http://www.stonewallrevisited.com/
site
designer: Leadership University
site
established: 1995
number of
hits: not listed (no hit counter)
The Internet is popularly depicted as a forum for diversity and tolerance. The diversity of viewpoints is clear to even the infrequent surfer on the web – type in a key word and fervent supporters and protesters of any issue are listed one after another in search listings. But whether or not there is true acceptance of other perspectives in this diverse realm is arguable. What tolerance has come to mean in the context of the World Wide Web is an acknowledgement that differing viewpoints exist, and should therefore be dealt with (and discredited) as quickly as possible. Communicating more traditional or conservative messages must be done subtly, as the Internet-using public is still captivated by the multivocal and slightly anti-establishment reputation that surrounds the Web. To successfully market an idea to this public, the site designer must recognize that the right to an opposing viewpoint is privileged in this setting, and therefore he or she must be able to package conservative opinion as an ‘alternative’ or subversive perspective on the issue in order to gain credibility with a sceptical audience.
Stonewall Revisited is an organizationally-produced evangelical site devoted to ‘homosexual recovery’, a topic which has received some press coverage lately in print and televised media[1]. It is not unique – there are at least twenty other sites, overtly Christian and otherwise, that deal with the same issue. I believe that there are many more than I have documented, as I rarely had the patience to scroll through the endless listings that resulted from my searches. Stonewall Revisited is, however, one of the best adapted to meeting its target community – homosexuals, bisexuals and transgendered – because its creators have made an effort to design their site in a conscious emulation of webpages dealing with gay, lesbian and transgender rights and support groups[2]. The site is not simply a copy of support sites with a contradictory content – it is styled as an ‘alternative’ support site. For Stonewall Revisited, the emulation of gay sites begins even before the web user has downloaded its homepage. It starts with a name. ‘Stonewall’ is an important name in the American struggle for gay and transgender equality. It refers to the 1969 riots in New York City, during which there was a backlash by the gay and transgendered community against constant police raids and gay-directed violence. The protest began at a bar called the Stonewall Inn, and resulted in a new political movement for public awareness of gay rights. Since then, the name ‘Stonewall’ has been adopted by gay rights groups around the world to evoke a feeling of revolution and unity. There are gay and transgender rights websites called Stonewall UK, Stonewall Youth and After Stonewall, as well as a noted documentary film called Before Stonewall. Therefore, the name Stonewall Revisited immediately evokes the idea of a site that supports the rights and practices of homosexuals, bisexuals and transgendered people.
The site name is also instrumental in how the potential target audience encounters the Stonewall Revisited site. Although some search engines such as Yahoo are careful to classify it under the heading of “anti-gay, lesbian and bi-sexual”, Stonewall Revisited still appears in almost all searches using the keywords “stonewall”, “homosexuality” or “gay”. Two of its search-engine descriptions read as follows:
Stonewall Revisited - personal stories of ex-gays and lesbians (Yahoo)
Stonewall Revisited: Homosexual, Lesbian & Gay Issue of Sex & Sexuality - Is
homosexuality genetic? Does the Bible support homosexuality? What causes
homosexuality? Are there such people as ex-gays? Can someone help me out...
(AltaVista)
Although these descriptions make no attempt to conceal the purpose of the site, they do allow for some ambiguity in their interpretation – especially the AltaVista description, which does not include an “anti-gay” tag or “ex-gay” in its description. It would be fairly easy for a web surfer to enter the site even through its Yahoo listing while searching for sites that are supportive of gay and transgendered people.
Upon entering the Stonewall Revisited homepage, it is not likely that the web surfer would notice any immediate difference between this site and a gay rights support site. At the top of the page, below the obligatory link-menu is the title graphic (figure 6) – a graphic that could very easily be applied to a gay and lesbian support site. It consists of a brick wall with ‘Stonewall’ in bold violet capital letters, and ‘Revisited’ in an aqua spray-paint style font beneath it. Multi-coloured lines and a pink triangle are also ‘spray painted’ on the wall. A torn page from a magazine with a photograph of a young person appears to be stuck to the brick wall background. The co-opted symbolism of the rainbow colours and the pink triangle create the impression of a site supportive of homosexuality, as they are well-established symbols of gay rights. The rainbow colours have been in use in the gay community since their inclusion in a “freedom flag”, created for a 1978 gay pride parade in San Francisco. The decision to use the pink triangle in the Stonewall Revisited site is a perilous one, given the careful political-correctness of Stonewall Revisited’s overall design. The triangle’s origins are in the Nazi concentration camps, a symbol worn on the shirt of prisoners to indicate their status as homosexuals and social criminals. The Rainbow Icon Archive describes the re-appropriation of the pink triangle by the gay community[3]:
In the 1970s, gay liberation groups
resurrected the pink triangle as a popular symbol for the gay rights movement.
Not only is the symbol easily recognized, but it draws attention to oppression
[sic] and persecution -- then and now. In the 1980s, ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition To
Unleash Power) began using the pink triangle for their cause. They inverted the
symbol, making it point up, to signify an active fight back rather than a
passive resignation to fate. Today, for many the pink triangle represents
pride, solidarity, and a promise to never allow another Holocaust to happen
again.
Black triangles are thought to have been assigned to lesbians and other ‘anti-social’ female prisoners and have likewise been re-appropriated.
The accuracy with which this graphic mimics the design of gay political support sites is emphasized when it is compared to a similar graphic taken from the heading of the support site Stonewall Youth (figure 7). This graphic also depicts a brick-wall background, a spray-paint effect title and pink (and black) downward facing triangles. It is possible that the Stonewall Revisited site may have patterned its graphic after the Stonewall Youth graphic, especially given that the overall approach of the Revisited graphic seems designed to attract young people. The graffiti motif is another ‘youth-friendly’ design element shared by both pages. Stonewall Revisited attempts to expand on this appeal with the photo of an ‘average’ young man (self-proclaimed “ex-gay” turned minister, John Paulk) and more colourful layout (the Stonewall Youth graphic uses only pink, black and white).
The text found on the homepage is no more an indication of the objective of the Revisited site than is its opening graphic. It is a history of the meaning of ‘Stonewall’:
For gay, lesbian and
bisexual activists, the word "Stonewall" signifies quite possibly the
most important, single landmark in the worldwide struggle for gay rights. Most
chroniclers of the homosexual rights movement trace the beginnings of the
movement's militant phase to 1969 and New York's lower-Manhattan (largely
gay-frequented) Stonewall Bar. There, for the first time on record, homosexual
patrons fought back when Stonewall was raided one hot summer night by New York
City policemen, who came hoping to arrest gay individuals for engaging in then
illegal homosexual acts…Eyewitnesses claim that the homosexual patrons' counter-riot
began when one burly, Stonewall patron hurled a lidded, metal garbage can
filled with empty liquor bottles through a police car window…Ever since that
night, Stonewall has been revered as an enduring symbol of the gay militant
spark lit that night, which has become a gay/lesbian/bisexual militant
conflagration setting America -- and the world -- aflame with gay rights issues
and conflicts.
This history is interestingly compared to an account of the same event given by gay-rights supporters (the owners of the Stonewall Inn).
The Stonewall Inn is the birthplace of the gay liberation movement - - when on the weekend of Judy Garland's death a group of drag queens and other patrons of the bar fought back against police harassment and made history by saying "no" to intolerance and "yes" to empowerment. The Stonewall patrons refused to be treated as second-class citizens...Although such raids on gay bars were common around that time, the police action that evening was particularly virulent… This night was far different than past raids: on this evening the drag queens inside the bar, as well as other patrons and passerby outside, had decided they would no longer be pushed around by a hostile police force… The enraged crowd, calling for gay liberation and encouraged by their growing numbers, was not going to let them off without a struggle[4].
In the former account, the police are described as ‘hoping to arrest’ homosexuals who were breaking the law. In the latter account the police are harassing and violent attackers. The first account sees the protesters as instigating the riot, while the second portrays the riot as consequence of aggression on the part of the police. Stonewall Revisited discusses the “militancy” that results from the Stonewall riots, where the proprietors of the Stonewall Inn see “empowerment” and “liberation”. It is to be expected that the language of each site should express the events in a way that best matched its creators’ perceptions of the consequences of the Stonewall riots.
The tone of disapproval used in discussion of the violence of the Stonewall riots is consistent with Stonewall Revisited’s general ethos of moderation and persuasion through dialogue. The presentation of the site is, for the most part, deliberately non-confrontational and conciliatory. The homepage specifically seems constructed so as to conceal the objective of the page – gay ‘recovery’ – until the user has accessed one of the linked pages. This is likely done with the dual purpose of reassuring the target audience of the benign intentions of the site, and to hold the attention of people with dissenting viewpoints for as long as possible. Square icons mark the entry to linked pages – these links are differentiated by a ‘spray-painted’ image on a brick wall background. The icon linking to the ‘Personal Pages’ shows a red heart spray painted on the wall, a small play on the ‘lonely hearts’ association with personal listings. The other icons/page listings on the homepage are named and represented as follows: ‘Current Issues’ (represented by the outline of a purple book); ‘Support Groups’ (a white hand); ‘Your Story’ (a green stick figure); and ‘FAQ’ [Frequently Asked Questions] (a blue question mark). These icons reiterate the visual cues first given in the graphic at the top of the page – the rainbow colours signifying gay support and diversity, and spray painted shorthand symbols that communicate the page creator’s desire to connect with youth culture. Below the icons is a short linked section, ‘About Stonewall Revisited’, that refers to the site’s objective in oblique terms:
About Stonewall Revisited. Our goal is to offer social, ethical and spiritual alternatives to people all across America. Educating people about alternatives provides them with a wider range of options for the critical life decisions they must make. We believe that . . . read on
It is only once the reader has accessed the ‘read on’ link that he or she is introduced to the objective of the page:
. . offering choices is one way of
treating people with the dignity they deserve as human beings. Homosexuality is
a sensitive subject about which many people have an emotional opinion. Our
goal, however, is not to give opinions but to offer alternatives. We offer the
personal stories of people who have found a more fulfilling life outside of
homosexuality.
Homosexuality is not inescapable. A homosexual identity, no matter how acquired, is not the only choice for anyone. If a person so chooses, he or she can set aside a homosexual identity with God's help, strength and love. Since some people want to set aside their homosexual identities, our goal is to assist them.
The aspect of the homepage that comes the closest to making a statement of intent is the final graphic that appears at the bottom of the page. This is similar to the opening graphic, a rectangular section of brick wall with spray-painted pink letters that appear one by one, spelling out “There is Another Way Out”.
Throughout the site there is a heavy emphasis on dialogue as the key to transformation of opinion and practice. This is specifically revealed through the centrepiece of the site, the ‘Personal Pages’. These pages are testimonials from dozens of self-proclaimed reformed homosexuals, or as they are described in the site (quotation marks included), “ex-gays”. There are seventy-seven testimonials linked into the ‘Personal’ page, with each linking testimony indicated by a triangle and a name. Each personal story follows a rough format: the name of the person, with a title above or below. There may be photo of the witnessing individual included below the title, and an essay ranging anywhere from two hundred to fifteen hundred words. The testimonials end with a short bio of the contributor. Most of the bios describe contributors as currently active in the administration of church ministries; many have also written books or pamphlets about their struggle with homosexuality. The personal narratives describe past gay lifestyles as the result of unfulfilling childhoods, early abuse, loneliness, a need for love and acceptance, or seduction by an older friend or acquaintance.
Testimonials are an integral part of most evangelistic endeavours, and their relative effectiveness lies in the fact that they reveal common fears and insecurities, while at the same time offering an answer to the problems in question. The following testimonial excerpt is by John Paulk, one of the most vocal proponents of the “gay recovery” movement:
My parents divorced when I was
five…For the rest of my childhood, I lived with a continuous insecurity that
the people I loved would always walk out of my life. Around other boys, I felt
terribly insecure and different. And because I wasn't good in sports and was
effeminate, they called me names like fag, queer and sissy…I started drinking
alcohol when I was 14. I drank to numb the pain inside and to escape from my
feelings of self-hatred and inadequacy…My drinking increased, and I became so
miserable that I tried to take my life. Then, due to my poor self-image and lack
of money, I started working as a male prostitute. I'd be dropped off at a hotel
room and sell my body for $80 an hour… Over the next three years I threw
everything into being the best woman I could. I was proud to be a drag queen
and even adopted the name "Candi." …Very shortly after that, a
college pastor from a nearby church asked if he could talk to me. He came to my
apartment and told me about Jesus Christ. I stopped him after twenty minutes
and said, "I know all about the Gospel. I used to be a Christian when I
was 15. But I was born gay, so forget it!" "No, you weren't," he
answered. Then he read from Genesis 2: "And God created man...male and
female... And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good."
The truth came shining through. I was convinced that homosexuality was not
something I was born with or something I had to stay in…I had finally found
someone who would never leave me…My process out of homosexuality has been slow,
but solid.
Following this lengthy testimonial is another short passage listing the options available for people who are attracted to the same sex. The first is acceptance of a gay lifestyle, which is described as a never-ending pursuit of acceptance and fulfilment. The second is withdrawal, which “den[ies] emotional and sexual feelings”, but allows homosexuals to “stay away from relationships that could cause…pain”. This is also an ‘unfulfilling’ option. The ‘third way’ is to embrace God through Christianity. In this way “homosexuality is overcome by building a relationship with Jesus Christ and letting him heal the underlying root issues”.
Scattered throughout the ‘Personal Pages’ listings are links to ‘Another way out’ . This is a short narrative about the ‘recovery’ and marriage of John and Anne Paulk, “ex-gay” and “ex-lesbian”. Below their story is a passage titled ‘The Way Out of Homosexuality’, in which several lessons that contribute to homosexual recovery are spelled out:
Homosexuality is overcome by building a relationship with Jesus Christ and letting him heal the underlying root issues. Our deliverance comes from a person, rather than from a method. Therefore, it is important that we build a relationship with God, our Deliverer. We must know him better than we know those around us. And in fact, for true deliverance, Christ must become the most important person in our lives. How can we come to know Jesus Christ?…
Receiving Jesus Christ. John 1:12 gives us the next step: "To all who received him [Jesus Christ], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." In order for Jesus to work in our lives, we must not only agree with him that homosexuality is sin, but we must trust in him for the forgiveness of all of our sins, including homosexuality…
Submission to Christ. In spite of the change God will bring in our life, we still have a will that often will want to slip back into our "pre-Christ" ways. Therefore, the height of victory over homosexuality is directly related to our willingness to submit ourselves completely to God.
The first-person accounts in
the witnessing narratives are replaced by the first person plural. ‘Our’
includes the surfer in the new narrative. As the evangelistic intent of the
section is revealed, more evangelical terms are used, while a biblical quote enforces
the authority of the message.
The next link listed on the homepage, ‘Current Issues’, is less distinctly evangelical, and more closely adheres to the presentational pattern that one would expect to find in a conventionally gay-friendly site. Naturally, the current events under discussion have a very different focus here as opposed to a site like Stonewall UK. In Stonewall Revisited, the issues discussed relate to the validity of the homosexual recovery movement, addressing the “gay gene theory”, the biblical mandate for repudiating homosexual activity, treating homosexuality as a psychopathology, and “gay theology”. Most of the current events discussed by Stonewall UK are more overtly and concretely political – the status of gay men and lesbians in the British military, or the repeal of Section 28. The next link, ‘Support Groups’, is, just as it sounds, a listing of ‘ex-gay recovery’ support groups all over the United States. Similarly, pro-gay sites will have listings of support groups for people who have just come out and their families. ‘Your Story’ is a collection of supportive feedback comments about the site. ‘FAQ’ or Frequently Asked Questions is a must for any informational site, and here presents an odd mirror image of the FAQs that accompany gay-rights pages. Compare the following question taken from Stonewall Revisited to a similar question from the Resources for Parents of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Youth page[5]:
Q. Are there such persons as "ex-gays?"
A. Yes! Thousands of people have
chosen to move out of a homosexual lifestyle through the power of Jesus Christ.
Many others have overcome a homosexual "orientation" through therapy.
According to psychiatrists who treat the disorder, approximately 30% of
homosexuals who submit to extended psychotherapy will revert to
heterosexuality, no matter why they entered therapy in the first place. (Stonewall Revisited)
Can my child be cured of
homosexuality?
There are lots of groups and individuals around who will promise you that they can "cure" your child of homosexuality. The fact is, they can't. The American Psychiatric Association has looked into the issue of so-called "reparative therapy" and "conversion therapy." The result was their statement on homosexuality. Though carefully worded to avoid controversy, it makes no bones about the fact that such therapies have not been shown to be particularly effective, and can actually be harmful…There are a number of Christian groups around, most of them associated with particular sects, who claim to be able to "cure" homosexuality. What they really succeed in doing is to merely repress it. (Resources for Parents of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Youth)
Other areas of overlap in these FAQs include whether or not the Bible forbids homosexuality, and the likelihood of an individual enjoying a fulfilling and happy life while involved in the gay lifestyle.
Overall, Stonewall Revisited makes a visibly successful effort to adapt externally to the norms of the ‘gay support’ webpage, while simultaneously retaining and utilizing one of the most valuable strategies of evangelism – the testimonial. Unlike some other evangelical websites, the purpose of Stonewall Revisited is not simply to bring the message of Christianity to a portion of the Internet using public, but to communicate a specific interpretation of Biblical text to a very specific online community. The community in question includes non-Christians, as well as fallen away or practicing Christians who have become involved members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered communities. Therefore, the site has been specifically designed to attract the inclusive ‘gay community’ in a variety of ways. Its homepage incorporates the language and symbols of the gay community, giving the site a ‘gay-friendly’ appearance. The introductory text conforms to the norms of gay-support webpages in subject and form, if not substance. The personal stories are integral to the claiming of gay symbols, as it is the contributors’ past lifestyle that allows the site’s developers to lay claim to the iconography of gay support. This calculated use of gay-rights symbolism by a group which has no purported interest in the political status of gay and transgendered community is intended to deflect accusations of hostility, but it may be interpreted as an act of duplicity or aggression by members of the gay community. The rainbow, the pink triangle and the name ‘Stonewall’ are clearly politically charged symbols: they are considered the ‘property’ of the gay community; they are status markers of social membership with a prestige value in that community (denoting activists); use of these symbols implies legitimacy and confers rights and privileges; and, because of their historical associations with oppression and struggle, each of these symbols are the focus of emotional attachment (Harrison 1995). Stonewall Revisited’s use of these symbols constitutes engagement in a proprietary contest with the gay community. As if in acknowledgement of the risks involved with claiming these symbols as their own, the gay recovery movement as embodied in Stonewall Revisited’s site uses extremely careful language to legitimate its claims on those symbols and present itself as an alternative community base in its own right.
Testimonials are therefore the key to both the legitimacy of the site’s attempt to gain entry into the gay community, and to the homosexual recovery movement’s decision to co-opt the gay community’s symbols. The testimonials are all personal, and therefore irrefutable, as it is not possible in the relativistic environment of the Internet to launch an argument against another person’s feelings and interpretation of his or her life story. Attempts to do allow a portrayal of the opposition as inflexible and domineering, regardless of the relative liberalism or conservatism of the opponent’s political associations. All of the testimonials include elements that ‘backsliding’ gay Christians would be familiar with: early religious training, and the difficulty of reconciling this training with same-sex attractions. An apparently conciliatory attitude pervades the site, as the ‘FAQ’ makes special effort to assure users that “God hates the sin but loves the sinner” and that this attitude is the one rightly shared by the Christian community. Stonewall Revisited rejects any association with hostility or ‘gay bashing’, and vehemently denies acting as an agent of intolerance. Because many people will associate the message of ‘gay recovery’ with an anti-gay movement, this site predicts and attempts to circumvent any instances in which such an accusation could be levelled against its content by taking great care of the graphic and linguistic contexts in which its views are presented to the user.
This website was created and administered by Leadership University, an online affiliate of Campus Crusade for Christ International. In contrast to the Michelle Akers Homepage, this is an obviously collective evangelical endeavour, not one based around a single personality. It acts as a collective representation of the ‘ex-gays’ whose testimonials are presented through the Stonewall Revisited project. Because of the multiple identities attached to the site, it is able to behave not just as a ‘location’ on the web , but potentially bas the centre of a social network in its own right, in which individual stories (albeit only those that agree with the premise of the site) may be expressed. The ‘My Story’ internal page encourages the establishment of a dialogue between web surfers and the site’s creators. But because there is no free access to a posting board, this site limits its own capabilities to become the centre of its own social network. Like the Michelle Akers Homepage, Stonewall Revisited tries to bridge the online social networks of both gay rights supporters and Christians, but Stonewall Revisited fails to become a fully linked partner in both online groups. Because the concept of ‘gay recovery’ is antithetical to the concept of a politicised gay rights movement, Stonewall Revisited cannot hope to become a linked partner in the online network of pro-gay rights pages. Instead it relies on the tangential links afforded by search engines to infiltrate the social network of gay interest sites. Stonewall Revisited is most likely to find its target audience in web surfers who are not already involved in a online gay support network, who are questioning their sexual orientation or are unhappy and involved in the gay community. The site hopes to attract the same sort of individuals as those who provided the testimonials. Though Stonewall Revisited fails to merge the two communities with which it identifies itself into a single group that transcends the cultural barriers between them, it succeeds as a transformative gateway. Its objective its not to create gay Christians but to transform gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people into a particular kind of Christian and “ex-gay”
[1] “Sex and Salvation”, Angela Neustatter in The Guardian G2 2 March 2000; CNN broadcasts (dates unkown).
[2] The secular sites:http://www.stonewall.org.uk/- good comp, looks like the Revisited site visually, http://members.tripod.com/~swoosh/Stonewall - has moved to http://www.stonewallyouth.org/; http://www.pe.net/~bidstrup/parents.htm - Q&A for parents of gay kids
[3] http://www.enqueue.com/ria/triangles.html, copyright 1995-200; 29/02/00
[4] http://www.historicstonewallbar.com/ 29/02/00.
[6] Stephen Sternberg of Stonewall Revisited replied to my assessment of the site’ s intent with the following: “Our intent was to counter the "once gay, always gay" and "born gay" PR, which one might also define as deceptive 'propaganda', with "personal testimony" evidence which showed that this claim cannot possibly be the only way to look at the issues involved. The diversity of the testimonies also show that the "road less travelled" is a diverse one and is not always characterized by a "quick fix." For those desiring more information, we offer the possibility for feedback”. His complete reply can be read in Appendix III.