Conference Aims To Convert Gays Christian Groups Upset About Growing Cultural Acceptance Of Homosexuality

A generation ago, married characters on “I Love Lucy” didn’t even sleep in the same bed.

Now network television shows have 28 gay characters who portray homosexuality “as a normal, passe thing - almost a cool thing,” said Mike Haley, who spoke Saturday at a conference in Spokane about converting gays to heterosexuality through Christianity.

Gay characters are so common on television that Haley’s employer, Focus on the Family, tapes every show, from “ER” to “The Simpsons,” and analyzes them for their homosexual content.

Haley jokingly calls these evangelical television watchdogs “couch potatoes for Christ.” But he’s dead serious about his campaign to stop what he sees as the “normalization” of homosexuality through television, music, books and school curriculum.

“If we, as parents, are not talking to our children, we are letting their morals be dictated by the media,” Haley said.

Schools use the excuse of fighting harassment of gays and lesbians to feed the message to students that homosexuality is fine, Haley said. It can seem as innocent as a teacher talking to children about the theme song from the popular kids movie “The Lion King” and then telling them it was performed by a gay man - Elton John.

That’s “taking something very positive in their life and marrying it with homosexuality,” Haley said. That’s “normalization through desensitization.”

Saturday’s program was held at Spokane’s Fourth Memorial Church and attended by about 150 people from around the region. The majority were church members from about 35 congregations, according to the conference sponsor, the Spokane Ministerial Association.

Haley, described as “involved in the homosexual community as a teen and young adult,” was one of three speakers.

The conference was prompted by “the growing trend to accept, not merely tolerate, homosexuality as normal,” according to a letter mailed out last month by the ministerial association.

“The purpose of the conference is to develop, through an educational process, a correct response to the lifestyle of the homosexual,” the Rev. John Tusant, executive director of the ministerial association, said in an interview. “We do that through a loving, compassionate acceptance of who they are as people.”

Homosexuality is a choice, Tusant contends, and the Bible says it is a sin. The church and Christ are the only way out, he said.

People who believe gays can change will start wearing green ribbons - as breast cancer awareness advocates wear pink and AIDS prevention activists wear red - to push the idea that gays and lesbians can change, conference speakers announced.

Penny Lancaster, one of the conference organizers, says she pushed for the conference after the Spokane City Council passed a human rights ordinance last January extending the civil rights umbrella over sexual orientation.

That will bring the moral, spiritual and social destruction of Spokane, Lancaster contends. Homosexuality is hard to pull away from, and “the fear is it will happen to our youth,” she said.

Saturday’s message was of great concern to counselors and anti-discrimination activists.

The American Psychiatric Association and the American Pediatric Association have long held that some people are born homosexual and do not choose their sexual orientation, said Maria Peck, a professor with Eastern Washington University’s school of social work. The real problem is the negative messages hurled at gays, lesbians and bisexuals that engender self-hatred, she said.

“If people are going to be loving and accepting, they should be loving and accepting of people for who they are,” Peck said. Instead, conference sponsors are saying they only will be loving and accepting on one important condition: The person must change something they cannot change.

Tying all of this to the human rights ordinance, with a biblical spin, also is disingenuous, said Dean Lynch, who is part of the campaign to defeat the November ballot initiative that would repeal the ordinance.

“We believe there is no biblical basis to deprive persons of the right to housing, employment and public access,” he said.