Hmmm — Well, They Were “Ministering” to Somebody

Los Ange­les Times Pub­lish­es Full-Page Ad Pro­mot­ing Homo­pho­bic Myths

On July 23, the Los Ange­les Times pub­lished a full-page ad by an anti-gay indus­try group called Exo­dus Inter­na­tion­al that ped­dles a series of homo­pho­bic myths about gay peo­ple. The ad, fea­tur­ing a man named Randy Thomas (whose role as Exo­dus’ com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor is not dis­closed in the ad), fraud­u­lent­ly sug­gests that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is caused by absen­tee fathers and sex­u­al abuse, that being gay or les­bian is syn­ony­mous with emo­tion­al prob­lems, and that being gay is some­thing that can and should be cured.

The ad cam­paign — which, like Exo­dus itself, has ties to the largest anti-gay group in the coun­try, Focus on the Fam­i­ly — was deemed accept­able by the Depart­ment of Adver­tis­ing Stan­dards at the Los Ange­les Times, and, accord­ing to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from that depart­ment, by the adver­tis­ing depart­men­t’s upper man­age­ment. How­ev­er, the adver­tis­ing depart­ment has declined to release its adver­tis­ing stan­dards so that the Times’ read­ers can con­sid­er the com­pa­ny pol­i­cy that led to the deci­sion to run the ad.

Founders of “gay recov­ery” min­istry run off togeth­er, leav­ing their wives