So we had our meeting Wednesday, and two members of a Christian student organization showed up. It was wonderful. They were very respectful, non-judgmental, and they invited us to a picnic along with another LGBT org, and we hear that they may be inviting other student organizations in general, so luckily this time nothing negative happened.

In preparation to avoid any negative circumstances, our E-Board decided to make this meeting "Closing the Circle". For our organization, at the beginning of the year we do "Crossing the Line" and advertise it to get as many people as possible there, and then a moderator reads statements of identity such as "I have or have had an eating disorder" or "I identify as a person of color", and people step forward as they feel it applies to them, then those who have crossed the line are given a chance to speak, typically encouraged to make their statement "I never want to hear..." and whatever they would like to fill that with. For Closing the Circle, we do not advertise so that it is only those members who have been active in our organization over the past year, and it is a silent activity, meant more for personal reflection and quiet contemplation. We did it at the meeting when the Christians came largely because it is a silent activity to discourage any outbursts or anything of that sort, and for them to see who we are... more than just gay or heathens or however we may fear being seen, but rather as everything we are as people... and a lot of us had things in common with the two who came to our meeting. For me, I was excited to see one of them step forward for "I am an ally". I'm not sure he knew what it meant in the LGBT sense, but even the fact that they participated with us was encouraging.

So, update on my campus religious organization issue.

Quick recap: My campus's Christian organizations have recently been mobilizing- confronting non-Christian individuals on campus and challenging their beliefs, closing their doors to questioning students (only allowing in affirmed Christian students), and most concerning to my position questioning LGBT students on campus and trying to "save" us.

Most recently, the leader of a group on campus asked our President when our next meeting is, and after she told him she asked if he wanted time to speak at the meeting or what we could do for him, and he said he just wanted to "show up". One of our students was told that this person and some of the students in his organization are going to come to our meeting and pray over us. Well, we notified our advisor and she went to the director of student activities. Our initial plan was apparently to allow them 3 minutes at the beginning of our meeting to lead us in a prayer and hope that they made them happy. Now I'm going to preface this by admitting that I have some pretty "atheistic" views. I put that in quotes, because I'm not necessarily anti-beliefs, or an anarchist like some would associate with that term. Simply put, I don't believe in any sort of higher power, and I don't like those views being forced on anyone who doesn't seek them out. I think it's fine to have a personal belief system, and to share that with like-minded individuals... but persecution is definitely outside my "things that are OK" zone. So I kind of went crazy. I told our advisor in our meeting that there was absolutely no way we should allow them in our doors, no less allow them to pray over us.

So I want to start out with full disclosure about this post... I am a 2008 graduate of Eastern Michigan University in the Higher Education Student Affairs program which is housed in the same department that the counseling program is housed in. During my time at EMU I was the Acting Graduate Student Body President and championed many issues around equal rights for LGBT students.

Now with that being said here we go.......

You can find a few news articles about this story here:
WorldNetDaily
The Eastern Echo
Ann Arbor News

From the Ann Arbor News:
"The Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom says student Julea Ward was dismissed from her graduate program in March after refusing to affirm a client's homosexual behavior prior to a counseling session, according to a press release from the group.

David French, ADF senior counsel, said the school initiated a disciplinary process against Ward despite the fact that she followed her supervising professor's advice and referred the client to a counselor who did not have a conscience issue with homosexuality.

Ward then allegedly was informed that the only way to stay in her program would be to undergo a remediation process to change her beliefs as they relate to counseling about homosexual relationships, the Defense Fund Center said. When she refused, she was given a formal review hearing, after which she was dismissed from the program. The dismissal was upheld March 26 by the dean of EMU's College of Education, the press release said."

~~~

So... I have an update on the religious issues with my campus. After our meeting this week, some members noticed a Christian group sitting near us discussing gays in the bible, and their leader followed our President to our office and asked her when and where we meet. According to some of our members, they are planning on sitting in on our meeting and praying over us.

Seriously.

So, I have a couple ideas for how to deal with this situation. My first was to let them, then I would get together a bunch of my gay guy friends and our President would get together her bi and lesbian buddies, and we'd go to their meeting and just make out. That idea got shot down. So I guess I'm going with my plan two: I just so happen to have a good relationship with the staff of our campus newspaper, and I'm inviting them to our next meeting. If they don't show up, hey at least they're covering our organization... but if they do, that's a hell of a lead in to our Hate Crime Awareness Week where we deal with issues of bias and hate on campus. Also, it'll be a great way to get the campus involved in taking action against organizations who at this point seem like they're stalking us, and making our members not only comfortable attending meetings, but being on campus at all.

I'll let you guys know how things shape up as they go... right now it looks like things are going to get more interesting before they go boring again.

Knock, knock. Who's there? Ex-Gay. Ex-Gay who?

Hmmm. Well this is not a "Knock, Knock" joke. It's for real and serious.

More and more colleges and universities are having PFOX and other ex-gay groups contact them. The groups want to put "ex-gay propaganda" in the LGBT & ally resource center/office. Campuses without LGBT centers are also being challenged to have this information on campus in other venues like health centers, diversity offices, etc. As pointed out repeatedly, there is no scientific evidence that shows "ex-gay reparative treatments" to work; however, the harms associated are well documented.

At the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting, August 10, 2006, the organization released the following statement: “For over three decades the consensus of the mental health community has been that homosexuality is not an illness and therefore not in need of a cure. The APA’s concern about the positions espoused by NARTH and so-called conversation therapy is that they are not supported by the science. There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. Our further concern is that the positions espoused by NARTH and Focus on the Family create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish."