i got an email from beyond egypt 2 days ago!

totally outta the blue. was a little taken aback..

they sent me their brochure and some guy wanted to see if i wanted to meet up n chat to see if i was appropriate for the group :~

Any group that gets homosexuality confused with transgenderism clearly has no idea what it’s talking about and is therefore not worth listening to. Goodness…

I think I may have contacted liberty ministries (and living waters for that matter) back in 2007, trying to get answers. They could have put me on a mailing list..? Also, a lot of people I know go to the church that this ministry runs out of, so it could be someone there. I highly doubt the email address they sent it to would be connected with homosexuality on any web-based source at any rate.

I have since emailed back to try and work out what is going on, and have informed my leadership back at Church that I’m getting.. ‘innapropriate’.. emails from them. I think we have it under control. I am hopeful that their trawling days are numbered .

Hey Scott,

I still get emails from exodus all the time. It’s almost like they just don’t wanna give up. I find it strange how this ‘beyond egypt’ group is so private and isolated. It’s creating an environment of shame. Shame only adds to the internalised homophobia of people that go through any form of ‘ex-gay’ therapy.

‘Beyond egypt’ is really close to where I live and are connected to churches all around North West Sydney. I am gonna try and get more info from them. Just to find out exactly what they intend to acheive.

If only these groups would stop trying to change people from gay to straight and instead accept people as gay and try to help them live as a Christian in a very challenging and sinful world.

Whilst some ex-gay ministries in Australia might seek to expand…..doesn’t necessarily mean they can or will. It’s becoming an increasingly irrelevant message. Let me give you a brief history.

In the 70′s, when ex-gay ministries commenced, they offered a miraculous cure from homosexuality to heterosexuality. It became evident pretty quickly that God did no such thing no matter how much prayer, how anointed the ministry, how many fasts, how many demons were cast out. Emotional changes may have happened to some but orientation remained the same. Many made claims of healing only to eventually realise that prayer doesn’t make the gay go away.

The next phase introduced various forms of therapy that were based on now defunct theories about the causes of homosexuality such as a dominant mother and emotionally distant father and also sexual abuse as the reason people turn our gay or lesbian. Mental health professionals moved on but the Christian ministries didn’t. Prayer, inner healing, masculinising men and feminising women, same sex ‘healthy’ bonding etc etc promised that eventually the same sex attraction would diminish and a person’s ‘true’ heterosexuality would come to the surface. Then the person could marry or getting married along the journey that would be a part of their healing. Destroyed marriages and lives have been the result along with mental health issues and the most tragic of all….suicide.

A more recent development has been the acknowledgement that possibly the gay will never go away (still stated on the Liberty Christian Ministries website http://www.libertychristianministries.org.au//content/view/16/29 ) and that the person will spend their lives ‘struggling’ even if they enter a heterosexual marriage.

Another option that has more recently been proposed is celibacy and suppressing ones same sex orientation. This is not a healthy acceptance of one’s sexuality as we know it but is more about denial and self hatred. Both of these states are unhealthy for a person’s emotional, mental and spiritual well-being. For the ‘ex-gay’ there is no release of the sense of shame and condemnation or the sense of empowerment that we have experienced. A life of celibacy is for them, a sentence inflicted on them because of a fallen creation. They are still sick….still broken.

5 Reasons why ex-gay ministries have changed over the last four decades?

1. Too many failures……even the supposed ‘success’ stories getting caught out.

2. False claims of genuine change have never been verified scientifically.

3. The emergence of the Gay Christian movement ( the Rainbow Revival)

4. Former ex-gays telling their stories of how damaging the time in ‘therapy’ was and that they found peace and resolution through acceptance of self not rejection.

5. Ex-gay leaders apologising for their previous ignorance about sexual orientation and the damage that may have caused people in the past.

The opening paragraph in the recent Living Waters Oz newsletter began (another Sydney based ex-gay ministry).

‘There has been a real shift in society lately. We have detected this through responses to Living Waters offerings, We cancelled a conference recently because only a handful of registered. This year we have fewer Living Waters groups and fewer people in those groups. Our leadership training week at Collaroy appears to be hugely undersubscribed’.

The next paragraph begins……’we are not discouraged’………but I was greatly encouraged as it seems our strategy is working. The enemy is ignorance and we seek to inform, educate and enlighten. Sites like Freedom 2 b[e] where people tell their stories is having an impact.

Eventually ex-gay ministries will cease to exist here in Australia. this has been my goal for the last 6 years now. They will seek to exist, not because we have attacked people or organisation but because we have spoken the truth.

Young people like Scotty , Ben and others have managed to sort this out within a few years instead of the many decades it took for us from previous generations. This is a sign of our future. Eventually it will be non issue.