My friend Wayne Besen at Truth Wins Out is releasing a new video to combat the false message put out by the Christianist funded "ex-gay" programs. I am setting out Wayne's press release in full because it not only addresses the failed marriages of ex-gays, but also the failed marriages of other LGBT individuals who try to conform to societal and religious dictates only to meet with ultimate failure. I know of what I speak - I am one of them and my children are collateral damage.
Groups That Encourage Marriage As A Cure For Homosexuality Destroy Families And Treat Spouses and Children As Collateral Damage
NEW YORK - Truth Wins Out released an exclusive National Coming Out Day video today, "Ex-Gay = Ex-Wife," that features the stories of four courageous women whose families fell apart after their closeted husbands came out. This video is the latest in TWO's "Talking Truth" campaign and highlights the harm of ex-gay programs from a unique perspective - that of the spouse who gets left behind when the promised "cure" does not endure.
"Ex-gay programs love to show the wedding photos, but they never show you the divorce papers that result from such ill-conceived marriages," said Truth Wins Out's Executive Director, Wayne Besen. "These programs hold marriage up as the Holy Grail to heterosexuality, but the truth is, these marriages wholly fail, leaving shattered lives and broken families."
Bonnie Kaye, an author and director of the organization www.GayHusbands.com, has dedicated her life to counseling women after the demise of her own marriage. She blames anti-gay activists, such as Alan Chambers of Exodus International and James Dobson of Focus on the Family, for creating such miserable and doomed marriages.
"Alan Chambers and James Dobson are destroying the lives of families, not helping them...It's not a choice, people are who they are. Learn to love them and learn to embrace them and help them love themselves so they don't have to go and get married to be somebody they're not," said Kaye.
In the video, Nancy Davis shares how her former father-in law, a psychologist, recommended that his son meet a woman, get married and lead a straight life. "I feel like I was used, I was like an innocent lamb lead to slaughter," Davis said. The pain of such marriages can linger, long after the divorce is final. "Many of us are severely damaged...the spouses and children end up being the collateral damage," said Carol Silverman of the Straight Spouse Network, who was divorced after being married for nearly three decades.
Ignoring the failure and destruction all around them, ex-gay groups arrogantly and selfishly continue to use such families as pawns in their divisive culture war. "These organizations that try to convince people that they can be cured need to be stopped," asserted Tracy Rosenberg, who divorced her husband after almost 20 years.
"This video is a powerful reality check and a warning for those who would marry thinking that it will help them go from gay to straight," said Besen. "We are now looking to tell the stories of husbands whose marriages ended when their ex-gay wives came out as lesbians."
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