Here’s this week’s column from The Carolinian (UNCG). Click here for past posts on Ignite Student Outreach.

Close encounters of the ex-gay kind
Ex-gay group targets youth & student ministry leaders

Matt Hill Comer, Don’t Ask (I’m Telling)
Posted: 12/5/06

Not long ago, I opened my email inbox to find a promotional invitation from a group called Ignite Student Outreach. The promotional invite was advertising a series of summer camps, entitled “Close Encounters,” taking place in four states across the South, including North Carolina. Looking at the invite, my eyes almost immediately focused on the list of the camps’ guest speakers.

Ignite Student Outreach will be welcoming Alan Chambers of Exodus International and Scott Davis of Exodus Youth to speak to teens and Christian youth leaders. Exodus International is the “ex-gay” group which promotes the message of “Freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.” Exodus Youth is its youth-outreach program.

Both groups believe that “reorientation of same-sex attraction is possible” and that reconciliation with Christ will enable “growth toward Godly heterosexuality.” The groups teach that homosexuality is “outside of God’s will” and describes the “homosexual lifestyle” as sinful, destructive, distorted and disordered.

In the past, ministries connected to Exodus and Exodus Youth have been known to condone and allow forcing gay adolescents into weeks-long residential or day-camp programs (some of which have been investigated and sued for child and sexual abuse). Even the Reverend Jerry Falwell, at Exodus’ 2005 conference in Asheville, N.C., said that it is perfectly acceptable to force gay adolescents into “reparative therapies” for their sexual orientation.

Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever that “reorientation” and “reparative therapy” is effective. Every leading medical, social and psychological association in America has said that conversion and reparative therapies offer no evidence of efficacy, are based on no valid scientific theory and are psychologically dangerous and harmful to patients, especially adolescents.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, the potential risks of reparative therapies include “depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient.”

More than the medical and psychological evidence weighing so heavily against them, the ex-gay movement also has a history full of scandal, lies and failure. From at least the early 1970s one can find a litany of ex-gay problems with sexual abuse, exploitation and “ex-ex-gays.” In the early years of Exodus, members kept sleeping with each other when they were, supposedly, living an ex-gay life. Even the two original founders of Exodus fell in love with each other, divorced their wives and started living together.

The facts against ex-gay therapies are so clear, yet groups like Ignite continue to associate themselves with ex-gay organizations. According to Ignite’s website, Exodus Youth was the group’s only affiliate organization. However, this changed after a few blog posts by me (and later by Wayne Besen, a nationally known and respected author) when Ignite quickly revamped its website. They changed the name of their “Affiliates” page to “ISO Friends” and added other groups to their affiliate listings.

The promotional invite and the group’s website make it clear that the summer camp series is designed, in part, to provide training and development for Christian youth and student ministry leaders. Both Chambers and Davis’ speakers’ profiles give credence to the exact purpose of their visit, their speaking and training and the camp programming itself.

Chambers’ profile states that he “offers unique insight into how homosexuality personally affects individuals and the broader culture” and that he will “share advice and training with youth workers at camp to teach them how to address this epidemic issue.”

Davis’ profile states that his goal is to “encourage the evangelical church to reach out to youth grappling with their sexual identity with God’s radical grace and unswerving truth” and that he “educates and trains college and youth leaders on this issue.” It also notes that Davis travels extensively for “nationwide training seminars that equip community leaders with a powerful, redemptive response to the growing crisis of pro-gay initiatives in America’s schools.”

I can only hope that there won’t be any gay youth at the camp. I can only pray for the gay youth back home whose church leaders will be trained in the ways of ex-gay deception and psychological abuse.

After first going public with Ignite’s promotional invite, I quickly found out that I wasn’t the only gay North Carolinian to receive it. Pam Spaulding, a nationally respected lesbian blogger who lives in Durham, also received the invite. Ignite’s targeted email campaign toward gay youth and activists is telling of an active attempt to recruit gay youth in the South.

Although I attempted contacting Ignite Student Outreach director Chris Leader, on six different occasions, in order to give him and the group a chance to comment and correct the many claims about them, Mr. Leader either refused to give any comment or ignored it. His cold shoulder tells me only one thing – there is no need for them to comment or issue a rebuttal, for all the claims about their group and camps are true.

Ignite Student Outreach is an ex-gay ministry affiliated with Exodus International and Exodus Youth. Its purpose is to introduce and train teens and Christian youth leaders with the harmful, fake and debunked dogma of the ex-gay movement. Ignite Student Outreach is nothing more than a deceptive trap set by the ex-gay movement bent on accomplishing one thing: the promotion of deception, psychological abuse and debunked theories used to force vulnerable gay adolescents already damaged by a world of hate, prejudice and bigotry into submitting to a sad, shameful, warped and twisted view of life and God.

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