Church accused of planning a conversion therapy workshop for LGBTQ girls

A Downriver church is at the center of a local culture war after being accused of planning a workshop for LGBTQ-identifying adolescent girls that has been likened to controversial — and in many states illegal — conversion therapy classes.

On Thursday, Metro City Church in Riverview is set to start a six-week course pegged as the "Unashamed Identity Workshop." Targeting people assigned female at birth between the ages of 12 and 16 who "think they may be gay, bisexual, or transgender," the church explained on its website that the $200 course would "help your girl be unashamed of her true sexual identity given to her by God at birth."

The phrasing and intentions of the course — using "thoughtful, relevant and biblical counsel" to help girls be "unashamed" with their "true sexual identity" — has raised red flags for locals, who draw parallels between the church's programming and so-called conversion therapy, which promises to change a minor's sexual orientation or gender identity via prayer.

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In response to news of the workshop, the church has gotten thousands of e-mails and complaints, Metro City Church head pastor, Jeremy Schossau told the Detroit Metro Times via e-mail Monday.

"The vast majority are filled with vulgarity, hate, and threats of all kinds. What we find incredibly odd is there is no seeking to understand what we are truly doing. Only the assumption that we are practicing some sort of conversion therapy," Schossau wrote, adding that the people attending the "Unashamed Identity Workshop" were "seeking" the church out.

"These are folks who are questioning their sexual identity or maybe they are in the gay or lesbian community and they are just not comfortable there," he wrote. "They think maybe that they don’t want to be there. And they are seeking out conversation. Again, nobody is forcing them to be there."

While information about the course on church's website has been taken down, the content has been preserved in screenshots, which show that the language surrounding the course was not targeting the teen girls but rather their parents.

Schossau ended his statement to the alt-weekly stating, "The hypocrisy of the gay community is so incredible because they are not seeking to understand and making totally wrong assumptions."

Schossau also took to YouTube, where he posted a five-minute vlog responding to the conversion therapy allegations, making many of the same points he shared with the Detroit Metro Times.

The Free Press reached out to the church for comment and to also find out whether the course would still be happening since information on its website has been taken down. It has not responded.

Conversion therapy has been widely discredited as being both ineffective and harmful; it has been denounced by major health organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association, which in 1973 removed homosexuality from the list of disorders in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Mexico, New Jersey, California, Oregon, Nevada, Illinois and Washington, D.C., currently have laws banning licensed conversion therapists from working with minors. A push for a federal ban was initiated in 2014 after a transgender Ohio teen committed suicide following participation in a conversion therapy course.

Metro Detroit Political Action Network, a local organization that was created in the wake of President Donald Trump's election, plans to protest in front of the church at 6 p.m. Thursday — a half hour before the first session is scheduled to begin.