iPhone News Updated

Burlington group leads fight against anti-gay iPhone app

Burlington group leads fight against anti-gay iPhone app

Yielding to public pressure originating in Burlington, Apple Inc. on Wednesday discontinued an iPhone application which aimed to steer people away from what the app’s creators call the sin of homosexuality.

Burlington resident Wayne Besen, executive director of local nonprofit Truth Wins Out (TWO), said about 150,000 people “signed” an online petition at www.change.org against the app created by Exodus International, an Orlando, Fla.-based Christian nonprofit group.

Online forums that monitor Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple, such as iPodnn.com, credited the TWO petition with pressuring the corporation to drop the app, which was a conduit to the Exodus International website.

Tom Neumayr, a spokesman for Apple, declined to elaborate on corporate procedures for vetting applications that run on iPhones and iPads.

“We removed the Exodus app from the App Store because it violates developers’ guidelines, by being offensive to large groups of people,” he said.

Apple approved the Exodus app’s Feb. 15 release; the religious group, however, postponed announcing the launch until March 8 for tactical reasons, Exodus President Alan Chambers said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

“We knew there would be a tremendous backlash,” he said. “We pretty much knew that it would get a heated response.”

On its website, Exodus International describes the app as “helping those struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction to live a life congruent with biblical teaching.” Online customers downloaded about 16,000 versions of the app before it was removed from Apple’s iTunes store, Chambers said.

“It was a way to help people stay in touch with our mission, a way to offer support,” he said. “Taking it off deprived a large number of people something that was useful to them.” The organization now is asking its supporters to contact Apple and “ask them to recognize the diversity of beliefs within its customer base.”

Besen said he and his colleagues had “laughed off” early reports that an Exodus app was due to surface. Last year, Apple had removed a “Manhattan Declaration” app that linked to a document that, among other things, defines marriage as being solely between a man and a woman and that discusses why gays should not be allowed to marry.

When the Exodus app surfaced, Besen said, TWO “went into battle mode” to challenge the message that homosexuality can be “cured” through Christian love.

“We worked day and night to put the kibosh on this,” he said.

“Exodus, like other anti-gay groups, preaches an incredibly dangerous message,” he added. “It rejects the psychiatric and medical findings; it tells people that God can ‘cure’ you if you just pray hard enough. It’s a smear campaign that they sugarcoat in the guise of love.”

In interviews online, an Exodus International official recently said that the term “gay cure” was being used by opponents of the app and did not reflect the group’s approach, which he said involved guiding gays not toward heterosexuality but toward “holiness.”

The group “views homosexual expression as outside of God’s will,” and “one of many conditions that beset fallen humanity,” the Exodus International website states, adding that “involvement in a homosexual lifestyle is considered destructive, as it distorts God’s intent for the individual and is therefore sinful.”

Apple’s approval and subsequent removal of the Exodus app still puzzles Besen, who authored in 2003 the book “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth.”

“Maybe they don’t have a real good system; maybe someone was lazy on a Friday afternoon and just wanted to get home to the husband or wife,” Besen said. “Maybe they were too busy — or maybe there was someone on the inside who approved this. What’s important is that Apple responded.”

The computer company’s action spawned a great deal of debate in the blogosphere. Jeff Bercovici of the Mixed Media blog at Forbes.com wondered if the petition’s success might backfire on the GLBT community.

“In other words, something is objectionable if enough people object to it,” Bercovici wrote Wednesday. “If that’s going to be the standard, Apple is going to be seeing a lot more petitions. You can be sure the religious conservatives who found themselves on the losing end of this culture-war skirmish have been taking notes, and are already at work drawing up a list of all the gay-themed apps in the app store that are offensive to their beliefs.”

But Besen, who moved TWO to Burlington three months ago from New York City, said the organization is not resting on its laurels. Others who he described as anti-gay religious extremists continue to prey upon insecure youth, Besen said; constant vigilance is needed to hold them to account.

“We’re always looking for one less platform to spread misinformation and anti-gay messages,” he said. “This is one less sandcastle of lies.”

[Thanks: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com]

Comments are closed.