The reading for this week consisted of Tanya Erzen’s Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement. Erzen’s work is an ethnography of individuals at “New Hope”, which she states is the oldest ex-gay organization in the United States (Erzen, 2006). Erzen excels at providing historical and social context in her writing along with her ethnographic findings, giving the reader a well-rounded basis to form their opinions from. The “ex-gay” movement is one that is widely known, with ardent supporters as well as extremely influential people opposed to the movement (Erzen, 2006). It is common knowledge that Vice President Mike Pence is known to be a supporter of the ex-gay movement, with people claim he has made statements
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For example, Erzen discusses a conversation with Lars about the hypocrisy of the church, in which she quotes Lars a as saying “…The church has a hell of a long ways to go before accepting people where they are because they hate people who are gay. When I was at church the very last time they were talking about Matthew Shepard and his sin and what a tragedy it was, and I wanted to stand up and say ‘You are the problem, you are the reason Matthew Shepard got murdered” (Erzen, 2006, pg. 66). Although members of New Hope may not have condoned the murder of Matthew Shepard, by staying silent in circumstances such as these, they are exercising a form of complacency (Erzen, 2006). I had a very diverse religious experience growing up. As a child, I attended a catholic church with my mother where I was baptized, went through communion and confirmation. As a teenager in my confirmation classes, I remember being told by our Sunday school teacher that “God hates fags, but if you resist sin you can still go to heaven”. The gray area was that if you did not act on your “sexual urges”, you still had the chance to “redeem your
For example, Erzen discusses a conversation with Lars about the hypocrisy of the church, in which she quotes Lars a as saying “…The church has a hell of a long ways to go before accepting people where they are because they hate people who are gay. When I was at church the very last time they were talking about Matthew Shepard and his sin and what a tragedy it was, and I wanted to stand up and say ‘You are the problem, you are the reason Matthew Shepard got murdered” (Erzen, 2006, pg. 66). Although members of New Hope may not have condoned the murder of Matthew Shepard, by staying silent in circumstances such as these, they are exercising a form of complacency (Erzen, 2006). I had a very diverse religious experience growing up. As a child, I attended a catholic church with my mother where I was baptized, went through communion and confirmation. As a teenager in my confirmation classes, I remember being told by our Sunday school teacher that “God hates fags, but if you resist sin you can still go to heaven”. The gray area was that if you did not act on your “sexual urges”, you still had the chance to “redeem your