October 3, 2015 8:25 AM

Today's nominee for Headline of the Year: Being gay isn't like a flat tire, something that can be fixed with the right tool

Nation Braces For Dick-Filled Sex Festival Known As ‘Ex-Gay Awareness Month’

“Ex-Gay Awareness Month” is coming! Aren’t you excited? Because see, as the religious right and the failing “ex-gay” industry have been telling us for years, there are LITERALLY MILLIONS of people out there who…don’t do that anymore, due to how they prayed the gay away. Is this actually a HUGE EVENT, you are asking? Haha, of course not, it’s a glorious failure every single year! In fact, in 2013, the event’s first year, it drew literally 10 people, despite wingnut Sandy Rios’s prediction that “thousands of ex-gays [were] descending” upon Washington for the soiree. IN FACT, it was originally supposed to be “Ex-Gay Pride,” but that had to be canceled, since all these people are filled with seething self-hatred, so “pride” isn’t really the right word. Oh, and also nobody wanted to come. “Ex-gay” organizer Christopher Doyle of Voice Of The Voiceless — who has admitted that when he was a youth, he pulled a Josh Duggar and “tried to have sex with the little girls that my mother watched in her daycare” — said at the time that they were canceling because “security threats,” but that’s pathetic bullshit and he knows it.

It never ceases to amaze me that so many on the Rabid Religious Right are so obsessed with the personal and private sexual practices of others. That the sexual identity and/or practices of another is something that has no impact on them (and is none of their damned business) seems to escape the busybodies who clearly have their own lives under control, seeing as how they’re all up in everyone else’s bidness. In fact, they’re SO fixated on the sexuality of other people, that they’ve invented a whole new way to convince the LGBT community that there’s something deeply, horribly, almost irretrievably wrong with them…when in fact nothing of the sort is true.

“Ex-gay therapy” has been a thing for many years. Based on the fallacy that it’s possible to “pray the gay away,” ANY good, God-fearing Christian will tell you being gay just means you’ve made some REALLY terrible, horrible, awful choices in your life. Thankfully, there are those godly souls committed to shepherding lost souls out of the darkness and ickiness that is the LGBT community and into the welcoming arms of a loving God who will eventually smite gays…just you wait. Not only that, they’re going to celebrate their (total lack of) success in publicly embarrassing themselves (not) convincing gays that they’re standing on the precipice of an eternity bathing in hellfire and brimstone.

Welcome to “Ex-Gay Awareness Month,” that wonderful time of year when proud ex-gays (don’t) stand up and (won’t) shout, “We’re here! We’re no longer queer! Deal with it,b——-s!!” Besides, if the Family Research Council is involved, you just KNOW that it’s a month (not exactly) full of negative, self-loathing positive messages about forcing people to deny their true self the joys of good, old-fashioned heterosexual sex.

Defenders of the truth that change is possible for those with same-sex attractions will mark the Third Annual Ex-Gay Awareness Month by gathering in the Washington, DC area for a “Safe Exit Summit” on Friday and Saturday, October 2 and 3. […] Attorney Charles Limandri of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, who defended a Jewish ex-gay ministry in a New Jersey lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is scheduled to receive an award. The Summit will also feature testimonies by individuals who have left homosexuality and entertainment by ex-gay Christian songwriter and singer Dennis Jernigan. The principal organizers of the Safe Exit Summit are Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX); Voice of the Voiceless; and Equality and Justice for All. Family Research Council is a supporting sponsor of the event.

Two years ago, the flagship model for the industry, Exodus International, which used to prey on untold numbers of impressionable gay kids and adults, closed its doors. And this came a full year after the organization admitted that, whoopsie, no, you CANNOT pray away the gay.

There’s no evidence that ex-gay therapy is effective in any sense, unless of course, your goal is to engage in something very closely resembling organized sexual molestation. The good news is that there isn’t much of a market for this sort of abusive and degrading fraud. Due in large part to the efforts of groups like Truth Wins Out, the “ex-gay” industry has declined to the point of being virtually irrelevant in the larger picture. Someone should probably tell the Family Research Council.

So how do you plan to celebrate “Ex-Gay Awareness Month?”

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on October 3, 2015 8:25 AM.

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