- 5 hours ago
Garrard Conley was enrolled in the now defunct Love in Action conversion therapy program in Memphis, Tennessee, at age 19. He was sent there by his parents after a classmate disclosed his sexual orientation to them following an assault. Conley grew up in a deeply religious family in rural Arkansas. He says he had to attend the program or face rejection from his family, and he ultimately agreed to enter the program.
Conley talks to Business Insider about the long-term harms of the practice, how it remains legal in much of the US, and how a new Supreme Court case threatens to strip away the few protections that currently exist.
In 2016, years after leaving the program, Conley published a memoir titled "Boy Erased," which was later adapted into a film. He's since reconciled with his parents and has dedicated much of his work to educating the public on the dangers of conversion therapy. His educational podcast, "Unerased," traces the history of the conversion therapy movement. The final episode features John Smid, the former director of Love in Action, who has since disavowed the practice and come out as gay.
Conley talks to Business Insider about the long-term harms of the practice, how it remains legal in much of the US, and how a new Supreme Court case threatens to strip away the few protections that currently exist.
In 2016, years after leaving the program, Conley published a memoir titled "Boy Erased," which was later adapted into a film. He's since reconciled with his parents and has dedicated much of his work to educating the public on the dangers of conversion therapy. His educational podcast, "Unerased," traces the history of the conversion therapy movement. The final episode features John Smid, the former director of Love in Action, who has since disavowed the practice and come out as gay.
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TechTranscript
00:00My name is Garrett Conley. I began conversion therapy at 19 after being
00:04outed to my parents. It nearly cost me my life. This is everything I'm authorized to tell you.
00:11I think a lot of people just think, oh it's that dramatic practice that happened like
00:15in the last century. It happened in this century to me and it's still going on.
00:21We were terrified. If you stood the wrong way, if you put your hand on your hip a certain way,
00:25that could be reported to the therapist who would then take you in their office and shame you for a
00:31very long period of time. Conversion therapy is any attempt to change the sexual orientation or gender
00:43of any person by use of coercion or force. I arrived at Love in Action in June of 2004.
00:50My mother drove me up and she said, well this place looks really tacky, you know,
00:56for the amount of money we're spending. Because I think at the time, the two-week session that I was
01:02in, which was like a youth group, was about $2,500. So we pull up, we're not impressed,
01:08it's in a strip mall. It's got ugly decor on the walls. My mom left right after she dropped me off.
01:16She wanted to see the place, but they said that she couldn't, that it was private and restricted.
01:22There was not a strip search per se, but definitely a padding down. One of the people there looked
01:29through every one of my belongings. He would like pull out cards from my wallet and say, okay,
01:34well where did you get this from? When did you go here? Is this a phone number that if I called it
01:39would be inappropriate? I had a notebook and I was writing short stories at the time.
01:46But when I entered Love in Action, they looked through my notebook and they decided that it was
01:52what was called a false image. It was misleading me in some way. And they ripped those pages out
01:58of my notebook and threw it away without reading the story really. They were
02:03disturbed that I'd written a female character and they said that I was identifying with the female
02:08character too strongly. Everything was kind of streamlined. You know, I had like a 274 page handbook
02:15with rules and regulations that were laid out. There were so many rules, like how we were supposed
02:20to talk to one another, how we were supposed to report behavior, how we were supposed to think in
02:26any situation. You know, like if you have a temptation, turn to page 55 and you'll see this
02:33sort of rundown of what you're supposed to do. It also had testimonies by people who had been cured
02:39and it seemed like they were following a script, right? So it would start with like,
02:43I did all these horrible things when I was younger. I wasted so much of my life. Here are the consequences.
02:49Here's why I'm so, so happy today. I mean, these people didn't seem happy at all. They seemed really,
02:58really deeply unhappy. They got into great detail on what we should wear. So men should not wear
03:06sleeveless shirts or anything that's going to be suggestive of their muscles or their bodies.
03:12Women were, you know, told to wear bras. And we were sort of taught that a surveillance system was
03:20important for this whole endeavor. We had to check each other for if you're a man, feminine behavior,
03:26and if you're a woman, too much masculinity. So basically, they were saying that if you're a
03:32straight man, you act a certain way. And if you're a straight woman, you must act completely effeminate
03:40and submissive. They had bizarre rules, too. I mean, there were suggestions about how,
03:45if you are going to slip up and masturbate, here's what you should do. You should switch over to thinking
03:51about a woman at the very end. You know, so there was practical advice along with theoretical
03:56discussions about masculinity and femininity. Outside of the handbook, when you first entered
04:03Love in Action, there was a map of the city with zones and places that were marked that were safe,
04:09and everything else was evil. We were prohibited from eating in certain restaurants, from going
04:16anywhere secular. So what that meant was if a bookshop or a store was not explicitly Christian,
04:23that during this time, I should not enter it. Although my mom did sneak one night, we went to
04:29the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, which is a really nice hotel, and ate this beautiful Italian dinner.
04:36And I remember feeling very guilty, like, oh no, I'm going to be influenced by the secular culture.
04:42I was constantly being told how to stand, how to act, what my posture should be. Those were things that
04:50I couldn't help, right? Like the way that I stood comfortably, the way that I spoke. It was not
04:57something I could just suddenly erase. Every day was rigidly scheduled. That schedule would consist of
05:11silent Bible study in the morning, group therapy. Then we would split off into our groups and do
05:17activities that were designed to teach us that we were wrong. Then there would usually be testimonials,
05:24anything from ex-drug addicts to people who'd come out of homosexuality. And then we would go to a
05:32separate church and do another lesson. We were never really allowed to be in a group together without
05:40a conversion therapist nearby, because they didn't trust what we were going to tell each other.
05:44Love in Action had a rather unique approach to conversion therapy in that they were sort of
05:51structured like a, what I would now say is a kind of demonic Bible camp. It's like you go to vacation
05:59Bible school and you do crafts and you like read about the Bible and sing and do those things. Well,
06:05there was no singing, there was no music allowed other than Mozart and Bach. We were allowed arts and
06:11crafts, but they were designed to like make you feel shame about your life. We went to church at various
06:18points, but there was no singing or eating together. It was like a lecture. I wasn't prepared for being
06:28placed in a group therapy session. And especially not with the people that I was there with, you know,
06:38there were people dealing with bestiality, pedophilia, marriage issues. But we were all grouped together
06:47in one session in the mornings. And the assumption that Love in Action was using was that all sins are
06:54equally sinful within God's eyes. Many of the people there had tried to commit suicide. And so every morning,
07:03there would be like another person that would confess to having suicidal thoughts. I remember thinking,
07:09wow, this is really serious. You know, like I could die if I don't change or I could become one of these
07:19people that I don't expect to become. But what I wasn't expecting was seeing these people whose lives were
07:27in many ways broken and being treated the same. I'm 19 at this point. And I'm being told like people's
07:37lives have been completely ruined by their sinfulness. I was sitting next to older men
07:43who were like, yeah, I lost my lover to AIDS. That was never true love. It was just a fantasy. And now I
07:50regret everything I ever did. Or a man who would say I lived 12 years with another man. But it was always
07:57selfish and greedy. And we were all we were just using each other. There was still a part of me, I think,
08:04when I showed up at Love in Action, that thought, well, maybe I can still have a future with a man.
08:11But suddenly, it seemed like every future that I was meeting was a tragic one. They were saying all the
08:18time that everyone is equal in their sinfulness and that God loves us all anyway. They would say that
08:23sometimes. But then what you really learned that they felt was that we were particularly disgusting.
08:35So they had a 12-step system that was very similar to Alcoholics Anonymous with the first step being,
08:41you know, you have to admit to God that you're wrong and that you're the part of you that believes
08:47you're gay is wrong. And as hokey as some of their teachings were and as silly as it sometimes looked
08:54or the ugly Bible verses crocheted on the wall, you know, any judgments I had could easily be shut down
09:02with, well, you know, when an alcoholic goes to AA meetings, it's not glamorous. The best way I would
09:08describe moral inventory would be testimonial format, really, is what it was. It was, I grew up in the
09:15church watching testimonials. So the assumption was, you've done bad things. It's time to talk
09:21about it. It's time to confess and then tell us why all that stuff was wrong. So we did this like
09:28every day. That was our homework. Everyone had a really gruesome moral inventory and mine were like,
09:35I went to the underwear section and looked at pictures of men in underwear. And so I started making
09:42things up, I think, by the third day, like, oh, yeah, I kissed a boy, only wishing that I'd done that,
09:48you know, at some point. They would interpret my lack of experience with stubbornness. They would say,
09:56you're not revealing everything. You're not telling me what you really did. I think I made up, like,
10:01masturbating with somebody. I never had. But I just made it up to, like, please them. So in a way,
10:08I knew that there was something deceitful in doing that. But I was also really afraid
10:12of what would happen if they kept telling me that I wasn't really committing. And I was terrified of
10:17them going back and reporting to my parents that nothing was working and that I was stubborn.
10:22Fear was everything during that time. I mean, like, that was my entire motivation for getting out of bed,
10:30for continuing to do it, even though it felt like my life was empty. The instructor would kind of pile on
10:37anyone during the therapy sessions that was revealing anything personal. We could never talk
10:42positively about anything gay or, you know, gender related that they didn't like. I talked a little
10:49bit about video games when I was there and how much I loved them. And they told me that that was the way
10:56the devil entered our minds often. And other people, you know, had sort of perked up and said,
11:03yeah, I like that video game too, or blah, blah, blah. I mean, it could be something as simple as Mario.
11:09And they're like, yeah, it's evil. It's talking about mushrooms. You know, like, they just come up
11:14with some reason why it was bad. After someone gave a speech, you'd have to say, I love you,
11:19and then say their name. You'd get up and you'd like share the darkest secrets you could. And then
11:26everyone would shame you and mock you. And right after that, it'd be followed up with, I love you.
11:33And I think it taught us a very dark version of love. They had an activity called the Genogram.
11:43And the goal was to teach us why we were in conversion therapy to say that the sins of your
11:50fathers are bearing down upon you now. And that's why you have an H next to your name for homosexuality.
11:57What it did was it really flattened my family members. It made me look at them as if that's all
12:04they were. I didn't really like looking at my family members like they were just sinful people.
12:10Love in Action was a conversion therapy facility in Memphis, Tennessee. It was founded around the
12:23year 1973, which was the same year that the American Psychological Association declassified homosexuality
12:30as a mental illness. It began as a church group in a small church in San Rafael, California. It quickly
12:36escalated from there. A few years later, Exodus International was founded. And that was one of
12:42the largest international conversion therapy organizations in the country. That began a movement
12:51where slowly people started to medicalize the problem. What they decided to do was to bring in
12:58a lot of different practices that could help systematize really the path out of homosexuality.
13:06So Love in Action had many programs. The one I went to was called The Source. It was a two-week
13:11trial program for younger people. Really what it was designed to do was to get you to buy into a
13:17longer program. The Source was like, okay, congratulations, you passed two weeks. Now it's
13:23time to go to three months. Then you got to commit to a year, then two years, and then you're a permanent
13:29part of the staff. Who are the people that are actually running this program? What qualifications did they
13:34say or claim to have? How did they get that position? Well, John Smid started off in a support group in a
13:43church for people dealing with homosexuality. So he himself was gay. And then Love in Action asked him to be
13:53the leader. So he did. He was, I think, married twice to women. And he had used these practices to
14:05create some semblance of a quote unquote, normal life. Those were most of our counselors. There was a
14:12sense of holier than thou. I was really angry at the time that someone who obviously couldn't hide
14:19who they were was lecturing me because I felt like I was good at playing the part. Nobody knew
14:27really about my sexuality until I was outed. And so I thought, wow, y'all are really bad at this.
14:32I was constantly scrutinized by the staff members being told like, oh, you're reading too much or
14:39I can see you thinking. That was something that I heard a lot. I think it was very hard for all of us
14:45to settle in because on one hand, it felt like a very familiar world that we were in and comforting.
14:55You know, like I grew up around youth pastors my whole life. They acted like youth pastors. So
15:01it felt like I could relax at times. And then on the other hand, you know, we were being shamed
15:06constantly by these people that we were told to look up to. And I think that was really hard for
15:12everyone, including myself. We had this one session where we had to do masks. We had these plastic masks
15:19that we had to decorate. On the front of it, we showed really what the world saw us as. I was the good
15:26sun. I sort of pasted together this like, you know, these Bible-y things and crosses and things. And then
15:33on the back, we were supposed to show the ugliness inside, sort of what we were hiding from people.
15:40And I looked around at the art supplies and I said, well, you don't have anything that can really do
15:46it for me because, you know, I would need like some tar. They were like, that's not funny. You need to
15:51take this seriously and you need to really commit to this exercise and you're distracting other people
15:58with your humor. I was definitely one of the main targets because I was skeptical of a lot of things
16:05and I would ask questions. And so anytime I would sort of react with a question or be academic in any
16:13way or like push back on anything, even a small thing, it was seen as evil. I can recall a moment when
16:21I pushed back. We were in a session on family dynamics and we were being told all the stuff,
16:30the Freudian stuff about how this is what your father needed to act like. And if you didn't,
16:35then you probably turned you gay. One time someone said, well, you know, really what you probably want,
16:43you don't know it is that you want to sleep with your mother. And I'm sitting there just like,
16:48did I just hear that? Is this what we're saying in this Christian setting? And so I said,
16:58well, I took a Western literature class and we talked about Freud and I don't think that's
17:05right. They were like, how dare you question that? You know, we know this, blah, blah, blah. And
17:11and so I was shamed for that, even though I could tell with a few of the expressions around the room
17:18that they agreed with me. You know, I've done some research since being in conversion therapy and
17:24discovered a lot of brainwashing techniques that are used around the globe. They happen to be very
17:29similar. They happen to involve a lot of rules. They happen to involve a lot of surveillance. They happen
17:36to involve a lot of repeated phrases like, no, that is not what you think. Here's what you actually
17:42think. So the correction was the point in many ways. Looking back, what do you think kind of motivated
17:49staff members? I think these people were truly religious people, for sure. I think that they
17:56believed that they were doing the right thing. Like, it's really hard to wrap your mind around the idea
18:03that these people thought they were doing good. But they did. That doesn't mean that cruelty didn't
18:08come through. There were people who were very cruel there, who would mock
18:15gay behavior or whatever they deemed as gay. But I think they did that out of self-disgust.
18:22I think they were disgusted with themselves and what they really wanted to express in their lives. And so they
18:28pushed it out on us. And I feel great sympathy for those people. They were trapped in it much longer
18:38than I was. I remember meeting John years later after conversion therapy, after he'd renounced it and
18:47said that he didn't believe in it anymore and he apologized. And he was still evasive about what he'd done.
18:54And I even had compassion for that because I thought, I don't think I could live with it.
19:04So I grew up in a really small town in Arkansas called Milligan Ridge. And the only real community
19:10that we had, aside from my dad's business, was a Baptist church where we would hang out pretty much
19:17all week. One day when I was in Sunday school, I think I was about 12 or 13, a man came into the
19:25classroom with a petition that was against a pride parade that was taking place in a town not far
19:31from ours. And he said, I want everyone in this room to sign it. And I remember thinking as the paper
19:38went around that if I signed it, I would be a liar on some level, which was a sin, because I was attracted
19:46to other boys my age. But if I didn't sign it, everyone would know that I was gay. And I signed it.
19:55And I remember in that moment thinking, okay, well, I've got to hide who I am somehow. During that 2003,
20:032004 period, there was a lot of anti-gay rhetoric. We had the marriage amendment, which was being voted on
20:12to forbid same sex partners for marrying. And it was not that distant from other stories like Matthew
20:20Shepard. So I learned how to mask a lot of what I was actually feeling during that time. And I had a
20:26girlfriend. And we met in church. And so she was kind of my shield during that time. My father is a
20:33really interesting person. That's why it makes it really hard to be angry with him. He worked at a
20:40cotton gin and owned it for 25 years. And that made him a major figure in our town. You know,
20:47everybody knew him, everybody loved him. And so when he became a minister, he went all the way.
20:52The entire community was watching me for signs of like, are you like your dad? Are you going to be
20:58a preacher? All these things that I had almost no interest in doing were expectations that I felt were
21:04on me? So for me, there were just two sides of me. One was evil and wanted to rebel and to live my own
21:14life. And the other was the good son and the straight son and the son who would follow in his father's
21:22footsteps. And I think that they were very separate people. And I was a very private person for that reason.
21:28Everything was going smoothly until my freshman year of college. It was a liberal arts college.
21:40And in that setting, there were these new ideas, ideas that were really forbidden when I was younger.
21:49You know, I grew up hearing that abortion was evil, that women's rights were nothing but a hoax,
21:56and that the LGBTQ movement was just basically perversion. So suddenly I'm in an environment
22:03where people don't believe that. I was shocked. I started questioning everything that people were
22:08telling me. And I think that without that one semester, I wouldn't have been equipped to leave
22:15a place like Love In Action. You know, literature and critical thinking, those were the things that
22:20saved my life. I had a roommate who was a friend from high school. And he was very religious. My roommate
22:30told me that he had assaulted a 14-year-old boy in his church group. And I remember at the time
22:37thinking, oh my God, I've never encountered this in my life. And also thinking like, is this what happens
22:44when you're gay? You know? And one of the reasons I thought that was because of so much language at
22:50the time, and it still exists today, around the idea that gay people are predators. And that they
22:57will assault people younger than them if they get into a position of power. I reacted very negatively to
23:03that disclosure from my roommate. And he assaulted me that night when I was asleep. The next day,
23:13I told some friends of mine, because I didn't know who to tell. And they told their mother,
23:22who then called him and yelled at him and told him he was a horrible person. I went to the minister
23:30at my school. It was a liberal arts school, but it was Presbyterian. And the minister basically told me
23:36that without any proof, I had nothing and that I should be quiet. My roommate found out about it
23:42that I'd told. He called my parents because he knew them. And he said, Garrett is living an openly
23:48homosexual life at school, which was not true. And he said that they needed to come pick me up
23:56and do something about it. And I remember thinking, if I if I leave college, you know, like,
24:03what else do I have? Because this is the world that is teaching me to think and is teaching me to feel
24:09less shameful about myself. So my mom shows up at the school with a friend because she's afraid.
24:16And we sit on a bench outside. She said, Is this true? And I lied. And I said, No, it's not true.
24:23My roommate did something horrible. And he's trying to cover it up by by using this. And my mom said,
24:29Well, I think we need to go home anyway and talk to your dad. I was in the backseat crying the whole
24:35time thinking like, How do I get out of this? When my dad learned that I was gay, he took me into his
24:45bedroom, closed the door and said, Listen, I've spoken with Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis.
24:51They tell me there's this great program that has a high success rate, you're going to do great,
24:56but you have to do it. And that if I didn't go there that I wouldn't see my family or my community
25:02or talk to God ever again. I denied it the whole night, but he didn't believe me.
25:09And finally, he said, I need you to swear to God that you don't feel these things. And I couldn't do
25:14that. And that's when he knew. After that, I went to my room and looked up a quick search on like,
25:24How do you have credit if you don't have any credit? You know, it's like, How do I live on my own?
25:30How do I become independent? And it was all so overwhelming that I just gave up.
25:42My parents sent off for an application for Love in Action in Memphis. I should have known from the
25:50start, you know, what, what I was up against, because the application, not only did it have
25:56absurd questions in it, like, Have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons? Or have you ever done yoga?
26:01Or have you ever done yoga, which they saw as Eastern and evil? But they also had questions
26:06that were deeply personal, like, What fantasies have you had? They wanted you to be vouched for
26:13by a preacher who believed that you were willing to change. We called on the preacher in our local
26:20church who wrote a letter of recommendation for my application. And I would say that my application
26:27was harder than my college applications. After that came the brochures and the planning. And that's
26:33when I went to about three months of one on one therapy with a conversion therapist who was connected
26:40with Love in Action. And that's where he basically had me divulge all my sexual thoughts and shamed me.
26:47And he would ask me to go into great detail. And after that, he would say, Well, here's a few Bible
26:54verses you should memorize. And here's why this is disgusting and shameful. And he would always
26:58express disgust, not only in his words, but in the way he looked at me. I just felt a lot of shame.
27:05And I didn't want to talk about it with my mom or my dad. They would ask questions like, What did he
27:10say? And I wouldn't talk at all about it. I think it was the start of depression. I didn't have a lot of
27:17motivation. And I think that my mom understood this on some deep level. I'll never forget,
27:24one of the sessions, when I was in this one on one therapy, she saw how sad I was, she saw
27:31that depression. And I had been in a slightly better mood before then, I came out just completely
27:38drained. And she said, Let's go shopping. Of course, in my brain, I'm like, Oh, no, I can't go shopping with
27:43my mom. That's gay. You know, see, you know, your brain just starts thinking all of these things that
27:48are totally normal that you would do with your family are somehow evil. She buys me this like
27:53really expensive, beautiful coat, and has me try it on. And, you know, I look good in it. And I'm
28:01feeling feeling good about myself. Almost instantly, I was like, You're disgusting. Like, look at you,
28:08you're gonna cover it up with this coat that makes you look even gayer. And like,
28:13I always felt as long as I could keep my secret that I had some kind of power over my life. When
28:19that was not a secret anymore, there was really nothing to hang on to. So I became very suicidal.
28:27And this new person that I was becoming, who was bitter, angry, cold, distant, was not somebody I
28:37liked. And it was something that I saw reflected in the conversion therapists I met. You know,
28:43there was just something fake about all of it to me. But then again, I thought, well, maybe that's what
28:50you have to do as an adult. Maybe you just have to be fake.
28:59It was crazy because my dad was being ordained as a Baptist minister the weekend between my two weeks
29:06of therapy. I think that my dad really believed in these people who sold him this idea that like,
29:12okay, once he hears for sure that this is wrong, and he hears it enough time, then he'll change.
29:20And I think he literally thought that I would just show up at the ordination ceremony,
29:26totally different person. And that's not what happened. What happened is I showed up and I was like a
29:32zombie. And my mom and me were asked to stand up on a stage with my dad as he was being ordained.
29:39Someone says, during the ceremony itself, do you commit to ensuring that no one within your congregation
29:49will ever believe that homosexuality is a good option? And he said yes. And I remember,
29:57yeah, I was, I don't know, I was like destroyed by that. When I returned, we had a big exercise called
30:06the lie chair, which was something that's often used in real therapy. So you sit across from an empty
30:13chair and imagine a person sitting there and say everything that you wish you could say to them.
30:18In conversion therapy, their assumption was that I hated my father. And they told me to sit in front
30:26of a chair and share all these intimate feelings I had about my relationship with my father.
30:35And they did this in front of everyone. When I said to them, like, I'm not actually angry at my dad. I,
30:41I love my dad and I feel sad right now. They said, that's not what you really feel.
30:47You have to let your anger out. And I said, well, I don't have any, that would be a lie,
30:53which would be a sin. Several people got up and started yelling all these insults. Like, you know,
30:59you're not really here for the right reasons. You're a plant. You're like fake. All these things
31:05just to try to get me to engage in the activity. And that was the moment that I walked out of
31:10conversion therapy. It was an auditorium. And I said, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to.
31:15Everything that I believed about Christianity was based in compassion. And suddenly I was being told
31:22that I needed to hate my father in order to be healed. I got up from the chair, started to walk
31:28out of the auditorium. They tried to stop me. I went to the office where all my belongings were,
31:34including my cell phone. And I said, I need my belongings. And the guy there said, no,
31:40not unless it's an emergency. I said, well, it is. And he gave it to me, gave me my phone.
31:45So I went to the bathroom and called my mom. And she was staying in the hotel room,
31:50not far away. And she didn't ask any questions. She said, okay, I'm going to come get you.
31:56She drove off. I'm in the car. And she pulls over on the shoulder of the highway and says like,
32:03I've heard all these stories about people. Are you going to end your life? And I said, yes.
32:12I can't even place myself back in that moment because I knew that if I said yes,
32:18it was the real test of my mom's love for me. Because if she says we're going back after she hears that,
32:26then there's nothing left. She said, I'm never taking you back there again. I was surprised,
32:32honestly. Like I knew my mom loved me, but I just thought the pressure of all of this would
32:38get to her again. We drove back in silence, came to the house, didn't tell Love in Action what we
32:45were doing. And my dad answered the door and he said, well, did it work? And my mom said, what do
32:51you think? We're back two days early. Like, no, it was never going to work. And our family closed the
33:00door on that conversation for like seven years, maybe. We didn't talk about it. It was like a
33:07source of great shame for all of us. I know my mom talked to my dad a lot during this time, but
33:14you know, he was struggling too with just what he'd done and what he saw in me when I showed up on that
33:21doorstep. Like, I was not the same person. After leaving conversion therapy, I mean, luckily I chose,
33:33I think, good choices. But I went to Ukraine for three years in the Peace Corps because I was just
33:39like confused about what my life was and I needed some other culture to understand my own culture.
33:46That pain doesn't just go away. It like stays there. And you have to deal with it every day of
33:53your life. I can just shut down or be cold or like just stop speaking to people for months because I
34:01don't feel safe with them. And it's not anything they did most of the time. It's like something
34:07triggered it. I can't walk into a real therapist's office. It just like creates intense fear and anxiety.
34:15Going to church? Impossible. Like I won't do it. And it's not because I'm not a person of faith.
34:22It's not because I don't believe in some version of God or wouldn't find community there. It's because
34:29of what happened. That's what makes me the angriest about many of these therapies, is that they close
34:37the door on so many things that could heal you. My mom was supportive from the minute I left
34:44conversion therapy. So she was sort of the easy one. Of course, it took her a while to get around
34:52to being comfortable with any boyfriends I dated or anything like that. But she said to me a couple
34:59of years, it was a couple of years after conversion therapy, she said, I used to pray every night that
35:04you would change. And then one night I got the great idea to ask God if I should change instead.
35:10And she said she woke up the next day feeling totally different about it. And so I believe her.
35:16When I had real conversations with my dad years after leaving conversion therapy, I discovered that
35:22he was just trying to fit into this idea of what a Baptist minister should be. He still believes the
35:29way he does. He's still a missionary Baptist preacher. And he and I disagree on a lot of things,
35:36but we share a lot of things too. Like I give him poetry every birthday. When I went back to his
35:43church, I totally expected like years later for people to be really rude to me. And instead,
35:50they were really kind. And I actually met this lesbian couple that was in my dad's church. And I said,
35:57do you know what's going on here? Like, are you sure you're supposed to be here? And they said,
36:01yeah, but your dad's actually really nice to us. And he doesn't ever judge us. And he never tells
36:06us to change. And I thought, well, that's a change. So he may have his own personal beliefs,
36:14but he doesn't push it on other people now. I think in his heart, he's completely changed his
36:20mind on everything. And he can't say it out loud in his church. He would lose his job.
36:30And I think that that's a kind of closet too. It's one that people don't really talk about a lot.
36:41The book that I wrote about conversion therapy, like, I did not want to write it. For years,
36:46I did not consider myself to be an activist because I didn't like what that term seemed to suggest.
36:51And I didn't want my entire life to be conversion therapy or the conversion therapy survivor story.
36:58After a while, I was just like, oh yeah, I do know a lot about conversion therapy. I have a
37:04singular message that I'm not hearing anywhere else. And the nuance to provide hopefully a way
37:12towards legislating against this practice. And I have the ability to go up in front of people in
37:17churches, speak in the language that they speak, and tell them why this is wrong. When I wrote Boy Erased,
37:23there were zero states that had banned conversion therapy. Almost half the states have now banned
37:29conversion therapy. And that was in large part thanks to the organizations I worked with,
37:36like the Trevor Project, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Born Perfect,
37:40all those organizations that worked with me and with the film version of Boy Erased,
37:46to really raise awareness around this issue. I continued writing after conversion therapy.
37:52I wrote a historical fiction novel that was published last year called All the World Beside,
37:57which was about many of the same themes, but set in New England with Puritans and there's a gay love
38:04affair. So, and the family sort of reacting to that. Currently, I teach at a state school in Georgia
38:13called Kennesaw State University. I'm a tenured professor there in creative writing. And I also
38:20run workshops at Bennington's MFA program.
38:23Love in Action, they were a non-profit. So, there were plenty of politicians and organizations that
38:37were funding conversion therapy at the time. Focus on the family was one of the big ones. They had a big
38:44Christian network and they funded a lot of it. So, Love in Action and Exodus International sort of
38:52popularized conversion therapy, but it existed well before they became organizations. St. Elizabeth's
39:00Hospital in Washington DC back in 50s and 60s was dealing with patients who went there who were either
39:09disclosed as homosexual or they were found out or they were caught. Many of the patients there were
39:17subjected to various shock treatments. Some were subjected to lobotomies. Forced hormone therapy
39:26or chemical castration was also used. So, this was a very dark practice for the queer community
39:34back in those years. And I think most conversion therapy places, I believe, aren't necessarily doing
39:43physical alterations to people or electroshock therapy, but it's transformed over the years to be more
39:51talk-based. How familiar are you with the 2005 state investigation into Love in Action? Love in Action was
39:59investigated around the time that this kid named Zach had posted on his MySpace at the time the rules that
40:11Love in Action had sent his family. His name was Zach Stark and he was in a documentary called This is
40:16What Love in Action Looks Like. He was kind of like the first big moment where conversion therapy became
40:22a CNN headline and there was a big protest happening because people found that blog post and they were
40:30terrified by what they saw, right? They saw this was very coercive, a very dangerous place for this sweet
40:36kid named Zach who was like 16 years old at the time. So, it was like the story came and went, everyone's done,
40:44they're never going to apologize. So, when I saw John Smith apologize online,
40:50I was shocked. I believe Love in Action ended in 2012. Exodus International quickly followed the year
40:57later. I mean, to say I was shocked is quite an understatement because I never thought that they
41:03would ever admit that what they did was very harmful. I wrote a short blog piece about my experience in
41:09conversion therapy around that time and he came in on the comments and I was so terrified to read his
41:16comments because I thought he's going to deny everything. And he said, everything you said
41:21here is valid, Garrett. Like, I did wrong. I'm so sorry for harming you. And then Alan Chambers, who ran
41:28Exodus International, apologized the year later and I started contacting many of these therapists
41:37because I wanted my book to be good. Then spoke with a bunch of survivors and that was really,
41:42I wouldn't say healing, but I would say it rounded out the picture for me. I could see that these
41:51people were really sorry for what they'd done. And that's why I included John Smith in so much of the
41:57promotion around the movie and the podcasts that I did because I thought people do need to hear his
42:04story. I may not personally like being in the same room with him. There was a lot of stuff around how
42:11these former leaders capitalized off their stories that made me feel icky. It made me feel like I was
42:17part of that, that I was one of those. But I decided to include their stories anyway because I thought
42:24there's no way you can know the story without knowing what they were thinking at that time.
42:28Now during the very anti-trans moment that we find ourselves in, conversion therapy is being used
42:41primarily against trans people. I think that there is an easier way to get people to send their kid
42:48there by using anti-trans rhetoric or gender ideology fear. And that that's where the movement is really
42:56picking up steam right now. Conversion therapy can only be regulated up to a certain point because
43:01it's often surrounded by the issue of religious liberty and freedom of expression. So the only battle
43:12that we've really fought through legislature is to make sure that licensed individuals do not
43:21use conversion therapy on minors. The UK has been trying to ban conversion therapy for quite a while,
43:27but I don't think that's passed fully. You know, even within the states there's a lot of complexity.
43:33A lot of people say, what's the point of these victories? Because in fact, they feel largely symbolic.
43:41They don't stop the majority of places from practicing conversion therapy. They don't stop churches from
43:47doing it. And what I say to that is that my mom, when she looked this up in 2004, she found websites
43:56that were saying conversion therapy is good for your child. And now in 2025, when she looks that up,
44:03there are warnings. And I'm very, very proud of some of the legislation that we've passed to end conversion
44:10therapy for minors in many states. When you're a parent, it's often very scary to see your kid
44:16not fitting into boxes, you know. So what I would say to a parent who is thinking about conversion
44:27therapy is let your kid grow, let them find out for themselves who they are. Because this coercion
44:35that you're putting them through is only going to confuse them more. We grow, we change throughout life.
44:41But the brainwashing techniques that are often used in conversion therapy have effects that last forever.
44:48What is something you might say to people who are put in a situation, whether it be by a family
44:55member or a close friend or something where it's an ultimatum? Change or you lose this part of your life?
45:01What I would love to say to them is,
45:03oh well, screw it, you know, walk away from that kind of thinking because it's dangerous. But I won't
45:11say that to people because they're in a position of great vulnerability. What I think you have to do
45:21in those moments is remember what you really feel and what you really are deep down. That's hard to do.
45:29I've spoken with so many people who went to conversion therapy who went along with the game
45:36because it was, you know, they would have ended up without housing on the streets in an unfamiliar place
45:45if they hadn't gone along with it. It's not easy to find a new community that's helpful rather than
45:51harmful. It's not easy to get your faith back when it's been used as a weapon against you. Yeah, I'd say,
45:57just hold on and hold on to the truth. Keep that other part of yourself alive,
46:03the part that is planning for the future.
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