychiatric Association.

The American Psychological Association agrees, and has stated that conversion therapy can “do more harm than good.” And an American Medical Association report stated, “aversion therapy… is no longer recommended for gay men and lesbians.”
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But there’s something more basic at work here at the Love Won Out conference. Few, if any, of the attendees offering their “amen’s” seem to be people struggling with same-sex attraction. These churchgoing folks are having their belief that overcoming homosexuality is a choice one can make successfully reinforced. And statistics show that if people believe homosexuality is a choice, they’re more likely to support anti-gay legislation.
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Read that last sentence again. Regardless of all the prattle about love, change and desire to “help” gay people that groups like Love Won Out peddle they have only one true desire. To convince people that being gay is a choice so they’ll support anti-gay legislation, and to actually support anti-gay legislation. That’s all it’s ever been about. Why do you think that Focus on the Family (the people who run Love Won Out) turns around and donates hundreds of thousands of the dollars they get from things like Love Won Out to anti-gay causes like Proposition 8? That’s pretty sick, using money obtained from harming gays to further harm gays. But I’m not the least bit surprised.

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“By and large, these so-called ex-gay ministries are really on many levels a propaganda operation aimed at convincing the public that homosexuality is a choice,” says Mark Potok, executive director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, an organization that tracks extremism and monitors civil rights violations.

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Potok says that he believes that at first, a number of these ex-gay ministries were genuinely concerned with the welfare of the people they were treating. But now, he says, “I think that is less true every day. Every single one of these programs is based on a fundamental lie, which is that homosexuality is a mental disease. This kind of propaganda from the Christian Right has the effect of demonizing individuals and damaging them in serious psychological ways.” He describes Love Won Out particularly as “really noxious.”
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Besen, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, has flown to Anchorage specifically to help organize opposition to Love Won Out. A non-practicing Jew, he tells the congregation the story of when he got a job as a television reporter in Bangor, Maine covering politics—until his co-workers discovered him at a gay bar, upon which he was taken off the political beat and later fired.

“This is what we face,” Besen says, noting that if he holds his boyfriend’s hand on a New York subway he has to look around at the people near him to see he’ll end up in a fight because of it.

“This industry is out there to keep discrimination strong,” he says of Focus on the Family and Love Won Out. “They do everything in their power to make us miserable. They ask you to lie to God, and have lust in your heart forever, while you bury your head in the sand. They need to open their eyes to the damage they’re doing, destroying families in the name of family values.”
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Sadly the RRRW doesn’t seem to care how much psychological, spiritual and even physical damage they inflict on LGBT people and their loved ones, so long as they get their way. It appears, though, that the tide is turning, though it seems to be doing so slowly, and these hateful bigots are a dying breed.

Now that you’ve read the article, watch the video.

If you’ve been reading the Newswire or Truth Wins Out you’re no doubt aware that Wayne Besen is traveling to Alaska today. He’ll be fighting the lies spread by Focus on the Family at their Love Won Out conference in Anchorage.

Of course Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for (the distortion of) Truth had to put his spin on the matter.

Homosexual gadfly Wayne Besen is begging for money to fly to Alaska to embarrass Gov. Sarah Palin and promote the lie that homosexuals cannot change. And Associated Press is happy to parrot Besen’s line ridiculing healthy change for homosexuals.

The lie that homosexuals cannot change? Who exactly is lying here? Let’s see. According to all reputable professional organizations and members of such:

“The most important fact about ‘reparative therapy,’ also sometimes known as ‘conversion’ therapy, is that it is based on an understanding of homosexuality that has been rejected by all the major health and mental health professions. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Counseling Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the National Association of Social Workers, together representing more than 477,000 health and mental health professionals, have all taken the position that homosexuality is not a mental disorder and thus there is no need for a ‘cure.’

“…health and mental health professional organizations do not support efforts to change young people’s sexual orientation through ‘reparative therapy’ and have raised serious concerns about its potential to do harm.” 11

The primer includes a number of quotations from major professional organizations about reparative therapy and other methods of attempting to change individual’s sexual orientation. One example is the American Academy of Pediatrics, which stated: “Therapy directed specifically at changing sexual orientation is contraindicated, since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving changes in orientation.” 11

There is no such thing as “healthy change for homosexuals”. It involves methods that cause psychological, spiritual and even physical harm. Furthermore in the majority of cases no actual change occurs, particularly in the long term, despite the claims of the organizations that tout the “reparative therapy”.

AP also quotes New York City-based homosexual gadfly Wayne Besen: “’I think gay Republicans are going to run away’ if Palin supports efforts like the prayers to convert gays.” Oh well, there go 379 homosexual activist Republican votes for McCain – while millions of pro-family, Sarah-Palin-loving Republicans applaud ministries that offer godly, healthy change to homosexual strugglers.

I’m sure many of them do. Some of them are deluded into thinking the “ministries” are truly helpful to gay people, and some of them can’t see past their hatred of gay people to care how much they harm them. As long as gay people stop acting gay and pretend they’re straight to please God and the Christians that’s all that matters to these people. And do any of theses people, including Peter LaBarbera, ever consider how few “Homosexual Strugglers” there would be if it weren’t for the hideous amounts of bigotry some Christians heap upon them in our society? Then again, I think they like it that way, and rather wish there were more.

But Professional Anti-Christian Activist Besen is not deterred. Oblivious to the thousands of former homosexuals worldwide who live happy lives shorn of their false “gay “identity, he is now begging his followers for money so he can fly to Anchorage to protest a “Love Won Out” conference promoted by Wasilla Bible Church and sponsored by Focus on the Family. LWO conferences – a favorite target of homosexual militants and anti-“Christianists” everywhere — feature “born again” former homosexuals sharing their hopeful testimonies.

I’m sure Peter already knows it–though he’ll never admit it–but most of those “born again former homosexuals” are nothing more than repressed gays who go right back to being gay shortly after the conference. If they actually ever stopped in the first place. Just because you pretend you aren’t gay to please bigots and their god doesn’t make you straight. It makes you a repressed gay person living a lie.

Special message to Peter: If Wayne doesn’t have enough to get back from Alaska I’ll gladly advance him the money. It’s well worth charging up my credit card for that. And I don’t buy that blurb at the bottom of your article where you claim it’s a spoof.