Peterson Toscano's A Musing

Beyond Ex-Gay Update

Since this summer's Ex-Gay Survivor Conference, Christine and I have primarily worked directly with ex-gay survivors, supporting them in telling their stories and helping them find necessary resources for their recovery. We have also met to begin plans for the next two years. Some exciting developments in store.

In addition, we continue to update the bXg website as well as respond to messages we regularly receive from ex-gay survivors all over the world. We see the ex-gay survivor movement as one that will grow with the people who feel drawn to be a part of it.

We welcome your suggestions and submissions for articles, narratives, art work, poetry and anything else you think might contribute to the site and the movement. We are finding that by telling our stories, we begin to understand more what we did, why we did it and what it cost us. Then we can get beyond those ex-gay experiences and enter more fully into life.

Here is a little update:

Video of the Ex-Gay Survivor Conference (15 min):
Here is a shorter trailer version

Featured Question
Okay, complete disclosure, Christine and I envisioned a "Question of the Month" but somehow it turned into the Question Every Six Months! Anyway, here is the current featured question:

What would you tell someone if they were thinking about attending an ex-gay program?

Check out five different answers from around the world as well as previous questions and answers.

New Articles
Loving Dissonance by Tom O'Toole
I also wrote some articles:
Ex-Gay Harm--Let Me Count the Ways
Change was NOT Possible series of articles

We have over 25 articles listed on the articles page with specific articles for ex-gay survivors, parents of LGBT children and spouses. We just posted two articles in Spanish and one in Swedish. If you know a language well and would like to translate some articles, let us know.

New Narratives
Seth Guyette
Barbara Leavitt
David Christie
Brandon Tidwell

Art Work
Collages of ex-gay survivors designed by Christine Bakke
Also we have some new artwork up at the visual art page--photos by Gregg Moreland, new art by Michael Goll, David Christie and Christine Bakke

In the fall a woman from Kentucky doing research for a college project contacted me. A married straight woman, she knew almost nothing about the ex-gay movement before her research project. She told me that she found bXg to be the most thorough and informative site out there. She read everything with interest, but said that the site became real for her when she began to read the narratives of other straight women. Her husband is not gay, but it got her thinking, what if he were? and suddenly the ex-gay survivor story became personal.

This is the power of narrative and one of the hallmarks of the bXg site. We wish to tell our stories as a witness and a warning. For most of us ex-gay therapy and ministries caused more harm than good. Through the art and narratives and such we have begun to build a public record to tell a story that has rarely been told.

Thank you all who have contributed so far.

Labels: bXg, ex-gay, ex-gay survivor

posted by Peterson Toscano @ 2:35 AM