Conversion Therapy Canards

ep3_qec.mp3

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What does queer mean?

Hello and welcome to episode three of Queer Enough Club.

I'm Gretta or G and I'm the Crater and Host.

This episode is trigger warning heavy as we'll be discussing conversion therapy,

which does include mental, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, suicide, depression, PTSD, and substance abuse.

I will include timestamps in the description when you should jump ahead and I'm going to call out

a specific area later on that I really think if you need to pass ahead I want to make sure I call that out.

But before we look at the reality of conversion therapy, we do have a queer definition.

Definitions are randomly pulled from the Queen's English, the LGBTQIA+ dictionary of

Lingo and Colloquial phrases by Chloe O. Davis. The phrase today is "Let them have it," which is an idiom.

The first definition of this is to "repermen someone strongly." Use case example.

I am about to let her have it if she says something else negative out of her mouth. She's

killing my vibe. Want more info? Think, to put someone in check. There is a second definition

for this. To overwhelm with fierceness and power. Use case example. J-Hud let them have it in

dream girls. Want more info? Think. I will outdo and be more successful than you.

Usage note. This term is commonly used in the Black Gay community and the larger queer and trans people

of color, QT/POC community. We're going to talk about conversion therapy today. Web MD defines

conversion therapy as any emotional or physical therapy used to cure or repair a person's attraction

to the same sex or their gender identity and expression. Conversion therapy, also known as

Repairative Therapy, XK therapy and sexual orientation change efforts, SOCE, has a long history,

which is often broken up in two three main periods. An early Freudian period, a period of mainstream

approval where the mainstream medical community classified homosexuality as an illness,

and a post-stonewall period where the mainstream medical profession criticized the conversion therapy.

Throughout this segment, I'm going to refer to it as conversion therapy. Conversion therapy

consists of several different types of techniques and as an additional trigger warning,

these range from emotional abuse to physical abuse to sexual abuse. Psychoanalysis.

For my research, the most common experience and practice is talk therapy or psychoanalysis.

While normally this type of therapy is used to look into how your past has shaped your present,

conversion talk therapy pushes boundaries almost immediately between therapist or "therapist"

and "patient" urging the patient to recall extremely private details or even search for

events in their past that never happened. Some experiences I read about were searching for past

abuses, either physical or sexual, blaming them for being too close to their mother,

for gay men, or father, for gay women, or even claiming it was trauma from their past life if they

couldn't come up with anything, and then forcing them to do past life regression, which has very

little scientific validity. Hypnosis has also been used to try and sway or redirect homosexual

feelings. While conversion therapy is sometimes called "repairative therapy", some claim it is a

therapy not intended to sway homosexuality, but rather explore the underlying reasons, which one

of the creators Joseph Nicolosi believes is often child-hotroma. The term "repairative" refers to

Nicolosi's belief that same sex attraction is a person's unconscious attempt to self-repair

feelings of inferiority. Web M.D's explanation on medical conversion therapy states

this includes medicine, hormone, or steroid therapies. In extreme cases, gender-affirming

surgeries are done to neutralize sexual orientation. What this means is that the sin of being gay is so

problematic that people will be pressured into undergoing a transition to negate their gay feelings,

regardless if they identify as transgender. Other medical examples I came across were lobotomy

during the: 1940

persecution of "gays" in Nazi Germany. When it comes to faith-based conversion therapy, the

practitioners are rarely licensed professionals, but rather religious leaders or those chosen by

religious leaders. Within faith-based therapy, the sessions range from what could be considered

talk therapy, but instead of looking into your past, it's looking into how you have submitted to

the devil or otherwise lost your way. There is one story I read of an orthodox shoe who was told

every person has one great challenge in life that they must overcome, and this person was having

gay thoughts and desires. A common theme among faith-based therapy is pushing a person to act more

traditionally like their gender. For example, if a man is gay, he should embrace more masculine

traits and behaviors to help remind his body and his mind that he is a man and men love women.

Depending on the religious organization one is in, homosexuality is viewed as equal to all other

sins, premarital sex, divorce, and so on, or as the worst of sins. There is a quote in Justin's story

on bandconversiontherapy.com that reads, "God doesn't rate and sin, but Christians definitely do."

Many of these religious communities believe in the power of prayer. I am someone pretty

unfamiliar with the extreme religious sex in the world, so I imagine this similar to a call out in

my reformed Judaism temple growing up. Jerry's grandfather is sick, please say a prayer for him.

Instead, what I found out is that the power of prayer for conversion is often physical in nature

with people shoving or pushing someone's head down, speaking in tongues, often for hours at a time.

It will not surprise you that the next step after this is performing an extracism which many

share that they've actually gone through. Aversiontherapy is where things start to get more

physically violent. Aversiontherapy's goal is to create an aversion to your same sex desires,

usually by training the brain to think of pain or other extremely unpleasant experiences

when feeling attraction towards the same sex. A non-exhaustive list of abuses is below,

most administered while forcing the patient to watch porn and then correcting the behavior when

they react to it. Beatings, electric shocks, starvation, induced vomiting, ice baths, sexual abuse,

called corrective rape, verbal abuse, especially punishing and shaming wrongness. It will most likely

not surprise you that the largest push for conversiontherapy comes from religious groups.

The main players appear to be conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews who claimed the Bible

or Torah condone homosexual behavior. Exodus International was a non-profit ex-gay organization

that helped individual organizations perform conversiontherapy. While they technically identified as

a non-denominational Christian organization, they primarily worked with Protestants in Evangelicals.

push in many communities. In: 2013

they officially closed their doors with several board members issuing apologies for the harm

that they caused. A similar organization in the Jewish community was Jonah, and they have since

changed their name due to a lawsuit which stated they were committing consumer fraud by claiming to

sexual orientation. Prior to: 2015

However, some claim it was named Jews offering new alternatives to homosexuality and even earlier date.

While there are no doubt those who claim to be non-religious and still against homosexuality,

it's impossible to pull the underlying reasoning from the centuries of persecution which has

always been at religion's hand. Conversiontherapy has been discredited time and again with virtually

all trusted medical organizations denouncing its practice. One study referenced by WebMD states that

LGBTQIA+ people who have undergone conversiontherapy are 8 times more likely to report having

attempted suicide. Almost 6 times more likely to report high levels of depression, more than 3 times

as likely to use illegal drugs, 3 times more likely to be at risk of HIV or other STDs.

Ban Conversiontherapy.com shares multiple stories on their website. I am going to share a few snippets

because I think it's important to hear from the people who have undergone these horrors and are now

using their voice to fight to change the laws around the world. Ban Conversiontherapy,

my understanding as the website was created to help ban Conversiontherapy in the U.S.

or in the UK, excuse me. The first is from Eli. My Conversiontherapy experiences started when I was

in my late teens. I'd spent some time in Israel for school and then visited America. When I came back to

London, my mental health had a crisis. I had a sort of breakdown and went to a therapist in Golders

Green. I was open with my therapist about my sexuality and was told that it was not natural or

normal to be gay. The therapy with him was designed to fix me. He would sit uncomfortably close to

me and instruct me to imagine different scenarios. My parents having sex, my mother's vagina,

my experience being molested when I was 15. He would tell me to think about good-looking girls

even though this wasn't allowed in our religion. That went on for about five weeks. I was then

sent somewhere throughout the winter. I didn't know exactly where we were but the conditions were bad.

We didn't have much food or water and the Conversiontherapy tactics were much more extreme.

We were made to watch porn and kicked every time we reacted. We were stripped naked,

blindfolded and sedated. I was there for about six weeks until I became so ill that they had to send

me home. Once I got back to London, I vowed never to engage with Conversiontherapy again.

The next is from Justin. Going through an exorcism is an incredibly emotionally traumatizing experience.

There is a definite expectation of reaction to proof that it's working and that the Holy Spirit

has exercised the demon within. Afterwards, you are left alone, lying there, shaking, crying,

screaming, thinking, "Did it work? Is that me? Am I normal now?" Only to realize very quickly that

it didn't. You're then left thinking, "What's wrong with me?" After six years of being told

consistently that something is wrong with you, it inevitably chips away at yourself a steam,

and by 23, I was empty. Empty and overwhelmed with utter loneliness, no support system or way out.

I had absolutely zero self esteem. I hated everything about myself, genuinely believing that I was

evil or had something fundamentally wrong with me. I would walk with my head down, avoiding mirrors

and windows as I despised what I saw. I was suicidal, stockpiling medication all over my bedroom

and in my car, and fully intending on taking my own life.

Lastly, here is a piece of carol and story. During the appointments, I was taken to a dark room

and strapped to a wooden chair. Doctors gave me painful electric shocks while images of women were

projected on the wall in front of me. I still remember clearly the pain of those shocks and the tears

that ran down my face. The doctors were convinced that if I learned to associate my gender with physical

pain, I'd stop having those feelings. After that, I really tried to commit myself to living a

normal life. I got married, had two children and became a teacher. From the outside,

everything looked wonderful. I even became one of the youngest head teachers in Linke Shire.

But, whenever I remembered the treatment I'd had, I would start physically shaking.

In that sense, you could say that the therapy worked in that it affected my body,

but in terms of my mind and my thoughts, it only made me hate myself for.

A non-exhaustive list of conversion therapy effects is as follows.

Depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation or acts, lack of sex drive, PTSD, substance abuse,

distrust of those in the LGBTQIA/2S+ community distrust of therapy.

As of August: 2025

practitioners from subjecting minors to any conversion therapy aimed at changing

sexual orientation or gender identity. California, New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois,

Vermont, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Connecticut, Nevada, Washington, Maryland, Hawaii, New Hampshire,

tts, Colorado, as recently as: 2019

Michigan, the law was signed in July 2023. Minnesota, it was effective in August 1, 2023.

oards adopted the policies in: 2025

the State Supreme Court in 2025, Virginia. 2020, band is still on the books but enforcement

,: 2025

extended to some adults in 2019. The following jurisdictions have implemented limited

restrictions such as barring state funds or medical board action, but do not actually fully

e agency funding, which was a: 2023

Kentucky briefly enacted a band in September 2024, but it was overwritten by the legislature

in March: 2025

social workers in 2021. Some states have existing legislation or local laws but the federal ruling

prevents and hit enforcement. Florida, Georgia, and Alabama located in the 11th circuit where the

ederal appears court ruled in: 2020

blocking enforcement of state or local bands. Indiana, state law, bands, local municipalities

from enacting bands blocking local productions. Some notable updates on court decisions in Wisconsin

in June: 2025

of her band on professional license therapy for minors. In Virginia, a 2025 legal sentiment

restricts enforcement of its: 2020

prohibited. Supreme Court case, childs versus cellars are challenging Colorado's conversion therapy

band is now being considered and could set precedent impacting similar bands nationwide.

expected to begin in October: 2025

2026. For last call today, I'm tapping a podcast that came across about a year ago called Queer

as Fact. I was hooked when I listened to episode 146. Yes, I was jumping around. I didn't have to wait

146 episodes to get hooked. That episode is called relationships between women in ancient Rome.

I was really impressed by the amount of research they did and how they presented it and also it

was super awesome to hear about Lesbians in ancient Rome. There are website states Queer's Fact is

a podcast run by four Melbourne-based queer people with a background in history and a passion for

sharing queer stories. We explore topics and figures from around the world and examine their

place in the wider context of queer history.

To learn more about myself or the project head to the website QueerEnoughClub.com.