My Exodus from the Fellowship

In panic and desperation, I turned to the Portland Fellowship of Exodus International in my endeavors to finally rid myself of that gay “boogieman” that I ran from all my life.  Once again I wanted to be straight and act straight and get my life in line to the now recognized propaganda that I was steeped in since birth.

I went to the Portland Fellowship and I talked to a leather faced former Leatherman who was the leader of that program at the time.  He had me fill out a long questionnaire concerning my past.  It had a plethora of personal questions, to which very few had any thing to do with being gay.

These questions concerned themselves with my religious history, my religious experience in “unauthorized” “cults,” my relationship with my parents and siblings, and whether I liked sports.  Of course, mother was not forgotten.  Was she domineering?  Being a former Mormon, that was a red flag to them.  So was my involvement in the past with a Hare Krsnas.  In the past I had myself baptized many times in diverse Christian churches to hide away.   I could have wrung all the baptismal waters from my hair and fill a car radiator from all the times I had been “dunked.”  Now I recognize that Exodus used the “shotgun approach” in their questionnaire.  They were searching for answers that set off flags to them why the “devil” entered me in the form of a fag. Shoot enough pellets, and some of them are bound to hit the target. It kind of reminds me nowadays of the “Personality Tests” that the Scientologists use to harvest “Fresh Meat.”

Anyway, I attended their little classes once a week, with the prayers and support of the church I belonged to.  They gave me an armload of books such as the study book: “Pursuing Sexual Wholeness,” “The Broken Image,” and “A Christian’s View of Homosexuality.”  I felt like the “Queer in the Kitchen” at home in front of my “straight” family as I studied that literature.  In the books I learned all the outdated 19^th Century theories and the “modern” theories about the social and cultural reasons for homosexuality.  The top conservative fundamental “scholars” Elizabeth Moberly, Joseph Nicolosi, Lon Mabon, Scott Lively, Richard Cohen and Jerry Falwell’s basic message to me was that my homosexuality was ALL DAD’S FAULT!  For if my father had taught me the “proper” “Manly” ways of being a “real man among men,” then I would not have this “cannibal compulsion” to “eat” the qualities that other men had and I didn’t think or realize that I had.  Hmmmm, “cannibal compulsion” to “eat” other men! :)  I like that

Each week I attended their meetings.  Quite a splattering of human flotsam and jetsam there, all made that way by their religious guilt.  Gentle-Giant Triple-Queens, twinks, “former” hustlers, grand”mothers” and prissy bible toters.  As we listened to our group (grope) leader drone on and on about it all being Adam and Eve’s fault and Dad’s fault, I spent hours and hours examining a chromed clasp buckle attached to a cushion anchor on that old couch.  As others made passes at each other and cruised each other surreptitiously, I was fantasizing of stealing that buckle to make a belt holster for my Walkman. :)  On Sundays when I went to church with the family, I just inwardly groaned on the farce I was playing.  Inwardly I was telling myself: “Give it up, you idiot!” But I continued to play their game outwardly, hoping for change.

An “ex-gay” “poster boy” befriended me there, a certain Richard Weller.  Even the Willamette Week printed his sob story.  For being an ex-gay, he sure took a shining to me!  He took me out on dinner dates while praising the Lord that there were men like Bob Larson screaming on the Christian radio.  Through Weller, I even met Scott Lively!  PROOOOT!  I spent hours with Richard at the Clackamas County Fair in the Oregon Citizen’s Alliance booth, just embarrassed to death there while Richard played his sob story “former gay” tape over and over on a cheap tape recorder at that fair!  It became obvious to me that Richard had developed an “emotional attachment” to the OCA’s Scott Lively!  Something inside me kept screaming: “Why in the hell are you doing this!?”  Was keeping the wife, kids and middle class morality really worth me selling myself down the river like that?

Week after week at the Fellowship, they droned on and on.  Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve and if Dad showed me manly things in life, I would not have to deal with “homosexual behaviors.”  Since at the time, my father disowned me for being gay, the ex-gay rhetoric only fueled my hatred for my father.  For over six months I observed the men in the Fellowship and I took careful inventory of myself as well.  It was obvious to me that none of the men were changing. They were merely stifling their gayness and need for another man with the need for Jesus to “cure” them.  Rather than to accept and appreciate the love and romance of another man, they prayed for the love and romance of Jesus!  Not a man among them were changing.  Many broke free from that environment by bursting out of their closets.  There were rumors of some even committing suicide.  Yet it went on and on, on and on…”Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve…..!”  To me, the “H” word was becoming less of a problem, but to the others their homosexuality and their religious convictions were becoming more irreconcilable.  The group leader admitted that he still was not “over it,” but Jesus was providing him with a method to cope with it.  Yeah!  Sure!

Some of the hypocrisies I encountered were galling!  In the study book “Pursuing Sexual Wholeness” there was a chapter on “Preparation For Marriage.” (With a woman, of course.)  In that chapter’s  advice for dating women, it recommended a “ex-gay” not to resist the sexual advances of a woman! HUH?  The Fundamentalists will burst a blood vessel over an unmarried man and woman fornicating, yet Exodus was encouraging it between an “ex-gay” and a woman!  That proved to me that they were even willing to bend their own rules to “cure” that “damned queer!”

I grew cynical of their “literal” interpretation of “godswordthebible.”  They only chose Scripture and verses that supported their “Ex-Gay Agenda.”  I soon realized that they had a bigger “agenda” to pull off than what they were accusing the so called “gay agenda” of doing.  I started challenging them on their rhetoric, and I began to bring up little known obscure verses in that Bible that the pastors are too embarrassed about to mention in public.  Once there I got so disgusted with all their Bible manipulation that I quoted to them a Jim Morrison line: “Words got me the wound, and words will get me well, if you believe it,” and they all went: “HUH?!”  One evening, the facilitator remarked that perhaps he spoke too much about Adam and Eve’s fall, and I loudly groaned: “IT SHOWS!”  That man went into a tirade in front of me.  He shouted that I needed to be there, but he had enough of my disrespect and I had to shut up!  I then lost my cool.  I got up and I screamed at them that I hated their God!  I stormed out of that house, never to darken their doors again.

For several months afterward, I tried vigorously to be straight and to keep the marriage and family intact.   I sold my beloved antique radio collection.  I was back to muttering to myself:  “I am NOT ‘one of them,’ damn it!”  I was back to torturing the cat.   I was back to staring at the sidewalks, lest I be “tempted” by “sights” that might make me “relapse.”  I was back to kicking the dog!

Now I have come full circle!  It has now been twelve years since that fish and I got divorced.  I have now been in a stable monogamous gay relationship for five years.  My father and I have reconciled, and he loves my partner Edmundo like a son!  Now I love the reflection in the mirror!  Now, when a guy cruises me, I do not hide away in shame, but I relish in it and I pursue it!  Now I am myself and to me being gay is NO BIG DEAL!  Labels are for duds!  My attitudes have changed from the paranoid “No! It can’t be, it’s impossible, I will not let it be possible” to the confident “If you don’t like my lifestyle, then you don’t have to LIVE my lifestyle” to the cocky and brash “If you don’t like my lifestyle, then take your cock out of my ass!”  Nowadays, I consider all organized religion as a bunch of hooey!

So it looks like the Portland Fellowship Ex Gay Ministry “cured” me, after all!

(Ever see the movie: “A Clockwork Orange”)