ThinkProgress: Former Ex-Gay Ministry Leader Comes Out, Recants Previous Teachings

Former Ex-Gay Ministry Leader Comes Out, Recants Previous Teachings

By Zack Ford on Oct 11, 2011 at 10:55 am

Love in Action (LIA) is one of the largest and oldest ex-gay ministries in existence, founded in 1973, the same year the American Psychiatric Association decided that homosexuality was no longer a mental illness. John Smid resigned as the group’s executive director in 2008, and since then has slowly been rethinking his understandings of sexuality and his beliefs about homosexuality. In a new blog post last week, Smid has shown just how far he has come, acknowledging his own homosexuality (despite his loving marriage to his wife) and the fact that sexual orientation cannot be changed. Here are some of the key confessions Smid makes:

• NO ONE CHANGES: “One cannot repent of something that is unchangeable… I also want to reiterate here that the transformation for the vast majority of homosexuals will not include a change of sexual orientation. Actually I’ve never met a man who experienced a change from homosexual to heterosexual.”
  
  
• NOT JUST BEHAVIOR: “I used to define homosexuality or heterosexuality in terms describing one’s behavior. I thought it made sense and through the years often wrote articles and talked from that perspective. Today, I understand why the gay community had such an issue with my writings. My perspective denied so many facets of the homosexual experience. I minimized a person’s life to just their sexuality but homosexuality is much more than sex.”
  

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Smid is on his own journey, and will likely continue to work things out for himself. As Ex-Gay Watch points out, “There is a certain haziness to Smid’s new statements, and rather than taking an unambiguously pro-gay stance, he errs on the side of caution.” Nevertheless, his words are revelatory and speak to the harms of ex-gay therapy and how little evidence there is supporting their effectiveness. He joins a chorus of other former ex-gay leaders who have apologized for trying to shame gays and lesbians into rejecting their sexual orientations.