Beat The Gay Out

Sadly with all the laws we cannot stop all Conversion Therapy because of the First Amendment and “religious freedom.”

The Terrifying True Story of 'Boy Erased' and Gay Conversion Therapy
Men’s Health 
By Melissa Matthews
October 30, 2018

Garrard Conley knew he was gay when he developed a crush on his third grade teacher, Mr. Smith. The son of a preacher, Conley was raised in a devout Baptist community in Arkansas where evolution is considered fake, and homosexuality is more than a sin-it's evil. Pressure to adhere to his family's expectations forced Conley to lead a double life, where he dated girls and ignored his true feelings.

Conley kept his sexuality a secret, even after going away to a liberal arts college. Although he prefers to leave out details for legal reasons, Conley was raped by a friend and fellow student his freshman year of college. His rapist then called Conley's mom and told her Conley was openly gay.

Immediately, Conley's parents sought treatment to cure his homosexuality. After undergoing several months of therapy, Conley spent two weeks at Love in Action (LIA), a Memphis-based ex-gay ministry run by Program Director John Smid. LIA's "Refuge" program claimed to help people with a variety of sex-based "addictions," including homosexuality.

As far as I know none of the states’ laws ban this kind of conversion therapy because Conley is an adult and legally no one can force him to go to conversion therapy. Even though his parents send him to take “the cure” he could have said no.

Under Connecticut law churches can do conversion therapy on minors as long as the person doing the therapy is not a licensed therapist. Also the parents can send their children out of state and not be covered by Connecticut law.

When Conley wanted to leave the program he called his mother to take him home when she arrived at LIA…

My mom said to them, "I don’t know why I haven’t asked you this before, but what are your qualifications?"

Smid said, "This one guy over there is a marriage counselor."

My mom was like, "What in the world are you people doing? You don’t have any degrees in psychology. You don’t know what you’re doing." And she took me out of there.

By then, she'd heard stories of people killing themselves from those camps, and said to me, "Did you want to kill yourself?"

And I said yes.

She said, "Well, I would rather have a living gay son than a dead gay son because the gay part is not going to change." She was just fed up with everything by that point.

Many of these so called “cure” facilities play on the guilt of the clients and do not have any staff that are trained therapists.

We did the best we can in passing the law banning conversion therapy given the restrains of the Constitution. The law just bans licensed therapists from practicing conversion therapy on minors.