Evangelical Gym Tells Members: Drinking Soy Will Turn Your Boy Gay!

We now know, thanks to scientific evidence, that many things can make a person gay: Playing with Barbies at a young age; reading superhero comic books; watching Fox News. But little did we know that soy milk — the sweet little lactose-free wonder made from soybeans — will also turn you into a homosexual. Or that is the latest theory flying around the gym Club Physical, which happens to be owned by the conservative evangelical Life Church.

The fitness center in Auckland, New Zealand, has been telling members “soy makes boys gay,” or at least pointing them to an “interesting link” to an article claiming letting young boys drink soy milk will turn ’em homo. And, of course, “homosexuality is always deviant.” That’s not sitting well with deviant homosexual members of the gym!

Auckland gym member John Kingi, who is gay, says he was “shocked and horrified” to see gym’s promotion of the discredited information. He is cancelling his membership and is urging his friends to do the same. He says the original writer is a dubious American homophobic and right-wing Christian who has set up numerous sites with an anti-gay bias.

Although most of the Club Physical gyms, including the one Kingi uses, are individually owned and operated franchises, Kingi says he is not comfortable with any of his money ending up in the pockets of people who “endorse” this damaging claim. “Although they claim the gyms are ‘A place where you belong’ this clearly doesn’t apply to glbt people,” he says.

In his formal complaint to Club Physical owners and newsletter writers Paul and Tina Richards, Kingi, who is treasurer of the Rainbow Youth glbt peer support organisation says “there is simply no justification in my mind which can be made that absolves [Club Physical’s owners] of the bad decision made in publishing the article.”

It should be noted that this photo, of two obviously heterosexual men engaged in a very straight example of male bonding, was taken at Club Physical location.