This is gayer than anything I’ve ever done. And my gayest-thing-ever-seen-or-done bar is set pretty damn high. Watch:
An anti-gay hate group opened their poorly attended #Teens4Truth conference in Texas earlier this week with this… interpretive rainbow flag modern dance gay ass fucking spectacular. Okay, okay: there’s no actual ass fucking—I watched to the glitter end—but this is as close as one fully clothed dude alone on a stage can get to ass fucking. Media Matters captured the performance on video and the Texas Observer reported on the conference itself and—SURPRISE YOU GUYS ARE YOU SITTING DOWN OMG—the flag dancer is an ex-gay:
A sign posted outside the hall reads “Women Make Lousy Dads.” Onstage, a succession of ex-gays testify about grace and their hatred of their old way of being. A man in a leather jacket and black tie introduces himself as George before telling the pious crowd that he was the wayward son of a pastor. He spent much of his young adult life “in the L.A. club scene,” before being called back to God one rough night at the Copa. Then Paul, of the flag dance, speaks. “I was in the competitive cheerleading scene for 11 years. I studied fine arts at a fine arts high school,” he says, back in Gainesville, Florida. He tells his story with the intonations of a veteran recalling his rough year in Fallujah. “I know what it’s like. I saw it up close and personal super early. I got to see what happened to them when they came out, before and after. I’m sorry it happened to them, and, if you are watching me,” he tells the camera in the room, “I am so sorry. But I’m praying for you.”
You pray for us, Paul, we’ll gay for you.
It wasn’t long ago that the nation’s biggest, oldest, and most harmful “ex-gay” organization—Exodus International—closed its doors. After spending decades insisting that prayer and a close, personal relationship with their version of the world’s most popular imaginary friend could turn gay people into straight people… after numerous ex-gay became ex-ex-gays and other ex-gays got caught up in totally sex-gay scandals… after the head of Exodus International admitted in his biography that he was still attracted to men (“The opposite of homosexuality isn’t heterosexuality,” Chambers said at the time, “it’s holiness.”)… the org’s leadership finally admitted that conversion therapy was a harmful fraud. The organization even offered a half-assed apology to the men and women they’d lied to and harmed—some were driven to suicide—as they were closing up shop.
But thoughtful people on the religious right (cough, cough) embraced Chambers’ definition of ex-gay: Paul of House Flag Dance is still gay as a fuchsia goose—sorry, Paul still struggles with “same-sex attraction”—but since he’s not actually having sex with men, he’s not gay. Attracted to same-sex partners but not having gay sex right now? Because you’re too busy, say, twirling rainbow flags around? Congrats! You”re ex-gay. (My husband is out of town… so technically I’ve been ex-gay all week. Where’s my parade?)
In other #Teens4Truth news: gay men were described as sexual predators who seek out teenage boys and Roy Moore was described as “a fine Christian gentleman.” And speaking of Roy Moore…
A retired Alabama police officer said she and her colleagues were told decades ago to “make sure” Roy Moore “didn’t hang around” high school cheerleaders, and confirmed previous reports that the Republican Senate candidate was banned at the time from a local mall for predatory behavior toward teenage girls. “The rumor mill was that he liked young girls, and … we were advised that he was being suspended from the mall because he would hang around the young girls that worked in the stores and … really got into a place of where they say he was harassing,” former Gadsden police officer Faye Gary told MSNBC on Tuesday. “We were also told to watch him at the ball games, and make sure that … he didn’t hang around the cheerleaders,” she said.