BOOKS
he seed for Anything hut Straight:
Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the
Ex-Gay Myth, Wayne R. Besen’s studious,
fact-centered, fascinating history-cum-
exposé of the ex-gay movement, was planted by
a memorable, traumatic personal experience.
He opens the hook with an anecdote from
1988— related with surprising gcxxJ humor— in
which his parents react with dismay when their
son comes out to them, going so far as to pur
chase him a self-hypnosis cassette titled Gay
and Unhappy.
Looking hack on the incident, Besen says,
“I spent the ages of 9 to 17 trying to deal with
the fact 1 was gay or trying to ‘change.’ I finally
accepted myself and the first thing my parents
say is, ‘Have you tried to change?’ ”
As Besen became a bona fide gay activist—
in the late ’90s he worked for the Human
Rights Campaign as associate director of com
munications— he saw that many families of
queers are opposed to ever “coming around”
and that an increasingly politicized ex-gay
subculture existed to reinforce their intolerance
and misunderstanding.
“I was working at H RC to combat the 1998
right-wing ex-gay campaign,” Besen says, refer
ring to that year’s newspaper ads featuring
“cured” gay men and lesbians. “I was inspired
to write Anything hut Straight as an activist.”
Besen began to he aware of the need for an
in-depth, complete resource on the very dan
gerous movement. “In 1998, there was not
much of a track record on exposing these
groups,” he says. “There was information, hut it
was scattered, not easy to access. I wanted to
put all this information in one place.”
Writing the book was no working vacation.
With all the research and preparation, it was
4 1/2 years in the making. It “nxik an enormous
amount of discipline and made it more difficult
to date or make new friends,” he shares. But
creating the fxxik offered its own intrigues, as
infiltrating the ex-gay underground often
requires researchers to do the espionage thing.
“Infiltrating these ministries is total acting,”
explains Besen. “One must go undercover to see
what they’re truly about. When a reporter or
activist announces who they are, the ex-gays basi
cally lie about how happy and ‘cured’ they are.
When you go undercover, you can see that these
folks are miserable and in a great deal of pain.”
B
ecause most ex-gay ideology exploits the
religious faith of its victims, Besen proposes
that the queer community, particularly our
spiritual leaders, be aggressive in addressing the
burgeoning contingent of disillusioned ex-ex
gays seeking affirmation.
“1 think it’s important to have churches like
Metropolitan Community Church and also to
Exposing the exes
Wa^yne R. Besen goes from
Gay and U nhappy to A n yth in g but Straigh t
by
REVIEW
A nything but S traight : U nmasking
the S candals and L ies B ehind
the E x -G ay M yth
by Wayne Besen; Harrington Park Press, 2003;
$19.95 softcover
C hristopher M c Q uain
reform primarily hetero
churches," he asserts. “As
stxriety becomes more
accepting, the lines will
blur a little. But we have a
long way to go to get to
that point.”
Though Besen hints in
Anything hut Straight that
ex-ex-gays, many from
conservative-religious back
grounds, may feel intimidat
ed by their prospects of fit
ting into a community that
in turn has its ambivalence
toward religious conser
vatism, he doesn't see intra
community religious dis
agreement as the principal
barrier to finding a place in
the community and defeat
ing ex-gay propaganda.
“The real problem is
not divisions but apathy,”
he says. “Gay people— very
much like heterosexuals—
are mostly uninvolved in
the political arena. While
most straight people can
afford this apathy, we
can’t. We have to make
every effort to pull more
people in our community
into the political process.”
While Besen became
an activist and a writer, his Wayne R. Besen reads from his tell-all book about the ex-gay
mom and dad took some
movement March 7 at Metropolitan Community Church of Portland
steps, too. Noting that par
a new home once he’s done promoting the btxik.
ents “have expectations [and] sometimes create
“When the tour is over, I’ll likely move back to
a story line for their kid...beautiful wife or hus
D.C. or New York. Who knows, maybe I’ll fall in
band, beautiful wedding, beautiful kids,” he
love with Portland and move there. I’ve never
explains that “coming out...forces parents to
been before, but I hear it’s lovely.” j H
readjust their story line. It took my parents two
years to come around; now they’re PFLAG par
WAYNE B esen reads from Anything but
ents who are as accepting as possible.”
Straight:
Unmasking the Scandals and Lies
As Besen’s b<x>k tour, which includes Port
Behind the Ex-Gay Myth 9 a.m. March 7 at
land on March 7, nears its end, he’s pondering
Metropolitan Community Church of Portland,
the direction his career will take next. He
2400 N.E. Broadway. Check the March 5 issue
plans to get into fiction writing and has “an
of Just Out for possible other appearances.
idea for nonfiction that I’m keeping secret for
now— but will be even more controversial than
C hristopher M c Q u a in , also anything hut
Anything hut Straight .”
straight, lives and writes in Seattle.
Currently a nomad, Besen will be lcx>king for
F
or anyone
committed to
understanding
the fullness and
complexity of
human sexuality,
the concept of
propagandizing
queers into altering
their sexual
orientation might
seem like
something of an
easy target.
In a culture that thinks and speaks clearly
about sex and sexuality, the notion that hetero
sexuality is morally superior to homosexuality (or
the association of homosexuality with pedophilia
and sex addiction) would seem laughable.
Anyt/ung hut Straight, a detailed chronicle of
ex-gay “ministries” preying upon queers whose
insecurity with their sexuality or unrelated
addiction and mental health issues make them
easy targets, amply demonstrates that we don’t
live in such a culture.
Wayne R. Besen offers an in-depth ex-gay
timeline, accessibly explaining the methods
and ideologies of the current network of het
erosexual conversion groups that have coagu
lated under the well-known Exodus Interna
tional organizational umbrella and had their
germ in the 70s, when the fledgling gay rights
movement provoked a reactionary response
from religious fundamentalists that continues
in various mutations to this day.
We’re introduced to an array of ex-gay
“trailblazers" and the tactics (from the punitive,
shame-based approach of the earlier years to the
falsely optimistic soft-pedaling of today’s PR-
saw y version) they’ve employed in the name of
saving queers from their basic human desire for
sexual expression and romantic fulfillment.
If Besen’s tone is sometimes incongruously
conversational for the subject matter, it doesn’t
undermine the rich, thoroughly researched
information in Anything but Straight. As a lie-
by-lie, distortion-by-distortion rebuttal to a
destnjetive social force aimed directly at us,
this book has a place on the bookshelf of any
conscientious queer.
—CM F J
N ext A dventure
P ortlands A ltgrnatimg S porting G o o dt 9 to r €
©©Offiahs* ®1 ?
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Bryan
beck