The following is an excerpt from a revealing interview with a former "ex-gay" minister, Scott Harrison, and I strongly urge you to read the whole interview, as it highlights the vulnerability of those who are desperate enough to go to "ex-gay" ministries which are staffed by people with mind-sets that largely caused, and continues to fuel, that desperation in the first place:
"A minister in your church performed an exorcism on you to root out your homosexuality. How did that happen?
"There was a particular associate minister who was pretty out there. But the problem was he was also extremely intuitive. He would know stuff about you without you ever having told him.
"When you're coming from a perspective that you believe God can give messages to people, words of prophecy, then it's very easy to become prey. This guy got a team of people together. One of the aspects that is pretty strong in Vineyard, still, is that they believe that people can be "demonized." Not meaning that a person is fully possessed by Satan, but that a person has given him or herself over to Satanic strongholds in his or her life, so that it may take an exorcism to release the various demons that this person has given over their lives to.
"What happened as you went through it?
"It was very intense, dramatic, group prayer. It lasted at least three hours. At the end, I was drenched in sweat. There were some real areas of psychological wounding. All I can really describe it as — because of how it happened and the incorrectness of the theology — is that it felt like a spiritual rape to me.
"I'm not saying he [the minister] didn't have good intentions, but it amounted to a spiritual rape. The exorcism occurred that afternoon, and then we ran into the evening church service. I've got hearing issues. I'm fairly hard of hearing; I had hearing aids at the time. This person was convinced that God had given word that I was supposed to give up my hearing aids, that God would heal my hearing. He did this in front of 300 people. I was psychologically vulnerable. I didn't follow my better hunches. Even though it happened over 20 years ago, it's hard to still not blame myself. … I knew there wasn't a demon of homosexuality.
"The [minister] said that if I let him crush my hearing aids, then God would give me back my hearing. He said he would pay for them if God didn't give me back my hearing. Then, he later reneged on that. For the next several weeks, I was faking that my hearing had been healed."
I disagree with Harrison when he says, "Legally, I believe they should be allowed to exist." Why should sadistic "therapies" be legally allowed to exist when they cause untold damage to people, especially emotionally vulnerable people who are looking to "cure" or "change" what cannot be changed; who rely on people, with degrees or not, who profit from the gullibility and ignorance of people who blindly accept the lies spewed by many clergy and others that being Gay is a "sin," is "not in the will of God," "that one's sexual orientation can be changed," and that "one can't be a whole and healthy person and be Gay at the same time?"
The Bible NEVER addresses the issue of sexual orientation; same-sex love is neither more nor less valid or Godly than is heterosexual love! Please read some of the many links in my Links section that amply show that there is absolutely no inconsistency between being Gay and being Christian!
Indeed, those who seek to change what God has made; who seek to deprive others of God's gift of sexuality and emotional fulfillment; who seek to entangle others in psychological and spiritual yokes of bondage; who drive desperate people to further heights of desperation due to the imposition of their ignorance and/or prejudices on these vulnerable and desperate people, and who can make quite a handsome living by so doing, who are out of God's will!
It is no accident that the first words Jesus quoted when He began His public ministry are the following taken from the book of Isaiah (61:1): "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18-19)
To truly understand this crucial message is the first step in understanding Jesus' ministry, and His mandate to all who are His disciples! And, clearly, those who condemn the gifts of God and what God has made are none of His!
And anyone who chooses to listen to wolves in sheep's clothing, be they seemingly well-intentioned or not, are putting themselves in a prison whose doors Jesus came to open!
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