Here is a new documentary about "Love in Action," an ex-gay ministry, and their now discontinued program called "Refuge." Refuge was a residential program for gay-teenagers. Parents were able to force their gay-children into the Refuge program to undergo re-orientation (or attempts at it). This documentary is about "Zach," the gay teen whose parents forced him into the program after finding out he was gay. This incident garnered worldwide attention.
Listen as his father gives some of his reasons for putting Zach in the program. Full of emotion, he said he wanted his son to see the "destructive lifestyle" that he would live and he wanted to give his son "some options that society doesn’t give him today." Listen as he says, "knowing your son by the age of 30 statistics say will either have AIDS or be dead..." He obviously loves his son, but the ex-gay and anti-gay Religious Right movement has so misinformed (lied to) conservative Christians (and attempts to within the general public) about homosexuality and gay people in general that this man truly believes that his dear son will be dead or dying of AIDS by the time Zach is 30. The emotional trauma these parents have to go through, not to mention what Zach had to suffer through, is tragic. It is this way because of the lies spread by certain strategic organizations and self-proclaimed Christians.
I have a good number of friends and acquaintances that have gone through ex-gay programs. A good friend of mine went through Love in Action.
I'm going to stand on a soap-boy for a moment. I become furious with the lying, hypocritical, power-hungry, anti-gay Religious Right organizations like Focus-on-the-Family and the American Family Association for their willful lying about gay people in this country. Listen to the preacher in the YouTube video in my next blog entry. He may be extreme, but this is the result of what the politicized Religious Right spreads around in order to gain more power and money. The leadership of these organizations are not stupid. They know what they are doing. They know that they are spreading lies and misinformation and bearing false witness against a whole group of people and fear mongering and scapegoating in an attempt to cover over their own profound failures. The end justifies the means in their minds and to hell with integrity and the Gospel. There are many messed-up, hedonistic, and lost gay people that desperately need help and need to be reigned in - just like a bunch of straight people. This is not the whole population, not even the majority of either orientation.
