Garrard Conley woke up today to learn the Supreme Court issued an 8-1 ruling limiting states’ ability to ban conversion therapy for minors, framing the practice as protected speech.
He was not OK.
When Boy Erased was published in 2016, Conley’s account of being forced into conversion therapy read like something from another era. The son of a Baptist pastor in Arkansas, Conley was 19 when he was given an ultimatum: attend a church-run program designed to “cure” his homosexuality or lose his family.
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What followed, as he recounts in the memoir, was a system built on confession, control and psychological pressure. He was subjected to six months of “therapy” sessions that demanded he invent sexual histories; assigned bible verses as punishment. At Love in Action, the program he ultimately entered, he attended exercises that mapped “sins” across family trees or
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