One Ex-Lesbian's Plea to Pastors Across America — Charisma News

So the ex-gay community has another new face, Linda Italiano, who claims a meeting with a pastor changed her sexuality after 30 years as an out gay woman.  What is not mentioned in her Charisma magazine piece, one of the main purveyors of this crap, is that this individual comes from a background of self loathing and the need for acceptance.

It wasn’t always like this. I didn’t always enjoy a life full of quality friends, days spent productively, and a real understanding of why I am on this earth. No, just a few short years ago I stayed mostly in the house and isolated myself. I was afraid to live and afraid to die. Allow me to back up and fill you in as to what led to this amazing transformation in my life.
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Thankfully, I was wrong about all of this. I requested a meeting with the pastor where I told her everything and I was met with love and respect. I was also shown exactly what the Bible says about homosexuality and it was made clear to me that it was unacceptable and wrong. [I would love to know exactly what the pastor showed her about homosex, since it is not in the Bible.]* I came away from that meeting still feeling welcome and accepted in the church, but understanding that homosexuality is a sin like any other sin. I understood that the Word of God is more important than anything else, and He is the answer to all of my problems. It did not take very long before I was completely delivered from the homosexual lifestyle and I totally renounced it. God did for me what I had been unwilling or unable to do for myself.  

Self-reported alcoholism, or as I like to call it - self-medication,

In 1980, the drinking age was eighteen, much to my detriment. It had become increasingly difficult for me to spend time at home because my mother was taking out all of her unhappiness and hurt on me. I had become her target for all that was lost in our family. I began to spend much of my time in bars. I drank to excess from the start and I quickly became an alcoholic. I also met a woman who introduced me to lesbianism. I chose this lifestyle for thirty years or so until I became a Christian in 2014.  [Notice the seduction by another women, ie. lack of personal responsibility.]

Drinking for me was like a job. I lived in fear of withdrawal and tried unsuccessfully to walk that line between maintenance drinking and blackout drinking. Blackout always won. This lasted until the age of thirty-three when I finally stopped drinking.

All wrapped up in a history of a traumatic, dysfunctional family life.

In 1980, a month before I turned eighteen, my older brother was killed in a car accident. This was the event that changed everything for me. I went from a stable person with goals and dreams to an angry, hopeless, directionless person. My family started growing apart immediately after the accident as we each dealt with the loss separately. This began many years of victim mentality thinking, which hindered me in a big way as it colored all of my decisions going forward.

If the formula sounds familiar it should. It is the same story used by recent right-wing, anti-gay poster children Linda Wall and Katy Faust.

• dysfunctional family life due to traumatic event
• development of self-loathing:  lack of self-worth, a reliance on "others" for perception of self or acceptance
• self-medication:  drugs or alcohol
• seduction by another:  lack of personal responsiblity
• a "god" fixes everything, at the flip-of-a-switch "I'm" healed

Not that it would have mattered much to the readership of Charisma, but her full story needs to be examined.  Italiano is in need of a therapist, not a minister.  As I said in regards to Katy Faust, "Having the personal, private belief that same-sex relationships are not Biblical may not be hateful per se (wrong IMO); it is her belief.  BUT, traipsing around the world spitting rhetoric that is not even your own,,, is vile; it is hurtful. Being loud about it, so that the whole world can hear you, is being hateful."

One Ex-Lesbian's Plea to Pastors Across America — Charisma News


*Just like with Linda Wall I would like to ask Italiano if she and her pastor delved into the complexities of the following:

• 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 (arsenokoitai and malakoi)
• Genesis 1:26-28; 2:18-25, Matthew 19:3-12, Romans 1:26-27 (male/female, sexual/gender complementarity)
• Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 (toevah)
• The sins of Sodom and Gibeah (Genesis 19/Judges 19)
• Also have you studied the socio-cultural norms of cultic temple prostitution (OT-Ashteroth /NT-Cybele)

You see, even after 30 years of "study", I still don't think I have all the answers.

ADDENDUM::In a previous posting concerning Katy Faust

As I was getting ready to publish the preceding article concerning Faust, I pondered a bit, I've heard this story before.  Although I couldn't find the correct video that my mind was wandering back to, I was reminded of Faust's  "open letter" to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.  It was concerning the, then upcoming, arguments in the Obergefell v Hodges case before SCOTUS.

Although I have many concerns with Faust's position, there are two points I find rather disturbing.  Although I may not be as scathing as David Cary Hart over at The Slowly Boiled Frog,

I hate to pile on but the anti-gay rhetoric of National Organization for Marriage (and Witherspoon Institute) spouted by someone who was raised by gay parents is still the anti-gay rhetoric of National Organization for Marriage. It is also preposterous. Simply stated a child being raised by a gay couple is better off if that couple is married.

Faust sounds as if she should be protesting divorce rather than gay marriage.  It seems like she is more upset that her birth mom and dad secured a divorce. 

What these complainers have in common is that these are children of divorce (we don't seem to be hearing from adopted kids). It is the divorce (and the attendant religious opprobrium) that makes people like Ms. Faust angry and irrational. I suspect that, according to Faust's “logic,” it is the acceptability of (forbidden) homosexual unions that created the divorce in the first place. The reality is probably quite different. If she lacked a relationship with her father it wasn't because she was being raised by two lesbian. Rather it was because her father chose to be absent from her life.

It is also a point that Jeremy Hooper alludes to in his criticism as well, 

Her parents divorce was painful on her. That's not a surprise. It often is on children. Katy herself cites the divorce as the key issue here.  "[T]he most traumatic event in my thirty-eight years of life," she says,,,.  Of course Katy's story is a personal one that she is projecting onto every family. And as I already said, she is taking the pain of divorce, which she admits is the root issue for her, and projecting that onto civil marriage policy for gays and lesbians (who may or may not even become parents). Because that's what commentators like Katy often do.

Which brings us to my second point, as a child of adoptive - hetero parent (evangelicals to boot) - I think it's bizarre that she thinks that it is biology that makes parents great.  By her definition, divorce and adoption are not only bad choices, but kind of an abomination. It seems that she thinks that if people just try really hard, they can become the "perfect" parents that she desires.  As Hooper points out,

But here's what really gets me. In truth, Katy's attack lines could just as easily apply to opposite-sex couples who parent the very same way as their same-sex counterparts. For instance, she writes:

When two adults who cannot procreate want to raise children together, where do those babies come from? Each child is conceived by a mother and a father to whom that child has a natural right. When a child is placed in a same-sex-headed household, she will miss out on at least one critical parental relationship and a vital dual-gender influence. The nature of the adults’ union guarantees this. Whether by adoption, divorce, or third-party reproduction, the adults in this scenario satisfy their heart’s desires, while the child bears the most significant cost: missing out on one or more of her biological parents.

Making policy that intentionally deprives children of their fundamental rights is something that we should not endorse, incentivize, or promote.
FULL: Dear Justice Kennedy: An Open Letter from the Child of a Loving Gay Parent [Public Discourse]

"Two adults who cannot procreate" is not a stand-in for "same-sex couple." Many opposite-sex couples cannot have biological children on their own, and many of them ultimately choose adoption. Adoptive parents, be they gay or straight, are not biologically connected to their children. There is no logically consistent way that Katy Faust can use a line about adopted kids "missing out on one or more of her biological parents" and confine that line only to the kids of same-sex parents. There are millions of kids of straight parents who fall into that very same category!

I'm sorry Katy, but I find that an odious thought.  You are basically endorsing the ridicule I faced growing up as an adopted child.  That I was somehow defective and that my parents, in doing their Christian duty, took pity on me.  Granted my folks and I had our issues, some even carried over into adulthood, but in the end my parents love me.  They may not understand me, but I am quite secure in our relationship.

Even now, as I recover from a stoke at 51 years of age, I call my dad weekly to let him know how I am doing. (Sadly my mom passed last November at 94).  As odd as it feels asking my dad about what to expect with my recovery, I value his input (and not just on health matters as I seek his advice concerning financials, investing and other mundane stuff of life). 

Though not connected "biologically" there is something even stronger that binds us together - love.  As Hart notes quite harshly, "I suspect that, according to Faust's “logic,” it is the acceptability of (forbidden) homosexual unions that created the divorce in the first place.  The reality is probably quite different. If she lacked a relationship with her father it wasn't because she was being raised by two lesbian. Rather it was because her father chose to be absent from her life." Or she encouraged that behavior by distancing herself from him - speaking from experience.

Having the personal, private belief that same-sex relationships are not Biblical may not be hateful per se (wrong IMO); it is her belief.  BUT, traipsing around the world spitting rhetoric that is not even your own (National Organization for Marriage and Witherspoon Institute) is vile; it is hurtful. Being loud about it, so that the whole world can hear you, is being hateful. 

Like those before her - Anne Paulk and Linda Wall - Faust needs to examine her own life before condemning others.

I am truly sorry that Katy Faust longs for a different childhood than the one that was in her cards. I am genuinely happy that she says she is happy with her husband and children. But what Katy is doing right now is an act of bad faith on behalf of actual human children who will grow up finding rhetoric like hers and wondering why they are being told to feel bad and/or broken because of their loving family structure. Rather than limit their political assaults to just adults and fellow commentators who signed up for this fight, these adult activists are now indirectly (or even directly) targeting our children as they come up in this world. It is an amoral thought crime against parents like me and children like mine.

SheWired - Antigay Daughter of Lesbian Couple Katy Faust Now Fights Marriage Equality in Australia

In an interview with ABC Lateline in Australia she describes her mother (who divorced her father and started living with her partner when Faust was in 5th grade) as “the greatest mother anyone could ask for” and her mother’s partner as a “dear friend.” She continues, “They are wonderful grandparents to my kids.”

The anti-equality activist tells Lateline that her drive comes from her belief that “children have a right to be in relationship with their mother and father whenever possible, and as a society, we shouldn't normalize a family structure that requires children to lose one or both parents to be in that household.”

Faust further explains that her beliefs about same-sex marriage began to take hold in high school when she converted to Christianity.* She has since dedicated a lot of time and resources, it would seem, to making sure people like her parents can’t get married and yet she insists that this isn’t a hateful act.

SheWired - Antigay Daughter of Lesbian Couple Katy Faust Now Fights Marriage Equality in Australia