Without going through all the pages before and after (which I’m not going to do today!) to find the REASON WHY this occured — actually, I cannot recall it being mentioned in any case — this does mean that Besen (from Evans) did said that Worthen was involved from the beginning. And that there was a later falling out.

This is what you also found. On that you actually agree with Besen (don’t drop dead) — and your claim that Besen didn’t include Worthen simply is not true.

(To recap: that was what I asked, not who was to blame for the split; and on that I’m sure we’d get three different versions).

Are you sure you haven’t got this LIA foundation story confused with the “Exodus founders” mythology quotes etc??? You’ve talked about that and Besen before.

Next bit.

Yeeesss, that was Randy Thomas… ack, just noticed that was not in the paragraph before the quote. Sorry if that threw you.

The fact he hasn’t corrected it is of no consequence.

What should trouble you (it did me) is that Randy SHOULD NEVER have made such a blatently untrue statement. He’s been involved in Exodus for some 13 years and is the membership director AND is a current poster boy and frequent spokeman.

What Randy said wasn’t a “urgh, you’re right, that does read confusingly doesn’t it” — but a flat out falsehood. Should I believe that he did not know better, despite how firmly he spoke on the subject, and that it needed you to eventually point out his error?

Or, alternatively, that Randy didn’t have a clue but still came out with a strongly-worded barrage against a couple of people?

Given that we’re all being asked to accept their testimonials at face value AND consider that they know what they are talking about — it doesn’t bode well to be considered either untruthful or clueless.

As for the statement you found, I assume this is from Randy Thomas’ blog. He wrote that before I wrote my piece concerning the founders of Exodus that is now posted on their website. I don’t know why Randy hasn’t corrected his blog but he was aware of the placement of the article on the website and sent it to all ministry directors when it came out.

Regarding the statement about Philpott and Evans being the co-founders, Wayne Besen says this in his book

But that’s not what I’m reading right now in front of me. While Besen does concentrate on the story of John Evans, it is clear what and who is going on around that story. It does read that Evans had more to do with Philpott, at least on a personal level, than others; but Worthen is mentioned.

Even the index entry for Worthen includes “LIA foundation, 65, 66”; so I’m not really sure why you’d think Besen said that.

As for the follow-on — I thought it was concluded that “founder” could be those there at the start (whether they held up their hand for a formal position) OR only those on the original Board. As there were rather a few more than just 5 people involved in the “start-up”, I’d lean to the former. If I remeber, you leant to the latter.

You’ve also reminded me of something I meant to pass on (and, forgot). What would you think of the following?:

“And the two men [Bussee/Cooper] they mention as “founders” of Exodus who left their wives for each other… were really just volunteers and one helped with the first conference. Neither man, while around, were ever staff or on the board.”

Regarding the statement about Philpott and Evans being the co-founders, Wayne Besen says this in his book and it is repeated all over the Internet (no time to find sources now – Google, Yahoo 🙂

I do not think Frank is lying. From his perspective, he was already engaged in a ministry, Philpott asked him to join with him in this support group and he eventually brought it into what he was doing at LIA.

I hope to bring all of this together in some form that I will give to LIA and see what they do with it.

I got interested in this awhile back because of statements like this: “The founder of every ex-gay ministry in America has proved to be an extraordinary failure. The two founders of Exodus International, [the world’s largest ‘ex-gay’ organization], divorced their wives to move in together.” – Wayne Besen, as quoted in an October 8, 2004 article by Natalie Troyer of the Washington Times.

I do not believe this viewpoint is supported by what I have found and that is the big picture as far as I am concerned. You have torture the concept of founder and ignore the contributions and lives of several people to get to a conclusion that “the founder of every ex-gay ministry in America has proved to be an extraodinary failure.”

I have had contact with Kent Philpott and Frank Worthen, both of whom convened the first meeting of Love in Action. Both deny these statements [“Evans, a gay man, founded what may be the first modern ex-gay group in San Raphael, Calif. in 1973”]. Evans was being mentored by Philpott and came along to a joint meeting of Philpott’s mentoring group and Frank Worthen’s group. At that meeting, the approximately 15 people present decided together that Love in Action was a better name for the ministy than the previous name (Brother Frank’s Tape Ministry). With all due respect to Frank Worthen, I agree.
–you on your own blog, Aug 1.

As to Besen on Philpott, page 66 of Anything but Straight: “I went through a divorce and I know they pretty much wrote me out of the history of it[LIA].”

So in thirteen days, you’ve gone from making the claim Philpott and Worthen started the ministry with Evans getting “mentored,” and the group trying to decide what to rename Worthen’s ministry (even though two years later Philpott’s book refers to that tape ministry as separate and distinct and still so-named), to “Worthen was there just as much as Evans,” and Philpott giving his ministry over to Worthen, and you “leaving it to the reader to determine founderhood.”

Now grantdale has joined me in asking why you’re giving Worthen a free pass for his misstatements.

I do want to “get it” Warren. When we’re talking about gay-change ministry, and Philpott used to do it, but isn’t doing it any more, and tells Besen, “I’m an old time gospel preacher,” and is doing televangelism and not gay-change, then, yes, I can say that he “gave up on it,” without it having anything to do with whether I agree with him or not.

You’re just not being consistent, except that everything you say seems to be the “spin” that you claim to be trying to expose.

Now how about it. You gonna call Worthen on his lies? You gonna call Love In Action on their falsehoods on their website? Or are you still worried about who was driving whose car when John Evans had his accident.

Better yet, how about how many founders of ex-gay ministries are still ex-gay? How many were heterosexual and are now in other endeavors? You’ve opened Pandora’s box here. You’re not only stuck with Evans, despite your early desire to play him off as some tangential third party, you’re stuck with rooms full of people you had to let in to keep from making liars out of Love in Action. How many of those 15 at that “name change” meeting are still straight?

Who said (and when) “that Kent Philpott and John Evans were the sole co-founders of LIA”? I’ve missed something?

This is what John said, as example, recently:

“Kent Philpott, Frank Worthen, and I were the only original members there.”

He freely acknowledges the others and also states that there were, at least in John’s view, other “original” members.

Kent has not been making public comments, for whatever reason, and the only person I see who has consistently been denying (or hiding) the involvement of others is Worthen.

You have had very little to say about Frank, or the consistency/accuracy of his public statements — which is curious…

Also wondering if Kent had an answer on the publishing issue the The Third Sex?

(Oops, that makes it two questions.)

The more you discounted Evans’ role, the more you effaced Worthen’s as well, because Worthen appears even less grounded in its beginnings than Evans.

You are not reading what I writing or you simply don’t want to get it. Worthen was there just as much as Evans. All accounts say that. He was one of the three people that contacted Philpott and prompted Philpott’s excited call to all three men.

since Philpott has given up on ex-gay programs as well. How about “the sole founder gave up?”

Where are you getting this? He had his own problems but is still in ministry and is still supportive of LIA. He gave the program over to (there he is again) Frank Worthen but he didn’t discount it to me or to Besen in his book. You may not agree with him, but you cannot say he gave up on it.

The more you discounted Evans’ role, the more you effaced Worthen’s as well, because Worthen appears even less grounded in its beginnings than Evans.

And if you get rid of both of them, then Philpott is the sole founder, which makes Love In Action’s current statements a blatant lie, along with your charactization that this issue is somehow one of “spin” by critics of ex-gays, since Philpott has given up on ex-gay programs as well. How about “the sole founder gave up?”

I think the real genesis of this, is that ex-gay groups are not comfortable with the truth that the majority of the people who begin them come to the conclusion they are ineffective and either close them or leave them to the minority who think they are effective.

You’re in pretty deep water on the Exodus claim too. Its obvious you can’t get rid of Bussee, because he thought Exodus up, and he’s still alive to defend himself. Gary Cooper’s dead, and he wasn’t on the board so you’re pretty safe there.

But the gotcha on Exodus is that when you look closely, questions like “what happened to Exit” suggest themselves, and suddenly you’ve got the parade of forgotten programs that populate Pennington’s book that underscore the original question you’re trying to discount as “spin.”

Truth has this annoying habit of rushing in like seawater, Warren. If you frame the questions so narrowly that you can cut out all the failures, you cut out the successes too, and make them liars in their claims that they were sole founders.

I know you didn’t endorse Worthen’s claims. You excused them, as opposed to Evans claims, which you attacked.

If you want to be seen as a man with academic integrity and intellectual honesty, you’ve got to treat these “founding members” evenhandedly. That means you have to show at least as much concern over Worthern’s sole founder claims which bear directly on the question at hand, as who was in whose car during Evans’ accident, which doesn’t.