NATIONAL NEWS

Tenn. teen tells of ex-gay camp on blog
Teen’s blog leads to outcry, charges of child abuse

By EARTHA MELZE
Friday, June 24, 2005

The state of Tennessee has begun an investigation in response to allegations of child abuse at Love in Action, a Memphis facility that advertises homosexual conversion therapy for adolescents.

K. Daniele Edwards, spokeswoman for Child Services at the Department of Health said that the agency cannot comment on details of the investigation, but she did say that she presumes that the Love in Action program would require licensing by the state.

According Rachel Lassiter of Governor Phil Bredesen’s communications office, Love in Action is not licensed by the Tennessee Department of Health, Mental Health, Human Services, Child Services or Education.

“Emotional abuse is difficult to prove in the state of Tennessee, Pamela Dickey, director of the advocacy center for Childhelp USA in Knoxville said. “You have to document that the child is undergoing depression or suicidal ideation, that he can’t sleep, or can’t eat.”

“Refuge,” Love in Action’s program for adolescents became the focus of public concern earlier this month after a Bartlett, Tenn., teen, “Zach” blogged that his parents had responded to his coming out as gay with plans to send him to a religious institution to be converted to straight.

Blogger EJ Friedman said that he been corresponding with Zach via e-mail since March and became alarmed when he saw that Zach had begun to write that his world was coming to an end and that his parents were isolating him and saying horrible things to him.

“When I saw Zach had written in his blog, ‘All I can think of is killing my mother and killing myself,’ I felt that clearly that something needed to be said about the program,” Friedman said.

No word from teen

Friedman passed information about Zach to the media and word of Zach’s situation spread around the blogosphere. By press time more than 1,000 messages of support had been posted to Zach’s blog and an online petition had begun asking that he be released from Love in Action. Lesbian performer Margaret Cho blogged a message of support.

But Zach has not posted to his blog since the first week in June. Meanwhile, concerned people who had learned of the situation through reports formed a group called the Queer Action Coalition. QAC began daily demonstrations in front of Love in Action in efforts to raise awareness of the dangers of “ex-gay” therapy.

Homosexuality is not considered an illness by the medical community and no major counseling or psychological organization supports therapy that aims to change a person’s sexual orientation. The American Psychological Association has said that it is unethical to subject an adolescent to reparative therapy.

According to Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays, "Several major professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have all made statements against reparative therapy because of concerns for the harm caused to patients. The American Psychiatric Association has already taken clear stands against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation."

Peterson Toscano is a gay man who spent two years in the Love in Action program as the last stop in a 17-year long struggle to not to be gay. He said that the program, which cost $950 per month, was highly restrictive. While he was in the program he was forbidden to go to most parts of Memphis, could not touch other men and had to submit to endless meetings where participants criticized each other over the ways that they seemed gay. Clients at Love in Action had to describe their sexual fantasies and deviant behaviors in front of groups so that they would be shamed, Toscano said.

Toscano, who gave up trying not to be gay in 1999 has written a play about his time at Love in Action called “Doing Time in the Homo No Mo’ Half Way House.” Toscano has been in contact with QAC and the Memphis media and said he plans to travel to Memphis to perform his play for free this weekend.

Though his experience of Love in Action was as a consenting adult, Toscano expressed serious concern for adolescents who are forced to participate in what he characterized as an extremely damaging and misguided program.

Although the program is live-in for adults, teenagers are driven to the facility each day by their parents who are required to stay in a nearby hotel that is approved by Love in Action.

Toscano said that the program’s director John Smid has taken the 12-step program designed for drug addiction and is trying to apply it to homosexuality. The ex-gay operators of the camp are themselves victims of a system that has convinced them that the only way that they can serve Jesus is to run an ex-gay facility, Toscano said.

“If they really understood that what they were doing was causing harm they would be horrified. My own judgement about reparative therapy is that it is a covert form of sexual abuse and assaultive to the sexuality of those who participate,” psychotherapist Joe Kort said. “Every mental health association has made a statement that reparative therapy is unethical and dangerous to the mental health of those who receive it.”

Jeffry Ford is a licensed psychologist who served as a leader in the ex-gay movement for years but left and is now in private practice in Minnesota. Ford said that Love in Action appears to be like a cult in that they monitor everything that their clients do and clients are not allowed to be alone with just one man or woman.

“Fear and threats play a big role. The biggest one being ‘losing your salvation and going to hell” Ford said. “Suicide is perhaps the most dangerous consequence or side effect of RT. Since the therapy never works, the client feels like a failure. This always impacts self esteem.”

According to Julie Neils, spokeswoman for Exodus International, an umbrella group for ex-gay projects, Love in Action’s Refuge program is the only project they are affiliated with that focuses on gay teens.

Love in Action has only offered services to adolescents for two years. Administrator Tommy Corman said that the program has treated 23 adolescents and that there are currently two teenage boys in the program, both signed up for 6-week long programs.

Corman admitted that teens are sometimes forced to participate in the programs, but dismissed the idea that this is wrong. “Youth camps, vacation bible school, Sunday school, how many places do parents put their children against their will,” Corman said. “It’s like when I tell my 3 year old to take a bite of broccoli. You have a legal, moral and ethical obligation to mold a child.”

Corman has worked at Love in Action for about a year and a half. He said that though the program advertises treatment for problems associated with drugs, alcohol and pornography, it is homosexuality, which the organization sees as a “deviant sexual behavior,” that is the main focus of the program. Corman said that some clients come to Love in Action after detoxing from drugs in order to “heal” themselves of homosexuality.

Corman said that he has been able to help clients get the costs of the program reimbursed by their insurance company.

Danny Cobsy is the only one of the staff members advertised on the Love in Action Web site who is licensed by the state of Tennessee as a counselor. Cosby is an alcohol and drug treatment counselor and works directly with the clients at Love in Action.

Cosby said that adolescents and adults are treated together as a group and that in addition to the two teenagers where are currently in the program there are between five and 15 adults. Cosby said that the presence of adults in the group is critical in helping teenagers “not glamorize the lifestyle.”

Cosby said that much emphasis is given to the role parents play in teenager’s problems. Cosby asserted that absent fathers and enabling mothers can cause children to become gay.

Cosby downplayed the organization’s focus on homosexuality.

A source in the State Board of Certification of Health Related Boards said that the ethical requirements for drug and alcohol counselors licensed in Tennessee forbids counselors to discriminate based on sexual orientation. The National Association for Addiction Professionals also requires the members to not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

Dr. David Kaplan, chief professional officer of the American Counseling Association said that it is a violation of that group’s code of ethics for a counselor to practice outside of his area of training.

Dr. John Nardo, a psychiatrist in Georgia is among the people who have begun to publicly question the legality of forced treatment at Love in Action. Nardo said that if Love in Action were a mental health facility it would be bound by the Tennessee code that gives children 16 or older the same rights as an adult with respect to mental health treatment.

“To me this is something of an unimaginable situation, reminiscent of the mid-19th century when people were committed to hospitals by families for all sorts of things,” Nardo said. “Though it is possible that there are some other factors involved, Zack [his spelling] appears to be a person who has been deprived of his constitutional rights without due process of law — because he is gay.”

Friedman, the blogger that sounded the alarm about Zach’s situation, said that the Christian community around Memphis is afraid of speaking out about the abusive treatment at Love In Action because it has called itself a ministry.

“They don’t want to create dissent amidst the ranks … they are fearful that they will alienate themselves from the money people of Christianity,” Friedman said. “The Baptists are powerful.”

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