I’m not going to put a comment section up, this has shaken me.

There is a 16 year old boy named Zach who lives in Tennessee.
He has been sent by his parents to a boot camp called Love In Action.

Zach told his parents recently he was gay and they’ve shipped him off.

I don’t know the details of Love in Action - what little I’ve read is bizarre.

This boy is being put in a program for adults, people that are at the end of their rope and who are coming out of a hard core life style.

Is this what we ‘civilized’ Christians offer teens?

When I was 16 I was sent to a psychiatrist because I was rebellious and my parents were at the end of their rope.

The guy was a Freudian, didn’t deal with kids, I was kind of an emergency because my mother had worked at that hospital, she demanded help, so I was assigned this guy.

The private therapy wasn’t hard. It was a 50 minute session (yes he had a couch but we used chairs) and every ten minutes he would ask me what I was thinking. It was a breeze, every 10 minutes I said “nothing” and crawled happily back into my own thoughts. No tranference took place so I suppose I shouldn’t call it therapy. But straightening me out with this ‘therapy’ was was my parents were paying for, and this shrink took his methods seriously.
Maybe he helped adults interested in self-exploration, I don’t know. Didn’t do anything for me.

Until the day I decided to get a reaction out of him.
I understand now, it was a normal 16 year old thing to do. I left the session (last one of his day) went to his secretary’s office, helped myself to some supplies, plunked them on the steps and waited for him to come down.

When he did, I said casually, “Here, your secretary will need these,” and hoisted myself off the step to leave.

He lost it.
I mean for real, the guy totally lost it and started yelling.
That was the reaction I was expecting, and was used to, so I didn’t even blink. I just left with a breezy, “see you next week.” (His closing line each session)

What came next probably has shaped my opinion on desperate parents and bad therapy. This Freudian pyschiatrist decided to have a family counselling session.
He wasn’t trained for that. It was awful.
I still apologize to my siblings. He demanded we talk about what we felt.

Hello. This family didn’t talk. They reacted.
When I got home the yelling started. You know the routine if you grew up in a home bent on control and image. It was the “how dare you” reaction.
Then dad beat me within an inch of my life.

That ended therapy.

This boy may well have well-meaning, helpless parents. They’ve put him in an program that is not much different than tossing him into an adult prision or out on the streets.

Here is what a director of the program says:

“Love In Action” director John Smid supposedly once said this:

I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle. In a physical death you could still have a spiritual resurrection; whereas, returning to homosexuality you are yielding yourself to a spiritual death from which there is no recovery.

The rules Zach has to follow are here on his blog.

via Camassia