‘Ex-gay’ group shuts down as leader says sorry

By jennifer-wadsworth@blog.timesunion.com (Jennifer Wadsworth)

Alan Chambers once tried to “pray the gay away.” (Photo via Exodus International)

A Christian group once committed to reforming people from their homosexuality has recanted that aim.

For 27 years, Exodus International has tried to turn thousands of gay men and women straight through a combination of prayer and intensive therapy. Late in the day Wednesday, the group’s leader, Alan Chambers, posted an extensive apology for the trauma he caused by promoting the misguided cause.

“There were several years that I conveniently omitted my ongoing same-sex attractions,” Chambers, who is married to a woman, admits online. “I was afraid to share them as readily and easily as I do today. They brought me tremendous shame and I  hid them in the hopes they would go away. Looking back, it seems so odd that I thought I could do something to make them stop.”

Today, he says, he accepts those feelings as an intrinsic part of himself.

Chambers’ journey to apology began three years ago, when journalist Lisa Ling reported on Exodus International’s controversial practice, one condemned by the medical establishment as a danger to mental health and a person’s well-being.

The Our America episode, “Can You Pray the Gay Away?,” aired on Oprah’s OWN network in 2011. But the experience stuck with Chambers, sparking a self-discovery that led to him reaching out to Ling for help in orchestrating an apology to some of the victims of ex-gay therapy.

“I asked if she would, once again, help us add to the unfolding story by covering my apology to the people who have been hurt by Exodus International,” Chambers writes. “Our ministry has been public and therefore any acknowledgement of wrong must also be public.  I haven’t always been the leader of Exodus, but I am now and someone must finally own and acknowledge the hurt of others. I do so anxiously, but willingly.”

Chambers’ change of heart leaves him uncomfortably in the middle. The confession and plea for forgiveness alienates him from much of his Protestant denomination, while his past alienates him from the LGBT community of which he now claims to be a part.

Read the entire apology here. Or, watch Chambers apologize to ex-gay survivors in a tearful follow-up episode, “God and Gays.”

© 2013 Hearst Communications Inc.

http://blog.sfgate.com/hottopics/2013/06/20/ex-gay-group-shuts-down-as-leader-says-sorry/