Title: Doh!
You may or may have not have heard the story about John Paulk, the poster boy for the "ex-gay" movement and the director of Focus on the Family's Homosexuality and Gender division getting caught in a gay bar in DC a couple of days ago. Apparently Paulk stopped in to use the restroom (according to him) and ended up in intimate conversation with another man, offering to buy other men drinks and outright admitting his homosexuality to an HRC staffer who struck up a conversation with him. He got caught on camera by the HRC guy and his buddy, and the story is splashed all over the front of SouthernVoice.com today. I, myself, got three separate copies of the story from three different sources before lunch.
Wow. That's about all I can say, while I shake my head sadly. I admit my initial reaction wasn't this calm. It was more along the lines of, "OH MY GOD WHAT A HYPOCRITE! I knew that little queen was still queer! You can lie and hide, but you can't change being gay, buddy! So much for the Religious Reich's ex-gay claims!" Ahem. I was not exactly the model of Christian charity, I must admit. After being subjected to the pounding of the ex-gay "ministries" trying to brainwash all Christian gays the last few years, and especially after getting it from my own family for a year, I was ecstatic to be justified in what I know as a lesbian: Sexual orientation is a part of you. You can no more change your innate orientation than you can your height or which hand you write with. It's really time to face up to this truth, and the downfall of John Paulk will, I predict, go a long way toward exposing the ex-gay movement for what it is: a huge, evil deception. It's a deception based on the best of intentions on the part of the well-meaning straights and "ex-gays" involved, to be sure, but it is nonetheless a deception.
Let me make it clear that I have nothing against people who truly are uncomfortable with their sexuality and sincerely want to reconcile it with their faith. I went through that for a long time. If they really think they need to try to turn straight, more power to them. I do think it's better in the long run to just deal with your sexuality and try to live a good and moral life in that context. It's a thousand times more natural and it's better for you.
But this is obviously not a man who is comfortable with living a straight life, or he wouldn't be hanging out in DC's most notorious, seediest gay bar. That's the first big no-shitter of the night, folks. You don't hang out in the cruisiest part of the District chatting and buying drinks for men if you're comfortable being straight. The guy isn't fooling anyone any more. Focus is circling the wagons like crazy, of course, but the jig is up, y'all. John Paulk is busted, big-time. He's still gay -- never was straight, if you ask me -- and he always will be. The healthiest possible thing for him to do would be to admit it and go on with his life. He won't, though, because the ex-gay movement is pretty much built around him. There's too much pressure, too many people he would "let down", too much riding on his shoulders for the right wing Christian groups that parade him out at literally every opportunity as "proof" that all gays can change, and that therefore we're just being stubborn if we don't. (And if we don't, well, we're punished for it by having our civil rights witheld.)
But I can't rejoice in Paulk's downfall. I really can't. As much harm as he's done the gay community, and especially gay teenagers by telling them repeatedly that they're not trying hard enough to change, I have to feel somewhat sorry for him. This is a man who must absolutely loathe himself. Can you imagine the psychological damage he must have as a result of being so deeply torn all these years? Anyone who has spent any time in an ex-gay "ministry" can tell you that it deepens your contempt for your feelings and desires and guilts you into trying to go straight at any cost. (Not to mention the notorious reputation for after-hours "counseling" by the counselors for their patients. Let's just say most of those camps would put any cruise bar to shame.) John Paulk claims to have been straight since 1987. I don't believe it for one second. I also knew it was a matter of time before something like this happened, because John Paulk and his "ex-lesbian" wife are not only struggling with their sexuality, but they're under an enormous amount of pressure from AFA, Focus and similar groups to make it. Their success as a couple is critical to the ex-gay movement at large, because so many of the ex-gays turn up gay again after a few years. The success rate for the ex-gay groups is abysmal, which should surprise nobody with even a tenuous grasp on modern science. Sexuality is simply innate. If it wasn't, straight people could turn gay, which is a prospect any right-winger would hoot at with derision, as well they should. Straight can't become gay, and the overwhelming majority of gay people will swear on their lives that they can't turn straight. John Paulk knows this full well, and it bit him hard this week.
-- marcie