Box Turtle Bulletin

Threatdown: Ex-Gay Survivors

One of my favorite segments on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report is the “Threatdown,” where Stephen Colbert runs down a list of the leading threats to society. Continuing reactions to the Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference leads me to believe that if there were an ex-gay “Threatdown,” former ex-gays would top the list.

The Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference continues to reverberate in some very interesting ways. For thirty-two years, ex-gay ministries, particularly as embodied by Exodus International, have enjoyed a virtual monopoly in framing the issues and setting the parameters for debate. Until now, their only counterparts have largely consisted of gay-rights advocates who know very little about the ex-gay movement and, often, next to nothing about contemporary Evangelical Christianity that is at the heart of the movement.

But the Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference has changed all that, and the reactions from ex-gay ministries are telling. Exodus president Alan Chambers left an angry-sounding comment on Shawn O’Donnell’s blog, and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX, Richard Cohen’s former outfit) responded with a hysterical open letter on their MySpace page:

While you all claim in websites, protests, in organizations, or coalitions, to want to help people who are “trapped in the ex-gay movement,” you seem to be more concerned with sticking your nose in my business, and telling me the way you think I should live, along with who I am. You don’t know me, and you don’t know my needs and wants. While you go on and on with slogans like “I survived the ex-gay movement,” it’s actually the groups like you that make it harder for us to “survive” if anything.

…Your attempts to get what you and you only want don’t scare me, nor do your lies and false accusations. If I want to change, that’s my business. Who are you to tell me who I am or how I should live? You know what? You’re no one. So get a life stay outta my business!

It’s hard to imagine that 175 people (give or take) gathering on a largely empty campus in Irvine, California could provoke such vitriol. Those who gathered for that conference didn’t seek to invalidate anyone else’s experience, nor did they try to project their experiences onto others. They were merely trying to describe their own experiences within the ex-gay movement. These stories acknowledged the good with the bad, and they were deeply personal and unique to each participant there.

Just a few miles down the road, Exodus held their Exodus Freedom Conference. I actually attended both conferences. And I must say that the contrast between the two was quite striking. While I was at the Exodus conference, I heard speaker after speaker describe their own lives of drug abuse, sexual abuse, physical and emotional trauma, depression, sexual compulsion, and so on.

Taking them at their word, I couldn’t help but believe that these speakers were telling the truth when they said they had led miserable lives. And again, taking them at their word, I was glad to know that they had overcome all of the addictions, abuse, traumas, depression, and whatever else that led to so much misery and heartache. But what I don’t remember hearing was anyone saying that their experience was all that unique. What I heard instead was the implication that their own personal struggles were common and even nearly universal among everyone who is gay or lesbian.

And so while I heard very few attempts at the Survivor’s conference to invalidate anyone’s story who is happy with their ex-gay experience, I certainly heard speaker after speaker at the Exodus conference invalidate my story and the stories of so many people I’ve come to know.

And so when I see the open letter from PFOX complaining that somehow the ex-gay survivors are “sticking your nose in my business, and telling me the way you think I should live, along with who I am,” I can’t help but shake my head at the incredible chutzpah it takes to say that with a straight face.

For the first time, former ex-gays are coming forward to tell their stories of their own experiences from deep inside the ex-gay movement. And they have done this in a way that draws directly from the language and culture of the movement. This also means that for the first time, the legitimate counterpart to the ex-gay message speaks the ex-gay language because they lived it. They walked that walk, and they know the talk far better than all the well-intentioned but often ill-informed activists who came before.

And more importantly, many of these former ex-gays still speak the language of Evangelical Christianity. For some, they have emerged from their struggles with their love of God intact. Tragically however, that was not the case for many others. And that, too, for many, is a consequence of their experiences with ex-gay ministries. But again, not all.

Peterson Toscano sums this up pretty well as he reflects on the defensive reactions to the Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference:

These ex-gay survivor stories strike a cord. While at Love in Action, whenever one of us would get defensive about some feedback we got from staff or other participants, the staff encouraged us to look into that defensiveness to see if there was anything in it. Perhaps we felt defensive because we heard a truth that we were yet not able/willing to grasp.