Why, my goodness, I should think so. Every known anti-gay in the universe comes flocking to read BTB, so please DO come share your anti-theism here instead of just writing them directly.

Speaking of delusional.

Passive agression is best shared where it can do the most effective job of communicating some point. Perhaps I should have put “effective” in upper case, but it’s early and I don’t want to start shouting before I’ve had my coffee.

Now, please go mind the bridge. Some goats are approaching.

Smothermon has lobbied hard against full citizen equality in Santa Fe. He was on the Police Oversight Commission, and has carefully cultivated a very close relationship with the sheriffs department which has had held some events in his church.

Smothermon regards conservative Christians as God’s privileged nobility. http://www.tonycooke.org/free_resources/articles_others/at-your-core.html This reads like a white privilege apologetic to me, though I’m sure that he’s not a “white” supremacist. He is, however, obviously a believer in a religious, self proclaimed privileged nobility. (Come to think of it…wasn’t that a Christian Reconstructionist conceit?)

“A noble birth is not to be taken lightly. It places an individual above the common man and carries a distinction of honesty and integrity.”

If memory serves, Legacy’s academy uses the low intellectual integrity curriculum of A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press.

So come on Alan, snap out of this nonsense and the stories you were brought up to believe. enjoy the one and only life you’ll ever have to the full. The most likely explanation is that you were hearing the voice of your conscience. That’s all.

As Jim noted LWO is not designed as a service or event for ex-gays; there is a sister conference called the Exodus Freedom Conference which is for the ex-gays themselves.

LWO is designed to provide families, pastors, youth directors and other non-gay evangelical Christians with facts and positions and theology and “instruction” to equip them to minister to the struggler. And so changes in LWO’s popularity speak to an interesting phenomenon, one that is very hard to otherwise gauge.

While it’s certainly not conclusive proof, a reduction in the demand for LWO, suggests a few things:

1) the population of evangelical ministers (and youth ministers, etc.) that believe that they would benefit from a seminar in ex-gay ministry is finite. And those who wish for such services may have already attended and don’t see a need for a refresher course.

2) the position that ex-gay ministries has held in the evangelical world as the christian response to same-sex attraction may be losing traction. This may no longer be the go-to answer.

And those are not mutually exclusive possibilities. But if either are true, pull out the confetti; it’s time for a party.

Sometimes outsiders think that such ministries are hucksters coming in to prey on vulnerable and gullible victims. Not so. Other than a few televangelists, evangelical christianity is self perpetuating and the preachers preach it because they believe it.

And – this is key – if they are no longer preaching it, it’s because they no longer have confidence in it. (Please don’t think that Christians change their message for PR purposes – other than a few fringe characters and the political activist posing as believers, they proudly say what they believe. If they are ashamed to say something, it isn’t because you won’t like it; rather, it’s because they don’t like it.)

Evangelical Christianity will have a response to homosexuality (and the rest of human sexuality). It used to be classifying gay people as perverts, willful sinners. Then they really began to know people who were gay who were not willful anything and then came the “struggler” and “healing” concept.

This may foretell the end of stuggler and healing.

It’s hard to guess what step is next in the process to (eventual obvious) acceptance. I suspect that it will be that God in his infinite wisdom chose to make some people gay (and will probably include some stereotypes about how gay people are creative and good church organists). I’m guessing that some portion of evangelical christianity will go the “and should stay celibate” route and others will go with “and should not have sex outside the covenant of marriage, which we now will not only allow but will insist upon.”

But in any case, I see this as an indication of change. Exodus was right. Change is possible. They just got confused about who would be doing the changing.

Presenters have traditionally opened the day acknowledging that fact, as well as reminding attendees that they reserve the option to remove any person at any time.

The thing that surprised and unsettled me when I attended LWO in suburban DC a few years back was the presence of armed off-duty cops in uniform at the check-in table and strolling the aisles of the church sanctuary during breaks.

Of all the things I thought I might see that day, loaded guns in holy space were not on the list.

SGM- LOL!