"Pray Away": The Rise and Fall But Not the Demise of Conversion Therapy

 Last week, the Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz signed an executive order halting Conversion Therapy in the state, after the state legislature failed to pass a bill ordering a halt to Conversion Therapy for two years. This is the 24th state that has stopped Conversion Therapy.

Thank you, Gov. Walz. I regret the MN legislature couldn't get its act together to do it.

What is Conversion Therapy? It is the practice of getting LGBTQIA+ people to convert or turn into heterosexual, cisgender, middle class, citizens. It began in the 1960s, in which psychiatrists and clergy persons wrongly believed that being LGBTQIA+ is a choice, and therefore we, who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, could make another choice towards being heterosexual, cisgender people. Conversion therapy was a marriage of poor psychiatric practices and wishful, magical thinking among many in the Church (universal). 

Thousands if not millions were either psychologically scarred for life by this practice, or, in some cases, died because they couldn't change from being LGBTQIA+ and killed themselves.

The World Health Organization, American Psychological Association, and other health professionals now call for stopping the use of Conversion Therapy.

On Aug. 3, 2021, a new documentary film will come out, "Pray Away." It is the story of groups like Exodus International movement, a group begun by gay Christians in 1970s, and other Conversion Therapy proponents who are now confessing that they were wrong in promoting Conversion Therapy. It is painful to watch and hear the early proponents lie about being "straight," in which all of them are now out and LGBTQIA+. And here's the really hard part: Sadly, there are still people who are still holding rallies and promoting the lie that Conversion Therapy works.  

Conversion Therapy never worked, and it never will work. But it still has an audience and niche market because so many churches and other religious communities, along with other social groupings, still promote being LGBTQIA+ as a life of "sin" and "shame" that people choose. None of these groups can fathom that we, who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, are born LGBTQIA+, created in the image of God. Imago Dei. Young LGBTQIA+ people are still being sent to Conversion Therapy sessions and camps and rallies, and in some parts of the country and world, killing themselves because one cannot change how one was born as a beautiful person in the image of God, and no one has affirmed for them the beauty of who one is, created in the image of an LGBTQIA+ and non-LGBTQIA+ God.

For more information about the documentary, go to this site: https://www.towleroad.com/2021/07/conversion-therapy-pray-away-netflix/

Instead of society and the Church teaching us to hate ourselves for being who God created us to be in the first place as LGBTQIA+ people, let us focus instead on why we were created in the first place: to love one another, just as we are. I end with this biblical refrain and standard of living life fully: Beloved, let us love one another, for love is God and the one who loves is born of God. 1 John 4:7, 8.  

Let us love one another, including ourselves.

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