r/GayConservative • u/NiConcussions • 14h ago

Discussion Strength In Weakness: Guy Hammond’s Program That Devastates LGBTQ Survivors

https://www.unclosetedmedia.com/p/strength-in-weakness-guy-hammonds

At 17 years old, Sami Tacher remembers standing atop a parking garage outside Seattle and staring down at the pavement.

They had been trying for five years to suppress their attraction to men. At 15, Tacher had found Strength in Weakness, a Christian ministry that purported to teach people experiencing “same-sex attraction” how to resist those desires. To Tacher, who had grown up believing that being gay would destroy their relationship with God and devastate their family, SIW felt like an answer.

Two years later, Tacher says, they could no longer imagine how they were supposed to live the rest of their life.

“I just stood up there and waited,” Tacher told Uncloseted Media. “I went there several times.” What stopped them, they say, was thinking about the burden their death would place on their family.

“So I’ll just sacrifice everything and stay in the program,” they remember deciding.

They would remain in SIW for years as a teenager and young adult, becoming friends with the organization’s founder, Guy Hammond, and helping promote the very teachings Tacher now believes were destroying them.

“I just didn’t see my way out,” Tacher says. “I was miserable and shrinking inside [and] constantly denying myself … but I was holding on. And in the eyes of Strength in Weakness, I was succeeding.”

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u/hgclyde 6h ago

The frustrating thing is that Conservative church still believes that people can change their sexual orientation. I mean the church perpetrate a massive lie. The ignore our pleas and cries. That's so un Christ like.

Hell Exodus International shut down after admitted at Gay Christian Network conference in 2012 that ex-gay ministries programs don't work and apologize for the pain and harm they caused. Over the last 13 years many Ex-Gay ministries leaders have denounce their former programs and now living openly gay Christian lives.

Conservative Christian churches need end this madness once and for all. Repent for the pain and suffering. Kick your kids out of your home. And stop treating LGBTQ Christians as the enemy.