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Anti gay billboard sparks debate Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.gazette.net/200503/rockville/news/255730-1.htmlhttp://www.gazette.net/200503/rockville/news/255730-1.html
Billboard sparks debate
by Warren Parish
Staff Writer
Jan. 19, 2005
Some area residents are crying discrimination after a billboard promoting the controversial idea that homosexuals can become heterosexuals was posted on Hungerford Drive in Rockville last week.
Visible from the southbound lanes of Hungerford (Route 355), the billboard located south of the East Gude Drive intersection displays a handsome man whose smile borders a caption that reads: "Ex-Gays prove that change is possible."
The towering advertisement is sponsored by Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), a national group based in Virginia advocating the idea that homosexuals are not born gay and can choose, with counseling, their own sexuality.
"I just think it's appalling, especially in a county as educated as Montgomery County," said Taryn Goodman, a former Damascus resident who saw the sign while driving to her job in Rockville. "It speaks to the fact when people are trying to convert gays into straights. People have a right to be who they are. This isn't a disease."
PFOX members hope the billboard, which they say pictures an ex-gay who has changed his orientation and started a family as a straight man, promotes the organization's message that such a transformation is possible.
No one is bashing gays over the head, PFOX Executive Director Regina Griggs said. It is saying that those who want to go straight can, she added.
"All we want is children to know that change is possible," Griggs said.
"There is no gay gene," she added. "Don't make excuses. If you are happy living a homosexual lifestyle, then I support you in that. If other people are unhappy, then they deserve a right to change and self-determination."
James Packard, a former Rockville resident whose 2004 San Francisco marriage to Erwin Gomez was invalidated by the California Supreme Court, is angered by the idea that homosexuals can become straight men and women through rehabilitation.
"There are those individuals and nutcases that believe homosexuals can be reformed," said Packard, who now lives in Laytonsville.
"We're supposed to be a community that comes together, and now we've got this group who says it's not right to be gay because of religion or their background. And that's kind of sad. I find it offensive," he added.
North Bethesda resident Ananda Jacob agreed.
"I am appalled by this whole ex-gay thing," he said. "If somebody was an ex-gay, they were probably not gay in the first place.
"People who claim that this is something that can change are people that simply just have their heads in the sand," he added.
Griggs would not identify the man pictured on the poster, saying he has received death threats after participation with the group.
Ex-gay advocacy groups like PFOX are "universally rejected" by all major psychological and health organizations, said Dan Furmansky, executive director of Equality Maryland, a statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization based in Silver Spring.
"They're free to disseminate their information," he said. "But it's so far out of the mainstream it would be ludicrous if it weren't so sad.
"What is discriminatory is they use this messaging to try to deny rights to gay individuals and their families and to prey upon young people grappling with their sexual orientation and to push them potentially one step closer to suicide," Furmansky added.
PFOX members, who failed last year in their attempt to shape the content of sexual education in Montgomery County high schools more to their liking, say pro-gay advocates are the discriminatory ones.
"There's a complete intolerance on the other side," said Mignon Middleton, a self-described ex-lesbian member of the Prince George's County chapter of PFOX. "The billboard is up there and might have helped some people that need help. It's not showing hatred toward anybody.
"I see it as discrimination on the other end," she said. "If someone said, 'I have these feelings and I want to overcome it,' to deny them that right to me that's discriminatory."
The PFOX Web site holds that sexual orientation laws "legitimize intolerance against former homosexuals" by silencing the ex-gay community as bigots.
However, arguing ex-gays are discriminated against provides PFOX a sympathetic shelter of legitimacy from which to operate a veiled anti-gay program, Silver Spring resident Cliff Witt said.
Gays and their supporters contend that by denying any genetic predisposition to homosexuality, PFOX and other groups like it repudiate the very identity of the homosexual minority, undercutting the need for legal protections.
When it comes to sexuality, there is no choice, Witt said.
"And if there were, why would anyone choose to be discriminated against? That is the major flaw in their thinking. What it is that they're up to is unclear," he said.
The billboard represents one step in the Christian Right's attempt to spread a message of intolerance in Maryland, Furmansky said.
"I find it very interesting that it is up the week of the presidential inauguration," said Ruth Hanessian, longtime Rockville resident and pet store owner. "It's a very extremist minority that has found the funds to put that up and I find that terribly, terribly disturbing."
PFOX has little funding and no large money backer, Griggs said. The movable billboard, she said, was not designed to pressure the county school board and was previously on display in Richmond, Va., in the fall.
That doesn't sway Hanessian.
"It is a classic example of why we have discrimination in this county," Hanessian said. "Because people don't respect the rights of others.
"It is the type of thing I see as I drive by in southern Bible-belt states. And I keep on driving," she said.
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