Comments on: Exodus International to take over Day of Truth

By: Eddy

Eddy — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:06:37 +0000

LOL. And it’s a good thing I didn’t ask you about repentance in a public forum…just as you have your take on why Joe or others in Exodus don’t answer plainly and quickly, it would appear that you’ve purposely avoided the question because it either makes you uncomfortable or you know very little about it. I’m not saying that’s so…just demonstrating how very easy it is to read motives and then have other people blindly accept your interpretation.
I’ve said it before: We’ve got enough issues to contend with here without the addition of our personal spin to the facts.

By: Eddy

Eddy — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:29:01 +0000

Michael–
There you go again. I’m sure you felt that Bob’s question re how Gary might have acquired AIDS offended you. But just like I was sure he didn’t use the word ‘slut’; I’m also pretty sure that he didn’t mock your relationship. He asked a question that you felt mocked your relationship. The question was simply a question. If he did in fact mock your relationship, please provide the words and I’ll confront him myself on his attitude. But, if he did nothing more than the conversation you quoted in another thread, please be warned that I will continue to dog you for the slant that you are adding to the truth.
And if I introduced myself as an ex-Pennsylvanian (I still have friends and family there and I visit EVERY year) not one person would say I’m a ‘From Pennsylvanian’. It’s what it means but they don’t say it that way. Your point is lost on me. Stretching but never reaching.
LOL. It occurred to me on the bus ride home that you’d likely ‘respond’ to me but that you would totally ignore the issue of repentance. It was in my first paragraph of the post you responded to. Please tell me where (if anywhere) repentance fits in your theology. You seemed to be accusing us of the heresy of works vs grace; I’m thinking that might simply be because you don’t understand repentance as we do. In any event, your charge of heresy makes me think you do owe me an answer on this one. Always willing to be REAL with you!

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:24:43 +0000

Michael,
Why is it so important to you – what we call ourselves? I honestly don’t think your motives here are for the poor, poor people who you think we are all trying to trick with evasive language – since we have all described ourselves in public. We have all taken steps at length to define what ex gay means to us and yet you have refused ALL definitions except the one you want. Your motivations must be with what YOU want for yourself to convince yourself of something – but not really for others. Else you would have given up this chase posts and threads ago.
Everyone has explained several times in numerous posts that ex gay can mean a variety of experiences. As Carole pointed out in a well thought out post, coming up with something more is just not going to work. Everyone has taken the time to help you understand that leaving gay behind means leaving gay behind. We have all made that decision.
For you to demand that we have not left gay behind is like you telling us that we can never leave. Persoanlly, I don’t want to be gay or identified in that social or sexual group. I am not gay and living in denial, or struggling against my “natural” being, or doing what you say most ex gay people do. I am ex gay.
I really do feel for you. It is painfully obvious that you are in pain and struggle still with decisions you have made throughout your life. We all do. I struggle today with decisions I made decades ago and still grieve. Yet, they have nothing to do with gay or ex gay. So we are all human and have losses and decisions that have hurt ourselves the lives of others. But I cannot go back and convince myself or someone else that I did the right thing. Could this be what is happening for you?

By: Michael Bussee

Michael Bussee — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:48:38 +0000

Eddy: I did NOT say that Bob Davies called Gary a “slut”. I said he strongly implied it, mocking our relationship. His comments were mean-spirited and out of line.
Regarding Joe Dallas “hemming and hawing” about having both “temptations”, I can show you the tape of our joint appearance on TV where Joan Rivers directly asked Joe about his attractions, and he repilied (after having to be asked more than once): “I make it a point not to talk about my private life” — even though he had agreed to present the “ex-gay” side on national TV! Joan Rivers even brought out Joe’s printed testimony! Joe was frustrated and embarassed, then exaplained “we all have BOTH [attractions]”.– even though that is clearly not ture.
Joe wne ton to say that the “change” he was talking about was NOT a change “from one end of the spectrum [gay] to the other [straight} — asserting tht all people are bisexual in their attractions and that “ex-gays” having simply moved down the line a little. That’s not “ex” and in “no longer”. That’s bisexual — and Joe’s own testimony shows that he has had bisexual attractions all of his adult life.
I do “congratulate him for a job well done”. He did speak plainly enough to please even me. How come EXODUS is not consistently and freely up front about such things? How come they hide behind the hype and Christianese? Why “vex” and “provoke” the media? When you used those words, you gave it away.
“Ex-gay” is intended to be puzzling and unclear so that the media will give EXODUS the attention it wants.
Why do they have to be pressured to be honest by antogonists like me? Why not just say, “In terms of my attractions, they are still toward men, not women. In that sense, I am still gay”? Why not say, “My gay attractions are weaker and I choose not to act on them?”
I seriously doubt that if you ask someone on the street, “what does ex-gay mean” that you will find one person, excluding yourself, who will say, “Oh, that’s a FROM gay!”. Come on Eddy. Get real.

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 06:20:52 +0000

Michael,
Women are different and your last statment is false – at least about me.

By: Eddy

Eddy — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:53:11 +0000

Michael–
Where does the biblical notion of repentance fit into your theology? I’ve got it in there alongside grace. (Just my way of pointing out that your ‘me-grace, you-works’ was a touch lacking in it’s theological scope.)
Love your ‘from’ ridicule. I’m an ex-Pennsylvanian and it doesn’t sound silly at all to say I’m “from Pennsylvania”. Well, would you look at that?! “From” is both supported in the dictionary and in common usage as a meaning for ‘ex’.
Can you supply us all with your definitive guidelines on when we depend on a dictionary and when we reject it? So far, it sounds like we depend on them when they support your point of view and reject them when they defend ours? Is it really as simple as that?
As to the Joe Dallas story, I’m going to have to see if I can find it for myself. You recently accused Bob Davies of calling Gary a ‘slut’ but then it turns out that he only wondered if Gary had had sex outside of your marriage. So, when you use words like ‘hem and haw’, I simply don’t trust them to be free from a Michael-twist. I have no doubts that Joe Dallas said what he said; I’m just hesitant about the Michael words that lead into it. I know you’ve made it sound that I only admitted to homosexual temptations ‘when cornered’ when, in fact, I majored on teaching ‘The Reality of Temptation’.
What you interepreted as ‘hemming and hawing’ could have been Joe trying to figure out whether to speak it from his own experience or to speak it in a more general sense. It could have been Joe taking a moment to survey the crowd and trying to sift out words that wouldn’t communicate clearly. Let’s congratulate him for a job well done. He evidently spoke plainly enough to please even you. So, perhaps instead of ‘hemming and hawing’, it was a ‘thoughtful pause’.

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:44:30 +0000

At least you are changing.

By: Michael Bussee

Michael Bussee — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:21:28 +0000

Mary: Wrong again! I am not calling you bisexual. I am using the dictionary definition of the term. Here it is. Notice that it says NOTHING about actual behavior and NOTHING about whether or not one “enjoys” having the desires.
“Bisexual
Adjective
1. sexually attracted to both men and women
2. showing characteristics of both sexes
Noun
Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006
Gay is being attracted to only the same sex. Straight is being attracted to only the opposite sex. Bisexuality is being attracted to BOTH. If you don’t like that, take it up with those who compile standard English dictionaries –= and with everyday speakers of the English language. Don’t blame me. I didn’t invent the terms. A stop sign still means “stop” even if you choose for it to mean “go”!
Unlike “ex-gays” I use the standard, commonly excepted, dictionary definitions. You insist on using words in you OWN way, meaning what YOU want them to mean. It is the classic Humpty Dumpty dilemna: http://sundials.org/about/humpty.htm
Like Humpty Dumpty, it seems that words mean whatever YOU prefer them to mean. It’s one of the biggest problems I have with “ex-gays”. And I think it is deliberately deceptive — an attempt to cover up the truth that “ex-gays” are not straight — no matter what they prefer to call themselves. What you choose to call yourself doesn’t change facts. You can choose to call an “elephant” and “eggplant” — but that doesn’t make it one. Same goes for choosing to call yourself “ex-gay”.
Joe Dallas, then head of EXODUS, was once pressured during a radio interview to explain what “ex-gay” meant. After a lot of hemming and hawing, he finally came clean. Here is what he said: “It [the term “-ex-gay”] is more of a convenience rather than saying a Christian with homosexual tendencies who would rather not have those tendencies. It’s just rolls of the tongue easier.”
Notice that Mr. Dallas refers to still having but not wanting the “tendencies” — the feelings, the attractions, the temptations. According to his own printed testimony of “change”, he still has BOTH. Alan Chambers admits having BOTH. That makes them bisexual in orientation according to any standard English dictionary, not straight — whether or not they “enjoy” the feelings or ever act on them.
Eddy insists that “ex-gay” only means “from gay” — as in having a gay background
But George Bush is not our “from president”. My former spouse is not my “from wife”. The guy who dumped you for another girl is not your “from boyfriend”.
“From” may be one of the possible definitions of the prefix “ex” but it is not t the most commonly understood or used one. Except for “ex-gays”, “ex” means “no loner” something. And since “ex-gays” still have exclusively or mainly gay attractions, it is misleading to keep using the term to give the impression that they are no longer gay.,

By: Mary

Mary — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 05:04:39 +0000

Michael,
I need only to refer to your many posts. You have spoken for yourself.
What is your life is clear to you. Calling someone else bisexual when they have clearyly said that they do not define themselves that way is like me calling you bisexual.

By: Michael Bussee

Michael Bussee — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:26:18 +0000

Mary, I don’t know why you seem to have such a hard time with it. I am just making clear that I have never said many of the things you accused me of, that ex-gays are not heterosexual and that they should be honest about that. What don’t you get?
Eddy, the theologiocal point that I am trying to make is that we are saved by grace, not by the absence of “continuing sin”. We ALL sin, everyday and if salvation depends on not sinning anymore we are ALL in BIG trouble!