Mary says: “Gays don’t like the term. So what.” It’s not just “gays” that don’t like it. Joe Dallas doesn’t like it. ALAN CHAMBERS doesn’t like it. The “so what” is that it is confusing and misleading. YOU may know what you mean when you use it, but what about the “new recruits” and those who are hoping for orientation change? What about the media and the general public?

“Ex-gay” creates a false expectation that a person is now heterosexual. It gives the impression, intentionally or not, that a person will become straight as a result of this faith journey. And, as Ed has pointed out, that’s “a total fallacy”.

I, personally, expected a rather fascinating journey that may or may not end up in straightness and I taught “lessons for the battlefield” at Exodus Conferences. Question: if ex-gays all went straight with no more homosexual temptations why would we need such a class?? When I ministered out of Dallas, Texas between my two stints at Outpost, I christened that one Joshua Ministries, again identifying with the journey. (By it’s third or fourth year, Exodus (the organization) was nearly half evangelical or conservative protestant as opposed to the early charismatic predominance.) The term was evolving along with Exodus but NEVER did it mean “heterosexual”; it applied to EVERYbody from the moment they felt convicted to leave homosexuality behind regardless of where they thought they were heading.

In that sense, I see it as no different from “post-gay” so could probably become comfortable with that term. Can I keep the hyphen, though? Post-gay? Post gay? Is either one okay? (apologies for any Seuss brain-loops that might provoke…)

And how would we establish its definition before it had a chance to be twisted or corrupted? I’d hate to have to come up with a new politically correct term every decade or so 🙂

So as it is with all or at least many social definitions – such as family, sexuality, social systems etc… ex gay is just a term that was used to make a mark of difference from having been engaged in gay living and changing – whatever changing happens to be. And though it is not perfect and exactly defined the same from one person to the next, it’s pretty broad in it’s scope and context, it gets the idea across to others.

That gays resist any term or word used by ex gays is obviously going to be questioned, doubted, and discouraged simply because the definition for homosexual means something different to gays than it does to ex gays. So how can you get from two different points of perspective on homosexuality to not homosexual anymore? I don’t think you can.

So be it. Gays don’t like the term. So what. I agree with DM – we all pretty much have the idea of what we are saying.

I happen to like post gay myself as that comes closest to my experience. I think I’ll take that out for a while and try it on. I really like the idea of moving on beyond gay and ex gay.