Peterson Toscano's A Musing

What a tremendous weekend in Memphis! All the events for Deconstructing the Ex-Gay Myth—A Weekend of Action & Art far exceeded my expectations. Loads of people turned out to everything, but more than the quantity of people was the quality of the exchanges we had and the depth of learning and sharing and loving. Bruce Garrett shares how the weekend moved him and posts some photos here . We did stand in front of Focus on the Family's Love Won Out event for a few hours on Saturday morning. We held up clear, positive signs with messages like Christian & Gay, We Know You Love Your Children, Integrity Changes Lives, Change at What Cost? Some ex-gay survivors also went into Central Church to present gifts to the people at Love Won Out, framed collages about our experiences (designed by Christine). But this was a tiny part of weekend. We were not there to protest rather the weekend showcased the creative, strong LGBT community in Memphis. I spoke with a neighbor today who casuall...

This past weekend in Memphis I saw wonders. Really amazing things as people stepped up and told their stories. My jaw continued to drop at the stunning things I heard and saw, the healing, the art, the honesty, the love. Today I experienced yet another wonder of sorts. Dr. Larry Bates of the Info Radio Network invited me onto his hour-long radio talk show News & Views along with a pastor from Central Church, which hosted Love Won Out this weekend. Just to give you a sense of the flavor of this conservative Christian program that airs on over 70 Christian stations around the nation, some recent show titles include, The Fight for Morals and Values: It's Up to You. Socialism and the Democratic Candidates in their own Words. Surviving Homosexual Parenting . Before we started the show, I requested that we pray, and I had my Quaker Friend (and elder for the weekend) Kristi praying in the lobby for the show and for me. I cannot fully describe what took place. The show is not for the ...

Below are some photos from our action outside of Love Won Out in Memphis. Our goal was to tell the other side of the story. Here you see Ryan, Daniel, Jacob, John and Brandon. Thank you Daniel and Brandon for making the sign and Jacob for help with the words. Here I am quoting my dad. The cute couple Jacob & Ryan Jim Burroway gets interviewed by Fox Ex-gay survivor Jason with the sign "I tried Ex-gay Therapy (It Didn't Work) flanked by local supporters from PFLAG and the Memphis Friends Meeting. Local folks standing out with survivor and Bob (Holy & Whole) who arrived rom Topeka that morning. Christine Bakke blogged last night about some of the Saturday events here in Memphis as part of Deconstructing the Ex-Gay Myth—A Weekend of Action & Art . Today we had, among other events, the Mid-South Regional Gathering for Ex-Gay Survivors and Allies. At the conference in Irvine, I was so busy doing the behind-the-scenes work I didn't really have the ability to partic...

Gee, what happened to all the lovely comments on this blog? I miss you guys. Maybe since half of you are already here in Memphis, you don't feel the need to write your comments. You can give them in the form of hugs and such. Well, I just like hearing from you. It has been an awesome weekend so far. Really couldn't be better except that on Thursday I got quite a scare when my sister called to say our dad was rushed to the hospital with a heart problem. He never had heart problems in his life. I started looking into flights home and figured I would miss out on the Memphis weekend. But we then got good news that the problem would be remedied easily with some minor surgery and with the implant of a pacemaker. They did the surgery on Friday morning, he is home now feeling 10 years younger. I will get to spend a few days with him starting Wednesday when I can cook and help around the house, as he has to take it easy while he heals. A challenge for him as he doesn't like to sit ...

What a day! The Ex-Gay Survivor Art Show opened and we also had a powerful press conference at the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center (a really great spot) to kick off Deconstructing the Ex-Gay Myth—A Weekend of Action & Art . Then this evening I performed the official retirement show of Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House. The art is amazing and Christine Bakke did a great job of putting it together along with the help of so many others including Jason Ingram, who also has art in the show. We even have art from John Evans, one of the founders of Love in Action. Daniel Gonzales of Box Turtle Bulletin took video and I know that Bruce Garrett took a bunch of photos. The video is up already (wow Dan, fast work!). Here see and hear Jim Burroway speak about his recent visit to Love Won Out, what he hear and saw. It moved me to tears. Here fellow ex-gay survivor and former Love in Action participant Brandon Tidwell shares his story and an impassioned plea to under...

In fact, it is great to be gay, if that is true for you, which it is for me. Bianca Phillips at the Memphis Flier wrote a super article all about Deconstructing the Ex-Gay Myth—A Weekend of Action & Art. For a title she used a slogan that the young folks chanted during the 2005 summer actions outside of Love in Action-- It's Okay to Be Gay! In the piece she lists off all the events for the weekend shares some of her interview with Morgan Jon Fox and with me. On Saturday from 2 to 5 p.m., Beyond Ex-Gay will host its Mid-South Regional Gathering, a series of workshops and panels for ex-gay survivors, at the gay and lesbian center. "There's a lot of psychological, emotional, and spiritual damage [in ex-gay survivors], and there's a need to unpack what we've done to ourselves and let other people do to us," Toscano says. "This regional gathering will give ex-gay survivors a chance to check in and talk to each other." Also on Saturday, local f...

Yeah, I actually did walk about three miles today in Memphis. Of course people of a certain race and class don't walk much in this city, and I got strange looks as I walked along Cooper towards the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center and First Congregational Church. Christine Bakke has arrived, and I received a text message from Bruce Garrett that he pulled into town with sweet ride of car. I saw Morgan Jon Fox tonight, poor guy looks wiped out from working on filming a movie while also editing This is What Love in Action Looks Like and still working his regular job. Artists will make great sacrifice to do their art. I know that what he shows on Saturday will be amazing, and he will also share about the film making process as well. On Friday night I will do my official retirement performance of Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House . I hired a camera crew, and four cameras will capture the performance so that the play can be put together for a DVD. Morgan will ...

This weekend staff from Focus on the Family and Exodus International, two large and well-funded organizations, will speak to hundreds of parents about the "gay lifestyle" and will present testimonies claiming that "change is possible". Parents will listen to folks who directly and indirectly pin the blame on parents for having a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender child. We know what they teach because some of us recently attended the Love Won Out Conference and and also listened to the recordings of all the presentations. See Jim Burroway's detailed account . My parents suffered under this message while I attended the Love in Action program in Memphis some years ago. Today I recorded this video relating the horrific Family and Friends Weekend and the effect Love in Action's erroneous and cruel teachings had on my parents. In the past year I have shared my family's experience with several ex-gay leaders. Many expressed shock at what happened at Love...

Over at Beyond Ex-Gay co-founder Christine Bakke and I receive many e-mails from ex-gay survivors sharing their stories, thanking us for the site and offering their suggestions for new features to add. We also routinely receive messages from people who never attended an ex-gay program or tried to change and suppress their sexual orientation or gender presentation, but they have become painfully aware of the harm of ex-gay experiences because their partner attempted a change process. Last week I heard from Jayne, a lesbian in the Mid-West who wrote to us looking for answers regarding her relationship with Rachel, a woman who attended an ex-gay program previous to dating Jayne. As I mention in my article, Emotionally Dependent Relationships , many of these ex-gay programs trained us to distrust close emotional ties with people of the same-sex thus insulating us from intimacy and hindering healthy relating even years after the ex-gay experiences. The process of living in the closet in ...

In the summer of 2005 the ex-gay program Love in Action made national headlines after accepting Zach, a 16 year old gay boy into their Refuge program. Before he went into the program, Zach called out for help on his blog. Concerned citizens and friends of the young man took a stand and each day shared their message of love and acceptance through signs, blog posts, interviews and social networking on MySpace. Jacob Wilson was a 19 year old client in Love in Action's adult program that summer. Back then Exodus programs did not have a prohibition to mix minors and adults together in their program, so Jacob sat in session with all the participants in both Love in Action's programs. He didn't have any real idea what was happening outside the building until he saw the trailer of Morgan Fox's film that we screened at the Ex-Gay Survivor Conference this past summer. Wendi Thomas of the Memphis Commercial Appeal interviewed Jacob for an article that appeared in yesterday'...

In the Love in Action ex-gay residentatl program, Friday night was movie night. Yeah, we got to see one movie a week in the form of a video (they didn't have a DVD—it was over 10 years ago). In the following YouTube video I reveal the secrets behind watching films in the Big House. Find out what's in, what's out, and why Biblical films were banned! Ex-Gay Watch posted this VERY FUNNY music video that finally explains how it is that "the gays" are destroying marriage. And I posted this before, but here is the entertaining trailer for the film, Chasing the Devil: Inside the Ex-Gay Movement . The man talking about zebras with the cat trying to steal the shot is my father.

Many of you know about this awful incident. I've been too sick about it to write up a blog post. But it comes as a stark reminder that we have work to do. I will copy and paste what Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin wrote: Lawrence King, a 15-year-old student at at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California was shot at least twice in the head by another classmate last Tuesday. Fellow students say that King was gay and was often taunted by fellow students. King was rushed to St. John’s Regional Medical Center, where he was initially listed in critical condition. By the end of the day, his condition was reportedly improving. But today we learn that he has been declared brain dead by two neurosurgeons at the hospital on Wednesday at 2 pm. He is being kept on life support so his organs can be harvested for transplant. Police said the 14-year-old Brandon McInerney shot King at the start of the school day and fled the campus. He was arrested by police a few blocks away. ...

In a week I will be in Memphis, TN one of my all time favorite cities in America. Some find that strange since I spent two difficult years in Memphis in the Love in Action ex-gay program. But once I emerged from that experience, for the next three years, I got to know the city and some of the many wonderful lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender folks in that city. While in Love in Action, I never go west of Highland Avenue so I never saw Mid-Town or Downtown until after two years in the city. At Love in Action the staff forced us to avoid the Forbidden Zone . Apparently the gays took over Mid-Town and kept all the best cafes, restaurants and stores to themselves. Next week we will deconstruct the ex-gay myth through action and art. Note we will not dismiss the ex-gay myth or rise up a diatribe against it. Rather we will carefully and thoughtfully deconstruct it. According to Miriam Webster online, Deconstruct - verb: to take apart or examine in order to reveal the basis or composit...

I just read an article in Christianity Today which reports on "Evangelicals hope to respond with both moral authority and biblical compassion to gender identity disorder." Ugh. Even LGBT-affirming folks like Jimmy Creech seem to question the Biblical support for the transgender experience. He starts off strong enough when they quote him saying, Religion has been used in history to discriminate against various groups of people by justifying slavery, denying women the right to vote, and persecuting religious minorities," says Jimmy Creech, executive director of Faith in America . "Today it is being used to persecute lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people. But then he adds this zinger. We have to recognize the Bible in terms of the history and culture in which it was written," Creech says. "Scripture doesn't address the issues of transgender experience. The piece also quotes Warren Throckmorton, who had been a strong proponent of ex-gay thera...

I had an EXCELLENT weekend which began on Thursday in Providence's Lincoln School for the Quaker Youth Leadership Conference. Organizers asked me to give a keynote address and that they chose art and activism for their theme. Instead of giving a traditional speech, I performed The Re-Education of George W. Bush—No President Left Behind! Here you see a photo of Vlad doing his now infamous dance. Thanks to Fabian from Brooklyn Friends School for the photo! On Friday morning I got up early to take the train down to Philadelphia where I performed the Bush play that evening at Calvary United Methodist Church. The following night I presented Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House at Germantown United Methodist. Here you see a photo of me after the show with two high schoolers from Germantown. Thanks to Bill Ewing for this photo. After performing the Bush play twice in a row, I feel stoked to get it out there. The piece has settled in to where I think it should be and the charac...

Via Victoria Lavin at Daily Queer News (which you can subscribe to by e-mailing dailyqueernews (at) myway.com) I found out about a great Orange County/Long Beach, CA Blade interview with ex-gay Survivor Eric Leocadio (who is also featured here at Beyond Ex-Gay ) Long Beach blogger Eric Leocadio learned to reconcile his strong Christian faith and his sexuality. He now uses his website, Two World Collision, to share his story with others. For nearly 14 years, a young Christian prayed his attraction to men would disappear. When his faith was strong, he trusted God to provide him with a wife and the desire for her. When his faith faltered, he tried to kill himself. Now comfortable with his faith and sexuality, Eric Leocadio shares his ongoing story on his Web site, Two World Collision . Leocadio spoke with the Blade about his personal saga. Blade: Tell us about your experience in the ex-gay movement. Leocadio: I went through ex-gay programs. I was part of Desert Stream Ministries in a pro...

Today I have witnessed and heard of extraordinary examples of people speaking out a message of sanity and hope. 1. Anthony Venn-Brown in Australia alerted me to a group of Christian ministers calling themselves 100Revs . They have decided to speak out during the sometimes raucous Mardi Gras festivities in their country, not to denounce the LGBT community like so many have done in the past, but rather to issue a public apology for the awful ways the Church has treated to LGBT people. In their official statement they say, As ministers of various churches and denominations we recognise that the churches we belong to, and the church in general, have not been places of welcome for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people. Indeed the church has often been profoundly unloving toward the GLBT community. For these things we apologise, whatever the distinctive of our Christian position on human sexuality – to which we remain committed. We are deeply sorry and ask for the forgivene...

As some of you already know, Memphis-area LGBT groups have partnered with Beyond Ex-Gay and other people around the country to present a series of events under the heading Deconstructing the Ex-Gay Myth—A Weekend of Action Art . (February 22-24, 2008) We have a new web page up with all the details, and Daniel Gonzales created a YouTube video ad outlining what will happen and why. Here is some of the transcript (video listed below) On Saturday February 23rd 2008 Colorado-based Focus on the Family and Florida-based Exodus International will set up shop in Memphis to stage "Love Won Out" a day-long conference promoting gay conversion or "ex-gay" ministries. Held at Central Church in Collierville, Love Won Out targets family and friends of LGBT individuals, preaching the message that homosexuality is sinful and change is possible. Concerned that this harmful message will misinform the community, local organizations, churches and citizens partnered with Beyond Ex-Gay a...

Some of you may shudder when you see or hear the words Emotionally Dependent Relationships . This is especially true if you attended an ex-gay program that warned against the perils of emotional dependency. Today I received a voice mail from a friend who attended Love in Action with me over ten years ago. Just the other day when we spoke on the phone he sounded chipper with a wonderful attitude about himself and life in general, but on the recorded message his voice sounded desperate. If I hadn't understand the words in his message correctly, I would have inferred from his tone of voice that he had spent the night strung out on crack cocaine engaging in multiple unprotected sexual encounters. He sounded defeated and demoralized. What terrorized him? It wasn't a "sexual fall," as we called it back at Love in Action. No, he encountered the specter of emotionally dependent relationships. Now this is a guy who has not really had sex with another guy in his whole life. ...

Truth Wins Out posted three great new videos with individuals speaking about the ex-gay movement and their personal experiences. The one that moved me the most features Susan Stanskas, a parent of a gay man who, discusses how ‘ex-gay’ organizations divide families - in the name of family values - and even cause some gay teenagers to commit suicide. In this video, she urges parents to accept their gay and lesbian children and warns about the harm done by rejecting them. “Would you rather have a gay child, or a dead child?” she poignantly asks. Clint Trout, who spent 13 years as an ex-gay, shares some of the outrageous things he did in order to get "healed" from being gay and also talked about the teachings he received that blamed his parents for his same-sex attractions. He also talks about life post-ex-gay and the clearness and fullness he has found since he left Exodus ministries and embraced the reality of who he is.

Gary Hines from G-Town Radio out of Philadelphia will interview me live tomorrow (Sunday) at 11:30 am. I'll be heading to Philly next weekend where I will perform on Friday The Re-Education of George W. Bush—No President Left Behind! and on Saturday Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House—How I Survived the Ex-Gay Movement! Lots to talk about with the Ex-Gay Movement, George W. Bush, shoot we may even talk about transgender Bible characters! In his e-mail today Gary promised me that he will not ask me anything sexual. Ah, but that doesn't mean I won't ask him anything sexual. Listen live and streaming. (If you have trouble listening, go to the radio program's help page ) Of course I would have just come directly from Quaker Meeting for Worship, so who knows if I will have anything to say. Hmm, I guess silence doesn't work too well on the radio. You can check out my presentation schedule here. Gary posted an archive of the interview on his blog .

As if there weren't enough great events in Memphis the weekend of February 22-24 ! After the outpouring of interest and support since the historic 2007 Ex-Gay Survivor Conference , Beyond Ex-Gay (bXg) will host the Beyond Ex-Gay Mid-South Regional Gathering An event for ex-gay survivors and our allies February 23, 2008 2:00-5:00 PM Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center 892 S. Cooper, Memphis, TN Organizers, presenters and attenders from the first Ex-Gay Survivor Conference will be present including Christine Bakke , Peterson Toscano :-), Jim Burroway , Daniel Gonzales , Jacob Wilson and more as well as plenty of folks from the Mid-South. bXg will offer a series of interactive workshops for ex-gay survivors and their allies. Events will include: A round table discussion about the ex-gay movement and youth concerns From the on-line chat room to the talk show—processing our stories through the media Ex-Gay 101 for allies Creating and Maintaining Support Structures as you P...