More on Setting Him Straight?

Amazing the stuff that is done in the name of Jesus.

I've been posting a torrent about it on my own blog.  Yeah...it's a 
pretty horrific story.  The guy who runs the place, John Smid, is a real  
piece of work.  His involvement in the ex-gay movement is a long one.  
He was the guy who has supposedly turned John Paulk straight, telling 
him at one point that he shouldn't even regard himself as an "ex-gay"  
but as a heterosexual man.  Well...we all know how that turned out.

One of Smid's former clients reports, in an article at Whosoever, that 
Smid once told him:  I would rather you commit suicide than have you  
leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle. In a 
physical death you could still have a spiritual resurrection; whereas, 
returning to homosexuality you are yielding yourself to a spiritual 
 death from which there is no recovery."  Nice guy.  And parent's are 
letting him perform therapy on their children?

The rules contain some creepy features.  Clients are not allowed to wear 
any "Abercrombie and Fitch or Calvin Klein brand clothing,  
undergarments, or accessories..." and male clients are told that 
"Bikini-style underwear is prohibited..."  This is allegedly to 
reinforce proper gender norms, and remove any so-called "false images"  
or "F.I.s" the client may have.  Clients also have to submit to an 
"F.I." inspection by a Love In Action staff member, who will confiscate 
any articles of False Image clothing the client is wearing.  I wonder if  
Smid keeps the underwear in a locked drawer in his office.  That isn't 
being flippant.  Take a look at the Refuge (the teen program) staff page 
sometime.  It's mostly either former clients or other various ex addicts  
or people with undefined sexual issues.  Catholic priest scandal anyone?

Last week, as the protests against Zach's forced treatment began getting 
bigger, Smid held a press conference, and to bolster his group's claim  
of competency to treat adolescents in a therapeutic capacity, he 
presented one Doctor Steven Rice, of  CNS Healthcare of Memphis. Rice is 
Board Certified in Tennessee in Geriatric Psychiatry, Adolescent 
Psychiatry, and General Adult Psychiatry, and his resume asserts at  
least a past membership in the American Psychiatric Association, as he 
was President of the West Tennessee Chapter from 1987 to 1988, and 
Secretary, from 1985 to 1986.  In 1998 the APA issued a statement 
opposing reparative therapy, and saying in part that the "potential  
risks of 'reparative therapy' are great, including depression, anxiety 
and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal 
prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already  
experienced by the patient."  I wonder how Rice reconciles his 
professional responsibilities, with his desire to wield them against gay 
teens.  First do no harm, unless its to a fairy boy, I reckon.

 One of the first gay man to enter the Love in action program, Jack 
McIntyre committed suicide because he was unable to change from gay to 
straight, saying in his suicide note that, "To continually go before God  
and ask forgiveness and make promises you know you can't keep is more 
than I can take."  The founder of the group, Rev. Kent Philpott, a 
heterosexual man, wrote a book titled ""The Third Sex?," which claimed  
that his patients had changed their sexual orientation through prayer. 
But his patients had not and when they confronted him, Philpott said it 
was "God's will" that the book be written. Four of them filed suit  
against Philpott for misrepresenting them in the book, and rather than 
face the suit, Philpott pulled his book off the market.

John Smid himself admits that the program has failed to make him a 
heterosexual.  So, from firsthand experience he knows it doesn't work  
and has killed people in it, and yet he's still taking big bucks from 
parents to force cure their teens' homosexuality.  Nice guy.  Treatment 
runs from around two-thousand dollars for two weeks, to four and a half  
thousand for six.  Zach initially got a two week incarceration.  When 
that one was finished last Friday, his parents told him he was in for 
another six.

How angry to any of you feel like getting.  Because this is a story  
that, the more you dig into it, the angrier, and more stressed you get.  
I've started smoking again after about a year and a half not.  Some days 
it's really, really hard to keep anger from becoming hate.

 ---
Bruce Garrett
http://www.brucegarrett.com/brucelog.htm