Via Ex-Gay Watch…  For a ministry whose alleged purpose is to help homosexuals, they sure spend a lot of time talking to heterosexuals.  And these days, heterosexual parents especially…

If one reads the news coverage following pretty much any Love Won Out conference it quickly becomes obvious they are attended primarily by family, friends and clergy rather than actual ex-gays or gays. As I’ve stood at the driveways to churches where Love Won Out is hosted I’ve seen too many cars pass by with children in the back seat, looks of sheer fear and dread on their faces, their parents unable to reconcile their faith with their child’s sexuality.

I’ve seen that horrific spectacle myself, while standing on a protest line outside of Love In Action.  Last summer I watched while one car drove out of Love In Action with a very young, very miserable looking teenage boy in the back seat.  He put a a spiral notebook up to his face to hide it as the car approached the picket line, his parents sat in the front seats with  angry faces.  Not five minutes before, I had been told by one of the protest organizers that an LIA staffer had assured him there were no underage kids attending Refuge that year.  And as it turns out, John Smid, the child abusing leader of that little cult, is trolling the Exodus Love Won Out conferences for fresh blood…

“I go to every Love Won Out conference,” Smid said, “and 60% of those who attend are parents. It’s primarily a ministry to parents, that’s their goal.”

Which is just as a lot of us thought.  Parents are really the only significant growth opportunity left to the ex-gay snakeoil salesmen.  Especially fundamentalist parents who can be terrified into forcing their kids into undergoing ex-gay therapy.  Which John insists really does work…

“The world is bombarding us with the lie that [homosexuals] should not change, cannot change, that it’s harmful to change,” said John Smid of Love in Action (LIA). “The media is bombarding people with those lies.”

The wall is yellow John.  

He said parents want to know how to build a respectful relationship with their children, which is necessary before they can help their children escape the tentacles of a homosexual lifestyle.

Oh really?  I was at the protest against the Love Won Out conference in Silver Spring last year, and a former "client" of John’s, Lance Carroll, was there on the protest line too.  Lance was also at the Love In Action protest in Memphis last summer, and spoke to reporters there about his experience as an unwilling participant in John’s Refuge program for teens.  Like other teens who have been through the "program", Lance was forced into it by his parents, a situation that John happily goes along with, I guess in the name of building respectful relationships.  But what was really heartbreaking about Lance’s story, was what happened to him after he left LIA.  His situation at home became even more abusive, to the point where the boy was being beaten up and he had to get the hell out of there.  Now there’s a respectful relationship for you.  And it only cost his parents $10,000.00.

Lance expressed the hope several times to me while standing on that picket line, that John would come out and talk to him.  Of course he didn’t.  If you don’t acknowledge the people in your life that you have failed, then you can say you have not failed anyone.   And cash the checks with a somewhat clear conscience.

Smid says family involvement is crucial to give the client the best shot at restoration in his or her life. Many other ministries have used LIA’s materials to start their own outreach, notable among them Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out conferences. Not only did Focus on the Family adopt LIA materials and resources, but the ministry was pioneered by LIA graduates.

Materials let it be said, created by someone whose own family life is somewhat less then perfect, apparently.  This is something I hadn’t heard before, but it’s strikingly unsurprising:

“Healing from the causes of homosexuality takes time,” Smid said. Again, his own experience brings a poignant focus on the needs he still faces in his restoration process. One of his deepest prayers is to reach reconciliation with his daughters. Those dysfunctional family relationships – consequences of his own poor choices – now fuel his passion for LIA to serve the whole family.

So to recap: he’s a self loathing gay man who spent his entire life running away from what he is, he’s on somewhat less then good terms with his own children, and he’s getting thousands of dollars from the parents to teach them, he claims, how to build respectful relationships with their gay children.  Swell.  Next time my roof needs fixing I think I’ll call a carpenter whose house has fallen apart.  Sure…I can hold a hammer.  Watch me hit myself in the head with this one.  Watch me do it again…

You see this over and over again in this struggle…people who are thoroughly obsessed with fighting the homosexual demon, that turn out to have painful family lives.  Maybe it’s a gay kid they loath.  Maybe it’s a gay parent.  Maybe it’s a failed marriage.  Maybe it’s their own failure to be the parents their kids need them to be.  But whatever it is in their own family lives they’re unhappy with, rather then accept responsibility for it they turn outward, looking for scapegoats.  And for thousands of years, gay people have played the role of human scapegoats for the intimate failures of heterosexuals…and those who wish they were heterosexual.  I wonder if John was having trouble with his daughters the day he told Tom Ottosen "I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle."   What I don’t wonder now is what John would have told Ottosen’s parents had he actually done that.  Nothing.  The man who could not so much as bring himself to walk over to Lance Carroll and acknowledge Lance felt so badly about how he was treated inside Love In Action…not even to apologize for it, just to acknowledge it…would have said nothing to Ottosen’s parents if their son had died as a result of John’s advice.  Of that I am absolutely certain.  The man who instructs his unwilling charges that they have to "be honest, authentic, and real", has a long familiarity with running away from his own issues. 

And he seems to think God should be willing to help him keep doing that…

"I’m looking at that wall and suddenly I say it’s blue," Smid said, pointing to a yellow wall. "Someone else comes along and says, ‘No, it’s gold.’ But I want to believe that wall is blue. Then God comes along and He says, ‘You’re right, John, [that yellow wall] is blue.’ That’s the help I need. God can help me make that [yellow] wall blue."

The wall is yellow John.

"Basically, their form of therapy is conditioning. It’s a negative reinforcement of shame. Anything that you connect to homosexuality, you connect to shame within yourself. You internalize this hatred toward yourself, this homophobia, this embarrassment…two months, every day, morning and evening, they would take turns. A person would get up and you would literally shame them for their feelings…"

-Lance Carroll

You don’t build respectful relationships on such a foundation as this.  You can’t.  When you rip apart someone from within like this, you aren’t doing it to make them a better person.  You do it, to punish them for existing.  You do it, so they will never rise above you, will never become the fully realized human beings that you never could yourself.  The staringly obvious thing about this assault on gay teens is that it isn’t about healing them, let alone bringing their families together.  Just look at the indifference toward them after they’ve left the "program".   This is about destroying the person within.   Nothing else.  John Smid is doing nothing more noble and righteous then making himself a willing pawn in the big boy’s Kultar Kampf, so he can fill the void inside of him with the lost hopes and dreams of young adults and helpless teenagers.  Probably, they remind him of himself the day he took his own hopes and dreams around behind the barn and killed them.  The big boys, the rich and powerful of the American hard core right wing, do it out of a bottomless hatred of the human spirit, which does not willingly accept their whips and chains.  But for the likes of John, it is more personal, more focused, more intimate.  Every light he manages to snuff out within a young person’s heart, justifies the choices he made in life that left darkness inside his own.  That’s why he does it.  In a larger sense, that’s why they all do it.  It matters not if it leaves a family in ruins.  Just so long as it leaves the kid’s heart in ruins.