There’s a new Christian faith-based counseling center opening on Lexington Springmill Road S in Mansfield, Ohio. 

When asked directly if they’ll offer conversion therapy, they say, “no, that’s unethical.”

When asked in a more indirect way if they’ll help change a person’s sexuality, they say they’re happy to help, and have no problem with an LGBTQ+ client describing their identity as a sinful lifestyle they’re ready to turn away from. 

You might think, “well, adults can do what they like.”

Which is absolutely true. 
But even in cases of consenting adults choosing to try and change their sexuality or gender identity, it results in worsened depression, anxiety, even C-PTSD symptoms. 

As a counseling center, it’s incredibly concerning that they’d offer services known to cause worsened mental health, not to mentioned significantly higher suicide rates regardless of religious beliefs surrounding sexuality and transgender identities. 

I’m not here to preach or tell anyone what to believe. 

But a mental health counseling center offering services that can cause harm to the mental health of their clients is abhorrent no matter who you are, or what the harmful practice is.

Crossroads Church, also on Lexington Springmill Rd, in Mansfield is supporting the center.

According to a local newspaper article written about the new center, “State ethics regulations prohibit professional counselors from trying to convert clients or persuade them to follow a certain religious practice. But counselors are allowed to take client's existing cultural and religious beliefs into account and discuss them in a way that aligns with the client's values.”

Ohio has no state law against conversion practices, though some cities and municipalities have banned it. 
These bans only apply to these cities, meaning parents from those areas can take their children to this center and be put through abusive, harmful practices that will not change them in any meaningful way except to make them not want to wake up in the morning and to cry themselves to sleep every night wishing they were different. 

American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC) guidelines, which counselors at the center will be following have been updated in recent years to stop the “official” practice of conversion therapy, although they state the same as the aforementioned newspaper article, which allows for it in the same roundabout way it was offered to me by this center. 

They aren’t able to directly recommend conversion practices, but if a client (of any age) believes their born identity is a sin, therapists are fully able to attempt to change a person’s sexuality or gender. 

the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), the world’s largest psychiatric association, representing over 2,000,000 mental health professionals says: “WPA believes strongly in evidence-based treatment. There is no sound scientific evidence that innate sexual orientation can be changed. Furthermore, so-called treatments of homosexuality can create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination flourish, and they can be potentially harmful. The provision of any intervention purporting to “treat” something that is not a disorder is wholly unethical… Psychiatrists have a social responsibility to advocate for a reduction in social inequalities for all individuals, including inequalities related to gender identity and sexual orientation.”

Which leads me to my last point, starting with a personal story: growing up gay deeply involved with the church — my dad was a deacon, my mom was in the choir. I set up for communion every week, helped change the altar vestments every new church season, and for every liturgical holiday. 

I was an acolyte and the boy who carried the crucifix in every Lenten, Easter and Advent season from the time I was 12 until I was 16. 

I went through a year of First Communion class, then over two years of Catechism class. 

I was also gay in a church that did not affirm who I knew God made me but turned a blind eye to other sins. 

The first time I experienced anxiety not because of my identity but because of the way I was being treated by my congregation because of it, I was 12. 

That was the anxiety of, “What will they do if they find out?” 

My identity did not shift, or go away like a phase, and neither did the severe mental distress.

I laid awake praying for so many nights in a row that I started taking melatonin to sleep at 13, and almost 12 years later struggle to sleep because the trauma of trying to be who God made me, and the reactions of my fellow Christians. 

By the time I was 15, I could tell you the milligram amount of multiple over the counter medications it would take to fall asleep and not wake up. 

I was researching, I was planning. 

It had gone from suicidal ideation to planning the act. 

At 16, I finally decided that no matter what, this wasn’t what God wanted for me. 

There is no way that a loving Heavenly Father would create a human being 1. Outside of His image. 2. Who was born condemned regardless of their faith, regardless of having been baptized into Christ as any other god-fearing man. 

I never attempted. 

But the trauma lingers. 

Being told by a faith-based counseling center that they will help turn away people from the sin of being LGBTQ+ harkens back to the darkest time in my life, but what worries me most is that it will be helping some clients (especially teens and youth) not come back to the light of the God, but lose their light altogether. 

I did not attempt, but I know those who have and I know some who were successful. 

Regardless of your beliefs on sexuality, or how you feel about me or this post up until now, you have to admit God does not want His creation to live depressed, anxious and wanting to not wake up every single day.

City Care Counseling Center needs to officially condemn ALL conversion practices, not just what they’ve officially designated as “conversion therapy”.