One Evangelical Gets Honest

One of the oldest, and most fraudulent of the "ex-gay ministries," was Love in Action. Love in Action had problems in that it claimed to pray away the gay. But right from the start they had problems—reality doesn't conform to their theology. They simply drove some people into suicide and others left with whiffs of scandal around them because the "cures' were just not happening.

John Smid ran "Love in Action" for years, pretending that Jesus was changing people from gay to straight, including himself. He now admits these cures were elusive and that he's still a gay man, even though he got married as part of the "cure" process. In this clip he says he hasn't "seen many people who have seen an orientation change." Previously he admitted he's seen none. When Rev. Kent Philpott founded LIA he published a book which supposed recounted six "testimonies" of people who changed. They hadn't and some of the people in the book petitioned the evangelical publishing house that was behind the book to withdraw it as fraudulent. The publisher refused.

Smid says that the state should not enforce Christianity. He now says, "I think two gay people should have the same rights as two straight people, because that should not be a Christian decision by the government."

Smid seems to be taking the view that since what fundamentalists have said about "change is possible" being fraudulent, the church needs to rethink how they will deal with the issue. All I can say is welcome to the real world.