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Title: The Salvation Mongers by Ronald L. Donaghe ISBN: 0-595-09835-5 Publisher: ToExcel Pub. Date: 13 July, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Killer Cults
Comment: This novel will be uncomfortable reading for anybody who believes that conservative Christianity always makes people do good. For many gay people, its unrelenting dissection of how far homophobia can go will come as no great surprise. Author Ronald Donaghe returns to the Southwest desert haunts so familiar to fans of his "Common Sons" to give us this dark chronicle of life in a remote boot camp designed to turn gay men into ex-gays. Narrator Kelly is there undercover in Lion's Mouth Christian Ranch, trying to find out why his partner William committed suicide after going through the camp's program. Little by little Kelly begins to see the behind-the scenes abuses, then the hints of murder. Donaghe does a great job of showing how judgmental religion can create a slippery slope of cult violence. Omnipresent in the story is the brooding beauty of the desert -- harsh, yet far less cruel than the humans who try to hide their inhuman deeds there.
Rating: 5
Summary: Read before joining or funding ex-gays
Comment: Ronald Donaghe, the author of Commons Sons, offers a look inside the bastion of bigotry and self-loathing that many people know as "the ex-gay movement."
Though The Salvation Mongers is a work of fiction, it builds its suspenseful, engaging plot upon the philosophies of that actual movement, and the ordeals of its actual victims.
Most people assume that these groups mean well and couldn't possibly hurt. This novel suggests otherwise; the book's afterword (a non-fiction essay) proves otherwise.
From my research into the ex-gay movement, and from my conversations with people who have seen the rotten fruit of its labor, I know that this work of fiction bares more truth than any of the promises that so-called "reparative therapy" makes.
Donaghe creates believable, tortured characters. I've met all the "types" he portrays in The Salvation Mongers, including some of the more sinister characters. I've also seen the beauty of the New Mexico landscape that provides an effective contrast for the ugliness that Donaghe exposes.
This book is both alluring and repulsive in its accuracy. Please read it before you join or fund an ex-gay group.
Rating: 5
Summary: Review of The Salvation Mongers bu cheri
Comment: "The Salvation Mongers", by Ronald L. Donaghe, is the next installment of "The Common Threads in the Life series", following "Common Sons" and "The Blind Season". This book ties in characters from its predecessors and will be included in the much awaited forth book in the series entitled, "The Gathering".
Donaghe does not disappoint the reader with his creative style and wit, and while I would not consider it an "enjoyable" book, unless the reader enjoys human cruelty, it is an account worth writing and reading about. Most people would agree that it is not pleasurable to read about the Holocaust, however, we still must remember it so that hopefully, we can learn from it. Trying to make gay people straight is atrocious and inhumane.
The setting is the Lion's Mouth Christian Church Ranch in the Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico, in 1998. We learn about what goes on there through the journals of Kelly O'Kelly, who loses his lover, William, to suicide after attending the retreat to cleanse his soul of homosexuality. William, having failed to become straight after all he went through, loses all hope to be "normal" and he takes his own life.
Kelly goes to this ranch where crack-pot ministers teach people to repress their natural inclinations, and deny their homosexuality, in order to become "saved". Kelly poses as a recruit in order to find out first hand (and expose) the truth about the Lion's Mouth Christian Ranch (LMCR) which purports to "cure" homosexuality through prayer and discipline. Can a person be delivered from living life as a homosexual, to become truly heterosexual? According to this ministry, "All things are possible through Christ". Their teachings also include condoning celibacy over same-sex love.
Kelly maintains a record of the daily steps toward salvation which include, inhumane treatment, semi-starvation, isolation, lack of privacy, hard work in often intolerable conditions, constant prayer, ridicule, spirit-breaking, reinforcing self-hatred, and boot camp like tactics to brainwash their victims.
As you read Kelly's daily log you can not believe this could happen in real life, however, as Donaghe states in the beginning of his novel, the story is based on truth and actual events. Pretty scary stuff!
Reading about atrocities imposed on the young men is not meant to be pleasant but is meant to educate against the evils lurking in our society disguised as religion, family values, morality, and political agendas.
Is rape and death also part of the ex-gay ministry? Will Kelly make it through "eighteen steps to salvation", unharmed emotionally and physically? And will he be able to expose the LMCR for what it is and save others from denying their true identity and suppressing their innate, God-given desires? It is interesting to read how each of the recruits handles the retreat's regimes depending on their differing degrees of self-hatred, willingness to change, and commitment to the teachings. Read this book and find out.
The author's commentary in the after word is reason enough for reading this book. Donaghe makes many valid points and offers powerful arguments against anti-gay beliefs and legislation. His discussions include, "The Salvation Mongers 2000-The Real Thing", "Treatment Options and Attitudes Toward Homosexuality" and "The Dark Side of the EX-Gay Ministries". The fact that these ex-gay ministries exist today is mind boggling and that people willingly subject themselves to the poison and brainwashing in desperate hope of a "cure", as if wanting to be straight bad enough is something they can achieve, is truly sad.
Don't miss this book if for no other reason than it is the bridge between "The Blind Season" and the much awaited book, "The Gathering", which promises to bring Joel, Tom and the family back together again in Common, New Mexico, as the year 2000 approaches. According to Donaghe, "Kelly is going to play a major role in "The Gathering" as the conscience for all those gays who try to get 'cured' by subjecting themselves to the ex-gay programs".
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Title: Common Sons : Common Threads in the Life by Ronald L. Donaghe ISBN: 0595097081 Publisher: Writers Club Press Pub. Date: 27 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Lance : The Continuing Journals of Will Barnett by Ronald L. Donaghe ISBN: 0595222676 Publisher: Writers Club Press Pub. Date: 21 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Uncle Sean : by Ronald L. Donaghe ISBN: 0595190146 Publisher: Writers Club Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: All Over Him : The Continuing Journals of Will Barnett by Ronald L. Donaghe ISBN: 0595269141 Publisher: iUniverse, Inc. Pub. Date: 10 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Into This World We're Thrown : by Mark Kendrick ISBN: 0595214681 Publisher: Writers Club Press Pub. Date: 30 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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