Wednesday, April 04, 2007

What a week!

This has been a fantastic but busy week. It is so exciting to see the fruition of a dream. Beyondexgay.com has been generating great feedback, and a lot of people are excited about it, and about the upcoming Ex-Gay Survivor's Conference.

I have ducked out of the house once or twice this week, but beyond that I've had my fingers glued to the keyboard, working on the design of the site, replying to e-mails. Good thing I don't have paying work this week (and no, you'll not hear me saying that very often—We'll see how I feel about it in June when I need money).

In a somewhat random aside, inflation has caught up with my local dollar theater. It is now the dollar-and-a-quarter theater, which doesn't quite have the same ring to it. After we launched the site on Monday, I finally went to sleep for a few hours. Then I went to my dollar theater (imagine my shock and dismay having to hand over that extra quarter) and saw "The Pursuit of Happyness" which was a great movie to see that day. Someone pursuing a dream, and with a happy ending.

My dream, of course, is to have an alternative to the messages from Exodus, to see people heal from their ex-gay experiences, and to deter people from experiencing something that is often emotionally and spiritually harmful. I know it's been Peterson's dream since well before I was even ex-ex-gay, but it's wonderful to have a partner in this, and to see it starting to become a reality. Documentaries are being made, books are being published, people are telling their stories. It's a new day for us.

We just added a wonderful narrative from Darlene Bogle, a former Exodus ministry leader. She has just published a new book called A Christian Lesbian Journey: A Continuation of Long Road to Love. She wrote two pro-ex-gay books while she was involved in the ex-gay world, one of them being The Long Road to Love, which explains the subtitle of her new book. I'm very glad to have her narrative on our site.

In other news, I have had the duct-tape ripped off my mouth (or fingers) and I can finally talk about being interviewed for a Glamour magazine story.

And one of the things that means is I that I can also finally blog about whatever the heck I want. I agreed to a bit of a blogging restriction about certain topics and anecdotes when I first agreed to do the story (2 weeks after I started this blog), but had no idea it would end up being for a year-and-a-half! I understand why they do it, but maybe now I will be able to blog more regularly. Or maybe I am just making excuses for my lack of previous blogging, and blaming the restrictions when it's really just that I didn't get around to blogging. I'm, um, not saying that's something I would do, or anything...

So, April 9th you can see the article at Glamour.com, and April 10th it will be available at newsstands (it's the May issue). I'll write more about the interview and the whole process soon.

Oh, I almost forgot. I'm going to be on "OutQ in the Morning with Larry Flick" show tomorrow morning on the OutQ Sirius Satellite radio channel (channel 109). I should be on for a few minutes around 7:30ish Eastern time if you want to listen in.

2 comments:

  1. Congrats!
    This is a national Glamour, right? So I can send my San Francisco dwelling niece out to buy it? 'Cause I'm not sure we'll get it here for another, say, 4 months or so ;)

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  2. I was quite impressed with your interview on ABC news. I think you can be an inspiration to those who struggle with their sexuality. I fully believe, based on my clinical experience and current research, that sexual orientation is established in fetal development. It is not "switchable" at a later date. Hopefully, society in general, and the religious community in particular, will come to understand this.

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