Truth Wins Out winter tour to include Des Moines and Lincoln

Wayne Besen

The 2011 winter tour of Truth Wins Out will stop in Lincoln February 7, 2011 at UNL at 7 pm in the Nebraska Union Auditorium. Details of other dates, including three in Des Moines, are here.

Press release, January 19, 2011:

BURLINGTON, Vt. – Author and activist Wayne Besen will kick-off an eleven state speaking tour this week to discuss the harm caused by programs that claim to turn gay people straight through prayer and therapy. At each stop, Besen will show a multi-media presentation pointing out the psychological damage caused by these unscientific religious programs.
     “The message of this tour is that you can’t ‘pray away the gay’ and LGBT people are fine just the way they are,” said Wayne Besen, founder of Truth Wins Out. “Organizations that claim they can change one’s sexual orientation are committing consumer fraud and harming a great number of people.”
     Truth Wins Out aims to educate local communities, counter misinformation, and help LGBT people find self-acceptance and freedom. Truth Wins Out organized the tour after the nation’s largest “ex-gay” organization, Exodus International, announced it would focus on youth in 2011.
     “We were outraged that Exodus would target vulnerable and desperate teenagers who need genuine love and self acceptance,” said TWO’s Besen. “The last thing young LGBT people need is scientifically bankrupt misinformation that tells them they are sick and sinful.”
     Truth Wins Out’s Wayne Besen will visit: Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Alabama.

     Truth Wins Out meets ex-gay conferences and symposiums on the ground where they are actively preaching disinformation. Across America, TWO joins its local partners and allies to hold media events and protest actions to counter the destructive messages the ex-gay ministries put forth. We work to ensure that the media and public are aware of the facts, prevailing psychological opinion and that they can hear the powerful stories of people who have been harmed by ex-gay groups.

Shopping and F**cking to run 1/14-23/11 in Omaha

Lilyhorn/Martin Productions presents Shopping and Fucking, a 1996 play by English playwright Mark Ravenhill, in Omaha 1/14/11-1/23/11. Tickets are here.

The play, as described by the producers:

The lives of a gangster obsessed with "The Lion King," a junkie stockbroker trying to kick the habit, a teenage male prostitute with a death wish and two club kids dealing X crash head-on in this disturbing black comedy. WARNING: The play contains nudity, violence and very explicit sex.

From Wikipedia: When first produced, Shopping and Fucking received mixed reviews. Some were shocked by the play's sexually-violent content, which includes the pseudo-rape of an underage male by other males. Other critics were drawn to the play's black humour, and its mixture of Sadean and Marxist philosophies. Along with Sarah Kane's Blasted, it was a prime exemplar of British in-yer-face theatre of the 1990s.

     The sexual violence of Shopping and Fucking explores what is possible if consumerism supersedes all other moral codes. To this effect everything, including sex, violence and drugs, is reduced to a mere transaction in an age where shopping centres are the new cathedrals of Western consumerism.

     Aspects of consumerism and sexuality rampant in popular culture recur throughout the play: drugs, shoplifting, phone sex, prostitution, anal sex, and oral sex in the London department store Harvey Nichols.

     The characters' names (Mark, Robbie and Gary) are taken from the Manchester, England boy band Take That, and from the singer Lulu who collaborated with them on their hit single Relight My Fire.