Since John Paulk, perhaps the country's most famous leader of the Christian "ex-gay" movement, was recently spotted cavorting in Mr. P's, a well-known gay bar in Washington, D.C., our community has been jubilantly reveling in self-congratulations.
But instead of basking with a vengeance in a tragic situation where there are no real winners, perhaps we should instead be learning a lesson from our nemesises at Exodus, the "ex-gay" group which Paulk headed until recently.
After Paulk finally broke down and admitted that his initial alibis—that he had gone into Mr. P's simply looking for a restroom, not knowing it was a gay bar—weren't true, the board of Exodus removed Paulk as the group's chairman. But in an ingenious stroke of public relations, they agreed to keep Paulk on their board on probation.
"We as a board wish to express our ongoing love, support and commitment to John," said a public statement issued by Bob Davies, director of Exodus. "I hope that our redemptive response to this situation will be a godly example" to others, Davies continued.
It would be easy to pooh-pooh and dismiss this action as mere theater designed to appear gracious in a moment of humiliation.
But we must not fail to recognize the power of this gesture. To Paulk, and more importantly to the thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of others like him still struggling with their gayness, Exodus has sent a strong message: We will be there for you even in the bad times. You can depend on us, lean on us. We will not abandon you. We are your home.
In the gay and lesbian community we have not sent that message to Paulk, and thus, we have missed the opportunity to send it to those thousands of gay men and lesbians who may be in his same shoes.
Instead, we have sent the message that if you desert our ranks, we will mock and scorn and ridicule you. We will demonize not only your message, we will demonize you. Even if Paulk wanted to renounce the wrong-headed and harmful bidding of the "ex-gay" movement, who among us can honestly say the man would feel welcome in our ranks?
I know the harm that people like Mr. Paulk perpetrate on our community. I understand how dangerous their message of self-denial, self-repression, self-oppression can be. I am not suggesting for a moment that we allow their perilous, unsound and unscientific words to go unchallenged.
And I realize the all too understandable joy in exposing the hypocrisy of Paulk, the epitome of the "ex-gay" farce. Of course we should reveal Paulk's message as a fraud. Of course we should use this incident to discredit the lies that Exodus perpetrates to the gay and straight communities alike.
But maybe we shouldn't get as much of a collective thrill out of it as we have. Our ecstasy at "catching" Paulk should be tempered by the sorrow of his self-conflicted mind, which reflects the tortured reality of so many others like him.
Our goal should be to win people like Paulk back. And we can't do that with the kind of venomous glee we've shown in Paulk's downfall, however deserving it may be.
We need to remember that people like Paulk are not as much evil as they are tragic. Members of the "ex-gay" community know as well as we do that they are gay and lesbian, and always will be.
While we battle the message of the "ex-gay" movement, we need to show its members not only that they can't change despite wanting to, but that their real home is with the gay and lesbian community. We need to assure them that, unlike Exodus or Focus on the Family, we do not wish simply to use them as pawns in our political struggles, however lofty and noble our pursuit of gay and lesbian rights may be.
Above all else, we need to show these people that their individual lives are important to us. After all, isn't that what our struggle is about—improving the lives of real gay men and lesbians? Whose lives could be more in need of overcoming homophobia than a person like Paulk's?
No one in the lesbian and gay civil-rights movement needs us as a community more than those fighting their own inner demons. And despite all the harm he's done, that includes Paulk.
If we can save people like Paulk, we will have saved countless thousands of other gays and lesbians from the harm in his misguided ways and his sad, sad fate.
Trying to welcome into our fold a person like Paulk is, naturally, much harder than scorning him.
But as we celebrate this alleged victory in our battle with the ex-gay movement, perhaps we should remember one thing: While we might have "caught" Paulk, Exodus has managed to keep him.
MubarakDah@aol.com
