Robert Jeffress, a pastor and Fox News contributor, has become a leading evangelical adviser to President Donald Trump and figures to be a prominent media surrogate during the 2020 campaign. In prior remarks and writing which haven’t been widely reported on, Jeffress promoted dangerous and discredited conversion therapy and wrote that he counseled an LGBTQ teenager with a history of suicidal ideation to change her sexual orientation.

Jeffress is a Fox News contributor and host of Pathway to Victory, which airs on Fox Nation. He is part of the campaign’s “Evangelicals for Trump” coalition and has spoken at Trump events. The president has said that he loves Jeffress and has repeatedly praised him on Twitter.

Jeffress has made numerous bigoted remarks about religious individuals, including Mormons, Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Buddhists.

He also has a well-documented history of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and actions. He’s said that LGBTQ people have a “miserable lifestyle” and what they do “is filthy. It is so degrading that it is beyond description”; claimed that support for same-sex marriage (“the acceptance of perversion”) is a sign of the coming apocalypse; and stated that the Supreme Court's marriage equality decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was “the greatest, most historic, landmark blunder in the history of the United States Supreme Court” (the court previously ruled in favor of segregation and slavery).

But what hasn’t been widely documented is Jeffress’ support for conversion therapy, a harmful and discredited practice also known as reparative therapy that seeks to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a person. Medical groups such as the American Psychiatric Association oppose the practice, with the APA writing that “there is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of ‘reparative therapy’ as a treatment to change one’s sexual orientation” and noting that risks include “depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient.”

Jeffress has characteristically backed conversion therapy. In 2014, Jeffress told a Dallas-Fort Worth’s CBS affiliate: