LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

If she worked at a college as anything higher than a janitor, she'd have some sort of readily available published work and doesn't.

I wouldn't call it strict proof, but it's a strong indicator that you're hugging a cardboard cutout here and should probably stop.

EDIT: okay now we have something to look into at least.

edited 20th Feb '13 10:29:32 PM by Pykrete

There is a real person making these claims, but that doesn't mean that her claims are real. Evidence seems to be on the side of she made this up.

edited 20th Feb '13 10:27:15 PM by shimaspawn

I wonder if you guys would pull out the CSI kits if she said she was a former pastor's wife who embraced the lesbian lifestyle....

'Evidence' eh.....

edited 20th Feb '13 10:28:48 PM by TheStarshipMaxima

I for one pulled out the CSI kit specifically because she claimed she was in a position that would've left a massive internet footprint. Like I said, I'm willing to buy a random lady falling through the cracks, but she made claim to a very noticeable position.

If she was claiming to be in a field that it was harder to find records and information on, then we'd let it go. As it stands, the fact that it should take five seconds to validate her claims and that an in depth search turns up nothing... That's kind of a smoking gun.

I generally do a twenty second google search on anyone who comes up in these threads so that I know what I'm talking about. The results in this case are just really weird.

It's not a CSI kit. I have access to academic databases through my school. It takes thirty seconds to run these searches. This sort of thing is basic fact checking.

edited 20th Feb '13 10:33:08 PM by shimaspawn

What's Evidence to you?

You seem to be using an exotic meaning of which I've yet to know of.

Edit: Maybe not that high. What's a step below a bishop?

edited 20th Feb '13 10:35:49 PM by Lascoden

Bishop is what you're looking for. It's just that all the other high levels of the Catholic Church are also Bishops. It is about the same amount of paper trail, though your average Bishop is probably going to have a smaller paper trail than your average academic.

edited 20th Feb '13 10:38:21 PM by shimaspawn

Well, I decided to dust off my pipe, magnifying glass, and wool cap and do some detective work of my own, just to keep with the theme.

Seems a Harvard student paper followed then Dr. Rosaria Champagne's recrimination of Promise Keepers.

Here's a link to her book on Amazon.

Oh, and here's an article from an archived Syracuse University magazine article in which she was interviewed.

Tell you what, that cardboard cutout is one of the more lifelike I've ever seen.

EDIT: To answer your question Matues, I don't consider this exotic so to speak.

edited 20th Feb '13 10:40:00 PM by TheStarshipMaxima

So Women are for babies..

..And lesbians are bad because they selfishly go against God's purpose for them.

Yay.

Alright, I retract my theory.

Using that interview as a lead, I was able to find this as well, which is an interesting take on the interview.

I'm not going to make claims about the veracity of her story now that she appears to be a real person. There's any number of reasons or ways she could be bullshitting or telling the truth, and while I find her story...highly unlikely given her supposed background, it's beyond me to say anything further.

edited 20th Feb '13 11:18:35 PM by Pykrete

This comment about her book is especially telling:

She identified as a lesbian despite not being sexually attracted to women. That sounds like a confused teenager who was still figuring out who she was. Not someone who was gay changing their sexuality. While people can label themselves however they choose, her story says nothing about sexual attraction being able to be redirected.

So she's effectively irrelevant to any conversation about ex-gays.

edited 20th Feb '13 11:18:19 PM by shimaspawn

By that logic many lesbian women are liars.

But alas, I'm sure we can do this all day and there'll only be yet another reason to dismiss her claims as the previous one is shot down.

It...kind of does, in a "have neither or have both" way I guess. I mean, if her interactions did eventually cause her to have erotic feelings for women, then chances are she could go back. Though yeah, I am leaning most charitably toward "biologically straight or maybe bi lady went through some shit and thought she was something she wasn't."

Like I said, fluid sexuality is a thing, but so are confused teens. Humans are weird, etc.

edited 20th Feb '13 11:25:56 PM by Pykrete

In none of the literature have I seen is there some defined order to how gay feelings are supposed to develop.

And to suddenly question the truth of her claims based on book comment......the nakedness of this Confirmation Bias is astounding.

Pretty much. Her own stuff makes it sound like she was straight all along though. Which is fine. People should be who they are, not forced into being who they aren't. Gay or straight or bi or pan or asexual or queer or anything else from the alphabet soup.

Nobody has to buy her story. Hell, she could be actively lying; or misled, or misunderstood. It's happened before.

But these posts reveal how Confirmation Bias and an unwillingness to challenge long-held assumptions is surely not the exclusive province of anti-homosexuals.

edited 20th Feb '13 11:28:56 PM by TheStarshipMaxima

How so? Seems the issue was that people couldn't find proper sources to back her claims. And when those were found, people amended their opinions. Now people are examining the claim itself, by looking over the statements. There was a lot of skepticism in the beginning, but that's necessary with matters such as this.

I'm only looking at what she actually says. She wasn't sexually attracted to women. She just wasn't good at talking to men, had short hair, and most of her friends were women. That doesn't say lesbian to me. That says awkward and confused teenager. Most people go through that stage at about the point in her life she was in at the time. It's normal adolescent behaviour.

I'm glad she found her bliss, no matter what it was. But it's disingenuous to hold her up as an example of people being able to change who they are sexually attracted to when she didn't do that.

edited 20th Feb '13 11:35:05 PM by shimaspawn

Not what I'm talking about. Although, it did seem that folks were equating "I can't find this" with "therefore it doesn't exist." When it did, in fact.

First off Shima you're basing this on a book comment. C'mon, really?? Secondly, all your points are pure conjecture, nothing more. There's no research that says there's a particular order in which these things have to happen in order to be a true lesbian and thus validating her conversion. You're basically saying "This doesn't line up like how I think it should." Last I checked, no two lesbians stories have to be alike. There is no correct lesbian narrative.

And even so, her statements line up with documented accounts of lesbians and first-hand accounts. The things you come up with for saying she wasn't truly lesbian could easily be explained as confused lesbian trying to shoehorn herself into a straight-role.

If you're going to disagree with her, do if for reasons less arbitrary.

edited 20th Feb '13 11:42:52 PM by TheStarshipMaxima

I listened to her interview, read an excerpt of her book, and read commentary on it. I'm basing my views on those. She only mentions sexual attraction when it comes to men. Her statements sound like lesbian stereotypes, yes, but shoehorning yourself into a stereotype has nothing to do with who you are sexually attracted to.

If you wore pink shirts, gucchi shoes, and spent five hours in the bathroom primping every morning, this wouldn't make you sexually attracted to men.

edited 20th Feb '13 11:45:32 PM by shimaspawn

It wouldn't make me not attracted to men either. Additionally I've met women you'd readily call lesbians who've admitted to, and in some cases acted on, attractions to men.

To suddenly hold her narrative to some imaginary standard of True Lesbianism™ is a bit disingenuous.

Plenty of people round up to lesbian, or even up to straight. The Kinsey scale says that most people are some degree of bi. The fact that she doesn't mention sexual attraction changing at all when that's supposedly the focus of this is interesting though. And because she doesn't, we can't make any inferences about changing sexual attractions from her story. That's all I'm saying.

If a lesbian is attracted to men as well, then she's not a lesbian. She's bi.

Correct. For purposes of looking at sexuality scientifically at least. She's free to label herself whatever she wants, but scientifically, she's bi or pan.