Surviving Eight Years of Conversion Therapy

About this episode

Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez discusses the psychological harms of conversion therapy and the recent Supreme Court ruling on its legality.

When we recorded this episode two weeks ago, we knew that the Supreme Court was planning on releasing a judgment in Chiles v. Salazar — to decide whether Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy (which is similar to laws in 22 other states) likely violated the First Amendment. We thought the decision might come in June. But it fell last week like a hammer, and has the potential to undo years of advocacy to ban treatments that have tried to "ungay" thousands of kids, teens, and adults. The judgment is devastating. But it also reminds us that just because a treatment is "legal" doesn't mean it's ethical — or even that it works. (It doesn't!) Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez endured years of conversion therapy, and joins the pod to talk about the real psychological harms it inflicts, and answer all of your excellent questions about how to spot a therapist using low-key conversion tactics, how to make sure kids growing up in high-control anti-gay environments know you're a safe person, and why this therapy persists despite so much evidence that it doesn't work. This is a hard episode — but an important one. GREAT NEWS: WE HAVE VERY GOOD EPISODE TRANSCRIPTS NOW! They come out within 24…

People in this episode

Host: Anne Helen Petersen

Guest: Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez

Topics covered

• conversion therapy
• mental health
• LGBTQ+ rights
• legal issues
• psychological harm

Keywords

• conversion therapy
• Supreme Court
• Chiles v. Salazar
• psychological harm
• LGBTQ+ advocacy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Supreme Court, Colorado

Places: Colorado, 22 other states

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