A former LIA "client" and now booster takes issue with this post of mine.  Here’s my reply…

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> I, having been a client at LIA (March, 2005), would like to know some of
> Lance’s horrendous experiences caused by his time there. 

A client were you?  Swell.  You know the difference between being a "client" and being an inmate…right?  There’s the beginning of the horror right there buddy, and what’s disturbing right off the bat about your comment is that you seem utterly unable to even notice it.  So you my friend, are part of the horror.

Those kids are not in there by choice.  Most of them had either made peace with their sexual nature, or were at least beginning to, when they were dragged into LIA by parents terrified from the cesspool of anti-gay propaganda that the religious right vomits into the public discourse, much of which John happily repeats.  Joe Stark was on Pat Robertson’s 700 club, mindlessly babbling that gays only live an average of 36 years.  Where the hell did he hear that claptrap, if it wasn’t John?  Even Paul Cameron isn’t claiming 36 years.  But John doesn’t seem to care where he gets his facts on homosexuality, as long as they’re sufficently ugly.

For months at least, if not longer, John was linking his LIA website to a group called The International Organization Of Heterosexual Rights, and using their bogus statistics to paint a picture of homosexuals and homosexuality that was relentlessly perverse and disgusting.  After community activists started pointing out how unChristianly it was to be linking to a hate site, John pulled the link.  But he kept their bogus fact sheet online.  So at least for a time (I haven’t been there recently), people visiting his site were still being given this crap from a hate group…only they weren’t being told who the source of this information was.  Dig it.  John responded to the accusation that he was spreading hate rhetoric, not by taking it down, but by making it harder for people to discover that the facts on his website were coming from a hate group.

I think part of the reason he does it is because he knows that it frightens parents, and that’s his last best source of clients now:  Helpless gay teens who cannot legally refuse his dangerous blend of anti-gay religiosity and junk psychology.  As more and more comes to light about the practices of these ex-gay ministries, and their spectacular rates of failure, fewer and fewer grown adults are checking in.  So the kids, who cannot legally refuse, are his last best source of income, which he needs to keep the operation afloat.  Never mind what it does to kids, to their parents, to the bond between parent and child…John’s on a mission from God, and Gods don’t feel shame.

Imagine a teen who is left handed.  Imagine they’re told that their left-handedness is unnatural, perverse, a God condemned abomination.  Imagine sending that kid to a place that claims to be able to treat left-handedness through prayer and counseling, and establishing a closer relationship to Jesus. They claim that left-handedness is a form of addiction, that using your left hand to do things like writing is no different from people who use their hands to rob, assault, and murder, people and animals.  Imagine that left-handed kid being forced to sit next to grown men who’ve used their hands to do all manner of cruel and perverse things to animals and humans alike, while the staff of this treatment facility is telling him, perhaps not so much in word but sure as hell in deed, that he’s no better then those men.  Someday, his desire to use his left hand instead of the God ordained right hand, will lead him into all manner of brutish, deviant, ugly acts.  

Imagine this kid trying desperately…trying, trying with all his heart and soul to pray away his left handedness.  But he can’t…he’s left handed. And every time he feels the urge to use his left hand, it only serves to remind him that he doesn’t love God enough, that he’s headed for the same life that all those robbers, and murderers live.  He’s going to become just like them one day…

What does that sort of thing to to a kid?  Well we all know what it does to an adult because it happened.  Does the name Jack McIntyre ring any bells?  Or has John finally erased all memory of Love In Action’s bloody birth?  McIntyre was one of LIA’s first clients (I say client because he went in of his own accord…a choice of free will that neither Lance nor Zach nor any kid in the horrifically misnamed Refuge "program" are allowed)  A few months ago I finally stumbled on a copy of his suicide note.  You want to know what the horror is my friend?  Well…take a peek into the Pit then…

TO: Those left with the question, why did he do it?

I loved life and all that it had to offer to me each day.

I loved my job and my clients.

I loved my friends and thank God for each one of them.

I loved my little house and would not have wanted to live anywhere else.

All this looks like the perfect life. Yet, I must not let this shadow the problem that I have in my life. At one time, not to long ago, that was all that really mattered in my life. What pleased me and how it affected me. Now that I have turned my life over to the Lord and the changes came one by one, the above statements mean much more to me. I am pleased that I can say those statements with all the truth and honesty that is within me.

However, to make this short, I must confess that there were things in my life that I could not gain control, no matter how much I prayed and tried to avoid the temptation, I continually failed.

It is this constant failure that has made me make the decision to terminate my life here on earth. I do this with the complete understanding that life is not mine to take. I know that it is against the teachings of our Creator. No man is without sin, this I realise. I will cleanse myself of all sin as taught to me by His word. Yet, I must face my Lord with the sin of murder. I believe that Jesus died and paid the price for that sin too. I know that I shall have everlasting life with Him by departing this world now, no matter how much I love it, my friends, my family. If I remain it could possibly allow the devil the opportunity to lead me away from the Lord. I love life, but my love for the Lord is so much greater, the choice is simple.

I am not asking you to sanction my actions. That is not the purpose of my writing this at all. It is for the express purpose of allowing each one who will read this to know how I weighed things in my own mind. I don’t want you to think that, ‘I alone,’ should have been the perfect person, without sin. That would be ridiculous! It is the continuing lack of strength and/or obedience and/or will power to cast aside certain sins. To continually go before God and ask forgiveness and make promises you know you can’t keep is more than I can take. I feel it is making a mockery of God and all He stands for in my life.

Please know that I am extremely happy to be going to the Lord. He knows my heart and knows how much I love life and and all that it has to offer. But, He knows that I love Him more. That is why I believe that I will be with Him in Paradise.

I regret if I bring sorrow to those that are left behind. If you get your hearts in tune with the word of God you will be as happy about my ‘transfer’ as I am. I also hope that this answers sufficiently the question, why?

May God Have Mercy On My Soul.

A Brother & A Friend.

No.  May God have mercy on yours, because I don’t have any to spare for the likes of you.  Jack McIntyre killed himself, rather then make one more promise to God he knew he could not keep.  Bad enough John Smid is doing this to grown adults.  Now he’s dragging kids into his little psych room, where he’ll sit them down right next to grown men who have engaged in the most extreme sexual perversions imaginable, and let them know that they’re just like those men are, that their sexual orientation will lead them into all of that and worse.  This is what John is subjecting gay teenagers to.  He takes in kids who are more or less fine with their sexual orientation, or getting there, and puts his crowbar to their self esteem and tries systematically to utterly destroy their deepest sense of their inner selves, to make them see their sexual nature as ugly and perverse and foul, and that only a relationship with Jesus can save them from their homosexuality.  But it won’t.  They’re Gay.  What happens is that they loose their faith, and often enough, loose their family too.  But as long as the checks clear, John doesn’t seem to mind.

> I speak on behalf of LIA, not only because I believe in what they’re doing, but also
> because I care a great deal about John Smid and the LIA staff. 

If you care about any of them then you need to do whatever you can to convince them to stop tormenting gay people, and particularly gay teens who are content with who they are.  John is trying his best to gut their ability to ever feel good about themselves as gay people, and ever experience what it is to love and be loved, body and soul.  He is systematically trying to put as much fear and loathing into teens and adults of their sexual nature so that they’ll never be able to love wholeheartedly without feeling ashamed and dirty.  To assault someones sense of self to the point where they cannot see one of this life’s most wonderful, beautiful, amazing things as anything other then ugly and perverse is a crime against them of absolutely staggering magnitude.  To do that to children is a crime against humanity. 

> Zach Stark’s opinion of "reparative therapy," as it’s being dubbed, variegated a
> great deal after his experience at LIA.  "Love In Action has been misrepresented
> and what I have posted in my blogs has been taken out of perpective and context,"
> as Zach is quoted at 365gay.com on 8-1-05.  My question to Lance is this: What
> specific occurrences at LIA made your experience so horrendous?

As for Zach…I’m a little fuzzy about how you expect a kid who was forced into ex-gay therapy against his will, and who said in an update to that blog post you’re quoting from there that he could only post blogs his father approved of, to speak out publicly against his treatment.  Actually, I’m being sarcastic.  You know damn well he couldn’t.  Since he’s still underage, and cannot speak for himself without suffering whatever consequences his parents (you know…the ones who put him into LIA in the first place) can dictate, it’s unreasonable to expect him to get on a soapbox about his feelings toward LIA.  If I were you though, I would strongly suggest that his silence on the matter since those first couple of posts speaks volumes.

I was with Lance at a protest against reparative therapy in Silver Spring, Maryland.  John Smid was there too, but too cowardly to come out to the line and speak with Lance himself.  One of the other LIA staffers, a new guy, did come out because, as he said, he wanted to hear from Lance himself why he was upset about what LIA did to him.  Lance gave him an earful, the gist of which was that he resented being made to feel horrible about himself simply because he’s gay. 

John likes to boast that he brings families together.  What happened to Lance after he left LIA was horrible, and he finally had to move out because his mom had become so abusive.  The day he moved out, his mom cornered him and started beating the crap out of him.  He’s told this to reporters and gave a more detailed account to Morgan Jon Fox who is doing a documentary on the LIA protests.  Morgan and Lance let me sit in on the interview to take some photographs and Lance’s story nearly brought me to tears and I had to concentrate on what I was doing and I almost couldn’t.  John did nothing, nothing for that family, except tear it apart.  Oh…and he cashed the check.

You care about the LIA staff do you?  Then dig up whatever stunted whithered stump of a conscience any of them still have left in them, and make them see two things they really, really need to see.  First, that they are committing a monstrous assault on the human identity of the people they’re "treating" and their capacity to love and accept love from another.  Second, that John has no brakes, and one of these days he’s going to push a gay kid too far and then they’re be more then Jack McIntyre’s blood on the LIA account books, and if you think the judgment on LIA has been harsh up till now, you haven’t seen anything.  Yet.