Remember when you got fired? We do! (Multiple times, for some of us) Check out our storytime roundtable: YOU’RE FIRED! I QUIT! Then, take a trip to Greece with special guest Erin, who went there to see the ancient sites and sounds and then this dude fell in love with her.
This week’s Tuesday Televisionary is one of epic proportions! So many teevee shows, so little time — True Blood! 10 Things I Hate About You! Gimme Sugar! So You Think You Can Dance! Weeds! Intervention! Ruby Rose’s new Australian show! And more.
↓ BUT I’M A CUTE MEDICAL STUDENT: “A young gay medical student named Bryce Faulkner had made plans to move from Arkansas to be closer to his boyfriend, Travis Swanson, who lives in Wisconsin. But now Bryce has vanished–into a 14-month program meant to “convert” him to heterosexuality, it is thought.”
In addition to their page at the Ergonomical Ministries, Bryce’s friends & supporters made a facebook page to rescue Bryce Faulkner and to raise awareness about the ex-gay organizations that “perpetuate the notion that being gay is evil, spiritually void and a choice on conscience.”
Recently, Bryce’s parents made contact with his friends to threaten litigation and to tell them that Bryce came to them “begging for treatment.”
Let’s raise some awareness, shall we? Bryce is being “helped” by Exodus International, the largest organization of its kind for men & women “struggling” with SSA, or “Same Sex Attraction,” who desire freedom through Jesus Christ. Their youth site encourages young people to get out the truth about the non-existence of “the gay gene.”
Any morbidly curious homo will find the Exodus International website to be a Pandora’s Box of offensive “information” and gateways into the jaw-droppingly shocking universe of the ex-gay netherworlds. I just lost two of the best most beautiful hours of my life to this website. I knew about the ex-gay movement before, and very much want to attend one of their events ASAP to expose these delusional asshats, but hadn’t found this website until now.
Firstly: Much like the Gay Movement/Agenda, the ex-gay movement seems so male dominated! Where were the hot chicks at this International Conference we just missed? Where’s Anne Heche?
Well, the Exodus International conference features a Women’s Oasis breakfast every day (our favorite meal to eat out!) and almost everyone gets a roommate! It’s like an Olivia Cruise, but with less fun and more Jesus and less “Closer to Fine” and more shame/self-loathing.
Secondly: Here’s a documentary someone made about the incredible experiences had at these Conferences. Surprisingly the documentary doesn’t discuss the plethora of opportunities for getting laid at an event attended by so many people with Same Sex Attraction Disorder.
I encourage you watch this video or at least make it to 1:30, where a “phD” describes how parents can prevent their children from becoming homosexuals (it’s preventative, people!) in a voiceover. Here’s a screenshot:
Okay, regardless of if you do or do not spend way too long digging through the Exodus International craptacular webiverse, including all the testimonials of reformed lesbians (it feels like reading the other side of the emails we get from young brokenheared girls around the world), you will really wanna save Bryce Faulkner.
This story is making its way across the news media very quickly and I implore you to keep it going! If anyone in the Florida area is ready to storm the barricades, please do.
↔ Mormons Manage to Set Back Anti-Gay Marriage Effort by acting ridiculous and saying strange things. (@queerty)
↓ Boy accused of killing gay classmate bragged he had guns at home, police say: Defense attorney Scott Wippert sought to show that King provoked violence by taunting McInerney with his effeminate dress and romantic pursuit. (@la times)
↓ “Even GLAAD Insiders are tired of its press releases condemning this and applauding that”: GLAAD is either clapping its hands or furrowing its brow. This is not activism. This is couch potato finger-waving. (@queerty)
↓ Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is hoping to add three different amendments to the Matthew Shepard Act in an attempt to kill support for the expansion of hate crimes laws to protect the LGBT community. (@pamshouseblend)
↑ Church ponders next step on gay vows: The bishops indicated that they are looking for ways to allow priests to at least celebrate, if not perform, gay nuptials in church. (@boston globe)
BRITNEY is this close to being left alone! Her conservatorship ends when her tour ends in November, at which point we can assume she will regain her freedom of speech, freedom of agency and ideally freedom from her arranged marriage to her manager. Also Brit don’t stop taking your Seroquel pleasethanxx! (@tmz)
ROCK BAND: In somewhat related other news, “got a song you’re dying to play in Rock band? Vote Now!”
GLAMBERT: Adam Lambert has some advice for the Westboro Baptist Church‘s protest of his inclusion in the American Idol tour; “I kind of think there’s probably a better way of spending their energy. Probably doing some good would be better, promoting positive causes, helping the homeless …”
DRINKITY DRINK: A new Pilot Alcoholism treatment program targets gay men because, “it’s too socially debilitating to cut a gay man off from the bar and club scene.” Sidenote: lesbians can’t seem to get off their asses to the bars & clubs but seem to do just fine drinking at home. (@nymag)
WATCH: Will Arnett reads from one of our most favorite books of all time, Are You There God it’s Me Margaret.
LESS TO LOVE ABOUT FOX, HOWEVS: More to Love: “The Bachelor is about beautiful people living a beautiful life and hopefully finding a beautiful love,” he explains. “This show is like a sporting event. You’re rooting for someone to find love.” So… Not beautiful? Just sweaty, and messy, like football or wrestling? (@jezebel)
LIZ FELDMAN IS THE FUNNIEST THING: The very last episode of ‘This Just Out with Liz Feldman‘ is now on (@afterellen).
LOHAN: “If I was a parent who sat my little adopted daughter Ling Ling down to watch Lindsay Lohan sink to ABC Family movie of the week last night I’d be pissed. The bitch smoked through the entire movie while getting advice from Cheryl Hines.” (@the insider)
WOMYN: Jimmy Carter leaves church over treatment of women. (@politico)
WTF SPRITE?: A young white girl gives a large black man a blow job, then declares she could really use a Sprite. It’s not porn … it’s Sprite’s new ad campaign! (Personally I haven’t had any Sprite since my first drinking experience in 1995, when I mixed gin with Mountain Dew and henceforth all lemon-lime flavored beverages make me barf now) (@bitchblogs)
GIGANTIC SURPRISE: During The Bush Years, rates of teen pregnancy and STDs went up! (@cdc)
Auto-Straddler of the Day:
from Laneia:
Feminist T-shirts on Etsy! KMStitchery is screen-printing legendary feminists onto t-shirts and I am in soso much love. So much love!
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from Crystal: My pick is an amazing crowdsourced map showing where iconic album cover photographs were taken. Did you know that the photography for The Clash’s Combat Rock record was shot on an abandoned railway track in Bangkok? It’s fun if you like music trivia. (via Something Changed)
Enjoyed Kate Moennig’s cameo on Liz Feldman but boo on no last UHH appearance ! :(
just making sure everyone on here has watched the film, “But I’m a Cheerleader.” I would make that assumption, but I have found that makes an ass out of u and me.
That’s one of the movies that made me start realizing that I might be *gasp* a homosexual! ;D
That movie is the reason I went on a mission to watch as many Clea Duvall movies/tv episodes as possible.
In the movie theater before But I’m a Cheerleader, which I think was 2000 or ’99? so right after high school or something … my friend from middle school and I had a conversation about how we’d both hooked up with girls before and she told me she had a girlfriend. And then I saw the movie. life-changing evening.
Duuuuuude that ex-gay shit is so fucked up! excuse my french.
that picture tells me bryce is gonna be a tough sell. i wouldn’t worry too much.
and church, REALLY. it’s 2009. you’re really making yourselves look like idiots. paternalistic nuclear families as the fundamental building blocks of the church is SO crusades.
Oh, gosh. My best friend’s girlfriend just happened to broke up with her via e-mail last week after going on a church ‘retreat’.
Aside from helping her compile every resource available on religion and homosexuality, I’ve also been banging my head against my desk and muttering, “What the fuck, America”.
Did your best friend’s girlfriend write me an email? Srsly reading those testimonials I found myself thinking every time of the girls they mentioned leaving for Jesus, like what happened to THEM? I hope they’re okay.
The Exodus stuff is indeed fucked up.
However, I can make myself feel a bit better while reading the testimonials if I just remind myself that sexuality is on a continuum, and I believe most people are at least a tiny bit bisexual, in one direction or another. Therefore if a person is mostly gay but has a small capacity for opposite-sex attraction… and their love for Jeebus makes them really really really want to embrace the love of a good Christian man… well then maybe groups like Exodus and all the helpful Christian counselors are just able to help them access that tiny piece of straight potential, and live from that instead of the rest. I mean, I think it’s unfortunate — and I don’t personally believe that any god would have such a silly restricted definition of how sexuality should be expressed — but hey, who am I to tell them not to love and listen to the calling of their Christian hearts?
Would love to hear the thoughts of others…
I think that’s a nice way to look at it in theory but unfortunately Exodus isn’t in the business of helping bisexuals make the “right choice” — I think most bisexuals raised in that kind of community would most likely make that choice on their own … as in, if there was any hope that they could be with someone of the opposite sex, they’d probs do it before it got to the point that they’d go to Exodus.
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Exodus blames same-sex attraction on poor parenting and other life circumstances and considers it an evil thing that must be overcome, not one choice of two which they’ll help you make.
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I agree sexuality is far more fluid than we think, but I don’t think that these kinds of places look at it that way. They look at it more like — well, all humans have a little bit of violence inside of them, but we must learn to not punch people in the face. But for Exodus, punching people in the face = acting on “same sex-attraction.”
I love the one and only Jimmy Carter.
I hate the implication that if you’re gay you’re godless. I really really do.
Uhg. This Exodus crap makes me wanna kick someone in the shin! My favorite testimonial is: “If you happen to struggle with lesbianism, please know that you are not alone in dealing with the awkward, difficult, and often distressing realities of being female…feminine.” I’m trying to understand this… is she saying because we’re gay we’re not female/feminine? Stupid people!
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I don’t want to hate on anyone’s religion, sorry if it appears that way. (I get a lot of shit for being Quaker so I know how it feels.) I’m just saying that I like girls and you can’t stop me G-d! Time to watch But I’m a Cheerleader…
“When a girl I’d met at work initiated a sexual relationship one night, I was caught off-guard and went along with it. Immediately I knew how Eve must have felt. Condemned!”
“why can’t I have the same love as everyone else…I broke down crying.”
Season 1 Jenny, meet Season 6 Max.
If people want to read up on the logic behind ex-gay movements including Exodus International, I highly recommend Straight to Jesus by Tanya Erzen.
Ugh. Dude. gaychristian.net is about the only logical feeling I can express right now.
*shivers* Wow. That site is something else. I did notice a trend though–most of the women in the testimonials had been raised strongly Christian & had some kind of trauma, be it rape, abuse, abandonment, etc. For some of them, there may indeed have been a gravitation towards lesbianism because of fear of men not love of women. Of course, those would be the ones touted as the “successes,” since they’d be the least likely to “slip back.”
Also, there was one darkly amusing aspect of the site: they felt they had to define the words “lesbian” and “gay.” If you’re there and you DON’T already know what those words mean…well, I don’t want to know where you grew up.
But, overall, I feel like I need to go take a bath after visiting the testimonials. A lot of those women were raised in the same Christian tradition I was (and which I rejected); I just hope no one tries to strong-arm me into one of those groups…
Does anyone know why the Bryce Faulkner story disappeared so quickly? I can’t find anything on it from after August ’09 or so, and the site was taken down.