Family Scholars Respond to Savage on "Brokeback"

The responses to Dan Savage's NYTimes article Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Ex-Gay Cowboys continue to appear. This one from our friends at Family Scholar's Blog is titled "Ex-Gay" Marriage?

After quoting some of the same paragraphs as in my first post on this topic, Tom Sylvester asks:

Do mainstream evangelicals really urge gay men to marry women? Here’s NY Blade coverage of an “ex-gay ministry” event that gives advice to ex-gays on how to build a successful marriage (for some reason, most of the tips centered on sexual issues)...

I just had to take some quotes from the NY Blade article for my first comment:

I find the Blade story about the Exodus convention to be pitiably sad. From the marriage workshop:

The Worthens said physical intimacy should proceed slowly, and it is best to wait until marriage to experiment with deep kissing.

There should be no commitment to sexual performance on the wedding night, they said, and some prudent couples wait a year after marriage before even attempting sexual intercourse.

A wife needs to be prepared to offer extra help so that her husband can have an erection, [Anita] said. Also, she added that some men do not enjoy the feel of a woman’s skin.

[ Frank] recommended that couples avoid oral sex, which could stimulate gay fantasies.

“What should be done if a man begins to have same-sex fantasies while making love to his wife?”

Good question. It’s clear that they have no expectation that a person can actually change hsr sexual orientation. Yet this is what they imply when they go around the country giving their talks. Instead, it has everything to do with pretending to be something you're not. This is a psychologically unsound practice to say the least. No wonder the APA condemns these “therapies” for the harm that they do. As the book and movie point out, these sham marriages are a recipe for disaster.

So a big Hoo Rah to Dan Savage. He certainly expressed what is wrong with the whole “ex-gay” fallacy in a way that is both humorous and easy to understand when he says, “Would you want your daughter to marry one?”

The answer is emphatically no.

If this Marriage Workshop is representative of the best that Exodus can do, then it certainly gives the word "change" an entirely new meaning. But then lots of words they use in referring to gays don't mean the same thing to them as they do to the rest of us who speak English, not psychobabble.