H E A LT H
Ill Treatments A survivor of conversion therapy speaks out. By
Samuel Brinton
The tears were welling up in my eyes. recently, few even realized it was still ocI kept brushing them away so that I could curring. The National Center for Lesbian see the page while I read my testimony. Rights has dedicated itself to the ambiThis was the very first time the United tious goal of “ending these dangerous and Nations had heard the words of a survivor stigmatizing practices across the country of conversion therapy. I knew that the once and for all” in the next five years room was listening. Looking up at delethrough its #BornPerfect campaign. I am gates from across the globe, I saw tear honored to serve as Co-chair of the after tear run down their faces, too. We, #BornPerfect Advisory Committee, the #BornPerfect community of survivors where I help guide one of the only LGBT of conversion therapy, had done it. We national organizations dedicated to an had brought the voice of the pained and issue on which I’ve crusaded for years. Before an audience including advocates from the National persecuted to an international stage and Just prior to entering middle school, I we weren’t going home until we had won. Center of Lesbian Rights and the Human Rights Campaign, told my parents that I was attracted to my And boy did we win! The next day, not Mayor Vincent Gray signs a bill making Washington, D.C. the best friend, who happened to be male. I one, not two, but three delegates would third jurisdiction in the United States to outlaw the practice was too young to understand why this was take my story and that of survivors like by mental health practitioners of conversion therapy on LGBT wrong or that anyone would have a probme to the United States delegation to ask minors. Credit: Lateef Mangum, Executive Office of the Mayor. lem with it. After beatings from my father how such horrible practices could still failed to work, and at the beckoning of our take place in this country. Their answer was silence. But the ques- church, I was placed in conversion therapy. The therapy began with tion had been posed. what can only be described as mental torture at the hands of what Experts estimate that nearly one in three lesbian, gay, bisexual, may or may not have been a licensed therapist. I was told that I was transgender, and queer youth have undergone some form of conver- alone. I was told that I was sick. I was told that God hated me. The sion therapy. Sometimes it takes the form of a pastor’s “deliverance”. mental pain this caused is something I cannot fathom going through Sometimes it’s a father forcing his son to “man up”. Sometimes a kid again, and yet thousands of youth across the country are placed in this is sent to a residential facility in the hope that God will save them. situation every year. And someWhen mental abuse was not sufficient to change my sexual oritimes conentation, we proceeded to what can only be called physical abuse. My I was told that I was alone. I was v e r s i o n hands were tied down and ice was placed on my hands as I was shown told that I was sick. I was told that therapy en- pictures of men in physical contact so that I would come to associate tails a child the touch of a man with pain. Like Pavlov’s experiments on dogs, this God hated me. sitting in a was torture in its worst form. Later sessions would include electric therapist ’s shocks to my hands as I was shown sexually explicit pictures of men, office, with promises of change whispered in a parent’s ear and the the first pornography I would ever see; again to associate such bepain of not being able to change rending a child’s heart. havior with pain. Conversion therapy (also known as reparative therapy or sexual I would attempt suicide several times. In one of the later attempts orientation change efforts) is a dangerous and discredited practice, I planned to jump from the roof of my house. My sister realized what condemned by every major medical and mental health organization was happening and told my mother. She came to the roof and told in the country, including the American Medical Association, the me if I could just change, she could love me again. In that moment, American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric As- I decided to lie and to tell her I was changed. For a while the torture sociation, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. However, until stopped and my life returned to some degree of “normality”. 92 | Boston Pride 2015
