-A Catholic high school tells a senior he cannot accept the Matthew Shepard Scholarship at the school’s awards ceremony.

-Jeremy Hooper finds a historic parallel to North Carolina’s Amendment One.

-Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan voice their support for marriage equality.

-Maggie Gallager makes her case for why same-sex marriage is worse than straight divorce.

-Gay children’s author Maurice Sendak passes away.

-North Carolina voters pass Amendment One.

-San Diego names a street after Harvey Milk.

-Colorado House Republicans run out the clock to avoid a vote on civil unions.

-President Obama endorses marriage equality.

-Congressional Republicans respond by adding an anti-gay amendment to a spending bill.

-Representatives of the Family Equality Council ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

-Governor John Hickenlooper calls the Colorado legislature back for a special session to vote on the civil unions bill.

-Chris Matthews challenges Tony Perkins’ anti-gay talking points.

Truth Wins Out disputed Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) dishonest and immature portrayal today of a lawsuit filed against its President Greg Quinlan. The lawsuit was dismissed by the United States District Court in Richmond because Besen was deemed a “public figure,” which raises the bar on proving malice in defamation lawsuits. However, the outcome does not erase the fact that Quinlan is a liar who got successfully called out for lying by Truth Wins Out.

“Greg Quinlan clearly fabricated a story and continues to lie about it, showing he has deep character flaws and is unchristian,” said Truth Wins Out’s Wayne Besen. “I’m pleased that we were able to use our lawsuit to highlight his moral turpitude and unethical conduct. Our legal action hardly cost us any money, but it cost Mr. Quinlan his credibility and reputation.”

Read the full press release at Truth Wins Out.

-A North Carolina man posts a video of himself shooting a “No on 1” yard sign.

-Tennessee’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is dead, for now.

-A transgender woman is murdered in Oakland, CA.

-A Missouri legislator comes out of the closet to oppose that state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

-Romney advisor Richard Grenell resigns in the wake of concerted opposition from anti-gay conservatives.

-LGBT rights advocate Zach Wahls releases his autobiography, My Two Moms.

-The wife of the author of North Carolina’s Amendment One says it is needed “to protect the Caucasian race.”

-Evangelist Billy Graham publishes an ad condemning marriage equality.

-Civil unions pass the first of several hurdles in the Colorado House.

-Russian gay activist Nikolai Alexeyev is fined under St. Petersburg’s new anti-gay law.

-Preserve Marriage Washington struggles to find signatures for its effort to repeal marriage equality.

In November, XGW reported on a secret meeting held by Exodus president Alan Chambers to come up with ways to rebrand the organization in the wake of social and financial collapse.  Since then events have occurred which seem to validate that scenario.  The cancellation of this conference, the first time we know of since either Exodus or Focus on the Family held the event, appears to provide more evidence of their decline.

In the email (see below) sent out to would be attendees barely two days ago, Exodus’ Senior Director of Events David Fountain suggests that they might “Automatically convert all or part of your registration fees into a tax-deductible gift to support the ministry efforts of Exodus International.”

Dear Attendee,

It is with great disappointment that we are notifying you today that the Love Won Out Conference scheduled for May 19th at Legacy Church in Albuquerque, NM has been cancelled.

First, we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. In my seven years serving on the Exodus team, this was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make. Unfortunately, due to the low number of registrations we simply were unable to justify the substantial cost of bringing the LWO Conference to the Albuquerque area.

We are grateful for the support and commitment that we’ve received from Legacy Church. At this time, we are discussing the possibility of partnering together in bringing another Exodus event to the area next year. We promise to keep you updated via email regarding any announcements we may have about this future event.

Second, I realize some of you were probably very anxious to receive the encouragement and equipping the Love Won Out conference provides, so Exodus is offering complimentary recordings of all the Love Won Out teachings to anyone who had pre-registered for this conference. To request a copy of these teachings, simply reply to this email or call the Exodus office at 888-264-0877. While these recorded teachings can’t replace the full experience of attending a Love Won Out Conference, we hope that you find them helpful as you seek biblical answers for a very personal and controversial issue in our culture today.

Lastly, in the section below you will find several options for you to consider in regards to your registration fees. Please prayerfully consider and notify the Exodus office of your choice by Monday, May 14th.

1. Request a full or partial refund for registration fees. (If you choose this option, Exodus will issue and mail you a check for the full or partial amount that you are requesting. If you choose a partial refund, the remaining balance will become a tax-deductible gift to the ministry of Exodus and you’ll receive an end of year receipt.)
2. Automatically convert all or part of your registration fees into a tax-deductible gift to support the ministry efforts of Exodus International (If you choose this option, a receipt will be sent to you at the end of the year.)
3. Transfer your registration fees to another Exodus Event in 2012. Click here to see a full listing of upcoming Exodus Events. (If you choose this option, Exodus will send you a discount code to use when registering for another Exodus Event.)

Thank you for your patience, cooperation, and understanding as we strive to wisely steward the ministry the Lord has called us to.

For His Kingdom’s Cause,

David Fountain
Senior Director of Events
Exodus International

P.S.: Please call or email the Exodus office if you have any additional concerns or questions.

Pastor Sean Harris of Berean Church, Fayetteville, NC, made the remarks in a sermon in favour of Amendment One, a proposed law to make marriage between one man and one woman “the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized” in the state of North Carolina.

Harris’s audience laughed as he advised giving a four-year-old son a “good punch” if he “acts a little girlish.” Listen to the nauseating audio (courtesy of Jeremy at Good As You), or read the transcript below:

So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old, and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female, and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it, and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Okay? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to butch you reign her in. And you say: “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”

You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?”

Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.

The pastor has now apologized, saying he was joking about the physical violence. He reaffirmed his view that gender nonconformity is ungodly. Presumably emotional abuse and psychological bullying would be the more appropriate way for fathers to shame their gay sons into manning up.

Of course, he also had harsh words for butch daughters, but his advice on how to convert lesbian daughters seems merciful compared to that dished out by a Cleveland, Ohio, radio host last week. DJ Dominic Dieter had this to say to a father who suspected his daughter was gay after he caught her kissing a girl: “You should get one of your friends to screw your daughter straight.”

Dieter’s ugly advice is hardly original, and nor is Pastor Sean Harris’s. Girls as young as 13 have been subjected to “corrective rape” in South Africa, just as effeminate kids the world over know what it is to be physically punished by their parents and their peers. Neither approach is anything new — you just hope not to hear it from your pastors and radio personalities.

________

Update: Listen to Pastor Sean Harris’s non-apology here. After psychologically bullying gays by suggesting they be physically beaten, he says he has never advocated psychological bullying or physical beating. Most of the “retraction and response” is taken up with complaining that his statements were taken out of context and misinterpreted. He’s sorry that some people were “unintentionally offended.” And don’t forget God really, really hates gender nonconformity and homosexuality. And that, not “beat your kids,” was what he meant when — after asking, “Can I make it any clearer?” — he recommended cracking wrists and giving out punches.

The apology (which is more an apology in the academic sense of a defence) means nothing. As someone Harris professes to follow once said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” You don’t say such things unless it comes from a deep place. And those ugly, ugly ways of thinking don’t disappear just because you were cornered into saying sorry.

-Gay Moroccan writer Abdellah Taia tells his story.

-The James Beard Foundation returns an award to the Boy Scouts in protest of their anti-gay policies.

-Olympic wrestler Stephany Lee marries her wife.

-Christian evangelist Jay Bakker speaks out against North Carolina’s marriage ban.

-California lawmakers consider a bill banning most ex-gay therapy for minors.

-An Illinois State University student is the victim of a violent anti-gay assault.

-Openly gay Pennsylvania state senate candidate Brian Sims wins his primary.

-North Carolina’s Amendment 1 loses one of its legislative sponsors.

-Hong Kong pop star Anthony Wong comes out of the closet.

-The gay son of an ex-Klansman announces his run for office in Kansas.

Dr Robert Spitzer, the researcher behind a flawed 2001 ex-gay study, has added to his recent retraction by apologizing for his claims.

The psychiatrist, now 80, already went public with his retraction in an interview with Gabriel Arana of American Prospect magazine. In his 2001 paper to the American Psychiatric Association, published in 2003, Spitzer had interviewed 200 ex-gays provided by conservative ex-gay organizations such as NARTH and Exodus International, then claimed their testimony proved that some homosexuals could change their orientation through therapy.

Those who claim gays can change have relied on the findings for over a decade, despite its obvious flaws. Having already denounced the study, Spitzer has now gone a step further in a letter to Kenneth J Zucker, editor of Journal of Sexual Behavior, the journal that published the study. He writes:

Several months ago I told you that because of my revised view of my 2001 study of reparative therapy changing sexual orientation, I was considering writing something that would acknowledge that I now judged the major critiques of the study as largely correct. After discussing my revised view of the study with Gabriel Arana, a reporter for American Prospect, and with Malcolm Ritter, an Associated Press science writer, I decided that I had to make public my current thinking about the study. Here it is.

Basic Research Question. From the beginning it was: “can some version of reparative therapy enable individuals to change their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual?” Realizing that the study design made it impossible to answer this question, I suggested that the study could be viewed as answering the question, “how do individuals undergoing reparative therapy describe changes in sexual orientation?” – a not very interesting question.

The Fatal Flaw in the Study – There was no way to judge the credibility of subject reports of change in sexual orientation. I offered several (unconvincing) reasons why it was reasonable to assume that the subject’s reports of change were credible and not self-deception or outright lying. But the simple fact is that there was no way to determine if the subject’s accounts of change were valid.

I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some “highly motivated” individuals.

Robert Spitzer. M.D.
Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry,
Columbia University

As of today, the Exodus International website still cites Spitzer to bolster its claims of ex-gay success (we noted specific instances in our earlier post). A search of the NARTH website still turns up over 300 citations for this now-thoroughly debunked study. The website of anti-gay lobbyists PFOX continues to promote the Spitzer study to prove that gays can be cured.

Will any of these groups have the honesty to acknowledge not only Spitzer’s apology and retraction, but the very clear reasons why the study is unreliable in proving the possibility of sexual orientation change?

Image: Truth Wins Out

The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed to us this morning that they indeed had an Anthony Falzarano there in their morgue.  Since Anthony and his wife, Dianne, are the only ones listed there by that name, we are taking this as confirmation that this is the same Anthony Falzarano who has participated in ex-gay and anti-gay activities since the 1990′s.  They would not release the cause of death.

While we don’t wish to dwell on the matter after a man’s death, Anthony Falzarano was a difficult person to deal with, subject to widely varying changes in mood, quick to anger and verbal attack.  It would be hard to report accurately about him without mentioning these traits.  He founded the rabidly anti-gay PFOX and was at one time a member of Exodus International.  He shunned both in later years as being too soft on the “gay agenda.”

Falzarano is apparently survived by his Wife Dianne, and what appears to be at least one daughter, Mary V Falzarano.

* Comment released posthumously.

Update: We have been told by unofficial sources that Mr. Falzarano died of a heart attack.

A good feature story is about something universal. When it comes to apologies, no one gets a pass in this life. Everyone deserves one, and everyone needs to give one. When I mentioned this letter to people, I found a story more universal than any that I’d written in years. Everyone told me they had someone they wished they could apologize to. And they told me that by the time they realized that truth, it was too late.

He relates the story of Larry, a man who, in the 1972-73 school year, transferred from his grade-8 social studies class because his teacher, Mr Atteberry, was gay. Thirty-nine years later, he apologized, and the two have reconciled.

I’m linking the story for personal reasons as much as anything. It inspired me, and this morning I sent off two emails to apologize to people I think I hurt; one as long as 25 years ago. I hope it’ll inspire you to say sorry to those you’ve hurt, too.

“We don’t consider it a disease,” he told the paper. He later added: “I see homosexuality as a normal developmental aberration. Which I know would sound profoundly disrespectful to some people, but that is how I have experienced it.”

Core Issues is the UK group that, with Anglican Mainstream, planned an advertising campaign on London transport, featuring the slogan “Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get used to it!” Boris Johnson, London’s Conservative mayor, pulled the ads, saying they were offensive in a city known for its tolerance and diversity. Davidson and his allies are now planning legal action on grounds of both human rights and breach of contract.

In Saturday’s Telegraph interview, Davidson said he  married and had a child while struggling with homosexual feelings. He had his first physical gay contact with a professor at Bible college, where he was training for ordination to Christian ministry. When he moved to the UK with his family in 1999, he began seeking out other gay men and again “acted out on those feelings.” His wife and son were devastated when they discovered his secret life.

Bizarrely, Davidson maintains that he and his wife have “had a fulfilled marriage in every sense of the word,” and appears to blame his relapse on the pressures of moving from South Africa to the UK so quickly. Yet his account of what followed does not sound like an account of an entirely fulfilled marriage.

He goes on to speculate, indirectly, whether another life crisis might trigger a relapse. He later says he could “probably” turn round and walk back. His way of depicting his “sexual orientation change” is revealing:

It may well be true that I could live such a life, but my choice, Cole [the journalist], is in another direction. … The gay community will say I am a repressed gay, that there is no real change here, it is just about behaviour modification. My experience has been that the more the behaviour has been modified, the more I don’t connect with that part of me that once was much more prevalent. … I feel I am far, far away from where I was.

What his words reveal is familiar. For all the simplistic soundbites about being healed, becoming ex-gay, leaving homosexuality or experiencing a sexual orientation change, when you pin down ex-gays on what they mean by change, it’s clear they’re not talking about a fundamental shift in orientation as the average person understands sexual orientation. The attractions are still there; the ex-gay has just chosen to view them differently and behave differently.

What also becomes clear is that, like so many prominent ex-gays, Davidson’s story is one of destructive gay behaviour. And blame for the consequences appears to be put squarely on homosexuality as a general state rather than simply one person’s bad choices. Interviewer Cole Moreton gets that it goes far beyond the mere fact of Davidson’s gayness:

Surely it isn’t homosexuality per se that he has had to deal with, as much as a series of painful, damaging experiences to do with secrecy and shame? How can he make the leap from there to urging people to turn away from faithful same-sex love, something he has never experienced?

Davidson gives a PC response to this, saying that monogamous gays should have “the freedom, the space, the respect and the value to do that.” This doesn’t flow with Core Issues’ rhetoric about homosexuality, however, or its decision to buddy up with the viciously homophobic Anglican Mainstream.

“Try not to paint me as naive,” Davidson tells Moreton. Sadly, he’s either naive or, for all his outer gentleness, just as homophobic as his allies.