And since we have started talking religion here, I want to share with you the work of TransEpiscopal. They are a group of “transgender Episcopalians and our significant others, families, friends and allies dedicated to enriching our spiritual lives and to making the Episcopal Church a welcoming and empowering place that all of us truly can call our spiritual home”. The group was responsible for spearheading the passage of several resolutions that recognized and discouraged hate crimes and discrimination against transgender people and also approved resolutions on making the church more transgender-friendly, and recognizing ENDA, which includes non-discrimination of transgender lay employees at the 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church held recently in Anaheim, California.

These two news articles sure made me smile.

Programs to change gays to straights don’t work, report says
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/05/gay.to.straight/index.html

(CNN) — The American Psychological Association concluded Wednesday that there is little evidence that efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation from gay or lesbian to heterosexual are effective.
The report looks at 87 studies conducted between 1960 and 2007.

In addition, the 138-page report — covering 87 peer-reviewed studies — said that such efforts may cause harm.

“Contrary to claims of sexual orientation change advocates and practitioners, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation,” said Judith M. Glassgold, chairwoman of the task force that presented the report at the group’s annual meeting in Toronto, Canada. The Washington-based association represents more than 150,000 members.

“At most, certain studies suggested that some individuals learned how to ignore or not act on their homosexual attractions. Yet, these studies did not indicate for whom this was possible, how long it lasted or its long-term mental health effects. Also, this result was much less likely to be true for people who started out only attracted to people of the same sex.”

In response, the group’s governing Council of Representatives passed a resolution Wednesday urging mental health professionals not to recommend to their clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or any other methods.

The group’s Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation reached its conclusion after its review of 87 studies conducted between 1960 and 2007 and finding “serious methodological problems” in the vast majority of them.

Those few studies that did have “high-quality” evidence “show that enduring change to an individual’s sexual orientation is uncommon,” it said.

In addition, the report cited evidence that efforts to switch a person’s sexual orientation through aversive treatments might cause harm, including loss of sexual feeling, suicidality, depression and anxiety.

Many who tried to change and failed “described their experiences as a significant cause of emotional and spiritual distress and negative self-image,” it said.

The six-member task force was appointed two years ago to address concerns about “efforts to promote the notion that sexual orientation can be changed through psychotherapy or approaches that mischaracterize homosexuality as a mental disorder.”

The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1975.

The task force noted that some people attempt to change their sexual orientation because it conflicts with their religious beliefs, and recommended that their mental health care providers help them “explore possible life paths that address the reality of their sexual orientation, reduce the stigma associated with homosexuality, respect the client’s religious beliefs, and consider possibilities for a religiously and spiritually meaningful and rewarding life.”

“In other words,” said Glassgold, “we recommend that psychologists be completely honest about the likelihood of sexual orientation change, and that they help clients explore their assumptions and goals with respect to both religion and sexuality.”

Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, a network of more than 250 ministries that he said “reach out to men and women and families that are affected by what we call ‘unwanted same-sex attraction’” disagrees.

He offered himself as proof that such efforts can work. “The fact is that there are tens of thousands of men and women just like me who once identified as gay,” Chambers said in a telephone interview. “For me and for these people, the truth is change is possible.”

Chambers said his transformation from gay man began more than 18 years ago, when he attended a support group at the organization he now leads. Chambers, who said he married a woman nearly 12 years ago, has written a book, “Leaving Homosexuality,” which was published last month.

“You can’t refute a personal story,” he said, adding that about a third of those who try to switch their sexual orientation through the group’s ministries wind up doing so.

“We’re not talking a light switch that you turn on and off, we’re talking about very deep and complex issues that, I think, take years to resolve.”

Though all mainstream health and mental health organizations concluded years ago that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, the American Psychological Association formed the task force to work on the report two years ago after noting a resurgence of groups that identified homosexuality as a defect or spiritual or moral failing.

On the way to the office, she thought back about last night. She remembered herself screaming, “More! One more!” Oh, that sensation! Those eleven men were all incredible, all of them handsome hunks. They kept on shooting it in she just could not resist as she held her own body tight. Those men were down with another half more to go. She will cherish that night because it does not come often. Manchester United were nil-two down, and ended up beating Tottenham five-two. That was real sexy football for her. Man Utd! She loves the Barclay’s Premier League lifestyle!

She pumped it hard at work the whole day, because the challenging lifestyle of all salespeople is always cold calling, appointments and trying to close the deal. She drank a lot of tea that day, and have to indulge herself in the dirty washroom lifestyle. She also ate at the mamak, a mostly fattening lifestyle of a lot of Malaysians. After a long tongue-licking day at work, before she left the office her straight friend R called. “Where are you?”. “At the office-lar”, she replied (Note: using “lar” at end of sentences is a Chinese Malaysian oriented lifestyle). “Come over (a pub) for a drink”, he invited. She playfully said yes with much delight.

Now drinking beer is the lifestyle of many that are staying in Damansara Uptown. Being a playground for a lot of well off people, she never turns down a chance to drink when people spend her alcohol. Besides alcohol consumption, hugging GRO girls is the proud lifestyle of many married straight men there. One of them came up to her and asked, “How is your lifestyle?” She decided she would leave her lazy lifestyle of sitting on pub chairs. She then stood up and tried to perform her bloody unhealthy lifestyle of dancing while moving away, because he was harassing her. As that guy went away, R asked “Are you gay?” She said “How can I be gay when I do not even like sex?”

After a few drinks, she went home. She climbed up to her room and turned on her lamp-light. She decided enough was enough, and she wanted to do something crazy that night. So after a quick shower, all wet, she quickly rubbed the sweet lotion all over her body. There she was, naked, ready to indulge in her despicable lifestyle. “Hey, everybody does it”, she thought. So she jumped into bed and quickly slept, the most relaxing lifestyle of all human beings in the world. Worst of all, with much utter disgust, it was only 10pm!

Yes, the gay lifestyle is so horrible and menacing!

Cross-posted from Yuki’s Box Of Chocolates.

We in Malaysia are more than 30 years behind time in our understanding of what homosexuals are all about. Ask anyone from the township to the villages, and most would still tell you different definitions of it, ranging from effeminate men, transgenders, anal sex and so forth. In the cities, they believe it is some kind of deviant alternative lifestyle that involves anything between being naked with other men and other “gross factors” that always seem to pick on gays, while lesbians bear the least semblance of the homo word.

Ask the churches and mosques, and all they can think of are men lying with men with a city called Sodom along with a man called Lot (or Lut) where the story of attempted rape of angels was mistaken for a homosexual deviancy show. All the explanations to the term by them are hardly even near correct definitions to what is supposed to be just a same-sex attraction. You may just be one of most Malaysians who really do not have a clue on what is a homosexual, and do not even know whether they are “choosing” something.

You may hold on to the thought that homosexuality is some sort of a lifestyle when except for their attractions they are really no different from you. You may be a curious straight who knows surely there are more to homosexuals than meets the eye, or you may be a passing gay brother or lesbian sister who wish to know more about yourself. Because of this, we will present you with the simple ABCs on homosexuality, a crash course in the form of this video which was said to be featured off a well known documentary.

Edmund presents the sermon called “Stop Pretending”.

But Edmund, while admitting that sexual orientation is inborn, still wants you to choose to act out heterosexually.

First, as most of you intellectual girls and guys would have known since you are born, homosexuality is something innate in you. Something that is not changeable. Secondly, you would have known by now that there is certainly no need to lie to yourself (and grief the Holy Spirit, if you are a Christian) by pretending to be someone you are not and exercise behavioral modification to suit any standards of heterosexuality thrown at you; because you are normal. Decades of strong peer previewed research concluded that.

Compelling new evidences of inborn traits of homosexuals and transgenders may have surfaced for the past few years. Yet many LGBTs are still deceived and confused by these medically rejected practices which began more than 25 years ago in the United States. The target audiences of ex-gay ministries have changed to the friends and families of LGBTs during the past decade, in the attempt to coerce the community into religiously motivated submission by peers and relations grounded specifically on “traditional values”.

Ex-gay ministries, losing their foothold in the States because of the rise of information technology since the 80s, stepped foot into the conservative Asian market during the 90s, with many eager listeners of their dogmatic views lining up to justify their own personal prejudices by way of the Bible and discrimination based on the myth that the LGBT community can but stubbornly refuse to “change” from their “immoral ways”.

What ex-gay ministries like RLM  would want you to believe is that you can, should and need to “change” your sexual orientation to heterosexuality or at least act out straight. And they would go all ways to prove that. Now honestly, Edmund Smith’s RLM would go around parroting the usual twists and turns of the truth in regards to homosexuality and transgenderism, and loves to double talk between the churches and the LGBT community, but even he actually admitted that nothing is changed and that you are to lie to yourself “for a season OR for a lifetime”.

Let us say you are born left handed. By the right (literally) of religion, you are to use your right hand. After struggling for years and found out you are just unable to do so, they ask you to not exercise the use of your left hand. So in the end you have one able left hand you never use and the other right hand that is without coordination to perform your tasks. So what happens to you then? Do you not look ridiculous? Those days can easily be labeled the days of the Right supremacy. The actions of ex-gay ministries such as RLM blatantly stigmatize the homosexual and transgender community into submission to heterosexual supremacy. It is a gently imposed threshold upon LGBTs. Curiously, the reverse process for those living an immoral heterosexual lifestyle never happens, neither calls of celibacy for heterosexual sex addiction can be heard. Is that not favoritism that even some religions especially Christianity would be against?

The premise of their ministry is denying who you are. When you lie to yourself, or let others convince you to do so, you only suffer consequences that can stretch a lifetime. You must know who you are to live a fruitful life. For example, if you are a true homosexual and choose what Edmund Smith calls the ex-gay lifestyle, two proven things would happen to you. While other homosexual couples move into adulthood having monogamous relationships and planning to migrate overseas to a more tolerant country to get a civil union or marriage and going to live happily ever after until old age takes shape; you either:

a) Will still naturally be attracted to the same sex while being married to your temporal co-star Ms Wife in your heterosexual acting career. You will suppress all desires towards the same sex for years. But, if you ever show interest towards your own sex, then you would hurt those people around you especially Ms. Wife, and children if you have any. Then you would have two choices; be who you are, or choose option b).

b) Be celibate. And spend a lifetime with independence to do whatever you want. The bulk stops there. Because that is all you would have for the rest of your lonely miserable life.

Any mantra that states homosexuality, a normal human born condition; as non-existent, as nothing but a sexual confusion that needs to be controlled, is a falsehood that goes against the very essense of being human. There may be some who choose this ex-gay path (good for them, all power to them). But to go around marketing it as if everyone in the world would eventually want that “change”, or attempt to brainwash weak and impressionable minds from the big fact that homosexuals can live in love, peace and joy just as any living person of any sexual orientation on this earth, is very wrong.

Presenting the “cure” that never was is a direct selling strategy that even God would not be pleased with, and I believe RLM’s Edmund Smith knows that all too well. Do you understand the obvious fact that his ex-gay image is used as a platform to sell his CDs? Do you get it when he is so desperate to become an international “superstar”? Do you realize that Edmund Smith charges people in the guise of “donations” to listen to his reification fallacies and self-created “sciences” based on nothing? Do you know that Edmund Smith recently changed to a new car, even though he mentioned RLM is a non-profit organization? It should be obvious to everyone; under whose expense?

The author of this article is often prayed for (for already a few months actually) with a lovingly made accusation masked as a prayer.

Please pray for Vivienne @ Yuki who was once helped by RLM. He is a transgender (male wanting to be female). He is aggressively moving from one website to another (internationally) trying to ruin the name of Ps Edmund and Real Love Ministry. Pray for Jesus to touch him.

As a girl, medically and scientifically reasoned, I take it as compliment. People can never be comfortable when the truth stares back at them. I have written a response here. By the way, I did not receive any help from RLM except attempts to indoctrinate and coerce me to change into something I am not. From that experience, I realize how important affirmation and integrity is for the community. That is why my fight now is for the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders.