Sexual Healing: Evangelicals Update Their Message to Gays

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http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/06/sexual-healing-evangelicals-update-their-message-to-gays/258713/



Thirty years ago, Alan Chambers was a Christ-loving 10-year-old with a terrible secret. He knew he was attracted to other boys. He also knew that the Bible called homosexuality an "abomination." After nearly a decade of hiding his feelings (and his love of shopping and decorating) from family and pastors, he discovered a ministry called Exodus International. Today, Chambers is the president of Exodus and the author of the book Leaving Homosexuality. He oversees more than 260 ministries, spearheads large annual conferences, and is married to a woman.

Christians who consider themselves "ex-gays" have become a source of ridicule in popular culture. Although the evangelical leader Ted Haggard isn't affiliated with Exodus, it didn't help the cause when he was outed by a male prostitute he'd been frequenting for years -- and then deemed by his pastors, after just three weeks of therapy, to be "completely heterosexual." For many, though, these stories represent something deadly serious. The American Psychological Association warns that homosexuality is not a disorder, and that trying to "cure" it can lead to "intimacy avoidance, sexual dysfunction, depression, and suicidality."

Founding Exodus leader Michael Bussee says he witnessed those harrowing outcomes firsthand. Bussee, who left the group in 1979 and now lives an openly gay life, recalls watching his Exodus clients descend into despair, mutilating their own bodies or driving their cars into trees. "By calling ourselves ex-gay," Bussee says now, "we were lying to ourselves and hurting people."

But Bussee has cautious praise for Chambers. "Alan himself is personally more progressive than any Exodus leader has ever been," he says. Under Chambers's guidance, for instance, Exodus canceled its sponsorship of the 2010 "Day of Truth" -- an event that asks high schoolers to wear t-shirts promoting "the biblical truth for sexuality." Gay teenager Tyler Clementi had just committed suicide, and Chambers told CNN that "all the recent attention to bullying helped us realize that we need to equip kids to live out biblical tolerance and grace."

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