SCOTUS to hear religious freedom case about Roman Catholic preschools refusing LGBTQ+ families

I had my allergy shots this morning. Ron and Diane have gone to see if they can find the casino in the next county over. I am trying to stay awake. I want to see if I can reply to a few comments before going back to bed. Fof those that don’t know I am not eating. I have one meal in the morning and spend most of my time in bed these days. My blood tests showed my red and white blood cells were all messed up. Animia? Cancer? Depression? My body breaks down under stress, and I have been stressed since November of last year. It is a lot less right now with Ron home but he still has little time for stuff at home because of the need to spend so much time with his sister. Plus he is having health issues as well. The real issue is I am tired. Just so tired I am unable to think, eat, or even engage with Ron. I find I am easily irritated, and when he reached out to touch me in bed I snaped at him for it. I have not reacted that way in a long time. I like his touch. I have lost between 8 to 10 pounds because I am not eating. I keep this up and I could get from my normal 170 t the goal of 150 pounds I want. 😀😃😉😎. Ron is concerned and says if we don’t see improvement next week I have to contact my primary care doctor. It all seems like too much work, I just want to go back to bed. The pain is less there. My right leg becomes so painful after five minutes of use I can’t really walk and I have to do the dishes with a rolling very high adjustable stool.

Anyway the video below is a great example of why real Christians are not bigots. I wish I felt up to posting more videos, it is all I seem able to do right now, just watch videos. Be well, and enjoy the Rev. explain why bigotry is a really bad thing for the Christian church. Hugs

More Decent News About Trans Rights

(It’s in regard to the news posted here the other day.)

RFK Jr agenda suffers another loss as trans advocates hail ‘huge step forward’

Judge’s repeal of Trump ban on gender-affirming care for children ‘a meaningful win for patients’, experts say

A federal judge overturned the Trump administration’s ban on gender-affirming care for children on Saturday, decrying Robert F Kennedy Jr’s “wanton disregard” for the law that “causes very real harm to very real people”.

It’s another loss for Kennedy’s agenda as secretary for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the second Trump administration – an agenda that has focused on restricting healthcare, including vaccines, abortion and gender-affirming care.

A different legal decision recently halted the agency’s attempt to raze vaccine recommendations, and new research and regulatory decisions have undermined controversial announcements by Trump and Kennedy on autism.

“Unserious leaders are unsafe,” Mustafa T Kasubhai, a US district judge in Oregon wrote in the opening to his final judgment on the gender-affirming care case, a 49-page decision that excoriated the administration for disregarding the law and overreach in its regulations. The judge also barred the administration from implementing similar policies under any other names to restrict care nationally by withholding funding.

Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, called the ruling “incredibly powerful” and “far-reaching”.

“It enjoins them from doing anything to interfere with the authority of states to regulate medical practice,” Minter said.

For healthcare providers and families who have been in limbo for months, “this is a huge, huge step forward”, said Jan Oosting, an associate professor of nursing at City University of New York (Cuny).

Khadijah Silver, director of gender justice and health equity at Lawyers for Good Government, who uses they and them pronouns, said they were “so overwhelmingly ecstatic” and “couldn’t actually process” that the ruling “was real life”.

In December, Kennedy announced that any health system providing pediatric gender-affirming care would be suspended from receiving Medicaid and Medicare funding. Medicaid and Medicare would also be banned from paying for any gender-affirming care, he said.

As nearly all major hospitals and health systems rely on Medicaid and Medicare, the proposed rule amounted to a ban on gender-affirming care for children, setting a precedent for the government limiting healthcare for any patients.

At the same time, Kennedy issued a declaration invoking a regulation to allow the HHS to exclude healthcare providers from Medicaid and Medicare when the providers no longer “meet professionally recognized standards of healthcare”. Unusually, the new rule was enforced immediately, without going through the usual rule-making process, including public comment.

Gender-affirming care often includes puberty blockers and hormones, but can also involve psychosocial support and, very rarely and after extensive medical consultation, surgery. It is widely agreed to be essential to the health of gender-expansive individuals. The Kennedy declaration claimed pediatric gender-affirming care for minors was “neither safe nor effective” and therefore fell below these standards.

Declarations like these are meant to be used for emergencies when the HHS needs to communicate the steps it’s taking to protect public health, Silver said, who added: “They have never once been abused in such a fashion to go against standards of medical care that are widely accepted … let alone to override the state’s primary authority in the regulation of medicine.”

Minter said: “This was an attempt by the federal government to impose a national ban and usurp the authority of states to regulate medical practice within their borders.”

Within eight days, the HHS general counsel, Mike Stuart, began referring health systems to the HHS office of inspector general for violating the new policy. The decision included several screenshots of posts from Stuart celebrating referrals of health systems for violating the rule.

At least 40 health systems have said the threat of losing federal funding is why they stopped providing care in recent weeks. Oregon and 21 other states sued the administration. In response, the US government argued that the Kennedy declaration was merely an individual’s personal opinion.

When the judge overturned the declaration, he called this argument “a bald-faced lie” and an attempt to “bully or gaslight” the court. The judge said the Kennedy declaration was “clearly unlawful” because it violated administrative law and the Medicare statute that forbids federal officials from exercising “any supervision or control over the practice of medicine or the manner in which medical services are provided”.

Following the judge’s preliminary injunction against the new rule in March, Children’s Minnesota began offering gender-affirming care again.

When another health system, Children’s Hospital Colorado, ceased care, patients and families sued the hospital. The case is currently before the Colorado supreme court, where judges have expressed concerns that forcing the hospital to resume care could bring federal backlash, endangering even more children. Silver noted that reversing the federal ban now could change the outcome of that case.

“This should be a huge relief and a tremendous source of protection” for families and children whose care was delayed or disrupted, Minter said. When health systems announced they would comply in advance with the directive and stop providing gender-affirming care, often effective immediately, it was “shocking and appalling behavior”, he said, but this decision “should remove that fear” and allow the care to resume.

Oosting noted that the “biggest source of fear, which was the threat of losing Medicare and Medicaid funding, is removed now, so I think that there will be reassessment by each individual hospital of what programs are going to be put back into play, what programs will have to be modified”. That’s especially true in states like New York that have laws against discrimination in healthcare, she said.

The proposed rule preventing Medicaid and Medicare from paying for gender-affirming care is also blocked by this decision, Minter said. The rule did not come before the judge because it hasn’t been finalized, but Minter reads the ruling as “effectively prohibiting those rules from being enforced as well”.

Challenges still exist for children who need gender-affirming care but may not be able to access it.

“Although this removes a major federal barrier, it doesn’t erase those state-level restrictions,” Oosting said. Some states have introduced bans on the care. In Ohio, the state’s supreme court will rule on whether a ban is constitutional in coming months.

Some families in states with bans or gaps in healthcare are once again able to access care by moving or traveling out of state – a “burdensome”, disruptive and expensive process, but an “important” one, Minter said.

Overturning the ban was a “meaningful win for patients and providers and, honestly, for healthcare integrity in the US”, Oosting said. It lessens fear and uncertainty around seeking and providing care, and it shows that “major changes in healthcare policy have to follow the law,” Oosting said – which has repercussions for other politicized changes to health regulations, like limitations on abortion. It was “a powerful tool to stop the federal government from that type of attempted overreach” in healthcare, Minter said.

The decision reinforces the fact that “the federal government can’t use Medicare and Medicaid restriction as a blunt-force instrument to control care and access to people’s bodies,” Oosting said. It’s significant not just for making gender-affirming care available again but also because it sets “the rules of the road – how far the federal government can go in terms of influencing what’s happening in a patient exam room”, she said.

Republican FCC Reviews TV Ratings System In Regard To Trans/Non-Binary Characters & Content

Trump’s FCC Targets Parental Rating System Over Transgender TV Characters

The FCC is seeking comment on whether the TV Parental Guidelines rating system needs to be changed to penalize shows for transgender or nonbinary content.

Erin Reed Apr 22, 2026

Today, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the FCC would be seeking comment on whether the TV Parental Guidelines rating system needs to be changed to address shows with transgender or nonbinary characters. The public notice, which Carr posted on twitter this morning, seeks to weaponize the TV ratings system to restrict shows that include such characters—asking whether programs that contain “the discussion or promotion of gender identity themes” should “be rated differently or contain relevant descriptions.” Though the FCC’s direct authority over the TV ratings system is limited—the system is voluntary and industry-run, and streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+ can maintain their own standards—the FCC retains enormous coercive power over broadcast networks and their parent companies, many of which also operate streaming platforms. The move comes after a series of attacks on network television weaponizing the FCC for political purposes, including Carr’s threats to revoke broadcast licenses over news coverage of the Iran war and his targeting of ABC over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. It appears to be an attempt to extend “Don’t Say Gay”-style policies—which have restricted discussion of LGBTQ+ people in classrooms across red states—to national television ratings.

“Years ago, Congress passed a law that empowers parents to decide the types of TV programs that are appropriate for their kids by standing up a TV show ratings system. But recently, parents have raised concerns with the industry’s approach—including with ratings creep. Specifically, they argue that New York & Hollywood programmers are promoting controversial issues in kids programming without providing any transparency or disclosures to parents. This undermines the whole point of the law and the ratings system parents rely on. The FCC is now seeking comment on whether the industry’s approach provides parents with the types of information and disclosures relevant to them today,” Carr wrote on twitter. However, the actual document posted alongside his statement tells a more specific story—it primarily centers on gender identity. (snip-MORE on the page)

Most US Voters Support Trans Rights, Even Republicans

This video explains what everyone on the real left already knew instead of forgetting the trans / woke culture wars and moving right, the center left keeps demanding which is simply code speak for leaning right. While all the same democratic strategists since the Bill Clinton days demand candidates move to the right to “triangulate” to capture republican voters these polls show what we already knew. The culture wars are losing for the republicans. After republicans spent nearly 3 million dollars in ads against trans people the polls showed almost no one felt those adverts influenced their vote. Even as red states rail against higher education, acceptance, and tolerance of people who are different it is losing them votes. Some thing the Christian nationalists who are in the height of their influence now in political circles don’t understand is that people who grew up with LGBTQ+ classmates, friends, and even dated some do not find them the evil that these hate religions preach they are.

*** Personal note. I explained to Ali in an email that I am not functioning. For what ever reason wheither it be anemia or something worse I am desperately tired from the time I manage to get up. I often get up only to a few hours later go back to bed for four or more hours. I have started taking vitamin B-12 and a woman’s one-a-day vitamin. That with more red meat which was recommended to me in the past every time I go into anemia. How ever I get up, I have coffee and stuff with Ron then I need to go back to bed for normally 4 hours, get up and do dishes while watching The Majority Report. How ever some days like yesterday I did not even get that far, going to back to bed by 2 pm only to have Ron wake me and beg me to eat.

I have done better today only going back to bed for 3 hours later in the morning. I wanted to go to bed two hours ago, but Ron was all upset he couldn’t sleep due to the neighbors having new skirting put around their home outside our bedroom. So I got him in his recliner and moved his CPAP out to his chair. Still he was not tracking. Good news as I was falling asleep at my desk he woke up and is fixing supper. At this point I am so tired I don’t really care whether I eat or not.

I tried to reply to comments, but I couldn’t. I even started to move old saved open tabs out by making a new cartoon / memes post but I simply couldn’t do it. Right now the best I can do to function is make doctors appointments and watch videos that don’t take too much thought to understand. That means most political videos are outside my ability. I am sorry but right now I am functioning at the level of a confused grandpa. Sorry. I hope to get better soon. Ron says if I don’t clear up by next week we will demand the primary care see me and deal with it. I’m not sure if I want that as my last visit he was insisting I think about getting a colonoscopy. Anyway. This is a good video and one I watched several hours ago when I was much sharper than I feel now. *** Hugs

Funny Gay Commercials

Canada’s Proposed Hate Speech Law – Don’t worry you can still humiliate, discredit, hurt and offend

I have the same idea as the Reverend on this issue. It is how I handle my comments on my blog. Attack the ideas, not the person expressing them. Hugs

Trans Children’s Lives Were Endangered Based on a Lie

I did some reviews on the Cass report because it was supported by so many anti-trans bigots. Turns out there were so many lies and errors in the report that it became clear the purpose was to discredit the clinic and get it shut down. The report was driven by anti-trans people and even Cass herself was well known to be anti-trans. But what is so irksome is the lies still get told and circulated repeatedly even when they are pointed out. The idea of social contagion was found to be entirely made up by people desperate to keep their child from transitioning. The idea came from a website set up for parents that had kids transitioning and they hated it. The Cass report used lies from that site as if they were medical facts saying that parents were not told and children were being rushed to transition, when even the parents admitted they had all the information in writing that they had to sign and the biggest complaint was how long it took to get seen by the clinic with many kids going through puberty before they got gender affirming care. The idea of large amounts of detransitioners is totally made up as real studies have found it is less than 2% and the regret levels are well below any other medical procedure. I wish haters and bigots would understand if they have to make up stuff and lie to prove their point then they have no point to make. They just hate the idea of people not accepting they are the gender / sex assigned at birth and don’t want to accept new medical data. Hugs

Staying Safe Online

A ‘Self-Doxing’ Rave Helps Trans People Stay Safe Online

Janus Rose ·Apr 8, 2026 at 10:18 AM

At a New York party, attendees spent Trans Day of Visibility dancing, DJing, and learning how to become less visible online.

Imani Thompson, digital security trainer and organizer of the event / Photo by Janus Rose

It’s Trans Day of Visibility, and I’m at an event space in the heart of New York City’s Commie Corridor to learn how to become less visible online.

The crowd gathered at the aptly-named Trans Pecos in Ridgewood, Queens is here for “404: Deadname Not Found,” a digital self-defense workshop which promises to teach trans people how to find and remove their sensitive personal information from the internet (and which also has no relation to this website). The vibe is giving OpSec rave happy hour—attendees sip colorful drinks, groove to DJ sets, and huddle around laptops using online tools to track down their own digital footprints.

The goal of the exercise is to find holes in your digital defenses, a practice cybersecurity folks call “red-teaming.” A slide deck guides participants through this “self-doxing” ritual, instructing them to use websites like IntelBase, PimEyes, and haveibeenpwned to find addresses, selfies, passwords, old names and aliases, and other personal info that might have been left sitting around on the open internet.

It makes for great cocktail party banter. One participant raises their arms in triumph upon receiving a clean bill of health while checking if their information was leaked in a data breach. Others swivel laptop screens and compare notes on the various places their digital detritus had cropped up. In my case, I was lucky: I mostly found data brokers with incorrect information, a long-forgotten MySpace page, and a woman whose spam calls I’ve been receiving for the past 10 years. Finally, participants are directed to various pages where they can request data to be removed, or sign up for discounted services like Kanary and DeleteMe that do the removals on your behalf.

Behind the fun and light atmosphere, everyone here knows the unspoken reality that drives tonight’s activities: an unrelenting wave of discriminatory bills and executive orders that are rapidly demolishing trans rights across the US. “Trans Visibility” is a nice idea, but it turns out it really sucks to be visible in a fascist surveillance state where the highest levels of government are obsessively trying to destroy your ability to live.

“In this world of hyper-surveillance, I want to make sure all my stuff is safe and that no one is trying to harvest my data for anything,” Anna, a workshop participant, told 404 Media. Anna asked to use a pseudonym to protect her identity, which is not surprising given that the goal of the workshop is to make it harder to be doxed. “Especially now that there’s lots of incentives for the federal government to get into that business, I just wanna make sure all of that is under wraps.”

Like the event’s name suggests, many attendees are looking for traces of their “deadnames,” which is how some trans folks refer to the names they were given pre-transition. Trans people face a disproportionately high risk of being doxed online, and deadnames and other sensitive info are frequently dug up on right-wing hate forums like KiwiFarms and social media sites like Elon Musk’s X, where harassment campaigns and hate speech are allowed and even encouraged.

“We have to protect ourselves,” said Ryan, who also used a pseudonym. “It’s great to know how to find stuff like this, because you never know what’s still out there.”

Imani Thompson, a digital security trainer who organized the event as part of her series Cache Me Outside, says she started hosting the free workshops at queer bars in Brooklyn a year ago, after noticing trans and intersex friends who were noticeably shaken by the opening salvos of the second Trump administration.

“I hadn’t seen cybersecurity events that looked like they would attract or resonate with the crowds I felt needed this information the most,” she told 404 Media. “I wanted to make this fun and un-intimidating and doing digital security training at the bar is kind of silly and fun and gives us a built-in VPN and protection from sensitive convos being recorded.”

There are specific reasons many trans people are anxious about their personal data and online presence these days. For one, trans identities often don’t fit neatly into government boxes, and the name and gender they are assigned at birth may or may not match their government-issued IDs. Recently, a new law in Kansas resulted in hundreds of trans people being told that their drivers licenses and IDs had been invalidated overnight, forcing them to obtain new documents that revert to the sex marker assigned at birth. Journalist Marissa Kabas later reported that the 300 trans IDs in question had been flagged and not immediately invalidated, but the goal of the law and its ensuing chaos was clear: requiring trans people to have IDs that don’t match their appearance or lived reality, forcing them to out themselves and introducing friction and discrimination into their everyday lives.

The same Kansas law also implemented the first state-level “bathroom bounty,” making it a crime for trans people to use appropriate bathrooms and changing rooms and promising rewards to random passersby who feel “aggrieved” by someone they think might be trans. Lawmakers in Idaho have passed an even harsher bill, which would charge repeat trans bathroom-users with a felony and up to 5 years of jail time. These bills threaten not only trans people, but anyone whose appearance might fall outside of someone’s normative expectations of “male” and “female.” And they are especially dangerous at a time when facial recognition can near-instantly identify someone with a quick search.

Thompson also worries about the information that queer folks can reveal while asking for help online. Trans people experience unemployment, housing insecurity, and violence at exponentially higher rates than cis people, and it’s not uncommon to see Gofundme pages and Venmo accounts flooding social media feeds. These posts will sometimes include personal details like a person’s name, face, transition status, location, immigration status, and even how much they have in their bank account—great for getting donations, but not so great for the doxable breadcrumbs they leave behind.

“I think the risk is tenfold for the dolls and Black trans siblings because of disproportionate scrutiny in light of these bathroom bills and also how we do mutual aid,” said Thompson. “Whenever I see a mutual aid request being reposted or processed it makes me nervous, because we’re basically doxing our most vulnerable friends.” To reduce risk, she recommends people take down mutual aid posts as soon as needs are met and set their Venmo activity to private. “I feel like the intention in listing off how all these systems of oppression impact our friends are meant to create a sense of urgency and care, but then months later it’s still floating around and is a goldmine for someone who wants to claim they were made to feel unsafe in a bathroom so they can claim $3k or further an agenda.”

The privacy attitudes on display at the event contrast with the dominant media narratives about trans communities a decade ago. Fresh off the Supreme Court victory in Obergefell vs. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage, many at that time were convinced that trans visibility would pave the way to equality, as glossy magazine covers featuring stars like Laverne Cox declared a “Trans Tipping Point.” But while conditions for some trans people marginally improved, we all know what happened next: a wave of reactionary anti-trans state laws, culminating in the re-election of Donald Trump and a series of executive orders aimed at destroying trans peoples’ access to healthcare, sports, bathrooms—essentially the ability to live a normal life.

At the same time, protection can’t be a retreat back into the closet. “It’s still important for trans voices to be heard in online spaces,” said Anna. “It’s not like I wanna go into the shadows or anything. I just don’t want people to know my personal data, my personal records, any of that.”

“Being Black, I also understand the distinction between visibility and hypervisibility and the precarity and lack of agency that hypervisibility creates,” said Thompson. “It’s tricky to find language around digital security that doesn’t imply queerness is something to hide or a shameful thing, because of course it’s not. I think having agency and purpose in how we can show up online and interact with tech as well as literacy around how technology and surveillance operates makes us better equipped.”

Janus Rose is New York City-based journalist, educator and artist whose work explores the impacts of A.I. and technology on activists and marginalized communities. Previously a senior editor at VICE, she has been published in digital and print outlets including e-Flux Journal, DAZED Magazine, The New Yorker, and Al Jazeera.

Over $84,000 Raised So Far For Tennessee Librarian Fired For Refusing To Remove LGBTQ-Themed Books

Over $84,000 Raised So Far For Tennessee Librarian Fired For Refusing To Remove LGBTQ-Themed Books

Nashville’s NBC affiliate reports:

The library director who was fired for refusing to relocate LGBTQ children’s books has garnered substantial community support, with people donating over $84,000 to help her as she navigates the loss of her job. A GoFundMe launched by a community member says that the fundraiser for Luanne James is going “directly toward supporting her family’s basic living expenses during this time.”

James was the director of the Rutherford County Library until the board voted to fire her last week. The termination came after she refused to move 132 children’s books to another section of the library because the LGBTQ themes were deemed inappropriate for children. James said that she “had no choice” but to refuse the board’s request to move the books. She said that she believes librarians are being politicized and that “is not what we signed up for.”

Read the full article.

Check out the protest crowd in the video below!

About Conversion Therapy

A Christian ‘Conversion Therapy Dropout’ on the Supreme Court’s Decision

By Tyler Huckabee

On March 31, the Supreme Court sided with a Christian therapist in Colorado and tossed out the state’s ban on conversion therapy for minors. The therapist, Kaley Chiles, challenged the state’s ban on the grounds that it violated her First Amendment rights. The Court agreed with Chiles by an 8-to-1 vote.

Conversion therapy is a practice that generally involves treatment intended to “cure” same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. Every major medical study has determined that conversion therapy does not work and often leads to serious mental health problems for patients who are subjected to it. Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez knows that from personal experience.

Rodriguez is the author of Conversion Therapy Dropout: A Queer Story of Faith and Belonging, which will be released on May 5. The memoir unpacks the eight years Rodriguez spent in conversion therapy, struggling to reconcile the tension between the version of Christianity he had been taught growing up and his sexual identity. For Rodriguez, the path to healing began when he accepted that there was no tension.

Rodriguez told Sojourners the Supreme Court’s decision is deeply personal and painful, and he hopes that his story will both help LGBTQ+ Christians feel a little less alone and help convince non-affirming Christians to rethink their convictions.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Tyler Huckabee, Sojourners: When critics talk about the harm that conversion therapy can cause, particularly for minors, what sort of harm are we talking about?

Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez: Where to begin? There’s documented research to show that anyone who experiences conversion therapy, especially as a minor, is subject to higher rates of depression and anxiety. The suicidal ideation rate nearly doubles for LGBTQ+ youth who have experienced conversion therapy, and then the long-term effect of it tends to show up in the inability to create lasting relationships, substance abuse, all those kinds of things. It’s a very devastating practice in the sense that it attacks body, mind, and spirit. When all three of those parts of yourself have been attacked, disengaging from the harm that that causes takes a lot of time and a lot of real therapy. But a lot of folks who have experienced conversion practices are untrusting of therapeutic spaces.

What arguments did conversion therapy advocates use that convinced the Supreme Court to side with them?

They were able to successfully reduce the idea of what the role of a therapist in a therapeutic setting is: that it’s just a space for conversation, that this is a free speech zone, that this is a space where we should all be allowed to say what we believe. Really, it shifted the definition of what happens in therapists’ office from approved therapeutic practices, to saying, “Well, actually, if a therapist has a different viewpoint, they should be allowed, with their First Amendment right and religious freedom, to be able to interject their own thoughts and go against what has been the conventional therapeutic practices.”

Tell me about your experience with this practice. You call yourself a conversion therapy dropout.

Yeah, I grew up in an evangelical Christian home in Illinois and was insulated in the evangelical Christian culture of the late 1990s and 2000s. Not much was said about homosexuality, but everything around me led me to believe that to be anything but straight was a problem.

So, when I was 19-years-old, I finally admitted for the first time that I was “struggling with same sex attraction,” as I called it back then. I was working at a church in Washington state and was dismissed on the spot for even admitting that it was a struggle that I had. I was told that I was broken and that there was no place for people like me in churches.

I was 19.

No one forced me in [to conversion therapy]. I opted myself in because I thought that was the only option someone like me had to maintain my relationship with God, my family, my community, the church.

I first was involved with the organization under the umbrella of Exodus International. It was an online forum that existed for folks who didn’t have access to a local ministry in their area. I was a part of that for about a year. I did talk therapy with a therapist for eight years, and then when I moved to Chicago and had access to in-person ministries, I started going to in-person support groups. And then all throughout that, I also attended an annual conference put on by Exodus that was their flagship event. It took a lot of different forms over eight years. It was a wild journey.

When somebody like me hears about conversion therapy, we assume a lot of Jigsaw-type Saw torture traps with gay people being violently forced to recant their sexuality. But in reading your book, you describe it as a process that can be deceptively gentle and cloaked in the language of love and acceptance. You even found some community there.

The experiences that people see portrayed in movies or documentaries—just the lore of conversion therapy—those do exist. But when I encountered conversion therapy, it was much more insidious. I was in talk therapy. I thought I was talking to someone who was trying to help me process my past, but all the information that I gave my therapist was weaponized against me and used as proof as to why I was struggling with what I was struggling with.

And so, from that side, you know, I was trained to moderate myself, to police my mannerisms, to change my behaviors, to change my interests, to try to be more like a man, all those kinds of things. And then there was a spiritual component to it: Pray, seek God, do what all good Christians are supposed to do.

And there was a community component to it. I think it was probably the thing that I’m most grateful for that I got out of it, but also the most dangerous. Most of us were on our own little islands and had no one around us who knew what we were going through. And when we’d go to these groups or go to these events, we’d be around hundreds or thousands of people who were facing the same struggle. There was a camaraderie in the community that formed. Most of us didn’t realize it then, but that was the first time we were ever really, truly experiencing queer community and what it was like to be around others who are like us. Even though we were trying to do all we could to not be ourselves, there was still that underlying connection that bonded us all together. As harmful as all of it was, some of the closest friends that I have in my life today are people that I met in conversion therapy. We were in the trenches together.

But there was an underlying sense throughout all of it that I didn’t measure up, that something was wrong with me because I wasn’t experiencing the change that other people experienced. They were really good in those settings at bringing people out to share their testimonies: “Hey, I went from darkness to light, and here’s my wife and kids! God really can work miracles!” There was this whole system of shame, self-hatred, and self-doubt. But on the surface, it was hard to see that at first.

What was your breaking point with this process?

After eight years, I had done everything. I followed the rule book, and I was also working in evangelical Christian megachurches. I was becoming a rising star in that space for helping churches understand digital marketing and communication. The whole time, I never questioned the program. I was always taught to question myself. If there was something that I wasn’t experiencing, it wasn’t because the program was wrong; it was that there was something in me that wasn’t adding up.

So that was just this constant state of depression and anxiety and fear and all those things raging. I started drinking a lot. I was just a shell of a person. I threw myself into my work, and thought maybe if I just work hard enough, God will finally do the work that I wanted God to do in me.

I was at a big Christian conference—Catalyst—and there was a pastor speaking there, talking about how we needed to fight against gay marriage, that we needed real men, no more sissies, that we needed to fight the gay agenda. And I watched this whole stadium of people erupt and stand on their feet and cheer, knowing that they were talking about me. That led me to have a nervous breakdown.

It just came to a point where I thought I would rather end my life than keep going. But thankfully, I chose to end the way I had been living my life and decided to figure out how I could integrate my faith and sexuality, quit conversion therapy, and figure out what it could look like to become a gay Christian.

There were—especially during the late 2010s—not a lot of openly gay Christian blueprints to follow. Today, many parts of the church obviously remain very hostile to the LGBTQ+ community, and that feeling is often understandably reciprocated. What’s it like having a foot in both worlds?

It’s the weird experience that we carry. I understand why queer people leave the church when they come out, because they’ve been told their whole lives by this particular religious community that they’re broken, that God doesn’t love them, that there’s not a place for them. Why would you want to stay there?

Thankfully, right after I dropped out of conversion therapy, I was connected with Q Christian Fellowship—it was called the Gay Christian Network back then—but it’s one of the leading organizations that’s working with queer Christians to help them reconcile their faith and sexuality.

I went to one of those conferences in 2010, and it was such a weird experience, because it felt just like Exodus or any of the other conferences I had gone to, except it was OK for me to have a crush on other attendees and admit it [laughs].

It just exposed me to a whole new way of reading the Bible, understanding what scripture says, and just seeing other folks who were still engaged with their faith. It gave me the hope and courage that I could find affirming spaces where I could be loved and accepted just as I was as a gay man.

So, given all of that, tell me about how it feels to see this ruling come from the Supreme Court, largely on the pretext of religious freedom. I imagine this feels like the war that you experienced within yourself for so long made manifest in the legal system.

It’s disheartening, but it’s not surprising. As long as the church continues to other people and to draw lines around who is accepted, this will, sadly, be a fight we’ll have. I am grateful, though, for the churches that have made room at the table for queer people and that have courageously gone against the conventional wisdom.

But the Christian nationalism that we’re experiencing today is emboldening people to do a lot of horrible things in God’s name. I think people like me are very frustrating to them, because it would be a lot easier for their narrative if I were a person who had been in the church and left it because now I’m gay and hate the church.

But there’s a growing number of us where that’s not the case. We still love God. My relationship with God is stronger today than it ever was when I was in conversion therapy. I’m being fully honest with who I am and who God created me to be.

I hate that my story and my book are very relevant right now, but I’m grateful too. I didn’t have those mentors or those people or that guidebook to follow when I was on this journey early on. I can hopefully help others like myself—that younger version of myself—to know that you know who they are, loved just as they are.

For any queer people reading this—maybe they’re out, maybe they’re not—who are scared or alone, what would your message be?

Take care of yourselves, keep your chosen family close. There are affirming church communities out there. Church Clarity is a great resource that can help you connect with those if you feel like you need that kind of support.

But church can be complicated. Tony Campolo said at that Q Christian conference I went to that the church may be a whore, but she’s your mother. And so remember that what the church did to you is not how God feels about you, and it’s not the truth. Remember that God is love, and God loves you just as you are.

And for folks who have experienced conversion therapy, this is a time for all of us to be emboldened to share our stories. Our lived experience is the thing that can counter all the narratives that are out there now. We can bring a human face and voice to what this decision means, and hopefully, our experience can help the next generation.

I get the sense that there are a lot of Christians who, inside, wish they could be affirming, but don’t feel like they can, maybe because of their jobs, or their community, or just because they feel that the Bible doesn’t allow them to be. That’s a place I know that you yourself were in for quite a while as well. What would you say to them?

Listen to our stories. Talk to queer Christians who have walked this path. Matthew Vines’ book God and the Gay Christian is an excellent starting point just to understand how you can start to look at scripture in a different way and examine all the things that were shoved down all our throats about how we were taught to believe.

Also, look at churches that are affirming and learn from them. See what they’re doing and how they’ve chosen to read scripture and care for and love people.

I didn’t know that affirming denominations existed. I mean, I knew that they did in the ether, but it was a foreign world to me. And I think one of the challenges, particularly for those churches now, is to really become bold in their stance and in how they are speaking about these issues. It is a life-or-death issue, and I think many mainline denominations that have historically been affirming can tend to rest on their laurels. You just start thinking: “Hey, we’ve got this. We’re good. Everyone’s welcome.” But someone like me, who’d never set foot in a church like that, doesn’t even know how to even begin to navigate that space. We see your rainbow flags. We see the “All Are Welcome” signs. But I think that we need some love and coaxing in, just because it feels like we’re crossing an enemy line going into those churches. It felt that way for me at first.

https://sojo.net/sojoshare/MTUyNXwyMzgzOTl8MTc3NTI0MzM0M3w5