From Dan Gonzales, Box Turtle Bulletin:

Via Ex-Gay Watch:

In 2007, three former Exodus leaders offered a public apology to those “who believed our message that there is something inherently wrong with being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.” Today we find that Smid is offering his own apology.

Some people have spoken out about being wounded through their experience with Love In Action. ” I want to say I am very sorry for the things that have wounded you or hurt you by my hands of leadership at Love In Action or anything I have done personally that has harmed you. Please forgive me.

Concerning Exodus International he writes:

I believe I could have done a better job of letting people know that Jesus loves them purely because He does, unconditionally. I am sorry for not being a better vessel of the Love of Christ to those who deeply need to know of His love. I realize I was often more concerned with telling people how to live than I was with imparting God’ grace so that they would want to live!

Concerning the Refuge program responsible for the ordeal over Zach:

I really wanted to help the young men in our program but in some cases the design of our program caused more harm for some of these kids that it did good. I am very sorry for the ways that Refuge further wounded teens that were already in a very delicate place in life.

And Smid asks those who were hurt by or through him to contact him.

If you have been wounded by me or harmed through the hands of my leadership; please come to me and allow an opportunity for me to personally apologize with the hope that we can both be released from the bondage of unforgiveness.

Hey John, was that indeed you that showed up on my parents’ doorstep in 1999, unannounced and uninvited, to fill my mother’s head with your fundamentalist brainwashing and junk science? If so, you may leave your personal apology for setting my family on a course that has never been righted in the comments section.

But that’s as far as it needs to go. As Timothy Kincaid points out in the comments section at Ex-Gay Watch:

As for “apologize in person”, I would not recommend it. Though John has moved away from judgmentalism, his site still has as a doctrinal statement that “We acknowledge the sinfulness of any sexual act outside of the scriptural context of Holy Matrimony between a man and a woman” and I’m not seeing that to be anything less that a rejection of those who do not agree.

Exactly. I would take it further: his site still has a doctrinal statement that denies reality and stands in opposition to the existence of millions of healthy, happy LGBT people and our families. You can dress bigotry up with a bow and a new please-and-thank-you attitude, but it’s still bigotry, and it hurts actual people.

So I say “shove it.”

Exodus International’s “Love In Action” residential ex-gay program in Memphis, Tenn. promises to free participants from shame, sexual temptation, and spiritual doubt.

But survivors of the program know that LIA often worsens participants’ shame, their feeling of separation from God, and their sexual temptations. For all that trouble, LIA fails to change most participants’ sexual orientation — and it subjects family and friends to weekend “retreats” that consist of verbal and emotional abuse against parents.

Survivor Peterson Toscano is thinking about LIA’s latest round of participants, as they begin a 28-day to three-month residency.

Although some people turn to programs like Love in Action for assistance dealing with compulsive sexual behavior, many of us actually learned more about where to find sex in unexpected public places after hearing other participants spill some of their own stories. In suppressing and demonizing our desires, many of us reinforced the deep shame we felt, which caused some of us to do harm to ourselves.

The heart of LIA’ message is that it is wrong, abnormal, sinful to be gay. This is the message we heard loud and clear in so many ways from the many many stringent and invasive rules to the disturbing Family and Friends Weekend. (For over a year, senior leadership at Exodus, which oversees LIA, have been aware of the bizarre and unethical nature of the Family and Friends weekend yet have done nothing to address the situation.)

After spending a tremendous amount of time and money and energy while also leaving key relationships and careers and homes, most people who have attended the LIA program came to the conclusion that it is fine to be gay, a healthy expression of one’ self. Joy, self-control, love and peace came with understanding ourselves and accepting how we are wired. Being gay or lesbian or bisexual is simply a part of the wonderful design of what makes us who we are. Once we apprehended this truth, then were able to better assess how to live our lives from there with integrity and openness.

Toscano spotlights the narrative of Mark, one survivor whom LIA tried to transform with a lifestyle of loveless and sexless monotony.

In a new video, Peterson Toscano recalls his own journey, and that of friends, through Exodus International’s flagship ex-gay live-in program, Tennessee-based Love In Action.

In his introduction to the video, Toscano writes:

Some people come to ex-gay programs sexually naive. They never had sex in their lives and have little idea where they would even procure gay sex. That is until they walk into an ex-gay program where day after day they hear people talk about gay sex–what’ it like, where to get it, how good it felt during the act, how icky one might feel afterward (particularly if that one gets in trouble for it.)

I know of at least two guys from my Love in Action days who came into the program virgins and successfully graduated many months later armed with so much information about cruising spots and anonymous sex protocol that once they left off being ex-gay, they plunged into a gay sex fest that lasted months if not years.

They learned their lessons well. Sadly those lessons insisted that gay men were driven by dysfunctional, sinful, compulsive desires and lesbians had a penchant for unhealthy emotionally enmeshed relationships. It takes years to detox from that misinformation.

Contrary to their own advertising, ex-gay live-in programs do not free people from homosexuality — or sexuality. Often, unfortunately, these programs merely poison sexuality and interrelationship. They condition people to experience sex and relationship in ways that may be dangerously unhealthy.

In an October 13 response to a London Times article, Exodus International president denies knowledge of any Exodus-affiliated live-in “boot camps.”

We are astonished at Chambers’ memory loss regarding the flagship Love In Action program in Memphis, Tenn.

I pray to my nominally Quaker God that Chambers finds secular professional medical assistance for his problem. Clearly Chambers’ god is causing him a terrible case of amnesia.

Zach Stark, who endured more than a month of involuntary detention in Exodus International’s costly live-in ex-gayification program Love In Action, appears briefly in the upcoming ex-gay documentary This Is What Love In Action Looks Like, which is planned for release later this year.

(Read More)

Unlicensed “doctor” Daniel Serrano served 15 months in prison after he promised a youth-restoring treatment that would be superior to Botox to Hollywood celebrities such as Priscilla Presley — and injected them instead with low-grade industrial silicone.

It’s illegal to practice medicine without a license. Yet it is perfectly legal in the United States for unlicensed and uneducated “therapists” and self-appointed “counselors” to engage in the ex-gay industry’s own version of bait and switch: Promise false cures for sexual attraction, then inflict confirmed and long-lasting harm against counselees and their families — sometimes, even, against the will of youths who are involuntarily “treated.”

In 2005, the Exodus-affiliated, ex-gay, live-in treatment facility Love In Action drew national attention when it became known that the program was admitting teen-agers against their will.

(Read More)