February 19th, 2008
I’ve wanted to post about this ever since I attended the Exodus Freedom Conference last summer. But to be perfectly honest, I was so flabbergasted by Love In Action Director John Smid’s workshop on masturbation that I was never able to figure out how to approach it.
Watch this, especially at the point about halfway through the video when he talks about respecting his wife while talking about her vagina. When someone like this projects so many of his issues onto everyone else, do you think he’s qualified to teach anyone about sexuality?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwsm9GMRyEkSo now that you’ve heard that, read the rules that the residential clients at Love In Action are expected to follow. It takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
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William
February 20th, 2008
As a life-long lover of classical music, I was particularly intrigued by this Love In Action regulation:
“No…listening to secular media of any kind, anywhere within the client’s and the parent’s/guardian’s control. This includes listening to classical or instrumental music that is not expressly Christian (Beethoven, Bach, etc. are not considered Christian).â€
I suppose you can never really be too careful; some of these classical composers were gay themselves, weren’t they? Take Handel, for instance. Ellen Harris, the professor of music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims that she can deduce Handel’s homosexuality from his music. So his “Messiah†may be full of subliminal, auditory, homosexual messages. Just consider how your same-sex attraction could be reinforced by listening to “Comfort ye, my people†– especially if it’s sung by a sexy-voiced tenor. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?
Ben in Oakland
February 20th, 2008
Two posts right next to each other–vagina monolog and harming parents– truly illustrate has sick this whole thing is.
Fear and fascination, intertwined so tightly and bound so closely by knots of religious gobbledegook.
Tell us your deepest and darkest secrets so that we can get off on them and you can be shamed eternally into giving us even more money. You do it so that i can keep my thoughts totally on what underwear i’m wearing.
Pathetic.
Emily K
February 20th, 2008
How is Bach not Christian?? He wrote “Jesu Joy!” WTF??? His job was to write Canons and pieces for the church! This is ridiculous. This all goes along with the twisted belief that Catholics aren’t Christians.
Ben in Oakland
February 20th, 2008
Emily, I have to disagree with you there. I think that hte prohibition comes from the idea that THIS world is sick and dirty, and that anything that keeps your mind on this world– including beauty in music, which is sensuality, thus a doorway to sin– is bad.
Same old puritan BS, the cultural equivalent of a hairshirt or flagellation.
It’s just sick.
Willie Hewes
February 20th, 2008
People, enough about the music, did you not hear the creepy man talking about vagina? Holy… mother of all things holy!
That was way, way creepy. You should put a warning on that video Jim, it could be seriously damaging to someone’s erotic potential, at least temporarily.
Never masturbate. Don’t look at yourself in a mirror. Don’t touch yourself ‘down there’. Yea, let’s teach ourself fear and ignorance, it’s surely the way to heaven.
Very sad.
Daniel Gonzales
February 20th, 2008
No tight underwear either don’t forget.
Regan DuCasse
February 20th, 2008
Give up my sports bras?! Oh…HELL no!
And the one about Handel, just kill me now!
Why don’t they just sign up sheep or puppies? Those are the actual kinds of living things they want to engage at this camp, not real people.
quo III
February 20th, 2008
About those Love in Action rules – I was bemused to see that they insist men in the program must be clean shaven. Men’s facial hair is one of the things that distinguishes them from women, so wouldn’t it be more logical to make it compulsory?
Craig L. Adams
February 22nd, 2008
Yes. This is disturbed, disturbing and bizarre. Thanks for posting this, Jim.
Leo
February 22nd, 2008
The whole thing is incoherent.
As Jim points out gays are probably around what—4 percent of the population? If there was a direct link between masturbation and homosexuality the percentage would be somewhere closer to what—98% or higher? We’d own the world.
Are these people really asserting that only around 4 percent of the population masturbates? Are they that divorced from their own bodies? How dismal.
Do they imagine the multi-billion dollar porn industry is supported by just the 4 percent of the population that is gay?
Who’s buying/renting all those hetero-porn DVDs and “toys” and what do they imagine those people do with them?
Tight underware? LOL. If that was true most all of the men in Europe and Latin America would be gay.
How could anybody listen to this man and not conclude that he was either a con-artist or in profound need of help himself?
It seems so obvious that these groups prey on people who are under duress. No one in a lucid frame of mind and who has a broader/informed frame of reference on matters sexual could possibly find any of this credible.
Emily K
February 22nd, 2008
I don’t think they’re saying masturbation directly causes homosexuality – I think they believe masturbation is a deviant sexual act (or at least “chronic” masturbation is) and that will lead naturally to OTHER “deviant” sexual activities, like homosexuality. Basically if a human can be led “astray” sexually in one way, they can be led astray sexually in all ways.
Priya lynn
February 23rd, 2008
Emily, I’ve heard fundamentalists make exactly that argument that masturbation causes gayness. The say masturbation is a same sex act so once you start masturbating you are engaging in gayness.
William
February 23rd, 2008
Yes, Priya lynn, you’re right. Tim LaHaye states that early and heavy masturbation is one of the causes of homosexuality in his trashy and pernicious book “What Everyone Should Know about Homosexuality” (formerly entitled “The Unhappy Gays”). Exactly how early he didn’t say, nor did he specify how often you have to do it for it to count as “heavy”.
I think Jim’s observation that the trick patently doesn’t work for the vast majority of people in America (or anywhere else, for that matter) is ample refutation. But I suppose some could always argue – or speculate – that it causes homosexuality only if you do it more than x times per week.
Emily K
February 23rd, 2008
I can’t believe fundies would take THAT BIZARRE a view of masturbation. do they seriously think that everyone who masturbates is doing so to a same sex fantasy? that is so stilted and odd.
William
February 24th, 2008
On the other hand, one of NARTH’s documents, “Adolescent Homosexuality” by Dr. Sander Breiner, suggests “[t]he total absence of masturbation or late onset of masturbation with no manifest heterosexual interests” as a possible indicator of “Teen Homosexual Problems”.
http://www.narth.com/docs/breiner2.html
Dick
March 30th, 2008
Comment deleted due to obscenity. All comments are subject to our comments policy.
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