Free Republic

Frank Worthen was ex-gay when ex-gay wasn’t cool! Perhaps no testimony of freedom from homosexuality has been more widely circulated and read than Frank Worthen’s. He is now 78 years young. This article, op-ed, column – call it what you like - will not likely be published in many places or read by many people, but it commands to be written. “Different” When Frank was 13, (1942) his pastor told him “Frank, you are a homosexual." Though Frank knew he was “different” from other children, he didn’t know what homosexuality was. “I'd been called different before!” Frank had become a...

Love In Action's plea in federal court Friday was a simple one. "Please give us relief right now," reiterates LIA Attorney Nate Kellum. But a judge denied the controversial group's request for an injunction. It's something that would have kept state regulators temporarily off their backs. "It was troubling in a sense that it did not provide Love In Action the security it needed," says Kellum. State law prohibits Love In Action from assisting more than one person with a diagnosed mental illness. Attorneys for the state argued there is no present investigation into the group and that an injunction...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The state Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities has ordered the closing of what it calls two unlicensed personal care facilities run by a Christian group that counsels gays to give up homosexuality. The state inspected two facilities in Memphis on Aug. 19 and determined Love In Action International Inc. was providing housing, meals and personal care for mentally ill patients without a license, according to a subsequent letter to the organization from the Department of Mental Health. The department gave Love In Action until Sept. 23 to cease operation of the facilities and apply for...

IT was the sort of confession that a decade ago might have been scribbled in a teenager's diary, then quietly tucked away in a drawer: "Somewhat recently," wrote a boy who identified himself only as Zach, 16, from Tennessee, on his personal Web page, "I told my parents I was gay." He noted, "This didn't go over very well," and "They tell me that there is something psychologically wrong with me, and they 'raised me wrong.' " But what grabbed the attention of Zach's friends and subsequently of both gay activists and fundamentalist Christians around the world who came across...

Tennessee officials closed an investigation into a so-called ex-gay ministry because of a lack of evidence to support child abuse allegations. But the Memphis organization that says instilling Christian beliefs can keep gays from acting on their homosexual desires continues to be the center of controversy. The Tennessee Department of Children's Services began an investigation into Love In Action, which advertises homosexual conversion therapy for adolescents, after a 16-year-old boy's blog started causing a stir in the blogosphere.