John J. Smid | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Ex-Minister |
Known for | Love In Action |
Spouse | Larry McQueen |
John J. Smid is the former director of the Memphis, Tennessee ex-gay ministry Love in Action, a group that claims to convert lesbians and gay men to heterosexuality. [1]
During his time directing Love in Action, Smid faced controversy over the organization's treatment of gay teens in their youth program "Refuge". [2] Smid subsequently resigned his position in 2008, [3] and in 2010 apologized for any harm he had caused, noting that his teen program "further wounded teens that were already in a very delicate place in life". [4]
In 2011, three years after leaving Love In Action and stepping down from its leadership, Smid announced he was still homosexual and stated he had "never met a man who experienced a change from homosexual to heterosexual." [5]
In 2012, Smid wrote and self-published the memoir Ex'd Out: How I Fired the Shame Committee. [6]
In the 2018 film Boy Erased , based on the book of the same name, the character Victor Sykes, portrayed by Joel Edgerton, is based on Smid.
A November 2018 Radiolab podcast titled "UnErased: Smid" [7] features Smid's life story.
Before claiming he had changed from homosexuality to heterosexuality, Smid lived for years married to a woman and fathering children. It was during this marriage that he said he was gay, divorcing his first wife in 1980. Four years following his divorce, Smid became a Christian and sought conversion from homosexuality to heterosexuality. [2] He married a second time, but by 2011 said, “I would consider myself homosexual and yet in a marriage with a woman.” [8] By November 2014, Smid had divorced his second wife and married Larry McQueen. The couple live in Texas. [9]
Within Christianity, there are a variety of views on sexual orientation and homosexuality. The view that various Bible passages speak of homosexuality as immoral or sinful emerged in the first millennium AD, and has since become entrenched in many Christian denominations through church doctrine and the wording of various translations of the Bible.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements are social movements that advocate for LGBT people in society. Although there is not a primary or an overarching central organization that represents all LGBT people and their interests, numerous LGBT rights organizations are active worldwide. The first organization to promote LGBT rights was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, founded in 1897 in Berlin.
The ex-gay movement consists of people and organizations that encourage people to refrain from entering or pursuing same-sex relationships, to eliminate homosexual desires and to develop heterosexual desires, or to enter into a heterosexual relationship. Beginning with the founding of Love In Action and Exodus International in the mid-1970s, the movement saw rapid growth in the 1980s and 1990s before declining in the 2000s.
Restoration Path, known as Love in Action (LIA) until March 2012, was an ex-gay Christian ministry founded in 1973.
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Exodus International was a non-profit, interdenominational ex-gay Christian umbrella organization connecting organizations that sought to "help people who wished to limit their homosexual desires". Founded in 1976, Exodus International originally asserted that conversion therapy, the reorientation of same-sex attraction, was possible. In 2006, Exodus International had over 250 local ministries in the United States and Canada and over 150 ministries in 17 other countries. Although Exodus was formally an interdenominational Christian entity, it was most closely associated with Protestant and evangelical denominations.
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Troy Deroy Perry Jr. is an American cleric and the founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, with a ministry with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities, in Los Angeles on October 6, 1968.
Ex-ex-gay people are those who formerly participated in the ex-gay movement in an attempt to change their sexual orientation to heterosexual, but who then later went on to publicly state they had a non-heterosexual sexual orientation.
Bisexual erasure, also called bisexual invisibility, is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or re-explain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources.
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Methodist viewpoints concerning homosexuality are diverse because there is no one denomination which represents all Methodists. The World Methodist Council, which represents most Methodist denominations, has no official statements regarding sexuality. Various Methodist denominations themselves take different stances on the issue of homosexuality, with many denominations holding homosexual practice to be sinful, while other denominations ordain LGBT clergy and marry same-sex couples. The positions of the various Methodist denominations around the globe are outlined in this article.
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors for LGBT people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior. This metaphor is associated and sometimes combined with coming out, the act of revealing one's sexuality or gender to others, to create the phrase "coming out of the closet".
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This Is What Love in Action Looks Like is a 2011 American documentary film directed by Morgan Jon Fox about a Memphis teenager who was sent to a controversial Christian program after telling his parents that he was gay. The film premiered in 2011, and is distributed by TLA Releasing.
Boy Erased is a 2018 American biographical drama film based on Garrard Conley's 2016 memoir of the same name. It was written and directed by Joel Edgerton, who also produced with Kerry Kohansky Roberts and Steve Golin. The film stars Lucas Hedges as Jared Eamons, a fictionalized version of Conley, the closeted gay son of Baptist parents, who is forced to take part in a conversion therapy program. Edgerton, Joe Alwyn, Xavier Dolan, Troye Sivan, Cherry Jones, and Flea also appear in supporting roles.
Garrard Conley is an American author and LGBTQ activist known for his autobiography Boy Erased: A Memoir, recounting his childhood as part of a fundamentalist family in Arkansas that enrolled him in conversion therapy. The book was adapted for the 2018 film, Boy Erased.
This is a timeline of LGBT Mormon history in the 2010s, part of a series of timelines consisting of events, publications, and speeches about LGBTQ+ individuals, topics around sexual orientation and gender minorities, and the community of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.