Rick Warren's Ex-Gay Group: What You Need To Know

Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish reported this morning on Rick Warren’s Ex-Gay group. The following (excerpt only) was received from one of his readers.

Most people probably don’t know this, but Warren’s Saddleback Church has a Friday night program called Celebrate Recovery. On the whole the program is modeled after the twelve steps, albeit with an evangelical supplement to it. There are subgroups in the program that cater to men with “addictions” to pornography, recovery alcoholics, and women with codependency issues. There is also a group for those who struggle with “same sex attraction”, the discourse of which is directly borrowed from the ex-gay movement. I know this, of course, because I was involved with the group in Spring of 2007.

I looked up Celebrate Recovery (again with the acronyms!), and found that in fact the group is listed on Saddleback’s website as a Signature Ministry. Here’s a link and a screencap of the page in case they decide to delete it from their site. While they’ve done their best to scrub any reference to homosexuality (or as they call it, “Same Sex Attraction”) from the ministry’s main website, there are traces out there. That’s one of the problems with selling your hate far and wide; you can’t control what everybody does with it.

I found one trace at Jubilee Celebrate Recovery, an affiliate group in California. Here’s the page and another screencap, because I expect the post to be gone soon. Note that this is not the page linked to at the top. It’s a post from March 2, 2008 on the apparently defunct blog. “Same Sex Attraction” is listed (way down at the bottom) as a treatable condition along with Chemical Dependency, alcoholism, overeating, and others.

Same Sex Attraction

Is your relationship with God characterized by shame and guilt? Have you pulled away from healthy relationships because of homosexual issues? If you relate to these struggles, we welcome you to join us for hope and strength as we learn how to apply the 8 Recovery Principles to our lives.

But maybe that Jubilee group is just misusing Saddleback’s materials, you know? Could be, except for the group I found in Loveland, Colorado. Crossroads Church did me the great favor of putting the pamphlet for Celebrate Recovery’s Same Sex Attraction group online. Here’s a copy, supplied by the church in handy-dandy pdf format! I found the symptoms of Same Sex Attraction quite interesting. They include stereotypically closeted gay qualities such as:

• Has more opposite-sex friendships than same-sex friendships
• Is overly sensitive to criticisms
• Cannot take good-natured joking or kidding from other men
• Can only guess at what it means to be a “man”
• May have acted out sexually with other men
• Secretly craves healthy, affirming affection from other men but feels awkward accepting or expressing such affection
• Feels unsure of himself
• Plagued by self-doubt and regrets
• Is very sensitive

And that’s not even half of them. Folks, this is Ex-Gay 101. Don’t let the Hawaiian shirts and Krispy Kremes fool you; Jim Dobson’s got nothing on Rick Warren. They are peas in a pod. (A totally heterosexual pod, of course.)

President-elect Obama, there are 33 days left to keep this from becoming the first major blemish on your presidency. Supporting an ex-gay proponent is not acceptable. You cannot support them and expect LGBT people, many of whom bear the psychological and spiritual scars from their abuse by ex-gay groups, and expect us to support you. This is non-negotiable.

33 days.