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The Gay-to-Straight Mandate by Yvette Cantu Schneider
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] had been a Christian for just under a year when it happened. I had moved into a church house with 7 other young women, made many good friends, and gotten into the habit of reading my Bible for hours each day. It was obvious to everyone that I was on the right track with…
Read Full ArticleIt’s Time for a Change by Yvette Cantu Schneider
I’m never surprised when someone who claimed not to be gay suddenly announces that, surprise, they actually are gay. Like I’ve said many times before, I haven’t met a so-called ex-gay man I didn’t think was still gay. Not one. It’s one of many reasons I left the Christian Right and the advocacy work I…
Read Full ArticleWomen’s Sports Ministry and Lesbianism by Yvette Cantu Schneider
Gay men and lesbians were aggrieved in 1983 when conservative pastor and leader of the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell, infamously stated, “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals, it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.” Lesbians, with minuscule infection rates compared with people who have sex with men, responded to Falwell…
Read Full ArticleThe Whiteness of Exodus by Yvette Cantu Schneider
My friend Adrienne messaged me after she saw a screening of Pray Away at a film festival in Chicago, “I couldn’t help but notice how very White the film is.” I observed the same situation when I attended my first Exodus conference in 1999 and walked into the main building to a sea of white…
Read Full ArticleChristopher Yuan, Stop Lying about the Participants in the Documentary Pray Away
The documentary Pray Away will premiere in 190 countries and 37 languages on Netflix on August 3rd. Former leaders of the you-can’t-be-gay-and-still-be-acceptable-to-God movement tell stories of their involvement in various ministries and their subsequent remorse and trauma, experienced and inflicted upon others. Pray Away will be seen by millions of people worldwide and it will surely…
Read Full ArticleJesus, AIDS, and How I Became “Ex-Gay” by Yvette Cantu Schneider
My road to evangelical Christianity and ex-gay ministry was not your typical “come to Jesus” journey. I suppose no one’s is. As a kid, God was a complicated figure in my life. I was raised a cultural Catholic, meaning we went to mass on Sundays and participated in the sacraments, but nothing more-just the basics.…
Read Full ArticleDisillusionment with Ex-Gay Ministries by Yvette Cantu Schneider
My disillusionment with ex-gay ministry/conversion therapy happened, to quote Ernest Hemingway’s character Mike in the novel The Sun Also Rises, “gradually, then suddenly.” When I eagerly became a Christian in my mid-twenties, I approached being “ex-gay” with the same zeal I approached God and His Church. My thunderclap conversion from militant lesbian to dedicated Christian,…
Read Full ArticleThe Long Legal Battle for LGBTQ Equality Began 150 Years Ago
Bostock v. Clayton County (June 15, 2020), a landmark Supreme Court of the United States decision (5-3), ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ employees from employment discrimination by expanding the definition of “sex” to include sexual orientation or gender identity. Within the environs of conservative political and religious…
Read Full ArticleWhere Does Christian Anti-LGBTQ Ideology Come From?
I was reviewing yet another book in the Christian non-LGBTQ affirming niche recently. I’ve now read and reviewed forty-five such books. Beyond the author’s personal story if it is a memoir, they all share a few similar core messages: homosexuality is sexual brokenness. We cannot find the reason for it, but it likely, at its…
Read Full ArticlePushing Back on Yuan and Publisher’s Attempt to Censor Review of Holy Sexuality
UPDATE: November 30: Bigger guns directly protested my reviewing on Yuan and other Christian authors. I was depicted by them as a “layperson and a troll,” where as Yuan is an academic. My goodness. One of the book’s five star reviewers has only reviewed a door latch. Do we really want to dismiss the reviews on…
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