Antigay bill author David Bahati chair of parliamentary prayer fellowship

In another sign that David Bahati’s stock continues to rise in Uganda, Bahati presided over the recent opening parliamentary prayer fellowship dinner as chairman. From the New Vision:

The chairman of the parliamentary fellowship, David Bahati, said the caucus of God is bigger than all other caucuses and does not discriminate against political affiliations.
The parliamentary fellowship was founded in 1986 by the late Hon. Balaki Kirya, and has since 1991 been organising a prayer breakfast on every October 8.
Bahati said the fellowship, initiated some bills like the Anti- Homosexuality and Anti-Pornography believes in a God led country and God led policies.

Bahati here locates the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in the agenda of the Uganda Fellowship. Bahati’s position is contrary to the American group and that Bahati’s continued advocacy is a source of frustration for the Fellowship.

Al Mohler says evangelicals have not told the truth about homosexuality; AFA's Bryan Fischer proves the point

Al Mohler, the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, told the Christian Science Monitor in March that Baptists have lied about homosexuality and practiced a “form of homophobia.”
Responding to questions about the CSM article, Mohler affirmed his belief that same-sex sexual behavior is sin, but then told the Associated Baptist Press:

“But we as evangelicals have a very sad history in dealing with this issue,” he continued. “We have told not the truth, but we have told about half the truth. We’ve told the biblical truth, and that’s important, but we haven’t applied it in the biblical way.”
“We have said to people that homosexuality is just a choice,” Mohler said. “It’s clear that it’s more than a choice. That doesn’t mean it’s any less sinful, but it does mean it’s not something people can just turn on and turn off. We are not a gospel people unless we understand that only the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ gives a homosexual person any hope of release from homosexuality.”

Rev. Mohler and I spoke together in 2008 at a meeting of Christian psychiatrists at the 2008 APA convention. He was saying the same things in that address and has consistently attempted to incorporate current research into his thinking about sexual orientation. Clearly, this stance has not changed his exegesis of Scripture, but he is calling evangelicals to stop at least some lying about gays.
On cue, however, is Bryan Fischer to quickly criticize Mohler for telling the truth. Fischer wrote:

On the whole, this was not a great week for the Southern Baptist Convention, as one of its leaders appeared to pander to the homosexual lobby and the convention itself pandered to lawbreakers, all in the space of two dizzying days.
Rev. Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, urged attendees at the SBC’s annual convention to “repent” of what he called “a form of homophobia,” without saying exactly what kind of homophobia he was talking about.
Evidently, according to Rev. Mohler, if you don’t believe gays are born that way, you’re either a homophobe or right next to it. He told the delegates at the SBC that homosexuality is “more than a choice,” and that it apparently borders on something sinful to believe otherwise.
He did not elaborate on exactly what he meant by “more than a choice,” but what else could it mean but that he’s urging SBC’ers to accept the bogus claim that homosexuality is innate and that people can be homosexual from birth. Perhaps that’s not what he meant to say; if it wasn’t, then it’s important for him to clarify exactly what he did mean.

Mohler is pretty clear it seems to me. He is aware that research is not on the side of people who claim that being attracted to the same sex is a choice or some kind of easily reversible situation.
What a strange situation we have in the evangelical fold. One of our leading theologians speaks out on a issue of significance, and the culture warrior Bryan Fischer attacks him as he might an ideological opponent. Instead of considering the message, he attacks the messenger. I have experienced this myself and believe that the only orthodoxy that matters to the evangelical culture war complex (e.g., AFA, AFTAH, FRC, CWA, Liberty Counsel) is, “thou shalt demonize the gays.” All else is measured by this metric.
Many reading this blog will no doubt believe that Mohler does not go far enough and still promotes a harmful rhetoric. Others will understand that he is speaking to his constituents in language they understand which may help them come to a more honest, graceful place. I think Rev. Mohler can move a little further but, for now, I am glad Mohler is calling out the evangelical culture war complex and hope he continues to do so.

Roots of reparative therapy – Momism as a root of homosexuality

Yesterday, I quoted the bookjacket of Their Mothers’ Sons by Edward Strecker which proposes smothering mothering as a culprit for the failure of boys to become men. Today, I want to quote a bit more from the book, specifically in reference to homosexuality. Of course, Strecker sees mom as being at root of the gay.

First,  I provide Strecker’s basic diagnosis of the sad lot of sons who find themselves in mom’s grips. Strecker’s laboratory was war. He lamented that over 3 million men dodged the draft or were discharged for psychiatric reasons during World War II. Strecker acknowledged for all people there is a inner battle between self-preservation and fighting for the greater good. Some men became valient fighters, even accepting with grace their wounds, whereas others wilted in the face of the demands of war. Why the difference? According to Strecker, it comes down to maturity. He wrote:

Why did the desire for self-preservation defeat one group of men, the their discredit, and not the other? The answer in ninety percent of the cases can be given in one word, IMMATURITY. The majority of men who failed, like the majority of men who fail for the same reasons in ordinary life, were IMMATURE. (p. 21; emphasis in the original).

So what causes immaturity?

You guessed it.

Mom.

Strecker wrote:

Maturity is not an inborn trait; it is not hereditary. It is the result of early background, environment, training, and unselfish parental love…Given the opportunity of having known when he was eight to twelve years old, any one of the men who failed in his opportunity to serve in the armed forces because of neuropsychiatric tendencies, and, particularly, of having known his mother, a competent psychiatrist could have forecast with reasonable accuracy the boy’s future immaturity. In the vast majority of case histories, a “mom” is at fault. (p. 23).

For Strecker, immaturity, and therefore mom, is also at root of homosexuality. While he does allow for “biological deviations” as involved in homosexuality, he also implicates “mom and her wiles.” Strecker provides a letter from a teen who calls himself a “sissy” and a “mother’s boy.” The young man also describes homosexual attractions. Strecker’s then diagnoses the causes of the boy’s homosexuality from his letter.

The essential parts  are there, and unedited, and a study of them shows two familiar types of silver cords – “you will never find anyone quite as pretty and worthy of you as mom,” and “sexual intercourse is a horrible affair in which the husband is the beast.” Mom, as the paints her in his letter, in undoubtedly the ‘pretty addlepate’ who by her actions and what she has said and implied has poisoned the boy’s mind against normal, mature heterosexual living. In various ways, mostly devious, he has been made to know that no girl could measure up to his mom, so he veered away from the normal companionship with girls that a part of every high school boy’s life. Sex was degrading, unnatural, undesireable — his mom had told him so. Naturally, when completely entwined by these two silver cords, his normal, healthy masculine instincts were stifled. The result — a tendency toward abnormal sex life.

Strecker also points to mothers who really wanted girls as another force behind some homosexuality. He then invokes one of the many psychoanalytically based theories by suggesting that some men remain in love with mother past their childhood which results in overwhelming guilt. This guilt is then transferred to other girls and women as an adult. Thus,

heterosexuality in a complete way is impossible for him to achieve and he may turn to homosexuality in his need for some sex outlet, as the lesser evil. (p. 131)

Lesbians are almost ignored but not quite. Strecker saves some blame for dad:

All the same forces operate against the daughters of immature fathers — pops — as well as against the sons of moms. The pop who mentally seduces his daughter may implant a tendency toward lesbianism.

Strecker concludes:

I want to repeat that while innate factors often go into the making of homosexuality, yet the environmental influence is strong enough so that moms and pops are to blame. (p. 132)

Dr. Strecker provides no references or evidence for his statements beyond the letter from the young man. Readers are apparently expected to believe him because he is a psychiatrist and an advisor to the armed services. Strecker puts much more weight on mothering than current reparative therapists do, but, in my view, Strecker, writing in 1946, would fit in quite well at the 2011 NARTH conference.

NARTH likes half of the NYT Magazine's coverage of sexual identity issues

NARTH is recommending the Glatze article but not the article by Mimi Swartz which addresses the APA position on sexual orientation change.
At least they tell readers

While the story is his own and does not necessarily represent a typical NARTH client his observations and thoughts are very interesting. They represent a perspective usually missing in the popular press on the subject of homosexuality.

Missing from the NARTH post is the perspective of the longer article of the two. Gotta go to the popular press for that.