Ex-Gay Watch

Image: loveinaction.org

Love In Action, the flagship ex-gay ministry of Exodus International, has shut down its residential program. A statement on its website says:

Love In Action’s Residential program has been suspended indefinitely. Simply put, there is a significant need to bring all of LIA under one location for it to be more cost effective. We continue to counsel and grow through our 4-Day Intensives, Hourly Counseling, Conferences, Support Groups, and Church Assistance Program.

The Memphis-based ministry is the subject of a new documentary, This Is What Love in Action Looks Like. The feature-length film follows the 2007 controversy over gay teen Zach Stark, then 16, whose parents enrolled him in an intensive LIA program to “cure” him of his homosexuality.

Former LIA Executive Director John Smid has since apologized for his role in what happened, and he now runs a new Christian ministry that appears more inclusive and embracing of a variety of Christian approaches to sexuality.

Tip of the hat to Peterson Toscano, who says he is “thrilled that the sun has finally set on this part of the program — one that housed and harassed many of us these past 30 years.”

A documentary about the ex-gay movement will have its premiere in June 2011, after six years in the making.

The premiere of This Is What Love in Action Looks Like takes place at Frameline 35, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, which takes place from June 16 to 26. The movie had its genesis in the 2005 story of Memphis, TN, teenager Zach Stark, whose parents forced him to attend a residential gay-to-straight “bootcamp” run by Love in Action, the Exodus-affliated ex-gay ministry.

The film features interviews with many figures at the center of the controversy, including Stark, now 22, his father and then-LIA director John Smid.

There has been no announcement regarding further plans for theatrical or home video distribution.

Watch the trailer below:

The parents of Bryce Faulkner have spoken to Fox News to deny allegations that their 23-year-old son is being coerced into attending an ex-gay program.

Friends of Bryce, a 23-year-old medical student who graduated this year, say he was happily gay and ready to move from Arkansas to Wisconsin to be with his boyfriend, Travis Swanson, 24. They believe he was browbeaten into therapy by his Baptist parents after they found out about his homosexuality.

But mother Debra Faulkner told Fox today that the stories were untrue. She confirmed that Bryce was undergoing “Christian counselling,” but said that he just wanted to “take some time and figure out what he wants to do with his life,” after he got “caught up with friends who were pulling him that way.”

A statement allegedly from Bryce was released through a representative of the family, saying:

Every decision that I’ve made has been based solely upon my beliefs and I have not been manipulated or coerced by anyone to do anything.

Swanson maintains that his boyfriend was manipulated under threat of being disowned by his family, both emotionally and financially. A campaign by Reverend Brett A Harris to help Bryce has been the subject of a website and two Facebook pages, both of which have now been removed, presumably due to legal threats.

Friends of a gay medical student from Arkansas are anxious amid claims that he has been forced into a Florida ex-gay program.

Bryce Faulkner, 23, has not been in touch with boyfriend Travis Swanson since 15 July. Swanson says their last phone call was an emotional exchange in which Faulkner tearfully related how he had been told “hateful” things about his homosexuality.

According to friends, Faulkner had planned to come out to his parents before moving to Wisconsin to be closer to Swanson. He is now believed to be in a 14-month [edit: earliest reports say 14 weeks] Exodus program in Florida, possibly Pensacola.

Friend and sympathizers have set up a website and a Facebook group to draw attention to the story, which is now gaining the ear of media far beyond the blogosphere. Bryce’s parents are furious with the allegations, however, and have threatened legal action if the website and its claims are not removed.

Although the situation invites comparison with the story of Zach Stark, the Memphis teenager forced into Love in Action in 2005, Bryce Faulkner is of course an adult. His parents deny he was forced into therapy, saying he “begged” them to help him. Friends claim that he was effectively given an ultimatum, however, under threat of being disowned by his family, on whom he relies both emotionally and financially.

It seems there is at least enough concern to warrant authorities to investigate the situation.

Update: As this article was being written, the Facebook page was removed. Another group exists here.

A documentary about the controversial ex-gay program Love in Action will be released on DVD on June 6 2009.

Love in Action revisits the furore of summer 2005, when then-16-year-old Zach Stark gained the attention of activists worldwide after his parents forced him to attend the Memphis-based program. In the film, Zach speaks for the first time about his ordeal.

From the official blog:

In the documentary, former Love In Action director John Smid as well as former adult and teenage clients share their hearts on these experiences. In addition, local bloggers, community activists and classmates of Zach tell their stories of becoming involved with what would become a story that gained the attention of largest international news organizations.

[...]

The documentary chronicles the personal stories of those involved and their relationships with God, the world around them and themselves as this agonizingly divisive and polarizing issue unfolds. It also features an extremely surprising, and highly unlikely friendship that developed over this time period, which no one could have predicted would form.

It follows the events that led up to and sparked this story, the ongoing protests and the events that have continued since, including state investigations into LIA’s practices, a lawsuit filed by LIA against the State of Tennessee, as well as the story of the return of a former teen client of Refuge a year later to speak out against the program in a “one year anniversary protest.”

Nancy Alcorn, founder and head of Mercy Ministries, a “Bible-based” rehabilitation home for girls facing ailments ranging from eating disorders to sexual abuse, is a closeted lesbian according to former member Jennifer Wynne. Nashville Scene provides an eye-opening article outing Alcorn and exposing terrifying realities behind Mercy Ministries, as described by the experiences of several former members.

Wynne, a lesbian herself, was entrusted with providing alibis for Alcorn’s secret liaisons with another “ex-lesbian” named Lisa who paid frequent visits to Mercy, where “looking lesbian was a major crime.” Wynne, in Alcorn’s inner circle, became part of the deception.

While Wynne was in Dallas, Alcorn told her about Lisa, a nutritionist at the Nashville home. Lisa had been gay for 17 years, said Alcorn, but now she was straight. Which made it all the more puzzling to Wynne when Alcorn would shut her door at night with Lisa in the bed behind her. Wynne wasn’t sure exactly what was happening. She just knew that every once in a while Alcorn could be counted on to rush into her room in the middle of the night, frantically begging Wynne to pray with her that Lisa wouldn’t leave.

Thus began a pattern. Lisa would threaten to go and Alcorn would buy her something. First it was a Range Rover. Then a newer Range Rover. And finally a house in Belle Meade. When Alcorn’s pastor caught wind of the relationship, he offered a remedy reminiscent of Alcorn’s own prescription for preventing lesbianism: a separation contract.

Suddenly Wynne’s job title changed. At 20 years old, she was already Mercy’s youngest intake director, the second-highest gig in the house. Now she was also Alcorn’s alibi. Wynne was dragged along to local coffee shops to witness Alcorn and Lisa’s “accidental” run-ins. They’d leave together afterward.

A blog was started by another former Mercy member, Jodi Ferris, to be a witness to the injustices experienced there. It’s entitled “Mercy Ministries of America: Truth Will Out.”

Hat Tip: Commenter John Weaver

Sawed-Off Films has released preview footage of the new documentary This Is What Love In Action Looks Like.

The film is an examination of the controversial Memphis-based Love In Action (LIA), a ministry whose actions became notorious in 2005 when 16-year-old Zach was enrolled in their residential ex-gay program against his will.

Zach, now 19, is one of several participants in the documentary. Following his ordeal at LIA, the harrowing run-up to which was uniquely documented on his MySpace blog, Zach refused to talk at length about his experience. In This Is What Love In Action Looks Like, he revisits the events of 2005 in detail for the first time.

Watch the film’s opening 10 minutes below, then click here to see an earlier extended preview.

HT: BTB.

Reverend John Smid, one of the founders and now president and CEO of Love In Action (LIA), recently claimed homosexuals are intolerant of those who wish to seek “change” of their sexual orientation.

There are many people within that community who are very intolerant of people who choose to walk away from it,” says Smid. “And I find that some of the people like that are unsupportive of someone who says, “I want to be free from homosexuality, I want to walk away from this lifestyle. Or I want to live sexually celibate and free, or I want to pursue marriage.” There’s very little tolerance for the choices I’ve made in my life.

I think that we put our head in the sand and we kind of cover things with “plastic answers” about sexuality rather than really being willing to get into what I call the “swamp trip of life,” he says. “It’s hard to invest in people who are confused and struggling and have some really ugly things in their life“. [emphasis added]

The reasons for any individual’s decision to pursue “freedom” from homosexuality — whether due to societal prejudice or family concerns, or even pressure from groups such as LIA — are not presented for all to see. Mr. Smid’s own understanding of homosexuality (PDF) is already questionable. Read more…

Growing up in a 1960’s conservative evangelical home, Scott Harrison not only knew homosexuality was a sin, he knew it was “the worst sin a person could do. It was worse than murder.” He described to the Southern Poverty Law Center the exorcism delivered upon him by a minister at Living Waters/Desert Stream [see edit below], a neo-Pentecostal ex-gay ministry. After a “very intense, dramatic” group prayer that lasted three hours, Harrison found himself “drenched in sweat” and “psychologically wounded.” Because of “how it happened and the incorrectness of the theology,” it “felt like a spiritual rape” to him. Harrison was the victim, but says it’s hard not to blame himself, even 20 years after the incident. When asked how he became involved in such a bizarre event, Harrison responds:

When you’re coming from a perspective that you believe God can give messages to people, words of prophecy, then it’s very easy to become prey. This guy got a team of people together. One of the aspects that is pretty strong in Vineyard, still, is that they believe that people can be “demonized.” Not meaning that a person is fully possessed by Satan, but that a person has given him or herself over to Satanic strongholds in his or her life, so that it may take an exorcism to release the various demons that this person has given over their lives to.

He adds that as an ex-gay minister,

I didn’t believe change was an easy process. People would have said, if you asked them in private, [that] the option was one of celibacy, as opposed to accepting oneself as gay and lesbian. When [ex-gay ministers] talked about change at that time, they were talking about behavior modification.

Not much about that has really changed, with Alan Chambers (head of Exodus International) claiming he’s never really met an ex-gay, and declaring that he wakes up every morning denying that part of his being that comes so naturally.
Harrison believes that legally, ex-gay ministries should be allowed to exist, but as faith-based organizations, not state-sponsored ones. Ex-gay ministries have no place in public schools, just like representatives of religious institutions are barred. And he says exposure to the messages of Exodus Youth (Exodus International’s ex-gay youth ministry) are downright dangerous:

I don’t think that’s healthy for anyone, but especially not for high school students. Teenagers are idealistic. They’re going to grab for that, believing they can actually change their sexuality, when we have plenty of evidence showing it’s not possible. What’s going happen when they don’t change? More youth suicides, more youths engaging in risky behaviors, feeling betrayed by the church and by God and giving up on their faith. If I’d heard that message as a teenager, I don’t know if I’d be here today.

Thank G-d he IS here today, to give us his valuable point of view.

Edit 1/3/2008:

Today we received an email from Scott Harrison with the following corrections to this story:

…the original interview had stated that the exorcism or deliverance occurred at the hands of the pastor of my church, the Vineyard San Pedro, not at the hands of leaders of Desert Stream or Living Waters, which were based out of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship congregations in Santa Monica and later in Anaheim, California. I understand that not all of these details appeared in the original interview and that it might have been possible to infer that the San Pedro Vineyard was somehow directly connected to Desert Stream or Living Waters.

The reality is that the San Pedro Vineyard supported the work of Desert Stream, but was not a host for ex-gay ministry. When interviewed, I cited the deliverance session as an example of how demonizing homosexuality (for example, referring to homosexuality as a satanic or demonic perversion of the “one true” sexual orientation of heterosexuality), which is the modus operandi of most ex-gay leaders, can open the door to all sorts of abuses such as what I experienced. I clearly stated this when I was interviewed and wish the SPLC article had been a bit stronger on this point.

Filmmaker Morgan Jon Fox has released an extended preview for the feature-length documentary, “This Is What Love In Action Looks Like.”

According to the filmmaker:

In the summer of 2005, a 16-year-old from Memphis, Tenn., wrote on his MySpace blog about his parents sending him to a “Fundamentalist Christian” program that claimed to offer “freedom from homosexuality.” What followed is a modern-day message in a bottle, as teen-agers in the local community stood up for their friend with daily protests which eventually grew to include a plethora of individuals demonstrating at the facility in what would become an international news story.

The documentary features several former clients of the organization who tell their personal stories about the time they spent within the programs walls, including exclusive never before seen interviews with several teenagers who were forced into the “Refuge” program.

The documentary producer’s intent was to show the passion and conviction of both sides of such a strong debate, however, countless attempts to interview Love In Action officials, and their wider network of affiliates were continuously denied, unfortunately thwarting [the filmmaker's] wishes to allow them to tell their personal stories in detail.

This Is What Love In Action Looks Like will premiere in February 2008.

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