In a post on his blog, Randy Thomas (pictured at left), the Vice President of Exodus International - the mother ship for the "ex-gay" cure "ministries" - complained about the so-called bias of a newspaper reporter who interviewed him recently for a story in a Florida newspaper. See: http://www.randythomas.org/blog/2007/05/i_dont_live_an_.html. However, Mr. Thomas does not practice what he would appear to preach. Comments on his blog are regularly blocked, deleted or edited to avoid any inconvenient views or facts. Here's what I posted on his blog last night:
Randy, I can understand your WANTING your sexual orientation to have changed. However, I know full well the power of denial, especially when it comes to not wanting to be gay. You see, I was in the closet for 37 years, got married, had children and tried all kinds of self-delusion to avoid admitting the truth. I feel sorry that you cannot accept that maybe, just maybe GOD made you gay. On my blog http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/ I am recounting my story so that others do not make the same mistakes, particularly the (in retrospect) selfish mistake of getting married in order to be “straight,” “normal, or whatever you may label it.
I pity the straight spouses in relationships with those you have helped to delude themselves into thinking they have changed their sexual orientation. Also, I am curious whether or not you draw a salary from Exodus. I am very familiar with those who are “ex-gay” for pay. Ask Michael Johnston, for example: http://www.washingtonblade.com/2003/8-8/news/national/exgay.cfm
Lo and behold, by this morning the entire second paragraph of my comment had been deleted. I guess the Michael Johnston fraud - who was a professional ex-gay for pay until his "moral fall" - hit a little too close to home fro Mr. Thomas, who I suspect draws a salary from Exodus. God forbid his readers discover the cure doesn't really work.
3 comments:
just found your blog and right now in middle of all the crap you have already gone through, wife found out about me 2 years ago and while still in the house relationship is deteriorating rapidly ..hope went better for you than going for me
Here's what I don't understand:
For whatever peculiar reasons, a person does his damnedest to deny or suppress an obvious reality. I understand the pressures of social conformity. I might appreciate someone's religious guilt terrorizing his soul (although I've never personally experienced it). Maybe its a "personality" disorder, a psychological fragmentation (as some of us say), or just simple mental dissonance (as I am wont to say). Maybe this person thinks acceptance of facts would make him "diseased," when it actually heals. Maybe this person "believes" s/he'll lose his/her soul for eternity, when it's the key to liberty? Lots of possibilities, even if none seem very credible. But on some level, if this disorder, fragmentation, denial, and dissonance "works" for someone, in some twisted sense, I respect their choice to live in that disorder, fragmentation, denial, and dissonance.
But why drag others into into this nightmarish hell-hole (or, dark night of the soul)? Why must others share in this same "disorder," fragmentation, denial, and dissonance? Does misery love company? What other motive could one have for demanding others be as "sick" in the head as s/he is, so discontent with the facts of life, so terrorized in that dark night of the soul? And, if this person is so demanding -- so insistent -- that others share in the same dysfunction, denial, fragmentation, dissimulation, why do others give it any credence?
If Mr. Thomas' same-sex affinities cause so much conflict, agony, and "moral falls" (a curious concept in itself), which costs him so much in terms of sanity and credibility, why is his postlapsarian state any better than the prelapsarian, or vice versa? And, we all know he'll fall, and fall, and fall, because he cannot stand.
I just do not understand it. But, then, I don't understand sado-masochism either, and there seems to be a "family resemblance" (to quote Wittgenstein) in Mr. Thomas' claims -- where pain is taken for pleasure, and pleasure is taken for pain. I'm told sadists need masochists, and masochists need sadists, or S&M just does not get off. Maybe that parallelism explains Mr. Thomas's insistence that others "play" in his particular "game of life." Sort of twisted, in my view, but we humans are a diverse lot and do a lot of twisting. I just do not see any pleasure (much less satisfaction) in it, but he seems to, and that may be self-explanatory.
Actually it makes perfect sense and happens all the time. First, people are given their reality in their early childhood usually by their parents. Most people who are deeply religious make it a top priority to indoctrinate their children. As we grow up our brains are forming what we know (our reality) and if our parents do a thorough job it's very hard to see any other reality. With that scenario, a lot of anxiety is created when your "true self" does not correspond with what reality you were implanted with (the false self). Therefore you must attempt to either come to terms with your internal reality or attempt to change your external one. If everyone believes what you believe then you can maintain the false self and reduce your anxiety.
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