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- [00:04]
Ryan Kendall
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com if the Supreme Court strikes this down on First Amendment grounds, it means that quackery and snake oil of all kinds will be legal under constitutional law.
- [00:39]
Akilah Hughes
Human rights abuses are something the United States loves to condemn. When they happen somewhere else. We issue sanctions, pass resolutions, and clutch our pearls at regimes that persecute minorities. But when it happens here, when the abuse is rebranded as therapy, when it's done in the name of faith or freedom of speech, we call it a debate. Conversion therapy has been called many things over the years. Restorative counseling, sexual identity, realignment, discipleship work. What it really is is psychological torture. Today, we're unpacking the latest front in America's culture war, the push to roll back bans on conversion therapy for LGBTQ minors, and asking how is it better to redefine what counts as speech, what counts as care, and to decide whether harm is protected by the const.
- [01:33]
Ryan Kendall
My family was extremely conservative. On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we would go on Academy Boulevard as children and hold signs against Roe v. Wade right against abortion rights. When Amendment 2 was passed in Colorado, which was a law that prevented cities and counties from enacting anti discrimination ordinances that encompass LGBT identity, we would be out there on Academy Boulevard holding signs saying that no special rights for homosexuals. Right as a child. And so when I put these two things together, what being gay was, and that I was gay, I knew very clearly that this was bad news for me in my family and that I had to keep this a secret because I knew I'd be rejected.
- [02:16]
Akilah Hughes
This is Ryan Kendall, a civil rights attorney and conversion therapy survivor who has testified in federal courts and state legislatures to end the practice, only to now watch the same Supreme Court that gutted Roe v. Wade take up the question of if praying away the gay should make a comeback. I think it's important to talk to people who've been affected by this horrible practice so we can really understand the stakes of returning to that archaic place.
- [02:40]
Ryan Kendall
I really grew up in an idyllic family environment. I was kind of upper middle class in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We lived right by a golf course near, like, a Kind of elite private school, Colorado College. My mom was a substitute teacher. My dad was a police officer. You know, one thing I said in prior testimony is, you know, my parents would put handwritten notes in our lunches that they hand packed, and then they would drive us to school. You know, my mother instilled a love of reading in her children. So I grew up in a. In a very close knit, very religious environment, you know, really surrounded by love up until, you know, some unfortunate incidents.
- [03:20]
Akilah Hughes
Not to bring up so much of that, like, youthful trauma, but can you talk a little bit about, like, what it really felt like being a kid with the secret and who wants to be, you know, continue being loved by the family, continue being a part of the unit and not suddenly different? What was that like?
- [03:38]
Ryan Kendall
I was just constantly afraid that people were gonna find out. Right. Uh, and, you know, kids are mean at school, so they would tease me, they'd call me names, um, they'd call me the f. Slur or gay. And I'd come back and report this to my parents, who were horrified. But they didn't know that the kids were right. Right.
- [03:53]
Akilah Hughes
Yeah. Right. To be very clear, we're talking about a small child spending days and nights in fear that his family wouldn't love him anymore if they knew who he really was. And the US in 2025, the powers that be want to hear arguments for how the parents are on the right side of this. You talked about your dad finding a journal that you had acknowledged within it, you had acknowledged that you were gay. What happened next?
- [04:19]
Ryan Kendall
So I was taking a bath at the time, and I suddenly start hearing my parents screaming. And I only I add this bit of color because it's funny, I think. And so my parents were like, ryan, get out here. And I said, one moment, I need to finish conditioning my hair before I come out there. Back when I had hair, also, like, the gayest thing I could have said in that moment to my parents who had just discovered that their son was gay. I only say that because it's funny. What happened next was not funny. So I got out of the room and saw what my parents had. And they, you know, immediately were like, you're going to hell. You're going to die of aids. I mean, they were just verbally abusive immediately, and I was terrified. So what I did is I, like, kind of ran through the house putting on the clothes that I found lying around. Turns out they were my dad's clothes. Way too big for me. And I ran out the back door. I ran to a Friend's house, a gay friend that I had met on a chat line who. Who housed me for the night. That person ended up paying a really heavy cost because my dad pursued them for two years with accusations that they were a pedophile and things like that. Tried to get this person kicked out of college, all for just housing a runaway for a night. Right? And then when you're, you know, 13, 14 years old, probably you have no power and no resources, no money, no legal rights. And so I had to spend the next day working up the courage to walk home to that environment where I knew my life was over.
- [05:48]
Akilah Hughes
When we come back, the long walk home and the further abuse Ryan experienced.
- [05:55]
Ryan Kendall
At first, my parents found a random Christian therapist, and he would just, like, kind of act like I was disgusting. And I only went to him for a few sessions. And then my parents went to Focus on the Family, which was headed by Dr. Dobson, and asked for referrals. And they got the executive director of Exodus International, a pray away, the gay organization who's now, I think, out and openly married to a man.
- [06:18]
Akilah Hughes
Two of Exodus International's foundation, Michael Busse and Gary Cooper, denounced and left the organization in 1979 after they became a couple. And the president of the organization, Alan Chambers, in 2013, put out a formal public apology to the LGBTQ community, renouncing conversion therapy, calling it harmful and ineffective.
- [06:39]
Ryan Kendall
But Focus on the Family referred them to them to the leading lights of conversion therapy, which is an organization called NARTH, which is stands for @ the time, the national association for Reparative Therapy of Homosexuality. Now, just think about that, embedded in that name, the idea that gay people are defective. They've since changed their name deceitfully to be about research and therapy of homosexuality.
- [06:59]
Akilah Hughes
The sessions he endured mixed religion and pseudoscience and used shame as a tool to break him and other kids down.
- [07:07]
Ryan Kendall
And I did in person therapy sessions where since changing your fundamental identity like this. Right. Is not a proper therapeutic goal, there are no techniques.
- [07:17]
Akilah Hughes
Right.
- [07:18]
Ryan Kendall
So it was a lot of pressure. God doesn't want you to be this way. You're going to die of AIDS at the age of 30. You're going to go to hell. Your family's going to reject you. Other parts of it were about mimicking, quote, unquote, heterosexual behavior to kind of, like, butch up. So, I mean, literally, at one point he told me, and viewers cannot tell I'm a pretty short guy. So he would tell me to go play basketball, which is pretty funny because, like, there's no way. And to drink Gatorade.
- [07:41]
Akilah Hughes
Yeah. Like, that all sounds very scientific. What are we talking about?
- [07:46]
Ryan Kendall
Talk about women with guys. And it's just like, it was like a very fake it till you make it. And you. You see the results of that in all of these so called ex gay men who are like cheating on their wives with men because they're still gay. Right. Like, so that's where it comes from. But also, you know, there was group therapy sessions where people basically were like, I'm here for my family. This isn't going to work. I'm going to a gay bar later this night. But you have to understand, I'm an articulate civil rights lawyer now. I was a child when this was happening. Yeah. I was 14, 15, 16 years old. To have my family tell me I was going to go to hell. My mom at one point said she would have rather I'd been born with down syndrome or that she had an abortion rather than a gay son.
- [08:24]
Akilah Hughes
I'm so sorry. That's like the antithesis of parenting. That's horrible.
- [08:29]
Ryan Kendall
Well. And people need to realize when they reject their kid for being queer or trans, what they say and what they do is written on that child's heart forever. I have survived and I've overcome my trauma, but I will live with it until I die. Right. There will never be a world where those words aren't etched on my heart, even faintly as they wear away over time. They're still there. And that belief that you instill in a child that there's something wrong with them because of who they are, kills people. It almost killed me.
- [08:59]
Akilah Hughes
After a short break, we'll look into the case before the Supreme Court and what Ryan hopes LGBTQ people. People understand, no matter what happens. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Chile versus Salazar, a case challenging Colorado's ban on conversion therapy for minors. The law was passed in 2019 after dozens of survivors testified that so called reparative therapy drove them to self hatred, self harm, and suicidal thoughts. But a Christian counselor named Kaylee Chilez says the ban violates her free speech rights. She's represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the same group that helped overturn Roe v. Wade and got affirmative action. At oral arguments, Justice Alito wondered whether medical consensus could ever be trusted at all. Justice Barrett said she was skeptical. There's proof of harm. And Justice Thomas asked why a counselor shouldn't be allowed to, quote, explore options with a patient seeking to change. It's a debate about whether the state can regulate what licensed professionals say in therapy. But beneath the legalese is something simpler. A fight over whether queer and trans kids deserve protection from people who insist they don't exist. The court is expected to rule next spring. If they side with Chiles, they won't just invalidate Colorado's ban. They could nullify protections in over 20 states, states, and territories. And they'd be opening the door for every kind of discredited and dangerous snake oil to slither back into American medicine.
- [10:38]
Ryan Kendall
First of all, conversion therapy is child abuse, period. There's no good way to do it. Second of all, we regulate medical professionals and their speech and ideologies all the time. If a doctor thought that you could treat cancer by drinking gasoline, we would ban them for having that belief, speaking it, and acting on it. Right. So Chiles wants to do this, you know, scientifically baseless form of torture, and she sued, saying Colorado is infringing my First Amendment rights. Now, real quickly, two points I want to get in about this are this means essentially that therapy, talk therapy, cannot be regulated at all going forward.
- [11:14]
Akilah Hughes
And that's the quiet part out loud. If speech equals medicine, then anyone can say anything in a therapy office and call it care. That includes the telling children that God hates them, that their bodies are wrong, and that love can be retrained. And if you think that sounds fringe, consider this. Earlier this year, RFK Jr. S Department of Health and Human Services released a report suggesting exploratory therapy as an alternative for trans youth, a phrase that critics are saying is conversion therapy in a lab coat.
- [11:44]
Ryan Kendall
If the Supreme Court strikes this down on First Amendment grounds, which is pretty shocking, it means that quackery and snake oil of all kinds will be legal under Constitution. The other thing, though, is that these laws were never really enforced. I don't know of a single conversion therapist that lost their license because of a conversion therapy ban. Colorado admitted it never enforced this law. Part of the purpose of these laws is public education so that children aren't subjected to this, so that parents know. And in that way, the Supreme Court taking this case and then doing something heinous is almost a very perverse gift because they are going to Streisand effect conversion therapy. And. And people. The more we talk about conversion therapy, the more repulsive people find it because it is a form of torture. She wants to be able to torture LGBT youth. There is no scientific basis for this. This is the inverse of how you do medicine. Normally. You have to say, hey, there's a benefit here, and there's no harm, and it works here. We're saying, well, you haven't proven the harm. That's ass backwards. And it's also very weird that we want to protect the kids when they're trans by banning healthcare for them. Right. But we also want to that you can torture queer and trans kids through conversion therapy. So there's just a one way ratchet in constitutional law right now that means that queer people, trans people, like the law, works for everyone but them.
- [13:08]
Akilah Hughes
So let's talk about harm. Because Ryan's experiences weren't out of the ordinary for gay teens sent to these kinds of therapists. According to the Trevor Project, youth who undergo conversion therapy are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide multiple times. The American Psychological association says there is no credible evidence that orientation can be changed, but ample evidence that attempting to change it causes harm. Still, that information is not enough for the Supreme Court's least qualified justice in history, Amy Coney Barrett. She asked for the best evidence that this kind of therapy causes harm.
- [13:45]
Ryan Kendall
I mean, again, it's an inversion of medicine. And also it's a weird abdication of the desire to protect children. Right. All these people are so concerned about protecting children. Except here, what I can say is conversion therapy nearly killed me. It has had horrible effects on everyone I know. And we filed an amicus brief in this case with the story of seven survivors and the harms that have been caused by them. Your viewers will get this. If you tell a child that because of who they are, because of their skin color or their gender or their parents or their socioeconomic status, that something is wrong with who they are, that destroys that child. Verbal abuse and emotional abuse are still abuse. And telling people that who you are is flawed because you're gay with no basis is abuse. So Amy Coney Barrett and the rest of the Supreme Court, and I want to be very clear about this, including James Campbell, who argued this case at the Supreme Court and who I've dealt with, they are in the business of killing queer kids. That's what they want and that's what will happen.
- [14:47]
Akilah Hughes
And let's talk about hypocrisy, because the same alliance defending freedom, arguing for conversion therap also fights to ban books about queer and black people in public schools.
- [14:57]
Ryan Kendall
I mean, is it hypocrisy if what's motivating them is bias against gay people? I think it's very coherent worldview of erasing LGBT people from public life. We see that with what they're doing in trans medical care. We see this with book bans. And while I agree with you and full disclosure I just litigated a book ban case against Huntington beach and one where they were seeking to ban books and held out books related to LGBT people. That's in my day job though, like the fifth Circuit, I believe, or the Texas, whatever circuit Texas is in maybe just ruled that libraries can restrict books based on viewpoint and content under the first Amendment. So I mean, you would think that book bans violate the first Amendment, but certainly nothing violates the Constitution when it comes to hurting queer people.
- [15:46]
Akilah Hughes
So what happens if the court rules against Colorado? Experts say states could lose the ability to discipline therapists for any talk based harm that includes Covid misinformation, anti vaxx rhetoric, even QAnon style counseling masquerading as mental health. It's not just about gay kids. It's about the truth itself. Across the country, organizers are bracing for the decision. Groups like Born Perfect and the Trevor Project are training survivors to testify, sharing their stories to keep public pressure high. In Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court just upheld its own ban on conversion therapy, defying a lower court challenge and proving that state level resistance still matters. And in California, lawmakers are considering legislation to treat conversion therapy as consumer fraud. Because when someone charges you money to cure a non disease, that's exactly what it is. But laws alone won't fix what faith broke. That's why survivor networks are reframing healing as collective work, mutual aid therapy with affirming clinicians in spiritual spaces where love isn't conditional on who you love. The Constitution weeps no equal protection once again in a conservative United States. So while we wait for the activist court, which has shown increasing bias against all marginalized groups between these Trump terms, I wanted to know what, if anything, Ryan wanted to say to the LGBTQ community in this frightening time where their rights are once again being threatened.
- [17:17]
Ryan Kendall
I am going to repeat the quote I gave in the Huffington Post article because I think this is so important. And I want queer LGBT trans youth to pay attention to what I say now, because this is for you. There's nothing wrong with who you are. You are a miracle. Your identity is beautiful. Conversion therapy is a lie. And do not let it take who you are away from you. You can survive and thrive, I promise you, because I have, and there will be countless people like me who will continue fighting for a world where you are not tortured simply for who you are. This is wrong. But you didn't do anything wrong. This is not your fault.
- [18:00]
Akilah Hughes
So how is it better to subject countless gay and queer adolescents to verbal abuse, denial of their personhood, and psychological torture in an effort to make the world only one way. How is it better to ignore this undeniable harm and roll back the clock to a shameful time in this country's history? How is it better to legalize hatred and bigotry? Well, I wouldn't be a good host or person if I said it was it is a historical embarrassment that our Supreme Court is hearing arguments from Ms. Chiles who's asking for their blessing in performing fake medicine driven by ideological delusion. I hope that the Court rules in favor of equality and science and moving forward, but hope is kind of all we have. Like I said, the Supreme Court will issue its decision in Chiles v. Salazar sometime next year. Until then, states are holding their breath, churches are pretending it's still 1950, and kids are wondering which adults are safe to tell the truth to. If freedom of speech is becomes freedom to harm, we should all be terrified. Because when cruelty gets constitutional protection, every other right is next thanks for listening to or watching. How Is this Better? Make sure you're following or subscribing on your platform of choice, including our very own YouTube page@YouTube.com How is this better? And if you can leave a rating and review or comment on the episodes because all of it is super helpful in spreading the reach of the show and we appreciate you. How Is this Better? Is written and hosted by me, Akilah Hughes. It's produced by Devin Maroney, video editing is by Shane Verkus, Kevin Dreyfus is Courier's National Managing director and Executive producer, RC demezzo is their VP of Brand and Social, and Charlotte Robertson is the Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Samantha Hollows is the YouTube and podcast growth marketer and Marianne Kuga is the Director of marketing. Tracy Kaplan is the Senior Vice President of Sales and distribution and if you're interested in advertising or sponsoring, you can reach her@advertiseuriernewsroom.com show artwork is by Danielle Deplato and original theme music is by Used People.