A great amount of attention has been focused on Love In Action in the last several weeks. Love in Action is an organization founded in 1973 by Frank Worthen who rededicated himself to Jesus Christ after “spending 20 years pursuing homosexual behavior.” The program is offered in a number of churches in Memphis, TN, purports to offer an “intensive discipleship program designed to minister to adolescents struggling with broken and destructive behaviors, such as promiscuity and homosexuality.” Love in Action offers from 4-day to 3-month workshops.
Recently, a controversy was sparked when a gay teen blogger started posting his feelings about attending the camp. The teen was from the Memphis area and posted his feelings about his parents forcing him to attend the program. Many people have protested the program, which does not keep track of it’s success rate. However, it has been reported that the great majority of those who have completed the program go back to identifying themselves as gay.
The State Of . . . Reparative Therapy programs like Love in Action is nebulous at best. The program has been criticized by the American Medical Association and has been linked to serious emotional damage suffered by one-time attendees of the program. The program does not seem to be helping the people it purports to serve as it has virtually no success rate. And if one were calculated, the numbers would be really low. So who is the program really for? And why doesn’t the program instruct those who are homosexual to be comfortable in their own skin like Peterson Toscano or Brandon Tidwell who have both come to terms with their homosexuality and God. Coming to terms with who you are no matter what the sexual orientation is really love in action.
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