ADF Files Suit on Behalf of Tennessee Ministry Fighting State Regulation

by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
October 17, 2005

(AgapePress) - The Tennessee State Department of Mental Health and Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen are being sued for alleged religious discrimination against a ministry that seeks to help people struggling with homosexual behavior or other sexual sins.

Tennessee's Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities has required a Memphis-based organization called Love In Action International (LIA) to obtain a license for treating mentally ill clients. However, LIA insists that what it offers people who struggle to align their behavior and their faith is not mental health services -- it is ministry.

Nate Kellum of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the pro-family legal defense group that has filed suit on LIA's behalf, contends that the state is violating the ministry's fundamental constitutional rights. "This is harassment, pure and simple," he says. "There is no legitimate state interest here. There's no health or safety violation, and there's no fire code or overcrowding concern. Love in Action's ministry has nothing to do whatsoever with mental health as defined by law, but the Department of Mental Health wants to regulate it anyway."

LIA's purpose is a religious one that the Christian ministry "should be allowed to carry on without the intrusion of the state, without having to comply with the licensure requirement of the state," Kellum asserts. The statute the state is applying "is being manipulated," he asserts, "and it's being misused."

Love In Action describes itself as a Christ-centered ministry that exists to aid in "the prevention or remediation of unhealthy and destructive behaviors facing families, adults, and adolescents." The ministry offers programs designed to raise families and individuals' awareness and to provide them with information and tools for addressing painful relationship patterns and destructive behaviors, including those behaviors related to sexual brokenness or unhealthy emotional dependencies.

LIA had not run into problems with the State of Tennessee for 30 years. However, after a teenage blogger claimed his parents forcibly admitted him to the facility, the ministry was investigated by three separate state agencies. Now, Kellum says LIA is being forced to turn away people who fall under the state's "mentally ill" rubric.

"Under the state's broad definition," the ADF attorney explains, "this essentially includes anyone who is taking an anti-depressant. So if someone is struggling with an issue of homosexuality or promiscuity, or some other type of destructive behavior, and they desperately want and seek the help of Love In Action, Love In Action at this point has to turn them away if they happen to be taking Zoloft or Prozac."

Kellum maintains that the state and the Tennessee Department of Mental Health are "trying to turn a Christian ministry into a state-regulated mental hospital." Following the state's reasoning, he contends, a homeless shelter offering a bed to a homeless person who happened to be taking antibiotics for some minor infection would have to be classified as a medical clinic.