Truelove.is has proven that it’s not interested in listening to criticism
Tags: LGBTQ, Singapore, Religion, Homophobia, Christianity

Previously, I wrote a piece titled “I am a gay ex-Christian and I attended a Truelove.is event”, in which I documented how this movement behaves behind closed doors. Amongst other things, I found that Truelove.is operates on an ideology that refuses to engage productively with criticism, choosing instead to interpret rebuttals as attacks on their identity and not their ideology. To recap,

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Truelove.is’s wilful aversion of engaging with criticism is a return to an “out of sight, out of mind” strategy that discounts the critic as someone worth engaging; if I don’t understand you, I can’t be guilty, and I don’t have to change for you. Why, then, are the critics not worth listening to? Truelove.is seems to think they are either liberal or stupid. Later on in the event, we are introduced to a Truelove.is social media response squad — they are “a group that [has] faithfully been responding on social media”, a group of “lawyers and writers who gather together and say, ‘hey, we cannot let lies and fake news triumph.’”

My piece was received with much aplomb; it even gained enough traction to warrant a reply from their pastor. In his response, Ian Toh mentions that Truelove.is “[has] reflected on [my] comments of shutting out criticism and will do better”. I took this to mean that Truelove.is might thus prove me wrong, that

Instead of engaging with criticism, all opposition is deemed wrong because they are from the left side of the ideology spectrum. To Truelove.is’s online response team, it’s not about what you say, but who you are. If you are a liberal, then your thoughts are fake news [. . .] Truelove.is might insist that they are here for conversations and not conversions, but these are conservations they will have about you and not with you.

Nonetheless, even though Toh promised me that his team will stop shutting out criticism, this is a goal they have yet again failed to achieve.

Recently, an Instagram post by @gabbiwenyiayane criticised Truelove.is for being “conversion therapy masquerading as allyship” and employing “psychological manipulation to ‘convert’ queer people to fit society’s cisheteronormative standards”. Her post features a photoshopped image of a Truelove.is banner with “conversation” changed to “conversion” and “A Fucking Disgrace” added below its heading.

Ayane’s post is the latest entry to a long list of similar attacks on Truelove.is. Rice Media has charged Truelove.is with “masking homophobia as holiness” and “claim[ing] to demonstrate unconditional love, yet stop[ping] short of all-encompassing acceptance and affirmation”. Gay Star News is troubled by Truelove.is’s insistence that homosexuality can be repressed and even reversed. This Yahoo! Article summarises Truelove.is’s embattled media coverage well.

As I pointed out in my previous piece, these are critiques that Truelove.is is aware of. More importantly, these are critiques to which Toh promised better, more sincere and genuine engagement.

Yet, and perhaps expectedly so, Truelove.is responded to Ayane in the manner they knew best. Taking a leaf from Singapore’s newly minted Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill (POFMA), Truelove.is called Ayane’s edited image a “deliberate [effort] to spread online falsehoods that TrueLove.is practices so-called ‘conversion therapy’”.

While I previously harboured hope that Truelove.is might have learned from my criticism, their latest reaction has reinforced my disappointment in them. By once again choosing to view criticism as “fake news”, Truelove.is has demonstrated a trend for ignoring its opponents by discounting and ridiculing them. It is more comfortable for Truelove.is to believe that they live in a lie-ridden world, because the alternative — that genuine, legitimate and logical arguments against them exist — is too dangerous a reality for them to inhabit.

In other words, it’s more important for Truelove.is to believe in their righteousness — and, by extension, in the sinfulness and wrongness of “The Liberals” — than it is to engage with arguments against their ideas.

Misusing POFMA

Truelove.is has tried to protect itself by characterising Ayane’s post as something that falls under POFMA’s jurisdiction. By calling the edited post a “deliberate [effort] to spread online falsehoods”, Truelove.is wants to believe that the post possesses the same sort of malicious and untrue quality that one might possess if they wish to undermine national security.

However, on a purely technical note, Truelove.is’s retaliation is on unsteady ground. After all, Ayane’s post is obviously an instance of criticism, satire and parody, none of which are prohibited by POFMA. As The Straits Times puts it,

A falsehood is defined as a statement of fact that is false or misleading. It does not cover opinions, criticisms, satire or parody, which the public can continue to upload and share.

To most reasonable readers, Ayane’s doctored image reads obviously as criticism, parody and satire, because no organisation would call itself a “fucking disgrace”.

A desperate desire to be correct in spite of reality

However, Truelove.is’s problematic relationship with “fake news” goes beyond purely technical terms. Truelove’s knee-jerk reaction of deeming contradictory arguments “fake news” should unnerve us because it brings to mind authoritarian impulses that seize power over truth in order to consolidate power and control.

Hidden within this resort to “fake news” is Truelove.is’s insistence that it is correct, because to believe anything else would rupture the ego that holds them together. Since Truelove.is’s identity is rooted so deeply in its moral opposition to homosexuality, entertaining the validity of these counter-arguments is too terrifying a move to make because it draws them closer towards an inexorable point of anguish: having to consider that these alternative viewpoints might be valid.

This rhetoric of “fake news” is not new to the movement; they used it during their symposium to discredit opposing views as well.

[W]e are introduced to a Truelove.is social media response squad — they are “a group that [has] faithfully been responding on social media”, a group of “lawyers and writers who gather together and say, ‘hey, we cannot let lies and fake news triumph.’”

Evidently, Truelove.is’s self-image is founded on a persecution fantasy in which it is hated for its identity and not its ideology. Since, in this worldview, Truelove.is is a perfect and blameless vessel of truth, it is impossible for the “liberal and mainstream media” (a term used during their symposium) to attack them on an argumentative level. Consequently, everything the Liberals say is false by definition. As such, there is no need for engagement, only the labelling of falsehood.

Who else uses this tactic? Donald Trump and far-right extremism.

When Trump runs up against news reports that expose his misdeeds, he defends himself by making unfounded attacks on their truth value. Rarely, if ever, does Trump actually examine the evidence and arguments these reports provide. Why not? Such a reaction suggests at least three possibilities: Trump doesn’t know how to examine the data; Trump genuinely believes he is right; he knows that the only way out is to lie.

None of these possibilities cast Truelove.is in a good light.

Firstly, we must eliminate the first possibility, because Truelove.is isn’t stupid. As they told us at the symposium, they have esteemed and learned members of society, such as lawyers and writers, on their side. Their branding is also not the product of an unintelligent mind. Clearly, they know enough about aesthetics and public relations to produce a text that can sustain the appearance of genuine hospitality.

This leads us to two remaining possibilities: Truelove.is is either convinced it’s right or consciously choosing to lie. I believe both are simultaneously true: in its desperation to believe in itself, Truelove.is is willing to believe in “alternative facts”, imagining and inhabiting a reality that it wishes were true instead. It chooses to ignore the substantial scientific evidence that establishes homosexuality as a natural, involuntary, and harmless variation in human psychology. It also chooses to resist the inevitable realisation that life without “same-sex attraction” is a viable mode of existence, which is a position that its predecessors, such as Exodus International, has publicly and decisively denounced [1] [2].

Finally, and most bizarrely, Truelove.is chooses to believe in a persecution fantasy in which it is Christians, and not gay people, who are subjected to social and institutional discrimination:

Many of these Christians with same-sex attraction feel that they have been marginalized by some members of the LGBT community and their allies because their worldview isn’t in agreement with the two established community narratives — that you’re born this way, and that you can’t change. Sadly, for the ones who have been bold enough to share their struggles, hate-filled responses to their personal stories reinforce their belief that it is not safe for them to come out to the pro-LGBT community after they’ve chosen a life of faith, in which they explore a life which confronts the established community narratives of being born this way and change not being possible. [Source]

Despite originating in a country where anal sex between consenting men is still criminalised for gross indecency, where gay teachers are held in the closet via the silent threat of dismissal, where our sexuality education programmes uphold heterosexual unions at the expense of all other partnerships, where our national leaders turn a blind eye to the systemic injustices that weigh LGBT citizens down, where LGBT citizens feel an ever-tightening lack of dignity constricting their ability to thrive, where dignity is only possible upon leaving our country, Truelove.is somehow still manages to see itself, a movement wholly in line with the nation’s systemic marginalisation and erasure of queerness, as the victim.

In order to sustain its persecution fantasy, which in turn structures and reinforces its identity as a maligned bearer of righteousness, Truelove.is decides to lie to itself about how the world works.

As Trump has shown us, a rash turn to “fake news” is often the defence mechanism of a fragile ego that knows its survival is contingent upon disregarding reality. This seems to be the position Truelove.is has found itself in. Perhaps, like Trump, whose sense of self is founded on an overripe image of himself as an infallible and uniquely righteous immensity, Truelove.is knows that to seriously entertain a counter-argument is to hold a needle to its own taut skin.

Psychological conversion therapy is still conversion therapy

Finally, to reiterate sentiments from my previous piece and to definitively put the “we are not conversion therapy advocates!” argument to rest, let me point out that Truelove.is ultimately promotes conversion therapy because it demands, even if only of its own adherents, to repress their sexual desires in exchange for social acceptance, while holding hostage their dignity and social acceptance.

In their rebuttal against Ayane, Truelove.is has written that it is not a conversion therapy provider. Instead, it “provides Christian stories, resources and a safe community to help Christians with unwanted same-sex attraction.”

Much is hidden within the phrase unwanted same-sex attraction. This sense of unwantedness, that homosexuality is a burden that must be stripped from its bearer, is programmed into the subject through mutually reinforcing circles of social and psychological control. Here are the psychological processes involved in the Truelove.is journey:

Internalised homophobia

Come to think of your attractions as dirty, sinful, hell-worthy; through social programming and peer influence, internalise the thought that you are exceptionally and profoundly flawed. Self-flagellation

Reinforce the inferiority from (1) by reminding yourself of the need to purge yourself of homosexual desires in order to escape hell; yet, these desires return, and your daily struggle between purity and damnation continues. Coming out

Come out to your society as one struggling with SSA; invite more people into your structure of sexual policing, so that self-flagellation is reinforced by the threat of actual social condemnation. Going back in

You realise that even though you pray and talk about it, your SSA never goes away; you think this reflects badly on your own piety; you entrench your social position as “that person who struggles with SSA”. Soon, you become defined both by your SSA and your failure to move past it. Become the subject of failure, in a repeated but never perfected act of failing. You internalise the judgment of your society. Life goes on around you, but not in you

Your straight friends move into relationships, get married, live unified lives. You remain chaste, celibate, and you feel loneliness make its home in your heart. Surely, holiness is its own reward. Learning to love the abuse

Tell yourself that the trauma you suffer from the above processes is a badge of honour that you happily wear in order to prove your piety; you link your socially conferred sense of self-worth to pain that is transmuted into pleasure. True love is straight love, and since that is what you can never experience, it is something you don’t deserve.

In this structure, the subject learns to love their suffering, and they learn to inflict it on themselves. One might thus say that the Truelove.is process is even more dangerous than electroshock therapy because its ultimate aim is to make the subject their own abuser.

Conversion therapy, at its core, is not about electric shocks. Electric shocks are but a means to an end. Conversion therapy is about reprogramming the mind through enforced negative feedback. Truelove.is moves beyond traumatising the body to traumatising the psyche; it weaponises the victim’s mind against itself. Why shock and sting the body, when you can make the victim despise and loathe himself?

Truelove.is seeks to instil within the adherent a self-reinforcing system of shame, shock and submission. Physical torture isn’t needed because the victim’s mind will learn, and love, to torture itself. If I learn to love the pain, I am worthy. If I do not, I will go to hell.

Conclusion: True love is straight love

In its desperation to exonerate itself, Truelove.is has resorted to reshaping reality in its head. By doing so, the movement has revealed that it is fundamentally founded upon the exclusion of contrary thoughts because evidence-based arguments have the potential to fracture the walls that keep them up and away from the Liberals that they despise. Hell for them is a world in which they might be proven wrong. Heaven, then, is a world in which these arguments dissolve into the ether of untruth. To reuse and update a statement I used in my previous article: “all in all, Truelove.is talks about gay people, speaks at gay people, but does not know how — and does not want — to talk with gay people”.

A call to action

If you are interested in advocating for equal rights and standing up against irrationality, please consider sharing this article. You can also share my previous article, which can be found here: