REFUGE, the new name for Love In Action, Memphis Tennessee, is a daughter ministry of Love In Action International, the largest member ministry of Exodus International. You will remember it from Zach’s story last year.
One of the questions floating around during that time was the legality (if not the morality) of forcing one’s child to attend such a place against their will. REFUGE addresses this in two different questions on their new FAQ.
Do parents have the right to force their child to come to our program?
There are currently no laws prohibiting Christian parents from rearing their children according to their faith. Because Refuge International, Inc., is a Christian discipleship ministry, no belief is forced on anyone; in Scripture, Jesus Christ never forced anyone to believe in Him.
This first one appears to side step the issue. First they claim that there is no law against parents rearing their children in the faith they choose, which I would assume is correct. They go on to say they don’t force beliefs on anyone. OK, but how does this address the issue of forcing a child to attend REFUGE?
Neither response seems to really answer the question. Even if they don’t “force” any beliefs on participants, how much choice does a captive minor have to avoid whatever they may be teaching? Does this “no force” rule apply to other areas, e.g., in another section they discuss a question about success rates in dealing with homosexuality; is this belief or therapy?
What will happen if I make my child come against his/her will?
Again, as we trust in the inerrancy of God’s Word, we adhere to the commandments for relationships between parents and children. We believe God is faithful to bless those who strive for obedience to His commands.
This second one is even less responsive. One can imagine this issue is important if they devote two sections of the FAQ to it. Yet here basically the parent is told that since a child is commanded to respect his or her parents, and the parents are responsible for their child, God will work it all out. I would say that it’s one thing to express this kind of faith in one’s personal life but quite another to use it to quell the fears of a parent while they consider forcing little Johnny into a program because he is gay.
Reading over their material, one gets the impression that REFUGE wants very much to be considered a ministry and only a ministry. I can think of a few reasons this may be so. In this case, they apparently want to equate forcing a child to attend REFUGE with forcing a child to attend church (not a good idea but also not illegal that I know of). I’ve never been through an LIA program, but I suspect there is a difference.
I can’t think many kids would go voluntarily. My generation (I’m 21) generally gives less of a damn about gay-versus-straight than my parents’.
Maybe they won’t force you to believe what they want, but they’ll sure as hell deprive you of any alternative if they can get away with it.
I’m tempted to want to list their FAQ in the dictionary under the definition of “fuzzy language.” Very interesting. I guess it’s one to sidestep a question while making $10,000 a head.
“No one is forced to attend unless, of course, they are.”
The leaders of Love in Action / Refuge (LIA/R) claim they do not force their participants to believe their message while the program leaders also shut out the opportunity for their charges to hear anything but that message.
Without access to th news, the Internet, friends, TV, movies or any music but contemporary Christian music, LIA/R staff bombard participants (willing or unwiling) with one message–their message–a message they reinforce with the Bible, psuedo-science, testimony after testimony, and the insistence of parents (who may also threaten to withhold financial support from a young person).
Is it like forcing a child to attend church?
As a survivor of LIA, let me put it in the form of an SAT test question:
Church attendance is to going to LIA/R
as
Going to an army recruiter’s office is to going to war in Iraq with no body armor.
Lance Carroll said the mental pressure while in the program is tremendous. He compared it to A Clockwork Orange, but emotionally, not physically, and he said it was worse.
Read the rulebook Zach posted. For the first four days in the program teens are not allowed to so much as look up at anyone. They are not allowed to speak, not allowed to look anyone in the eyes. You cannot journal, you cannot wear certain articles of clothing, cannot listen to most any music or watch most all television, you cannot go into certain parts of Memphis, you must wear your hair in certain gender normal (by LIA standards) ways. You are even told how many minutes a day, Total, you are allowed to be in a bathroom. Kitchen timers, I kid you not, are provided to enforce the daily bathroom time limit.
Force? Well I guess that depends on what your definition of “is” is. Clearly they are not physically forced (although one teen told of being deposited at LIA’s doorstep in handcuffs), but the emotional, the mental strong-arming involved in the program is staringly obvious. Lance Carroll said he is still dealing with things they put into his head that come back to confuse him about his own innermost feelings now and then. I hear grown adults are still dealing with it years after being out of the program.
The suggestion in that FAQ that forcing your kid to go to Refuge is like forcing them to go to church is a belly laugh. In the Baptist church I grew up in, I sure wasn’t forced to talk In Detail about my sexual urges and feelings in front of adult strangers, some of whom were pedophiles, and others who’d had sex with animals. I don’t know off hand of Any churches that make their teen members talk explicitly about their sexual feelings and urges, in front of adults they don’t know.
If it is a program sponsored by any “conservative” religious group, coercion has to be a factor. These are people who believe individual free will in itself is evil.
Discipleship — that’s an interesting word choice. Would Christ have used similar teaching techniques as Love In Action/Refuge when he was disipling those first 12 disciples?
“Lance Carroll said he is still dealing with things they put into his head that come back to confuse him about his own innermost feelings now and then. I hear grown adults are still dealing with it years after being out of the program.”.
I’m outraged by this. The song and dance they give in response to straightforward questions is a disgrace to humanity. They are literaly making people nuts with this kind of disingenous mind-f**k. If they had the courage of their convictions they’d give a simple and honest “yes” or “no” instead of making people wonder what the hell they are talking about.
The final statements about whether one is reoriented seem to lay the blame entirely on the one not made straight.
It is a perverse logic and one that cannot be refuted, i.e. tested in any scientific manner.
LIA’s REFUGE is not about free will but about coercion and forcing youth into reparative therapy which is something that should be absolutely illegal. That’s the problem with extreme right wing Evangelicals who are Dobson disciples and others like Jerry Falwell as well. They don’t really believe in free agency or free will. That’s an extremely dangerous mindset. In my view that is the real Satanic premise. To take away the agency of an individual (to brainwash them) is one of the basest evils there is and they think they are doing God a service by doing this. I do not believe in that kind of a god and they (through their actions) are showing the world exactly what kind of god they worship. A tyranical puppetmaster who shows a form of godliness but totally denies authentic unconditional love and respect for the dignity of each person as an autonomous individual with God given freedom of thought. They are absolutely implacable.
Ben, darlin’, careful there.
You seem to be criticizing religions that “don’t believe in free will”… while also saying that parents should not have the right to determine what is best for their kids.
And just for the record, folks, most conservative Christians absolutely believe in free will.
Free Will is not a doctrine that says that everyone is free to do anything at any time without any consequences. It is a doctrine that says that we are all allowed by God to make our own choices (as opposed to pre-destination) and that we will be judged by what we choose.
It is entirely consistent with free will to believe in cosequences for actions and to also believe that parents are responsible for their children.
In fact, they would probably argue that WE don’t believe in free will because we believe sexual orientation is of organic origen and is not (generally) mutable. You can hear this in arguments like “You don’t have to be gay! You can walk away from that lifestyle!”
Obviously I disagree with them. Orientation is not a lifestyle or a behavior but a trait over which “will” is irrelevant. One can no more will away one’s skin color or handedness than one can one’s orientation.
But to falsely characterize others does nothing to convince them of their error in their thinking.
As one who lived in New Hope (use to be LIA before they moved to Memphis in 1994) for a few years I can attest that it is a very controlling environment designed to change your behavior. You are not allowed to go anywhere alone except to work and back, you have stewardships (chores), you are in classes everynight, and you even spend weekends together. I am not bitter anymore at what happen to me. We must pray for them because they truly believe they are doing the right thing. I feel sorry for them.
I first read these FAQ’s just before our demonstration at their facilities on June 5th, after having a lengthy conversation with former REFUGE client, Lance Carroll. What saddened me the most was the fact that LIA is so adamant about supporting the parents wishes of what to do with their children…yet in Lances case(as well as many other teens, obviously), his parents wishes eventually lead to physical abuse, putting him in the extremely dangerous and vunerable position of having to leave home in order to feel safe. I questioned a LIA staff member who spoke with us at the demonstration about what she felt about this. She didn’t have alot to say about it. I was deeply saddened that none of the counselors that we there to “help guide” Lance through REFUGE even attempted to come out and offer any words of support, or concern for him, with full knowledge that his “parents will” eventually led to acts of physical abuse against him. They did not speak to this issue what so ever, and have continued to make the gravely dangerous mistake of speaking so blindly of “supporting a parents wish”, regardless of their knowledge of such attrocities commited towards former clients simply b/c of these clients “failure to succeed” under LIA’s doctrines. Is this a message of Love In Action? I beg the question, where was the Love In Action when Lance’s well being was put in such a vunerable place?
Wow…
My late father was a probation officer. And for the last ten years of his life, was an in-house PO at a lock down juvenile facility.
They had a little more freedom and access than these kids in LIAR.
It’s one thing when you’re disciplinig your child, or a child for outright criminal behavior.
Being gay isn’t a matter of criminal behavior and those who are credentialed in mental illness and addiction know the difference.
And addicts and the mentally ill aren’t locked down unless they are unable to do anything for themselves or anyone or have done someone serious harm.
The point is: gay people, kids especially long before problems are even in evidence, are treated like this.
Treated this way for a non problem that is only in the heads of those who support LIAR.
Sure, parents are responsible for their children.
But if there were people out there saying that because some children get cancer, then any kid is at risk, but maybe specifically fair skinned children from UVA rays.
And out of fright, a child (who was cancer free) was diagnosed with ‘pre cancer’ and put into a regime of chemo and other ruthless treatment by a doctor who insisted that kid was in danger.
Not only would the so called expert or doctor be stricken from practice, but the parents would have to be taken to task for listening to uncredentialed and worthless quacks.
It’s illegal in other professions that ‘treat’ people who don’t need it.
Why not this?
Why is it okay just because it’s religious based?
But no less damaging and horrific?
QAC-Morgan,
This is where I put the clergy or faith communities in full responsibility for this against gay children.
The consequences and risks are have too broad a range for LIAR to be (if you’ll pardon me) ***king around with other people’s lives like this.
And see, when the fit hit’s the shan…they aren’t around for what happens and have no protection or intervention-but their bogus refuge.
There are some parents who have turned MURDEROUS towards their gay child, and many children have been assaulted at worst, or thrown from their homes literally to dangerous streets.
People like Exodus and LIAR aren’t held responsible, but the gay child is.
I’m so sick of this.
If any one, any one at all wanted to go to church, it’s not hard to find them.
They are everywhere…
And if anything, the choice to have a life in faith or not is the most fundamental choice of all.
Exodus blows all their so called ‘compassionate outreach’ with places like these camps or any incursion where they make people believe change is possible.
If it isn’t possible absent all these ruthless tactics, lies and threat, IT’S NOT POSSIBLE!!!
I really want to know. Please write me. Can people make their kids go to reprogramming without getting into trouble? What is the law.
Thanks.