Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 6, 1994                   TAG: 9407060022
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Cal Thomas
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE BIG MEDIA

No member of the big media has promoted the gay agenda more resolutely than The New York Times, which on this subject has crossed the line dividing reporting from advocacy. From its opinion pages, to its Arts and Leisure section, to its business pages and front page, The Times with increasing frequency publishes laudatory stories advancing the gay-rights cause.

Those who believe that the gay lifestyle is a choice (and a wrong one), and that the homosexual political agenda is counterproductive to the general welfare, are stereotyped by big media such as The Times as unreconstructed homophobes and fundamentalist fanatics.

The Public Broadcasting System has gone a step further. Last month, the taxpayer-subsidized network broadcast a piece of propaganda called ``One Nation Under God.''

It was an 83-minute pro-gay ``documentary'' produced by two homosexual film-makers critical of the ex-gay movement and those who believe that it is possible to exit the gay life.

The film focused on two men, Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper, who founded Exodus International, a Christian ministry to homosexuals who wish to change. Two years after founding Exodus, Bussee and Cooper quit the organization, left their wives and children and became lovers. Cooper died of AIDS shortly after the film was finished.

A USA Today ``review'' of the film charged that those engaged in efforts to help homosexuals change engage in ``brainwashing tactics.'' The film compared their methods to electroshock therapy and demonic exorcism.

The current director of Exodus, Bob Davies, called the film ``obviously biased.'' He says no one asked such hard questions as how the two justified adultery in light of their supposed Christian beliefs? How did their wives and children react to their choice to pursue homosexuality? And how did Cooper get AIDS when the two claim to have had a monogamous relationship since 1978 when they began having sex?

It is important for the gay-rights movement to squelch any evidence that homosexuals can change because their political goals are predicated on getting sufficient numbers of people to believe they cannot. When confronted with those who have changed, gay-rights advocates contend they are fooling themselves, or that they were never truly homosexual. If they ever admit that homosexuals can become celibate or heterosexual, their movement is finished.

Bob Davies acknowledges it is difficult to change and that every recovery group has successes and failures.

``The fact that Bussee and Cooper deserted their heterosexual marriages,'' he says, ``does not invalidate the testimony of hundreds of former homosexual [men] and lesbians who have achieved satisfying marital relationships.''

Exodus claims that thousands of men and women have overcome homosexuality in both identity and practice, and that evidence, Davies says, ``destroys the whole foundation of the modern pro-gay movement,'' whose leaders often promote the ``born-gay'' theory.

Davies says Exodus ministries worldwide has received more than 100,000 requests for help and information since 1976 from people in North America, Europe and the South Pacific. There are large numbers of people who are unhappy with their homosexuality and want to change, he says.

The truly intolerant ones are those who want tolerance for themselves but demonstrate none for others, such as Exodus, which is trying to help people who want help.

But don't look for their story to be told on PBS, or in The New York Times, or on any of those award shows where the uniform dress code of red ribbons indicate the ranks have been closed to anything but the party line.

Los Angeles Times Syndicate