An "Ex-Gay" Divorce! What Would Jesus Think?

by Wayne Besen at Truth Wins Out:


Ex-Gay Watch reported today that anti-gay activist Greg Quinlan’s wife of three years, Cheryl Quinlan, appears to have received a decree of divorce in May of 2007, having filed the initial complaint seventeen months earlier.

Who can blame her? From my personal experience, Greg Quinlan is one of the most insufferable, dishonest and phony anti-gay zealots in the nation.

The Quinlan family shamelessly paraded their marriage through the media to prove that people could pray away the gay. Greg exploited his union in a successful political effort to ban gay people from marrying in Ohio. He and Cheryl also capitalized on their wedding by appearing in Dr. Warren Throckmorton’s (Grove City College) hopeless “ex-gay” movie, “I Do Exist.” That Throckmorton hasn’t burned the remaining copies of this humiliating train wreck in a giant bonfire (or, more appropriately, Hellfire) says all you need to know about his values and morality.

Now, instead of being honest about his failed marriage to an “ex-lesbian,” Quinlan, also an ex-gay poster boy, slunk out of Ohio in the dead of night and went to work for the New Jersey Family Policy Council. When you go to the group’s website, they have much to say about gay people. However, notably missing from the “issues” section of the site are editorials about divorce. Perhaps, now that Quinlan has personal experience in this arena, he can contribute to the commentary. He can begin by writing an essay on why Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, but was quite clear that divorce was unacceptable.

I want to know why Quinlan is still working for a “pro-family” organization, when the one family unit he was responsible for - he destroyed. Who does this hypocrite think he is to tell me or anyone else how to run their family? Aside from wrecking a marriage, what makes this holier-than-thou busybody an expert? It seems he would get his own house in order before preaching to others. But, unfortunately, these types who fight their inner-demons by attacking others on the public stage can never mind their own business.

The first time I heard of Quinlan is when I worked for the Human Rights Campaign in 1998. The ambitious ex-gay activist tried to climb the career ladder by lying about his past. He said that he had worked for HRC, when in reality, no one had ever heard of him. Instead of apologizing, he kept repeating this lie, as if by mere repetition it would become true.

My next run-in with Quinlan came on a television show when he seemed a little “off” and tried to shout me down. After the show, I pointed out that he still seemed stereotypically gay, which sent him into a tizzy. For a decade, Quinlan has been railing at me for pointing out the obvious – he does not appear to be heterosexual. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this, unless you are Quinlan and make your living as an ex-gay activist who strives (and fails) to appear as a beacon of masculinity and heterosexuality.

My saga with Quinlan continued in 2006, when he was working with the bizarre group, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX), which sponsored an “Ex-Gay Educators Caucus” booth at the National Education Association’s annual convention in Orlando. After Truth Wins Out held a press conference condemning the Ex-Gay Educators Caucus (which is a front and Trojan Horse for anti-gay political organizations), I peacefully walked into the exhibition hall and up to their booth.

I asked one simple question to the activists, “How many educators were part of the ex-gay caucus?” Upon asking, I was physically accosted by Quinlan. Ironically, he had called security on me, even though he was the hostile party. When security arrived, he made up a fake story and I was forced to leave the conference. (It is important to make clear that I had previously and subsequently been to dozens of ex-gay and anti-gay conferences without incident.)

This Orwellian scenario was to become a pattern with PFOX and Quinlan. They would intentionally inflame a situation and then call security and act as if they were innocent actors, when they were really the instigators. Their perverse goal is to portray ex-gays as victims and create phony martyrs that could be shamelessly flogged in the media – much like Quinlan’s marriage.

PFOX pulled this unseemly stunt last year at a Virginia fair – claiming that an ex-gay at their booth was assaulted, when the incident likely never took place. After weeks of denying an incident occurred at the fair, the police belatedly said that something happened. However, the police have no perpetrator, no arrests, no witnesses and simply repeated PFOX’s uncorroborated claims.

Only weeks after the alleged fair incident, PFOX and Quinlan badly undermined their credibility and martyr strategy. PFOX had another booth at a fair in Falls Church, Virginia. Curious, the publisher of the Falls Church News Press, Nicholas Benton, (disclosure, I write a column for the newspaper) came up to the PFOX booth to photograph it for his next edition. Quinlan did not know who Benton was – and preceded to threaten to have him arrested for inciting violence and a hate crime. The embarrassing incident exposed the PFOX strategy of crying wolf and showed Quinlan’s propensity for storytelling.

Last week, PFOX allegedly filed a lawsuit with the DC Office of Human Rights, once again falsely portraying ex-gays as victims who needed legal protection. Furthermore, it now appears that PFOX may not have even filed a real lawsuit, making their claim to have done so their latest, empty publicity stunt.

PFOX and Quinlan are the bottom of the barrel of ex-gay activists. His divorce – and cover up of the incident – speaks to his lack of character and utter hypocrisy. It is time Quinlan step down and get a real job, because his twisted morality play has come to an end. He now has been reduced to a self-righteous sinner who makes a living browbeating others into living up to a standard in which he notably failed.

What would Jesus think?