Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJune 19th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Barcelona, Spain; Biarritz, France; Beaumont, TX; Berlin, Germany; Butte, MT; Chicago, IL; Columbus, GA; Columbus, OH; Denver, CO; Durango, CO; Edinburgh, UK; Ft. Myers, FL; Houston, TX; Huntsville, AL; Iowa City, IA; Juneau, AK; Knoxville, TN; Lancaster, PA; Lander, WY; Lisbon, Portugal; Longview, TX; Louisville, KY; Nanaimo, BC; Napa, CA; New Orleans, LA; Oklahoma City, OK; Oldenburg, Germany; Olympia, WA; Oslo, Norway (Europride); Portland, ME; Providence, RI; Salem, MA; Salisbury, NC; Sardinia, Italy; Saskatoon, SK; Shanghai, China; Schenectady, NY; Sioux Fall, SD; Springfield, MO; Syracuse, NY; Thessaloniki, Greece; Toronto, ON (WorldPride); Wilton Manors, FL; Wuppertal, Germany; York, UK.
Other Events This Weekend: Durban Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Durban, South Africa; AIDS WAlk, Oakland, CA; Frameline 38 International LGBT Film Festival, San Francisco, CA.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From The Calendar (San Antonio, TX), December 12, 1986, page 10.
Faith has always been a very important source of inspiration, consolation, and fulfillment for large numbers of LGBT people. Religious institutions have also been for many, many more, a source of pain, humiliation and abuse. But there have also been a few bright spots here and there. Of the four represented here, three are still serving the needs of San Antonio’s LGBT Christians: The Episcopal Church, the Metropolitan Community Church and River City Living Church. Ahem.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► 1 YEAR AGO: Exodus International Announces Its Closure: 2013. In a dramatic and emotional plenary talk during the opening night of the Exodus Freedom Conference in Irvine, California, Exodus International President Alan Chambers announced that the 37-year-old organization would no longer continue.
The day began with a far-reaching apology for the “trauma … shame, sexual misconduct, and false hope” that former clients and members of Exodus-affiliated ministries had experienced. But more than a corporate apology, it was also a very personal one for Chambers:
Please know that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents. I am sorry that there were times I didn’t stand up to people publicly “on my side” who called you names like sodomite—or worse. I am sorry that I, knowing some of you so well, failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry that when I celebrated a person coming to Christ and surrendering their sexuality to Him that I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart. I am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine.
More than anything, I am sorry that so many have interpreted this religious rejection by Christians as God’s rejection. I am profoundly sorry that many have walked away from their faith and that some have chosen to end their lives. For the rest of my life I will proclaim nothing but the whole truth of the Gospel, one of grace, mercy and open invitation to all to enter into an inseverable relationship with almighty God.
The formal apology ended with a note of more announcements later that night at the conference, which we later learned was the close of Exodus’s final chapter. That chapter opened eighteen months earlier when Chambers appeared at a conference of the Gay Christian Network in Orlando and acknowledged that “the majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation.” He also acknowledged that he, too, was still attracted to other men (while also remaining in love with and devoted to his wife). Later that month, Chambers withdrew his organization’s support for the particular form of conversion therapy known as Reparative Therapy. In May, when Exodus board member Dennis Jernigan went to Jamaica — where homosexuality is a felony punishable with ten years’ imprisonment — to speak in support of its anti-gay laws. Chambers swiftly responded with a statement opposing criminalization of homosexuality and Jernigan resigned. Also that year, Chambers condemned the Family Research Council for honoring a pastor who called gay people “worse than maggots” and that God had an “urban renewal plan for Sodom and Gomorrah,” and he declined to oppose a California law that bans sexual orientation change therapies for minors.
All of this together has resulted in a general exodus of several member ministries from Exodus, with many of them forming a much more hard-core Restored Hope Network. The Exodus Conference in 2012 went ahead much as before although there were a number of differences in message and tone from before. But by the time the 2013 conference came around, it was obvious that what remained of Exodus was now much smaller. The conference schedule was significantly scaled back, and attendance was down to about three hundred, versus the thousand or more that was typical for previous conferences.
Chambers opened the conference by recalling the “scandal” of the previous eighteen months. “The scandal has been about finally sharing things about myself and about this ministry and about these issues that I’ve learned along the way,” he said. “Never in a million years did I dream that some of the things that I’ve shared would become the controversies that they are today, or the scandals that they are today, or would have ripped our ministry apart in the way that it has ripped our ministry apart. I tell people all the time I’m not smart enough to create a scandal like that. And therefore I’m convinced that the scandal is of God’s making.”
And what were those scandals? Saying that almost nobody changed their sexual attractions, and admitting that he also continued to “experience same-sex attractions.” Another scandal was a theological one: proclaiming that “that no matter what we do, no matter where we go, no matter how we behave, when we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, we have an irrevocable relationship with Jesus Christ. And what that means is what I just said.” He continued:
We in the church have been motivated by fear. It is our fear that keeps us straight, it is our fear that keeps us off of all sorts of chemicals, it’s our fear that keeps us looking a certain way, and acting a certain way, and living a certain way, and treating anybody who doesn’t live and act in those ways like sinners in the hands of an angry God. It is fear that is the biggest motivator for people in the Body of Christ to act in the religious way that they do. My true story is I spent the majority of my life pretending that I was something I’m not because I was afraid of the Church. And I was afraid that they might be right, that that’s how God felt too.
And it has been the most amazing journey for me to come to the realization that my Father in Heaven will never abandon me. He will never turn his back on me. He won’t turn his back on me even if I turn my back on him. … And you know what that means? All sorts of people will live in all sorts of ways that you might not endorse or condone. But let me let you in on a secret: you’re not God and it doesn’t matter what you think anyway.
He also listed as another scandal the fact that they had acknowledged the damage that they had done to many of those who had been involved with Exodus. He described meeting a number of ex-gay survivors, an experience he described as “excruciating,” as “they told stories of abuse and pain, missed opportunities, awful words were spoken to them, stories of abuse and pain from the Church and even from Exodus.” Turning back to the apology that had been released earlier that day, he said that he heard from a number of people who were angry that he apologized:
“There is a concerted effort in parts of the Church to disqualify me from my rightful place as a son, simply because we dared to say we were sorry to people who deserved an apology. …We’re not going to control people anymore. We’re not going to tell then how they should live. We’re not going to be responsible for what they’re doing. It’s not our job. You are not the Holy Spirit.”
And finally, he acknowledged that Exodus had become a rules-based religious institution, “focused on behavior and sin management, and short on grace. … and it is for these reasons, and for other reasons, that we the International Board of Directors for Exodus and many within our leadership believe it is time for Exodus to close.”
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Paul Douglas
June 19th, 2014
Alan Chambers really has done an amazing turnabout, the depth of its import reflected in the virulent reaction of the Comiskey/ Ann Paulk/ Robert George “Restored Hope” (what an oxymoron) cabal. I have to give him credit, though I am no longer a christianist.
Nathaniel
June 19th, 2014
I’m surprised you didn’t mention NOM’s pointless march today. On the other hand, a Facebook group I follow has been posting about non-stop all week; I think they have advertised more for it than NOM did.
Eric Payne
June 19th, 2014
“I’m sorry” is what a person says when they accidentally spill a drink, or make some inadvertent mistake.
“I’m sorry; I’ll pay for that” is what a person says and does when damaging/destroying physical property that belongs to someone else.
“I’m sorry” is not the appropriate response when someone is responsible for damaging another person’s psyche or personal faith… especially when that destruction is intentional and one of the “bonuses” of that destruction is personal monetary enrichment.
Since Chambers’ ex-wife, Leslie Chambers, is still involved with the “ex-gay” movement, and assuming Mr. Chambers has, at the least, visitation rights with their two children, I’m sure the raising of his daughters has become challenging; I hope the former Mrs. Chambers is not, to use the vernacular, “f-ing with the girls’ minds” concerning their father.
But “I’m sorry”?? If I were the parent (or spouse) of a gay man who suffered physical harm/committed suicide after “reparative therapy,” I’d press a lawsuit against that group, as a group, and the individual leaders of that group, as individuals, as far as it could go. In the past, such lawsuits have been dismissed on First Ammendment grounds… but that was before Chambers’ very public admission such therapy doesn’t work, it never worked, and he knew that all along.
Jim Burroway
June 19th, 2014
Eric,
You have Alan Chambers confused with someone else. Alan and Leslie Chambers are still very much married, and Leslie is not at all involved with the ex-gay movement.
Eric Payne
June 19th, 2014
You’re right, Jim; I confused Chambers with that other ex-ex-gay 2013 apologee, John Paulk. There’s been so many of them closing shop and “apologizing” it’s difficult to keep them straight — obviously.
Ben in oakland
June 19th, 2014
Eric– they can’t even keep themselves straight.
Eric Payne
June 19th, 2014
Ben — my point, exactly.
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