PULPIT: Focus deepens view on causes of gay attraction

Zero.

That’s how much the gay sex scandal involving Christian right leader George Rekers will affect Focus on the Family’s Sexual Orientation Change Efforts, or SOCE, a series of programs to help people with same-sex attraction become heterosexual.

“As more people continue to walk in freedom in this particular area of struggle, the occasional personal scandal pales in comparison to the individual success stories,” said Focus spokeswoman Carrie Gordon Earll.

Rekers’ 10-day European trip with a 20-year-old gay male escort places him on a growing list of Christian leaders who preached against same-sex attraction, then got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

A partial list:

• Colin Cook, a Seventh-day Adventist minister and founder of Homosexuals Anonymous, was caught in the 1980s having gay phone sex and giving massages to naked men.

• John Paulk, founder of Focus on the Family’s now-defunct Love Won Out, which sponsored seminars in U.S. cities on same-sex attraction, was caught in a gay bar in Washington, D.C in 2000.

• Ted Haggard, former senior pastor of New Life Church who infamously mocked gays in the documentary “Jesus Camp,” got caught in a gay sex scandal in 2006.

But some observers say the Rekers scandal is the most significant fall because Rekers’ research seemed to give scientific credibility to the notion that gay people can be transformed into heterosexuals. Organizations like Focus, Exodus International and National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality relied on his writings to help them argue that changing someone’s sexual orientation at its most primal level is possible.

Meanwhile, evidence mounts, including from the American Psychological Association, that people become gay through nature, not nurture, and trying to change their gender attraction can be psychologically harmful.

Focus may well be unaffected by Rekers’ fall. But its modifications to its same-sex attraction programs suggest at least some acceptance of the secular reports on gays. 

When James Dobson was calling the shots at Focus, the overarching view was that poor parental role models in childhood was the predominant factor in making people gay.

That has changed.

“Homosexuality is likely caused by a complex interaction of psycho-social, environmental and possibly biological factors,” Melissa Fryrear, former spokeswoman on gay issues at Focus, told me in March.

Earll says critics simplify the ideas espoused by Focus on same-sex attraction. “We do not advocate a one-size-fits-all approach or any particular model,” she said.

Focus has hardly embraced the APA findings on gender attraction. But it has modified and deepened its approach over the years, something typically overlooked by Focus critics.

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For my interview with a leading critic of Focus’ SOCE programs, go to my blog, The Pulpit, at www.thepulpit.freedomblogging.com.