OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A planned visit from a Colorado religious group that encourages gays to turn straight is stirring up the city’s gay and lesbian community.

Focus on the Family of Colorado Springs is holding a conference in Oklahoma City on Saturday to show gays how to abandon the lifestyle.

About 200 homosexual advocates plan to stand across the street from the “Love Won Out” conference holding signs saying “Diversity Now” and “God Loves Gays and Straights.”

“They want to cure these people of something that cannot be cured nor should be cured,” said Jim Craig, who is organizing the rally through IDEA, the Interfaith Diversity & Equality Alliance. “Their louder message is gay is wrong and gay is not natural and gay is not accepted by God. Our message is just the opposite.”

Conference speakers include two ex-gays who say walking away from homosexuality is possible and healthy.

“The gay community likes to promote that homosexuality is genetic,” said Mike Haley, who was gay in his teens and 20s but is now married with two children. “You state a myth long enough, people are going to believe it.”

Haley said he fell into the gay lifestyle because his father was abusive, calling him his third daughter. He developed a gender identity problem and delved into the gay community at age 16.

“I tried to convince myself that I was happy because I thought that was the only option for me,” he said. Haley said he turned straight with the help of a residential treatment program.

“Now I’m living the life I never thought possible,” he said.

As a Christian, Haley believes homosexuality is “against what God intended.” But that’s not why he left the lifestyle.

“It wasn’t because of this God thing,” he said. “I walked out of homosexuality because I was tired of what the gay community offered me.”

Melissa Fryrear, another conference speaker, said people become gay because of breakdowns in their relationships with their same-sex parent. Others, particularly lesbians, turn gay because they were molested or raped in their youth, she said.

Up to 90 percent of lesbians were violated sexually, compared to about 25 percent of women nationally, said Fryrear, who was a lesbian in high school and college.

“In the beginning, I felt like I had found nirvana,” she said. “(But) I had relationship after relationship. I was becoming alcoholic. I met a lot of people who seemed as broken as I was.”

The local gay community, which has an established district of clubs and businesses in central Oklahoma City and includes many people who attend Church of the Open Arms, is not worried the conference will stall Oklahoma City’s progress toward acceptance, Craig said.

Mostly, he said, gays are surprised people still are preaching such old-fashioned ideas.

“Those views are almost laughable,” he said. “This is 2003. We know that we were born gay. We were born lesbian. We were born bisexual. I was not abused. I was not neglected. I didn’t have a doting mother. There was no family history that matches what they say causes homosexuality.”

Focus on the Family mailed thousands of invitations and usually ends up with about 1,000 participants, the majority of whom are relatives and friends of gays, Haley said. This is the group’s 24th “Love Won Out” conference and the first in Oklahoma City.

Nathaniel Batchelder, a member of IDEA and director of the human rights group, Peace House, said Focus on the Family’s anti-acceptance rhetoric is harmful to gays who are struggling with self-esteem and could even lead to suicides.

“Our sexual orientation can be inborn and it can be a personal choice, but there is no reason for it to change,” Batchelder said. “Same-sex love and affection are every bit as beloved by God as opposite-sex love.

“If we just stop worrying about it as a problem and love one another as we are, then all the fear and shame goes away.”