As a parent I completely understand going to unreasonable lengths to protect my child.  We parents are a little bit nuts about it.  You’d jump between your child and a grizzly bear without a moment’s thought - that’s what you’re there for. 

With perceived behavioral dangers, there are many “experts” telling you what to do.  If you can’t dope out the right response on your own, you’ll have to pick one, as Zach’s father apparently did.

For that reason, not every intervention a parent might choose is wise, and not every parent has the knack of dispassionate analysis.  I know there were times when I did not.

I’d say both the Wiccan parents mentioned upthread, and the Christian parents, are within their rights to teach their kids about their faith and even to tell them it’s the only correct faith if that’s what they think. 

But if the “De-gayification” camp includes sleep deprivation, social isolation, or verbal/physical abuse that crosses over the line of violating the child’s autonomy in a big way.

What are some of the best ways to catch the virus which causes AIDS?

> Becoming homosexual is a great one

Uber already addressed that—it’s the behavior, not the orientation.

> Become an intrevenous drug user: also a very effective way to expose yourself to HIV

Only if you’re sharing needles with other people.  New, sterile needles, or even previously used and re-sterilized needles that one has only used on ONESELF have ZERO chance of exposing one to the HIV virus unless it’s already present in one’s own body.

> Being promiscuous works too

I and most of the people I grew up with pretty much indiscriminately fucked our way through the early 80s until AIDS finally came to public attention in a big way, and as something other than “gay cancer” or “gay bowel disease.” Nary a one of us has been exposed to HIV.  In light of the warnings about HIV/AIDS that “when you have sex with someone, you’re having sex with everyone they ever had sex with,” as promiscuous as we all were, after sleeping with what amounts to thousands of people, we were either extremely lucky, or those condoms we were using actually prevented any of us from being infected with HIV (or any other STD).

The point is that even though there are undoubtedly certain behaviors that carry a higher risk of infection, there ARE in fact ways to engage in those behaviors, while minimizing the risk.

I don’t know what to say about Zach.  While his parents are, I guess, within their legal rights to send him to a hellhole like Love In Action, they’re alienating their son and I don’t blame him for taking whatever measures he’d like to publicly out them as the shitty parents they are - whether that’s suing them, getting himself emancipated or simply writing a book about his experience at LIA and warning other gay teens with fundy parents to stay the fuck in the closet until they’re 18 and no longer subject to their parents’ ideas of what’s “good” for them.

What happens when he gets out of this camp and is still gay (which he WILL be)?  What else will his parents put him through to “cure” him?  Enough to drive him to suicide?  I’d hope he can fake his way through the next couple years until he can get away from his insane parents but if not, and he DOES kill himself, they have no one to blame but themselves, for their gullibility and their caring more about a bunch of superstitious nonsense than their own child’s mental well-being. If anything like that happens to that kid, I hope his parents live with crippling guilt, emotional agony and never have a moment’s peace til the day they die.  Couldn’t happen to more deserving parents, IMO.

If you love your God and your Bible more than your own flesh and blood, LIVING, REAL kid, something’s terribly wrong with you - and you shouldn’t breed.

Everyone seemed to agree on that when it was parents raising their kid as wiccan.  Why the sudden change of heart, everyone?

The difference is that we don’t want teachers and lawmakers telling us that we can’t teach our children our religion, not that our children shouldn’t have any say in the matter themselves.  It’s a BIG difference.

I think that the high degree of promiscuity in the gay community is fostered by their persecution.  Though gay culture has changed a lot in the last 20 years, and I expect the degree of promiscuity has diminished as they’ve been able to settle down and make families.

AIDS is now spreading faster among heterosexuals than gays right now.  Many heteros engage in anal sex as well, and it’s often unprotected because you can’t get preggers in your butt.  As others have said, the real problem is irresponsability in general.  The parents would be far better off encouraging him to be careful no matter whether he sleeps with women or men.

Also--
Of course, it’s easy to prevent AIDS:
>Don’t have unprotected sex until you and your partner have both been tested
>Only sleep with people you trust and know to be HIV-negative
>Don’t share needles

As for “most cultures” (WTF do you mean?  I would never sleep with a man unwilling to use a condom, and most women I know agree...so I don’t see men getting too much action without one.):

What makes you think that encouraging monogamy would work any better than encouraging condom use in those cultures?

you are all wrong! haha i’ve always wanted to start a comment like that. but no, seriously, i feel bad for this kid. but he forgets… his parents can’t FORCE him to do shit! Sadly, thats what i had to do to my folks when i was 17. they were oppressive christians as well. they have the right to do whatever they want, i suppose.

repeat after me, Zach:
“Fuck you mom, Fuck you dad! I’m out!”

I then proceeded to make a life for myself. I traveled, saw a lot of different cities, and met a lot of different people on my own, and realized i should’ve left those sorry fucks when i was 13!

sure, my dad tried to stop me, i’ve been chased down by hoardes of “friends” from church+1 cop car, had my car stolen by a PASTOR “for my own good” (i.e. trying to stop me from escaping), but eventually they caught on. or i ran faster.. i don’t know

zach, are you just gonna sit there and let the world shit on you or get up and leave the toilet?

excuse my grammar. and excuse the chronological mistake in the first paragraph.

hehe, youll only get that if you saw that al franken

A couple of people have been trying to draw connections between raising your kids with your religion and sending them to this camp.  It would be a good point, except that they’re not really parallel.

Zach’s parents have raised him Christian.  Nobody has interfered with their raising him Christian.  He has broken with their version of Christianity, at least a little, by accepting his homosexuality.

They are legally allowed, as parents, to punish him for what they see as bad behavior.  They can ground him, they can spank him, they can tell him he’s going to go to Hell if he acts on his gay impulses, and they can tell him they want him to go to that camp.  However, they are not allowed to do significant harm to him; there are laws against child abuse.  Sending him unwillingly to a place in which suicide is preferred to acting naturally certainly seems to fit the bill to me.

Sometimes I wanna be gay just to piss off people like this! Argh, I should ask Brock…

Welcome to Satanist reeducation camp.  Rules: Ritual sodomization will take place before every meal, just after the chicken sacrifices.  Do NOT use the chickens in the pen labeled ‘food’ for the ritual bestiality.

Nowiser, are these good Christian Satanists we’re talking about here, or Axis-of-Evil Satanists?

...She tells of an interesting ruling by the Ayatollah Khomeini concerning chickens you’ve had sex with, a practice permitted so men would not vent their urges in illegal ways, on women. Are you allowed to eat such chickens? No, said the Ayatollah: Neither you nor your next-door neighbour may eat the chicken, but the family two doors down is allowed to do so. One envisages a lively local street traffic in chickens.

- from Reading Lolita in Teheran, by Azar Nafisi.

Coincidence?  I think not.

Sometimes I wanna be gay just to piss off people like this!

Truthfully it isn’t as easy as it looks on TV and is mostly done with mirrors and scaffolding. You’d be better off learning some easier Bi tricks. Those can be executed quite easily and typically require fewer assistants.

I’m an expert. You’d better leave the hard stuff to trained individuals like me.

Truthfully it isn’t as easy as it looks…

Hardly anything is! Being straight is not without its challenges, but since most people are straight I could be fairly inept at it and still manage to establish relationships. 

I have often wondered if that would be the hardest part of being a closeted minority, dividing the set of potential partners by one’s natural shyness (or other challenge) and then dividing that set by the relative rarity of one’s persuasion.

Part of this seems to be with ‘age of majority’.  While I can not agree with the place Daryl stands, and how he uses the law, he is right in the fact that there has to be a point where a person is considered a child, and therefore the responsibility of the parent/guardian.  However this power is not without restriction: you may set a curfew, but may not enforce it with a bloody beating.

Would anyone argue with the fact that there has to be a legally defined age?  I’m not asking do you agree with the age as it stands, but do you think there should be a point before which a parent can say no?  If the methods used before that age are cruel then society steps in- the parents right is not unlimited. 

Zach’s story saddens me, let no one think I believe him wrong.  I hope he has the strength of mind to be ‘him’ when he is fully grown and mature, and not scarred by his parents.

However if a parents attempt to ‘convert’ a gay child was done in a gentle and loving way would we still belive the child should be away from that parent?  If so should we remove a child who is taught to deny scientific facts on the basis of a religeous belief system?

If you read carefully upthread, Last, you will see that most of us support the parent’s right to teach their beliefs or to try to pursuade the child.  The problem is abuse - most of us are against that.

he is gay

he is gay

Which one, Butterfly and why should I care? 

Does anyone know what’s happened to this lad since?

(I haven’t yet read his own blog, which I am just about to do. It’s on MySpace, so I’ll have to breathe deeply first. Can’t stand MySpace.)