Anglican Mainstream

Mario Bergner responds to Lucy Bannerman’s article in the Times

Redeemed Lives and Living Waters UK gave a fringe event at Lambeth 2008 entitled Pastoral Care After the Sexual Revolution.  Together, Lisa Guinness and I did our very best to communicate our central point.  Namely, that all people have been negatively impacted by the fallout from the sexual revolution of the 1960’s.  Be it multiple remarriages after multiple divorces, cohabitation, recreational sex, the proliferation of pornography on the internet, sexual addiction, abortion, isolating loneliness or same-sex attractions: we are all in need of relational and sexual healing.  While both our ministries have helped many men and women seeking healing for unwanted same-sex attractions, the overwhelming majority of the people who seek us out are Christians dealing with other issues listed above.

At the second session of our fringe event, a London Times reporter asked to sit in.  Earlier that week I had given Joanna Clegg of the London Times an interview, and found her a delightful, objective and honest reporter.  But Joanna was part of the official press core of Lambeth.  But this reporter, I realized only later, crashed Lambeth and was not wearing a press pass suspended from the official Lambeth lanyard that Joanna wore.  Lisa and I briefly discussed whether or not to allow this reporter into the session.  Lisa thought we should not.  I thought we should, having had such a good interview with Joanna.  Lisa graciously gave way to my inclination.

            At first, this reporter seemed so sweet.  But when we opened the floor for questions and answers at the end of our talk, she dominated the time.  She had just returned from North Carolina where she attended the Exodus International as an undercover reporter.  She recounted to us several times that Exodus, ‘makes young people feel bad about being gay.’  To support her conclusion she mentioned seeing young women crying at the conference, assuming their tears were issuing forth because of their participation in the Exodus Conference.   The sweetness that greeted us before our event began quickly turned into outright aggression.  She continually reiterated to us that we were really ex-gay ministries.  Neither Living Waters UK nor Redeemed Lives employ the term ‘ex-gay’, or any references to gayness.  Why?  Because we do not believe that ‘gay’ is a viable category for describing human sexuality.  Gayness is not an ontological state.  This reporter didn’t seem to believe us.  Actually, it seemed she did not want to believe us. 

 So, I tried to explain  using an illustration from an episode of Sex and The City.  I paraphrased , “A few years ago I was seated in the lobby of a hotel waiting for my hosts to pick me up for dinner.   On the television was an episode of Sex and The City.  Now, I have never seen this television series before or since, but the scene I watched fascinated me.  Four beautiful young women sat around a bar, talking.  One spoke of a strange event that happened with a colleague.  ‘He asked me out for a drink after work yesterday.  Knowing he was gay, I thought there was no harm in it.  After a few drinks, we decided to have dinner together.  We had a great conversation, and when dinner was over he walked with me outside and hailed a cab.  But before I got into the taxi, he took me in his arms and gave me a kiss.  What was that about?’  One of the other young women answered, ‘Maybe he’s a straight gay guy.’  Another one of the women said, ‘Maybe he’s a gay straight guy.’  A third women said, ‘Why does he have to be straight or gay, maybe he’s just a guy.’”  My point was that the categories of gay or straight are falling out of favor with popular culture.  It seems that even Hollywood understands that male sexuality is plastic and doesn’t fit into polarized little boxes like gay or straight. After the fringe event was over, one of the leaders from Zaccheus Fellowship, an ex-gay Anglican ministry in Canada, said to me, “‘That reporter walked by our booth yesterday in the Lambeth Marketplace and said one word, ‘disgusting.’”   

Just this week her article on Exodus International, The Camp That ‘Cures’ Homosexuality appeared in the London Times Online.  It is a mix of accuracy, harsh judgments, contradiction and deception.  Her name is Lucy Bannerman and her writing style is compelling.  She tells a good story.  Her voice and point of view are crystal clear.  Miss Bannerman thinks ministries like Exodus International are, well, disgusting.   She judged all 800 people in attendance as having ‘awkwardness in common.’   At the same time she captures the sincerity of people seeking help for unwanted same-sex attractions.  From the article, quoting Michelle, Ms Bannerman’s  28 year old roommate at the conference, ‘My homosexuality is just one of many things to come from this place of pain, and all it gave me was a heart full of ache.’  So true.  Likewise, my experience of living in the gay lifestyle caused me deep heart ache.  The ache of short-term unfaithful lovers.  The ache of seeing many of my dear sweet friends die of AIDS in the 1980’s and 1990’s.  The ache of the fear of growing old realizing the gay community prizes youth and beauty and ridicules aging gay men as trolls, aunties and old queens.  The ache of never having my own biological children with the partner I love.  These are the aches that motivate many people to find a way out of homosexuality, either through the church or through psychotherapy.  For Christians, even if such attractions never go away, a life of singleness and holiness before God is better than the isolating emotional instability of the gay community.  

But Ms Bannerman contradicts herself too.  Quoting Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus USA, ‘The opposite of homosexuality is not heterosexuality.  It’s holiness.’  Then later in the article she states, ‘We are told repeatedly that marriage is evidence of healing’ although she never identifies who said that.  But Ms Bannerman’s quotes from Alan Chambers, two other participants, and her own words attests to just the opposite.  Ricardo, a doctor from Illinois shares, ‘I used to think marriage was the ultimate goal but I’ve come to accept that I’ll struggle with [same-sex attraction] for the rest of my life.’  Ms Bannerman’s roommate discloses, ‘It’s not about gay or straight.  It’s about holiness and my relationship with Christ.’  Even Ms Bannerman accurately reports, ‘She wants to marry but admits that she may never be attracted to men.’  At our fringe event at Lambeth, Lisa and I both stated several times that the goal of healing is not marriage, but wholeness in Christ and that the Good News of Jesus Christ for self-identified gays is not, ‘Jesus loves you and wants to make you straight.’  Vouching for the leadership at Exodus International, many of whom I have known for twenty years, I  can assure that do not promote marriage as a goal.   The truth is just the reverse; all too many people have mistakenly entered into marriage thinking a partner of the other-sex was all they needed to deal with their same-sex issues.  Sadly, this is the bad advice given to many men and women with unwanted same-sex attractions, “You just need to get married and have a bunch of kids.”  Equally dangerous is when a person overcoming same-sex attraction marries against the counsel of others, only to find themselves bonded to a partner who has personal issues that war against future growth and healing.  What follows such a tragic mistake is a regression into same-sex attractions to escape from the efforts it takes to live day-in and day-out with a spouse who has great needs.

Perhaps the most egregious feature of Ms Bannerman’s article is her deception and lack of regard for Michelle’s turmoil.  Ms Bannerman went to the Exodus Conference ‘masquerading as one of hundreds of homosexual strugglers.’  Although I am sure Michelle is not the real name of Ms Bannerman’s roommate at the Exodus Conference, I would think ‘Michelle’ shared what she did with Ms Bannerman trusting she was disclosing to a fellow sojourner.   How devastating for ‘Michelle’ if she reads Ms Bannerman’s article, only to have her deepest sexual struggles printed in the London Times Online.  I realizes now that Lisa Guinness was right.  We should have never let Ms Bannerman into our fringe event.

Rev Mario Bergner is an Anglican Priest and Director of Redeemed Lives. www.redeemedlives.org

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