The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, April 21

Jim Burroway

April 21st, 2015

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From Michael's Thing (New York, NY), February 2, 1976, page 65.

From Michael’s Thing (New York, NY), February 2, 1976, page 65.

It appears that there were two Danny’s (Danny’ses?) near Sheridan Square. The one on 7th Avenue was known as “Dancing Danny’s,” and “Regular Danny’s” was at 141 Christopher Street.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
 Three Homosexuals Order A Drink: 1966. Gay bars were made illegal in New York, due to a State Liquor Authority regulation against serving customers who were “disorderly,” a term that was invariably used against anyone who was gay. Inspectors routinely revoked bars’ licenses which allowed gay people to congregate, citing New York City’s statutes against “indecent behavior.” As a result, the better bars routinely refused to serve anyone suspected of being gay.

Furthermore, New York Police routinely launched entrapment campaigns in which they would place good-looking undercover officers in bars who would hit on suspected gay people, propose a sexual encounter, and arrest them and shut down the bar. Vice officers were under a monthly quota, which resulted in a lot men being arrested on flimsy evidence. All of this together drove the gay bar trade to the less reputable bars, often owned or operated by the Mafia who paid off police officers for protection.

From The New York Times.

To highlight the problem, members of the Mattachine Society — President Dick Leitsch and members Craig Rodwell and John Timmons — contacted reporters at The New York Times, The Village Voice, and The New York Post to say that they planned to stage a “sip in” at a bar in the Village. The idea behind the sip-in was to go into a bar, announce that they were homosexual and order a drink. If they were served, the reporters would report on it, and the bar would either serve them and risk their liquor license, or refuse to serve them and they would then sue to bar. As Leitsch later recalled:

Well, first of all, we were going to go to this bar on 8th Street (the Ukrainian-American Village Restaurant). They had a sign in their window saying, if you’re gay, go away. And we thought that would be very dramatic and we’d go there and ask for service and see what happened. We notified the press and being gay, we got there late. And the New York Times had already gotten there and said, what about this gay demonstration? And the manager said, what? So he closed the place for the day.

When we got there, there’s a sign on the door saying, closed today. And so then we decided we had to go Julius’ because Julius’ had been raided like 10 days before. The bar would have a sign in the window saying, this is a raided premises, and very often they’d put a uniformed cop on the stool inside the door, and he sat there until the trial came up.

So we knew that Julius’ would not serve us because they have this thing pending. And so when we walked in, the bartender put glasses in front of us, and we told him that we were gay and we intended to remain orderly, we just wanted service. And he said, hey, you’re gay, I can’t serve you, and he put his hands over the top of the glass, which made wonderful photographs. The whole thing ended up in court, and the court decided well, yes, the Constitution says that people have the right to peacefully assemble and the state can’t take that right away from you. And so the Liquor Authority can’t prevent gay people from congregating in bars.

The May 5 edition of the Voice carried the headline, “Three Homosexuals In Search of a Drink,” and featured a photo of the three Mattachine members seated at the bar with the bartender’s hand covering their drinks. After stories appeared in the Times and the Post, the Liquor Authority was forced to abandon its anti-gay operations. But NYPD raids would continue for at least three more years, culminating in that fateful raid at the Stonewall Inn in 1969.

Julius’ bar, which dates back to 1864, is still in business, billing itself as Greenwich Village’s oldest bar and New York’s oldest gay bar.

 Wall Street Journal Coverage of the Ex-Gay Movement: 1993. The article opens with a description of an ex-gay meeting at the Foursquare Pentecostal Church in Hayward, California, near San Francisco, where a 31-year-old former missionary talked about his despair over the difficulties of trying to change:

He confesses: “It’s not working, and I don’t know why.” The others, regulars at this Friday-night support group, are sympathetic; they know the temptations of the flesh and the damnation they figure awaits those who succumb. “It’s a matter of will,” says one. “You have to make the choice.” Maybe, suggests another, it is demonic possession.

The erstwhile missionary’s eyes grow watery. He has begged God to free him, has surrounded himself with Christians and spent a month in an in-patient treatment program. But nothing has worked, and thinking about it just makes it worse — especially at these meetings. “I’m having sex, I’m having fun, and I don’t feel bad about it,” he confesses. “Not getting AIDS is all I care about.”

Having sex, having fun and not feeling bad about it are not options here. Another of those interviewed was John Evans, who, with Ken Philpot and Frank Worthen, founded Love In Action (which would later move to Memphis). Evans had already left the ex-gay movement when his best friend, Jack McIntyre, killed himself over his failure to change. McIntyre had spent four years in Love In Action before winding up in the psychiatric ward at Marin General Hospital:

There, in 1977 at age 46, he recorded his thoughts in a letter: “No matter how much I prayed and tried to avoid the temptation, I continually failed. . . . I love life, but my love for the Lord is so much greater, the choice is simple. . . . To continually go before God and ask for forgiveness and make promises you know you can’t keep is more than I can take. I feel it is making a mockery of God and all He stands for in my life.”

In room 104, he gave himself Communion, swallowed a lethal nightcap of Valium and Dalmane — tranquilizers and sleeping pills — and lay down on a couch to a quiet death.

By 1993, Exodus International claimed 65 affiliated ministries, but Evans said, “They’re destroying people’s lives. If you don’t do their thing, you’re not of God, you’ll go to hell. They’re living in a fantasy world.” Among those in that fantasy world was John Paulk, who was also interviewed for the Journal:

Mr. Paulk had been a prostitute, a female impersonator named Candi and an alcoholic who tried to kill himself before he decided to become straight and marry an ex-lesbian he met in church last year. “I had no sexual interest in women at all,” he says. “But when you begin a relationship with a woman that you believe God has led you to, then you develop attraction to that person. To say that we’ve arrived at this place of total heterosexuality — that we’re totally healed — is misleading.”

In 1993, Paulk was a cautious “success story” for the  ex-gay movement. He would later run Focus On the Family’s Gender and Homosexuality division, and he was elected to two terms as chairman of Exodus International. In 1998, he helped to found Love Won Out, a traveling ex-gay roadshow and infomercial conducted jointly by Focus and Exodus. Love Won Out staged a half a dozen conferences per year in cities across North American for the next thirteen years. That same year, he and his ex-lesbian wife, Anne, became the face of the ex-gay movement in a massive publicity campaign that culminated in their landing on the cover of Newsweek. In 2000, Wayne Besen photographed Paulk as he was leaving a gay bar in Washington, D.C. (see Sep 19). After a brief hiatus, Paulk returned to ex-gay ministry, and continued working at Focus On the Family and speaking at Love Won Out conferences for the next three years.

In 2003, the Paulks left Focus and moved to Oregon, where John started a catering business while Anne continued writing books and speaking on the ex-gay circuit. But in 2013, John recanted his ex-gay beliefs and issued a formal apology to the “countless people (who) were harmed by things I said and did in the past.” Later that year, he and Anne divorced. Anne helped to form a break-away group of former Exodus ministries following Exodus president Alan Chambers’s acknowledgment that change in sexual orientation was not possible. She now serves on the board of directors of that dissident group, Restored Hope Network.

Meanwhile, Exodus International shut its doors in 2013 after Chambers apologized to the gay community for “promot(ing) sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents” and for “communicat(ing) that you and your families are less than me and mine.” California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia now prohibit licensed professionals from offering conversion therapy to minors, and President Barack Obama has called for a similar ban nationwide.

[Source: Michael J. Ybarra. “Going Straight: Christian groups press gay people to take a heterosexual path.” Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition (April 21, 1993): A1.]

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Eric Payne

April 21st, 2015

Funny…

Is this what Chambers, et al. meant when they issued their statement supporting the President’s opposition to conversion therapy?

Despite Timothy Kincaid’s statement church dogma is about stopping a perceived sin as opposed to “changing” of sexual orientation, all those who spoke in 1993 had become members of church backed and financed groups, and it was in churches, and spaces rented by churches, in which the “Love Won Out” dog-and-pony show made their appearances.

Timothy Kincaid

April 21st, 2015

Eric,

If you are suggesting that something in the above disputes some statement I’ve made, please reference the thread.

Eric Payne

April 21st, 2015

Not a problem, Tim.

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2015/04/10/69323#comments

In which you stated, in reply to a comment I made:

yFor a very long time, homosexuality was seen by the church as merely behavior. There was nothing to “change” about a person, per se, they simply needed to resist temptation.

Eric Payne

April 21st, 2015

As I said in that comment stream, Timothy: Chambers and Company had a reason for not being against “spiritual counseling” in place of reparative therapy in the secular world (and it is Chambers and Co. who link the two in their statement by the juxtaposition of the two).

Read what they said in 1993 and on into today — they know that sexual orientation cannot be changed… but they want it to be.

Timothy Kincaid

April 21st, 2015

Ah, yes.

You were asserting that therapy to change sexual orientation originated in the religious realm. I countered that no, psychotherapy was secular and that for a long time that homosexuality was seen by the church as merely behavior.

I was correct. It wasn’t until the late 70’s that the church-based ex-gay movement came about, long long after therapy efforts originated.

Timothy Kincaid

April 21st, 2015

And as for what former ex-gay leaders currently “want to be”, your assertions are not in alignment with their current statements.

Eric Payne

April 21st, 2015

Banning reparative therapy for minors from licensed clinical mental health professionals assures young people can find solace and solidarity in the scientific community, while holding mental health workers accountable. It does not limit them, or their parents, from seeking spiritual advice from clergy. It does however, send a clear message that the practice of sexual orientation change efforts does not work, and should alert and alarm guardians of its potentially dangerous, or even deadly, effects.

As one would never send a patient to a doctor to perform unethical, unnecessary, and outdated medicine, it is time to hold mental health practitioners to similar standards. We welcome President Obama’s statement and stand with him in opposition to reparative therapy for minors, and call on everyone, regardless of political affiliation, to stand with us and put an end, once and for all, to this practice.

Look what they said, Timothy — they realize reparative therapy is “dangerous, or even deadly,” and oppose those therapies, calling for health care providers and mental health practitioners to be held to a new standard.

But they do not oppose “spiritual counseling” for gays and/or their parents.

And look what their experience(s) with “spiritual counseling” is/are: Love in Action, Exodus, International; and Love Won Out.

If that’s their idea of “spiritual counseling,” then they’re still supporting a “change through faith” mentality.

But isn’t there anything more noteworthy in “gay history” that happened on April 21 than a Newsweek piece on ex-gays? They’re so collectively… unimportant… and completely undeserving of continuing commentary.

Timothy Kincaid

April 21st, 2015

Eric

We have discussed this before. Your imagining what “spiritual counseling” means in their statement does not appear to be in alignment with what they regularly say.

I don’t know of a single former ex-gay leader – especially those who supported the President – who still supports “change through faith” mentality.

Eric Payne

April 21st, 2015

By their own admission, Timothy, they lie… especially when the lie best suits them.

Priya Lynn

April 21st, 2015

I think they did lie but they are now much more truthful.

Timothy Kincaid

April 21st, 2015

Eric,

Please correct me if I have this incorrect, but your position is as follows:

Back when they were ex-gay leaders, they told the world that through prayer and therapy they had changed their orientation, were changing their orientation, or any day now would be changing if they just kept believing.

Then they announced that it really doesn’t work, shut down their ministries, had to find new jobs, and lost many of their friends. Most of them now identify as gay and some have married someone of the same sex.

But though they denounce the ex-gay ministries that they once led, secretly they still believe that you can pray the gay away.

Is that it?

ET

April 21st, 2015

The formalized, single-agenda church-based ex-gay programs may have arrived in the 70s, but they extended from centuries-old church traditions not only in regard to homosexual acts but also in regard to homosexual thoughts and feelings, attractions, inclinations, tendencies, etc — all of which the Church has long considered to be disordered and in need of prevention and correction through faith, prayer, spiritual endeavors, indoctrination, and everyday actions equivalent to not scratching a mosquito bite if you don’t want it to itch more or to get infected — even if secular psychotherapy has not (yet) proven effective.

Eric Payne

April 21st, 2015

Until they openly renounce another tenet by which they, supposedly, lived their lives, Timothy, yes; you are correct.

They once lived by the statement: “Through God, all things are possible,” including changing of sexual orientation.

So which is it? Do they truly believe that through the intervention of a deity in which they blindly place their faith, change of sexual orientation is possible… or do they now truly believe orientation to be immutable?

In other words… did their God fail them, or did their faith in their God fail? In stating they’re not opposed to “spiritual counseling” from the Church if parents of a gay child want their child to receive such counseling… that’s a pretty good telegraph as to what they truly believe.

ET

April 21st, 2015

What is the significance of the word “primary” in Chamber’s recent statement that “efforts to change someone’s PRIMARY sexual orientation are dangerous and always unsuccessful”?

Timothy Kincaid

April 22nd, 2015

Eric,

As I have said before, you are entirely free to believe whatever you like about whomever you like. Frankly, I think it’s verging on absurd, but clearly we can have different opinions.

Eric in Oakland

April 22nd, 2015

Eric Payne, you said “In stating they’re not opposed to ‘spiritual counseling’ from the Church if parents of a gay child want their child to receive such counseling”. However, they did not state that they are “not opposed” to spiritual counseling. All they said was that the bans do not prevent such counseling, which is a fact rather than an opinion or statement of support. Even if you don’t support spiritual counseling, I think that it is an important fact to point out. That fact contradicts a frequent claim from many opponents of the bans. I do not read their statement as anything more than this. Your inference of support for faith based change efforts appears to be unfounded.

Priya Lynn

April 22nd, 2015

Cogent point Eric in Oakland. It seems they’re reading into that statment their own ideas about those people.

Eric Payne

April 22nd, 2015

Eric in Oakland,

I would agree with you IF they had said that… but they didn’t. What they said was:

1. They support the White House in banning secular, psychiatric reparation therapies, and;

2. They did not :oppose” “spiritual counseling” of a gay youth, if that youth’s parent(s) wanted their child to receive such counseling.

They did NOT, however, use their statement to volunteer their own, personal experience of the failure of such “counsel.”

As i’ve further clarified; they once lived by the credo “In God, all things are possible,” including the change of sexual orientation. Now, they say sexual orientation cannot be changed via secular therapies… but say nothing about God and, in their statement, are “not opposed to spiritual counseling.”

Okay… why? What would “spiritual counseling” offer that secular “therapies” cannot offer? What they’re not saying is deafening… because what they’re not saying is “my faith wasn’t strong enough to allow God to work the change, but maybe someone else’s is because, in God, all things are possible.”

IOW: They don’t believe change or orientation is possible… for them. They failed. Not God, because God can’t fail. So someone else may succeed where they failed.

Priya Lynn

April 22nd, 2015

That’s not what I read Eric. They did not say “we do not oppose spiritual counseling of gay youth”, they said that banning this “therapy” for minors does not prevent people from seeeking spiritual advice from clergy. You’re reading into their statment something they didn’t say.

Eric Payne

April 23rd, 2015

And it’s also been pointed out — if someone feels “spiritual counseling” is needed, that person is probably not of a sect/congregation that is already gay affirming; the need of such “counseling” is practiced by those sects/congregations who hold homosexuality to be sinful, and the homosexual to be damned and hell-bound unless he… changes.

And, yes, as I said to Timothy (and have freely revealed, here) their lack of referring to the abject failure of their own “spiritual counseling,” combined with their stated non-opposition to such counseling, tells me they still believe through God, all things are possible, including changing one’s sexual orientation; it must not have worked for them due to some failure on their part.

I wish some of these media people who still give these people the exposure they crave would ask, flat out “Do you believe God can do anything?,” if they respond in the affirmative, immediately ask: “Including changing a oersons’ sexual orientation?” If they respond in the negative to the follow-up, I’d like to see an explanation for that dichotomy of belief.

Priya Lynn

April 23rd, 2015

” their lack of referring to the abject failure of their own “spiritual counseling,” combined with their stated non-opposition to such counseling, tells me they still believe through God, all things are possible, including changing one’s sexual orientation; it must not have worked for them due to some failure on their part.”

There was no “stated non-opposition” to such counseling, they merely stated that the ban on this counselling for minors does not prevent people from seeking such counseling. Once again, you’re reading into it something that isn’t there.

Timothy Kincaid

April 23rd, 2015

I probably shouldn’t wade into this again… but I’ll give it one more try.

Eric, I’m sure that we can agree that groups of people use language in ways that have meaning to them that is largely absent to those outside the group.

Consider the gay community. We have terms that have nuance and shade and which might be confusing to those unfamiliar with our culture. Even more important, we have shared experiences which lend meaning and understanding to language.

This is also true with the Christian communities (there are several with their own cultures). They have shade and nuance to their dialect and shared experiences which lend meaning. And those who are far absent from this community may hear the words and yet completely miss the meaning.

Sometimes those who are not Christians use “gotcha” questions that they presume will reveal the Christians’ schizophrenic theology. But most of these gotchas rely on the outsiders’ understanding of language and belief and have little connection whatsoever with what a Christian understands their faith to mean.

I think that you are using the “all things are possible” in that way.

In your view, if a Christian thinks that all things are possible, then he must think that God can change orientation. So therefore they still think that they should pray for God to change orientation. Gotcha!!

But the former ex-gays that I know don’t see the passage that way.

Yes, they think God can do anything. But that doesn’t mean that it is in his will to do so.

Part of Christian theology is that there is power in prayer… but that it must be prayer that is in God’s will.

They prayed for orientation change, believing that this is what God wanted them to do. Over time, it became pretty clear that it wasn’t going to happen, and over time God’s will on the matter was revealed.

To non-believers, this might be evidence that there is no God. But to them it became evidence that they were wrong about what God demanded of them.

Sure, to a Christian, God can do anything. But “God, make me young and beautiful forever” is a prayer that is vain and contrary to his revealed will. They’ve come to see that so too is “God, make me straight.”

Sure, God may some day decide he wanted to turn a gay person straight (just like he might make someone tall or another race), but pretty clearly he had no desire to do so to them. And they weren’t going to spend any more time begging God to make changes that he obviously didn’t want to make.

One of the things that I have noticed about former ex-gays is that many believe that their journey has greatly changed the way they experience their faith. Most are relieved and happy to drop not just their quest for heterosexuality, but all of their rules-driven fundamentalist legalistic thinking and accept a boundless-love type of faith.

This may not resolve the issue for you not change what you insist that former ex-gays secretly believe. But I hope it helps shed a bit of understanding.

Priya Lynn

April 23rd, 2015

And if they had stated (and they didn’t) that they don’t oppose such counselling it does not follow that that means they think anyone can change orientation.

Priya Lynn

April 23rd, 2015

And it does not follow that that means they think anyone should get such counselling.

ET

April 23rd, 2015

Alan Chambers: “Long ago I abandoned the quest for heterosexuality. I am content with Holy-sexuality.” “It isn’t a white flag of surrender to my struggle.”

Priya Lynn

April 23rd, 2015

“Long ago I abandoned the quest for heterosexuality”.

Case closed.

ET

April 23rd, 2015

No, the case remains open, relabeled under “holy-sexuality” – “It isn’t a white flag of surrender to my struggle.”

Not even his death, much less anything he says, will close it.

Priya Lynn

April 23rd, 2015

You guys need to stop attacking allies because of past wrongdoings, there’s nothing to be gained from it. It might make you feel good but its counterproductive.

Priya Lynn

April 23rd, 2015

And that comment was before he shut down exodus so it has nothing to say about the major attitude adjustment whe went through at that time.

Timothy Kincaid

April 23rd, 2015

Priya Lynn,

Based on the previous thread, I don’t think ET is community. He’s here to sow discord.

Priya Lynn

April 23rd, 2015

Yes, it seems like a personal vendetta that has no concern for the ultimate consequences.

ET

April 23rd, 2015

Whoever you imagine me to be will always play the very role you imagine me to play.

Priya Lynn

April 23rd, 2015

You don’t leave much up to the imagination.

ET

April 23rd, 2015

If that’s what you imagine.

Timothy Kincaid

April 23rd, 2015

ET,

to post at BTB, we require a valid email be provided. We don’t put you on a list or ever send you anything, but there are times when we need to contact a commenter re a comment caught in spam or something similar.

Please use a valid email address for all future comments.

Eric Payne

April 24th, 2015

Timothy writes )in this thread, above):

Consider the gay community. We have terms that have nuance and shade and which might be confusing to those unfamiliar with our culture. Even more important, we have shared experiences which lend meaning and understanding to language.

This is also true with the Christian communities (there are several with their own cultures). They have shade and nuance to their dialect and shared experiences which lend meaning. And those who are far absent from this community may hear the words and yet completely miss the meaning.

Timothy, you are absolutely, 100% correct.

And in the gay community, what nuance and shading is attached to the phrase “spiritual counseling” in relation to gay youth?

So, there’s no “nuance” or “shading.” There’s no “gotcha questions.”

Chambers, Paulik and the entire “ex-gay” movement garnered national support and notoriety through their claims their personal interactions with the teachings of their Church(es) and each other — their personal “spiritual counseling” — had changed, or were changing, their sexual orientations.

Paulik even continued, publicly, that charade when caught cruising a gay bar in Washington, DC, by Wayne Besen.

Now, they support the White House in wanting to ban reparative therapy… but they are “not opposed” to “spiritual counseling.”

And it is they who make that distinction in their statement == they oppose secular, psychiatric “change” therapies… and then, very casually, say that are not opposed to “spiritual counseling” if the gay youth OR HIS PARENTS so desire such counseling.

There’s no shading in their statement. It’s simply what they said… and who would know more about the “spiritual counseling” a gay youth is going to receive from a majority of churches than these people?

Timothy Kincaid

April 24th, 2015

Well I guess you are the specialist in knowing not only what Christians mean by certain terms but also what is going on in someone else’s head. So I’ll just defer to you on the issue and move on.

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