B2 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 , 2019
This week, D.C. police released
almost 400 images of a group of
ATV and dirt bike riders illegally
riding in Southeast Washington
on Aug. 25. Police are offering a
$250 reward for tips leading to an
arrest of any of the riders, saying
ATVs and dirt bikes “pose a dan-
ger to pedestrians and other mo-
torists and are illegal to operate
on D.C.’s streets.”
[email protected]Da na Hedgpeth contributed to this
report.said.
The county has long tried to
stop the use of off-road vehicles
on county streets, a practice that
police said is illegal and danger-
ous to riders and others nearby.
“A s we conduct this investiga-
tion,” Stawinski said, “we contin-
ue to urge all those who ride ATVs
to please do so only in a safe and
legal manner so we can prevent
these types of heartbreaking out-
comes in the future.”
Police in the District have also
been urging safe ATV driving.“We are going to get to the bottom
of what happened and how it
happened.”
Police said the 8-year-old and
teen were family friends.
The child was in the care of an
adult family member at the time
of the incident, police spokes-
woman Christina Cottermanhe was pronounced dead, police
said.
An autopsy is pending, and
Prince George’s detectives are in-
vestigating the events leading up
to the incident, police said.
“This is a tragic situation,”
Prince George’s Police Chief Hank
Stawinski said in a statement.George’s County police said. The
ATV flipped in a cul-de-sac in the
5000 block of Janice Lane, and
the 8-year-old was injured, police
said.
A family member drove the boy
to a hospital in the District, and
he was transferred to Children’s
National Medical Center, whereBY LYNH BUIAn 8-year-old boy riding on the
gas tank of an ATV died after the
vehicle flipped, police said.
Kemel Bonilla-Reyes of Te mple
Hills was holding on to the han-
dlebars of the ATV being driven
by a 15-year-old on Sept. 1, Prince
paid more than $1,000 for the
treatment, he said, and none of it
worked.
Eventually, White said, he
couldn’t live that way anymore.
He and his wife divorced, and he
has been with his now-husband
for 37 years. He said he eventual-
ly came to believe that God loves
him exactly as he was created,
and he stopped ghostwriting au-
tobiographies for the likes of
Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham.
White said he believes Christi-
anity is the greatest source of
suffering for LGBTQ people, and
he co-founded the organization
Soulforce to combat what he sees
as this oppression. The organiza-
tion promotes nonviolent resis-
tance to religious fundamental-
ism.
After spending years working
with the conservative Christian
right, White said he has “spent
the rest of my life trying to
redeem myself from having any-
thing to do with that ex-gay
system.”
[email protected]family. Sometimes you lose ev-
erything.”
Chambers, who said he is “a
gay man married to a straight
woman,” said his decision to re-
ject conversion therapy devel-
oped slowly over decades. He
said he was particularly struck by
the devastated reactions he saw
to California’s passage of the
now-defunct Proposition 8, a
constitutional amendment that
in 2008 banned same-sex mar-
riage there. Chambers now advo-
cates for an end to conversion
therapy for minors and for in-
cluding LGBTQ people in faith
communities.
Mel White, a former ghostwrit-
er for high-profile evangelical
Christians, describes himself as
“a victim of the ex-gay move-
ment.” White said that when he
was married to a woman and
believed his same-sex attractions
were sinful, he tried every kind of
conversion therapy in the book:
He took cold showers, subjected
himself to electric therapy and
got an exorcism. He and his wifetwo children. He said some peo-
ple, including Christians and LG-
BTQ advocates, have expressed
anger against him.
“I can see how my life could
have been used manipulatively,
and I’m very sorry for that,” Game
said. “How can I count all the
ways I did wrong? I don’t know
that I can. But I’ve tried, and I’m
trying.”
Leaders of conversion therapy
programs rarely renounce the
practice publicly because doing
so involves turning their backs
not just on the ex-gay community
but also on conservative faith as a
whole, said Alan Chambers, the
former president of Exodus In-
ternational. Exodus was the
world’s largest conversion thera-
py ministry until Chambers shut
it down in 2013 and apologized to
the LGBTQ community.
“Oftentimes, not only do you
lose the relationships of people in
the community that you’ve been
in, but you lose your church,”
Chambers told The Washington
Post. “Sometimes you lose yourdirectors fired him, the Post and
Courier reported. In his Face-
book post, he said all conversion
therapy programs should be
closed, but that he would support
them becoming support groups
for people who believe being
LGBTQ is incongruous with their
faith.
“I was a religious zealot that
hurt people,” Game told the
Charleston, S.C., Post and Couri-
er. “People said they attempted
suicide over me and the things I
said to them. People, I know, are
in therapy because of me. Why
would I want that to continue?”
In a Facebook Live video post-
ed Tuesday, Game said he decid-
ed to tell people he was gay
because he was scared that some-
one would “out” him — reveal his
sexual orientation — and he
wanted to control his own story.
He said he slowly hinted on
Facebook t hat he was attracted t o
men.
Game said his wife has been
“ridiculously understanding” of
his coming out. The couple haswrong with themselves and
wrong with people that choose to
live their lives honestly and open
as gay, lesbian, trans, etc.,” Game,
51, wrote on Facebook last week.
“The very harmful cycle of self
shame and condemnation has to
stop.”
Hope for Wholeness, based in
South C arolina and known as one
of the nation’s most prominent
conversion therapy centers, did
not respond to requests for com-
ment.
Game is among many founders
and leaders of conversion thera-
py programs to disavow the prac-
tice later. In 2014, nine former
“ex-gay” leaders signed an open
letter denouncing conversion
therapy as “ineffective and harm-
ful” and calling for an end to it. A
Latter-day Saint counselor who
practiced conversion therapy
said in January that he is gay and
that he “unequivocally renounc-
es” ex-gay ministry.
Game announced in June that
he was gay, a lmost two years after
Hope for Wholeness’s board ofBY MARISA IATIMcKrae Game wants people to
know that he was wrong a bout a ll
of it.
He was wrong to found Hope
for Wholeness Network, a faith-
based conversion therapy pro-
gram that seeks to rid people of
their LGBTQ identities. He was
wrong to create a slogan promot-
ing the idea of “freedom from
homosexuality through Jesus
Christ.” He was wrong to tell
people they were doomed for all
eternity if they didn’t change
their ways.
After 20 years working in that
field, Game said he realizes the
harm he has caused and that he,
himself, is gay. Conversion thera-
py encompasses a widely discred-
ited range of methods that pur-
port to change someone’s sexual
orientation or gender identity.
The practice is illegal in 18 states
and the District.
“It’s all in my past, but many,
way TOO MANY continue believ-
ing that there is something
A change of heart for ‘gay conversion’ advocate
RELIGION
MARYLAND
Boy fatally injured when ATV carrying him flips
A presentation in Paris
The Crown of Thorns, purported to have been the one placed on
Jesus’ head at his crucifixion and saved from the flames at Notre
Dame Cathedral in April, is reintroduced for public viewing
Friday at St. Germain l’Auxerrois church. The crown has been
kept at the Louvre since the fire.PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHE ENA/ASSOCIATED PRESSvery openly. The question was,
was he sincere in his beliefs? And
there’s no question in the chang-
es.”
Now, the men are good friends,
who spend lunches talking about
the problem of racism. They even
spoke together at a corporate
Black History Month event.
Ta rrants’s new book, “Con-sumed by Hate, Redeemed by
Love,” has mostly attracted praise
from evangelical Christian lead-
ers, though John Grisham — who
based his novel “The Chamber”
on the bombings that Ta rrants
participated in — said on the book
jacket that his story is “riveting,
inspiring” and a “measure of
hope.”Ta rrants will be donating the
royalties from his new book to the
National Christian Foundation,
which supports numerous minis-
tries, not an anti-discrimination
group. He occasionally gives talks
about tolerance and wrote a previ-
ous book about his story. He does
not work with groups like the
Anti-Defamation League or theAristotle. And then scripture.
He became convinced that he
had gone drastically astray.
With the support of a Jewish
community leader who believed
in his redemption, Tarrants se-
cured early release from prison
after eight years behind bars. He
moved to the District in 1978,
where he went to work in Chris-
tian ministry. He eventually ob-
tained a seminary degree and a
doctorate, pastored a nondenomi-
national church in D.C. for five
years, and spent the past 21 years
working at the evangelical C.S.
Lewis Institute in Washington,
including 12 years as its president.
To day, h e is a soft-spoken, man-
nerly 72-year-old who picks his
words deliberately as he convers-
es about theology and about the
research statistics he’s always
reading, tracking the rise and fall
of hate crimes and bias in Ameri-
ca. Only a hint remains of his
Southern accent.
Chris Morris, the current chair
of the board of the C.S. Lewis
Institute, remembers when he
first learned of Ta rrants’s criminal
record when Ta rrants talked
about it on a Christian retreat led
by the organization in 2005.
“My first reaction was, ‘Real-
ly?!’ I wasn’t sure what to make of
it.... Why would you e ver want to
be in a room with somebody who
did what he did?” said Morris,
who is African American. He re-
calls asking Ta rrants tough ques-
tions at that retreat and watching
his behavior in the years that
followed. “We chatted about it
TARRANTS FROM B1
Southern Poverty Law Center
(both of which declined to com-
ment on Ta rrants), although he
follows their work closely.
Groups including Life After
Hate successfully work on depro-
gramming members of hate
groups, but Ta rrants does not aim
his message at current-day mem-
bers of such groups. Any attempt
he might make to dissuade white
supremacists would be futile, he
says: “Knowing the mind-set of
folks like that, they’re not inter-
ested in hearing anything from
someone like me. I’m seen as a
traitor to the cause.”
Instead, he said, his intendedaudience is Christians, and he
hopes to inspire them by sharing
his own transformation. If Chris-
tians were practicing their faith
more deeply and truly, he be-
lieves, they would be forging
meaningful, loving relationships
across racial differences. They
would be alert to the signs of a
lonely young man growing radi-
calized in time to steer him differ-
ently. They would vote for politi-
cians who won’t e mbolden racists
and prevent hate crimes by sup-
porting policies like a ban on
private ownership of assault
weapons, which Ta rrants advo-
cates for.
People who don’t follow Jesus’
instructions to love your enemies,
and to love your neighbor as your-
self, he argues, aren’t really Chris-
tian, even if they think they are.
“There’s a lot of it in America. It
really undermines and discredits
the whole concept of Christianity.”
For some evangelicals, he says,
racism is “one of the areas of sin
that need to be worked on.”
Citing the statistics on the ris-
ing number of hate crimes and on
the gap in whites’ and blacks’
perceptions of racism, he claims
the problem is getting worse.
Ta rrants believes that the
Trump era is the first time since
the 1960s that people feel more
emboldened to voice their racial
prejudices, not less.
“What has happened now is
that people on the extremes are
feeling like the wind has shifted,”
he warned. “It’s no longer at their
face. Now it’s at their back. Their
time is here.”
[email protected]Former Klansman renounces white supremacism, urges others toward God
J. EDWARD GLANCY
LEFT: Ku Klux Klan members
burn a cross in Edinburg, Miss.,
in 196 7. ABOVE: Thomas
Tarrants has renounced his past
as a white supremacist. “People
can be seduced by these things
when the climate is right,” he
said. He says Christianity is the
solution to reducing hate and
intolerance.ASSOCIATED PRESS