“Alan Chambers: Change We Can Believe In” by Jamie Dean, World, December 17, 2011.
“NARTH Statement on Sexual Orientation Change”, NARTH.com, January 25, 2012.
“More Unmerited Mercy” by Marvin Olasky, World, February 11, 2012
The Religious Right’s World magazine named Exodus head Alan Chambers its “Daniel of the Year” for 2011, celebrating discordantly that his “homosexual desires changed, [his] same-sex attractions diminished and he stopped indulging [his homosexual] temptation.” In his book, Leaving Homosexuality, he’d warned that same-sex temptations remain and that his testimony is not a “guide to change from gay to straight.” He wrote that, “heterosexuality shouldn’t have been my goal – nor should it be yours.”
Dean notes that Chambers says the “ex-gay” aim is “not to fix people” but she adds an equivocation: “The opposite of homosexuality isn’t heterosexuality. It’s holiness.” She refers to those who “don’t want to live with same-sex attractions” and quotes Chambers’ rhetorical reply: “Why shouldn’t that be out there for people who want it?” But “same-sex attractions” are what he says the “ex-gay” will always live with! Dean grants that, “some prominent leaders of Exodus have returned to homosexuality.” Some? Returned? No. The vast majority left the movement because same-sex attractions never left them. They’ve not “returned to homosexuality”; they’ve remained in homosexuality – whether or not they engage in genital acts.
Dean notes: “The marks of change in Chambers’ life decorate his office: photos of his wife of 13 years” and pictures of their adopted children. World features a big photo of Chambers and wife, captioned: “My wife isn’t my diploma.” Dean reports on the modern Daniel’s workaday life, “treading into the lion’s den of mainstream media [with] his message that homosexuals can change.” Change what?
“Alan Chambers is in denial,” is how Dean began her report. “It’s a charge his critics level against him [and, she says, he] wholeheartedly agrees.” But what she and he mean by “denial” is “self-denial”. Cute – except that, biblically, self-denial is not an enforced asceticism or a mismatched marriage. And “the cross” they note we’re to bear does not require rationalization and obfuscation.
While World readers were digesting “Change We Can Believe In”, Chambers was on a panel at the 2012 Gay Christian Network conference admitting: “The majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9 percent of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation.” So, World: Where’s the exodus? You’re still down there in de’Nile!
Seriously, none at World buys into these change claims. Scenario: World-types send daughter off to Christian college. Daughter tweets she’s dating a nice Christian young man who’s “like, ex-gay”. Would parents be worried? Months later, daughter tweets she’s no longer dating “ex-gay” guy. Now she’s dating a nice Christian young man who’s “like, just a nice guy – not ‘ex-gay’”. Would parents be relieved?
With but face validity, the “ex-gay” lobby’s board of the pretentiously billed National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality issued some fancy footwork of its own. It’s spin on failures is that, “much of the expressed pessimism regarding sexual orientation change is a consequence of individuals intentionally or inadvertently adopting a categorical conceptualization of change.” Translation: “Change doesn’t mean change.” NARTH compares same-sex attraction with alcoholism. Misrepresenting the Kinsey scale and minimizing problems of self-reports, NARTH suggests a refocusing from “religiously mediated outcomes” to non-religious “psychotherapeutic care”. There’s a better rate of “change” over there?
One reason Christians have a problem with homosexuality is that, they think the Bible has a problem with it. But, throughout history, “numerous interpretations [of the Bible] have been proved wrong.” (Moises Silva) Proof-texts once used to support slavery or segregation are all still in the Bible, but they’re not interpreted as they once were.
Our current dispute is over allegedly antigay proof-texts. One word in a list of abusers comparable to Christians suing other Christians in secular courts (in I Corinthians 6) is malakoi, meaning “soft”, here, morally soft. The other word, arsenokoitai, is not found before Paul’s use of it here. It links “male” and “bed”. So, some now say it means “gay”. But, does a lexical link mean a sexual link? Meaning is always determined by common usage, not by components. Are folks 2,000 years from now to conclude that our “wise guys” were men of great wisdom and our “lady killers” murdered women? Clement of Alexandria knew Paul’s use of the word but he never used it in discussing same-sex acts. He used many other terms instead. Theophilus of Antioch and Acts of John place arsenokoitai among economic, not sexual, sinners. The only other allegedly antigay passage from Paul is in Romans 1 where he castigates pagan rites, e.g., orgies of genitally self-mutilating shrine prostitutes that church fathers also decried. For some 400 years, church fathers took Romans 1 as also alluding to men penetrating women anally so as to indulge lust without procreating. Weren’t these early Christian leaders closer to Paul’s culture than we are?
Editor Olasky brags about World’s earlier battle against a “feminist” NIV revision. His prime example of an offending rendering is this: “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked” was changed to “Blessed are those who …”. World’s attack brought down this edition. Now, if Olasky can boast of having raised such a stink over inclusion of women among the blessed who walk uprightly, surely an eyebrow can be raised over harmful anachronistic projection of today’s same-sex marriage back into ancient culture. To his credit, Olasky wonders if he had “humility” in his criticism of 15 years ago. But where’s the humility in World’s current harassment of homosexuals and its cruel and careless puff piece on “change”? Among all the kudos for the “change” story, there’s not a note of dissent.