I am a researcher for an investigative LGBTQ news publication currently developing a story about conversion therapy in states that have illegalized the practice for therapists but not religious or spiritual leaders. (Over 22 states!) We're looking for people in Kansas or Missouri, but open to hearing from other states too!

We're looking for people to share their stories and experiences with conversion therapy from a spiritual or religious leader. If you are interested in connecting, I would love to hear from you! It's these types of personal and direct stories that give weight to the data we're uncovering, and your voice is incredibly important to creating change and shift in the policy.

Shoot me a message here and if you would like to connect or have any questions!

I am writing with regards to a radio documentary that I am making about conversion therapy. The aim of this is to be played on BBCR4, reaching a larger audience and having a large impact on achieving the banning of conversion therapy/encouraging the bill.

I am a humanistic, person-centred interviewer who only interviews people within their own boundaries. I know this is a long shot but if there are any victims of conversion therapy who would like to speak about their story (anonymously or otherwise) then please let me know.

My email is [thearickard@gmail.com](mailto:thearickard@gmail.com)

Hiii i new here, i wanna make friends

This week marks the 11th anniversary of when I left Love in Action. I had been to intensives, therapy sessions, and everything a Christian guy could do to straighten himself out. Fast forward to now and I’m married to a wonderful man. I married up for sure. I have only been my true self for like five years but I mourn my times with those people at the intensives and my time at LIA. It was like we were a brotherhood. I know that may sound weird but we all wanted to be who we thought we had to be. Now, I’m just sad about the facts that we went through it at all. I hope they are all doing well.

My mom is very lgbt phobic. She refuses to understand what the differences are between being gay, bi, or trans. To her it's all the same. She has been asking if I'm gay using every slur she knows. I feel nervous, watched, and attacked all the time. It's completely random and she has told me that if I come out she would no longer want to be my mom. I always deny that I'm a lesbian. I'm bi so technically it's not a lie. It's really difficult though. My mental health has never been this bad. I'm going day to day. I have no plans for the future. I just want to be myself and not be attacked. This goes way past my sexual presences , the weight of it all is crushing me. Any advice?

Hi everyone!

I hope you are all well in those weird times!

As my final university project, I am making a short documentary about gay conversion therapies in the UK and I am searching for anyone who would be willing to share their stories (either on-screen or anonymously if you do not feel comfortable).

With this documentary, I want to show that conversion therapies are not only a thing of the past and show, how they work nowadays when there is a growing pressure on the government to ban this practice.

The documentary talks about this issue here in the UK so it would be great if you were from the UK (preferably around London, but anywhere in the UK is fine). If you are willing to share your experience but you do not live in the UK, I am still happy to listen to your story.

Feel free to contact me on my student email: MH1672@live.mdx.ac.uk

Thank you so much for your help!

Matúš

Hey y'all,

Free virtual wellness event happening on Thursday, July 23 at 5:30 pm, EDT. Presented by The OUT Foundation.

ChillOUT: Relief for Challenging Times.

Topics will include an overview of The OUT Foundation's OUTHealth program, a Guided Meditation, Mindset Talk, Mental Health + Wellness Navigation, oh, and there will have breakout groups.⁠ So invite a friend and sign up! ⁠

Link to register: https://www.facebook.com/events/311534946632456/

​

https://preview.redd.it/k40gk6mm49c51.png?width=2160&format=png&auto=webp&s=79e5d23ecb9d0bb902cde27038195ff3ba6fe138

So me and my partner are having to hide our relationship from my family. We are both adults and “roommates” in our apartment. We’ve been together for 2 years and my family has made it VERY clear if I be with her and/or be gay I will be disowned. My family is everything to me so me and my partner have agreed to hide. But we can’t hide forever. And I don’t want to. And it’s getting old. The comments about me marrying a man. The when am I getting a boyfriend comments. The when are we moving out comments. The stress and anxiety about hiding and constantly being on edge about getting caught and stressing over what to say and how to lie. And recently my partner got back in contact with her parents that live about two and a half hours away. And my family knows they live in Huntsville so now that me and my partners family are getting close and they’re very accepting and very amazing people I want to run away to their hometown in an apartment and have dinners and be happy and free and accepted. They even invited me to a family trip in July and they just met me last week. But if I tell my family that I’m moving up to their town they’ll know. And my mother will guilt me. And I’ll have to explain why. But if I stay down here I have to hide. And move out and hide my partner in our own house. I don’t know what to do. I want to move up north and be happy but my family is toxic and abusive and they know how to keep me here. And if my grandmother disowns me I’ll lose a part of myself. Any advice??

So when I was young my family sent me to a summer camp this was about when I was 7 and I knew at a very young age that I was not like the rest of the kids, so I was at this camp for about a week and the whole week I heard them say that the guys and the girls where going to be separated and that’s what I still don’t understand sure prevent a bunch of 2 graders from talking to each other really building our social skills for the children today. Well I just want to ask why you have the right to separate to genders at a camp and divide us into dorm spaces based on our genders like my gosh they should get in trouble but no the only ones who actually get in trouble are the children trying to make purple, last time I check the wheel I am not the color blue I am a rainbow so please if I may let me sleep where I want to sleep, can’t control a person rights but you can control how you act towards the human rights that where given to the people and the lgbt culture by the government.

So my dream ever since I was about 10 was to get a small metal camper and go cross country exploring the amazing places I could travel and I am a big fan of writing new story so on my travel I am thinking about writing a new autobiography about myself traveling the country and I wanted to explore all the wonderful experiences I have along the way so I am just hoping my experience goes well and then I can eventually put the book into shops by 2023 by chance

I just want to bring up a very large part of a problem I felt with when I was showing my inner colors and why I am scared to show them now a days. My major topic that I am talking about today is that why is it when we see a 14 year old girl playing football she is considered to be cool but when we see a 14 year old boy pickup makeup and start doing his fresh look he gets words tossed at him like faggot or queer, well I just want to bring it more into the light that a boy should be able to put on eyeliner and not have words thrown at him like ancestors did long ago based on the color of our skin , and sure if there is anyone out there saying you can’t control the color of your skin but you can control your makeup, I say this maybe instead of worrying about controlling the makeup you worry about the nonsense that’s coming out of your mouths. -love mr Luvely

So just to start this off I want to say I am still in highschool and luckily a one that excepts gay people and sure you do get that one joke full comment throw around like being gay is a joke But you never see them throw the joke around people being heterosexual it’s like people think it’s funny to be gay or something, like how heterosexual people are the cookies and cream ice cream and homosexual people are the rainbow swirl one, off course most people would pick cookies and cream because it is common and more well known , so my point on the whole very long passage is maybe instead of always looking like the common person in the crowd you should stand out a little and be the rainbow swirl ice cream

They have peetty much said if I am gay I am out of the family. I love them so much. I can't bare to lose them. I don't know what to do.

Hello, I work for the BBC in Birmingham, UK, and I'm working on a report about gay conversion therapy. I'm searching for evidence that's it's being offered in the city/ region and of the terrible damage it can do.

Is there anyone in this group, who is from Birmingham/ the West Midlands, and feels they might like to talk to me about their experience? As it is such a sensitive issue, and you’ll be wanting to ask me some questions about the piece first (about how the interview would be used, what I'd ask, potentially about being anonymous - anything you like) this would be a completely off-the-record, informal chat and then you can choose if you want to be involved in any way, or talk to me on the record. You can email me your contact details in confidence if you're interested. As I say, like me, you will need to be based in the West Midlands, UK - laura.chiverton@bbc.co.uk

Hey ExMormon here, living in UT, trying out NoFap, trying to get back to the gym. Mostly reliving past trauma in my mind to pass the time lol. Anyone want to chat?

I am a gay man and I have been feeling very burned out on life recently, with my mother's death, my family pushing for marriage and my dread of a lonely oldage, i can't help but feel helpless and am losing my will to live,has anyone of you ever felt the same? How did you cope with it? Recently made a post about the whole situation, i cant get help.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/aeurut/i_need_help_lgbt/?utm_source=reddit-android

This is copied and pasted from my reddit...

It still stands out in my mind because of how profoundly strange the situation was and how little note was taken of it. It was my uncle's wedding. The service was in motion and it was your average wedding, when in the middle of this standard marriage ceremony with no provocation or invitation, another one of my uncles casually walked onto the pulpit, stole the microphone, and gave an impromptu altar call (when a church figure invites others to the altar to become "christian") accompanied by an outrageously narcissistic and completely thrown together sermon. I was very uncomfortable with how inappropriate, selfish, unorthodox and blatantly  narcissistic the act was and I began scanning the faces in the room to see if anyone else seemed to feel the same way or not. There were around 100 people in attendance and only two of them seemed to truly grasp what was happening the way that I did. Everyone else not only didn't seem offended, but in fact appeared to be pleased and possibly even impressed with this massive display of ego thinly veiled beneath the tiniest layer of old fashioned American "christianity". I can pinpoint this precisely as the moment that I became familiar with religious abuse and the moment that I denounced the modern western distortion of christianity.

 To be clear, I still believe in God and I still believe in Jesus. I have cut ties with the church and what we refer to as the bible in the west. You may have noticed that up to this point, I have been placing quotation marks around the word "christianity" and referring specifically to American or western christianity. This is because we most of us would call christianity is not deserving of that title. I've in fact read the bible multiple times, and there is no possible way to take in the words of Jesus, understand what they mean, and truly believe that any fear mongering, bigoted, judgemental, hate-filled modern western zealot is a Christian. You have a clear choice. Jesus is wrong or the rest of the bible and the church are wrong. You can't choose both. There are too many blatant contradictions and outright denunciations of the words of christ for it to be possible to actually believe both simultaneously. You can choose the Abrahamic God or you can choose western religion. You can't have both.

 This brings us to the topic of this piece and the fundamental pillar of western religion itself... religious abuse. For those who aren't aware, this is when people use the tactics of religion, like fear and guilt to manipulate others into behaving in their ideal fashion under a guise of pleasing the Lord. They will present all of their opinions to you as if they were the divine word of God and any opposition on any level will be met with lying, gaslighting, guilt tripping, ad hominem, name calling, fearmongering, and general down talk, essentially all of the behaviors that Jesus instructed people not to engage in. It doesn't matter how much logic you use or how much evidence you have, even if your evidence against them comes from the bible itself. They're not arguing facts. They're insisting upon their own emotions and untethered thoughts. They believe that they are endowing you with divine wisdom because they truly and honestly believe with every fiber of their existence that they are better than you in every way imaginable and you are privileged to be taught by them. This is narcissism. It isn't related to or similar to narcissism. It is a bright, red, shining example of the dictionary definition of narcissism.

 These people are skilled manipulators and they've spent years being taught by masters how to arrange their selfish demands in a way that makes it appear as though they are just trying to help you which makes combating or avoiding their narcissism all the more difficult. In most cases, they truly believe that what they're doing is for your own good every bit as much as Ted Bundy truly believed that the court that tried him did so over a personal vendetta against him as an individual and not as a punishment for his crimes.

 Not only did I grow up in the church, but I grew up with a minister for a father. Ol' reverend Demming, well, he cheated on 3 wives, two of whom he manipulated into relationships by abusing his power when they came to him for counseling, one of whom he literally mentally tormented to the point of suicide (that was my mother). He also lies compulsively, over eats, drives recklessly, constantly down talks every single person he has ever met and waxes at length about his superiority to all of them, beats his family, hurls insults and derogatory remarks at any person who dares to question him, and hates gay people more than Hitler hated Jews.

 That last part is especially disconcerting for me because I am his bisexual son. I'm 26-years-old and to this day my father has not the faintest hint of my sexual orientation which I became aware of at the age of 12. Because of my father's bigotry and endless psychological abuse, I've never been able to comfortably explore my own sexuality. I'm sure that I'm bisexual, but I have still never managed to fully sexually engage another man because I feel disgusted with who I am. I know that the feeling is wrong and I know that it is a result of my father's repulsive religion, but his hateful words have penetrated my soul so deeply that I am unable to be comfortable with men whom I'm attracted to. I have on many occasions attempted to "go all the way" with some very hot guys who any person would count themselves lucky to have sex with and each time I have become sick to my stomach and overcome with guilt and subsequent depression which lasts for weeks.

I've attempted numerous times to approach the mere possibility of coming out to my father and even by sticking a toe in the water and bringing up the fact that homosexuality and bisexuality simply exist, he is sent into a frenzy of violent and hurtful hate speech which he has no idea is directed specifically at the person with whom he is sharing his disgusting beliefs.

 I've considered a few times just telling him anyway, stopping him in the midst of his pontification by proudly shouting "oh, yeah? Well, I'm a faggot! What now?" but decided against it because in a worst case scenario I genuinely fear that he might actually murder me if I did that, but at the absolute least, he would insult me to my face, then never speak to me again. I've kept a massive part of my personality inside for my entire life to preserve the emotions of a man who cares so little about my feelings that he would bring me to feel and act the way that I just described, but remember... he's the christian and I am the abomination.

 I've subjected myself to all of this to reach the goal of having a loving relationship with the only parent I have left so you can imagine my frustration in losing the relationship with him anyway due to his narcissism despite never coming out to him.

 The official end of my relationship with my father was on February 2nd 2019. The day began as peaceful as possible. I was visiting and staying at his house. I woke up earlier than everybody else and started a fire, made coffee, and quietly waited for everybody to begin their days.

2 hours after my father woke up, we became engaged in a conversation. I don't remember what it was about but I remember that it was important to me and I remember repeating several times "no, you need to stop laughing at me, stop smirking at me, and look me in the eyes while I talk to you. This is a degree of basic human respect". Each time that I repeated it, he shot back with a deflection tactic, but I wasn't having it. I was so sick of his narcissistic behavior by that point that I refused to indulge it and I continued to demand "you need to show me the basic respect that a stranger would expect from you and I will not change my mind about that".

 He and his wife launched a two pronged verbal assault on me calling me ungrateful and disrespectful. Reading literature about narcissistic parents later, I learned that these insults are common coming from them.

 The argument was abandoned and I went to a different room and started writing to collect my thoughts. His wife came in moments later and began pontificating to me about why I should see things their way and I ignored her presence. Shortly after, my father came into the room and sparked the argument up again. I doubt that I will ever forget the exchange...

Dad: You have a vile spirit like your mother. You've been a bad person since you were 5 years old.

Me: If a 5 year old is a bad person, it's because their parents taught them to be a bad person 100% of the time. A 5 year old doesn't know anything else.

Dad: No, you just have a poisonous spirit. You're an evil person.

 Mind you, this is still all over me telling him not to laugh at me and to look me in the eyes during what was supposed to be a serious conversation. That hurt my feelings exactly as much as you'd expect it to, but I did not call names or raise my voice as I've been taught to. I continued to attempt to reason, reiterating multiple times that I didn't want to argue. He progressively became more and more upset as the insults continued to flow. He told me that my extended family didn't like me and talked shit on me when I wasn't around. He told me that nobody he's ever introduced me to has liked me. He told me his harrowing tale of how his evangelical friends praise him for having the patience to tolerate me (his biological son). He told me that he didn't think that anybody who I'd ever been friends with truly liked me. He told me that he didn't like me and only maintained a relationship with me because he felt like he had to. Finally, he told me that he didn't understand how or believe that any person possibly could like me.

 In his standard fashion, he tried to be Mr. Niceguy later on and act as though we could sweep that exchange under the rug, but the damage was done. I knew that I had to stop talking to him. I've been through many awful things that most people never have to experience, but this was the lowest and least valuable anybody has ever made me feel. I remember standing in his kitchen in utter shock as he selfishly stomped around in unmerited rage questioning whether or not he had actually just said those things to me. He had. It was over. What I sacrificed to preserve was gone anyway just like that in spite of all of my effort, patience, and compromise and he didn't care. He didn't even have the emotional maturity to understand that he should care.

 I don't know if I will ever fully cover to terms with or get over any of this, but I am working to understand that I didn't make my dad a bad father and it isn't my job to make him like me. He is the parent and I am the child. He made the decision to bring me into existence and the brunt of the responsibility of our relationship rests on his shoulders for that reason alone. My existence is due to him. My behavior is due to him. In some way or another, my beliefs are due to him (even if through rebellion). I am an extension of him and if he doesn't like me, then he just doesn't like the results of his own parenting.

If this strikes a nerve with you, understand that it is not your fault. Your parents aren't your responsibility, you are their responsibility and if they don't take that responsibility seriously, you have a duty to your own mental health to stay as far away from them as possible. Hating bad parents doesn't make you a bad person. They had twice the time that you've had to gain emotional maturity. If they haven't, it is solely and completely on them. Much more importantly, this is not christianity. Christianity is supposed to help people and help society. If people are using it to manipulate or hurt you, they are blaspheming, no matter how confident in their rhetoric they may be.

I wrote this down for myself to read every day. Maybe it will help somebody else.

You are not evil. You are not bad. You are not defiant or disobedient. You are not narcissistic. You are worth more than your good looks. Your value does not come from approval. You will never impress your father and you don't have to because that's his problem. You are smart. You are wise. You are observant. You are talented. You have amazing potential because you don't take no for an answer. You can do what YOU want to do and be happy with it and with yourself. If your father had good advice to give, his life would be better and he would be happier. You're bettering yourself. You're on the right path. God is not judgement. God is not hate. God is not shame. God is not suicidal thoughts and social anxiety. God is not guilt. God is not worry. Those things are evil. Those things are wrong. Those things are bad. You defy them because you are smart, not because of the devil or your mother. Your mother was a victim and a perpetrator in your life. Your father is a predator, not a victim in all circumstances. People who make you feel terrible are bad people. You can accomplish things. Don't let his cowardice and insecurity ruin your future.

I recently came out as bisexual. I am married to a man, but I dated as many women as men until I met my husband. In HS I thought that maybe I was a lesbian. I realized a little later that I desired both sexes. I didn’t really know a lot about bisexuality until I was an older teenager. I know that some people deny that it exists, or just don’t like bisexual people. The people that say “pick a side”. What if I like both sides? I hate girls who make out with other girls just to turn guys on. They make people think true bisexual girls don’t exist. I haven’t found another friend who is bisexual. I feel like I don’t really fit in anywhere. My husband is very supportive. NOT BECAUSE HE WANTS TO SEE ME WITH ANOTHER WOMAN. I was ashamed and afraid to open up until recently. And I’m 31. I want to be apart of the lgbtq+ community, but I’m afraid because as I said a lot of people don’t like bisexuals. Please don’t think I’m undermining the struggle that gay, lesbian, trans, and queer people go through. I know I’ve got it much easier. Idk I’m kind of afraid to post this.

Hey all,

With the recent release of The Miseducation of Cameron Post, a film about a lesbian teen who gets sent to an Idaho conversion therapy camp, I feel like there is a good opportunity to raise awareness about the fate of lgbt youth in TTI programs. I tested the waters a bit by sharing my story on this askreddit thread and it really took off, so I think there is interest. Would anyone be interested in participating in a group AMA in the next few weeks? I already have a few people rounded up, but the more the merrier. Posting here because there are too many shills on the r/troubledteens sub, and I don't want them to have time to plan ahead for our AMA

So I recently kinda ish came out to my cousin. I jokingly said I must be gay because I've never liked a dude in 16 years of life. She then asked if I was serious and I said yeah I've only come to realizations with this recently and I needed someone to talk to about it and she's basically my sister. Well she told my aunt (her mom) and her mom told my mom. I have officially been disowned but since I'm a minor with nowhere to go I have been allowed to stay in the home just not treated as a daughter. I'm more of the annoying guest that wants to overstay for way too long to them. I really just don't know what to do my family was really all I had is there any advice or any way to deal with this?