French Protest American Ex-Gay Program in Tolouse

Jim Burroway

November 9th, 2011

Organizers of Rainbow Toulouse had hoped that maybe a hundred people at the most might to show up in front of a small Evangelical church to protest a planned ex-gay seminar. Instead, they were pleasantly surprised to see between 200 and 300 protesters turning out. Michel Megnin, secretary of Rainbow Toulouse, called the showing “the most important LGBT gathering in Toulouse aside from Gay Pride.” Protesters denounced the ministry, saying “we are not sick.” Another sardonically noted the price of an ex-gay seminar that was scheduled for last weekend and said,  “At €330 (US$400), I am too poor to become straight.”

The scheduled seminar, scheduled for last weekend, is affiliated with Andrew Comiskey’s Living Waters program in the U.S.  Comiskey, a former president of Exodus International, has been aggressively expanding his Desert Stream Ministries and its Living Waters program in Canada and Europe. Former ex-gay leader Vonnie Pits issued an apology for her role in a Living Waters-based program she set up in New South Wales, Australia. Last year, Comiskey posted an admission on his blog that a staffer at DSM had sexually abused at least one teenager under their care. But instead of publicly apologizing for the appalling transgression or expressing anguish over the teen’s abuse, he talked about his own anguish over having been interrogated by police and liability insurers, and he thanked his god that “God spared us” from the humiliation of their story appearing in the newspapers. In 2005, DSM moved to Kansas City where Comiskey announcedhe was partnering with Dominionist theologian Mike Bickle (organizer of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s crusade in Houston) and the International House of Prayer. DSM  reportedly uses “extreme methods that involve forms of exorcism (deliverance/healing prayer) and rely on teachings that believe that people become gay through demonic influences and the sins of ancestors.”  

You can see a video testimony of an ex-gay survivor of Living Waters here.

Regan DuCasse

November 9th, 2011

Comiskey is such a self serving disgrace I have wished for him to be struck by lightning.
Seriously.

William

November 9th, 2011

A good aversion therapy for anyone ill-advised enough to contemplate dabbling in the “ex-gay” fraud would be to go onto the Desert Stream Ministries website and read Comiskey’s nauseating claptrap.

Timothy Kincaid

November 9th, 2011

I don’t wish for Comiskey to be struck by lightning. But I do wish him lots and lots of peace, prosperity, happiness and love.

Joe-Allen Doty

November 9th, 2011

Back a few decades ago, I read an article by Comiskey in the Pentecostal/Charismatic magazine “Charisma.” He wrote about seeing a single man in the church services but never in any of the church’s other activities. When he found out the man was gay, Comiskey admitted to him that he still experienced same-gender sexual attractions to other men at times.

David S.

November 9th, 2011

The signs say (in French):

“Homosexuality is not an illness!”

“We are not ill!”

“Homophobia kills!”

Mark F.

November 11th, 2011

I once got too tight in Tolouse

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