A rural Ohio fairgrounds has canceled the contract to host a “conference” that LGBTQ+ advocates say was a conversion therapy bootcamp.
A group called the Pastors Action Coalition signed a contract to rent the Market Hall at the Mercer County Fairgrounds on the western edge of Ohio. The rental was part of a two-day event called “Come, Let’s Reason Together.” The gathering consisted of three separate parts:
- “Understanding the Journey Out of Homosexuality”
- “Ministering Truth to Those Who Identify as LGBTQ”
- “Come, Let’s Reason Together: We cordially invite members of the LGBTQ+ community to come and respectfully dialogue with us. Our aim will be for those of all beliefs to listen and move toward truth and understanding, recognizing Jesus’ desire for us to experience the life that is found only in Him. This session is for a mature audience.”
“Conversion therapy … with a fresh coat of paint”
The guest speaker for the event was announced as Daren Mehl, associate director of Agape First Ministries in Minnesota. According to the ministry’s website, Mehl is in favor of conversion therapy and signed an open letter that decries New South Wales, Australia’s law prohibiting prayer-based conversion efforts.
On the Agape website, Mehl describes himself and his wife as “coming out of the LGBTQ+ community” 20 years ago. His blog posts cite discredited studies that suggest conversion therapy works, including one denounced by its own author, psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, after anti-LBGTQ+ activists used it to legitimize conversion therapy. Spitzer was also a leading figure in declassifying homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Arienne Childrey, who serves as the first out transgender city council member of St. Marys, Ohio, said the event was “little more than a conversion therapy seminar with a new coat of paint.” Childrey ran unsuccessfully for state representative in District 84, which includes Mercer County.
The praying model of conversion therapy can put additional pressures on the victim, Childrey said. When victims do not respond to the therapy, they receive the blame because they did not “pray hard enough, weren’t faithful enough, or just didn’t love God the right way.”
“My concern is with those who don’t get a choice—LGBTQ+ youth, family members, or community members who end up suffering because someone close to them took this message to heart and turned it into a weapon,” she told The Buckeye Flame.
Contract: canceled
Visibility for – and opposition to – “Come, Let’s Reason Together” skyrocketed on April 8, when Have a Gay Day, a Dayton-based nonprofit supporting the LGBTQ+ community, shared a post about the event on its Facebook page. The page has 1.6 million followers.
Michael Knote, executive director of Have a Gay Day, said he shared the post to bring visibility to what was happening in the community.
“We looked at how the event was worded and had some concerns,” Knote said. “While the narrative overtone was ‘come sit with us,’ there were undertones also that could be seen as far less than kind. The audience agreed with us and our concerns, and many local residents reached out, sharing their concerns locally.”
Two days later, the rental contract had been canceled.
In a press release on April 10, the Mercer County Fairgrounds said that “the event was initially presented to be a pastoral conference” but had “evolved into a highly controversial demonstration, which is not what was discussed.”
“After consulting with our legal counsel, it was determined to rescind the rental,” the release stated.
The next day, the fairgrounds released a different statement about the cancellation:
“The event was canceled due to security and safety concerns, not because of anything that was represented, or not represented, by the rental applicant. The rental applicant did not misrepresent the purpose of the event, or any other related details, in its rental application or through other information provided to the Mercer County Fairgrounds.”
When reached for comment, Mercer County Fairground Manager Cara Muhlenkam told The Buckeye Flame that the event had been “evolving into more” but that she couldn’t comment further as the fairgrounds had been approached by Meyer’s attorneys.
Muhlenkam clarified that the group received a discounted rate because they were not using the space for the full day, not because of “who was renting it.”
The man behind the curtain
Aletheia Christian Church Pastor Shawn Meyer rented the fairgrounds with an organization called the Pastors Action Coalition, according to a rental agreement.
Meyer uses an online pseudonym, “Hanz Meyer,” and has harassed Pride organizers through social media. He is listed as an administrator in anti-LGBTQ+ Facebook groups like “Protect Celina’s Children.” and has previously stated that LGBTQ+ people are “enslaved by [the devil],” and that drag performances at Pride “appeal to abnormal unhealthy interests.”
When the first posts appeared online about the event, Meyer labeled people against the event as “homosexual activists.”
“Please pray that the intolerance of a small segment of our population does not prevail in the attempt to silence the message of the gospel,” he said.
Childrey defended the rights of people to protest the event.
“It’s more than a little ironic to see folks who regularly organize protests of local Pride events suddenly screaming foul when the LGBTQ+ community dares to exercise that same right in response to theirs,” Childrey said.
Conversion therapy on minors is currently banned in 13 municipalities in Ohio. There are no municipalities in Mercer County that have banned the widely discredited practice.
A bill to end conversion therapy on minors statewide was introduced in the Ohio Senate earlier this year. 🔥
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