Volume XXII
Issue
1
Date
2020

The Legal Status of Conversion Therapy

by John J. Lapin

“I was told that my faith community rejected my sexuality; that I was the abomination we had heard about in Sunday school; that I was the only gay person in the world; that it was inevitable I would get H.I.V. and AIDS.”

“The therapist ordered me bound to a table to have ice, heat and electricity applied to my body. I was forced to watch clips on a television of gay men holding hands, hugging and having sex. I was supposed to associate those images with the pain I was feeling to once and for all turn into a straight boy. In the end it didn’t work. I would say that it did, just to make the pain go away.”1

Keep Reading The Legal Status of Conversion Therapy

1. Sam Brinton, I Was Tortured in Gay Conversion Therapy. And It’s Still Legal in 41 States, N.Y. TIMES (Jan. 24, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/gay-conversion-therapy-torture.html.