At a predominantly gay church in Sherwood, 10 miles north of Little Rock, the congregation broke into a united “Amen” and applause Sunday after hearing that a national “ex-gay” ministry would be shutting its doors.
Exodus International, an organization that for more than three decades claimed to offer a “cure” for homosexuality, ceased operation June 19 after board members voted unanimously to begin a separate ministry with a different focus. The announcement came less than a day after Exodus released a statement to the gay communitycondemning years of undue judgment by the organization and the Christian church as a whole. In the preceding years, the nonprofit had reported a revenue shortfall of nearly $200,000.
“Exodus is an institution in the conservative Christian world, but we’ve ceased to be a living, breathing organism,” said Alan Chambers, president of Exodus, in a news release. “For quite some time we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical.”
In a reversal of their own, the group’s leaders admitted in 2011 that sexuality reversal isn’t possible for all people. Their findings were consistent with psychological studies - the American Psychological Association in 2009 adopted a resolution saying no evidence existed to support the notion that sexual identity could be changed. The group said gay “conversion” could cause depression and lead to suicide.
Chambers addressed this in his written apology.
“I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced,” said the 41-year-old, who admits an ongoing sexual attraction to men, despite therapeutic efforts. “I am sorry that some of you spent years working throughthe shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change.”
Chambers remains married to his wife, Leslie.
Like the gay-friendly Open Door Community Church celebrating in Sherwood on Sunday, lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual advocacy groups across the country welcomed the ministry’s decision to close shop.
Paul Guequierre, a spokesman for the national Human Rights Campaign, said the move is a sign of the times, representative of society’s evolving outlook on issues involving sexual orientation.
“I think it’s good for the LGBT community in the South,” Guequierre said, adding that ex-gay groups are especially powerful in the Bible Belt. “People who once held these beliefs are coming around and seeing that what these people are doing has been dangerous and harmful.”
Many psychologists back the notion that the reparative therapy efforts can do more harm than good. Jon Mourot, a certified sex therapist based in Little Rock’s Hillcrest neighborhood, said Monday night that programs aimed at converting homosexuals into heterosexuals are unsuccessful and damaging.
Participants who try and fail to change their sexuality can experience feelings of hopelessness that lead to alcoholism, drug abuse andother risky behaviors, he said. The risk of suicide is also increased.
“They try to soothe their guilt and feeling of being abandoned by God - that feeling that God changed them,” he said. “They feel that they failed God or that God abandoned them, failed to change them.”
The phenomenon causing such behavior has a name: sexual-minority stress, the constant sense of rejection that afflicts those of nondominant sexual orientations, Mourot said.
For Mourot, who is gay, the idea of whether Exodus’ methods could be effective boiled down to a simple question.
“Say you’re straight,” he said. “How can you go in to see me as a therapist to convert you to be gay? You can’t. I can’t change your sexual orientation.”
Not all were pleased with the news of Exodus’ closing. Ron Woolsey, a Marshall-based Seventh-day Adventist pastor who describes himself as “ex-gay,” said that although he didn’t agree with all of the group’s methods, Exodus had done a lot of good.
“They get people started in the right direction,” he said.
The pastor described his experiences with homosexuality - nearly two decades of what he called struggling with temptation. The 64-yearold remembered what church members told his ex-wife nearly 40 years ago, when he realized he was gay.
“They were telling my wife, as we were getting divorced: Go ahead and divorce him because ‘that kind can never change,’” said Woolsey, who renounced his homosexuality 22 years ago, believing he couldn’t embrace Christianity without doing so.
But Woolsey says he believes homosexuality is an addiction that can be overcome,not necessarily an orientation that can be changed. Rather than trying to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals, he said, it is better to teach them to resist the temptation of same-sex attraction.
Despite disagreeing with some of Exodus International’s approaches, Woolsey said he’s sorry to see them give up.
“I think it is sad to see that an organization that has been working so fearlessly in this effort for so long is closing down,” he said. “I admire them because they were willing to take on an issue against all odds. They were standing for something they believed in in the face of opposition, slander, persecution, all that.”
Randy McCain, the gay pastor who founded Open Door in 1996, recalled some of the methods used in the group’s gay-to-straight conversion therapy. Local ministries might encourage gay boys to play more football,or teach girls how to put on makeup. The training, he said, may have been more effective in strengthening traditional gender roles than changing an individual’s sexuality.
The pastor, who married his partner, Gary, last year in New York, recalled spending much of his teenage life juggling faith and sexuality, thinking, as Exodus preached, that he couldn’t be gay and Christian. For a while, he even tried dating women.
For decades, he remembered, the church had said “well, you need a good woman - that’ll cure ya.”
“I tried as hard as I could to believe that I was heterosexual, but the more and more that I tried, the feelings and attractions were still there for the same gender,” he said.
Sunday, as McCain preached, two men tended to a child in the back row and two more held hands in the front. In the sanctuary, withits purple walls, portable fans buzzed.
The decline of Exodus International is good news, McCain said, but homosexuals are still rejected by many church leaders, he noted, pounding his fist on the dais.
“They know nothing of the man whose name they pray to! …. know nothing of his spirit,” said the pastor. “And the Jesus of the Bible would have never acted in such a way.”
Religion, Pages 12 on 06/29/2013