Did Love Win Out in Atlanta?

I'm not sure since I didn't attend, but here's the lowdown of what happened when love came to Atlanta.

Atlanta's WXIA (NBC 11) took the media lead on covering the Love Won Out conference and the conference's protest groupies. Video reports here. A friend of mine who went out to take pictures of the protesters told me there were a scant few of them out. There were barely 35 people, he said and that only at a certain time. And only ONE of those protestors was black. I guess the "substantial" black gay community in Atlanta wasn't as outraged as the protestors claimed. Atlanta's black gay community may be good for turning out in mass numbers for a party, but they shun protesting like a plague.

I noted Daniel Gonzales' speech at the protest press conference. I'm not sure why his voice was quivering and shaking when he was talking, but it was. Maybe he was really scared about lying on public TV or maybe it was an act to dramatize his brief speech. You can watch it ">here [video]. Gonzales is the token "former exgay" at exgaywatch who has joined the cast of Besen's LWO groupie show. Gonzales major complaint was that he had indeed prayer the infamous MMS Prayer. On the video Gonzales says it took "countless evenings" to find out he could not be "straight", but in print says it took "thousands of hours". Since he didn't say just how many thousands of hours it was, we are left to guess. If it was "thousands of hours", let's just assume that it was 2,400 hours. That means he only tried his prayer about three months. I don't know about him, but I have prayed for things for years before the answer came from God. That's what the Bible called being faithful in prayer. I'm not sure why Gonzales offered the different versions of how long he actually claimed he prayed.

Version 1: “I spent thousands of hours on my knees, praying for the Lord to make me straight,” said Daniel Gonzales. “And he never did.”
Version 2: "I spent countless evening on my knees begging the Lord to make me straight. And he never did."

Do you know what the MMS prayer is? If you don't, I explained it here.

On the other side of the LWO coin, Exodus used the face of my friend James on the billboard in downtown Atlanta area, but held the conference in Woodstock at First Baptist Church. Although I'm proud of my brotha for reppin overcomers of color, I hope Exodus is not pimpin' his face.

They also used the same billboard in St. Louis and this is what happened. I got a call from someone who saw the billboard. The man was very direct in asking me why LWO had NO BLACK SPEAKERS especially since they were in a predominately African American city? That remains to be seen. We have had that conversation before with them (in the John Paulk days) but things haven't changed. That's probably why you won't see me at a LWO anytime soon. I did attend the LWO in Atlanta several years ago, but there were only a handful of blacks there. Maybe not that many. Change is a process we always say, so we will wait for the process to kick in.