I was 15 years old the first time someone told me I was broken and needed to be fixed. It wasn’t in the “your arm is broken, let’s get you a cast” way, or the “you’ll grow out of it” kind of way. It was fixed, as in there’s something fundamentally wrong with you, and until you change it, you don’t deserve love.
When I was outed by my cousin at 15, my life changed overnight. The next morning, my parents showed up at my school, cleaned out my locker, and brought me straight to a counselor’s office — a pastor who said he could help me “change.” That first appointment was the gateway into what would become three years of conversion therapy.
For 36 months, I sat in fluorescent-lit rooms with strangers who promised that if I prayed hard enough, journaled enough, cried enough, I could become someone else. Someone God would finally accept. That’s what gay conversion therapy is built on: It’s abuse disguised as care and shame dressed up as salvation.
I was moved to four different high schools during that time. Every time someone found out I was gay, I’d be forced to start over somewhere new. At home, I lived under my parents’ roof while being sent to large and small gay conversion therapy groups in Orlando, Florida, and I even had phone sessions with people like Richard A. Cohen, author of “Coming Out Straight.”
