"...there will be no new memories"
Linda Robertson: ‘Gay conversion therapy killed my son, Ryan’
"DEVOUT Christian Linda Robertson says her son came out to her at 12-years-old but that she forced him into ‘conversion therapy’. Now she is travelling the US to ensure more kids don’t die like hers did."
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/linda-robertson-gay-conversion-therapy-killed-my-son-ryan/story-fnet085v-1227138934331
on reading this article, Victor Salvo, executive director for The Legacy Project, wrote on facebook:
"My gut reaction to reading this was "what a price this sweet kid had to pay so his parents could become cause-celebrities." I have no sympathy. When I was a small child I was indoctrinated into a faith construct to which I was simply expected to cede total control and all reason. I had no choice in the matter and I suffered in silence because I knew if I came out there was an end to my parents love - I would have been out on my ass - like 3/4 of the kids who are homeless today because their parents chose the church over them. It was not "the gay". It was not even the drugs. It was the goddamned church that killed this kid. And all the tortured prayers of his belatedly enlightened parents wept at his bedside could not save him. If he had been forcibly addicted to heroin as a baby the end result would have been no different. My life has been irreparably harmed by the church. Being tacitly taught to hate yourself gets hard-wired into you when you are too young to know any better, to fight back. Nothing - not therapy, not antidepressants, not love, not even leaving the church - can undo that. You just learn to live a life of diminishing expectations. That I still have a relationship with God - however grudging - is a miracle... but the message of organized religion is permanent. The only solution is to never do this to your children in the first place. It's too late for those of us who wander the world addicted to feeling like damaged goods. Tattoos don't wash off."
salvo goes on to say: " If the parents are smart enough today to be in-demand on the lecture circuit, they were smart enough six years ago to know better. Their son didn't have a choice. They did. They chose wrong. There is something icky about watching them wring their hands in lament, imploring Evangelicals to try and love their kids in spite of their being gay, as though it were some unfortunate affliction. The church will never be "right" with this issue until it admits it is 100% wrong about LGBT people. No equivocation. Only an absolute rejection of this blindingly stupid and irrational belief - borne of biblical misinterpretation and reinforced by politics - will save the church from irrelevance in the next generation."
the mother's lament of "there will be no new memories", although filled with regret, seems to be too little too late. "“Basically, we told our son that he had to choose between Jesus and his sexuality,” Mrs Robertson said."
i have never understood, and will never understand, how parents can turn their backs on their children.
check out The Legacy Project
http://www.legacyprojectchicago.org/
and the video written by Victor Salvo & Nicholas Gebben
it's pretty cool
= new reply since forum marked as read
