With minor changes in word order and little change in sense this reads “I love my denial of life.”

I recently compared Exodus’ message to an infomercial.

“I made $50,000 in the first month working from home!! (reinactment – actual results may vary)”

The ex-gay I was conversing with wasn’t much amused by the comparison. But it is pretty close. Exodus doesn’t exactly “promise” reorientation but they do everything this side of it.

(1) books with misleading titles such as “Leaving Homosexuality” and

(2) statements like “For thirty years, Exodus International has offered hope and help to people seeking freedom from homosexuality. We believe and we have seen in thousands of lives that this freedom is possible….”; “you don’t have to be gay”; and “What you are really asking is whether there is realistic hope for change for men and women who do not want their sexual orientation to be homosexual. And the answer to that is yes!”

It’s no excuse for Exodus to plead that its message is being misunderstood, since that message has been deliberately framed in terms calculated to lead to such misunderstanding. In other words, it’s deliberate misrepresentation.

The decisive question about the ex-gay movement is (if I may be forgiven for using a cliché current in the UK at the moment), does it do what it says on the tin? The answer to that has to be no.

I suspect Alan’s message is complicated by his politics. While an honest message such as you propose would benefit those seeking to live according to a conservative Christian sexual ethic, it would not well serve those who seek to reduce, block, or eliminate civil equality for gay people and who use “they choose to stay gay” as their justification for discrimination.

Alan is every bit as much a political anti-gay activist as he is a minister to those seeking to not live as a gay person.

But perhaps the simple truth won’t help to sell Exodus.

“It’s amazing how many men there are who have come out of fake marriages or are still in them…”

Just last week I had a worker in my building admit to me he is in one of those fake marriages.

And you hit the nail on the head with:

“Or maybe faking it is okay when it’s with someone else’s daughter.”

Who would want their daughter to marry a guy with same-sex-attraction.

So, their only alternative for gays is celibacy. Lifelong celibacy. I wouldn’t doubt they may even suggest eunuchism.

TRiG.

For them, it’s totally reasonable to expect us to date members of the opposite sex for whom we lack feeling or to just remain celibate altogether, while heterosexuals can have satisfying romantic and sexual lives.

I would like to ask how they would feel about their daughters dating a homo secretly trying to fake the hetero. That is a very real possibility. Relationships are difficult enough without the burden of one partner trying to fake it. It’s amazing how many men there are who have come out of fake marriages or are still in them while indulging in homo-sex on the side.

Surely a rational parent would see that society is better when homo men link up with each other rather than deceive their daughters. Or maybe faking it is okay when it’s with someone else’s daughter.

Given AC credit for some kind of honesty. At least he doesn’t pretend that he is straight, he only acts straight, or as straight as a man who is actually gay can act.

His dishonesty lies not in how he chooses to live his life. His dishonesty lies in his failure to acknowledge his support of Exodus’s lies and political activism against gay people who do not accept Exodus’s views about either religious belief, G’s will, or homosexuality.

Like a certain other self-hating wanna-be-straight-but-ain’t writer I can think of, the animosity of the ex-gay industry is a mirror image of the animosity towards oneself as a gay man, and isj ustified on that basis.

As always, Transactional Analysis– I’m not OK, and you can’t be either lest either of us challenge my self-perceptions– explains and predicts it all.