Bad Heterosexual

Breaking news: not all heterosexuals are good people, and the small number of gays and lesbians who pretend to be heterosexual aren’t necessarily good people, either. Pretending not to be gay or lesbian does not make you a good person. Living the ex-gay liestyle doesn’t grant you special rights and it doesn’t give you a ticket to heaven. This shouldn’t be news, but it will be for Randy Thomas, president Executive Vice President (corrected 20090117) of Exodus International. Randy is upset with a Dan Savage article which posits that the the Ricin threat letter sent to 11 gay bars in Seattle was written by a gay man, “a blood brother to those guys who come out, spend ten methed-out years on their backs in bathhouses, and then decide that gay life is depressing and squalid and sinful before they ‘come out’ as ex-gays.” Randy is so upset by this theory that he posted this doozy on Savage’s blog:

For the most part, we are intelligent, balanced, stable, tolerant of what we may not personally accept and loving. We looked at what identifying as gay and all of the predetermined relational options of what that means and said, “no thanks.” Some of us have experienced orientation shift and others haven’t … and we are all living out our faith and life as we see fit. I and everyone I know, have no desire to force others into our line of thinking. [Emphasis added]

Slow forward to the next post on Randy’s blog, and he is really excited by the “good news” (reported by Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink) that Exodus has expanded it’s network from 117 to 234 churches (exactly double…wow!). Here is a quote from CitizenLink:

“This is really exciting because churches are getting behind this movement of teaching people about healthy sexuality and teaching people that they don’t have to be gay,” said Jeff Johnston, gender issues analyst at Focus on the Family and part of the Love Won Out team.

Johnston is partially right. Straight people “don’t have to be gay”. But gay people do, at least if they are to be whole. JoAnne Wypigweski describes a public kiss of a lesbian couple in a Harlem lounge on the night of the presidential election:

First, the kiss was carnal, not marital; an expression of being, rather than legal right or obligation. As gay marriage advocates simultaneously mourned the success of Proposition 8 in California, the kissing pair in the merry crowd wordlessly declared that sexuality isn’t a right or a privilege any more than smiling is, or skin color. Intrinsic to being, it is un-legislatable, un-votable, in any moral world.

Sexuality is part of who we (all people) are. It is an immutable human characteristic. Exodus can teach people to lie to themselves and to hate themselves, but Exodus can’t teach people to be other than who they are. And that is precisely the mission of Exodus. It’s a bald-faced, flaming lie to claim that Exodus leaders (and “everyone they know”) don’t want to “force others into our line of thinking”. Exodus works hand in hand with the anti-gay industry to oppose ALL efforts to end discrimination against LGBT people, to oppose ALL legal protections, to assign mendacious motivations to advocacy groups like PFLAG, to censor all educational materials sympathetic to GLBT people, and then to offer an “alternative” that they claim to be “healthy.”

Pants on Fire, Randy. You’re a winner!

Oh, and by the way, we appreciate the fact that you believe it’s unethical to label the entire teensy ex-gay “community” as terrorists because of the Ricin letter.

I don’t care if the man/woman is a religious zealot. I don’t care if they do turn out to be ex-gay. I don’t care if they are a gay activist trying to fake a “hate” crime. Whoever did it is a psychotic who deserves a lot of jail time for making terrorist threats.

It’s funny that Randy is so quick to suggest that the Ricin threat is a stunt. Where was he when the anti-gay and right wing media machines blamed the gay community for the harmless “white powder” sent to two Mormon temples, despite the FBI assertion that there was “absolutely no evidence” of this? It can’t be that he missed this baseless accusation, see here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here herehere here here here here here here here here here here here here and here. Here’s an exemplar from, who else, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse – who just can’t seem to restrain her impulse to blame all things bad on GLBT people:

Militant homosexuals have not respected that decision and have vandalized property, threatened people, and mailed white powder to Mormon churches. Fitzpatrick calls that “fascism.”

Notice the difference in methodology, Randy and Dr. J.; Dan Savage analyzed the evidence (actually in three separate posts), in an effort to seek truth. You guys might want to try that if you really do care about the fate of your souls.

“If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
1 John 1:9

Being (or pretending to be) heterosexual in and of itself isn’t going cut it, even if doing so gets you a seat at Dr. Dobson’s desk.

Note – All photos can be found on Randy Thomas’ Flickr site. Check it out. You’ll see lots of photos with anti-gay politicians (Karl Rove, Marilyn Musgrave, Sam Brownback) and anti-gay Dominionists (Dr. D. James Kennedy, Tony Perkins, Phil Buress). The icing on the cake, however is Randy’s showing at the 2007 Family Research Council “Value Voters Summit” (scroll/search for “October 19, 2007” or “World without ENDA, amen”). Randy Thomas follows Pastor Rick Scarborough. The article says:

Pastor Rick Scarborough, founder of Vision America and a native of Pearland, said adding transgendered people to the bill would “destroy the economy of this country.” He has said lesbians and gays are guilty of “abhorrent and deviant behavior.”

No, Thomas doesn’t want to “force his ideas on anybody.” He just wants to mis-educate churches and voters and then profit from the the sale of products and services of Exodus international for “freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.”