Category: sexual orientation

Charisma recycles 2004 article, gets lots of attention, then goes away. Alan, at the beach, knows nothing about it

Charisma Magazine generated an internet thunderstorm today by updating and reprinting a 2004 article by Alan Chambers titled, Do We Want a Gay America? Charisma put it on the front page of their webpage with no notice that it was a reprint.

RightWingWatch (who has the article in full) picked up on it and then various gay blogs followed. I started seeing emails and tweets about two hours ago. Then ExGayWatch and BoxTurtleBulletin reported that the article was a reprint. BTB editor Jim Burroway just tweeted that a woman at Charisma told him they were looking into it.

Meanwhile, Alan Chambers tweeted that he was at the beach and didn’t know anything about it, saying

Breaking: No idea why @charismamag pulled out an 8 year old piece I wrote that doesn’t reflect my current views.

Charisma has blocked access to the article.

All of that in a matter of hours. I would say Charisma has got some explaining to do.

UPDATE: Alan just sent this note along:

I am on the beach, literally, with my family enjoying the dog days of summer.  I have no idea why Charisma decided to reach so deep, edit and republish an 8 year old article that I am embarrassed that I ever wrote.  Our PR team has asked them to remove the article and not to repost it.  When I am back in town I will contact them, as well.

Latitude News covers the relationship between Scott Lively and Uganda’s anti-gay bill

I provided comment for this series of Latitude News reports. They are worth looking at for those who are interested in the relationship of Americans (notably Scott Lively) and the Uganda bill.

Click these links for the reports:

Uganda, U.S. export anti-gay pressure (podcast)

U.S. exporting homophobia to Uganda – Part I (print story)

U.S. exporting homophobia to Uganda – Part II (print story)

The facts and players will be familiar to anyone who has followed this blog for the past three years. I think they have done a nice job of summarizing the situation and getting us up to the present.

Latitude News covered the divide among evangelicals in the United States over the Ugandan bill. This is a balanced approach I appreciate.

 

New York Times on the Changes at Exodus

Friday night at the evangelical fights.

After the NPR segment comes this New York Times article which covers much the same ground.

It cannot be any clearer; Alan Chambers is leading Exodus from the wilderness of reparative therapy to the promised land of Grace and soul liberty.

What a ride.

Conservatives in the church and elsewhere should welcome this. There is no necessary conservative attachment to reparative therapy. In fact, given the psychoanalytic roots of the model, it has surprised me that conservative Christians have bought into it for as long they have.

 

NPR Segment on Changes at Exodus International

A segment on changes at Exodus is coming up on NPR sometime between 4:30 and 4:45pm. It should repeat again between 6:30-6:45pm.

I have a few lines but I am not sure who else is in on it.

Listen, learn and comment.

The audio will be posted at 7pm, but the transcript is here.

Rob Gagnon has emerged as a vocal opponent of Exodus. I am baffled by his approach, which seems to make grace conditional on one’s behavior or attitude.

I intend to write more about this next week. Gagnon says he thinks reparative therapy sometimes works. I suppose for some it can work to give them a way to think about their lives but the burden of proof is on NARTH and others who support the group to demonstrate some kind of categorical change. Nothing has come from NARTH that approaches good research strategies and as a result, NARTH is currently on the defensive. They have been fighting a defensive battle with no real offense. After awhile, if you have nothing to offer, people will look elsewhere.

Exodus Publicly Backs Away From Reparative Therapy

If you’ve been reading here, you would know this.

An AP story is all over the place yesterday and today with the headline that Exodus has removed reparative therapy books from the website, and is no longer promoting change therapy. According to Alan Chambers, Exodus President, “the ministry’s emphasis should be simply helping Christians who want to reconcile their own particular religious beliefs with sexual feelings they consider an affront to scripture.”

Again, no surprise to anyone who reads here regularly, I think he is on target.

I must admit, this is satisfying. When I first dropped my article in 2005 questioning reparative therapy, I was beaten up pretty badly by those in what was the ex-gay movement at the time. Things have changed. Focus on the Family is out of the reparative business for the most part. Exodus is now working on congruence as a goal, and NARTH is fighting for its life. And the APA has taken a position that congruence as an objective is acceptable.

Speaking of NARTH, the AP article says is “a professional association made up of about 2,000 therapists and others who still espouse such treatments.”

Wait, what? 2,000?

Did they gain 1,000 members in less than a year? In October, 2011, I asked David Pruden at NARTH how many professional members were on the rolls. He told me the number was at 250, with the remaining 750 or so being advocates and laypeople.  Is this puffery or have they gained 1,000 names since last October?

UPDATE: David Pruden just wrote to say that he did not tell the reporter 2k so perhaps it was a misunderstanding.