Warren Throckmorton commented on-air at CNN Tuesday:

The congruence for some clients will be with their sexuality. The congruence for others will be with their religious beliefs.

Clearly, some people feel that the most core aspect of them is their sexuality.

Others, on the other hand, believe that their religious values and religious beliefs are most core, and they would rather explore congruence of their behavior with those beliefs and values.

Dr. Throckmorton has my respect for being a thoughtful, available presence at his blog. He has earned Michael Bussee’s endorsement of the sexual identity framework.

In that context, I won’t/can’t lash out in activist mode about the ache I felt when I heard him say those words. And yet, the ache remains.

(more…)

An anonymous ex-gay writer at the PFOX MySpace blog posted an open letter:

Dear Ex-Ex Gay Organizations,

I really appreciate your concern for people like me, people you consider “ex-gays.” It’s really great to know that there are people out there that seem to want to help. According to your websites, you seem to really care for those of us who have been through the chaos and confusion of sexual identity issues.

However, your help is not wanted, nor needed.

(…the rest of the open letter)

I posted a comment in reply to the open letter which hasn’t been approved yet.
(more…)

I just threw up a new site, QueerSuicide.org.

The concept for it has emerged from multiple sources — my experience as a survivor of Dale, my boyfriend’s, suicide in 2000, and my admiration for the ways in which Peterson and Christine have crafted the Beyond Ex-Gay site as a place of healing and sharing of survivors’ stories.

The impetus for this is my sense that suicide-related issues play an obvious role in queer life, and yet as a community we are sometimes better at launching activism-based challenges at others than healing-based nurturing within. It’s important to me that suicide in the gay community impacts folks of all ages, not adolescents or young adults only, as Peterson described recently.

I don’t see this as an always dismal or devastating topic. At its core it’s a mental health issue and a community health issue. More folks have survived despair and self-harm than died; many of the loved ones we have lost actually spent years courageously battling mental illness and dysfunctional family or community dynamics. When it comes to suicide prevention and survival, sustaining strong, supportive communities with access to good health care is as important if not moreso than ongoing efforts to eliminate bullying, discrimination, and homophobia. Just like the gay community has been essential in caring for people with HIV, we have a critical roles to play in helping each other survive, heal, and thrive in the context of suicide.

It’s too easy to shy away from talking the issues out. It’s a tough experience, a complex topic, and a word we’d rather avoid. When I looked at domain names, I found a number of suicide-related names owned by resellers, available for hundreds of dollars, and figured I’d end up a long or quirky leftover. Surprisingly, though, neither the QueerSuicide nor the GaySuicide domain names were in use… one more suggestion that we’re prone to shuffling the topic aside.

And, it’s not that I’m any sort of innovator on this, either. Folks like Gabi Clayton, Steve Schalchlin, the Trevor Project, and thousands of gay teen suicide prevention web sites have been available for a long time.

Today, Peterson talks about the importance of telling our stories, highlighting what’s going on at Truth Wins Out with its short, punchy videos (the first one features Shawn O’Donnell) and at Beyond Ex-Gay with more detailed telling of people’s stories.

He closes with:

The important point is that we need to tell our own stories because once others tell them for us, the stories morph into a political message. So I encourage you, whatever journey you are on, step up and speak out.

The intersection of the personal and the political really is intriguing in this context, isn’t it?

I mentioned recently (see War or Peace?) that I see a clear distinction between healing which calls on people to be at war with themselves and healing which draws them into peaceful places where still-tender hurts can be soothed and souls can be gently nurtured.

At its heart, healing is profoundly personal. Rediscovering quiet and peaceful places within ourselves where previously there was only conflict and shame isn’t likely to happen in the midst of assertive or angry political activism. Healing of deep hurts often begins with reclaiming all that was already whole and complete, learning to be tender with ourselves, treating the wounds, and acknowledging the scars.

(more…)

Apparently, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, co-founder of NARTH, will speak to a faith-based group in London in June. His presentation is titled Time for Truth - Is Gay Real? and the plan is that he will “take a scientific rather than an explicitly Christian approach.”

I just wonder whether he

• Will seem angry, or struggle for composure;
• Mention that there is no such thing as a gay Catholic;
• Solicit professional clients for his case supervision service;
• Explain how not being a neutral therapist meshes with his scientific approach.
• Describe how he works with openly gay clients while asking publicly, “Is Gay Real?”

(more…)

Peterson talks about his time as a member of the Times Square Church under pastor David Wilkerson.

In the midst of his own struggles with believing he had to choose between being gay and having God in his life he recalls:

I even spoke to a minister at the church about my struggle. To my shock he told me that he too had a similar struggle. He warned that it is a spiritual battle, one where I needed to bind the devil, do spiritual warfare and drive out the evil spirits in my life.

Years later, after emerging from his ex-gay years as an openly gay man, he asked about that minister and heard:

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” he replied, “Brother _______, moved back to _____ . Soon after he returned home, he killed himself! So awful. And such a man of God. No one knows why he would do such a thing.”

Sadly, I think I know why, knowing the weight of wickedness he sat under, wickedness heaped on him every Sunday. Perhaps it eventually crushed him.

Suicide leaves so many questions in its wake for which clear, simple answers can be elusive.

(more…)

The Love Makes a Family organization in Connecticut is encouraging folks to email Governor Rell and their statehouse reps about marriage equality with an easy-to-use page at their site.

Here’s my letter, with the personal portion highlighted:

Jan 16, 2007

Governor M. Rell
Executive Office of the Governor
State Capitol, 210 Capitol Avenue
Hartford, CT 06106

Dear Governor Rell,

As your constituent, I urge you to support legislation this session giving full marriage equality to same-sex couples in Connecticut.

Civil unions provide important legal rights, but thousands of loving, committed couples–many raising children–deserve the dignity and respect that only marriage can provide.

Six years ago my 46-year-old partner died after a long battle with depression which had been compounded by fear of losing the respect of his loved ones and his community if he was honest with them about being gay.

Suicide is complex, leaving no simple cause to blame. But, one of the contributing factors in Dale’s case was the message he had gotten loud and clear: That to be gay was to be less, to be set apart.

In Dale’s name, I ask you to take a step to ensure that the state of Connecticut is not promoting the message that gay relationships are less worthy of the rights and responsibilities of marriage than others.

Please support marriage equality this session, so ALL people in Connecticut are treated equally and fairly under the law.

Sincerely,

Steve Boese
West Hartford, CT

Juan Cole has put up a thoughtful piece on Martin Luther King Jr.’s response to the Vietnam War.

Dr. King was not saying that war cannot solve military problems, you will note. He was saying that it cannot solve social problems. He would have scoffed at the Neoconservative idea that you can spread democracy by war or can improve peoples’ economy by war. He thought that the mid twentieth century was witnessing a revolution in human affairs that made war increasingly unacceptable. He probably had in mind nuclear weapons, the use of which normal people consider too horrible to contemplate. He may also have been thinking of Gandhi’s attempt to use non-violent non-cooperation in India to expel the British without resorting to guerrilla war.

The MLK Jr. quotes are rich.

[…The Vietnam war] has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together.

Today’s version, as Cole notes, is in Iraq. The challenges on the home front remain. And glbt members of the armed forces must fight for their lives in silence, at great risk to their careers, returning home to fight for their families, their faith, and all too often, their safety in their communities.

Something unusual has happened at Family.org, the web site of Focus on the Family. In its latest incarnation, its home page isn’t all about sex!

The typical home page I remember, as shown at Archive.org,

• Was headlined with a story about parents talking to their adolescents about sex.
• One of the FAQs asked about a gold key symbolizing the Dobson’s daughter’s moral purity.
• A list of Hot Topics included pornography and homosexuality.
• One of the daily news headlines was Arrest in Ramsey Case Spotlights Thai Sex Trade
• The Web Spotlight highlighted Love Won Out, leading with “Is homosexuality genetic? Can it be prevented?”

Sexual issues are just one click away from the new home page, but first you have to hover over the Life Challenges tab. Likewise, Sexual Identity and Gender can be found after hovering over the Social Issues.

Those two links fall toward the bottom of about 40 links, and the top of the list is all about relationships, marriage, parenting, and faith.

Who would have thought, after so many years of terrifying folks about gays and lesbians destroying life as we know it, families might become the focus, and glbt folks the footnote?

This just sounds too bizarre to be true, but apparently not:

Dear Parents/Guardians:

I want to inform you of an incident that occurred January 8 in your child’s comprehensive health education class. It has been brought to my attention that an outside speaker encouraged students to chew a piece of gum already chewed by other students in the class. I have learned that the intended purpose of this exercise was to demonstrate to students the power of peer pressure and to use it an analogy for transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.

I am appalled and aghast…

Sincerely,

James Fernandez
Principal

Jim, over at TeachTheFacts.org, has the details as well as the context. For the record, it wasn’t a matter of sharing one piece of gum with your neighbor, it was one piece of gum shared by the entire class.

Check it out for yourself.