Photo by Jonathan Daniels

I should have been at track practice. I gave my coach an excuse about why I’d have to miss every Tuesday for a while. It was my junior year and he wasn’t happy that I was skipping 1/5th of our practice time. Although I was seventeen, I didn’t have my driver’s license, so my dad drove me home. After-school car rides with my dad usually consisted of him asking well-intentioned questions about school, and me answering with more annoyance than he deserved. But not on Tuesdays. Instead of driving home, we would drive silently towards the heart of Portland, where an unassuming home in a cute neighborhood housed Portland Fellowship — the organization that taught me to hate myself.

The old home was wood everywhere, and terribly creaky. I waited for my appointment on a wood bench at the foot of the wood stairwell. My throat was always so dry. This was before smartphones. My dad and I were silent. I had nothing to do but think. An older man descended the stairs. Creak. Creak. Creak. He made no eye contact as he passed my bench and left the house. Neither did I. “Come on up, David.” I creaked up the stairs to an office with a couch and cozy chairs, hoping against hope that the man I was about to see could fix me.

My counselor was a soft-spoken, kind-faced man who looks a lot younger than he is. He didn’t have a therapy license per se, but he was in school to get one. What he lacked in education, he made up for in life experience. “When I was younger, I was deep into the homosexual lifestyle. I was in a relationship with a man, but I knew that I wasn’t right with God and was living in sin. I made the decision to turn my life around and came right here to deal with my unwanted same-sex attractions. That was years ago. Now, I have a wife and daughter, and I’m on staff helping out young people in a similar situation as I was.”

His testimony was all the assurance I needed. I was very used to being successful in reaching my goals. If he could do it, so could I. Surely this was God giving me a way out of the feelings and urges that plagued me.

I worked hard. Every night I prayed that God would change me. I kept a journal of every same-sex thought and urge that went through my teenage mind. I created a timeline of every sexual or pseudo-sexual occurrence of my young life, with a rating scale to indicate how “bad” each event was. I had online homework that consisted of reading passages of the Bible and watching clips of “healthy masculine bonding” and responding to them. One night, I had a sex dream about a woman. It felt gross and wrong. But I was ecstatic. Maybe it was all working. Maybe my attractions were changing.

Mostly I failed. Once, I failed hard. I tried to get around the monitoring software on our home computer by looking up terms that seemed tame, but might pull up pictures of sexy men. Of course I got caught. The next Tuesday, my dad joined for part of my counseling session. Was I not taking this seriously? Did I really have no respect for my parents or their rules? Was I abandoning God?

Many nights, I asked myself those same questions and so many more. I was terrified of the future. I was convinced that if I couldn’t fix my same-sex attractions, my life would be awful. Either I would struggle against them forever and mostly fail, or I would give in to them and live a life of total depravity, which seemed even worse. Sometimes when I was feeling self-reflective, I’d ask myself if maybe I was gay. But as soon as that word, g-a-y, came into my head, I would scream internally: “NO!!!” Immediately, I’d be on the brink of tears. That word represented everything I didn’t want to — couldn’t let myself — be. Being gay would mean rejecting God. I knew my family couldn’t accept it. I would be letting myself, and everyone around me, down. It was quite literally the worst future I could imagine.

So I pressed on. I showed up every Tuesday, silently riding to and from that old, creaky house. Spilling my temptations, my experiences, my impure thoughts, to a man who said he could help me get better. I learned that I was “enslaved” by my same-sex desires. That I was utterly broken. But that by surrendering my thoughts and temptations to God, I could be restored. Mostly, that meant trying really hard not to think about men sexually, failing, writing about my failure in my journal, and sharing those failures with my counselor. To this day, I’m not sure how that process was supposed to make me straight. But the message sunk in: you are broken, and if God doesn’t fix you it’s because you’re not trying hard enough. The shame I felt was ever-present and vicious.

I don’t remember how my conversion therapy ended. A lot of what I said and did during that time is buried in the back of my mind, and maybe it’s better that way. I was at war with myself, head against heart, with my soul somewhere in the middle being torn apart a little more each day.

In the past weeks I’ve been exploring conversion therapy, both through the lens of my own experience and others’ stories. I learned that, thankfully, in 2015 Oregon banned the practice of conversion therapy for minors. However, it is too easy to get around. Portland Fellowship still works with minors and dodges regulation by having no licensed counselors and instead focusing on “personal discipleship.” That site I used during therapy is still online, and its $25 administrative fee is waived for anyone 16 or under. The counselor I saw each week has moved on to start his own ministry. He speaks at churches across the country and just released a book for people trying to overcome their unwanted same-sex attractions.

But here’s the truth: the only reason same-sex attractions are ever unwanted is because you’re told that those attractions are evil or unnatural or an attack from Satan. Because kids get bullied and called faggots for having that kind of attraction. Because you desperately want your family, or friends, or church to accept you the way that they would if you were straight. Because every trusted voice you’ve ever known has said that boys thinking about other boys is WRONG and boys kissing boys is WRONG and boys loving boys is WRONG. Because you have been brainwashed, dear young David.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’d say to my Tuesday counselor if I ever saw him again. What can you say to someone you paid to abuse you? Maybe I would ask if his attractions really ever changed. Or if he has regrets. Most likely, I wouldn’t have anything to say to him. What I can say, and must say, is that this practice has to end. It is not therapy. It is not reparative or restorative. It is a nightmare of blame and shame and self-hatred. It’s been debunked by the medical establishment. My story is not unique, and is in fact mild compared to conversion therapy victims who have gone through physical abuse, separation from family, or who’ve taken their own life.

We are in an important cultural moment. The conversion therapy conversation is starting again. Thirteen states have already banned the practice for minors, but it’s still legal nationwide for adults. Several books and movies are addressing the terrifying impact that conversion therapy has on young lives. Politicians like Senator Kamala Harris have spoken out against it, whereas Vice President Mike Pence has seemingly supported it in the past during his congressional campaign. We need to elect people to office who will work to eliminate this practice in their jurisdictions, and we need to tell incumbent politicians how important this issue is. But most of all, we need to recognize the (often secret) hurt that the hundreds of thousands of victims of conversion therapy are going through. Support them as they work to un-rewire their brain. Let them know they are loved exactly as they are.

And if you are that person who has been through conversion therapy of any kind: you are not who they say you are. You are so much more. You may feel broken, and the shame and loneliness might seem like too much some days. But you’re still here, and I am rooting for you. Find communities that accept you. Talk with a therapist that has your best interests in mind. Believe me, there is hope on the other side. And a lot of rainbows. 🌈