LOCAL NEWS

Settlement allows ‘ex-gay’ ads on bus shelters
Activist says transit authority was bullied into accepting ‘false advertising’

By PHIL LaPADULA
Friday, October 22, 2004

The Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority has agreed to allow organizers of a so-called “ex-gay” conference to advertise on bus shelters in the St. Petersburg and Tampa areas.

Focus on the Family, a group that claims homosexuals can be changed into heterosexuals through religious counseling, had filed a federal lawsuit against the transit authority after their request to advertise a February 2000 Tampa conference on the bus shelters was denied.

On Oct. 12, the transit authority settled the case, agreeing to allow Focus on the Family to advertise its future “Love Won Out” conferences.

Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy for Focus on the Family, said the group plans to bring one of its ex-gay conferences to Fort Lauderdale in 2006 but that the exact date and venue have not been chosen yet. The group holds five “Love Won Out” conferences in different cities each year, he said.

According to Minnery, a central issue in the lawsuit was Focus on the Family’s argument that “a public entity cannot deny the right to access to a group just because some people think it’s controversial.”

He said the transit authority was obligated to accept advertising as long as the material was “not obscene and did not cause personal injury.”

But Wayne Besen, a South Florida-based activist who wrote a book debunking what he regards as “the myths” of ex-gay ministries, thinks that the injure gay people. He criticized the transit authority for agreeing to allow “false advertising” on its bus shelters.

‘Like cigarettes or asbestos’
“It’s a tough call since there is a free speech issue,” Besen said. “But they’re advertising a product that’s harmful, like cigarettes or asbestos. There are laws against false advertising.”

Besen contends that ex-gay ministries are psychologically harmful to gay and lesbian people and that medical experts have disproved Focus on the Family’s theory that homosexuality can be changed. His book, “Anything But Straight,” documents the failures of ex-gay ministries and the harm that he believes they do.

“Focus on the Family is promoting a psychological point of view that has been discredited by every respected mental health organization in the country,” Besen said. “It’s a conference on failed medical techniques.”

Besen also accused Focus on the Family of bullying the transit authority into accepting the ads.

Group’s attorney led effort to kill dignity bill
“By making it a federal case, as far as I’m concerned they intimidated them and bullied them,” Besen said. “That’s what Focus on the Family does. They push around people who don’t have their kind of money.”

Matt Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, was the attorney who represented Focus on the Family in the transit case. Staver’s group led a successful e-mail campaign in 2003 to persuade state legislators to kill Florida’s Dignity for All Students Act, which seeks to prevent bullying of gay students and students from other targeted groups by training teachers about the problem.

Focus on the family: Being gay not a choice
Staver told the Associated Press that monetary damages were not part of the court settlement in the transit case.

Focus on the Family’s Minnery said the “Love Won Out” conferences are “led by people who have come out of the gay lifestyle.”

“This country has thousands and thousands of individuals who are no longer homosexuals,” Minnery said.

Minnery said Focus on the Family doesn’t believe homosexuality is a choice.

“We believe it has its roots in the psychological bonding, or lack of bonding, between a child and a parent,” Minnery said.

“The orientation is not a choice; the lifestyle is. Nobody has found a gay gene or biological origin.”

Phil LaPadula can be reached at plapadula@expressgaynews.com.

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