What I Learned From Sending My Daughter to Anti-Gay Therapy

Absolutely the worst moment of my life

The Worst Moment of My Life

When I took my 18-year-old daughter three states away to become part of a religious anti-gay program, it was the most shameful time of my life. I knew it was wrong, but I remained silent. Not a word to stop it. I actually helped her pack — folding her favorite t-shirts and organizing her books, then, together as a family, loading the car, driving through the mountains, depositing her at the church in the middle of a sweltering Georgia night.

To this day, my throat tightens when I think of it. I shook hands with the people who would “help” her discover god’s true purpose for her life. I toured the apartment where she would be living with other girls — who were not gay but there for their own scattered reasons. I even signed the paperwork and wrote the check.

The trek home without her was long, crammed with speechless tears and absent apologies.

Absolutely the worst moment of my life.

Even though I’ve sought my daughter’s forgiveness a million times since then (and she has never hesitated to give it), I remain riddled with guilt.

But in the midst of mistakes, there is no lack of lessons learned, even from this life smudge.

I’ve always told my daughters, it’s not a mistake if you learn something from it. It’s a life lesson.

Lesson #1: Backstory . . . Is Never An Excuse

To understand what I learned and why I would do such a thing, you need a bit of backstory. But please, do not think I share this as an excuse. Because it’s not. I could have spoken up at any time. I could have refused, fought, yelled. I could have stopped it and loved her the way she was, already perfect. But I didn’t. I chose to remain tight within my tarnished little world.

Mostly because I was a good wife.

I was raised in a strict religious environment. I spent my life at church (at the actual building) from early childhood. I went to “church” school Monday through Friday. We had a bible study on Tuesday nights. We had church services on Wednesday and Saturday nights and twice on Sundays, with band practice between services. And every Thursday night we cleaned the church and school.

There was no maltreatment, no corruption, or humiliation. Just a deep-seated belief system glued together with tradition and doctrine with the intent to instruct on a godly life. It was like I had been born with a straight jacket and blinders: only knowing what they allowed me to know, only seeing what they saw, indoctrinated. Hoaxed.

To place the final clamp on my small existence, at 23 years old, I married into the fold.

Days before that wedding, I recall my older brother, who was finishing college at the time and starting his own process of waking up from the religious constraints of our childhood, saying, “You act like a Stepford wife.”

We weren’t allowed to go to movies or watch television, so I had no reference point for his comment. After he explained, I enlighten him that my intent was to be submissive to my husband. I left him standing in the dim light, en-route to my misinformed life.

And my personality didn’t help matters. I’m naturally the type of person who loves order and rules. I find comfort in knowing where the limits are and quite enjoy everything in its rightful place.

To this day, I glory in grammar rules and depend on medical guidelines in my job as a nurse practitioner. But this propensity to adhere didn’t do me any favors in the rule-ladened environment of my youth; it just led me further into the trap.

Time passed.

I didn’t wake up until I was 42 years old, too late to keep my daughter from anti-gay therapy. Still, there’s no excuse. But over time, people learn.

Lesson #2 You Are Who You Are

Even though a lifetime of religious training had pounded into me that homosexuality was wrong, that gays and lesbians are being deceived by the devil and are an abomination to god, this was my daughter. I knew that she wasn’t wrong. But sending her to this place, that was wrong. It felt wrong.

This was my daughter. Not the faceless, nameless homosexual they had no sympathy for at the pulpit. This was my baby girl, not the desperate and discarded lesbian they had convinced me was out there somewhere in the world ‘choosing’ this life for herself.

I had spent 18 years raising her and loving her, catching her at the bottom of slides and reading her books under the covers by flashlight. Even though I knew she was pure and real, I didn’t know her as much as I thought I did because my threadbare belief system wouldn’t allow it.

She had a few close relationships with girlfriends throughout high school but had several steady boyfriends along the way, so honestly, I never saw it coming. My mind was so infiltrated with biblical commandments, it didn’t occur to me as a possibility, even with the girl crushes she didn’t hide.

So when she told us she was a lesbian, I was surprised but somewhere inside I knew . . . she wasn’t wrong, she wasn’t an abomination. She was just . . . my daughter. She wasn’t being deceived it was me. I was deceived.

When she came out, my then-husband got on the phone and found a christ-centered, anti-gay program for her. Someplace where she could get straightened out, a place to sort through her mixed-up feelings. A place where she could be fixed, made normal, become a good christian.

Today, she doesn’t hate us for this at all. She spent her time there volunteering, working in a coffee shop, and earning a bachelor’s degree at the local university. She learned piano and sign language. Those years shaped her life and by the end of three years in the program, she left the church because she had a girlfriend.

She remains in touch with many of her friends from her stay in “the mission,” as it was called. Her best friend — a young man who had also been sent there by his parents to have the gay prayed out of him — found each other right away. She told me later how they spent many nights sorting out their confusion and making up their minds about who they really were.

This “program” was either the worst of its kind or the absolute best, allowing these two young people to figure things out on their own because my daughter and her best friend exited the “mission” sure of who they were: homosexuals who deserve to be loved and accepted for themselves.

I am thankful that while she was a part of this conservative religious organization — who backed the idea that gay is a choice to be talked out of— she was always safe. She reports there were no actual praying-the-devil-out-of-her incidents or horrible anti-gay sermons to endure. There was no abuse, shame, or pleading. For that, I am eternally grateful.

Unfortunately, not all anti-gay programs are created equal.

Lesson #3 Anti-Gay Therapy Has To Stop

According to Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, “Conversion therapy, also known as sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts, is a practice grounded in the belief that being LGBT is abnormal.”

Homosexuality used to be classified as a mental illness, according to the first diagnostic manual in psychiatry published in 1952. The “cures” were electroshock therapies, forced hormone treatments, and “behavioral” interventions that involved paid prostitutes. Eventually, those treatments morphed into aggressive counseling and forced talk therapy, but some forms of aversion therapy are still used which include inducing nausea, vomiting, or paralysis.

The sad part is that attempts to change a young person’s sexual orientation in the U.S. persist to this day.

According to reports by the Williams Institute, “16,000 LGBT youth (ages 13–17) will receive conversion therapy from a licensed health care professional before they reach the age of 18 in the 32 states that currently do not ban the practice.”

Only 18 states, including the District of Columbia, have banned the use of conversion therapy on LGBT youth. Which means there are several, mostly religious groups, out there who preach freedom from homosexuality with the help of Jesus Christ or through other traditional anti-gay methods.

There is no science behind the use of conversion therapy, and many professionals believe the therapy does more harm than anything.

“The use of these harmful practices can lead to depression, decreased self-esteem, substance abuse, homelessness, and even suicidal behavior.” — Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act

Several medical and psychological associations — the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics to name a few — have issued official statements and lobbied Congress and state governments to ban these harmful practices and protect LGBT youth under 18 years of age.

We have to stop allowing young people to be subjected to this detestable practice and our best hope is at the federal level. Several bills, including the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, are trying to ban conversion therapy and are supported by many professional health associations (National Association of School Psychologists, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the American Counseling Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics). Unfortunately, they remain in limbo in the House of Representatives.

My amazing daughter is now a decade past anti-gay therapy, has two degrees, and is engaged to a remarkable woman. Her life is bursting and robust. She has flourished regardless of my silence. While I was busy being a good wife and mother, sitting by watching her father create conversion plans to save her from the devil, she ended up saving herself.

Even though my childhood and young adult life had been swindled from me, I often look back, hoping her young life wasn’t the absolute worst. I am thankful that this program that masqueraded as gay conversion ended up being the avenue that led her to her true self. Even though that’s still not enough to cleanse my shame.

But this isn’t about my load of shame; it’s about her remarkable ability to be who she is . . . regardless. An experience I hope every LGBTQ+ person the world over gets a chance to embrace.