Joe Dallas

Joe Dallas, the former leader of Exodus International and speaker at Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out conferences, appeared yesterday on The Janet Mefferd Show to attack Christian figures who support equal rights for gays and lesbians. Dallas claims that he is an “ex-gay” and runs his reparative therapy group, Genesis Counseling. He has also endorsed the work of the immensely discredited Joseph Nicolosi, an officer of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality and who jokes that it is better for a child to have brain damage than to be gay.

While the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association of Social Workers and the American Psychiatric Association all deny the effectiveness, safety and ethics of ‘ex-gay’ reparative therapy, Dallas in his book When Homosexuality Hits Home claims that people can change their sexual orientation. He lists the “causes” of homosexuality, including “unmet needs for bonding with the same sex” and “early sexual violation” like child molestation. He also argues that Satan has a role:

Satan’s strategy is leading humans astray, whether the arena is doctrinal or moral, is to deceive an individual into thinking that what God has forbidden is not really wrong or destructive, but is, in fact, life enhancing. So it was I the garden when Satan tempted Eve; so it may well be with your loved one. The sin of homosexuality is human nature, but the belief that sin is not really sin comes not from human nature alone but from an ancient and evil messenger.

Dallas told Mefferd that church leaders who are gay, such as Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, or who support gay rights are all asking for God’s judgment. “So I really tremble for Bishop Robinson and the many other leaders who are in essence perverting the truth that they have been commissioned to speak,” Dallas said, “and I don’t want to be anywhere near them when they stand before God.” He went on to compare Christians who back gay rights to cultists and Nazis who distort scripture:

That causes me to wonder when Bishop Robinson says he’s going to evangelize, what exactly he means by evangelizing, of course I would love to see anyone preaching the gospel to homosexual people or heterosexual people anywhere but I’m not sure what gospel he will be preaching to put it plainly and I’m not sure what his concept of evangelism is going to be, I suspect that it will be a message to young people stating that homosexuality is legitimate, therefore they can embrace their homosexuality and do so with God’s approval.

I am reminded of the warning to those who call good evil and evil good and darkness light. There is a particular judgment, and this is the heart of the matter, there is a particular judgment that is placed biblically on leaders who teach falsehood, it is of course serious when any Christian goes into error, whether moral error or doctrinal error, but you remember James said, ‘my brethren let us not be many teachers because we will receive the greater judgment.’ Shepard’s in the Old Testament who misrepresented God and misrepresented truth were in a terrible position and had serious judgments placed on them. Jesus was death-on-wheels when he talked to religious leaders who proclaimed falsehoods.

So I really tremble for Bishop Robinson and the many other leaders who are in essence perverting the truth that they have been commissioned to speak, and I don’t want to be anywhere near them when they stand before God.

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And as you know, if you took the Bible hard enough you could make it say whatever you want it to, cults can do that, Nazis did that and I’m afraid it’s being done today under the guise of civil rights and gay liberation.