Love in Action? Yeah, right.

[thessalian]

Depression of the day is the following.

Normal-seeming kid with blog, recently came out to his parents. They say there is "something psychologically wrong" with him, and that they "raised him wrong". And he has been enrolled into a fundamentalist Christian programme for gays.

That was bad enough. Then he saw the rules of this 'refuge'. "Love in Action" seems to value repression, encourage stereotyping and enforce rigid controls in the name of expelling deviancy, all of the rules interspersed with carefully chosen Bible quotes. It'd make a Christian ashamed, I'm telling you.

I'd laugh if it wasn't all so sad. And I Googled. This place exists. Now, while I'm all for free speech, if you take a good hard look at the rules, you'll see that there is none here. And fine -- some people may be so uncomfortable with their sexuality that the closet just isn't enough. Still, that's not what this sort of place is going to be used for, at the end of the day. Parents are going to ship their teenagers off to this Guantanamo Bay for gay people and effectively have them brainwashed. It's pathetic. And very, very scary.

Comments

[nadriel.livejournal.com]

Grrrrrrr. *reaches for cluebat. With nails*

That is so wrong on so many levels

[navytron89.livejournal.com]

Poor kid.
Got to love those Religious Reich Asshats. I have a gay cousin and while his parents are just in denial and the rest of the family think he is "just different". My parents and I are the only ones who acknowledge his choice of lifestyle and don't critique or comment on it. He's happy and in a positive relationship and that all that really matters.

When I have children, I may be upset if they are gay, but I've made promise my wife I'd be supportive and respectfully to their lifestyle and not try to interfere or cause undo harm.

Odds are that kid will either a runaway or be needing years therapy to unfuck the psychological damage that a place will inflict on him.

I'd be contacting DFCS and asked to be removed from the house, on the grounds that my parents are trying to send me to a psycho-sexual prison camp.

The kid would also be smart and threaten to sue his parents for psychological damage done by this place. Either the parents back off or they pay later after the child moves out at 18.

More like hate in action...

[msgeek.livejournal.com]

See, this is why you should be glad you are a Canadian citizen in Britain. Being a USian is getting worse and worse with every passing day.

However, this is not new. In Frank Zappa's "The Real Frank Zappa Book" he mentions a live-in program called "Back In Control" which was a place parents could take their unruly headbanger kids to have the metal wrung out of them. That was in the late 1980s. There have been "Homosexual Deliverance" ministries since the late '70s but they really got a head of steam during the first waves of the AIDS crisis.

I keep waiting for the "Feminism deprogramming" camps to spring up. :P

Re: More like hate in action...

[aberrantangels]

See, this is why you should be glad you are a Canadian citizen in Britain. Being a USian is getting worse and worse with every passing day.

*nods* It hasn't touched me yet, except psychologically, but I'm sure it will.

I keep waiting for the "Feminism deprogramming" camps to spring up. :P

If they haven't opened by December 22, 2012, they'll be prevented. One way or the other.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

It's horrible, but it's amazing how much support and outrage is happening all over. This blog talks about a lot of the demonstrations that are going on outside "Love In Action" and so on.

[nitebytes.livejournal.com]

Just when I thought the world and humanity had a chance ... FOOOM!!!
I read this.
Damn!