MINNEAPOLIS – The president of the
country's best-known Christian ministry dedicated to helping people
repress same-sex attraction through prayer is trying to distance the
group from the idea that gay people's sexual orientation can be
permanently changed or "cured."
That's a significant shift for Exodus International,
the 36-year-old Orlando-based group that boasts 260 member ministries
around the U.S. and world. For decades, it has offered to help
conflicted Christians rid themselves of unwanted homosexual inclinations
through counseling and prayer, infuriating gay rights activists in the
process.
This week, 600 Exodus ministers and followers are
gathering for the group's annual conference, held this year in a
Minneapolis suburb. The group's president, Alan Chambers, told The
Associated Press on Tuesday that the conference would highlight his
efforts to dissociate the group from the controversial practice usually
called ex-gay, reparative or conversion therapy.
"I do not believe that cure is a word that is
applicable to really any struggle, homosexuality included," said
Chambers, who is married to a woman and has children, but speaks openly
about his own sexual attraction to men. "For someone to put out a
shingle and say, 'I can cure homosexuality' — that to me is as bizarre
as someone saying they can cure any other common temptation or struggle
that anyone faces on Planet Earth."
No comments:
Post a Comment