I sense way too much judging with all the above comments. I also sense fear. God created family for a purpose. I pray for both parents and son the grace and patience needed to move beyond the pain they are feeling right now. With open and honest communication, this is possible.

Thanks for stopping by:

4. Travis is not Bryce’s first boyfriend. He just happened to be the one Bryce’s mother “caught” Bryce with. And I say “caught” because NO PARENT has any right to go through an adult child’s email, chat logs, smail mail and voicemails!

As a parent I can almost agree. But I am aware of other parents who have kidnapped their adult children from religious communities (cults?) because they assessed the adult child’s devotion as brainwashing…it wouldn’t surprise me if they violated much milder boundaries similar to what you describe.

In the long run, the parents and the adult child were alienated for some time, and the child ended up choosing a less radical faith as their own person…later the parents and the child reconciled.

Financial and emotional coercion by parents is common in childhood…and late into adolescence (up to age 25) parents may make more coercive bids to prolong the parent child relationship.

Ultimately, each child has the option to choose to live as an adult with all its costs and rewards.

If a bright pre-med student cannot make this calculation in the current, open culture; we are all endless victims and weaklings.

Yeah , it’s not like we ever forget our past or are totally going to deny it. It is something that is there that can present itself again.

If I could meet just one male ex-gay who is not SSA, I would personally spread the word around. Even EXODUS leaders admit that if such “healing” exists, it is “rare”, “seldom happens” and “should not be expected.”

Seems to me the most intelligent thing I’ve heard said in regards to this line of reasoning came from Warren on the Exodus-PFOX decoupling thread. He used covetousness as a representative sin of which no one appears to be an “ex.”

Can I say, “If I could meet just one (substitute the infirmity, sin or temptation) who is not stumbling in thought or deed, I’d believe atonement, justification, sanctification and all the rest were applicable in the Christian life”? Don’t you see the flaws in your attempt at logic, Michael? Why must ex-gays (I don’t really give a rip what we are called) never be allowed to experience any SSA thoughts or temptations again? WHERE IS IT WRITTEN? Why does Romans 7 not apply to them? It applied to Paul. Are they/we supposed to have righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes”?

Now, on the psychological side of the house, I also take issue with the once addicted, always addicted mode of thinking. How rare is it to really overcome and not be a slave to past addictions in any sense? I don’t know, but I do know we can’t take that hope out of the equation completely, and we dare not limit God, with whom all things are possible.

This is not complicated, folks. It is reasonable, searcheable and there for all to see.

A recent Times article characterizes Exodus president Alan Chambers as saying he has never met a successful “ex-gay.” Chambers cautions those words were not his, but those of the writer, Stephanie Simon. Chambers says in the interview, he merely stressed he has never met anyone who has loved the term “ex-gay” — which he contends is difficult to define.

He told me he doesn’t like the term and thinks it should be officially retired because it is “more confusing than anything” and does not “convey what the change process is really all about” . He stresses that the change is not to heterosexuality but towards holiness.

EXODUS’s own website doesn’t actually describe a change in what we would call “orientation”. It speaks instead of changes in attitude, identity, behavior, lifestyle and the reduction in the intensity of SSA. Not the elimination or “reorientation” of same sex attractions — but only the “possibility” — or hope of — reorientation.

Karen Booth of EXODUS says it is her opinion that such reorientation to complete heterosexuality is “rare”, “seldom” occurs and should “not be expected” by clients or loved ones.

That’s what he told the LA Times. I he knows some, why isn’t he spreading the word around?