According to an article in the Philadelphia Daily News, a Catholic Group holds sports weekends as a way to purge men of their same-sex attractions.
The group, called Courage, held its 13th annual sports camp the last weekend in May in which “men physically compete on the field while enriching their souls through a daily regimen of prayer, confessions, mass and the Liturgy of the Hours,” according to the Courage website.
The mission of the camps state that by developing a life of chastity, men can move beyond the confines of the “homosexual identity” to a more complete one in Christ. That homosexual identity can make men feel rejected, according to Robert Fitzgibbons, a therapist quoted by the Philadelphia Daily News who says he “heals homosexual attraction.”
Boys who are unable to play sports well feel rejected because they “begin to identify with the female instead of the male,” he is quoted as saying in the article.
“They think that in offering people with same-sex attraction the chance to learn how to play sports, they will learn to be manlier,” Ed Coffin, director of the Peace Advocacy Network told the paper. The group protested outside the seminary throughout the weekend. “There are many, many out gay athletes and many gay men who play sports.”
An unidentified member of the group told the Daily News that many different kinds of people attend the sports camp, including married men “who had this issue in the past.”
