I was reading Ex-Gay Watch this morning. Mike included information from the new Exodus ad campaign unvailed in Cincinnati. The “Question Homosexuality” campaign, which includes newspaper ads like the one appearing in the Cincinnati Enquirer, seems to be a good effort.
If I am honest, which I have no problem being, there are times when I still question whether I simply did not try hard enough, pray hard enough, get psychoanalyzed enough, or grit my teeth hard enough to resist the whole homosexual thing. Change did not come, despite all that I did. All one has to do is read the testimonials/auto-biographies of people year after year after year to realize that scores have tried and tried again to change their orientation to no avail. The success rate of Exodus and their methods are dismally low – and this fact comes from those involved with the methods/programs.
Have some changed? I don’t know. All we have to do is look at those who have claimed healing and change and later failed/fell/admitted the truth that they still have same-sex attraction to know that just because some say they have changed does not mean much! Yet, there are those few who do say they have no attraction to the same sex any longer. Are they lying or have they changed? If they have changed, then why or how? Did they prayer just the right amount of time? Did they cry to just that point where God figured He might as well do something? Did they grit their teeth hard enough and now are simply enduring an incongruent life? Is it because God truly zapped them and turned them into heterosexuals or enabled them to realize their true heterosexual selves? Is it because they were not truly homosexual to begin with? Is it because God wishes for all homosexuals to realize they aren’t really homosexual and that if we do just what Alan Chambers did that every one of us will be zapped, too?
There are simply too many individuals who have done everything and anything to change (relying upon God and everything) who have not experienced changed. What does that mean? Does God not love them, but does love Alan Chambers and his crew? Is God fickle? Does God play favorites? Did these people not have the guts or endurance to realize their change – they simply quite too soon? Maybe these homosexuals were predestined for hell by God, so they aren’t going to change no matter what anyone does (a good application of Calvinistic double-predestination!)?
There is nothing reliable, verifiable, and consistent that presents to me the honest notion that homosexuals are not homosexuals because that is what they are – that God changes homosexuals into heterosexuals, or that reparative-therapy actually works. Why are people homosexual? We don’t know, yet. Scripture does not support what the Church has traditionally claimed concerning homosexuality. Science does not support ex-gay ideology, theology, or psychosocial theory. Yet, sometimes I wonder whether I just didn’t pray enough, cry enough, study enough, grit my teeth enough, or get analyzed enough to change.