Ex Gay Survivor in Irvine this Weekend

This weekend is the Ex Gay Survivor's Conference in Irvine, CA. BeyondExGay.com and Soulforce put together a series of workshops, speakers, performances, music and movies to bring people together who have dealt with ex gay ministries in their lives.

I will be in the minority there as I didn't fall for the ex gay ministry tractor beam propagated by many Christian churches in the country. I don't know how I escaped it actually. Under the sign saying "Grace Ministries" at my previous church, sat a table top full of books titled "You Don't Have to Be Gay" and other such myths. I was fortunately at a place of self-acceptance that seeing the contradiction of the book titles with the sign saying Grace helped me leave the church, never looking back.

If you're not familiar with what ex gay means, it's a philosophy around believing being gay is preventable and/or curable. All you have to do is read the Bible more and welcome Jesus into your heart. It completely negates those of us who have reconciled did not do so in spite of God, but because of Him. Well, recently the head honchos at Exodus International, the biggest and best funded ex gay ministry (by Dobson's Focus on the Family) stated they see homosexuality is actually not a choice. Gee, what took them so long?

It's a way to make people conform to other people's level of comfort. It takes creativity away from God. It's absurd and there's thousands of people in loveless marriages because of it.

Now the course of self-justification of existence is to say gays must be celibate. As if all gays can be priests, when priests aren't always able. It's insane. It's emotionally traumatic. It's caused youth and adults to commit suicide. It's psychological malpractice. It divides families. It divides individuals. It's conditional when the Bible is clear on loving as Jesus loved, which is unconditionally.

We have Darlene Bogle, a former ex gay (I guess an ex ex gay...) and former leader in Exodus Ministry in our movie. She has a powerful story of how she sees how damaging her life was by confusing being numb with being straight. The self-hatred she had, burrowing it in alcohol, drugs, staying busy at work so she didn't have to feel or deal. I've met others who are anorexic. I have a personal friend who has caused herself an ulcer, had surgery, aged her skin with stress, kept her kids home from school so she isn't alone, got addicted to Vicodine...all to avoid and self-punish after listening to made up marketing terms like "pro gay theology". People will cause themselves physical harm when emotional trauma manifests. It's emotional trauma because there's a huge disconnect from our soul to God when we pull back and listen to made up rules from human beings versus listening to what God is telling us in the whispers. Even if we ignore it or deny it at first, it always gets worse and the consequences greater. Always. Being gay can't be fixed, because there's nothing to fix.

Darlene now is on fire to minister to ex ex gays and help those currently in ex gay groups get out and get on with their life as a whole human being.

We have another person in the movie who is currently ex gay and has been for 10 years. We've gotten the feedback from screenings of how viewers can see her pain and struggle and wish she would truly connect to God and get her nose out of studying herself into dead ends to keep herself from feeling anything. It's interesting. People think they pull off how they are happy and at peace, even though parts of them are quite shut down.

We don't fool anyone. Except ourselves usually. I'm excited to be at the conference and show the movie on Sunday, July 1st 4pm at UC Irvine as the grand finale. I'm proud to be a part of a sanctuary of sanity for people who got caught in the ex gay net. Hope to see you there on Friday with Mel White, Wayne Besen and Darlene Bogle. I love my job.