Truth Wins Out Commends Former ‘Ex-Gay’ Leader Randy Thomas For Coming Out As Gay | TWO Care

Truth Wins Out today commended former Exodus International official and “ex-gay” activist Randy Thomas for stepping forward in a blog post to admit that he is, and always has been, a gay man. Thomas’s post, entitled “A Peaceful Disclosure,” explains that the years since the downfall of Exodus International, as well as the tragic suicide of a beloved friend who “struggled with his faith and sexuality,” have forced him to authentically come to terms with who he is. Thomas was one of the public faces of Exodus International, once the largest network of “ex-gay” groups in the world, for many years. Exodus was formally dissolved in 2003. [Note: I believe they meant to say 2013, not 2003.]_

As TWO points out, here is the crux of he matter behind the "ex-gay" movement and why it is still hanging on,,,money.

Indeed, the only public “ex-gays” left seem to be those who are currently making money promulgating the “ex-gay” lifestyle, people like Christopher Doyle and the “ex-gay” Mormon leaders featured in TLC’s recently aired “My Husband’s Not Gay.”

Truth Wins Out Commends Former ‘Ex-Gay’ Leader Randy Thomas For Coming Out As Gay | TWO Care

To Straight and Back - POLITICO Magazine

Although I was exposed to the teachings and preachings of the Paulk's, I guess I was one of the lucky ones. Even at a younger age I knew "society" would have issues with who I was, but I didn't (and still don't) care. I am who I am, I never "internalized [the] homophobia."

It could be that I was battling other "demons" (my mental illness and trying to stay sober) or the fact that Paulk's popularity came after my so-called formative years. I had already left the church and was heading for full blown apostasy, those still in my circle who attempted to use the Paulks as an example where cut off or out of my life. But their influence and the damage they caused was still felt. "You can change" was the oft heard slogan.

I am thankful that I never, as Paulk puts it, had to maintain a "veneer of heterosexuality"
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There was a time in my life when I used to sound a lot like Rick Perry. In fact, for more than ten years I was one of the nation’s leading spokesmen for the “ex-gay” movement. I traveled the country telling audiences that being gay was a preventable condition, and it could be treated if only you followed a simple plan, obeyed God and sought repentance for your sins. “Ladies and gentlemen, homosexuality is not a genetic, inborn condition,” I would say. “It is the result of traceable causes that, once unraveled, can bring about understanding and transformation in the life of one who is motivated and submitted to God.”

Oh, I was a believer: Homosexuality was just WRONG. And I was Exhibit A, a self-declared convert who had managed to overcome my own shameful gay past. I even appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine in 1998, posing alongside my wife as a poster boy for “going straight.” And I was happy to do it: Those stories gave me a national platform to advocate for what is called “gay reparative therapy”—basically, convincing gay people that they were sexually “broken” and could be provided with a way to change. My wife Anne—herself an ex-lesbian—and our three sons were often put forward as evidence of how to accomplish this. Anne and I even wrote a book together preaching the gay-to-straight gospel, Love Won Out: How God's Love Helped 2 People Leave Homosexuality and Find Each Other.

But I was in denial. It wasn’t in fact true, any of it. Worse than being wrong, it was harmful to many people—and caused me years of pain in my own life. Which is why I have this to say to the Rick Perrys of the world: You don’t understand this issue. At all.

To Straight and Back - POLITICO Magazine

Ex-Ex-Gay Pride

Far-right groups including the Family Research Council and the American Family Association pooled $600,000 to place ads promising the effectiveness of reparative therapy in The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. Anne and John Paulk smiled from full-page newspaper spreads.

In front of the crowds and cameras, Paulk was the image of certainty. But backstage, he was faltering. More than that, he knew he was lying.

“It’s funny, for those of us that worked in it, behind closed doors, we knew we hadn't really changed,” he says. “Our situations had changed—we had gotten married, and some of us had children, so our roles had changed. I was a husband and father; that was my identity. And the homosexuality had been tamped down. But you can only push it down for so long, and it would eke its way out every so often.”

When Paulk walked into that gay bar in 2000, someone recognized him and phoned Wayne Besen, a gay rights activist who now runs the nonprofit Truth Wins Out. Besen rushed over and snapped a picture. In the ensuing scandal, Paulk initially claimed he just went in to use the bathroom, and didn’t know it was a gay bar. But really, he was aching just to be in a welcoming environment.

“I went to a gay bar—not looking for sex, which is what people thought—but because I was missing my community. I was looking to sit in a place with people I felt comfortable with, and that was other gay people,” Paulk says. Though he continued to take speaking engagements, by 2003, he was burned out.

“I would be in hotel rooms, and I would be on my face sobbing and crying on the bed,” he says. “I felt like a liar and a hypocrite. Having to go out and give hope to these people. I was in despair knowing that what I was telling them was not entirely honest. I couldn’t do it anymore.”

Even in its earliest days, Exodus’s philosophy—that same-sex attraction meant a person was “broken” and could be “fixed”—was undermined by the reality of its members’ actions. Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper, two of the co-founders, left the movement in 1979 to be in a committed relationship with one another. (Bussee has spent the decades since actively fighting Exodus’s message.) John Evans, one of the founders of Love in Action (LIA), an early ex-gay ministry that helped establish Exodus in 1974, left LIA after a friend committed suicide over his distress at being unable to change his sexual orientation. "They're destroying people's lives,” Evans told The Wall Street Journal in 1993. “They're living in a fantasy world.” (LIA has since changed its name to Restoration Path.)

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First came the photo of Paulk in the gay bar. Then in 2003, Michael Johnson, founder of “National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day,” was revealed to have infected men he’d met on the Internet with HIV through unprotected sex. John Smid, who joined LIA in 1986 and eventually became its executive director, left the organization in 2008. Three years later, Smid wrote on his blog that he "never met a man who experienced a change from homosexual to heterosexual," and that reorientation is impossible, because being gay is intrinsic.

Then it crumbled further. In 2012, psychologist Robert Spitzer—one of the leaders of the successful push in the 1970s for the American Psychiatric Association to declassify homosexuality as a disease—retracted a controversial study, published in 2003, often cited by the ex-gay community that had concluded some “highly motivated” individuals could change their sexual orientation. Spitzer wrote an apology to LGBT people who “wasted time and energy” on reparative therapy.

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Lastly, there’s the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), founded in 1992 by psychologist Joseph Nicolosi. NARTH considers itself the foremost secular proponent of conversion therapy; it counts hundreds of well-credentialed mental health professionals among its ranks and has issued a number of white papers on the subject. It too, however, has suffered in the public eye in recent years: In 2007, NARTH therapist Chris Austin was convicted of sexually assaulting a client, and sentenced to 10 years in prison; in 2010, NARTH board member George Rekers was found to have employed a male prostitute as a companion for a two-week European vacation; and in 2012 the Internal Revenue Service revoked NARTH’s nonprofit status for not properly filing its paperwork.

Paulk left Exodus in 2003. He cautions against “speaking for everybody,” but says in his more than two decades of watching people undergo ex-gay therapy, the “large majority” of people he met “did not change one iota.” Paulk remained silent for a decade, until he issued a formal apology last year. "I know that countless people were harmed by things I said and did in the past, " Paulk wrote in a statement. "I am truly, truly sorry for the pain I have caused.”


Ex-Ex-Gay Pride

Former ‘Ex-Gay’ Superstar John Paulk Finally Renounces His ‘Ex-Gay’ Past | Truth Wins Out

Not quite sure whether to think of this as a victory or not.  I have seen and experienced the damage that individuals like the Paulks have caused.  Exodus International and Focus on the Family are insidious organizations that latched on to their story and milked it for all it was worth.  But change can occur and as the article states hopefully this is the first step to authenticity,,,

In a piece in PQ Monthly, Paulk, who has perhaps done more to hurt LGBT families than any other single person in the “ex-gay” industry, states for the record that he no longer endorses efforts to change people’s sexuality:

"Until recently, I have struggled all my life in feeling unloved and unaccepted,” Paulk said. “I have been on a journey during the last few years in trying to understand God, myself, and how I can best relate to others. During this journey I have made many mistakes and I have hurt many people including people who are close to me. I have also found a large number of people who accept me for who I am regardless of my past, any labels, or what I do.”

Paulk continued, “I no longer support the ex-gay movement or efforts to attempt to change individuals — especially teens who already feel insecure and alienated. I feel great sorrow over the pain that has been caused when my words were misconstrued. I have worked at giving generously to the gay community in Portland where I work and live. I am working hard to be authentic and genuine in all of my relationships.”

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Anne Paulk continues to propagate a false narrative of her own “ex-gay” life in order to stay in the spotlight and make money off of suffering LGBT people and their families.

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Focus On The Family and others on the Religious Right have had ample opportunity to remove the Paulks from their literature and to stop using them as poster children for the lie that “ex-gay” programs work. While John expressed in the recent investigation that he no longer wanted to be associated with his “ex-gay” past, he was unwilling to publicly correct the record, and his estranged wife has continued to peddle their false story to any “ex-gay” charlatans who will listen.

In light of  John Paulk’s announcement, Truth Wins Out also calls upon Anne Paulk and the rest of the Religious Right to immediately cease using the Paulks’ story to sell harmful “ex-gay” therapy to vulnerable people. “Anne Paulk and her Religious Right cohort must immediately cease lying to people about the false ‘ex-gay Paulk fairy-tale,’” said Truth Wins Out Associate Director Evan Hurst. “Indeed, both Paulks should become poster children for the very real nightmare that has been the ‘ex-gay’ experience for so many LGBT people.”

Former ‘Ex-Gay’ Superstar John Paulk Finally Renounces His ‘Ex-Gay’ Past | Truth Wins Out