By Paul Harris

PHarris@OurIndy.com



While
supporters of the “Religous Right” were meeting a little over two miles to
the north at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church for their “Love Won Out”
conference gay activists and supportive clergy members from a number of
backgrounds held their own conference at First Congregational Church. About 150
people attended the gathering called “Love Welcomes All” which was addressed
by clergymen, a distinguished psychiatrist, and the author of “Anything But
Straight,” Wayne Besen.



Chip Arndt Miami LGBT Caucus

The day started with a press conference and then proceeded to the conference
proper. Frank Faine, on the staff of the Sunshine Cathedral and one of the
organizers of the conference, stated that the goal of the conference was “to
proclaim God’s love is for all” as well as pointing out the harm done by the
ex-gay ministries by explosing the flaws and dangers of the ex-gay
ministries. He described the activities of the Religious Right as “doing
spiritual violence” to gays and lesbians.



Elder Nori Rost pointed out that far from supporting the family the Religious
Right’s policies actually excluded family members and placed conditions on
God’s love with “their insistence that parents treat their GLBT children
differently.” She called on the Focus on the Family organization to “stop
lieing about us.” Later in the day she pointed to the number of estranged
families involving members of the GLBT community. She blamed the Religious Right
for “spreading the language of fear, not love.” The Reverend Rost preferred
to say not that she was “coming out” but that she was “welcoming you in to
the reality of my life.” She pointed to the high levels of divorce in
heterosexual marriages. “When was the last time you saw a Focus on the Family
conference on divorce?” she asked.



Dr. Jack Drescher is an internationally acknowledged psychiatrist and author. He
opened his comments by saying that “homosexuality does not require therapy”
and that “most of the treatments don’t work” and that “people often feel
worse.” If gay men do get married to women the resulting “families often
live under tragic circumstances.” He also pointed out that “no mainstream
qualified school of therapy teaches reparative therapy.”



When he came to make his presentation he showed that not only did the vast
majority of people who entered conversion therapy fail to change their same-sex
attractions but that many of them suffered long-term harm as a result of the
alleged ‘therapy.’ He pointed out that the American Psychiatric Association
(APA) had decided that conversion therapy does not work and is both harmful and
unethical.



Jason Cianciotto, the Research Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force Policy Institute, appealed to Dr James Dobson of Focus on the Family to
“stop lying to parents about their children,” claiming that what he was
doing was harmful and “only served to split families.”



Cianciotto went on to describe the state of Florida as “Ex-Gay Central.”

He stated that between 2000 and the end of 2006 there will have been 53 “Love
Won Out” and similar conferences of which 11 of them will have been held in
Florida, more than in any other state! Cianciotto went on to relate the story of
how a five-year old diagnosed as being “prehomosexual” had been taken
to see Dr Joseph Nicolosi because he liked the color red and liked to dance on
his toes!



The person perhaps most responsible for highlighting the failures of the Ex-Gay
movement in the popular media in recent years has been Wayne Besen, author of
the book “Anything But Straight.” He was the journalist who photographed
(supposedly) ex-gay leader John Paulk at a Washington D.C. gay bar. He has also
collected many other instances of supposedly “cured” homosexuals behaving in
anything but “cured” ways. He described many of the ex-gays as being
“living spoofs rather than living proofs” that reparative therapy works. He
also pointed out that in spite of all the publicity the Religious Right have put
into opposing equal rights for gays and lesbians they are offering the ex-gay
ministries less financial support than they used to. Besen described the
ex-gay ministries as offering “promises that they can’t deliver.” For
Besen the main reason the Religious Right used the gay issue was for their own
political and financial ends.



In the afternoon Sky, a transgender male to female, was introduced by Carole
Benowitz, the Florida statewide coordinator for PFLAG. Sky spoke movingly about
her life in foster homes and the rapes and violence that she suffered in
Pentecostal homes which led to her attempting suicide.



The challenge facing gay activists and progressive clergymen, both gay and
straight, was sketched out by the Reverend Hal McSwain, of the host church,
First Congregational - “Our most daunting task is maintaining the high ground
while maintaining a regard for the integrity of every human being.”



At the conclusion of the “Love Welcomes All” conference a brief peaceful
demonstration was held outside Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church to coincide with
the end of the “Love Won Out” event that was attended by about 50 people.



Editor’s Note: The Independent congratulates all those involved with
mounting the “Love Welcomes All” Conference.