A LESBIAN, who was ordered last year by a court to undergo hospital therapy for her drug addiction, wound up instead in the clutches of an evangelical couple, who were allegedly paid $600 by Bartow County Sheriff’s Department to “cure” her of her homosexuality.
Amanda Booker
Amanda Booker is now suing the police. A lawsuit filed earlier this month by Booker’s attorney, Anthony Perrotta, claims that the Sheriff’s Department considered it:
Normal procedure … to punish homosexuals and persons holding different religious beliefs.
The lawsuit also alleges:
At all times relevant to this action, it was the normal procedure, practice and custom of Defendants Bartow County, [County Commissioner Clarence] Brown, and [Sheriff] Clark Milsap to harass homosexuals taken into custody, to mandate that homosexuals taken into custody refrain from living as homosexuals, and to forbid them from maintaining any homosexual relationships.
In April, 2010, Booker’s family requested she be given therapy for her drug addiction. A court order commanded the Sheriff’s Department to take her to Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital in Rome, Georgia.
She suffered seizures on the way, however, and was taken instead to Cartersville Medical Centre. It was there, Booker alleges, that police officers prevented her from contacting her female partner and made:
Numerous threats concerning her lesbian relationship.
From there, Booker was taken to stay in a private home for a week and then to The Mercy House, run by evangelical couple Chris and Donna McDowell, who claim the ability to turn people into:
New creatures for Christ.
The couple handed a fee of $600, paid out of public funds to:
Convert Ms Booker from being a lesbian.
Booker was arrested a few days later after she made a getaway from The Mercy House and returned to her mother’s home.
Sheriff Milsap has responded by saying the charges were:
The most absurd thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
Brown, meanwhile, has declined to comment.
Perrotta says his priority is to get Amanda Booker out of Pulaski State Prison, GA, where she has been held since October, 2010, on charges that include damaging a police vehicle — an incident that occurred during her arrest, which the lawsuit portrays as aggressive, humiliating and without warrant.
Hat tip: Alan
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
May 28th, 2011 at 11:18 am
Is there any indication of just how Mr & Mrs Nutjob were going to ‘cure’ her of her affliction? The only recognised medical treatment is tridyxagaine.
May 28th, 2011 at 11:46 am
I am also amazed and appalled at the apparently arbitrary nature of american police powers.
May 28th, 2011 at 1:31 pm
So now the US police are allowed to be judge, jury and executioner if they arrest a Gay suspect?
In today’s Guardian there is a story about a “gay cure” counsellor [religious nutter] who seems to have got away without punishment. Notice how no comments are allowed on this story. See the NSS link at the side.
May 28th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
“New creatures for Christ.”
Lol, sounds so appealing.
May 28th, 2011 at 3:04 pm
remigius – you got me for a second! : D
I work in mental health and can categorically state that such views are extremely rare indeed in the UK – on the fringes of the fringe. They do exist and such people can be located but you are talking dozens out of tens of thousands of clinicians.
Much more depressing is the large and unacknowledged religious agenda pushed by too, too many mental health professionals, oftten in public services.
In the USA the gay-cure movement is pretty big, massive relative to the UK scene. Check out this website:
http://narth.com/
NARTH have a large membership but a small internet presence – intentionally low profile but very serious about treating people who are homeosexual – curing this ‘mental disorder’.
My own view is that clinical staff are just regular people, same as any of their clients, and susceptible to the same pressures. We all love a group of ‘others’ to be superior to. It gets you through. Religious twats (my hate group?) have paved the way in the USA for who these groups might be composed of.
May 28th, 2011 at 3:05 pm
The Guardian article made me laugh at the suggestion that playing Rugby could help a man turn heterosexual. I wonder if the therapist actually had any idea what playing Rugby would entail, from the mass male nudity in the changing rooms to putting your arm around another man and bending over, it doesn’t strike me as an effective way to avoid homoeroticism.
May 28th, 2011 at 3:07 pm
I think it’s a little premature to jump to conclusions. (Except for the nuttiness of the couple that wants to cure homosexuality, of course.) If this story seems “over-the-top,” maybe it’s because that’s what it is. Lesbians can lie just like anybody else. I’ll wait for the results of the lawsuit.
May 28th, 2011 at 3:48 pm
@mikespeir,
My thoughs went along the same lines. It’s such an extreme story, I’m struggling to believe the girl. However, the christian fundies are now so far out of touch with reality that this incident may have indeed happened.
I’ll have to sit on the fence with this one.
May 28th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
@tony e. We can no longer distinguish fact from fiction in fundies’ beliefs and actions. The Rapture non event is an example. Even more incredible is that they are now looking forward to the correct date, 21 October 2011, I think, after doing more sums.
You couldn’t make it up. But then you don’t have to. It happened and thousands bought into the nonsense.
May 28th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
Broga,
Indeed. Furthermore I can see the fundies, learning from the behaviour of muslims, are going to become an even bigger pain in the arse.
However, Camping has done more for the atheist cause than I ever could. Every wrong thing he says, and it appears to be everything, is money in the bank.
May 28th, 2011 at 7:03 pm
To be fair, well actually bending over backwards to be fair, Camping’s date for the actual end of everything was 21st October 2011. The Rapture and tribulation was supposed to start on 21st May. So provided that we ignore his failed 1994 prediction he could still be right. The rationalising that goes on when that date has come and gone should be entertaining, I just hope that he lives that long.
May 28th, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Going by some of the bollocks that goes on over there, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s true.
May 28th, 2011 at 10:35 pm
Stonyground: Go back and read the verses that I quoted from I Thessalonians regarding The Rapture. There would hardly be any doubt that it had taken place. Russell (Jehovah’s Witnesses) also came up with the lame excuse that Christ had in fact returned, but secretly, and that he was “in the heavens” ready to actually set foot on earth!
May 29th, 2011 at 8:50 am
Quite, I don’t think that there is any doubt that Camping and his followers are idiots. I just think that it would be more fun to humour them until October and then have another good laugh. I believe that the ‘Return of Christ that was so subtle that no one noticed it’ argument has been used to rationalise the ‘this generation and some standing here’ passages from the NT, so he isn’t even being original.
May 29th, 2011 at 9:43 am
Time someone started a religion involving Gandalf ad Bilbo Baggins… a lot of dosh could be made… see scientology.
May 29th, 2011 at 10:19 am
Well, it seems as if Jesus Christ HAS arrived, and is attracting a number of followers,together with his partner, “Mary Magdalene”, in Australia. With any luck he’ll soon be crucified for the second time around … by the fashion police.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ne.....6058687353
Also see http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/arti.....questioned
May 29th, 2011 at 11:39 am
As far as I know, the idea of a separate “rapture” of believers is a fairly recent arrival, cooked up by evangelical “dispensationalists” in an attempt to harmonize different passages in the Bible. I spent many a happy hour poring over these contradictory scriptures before the penny finally dropped, and I realized that all the different writers had different ideas of what was going to happen! Not only so, but there were, of course, many other “scriptures” in existence at one time, all purporting to reveal “the truth”. To Christians, the Bible as we have it is the seamless, inspired word of God, so somehow they have to make sense of all its contradictions. You can see what difficulties this causes here, if your brain doesn’t explode!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture
May 29th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Barry Duke,
I had to smile at the qoute in the Herald Sun, which went ‘Cult watchers and the Anglican and Catholic churches are alarmed the pair, who ask followers to make donations to sustain them, could draw in the vulnerable.’
Which is a bit rich coming from the Anglican and Catholic churches.
May 29th, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Hilarious that this “freethinker” website blacks out the screen if you turn off javascript. THINK free but surfing without danger of malware is over the line…
May 30th, 2011 at 2:14 pm
My unsolicited advice to this young woman, based on my own experience: leave the South. Try a larger city in the North or the West. Best of luck to you.
May 30th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Someone tried to convert me from being a lesbian when I was in my teens. Needless to say, it didn’t work.
May 31st, 2011 at 4:29 am
Everyone I know from Georgia says that people from Georgia are all crazy. This proves it.