Selects: How Conversion Therapy Doesn't Work

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know

Episode: Selects: How Conversion Therapy Doesn't Work
Date: November 8, 2025
Hosts: Josh Clark & Charles W. “Chuck” Bryant
Podcast by: iHeartPodcasts

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Overview

This episode of "Stuff You Should Know" critically examines the practice known as conversion therapy—the theory and efforts purporting to change an individual’s sexual orientation from gay (or LGBTQ) to straight. Josh and Chuck break down the historical roots, psychological and cultural context, methods, scientific responses, and the documented harms of conversion therapy. With a blend of humor, empathy, and a clear stance anchored in scientific consensus, they explain why conversion therapy doesn’t work and why it’s considered deeply harmful.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Definition and Background [05:00–06:12]

• What is Conversion Therapy?
  Conversion therapy, reparative therapy, “ex-gay therapy”—all are attempts to "cure" LGBTQ individuals and convert them to heterosexuality, often based on the unfounded premise that people are naturally straight unless something “goes wrong.”

  “It is an alleged psychological theory and practice based on the idea that all people are born heterosexual...that can be accidentally steered into homosexuality and therefore can be purposefully steered back.” —Josh Clark [06:07]

• Fundamentalist Adoption
  Popularized primarily by the Christian right, especially in the U.S., conversion therapy became integrated into broader culture wars around LGBTQ rights.

  “It was officially part of the 2016 Republican Party platform...by far the most anti-LGBTQ platform in the nation’s history.” —Chuck Bryant [06:48]

2. Historical Context [09:00–14:24]

• 19th-Century Origins
  The roots trace back to late 1800s psychological practices, like hypnosis and lobotomies, with the underlying idea that being gay is an illness to be cured.

  “In 1899...claimed to have turned a gay man straight after 45 hypnosis sessions and some other therapies. That’s sort of the first evidence...” —Chuck [09:48]

• Distorted “Medical” Approaches
  Methods included testicular transplantation, electroconvulsive therapy, aversion therapy using nausea-inducing drugs, and lobotomies.

  “They would give you a lobotomy for anything!” —Josh [12:21]

• Lasting Harm
  The internalized view that “something is wrong with you if you’re gay” leads to shame, guilt, and long-term psychological harm.

3. Medical & Scientific Consensus [15:17–16:10]

• Declassification as a Disorder
  In 1973, the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, marking a major turning point.

  “We’re no longer going to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder.” —Josh [15:17]

• Abandonment by Mainstream Psychology
  Science does not support change efforts; mainstream medicine and psychology condemned conversion therapy.

4. The “Scientific” Face: Joseph Nicolosi & Modern Ex-Gay Movement [20:18–32:13]

• Trademarked “Reparative Therapy”
  Joseph Nicolosi Sr., a psychologist, became the academic face, trademarking and systematizing “reparative therapy.” He argued environmental childhood traumas and certain family dynamics create “same-sex attraction” (SSA).

• So-Called Theories and Techniques
  Nicolosi’s steps included therapist disclosure of anti-gay beliefs, “client inquiry,” resolution of supposed trauma, and education about motivations for “homosexuality”—all designed to root out same-sex attraction.

• Pseudo-Scientific Jargon
  Nicolosi’s language mimics ethical psychological counseling but is founded on disproven and damaging premises.

  “Let’s figure out how to get the gay out of you.” —Josh [29:09]

• The Big Problem:

  “If somebody came to you and said, ‘I’m tired of being Black or white or Hispanic or straight, I can’t stand it,’...any therapist worth their salt would say, ‘Let’s focus on that so you can own your identity.’ Conversion therapy does the opposite.” —Josh [28:40]

• Real Harms to Minors
  While some adults voluntarily sought therapy, children and teens are often coerced by parents, raising major ethical concerns.

  “If you’re a minor and your parents are forcing this on you, that raises a whole other can of worms.” —Josh [10:58]

5. The “Religious” Face: Adoption by Evangelical Movements [33:28–37:12]

• In the late 20th century, as gay visibility increased, religious conservatives doubled down, painting homosexuality and feminism as societal threats.

  “They saw homosexuality and feminism...as signs of a decadent society that would eventually cause us to crumble and collapse.” —Josh [34:18]

• Religious doctrines emphasized rigid gender roles, scapegoating “passive fathers” and “domineering mothers” as supposed causes of being gay.

6. Conversion Therapy in Practice: Methods & Harm [41:04–51:59]

• Physical and Psychological Abuse
  Tactics have included forced aversion therapy, humiliation, isolation, carrying heavy burdens, fake funerals, “re-masculinization” exercises, public shaming, and psychological manipulation.

  Example stories:

  • A teen forced to wear a backpack with 40 pounds of rocks for 18 hours a day to “symbolize the burden of being gay.” [45:22]
  • A family staged a fake funeral for their son, pretending he’d died of AIDS to “scare him straight.” [45:36]
  • Robert Gilbraith Heath experimented with brain electrode stimulation, leading to severe harm. [44:31]

  “The whole idea is to break you down to nothing in the worst way possible and then build you back up again in the image that they want.” —Chuck [46:05]

• Less Overt, Still Harmful Tactics Others used “manliness” training (chopping wood, tailgating, learning to not cross one’s legs) to reinforce gender-normed behavior. [47:17]

• Documented Tragedy The “success” case of a boy subjected to behavioral modification at age 4 led to suicide at 30.

  “This child died by suicide at the age of 30. Like, that’s the end result of this road. That’s where it ends up.” —Chuck [50:59]

7. Scientific Studies: The Evidence [52:40–54:00, Notable Quote]

• APA 2009 Task Force Findings:
  Conversion therapy “can pose critical health risks”:
  • Depression, guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, shame, self-hatred, hostility, dehumanization, betrayal, social withdrawal, substance abuse, stress, sexual dysfunction, loss of faith—and suicidality.
• Increased Suicide Risk:
  LGB teens are twice as likely to attempt suicide if rejected by parents; three times as likely if subjected to conversion therapy.

  “There is no science backing up the idea that you can change someone from homosexuality to heterosexuality. And... there is science backing up the idea that trying to do that causes damage.” —Josh [54:00]

8. Legal and Political Landscape [55:34–66:47]

• High-Profile Failures of Conversion Therapy:
  Leaders of ex-gay organizations—such as John Paulk and Alan Chambers (Exodus International)—later acknowledged it doesn’t work, apologized, and came out themselves.

  “...the biggest organization...dedicated to conversion therapy said, it doesn’t work. We’re sorry, gay people, for all the damage we’ve done.” —Josh [62:06]

• Bans and Lawsuits

  • As of 2019, 18 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico ban it for minors—though bans typically apply only to licensed medical or mental health providers (not religious leaders).
  • Landmark civil fraud cases (e.g., the Jonah case in New Jersey) held practitioners accountable for fraudulent “treatments.”
  • New York City's more sweeping ban (covering adults) was repealed over concerns about Supreme Court challenges and religious freedom.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Objectivity

  “We typically try to be super objective. This one is very tough. We have science on our side too.” —Josh [41:17]

• On the Emotional Toll

  “Researching this one was like turning over a log and finding it like maggots writhing underneath...super sad.” —Josh [41:46]

• Challenging Pseudoscience

  “Directing them toward working on not being gay is not the answer. Go to regular therapy and learn to love that you’re gay and go find a church that accepts gay people.” —Josh [52:26]

• APA Final Word on Harms

  “Sexual orientation change efforts can pose critical health risks to lesbian, gay and bisexual people.” —Chuck [52:37]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Definition and Basic Premise: 05:00–06:12
• Historical Origins & Early Techniques: 09:00–14:24
• Declassification & Modern Context: 15:17–16:10
• Joseph Nicolosi & Practice Details: 20:18–32:13
• Religious Adoption & Gender Ideology: 33:28–37:12
• Methods in Practice & Survivor Testimony: 41:04–51:59
• Scientific Consensus on Harm: 52:40–54:00
• Legal Developments: 55:34–66:47

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Final Thoughts

Josh and Chuck make it clear: conversion therapy is unsupported by science, proven to cause harm, and rejected by all mainstream medical and psychological associations. Despite political and religious roots, it remains dangerous, particularly to minors and vulnerable individuals.

“There is no science backing it up. Trying to do that causes damage.” —Josh [54:00]

They urge listeners to seek affirming, science-based support, and call out the practice for what it is: a damaging, fraudulent effort rooted in prejudice, not credible science.

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Further Learning

• On Film: The episode references The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018), a film dramatizing a teen’s experience with conversion therapy.
• APA 2009 Report: APA task force on appropriate therapeutic responses to sexual orientation
• History.com Article: "Gay Conversion Therapy's Disturbing 19th Century Origins" by Aaron Blakemore

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[For sensitive topics like this, support and resources are available via organizations like The Trevor Project or local LGBTQ centers.]

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Transcript

[Josh Clark]

This is an Iheart podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Good day everyone. This is Chuck here on a Saturday with a selects episode about conversion therapy.

[Podcast Announcer]

Boo.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And you know what?

[Chuck Bryant]

Regardless of what you think about conversion.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Therapy, it doesn't work.

[Chuck Bryant]

And so that's why this episode is titled How Conversion Therapy doesn't work from November 2019. And if you're wondering before you listen, what is conversion therapy? That's when parents try to make their lgtbq.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Let's just put it in that whole bucket, child.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And it's just not possible because that's who they are. So I hope you enjoy this episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

And if you don't, keep it to yourself.

[Podcast Announcer]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's guest Producer Josh over there. Don't be confused. Everybody there more than one Josh in the world.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's nice to hear. You finally admit that.

[Josh Clark]

It's taking a long time. A lot of therapy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Hey, nice segue.

[Josh Clark]

It's like a short stuff. I'm like, let's get to it. Let's get going.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, I have a COA to issue.

[Josh Clark]

You know what cracks me up is people who are still like, what does that mean?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You figure it out. You can email us.

[Josh Clark]

Eventually some people will.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So my COA is just a personal COA that I'm going to try and just disguise my disdain for this entire topic.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But I might not do a great job about it.

[Josh Clark]

Well, you've already shown your hand.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, good. That's my coa.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I don't think there's too many stuff you should know, listeners who are probably into this.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But part of the problem is. We'll see later in this episode, is part of the problem with conversion therapy's coverage in the media is that it has largely been fairly even handed and described as, like, this controversial therapy and not said, this scam and this junk science fraud perpetrated by zealots.

[Josh Clark]

Super harmful.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So that's where I am.

[Josh Clark]

You know, that stuck out to me, too, that in the late 90s. We'll talk about it. Especially when it was treated evenhandedly. And it made me think, like, we should do an episode on that. Like the. Like, should the media treat all sides of an issue equally? And if it does, does that just, like, perpetuate ignorance? Or if it doesn't, does that, like, support fascism?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Like it's a. It's a hornet nest. I really think we should do it sometime.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It is. That's a good, good call.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you, Charles.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I don't know how we. I mean, I guess it could be researched.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Surely somebody's done a think piece on it that we can springboard off of, you know?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

A think piece. That's right.

[Josh Clark]

That's what we do most of our research on. Think pieces.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

This is from one of our great writers, Julia Leighton, and she put this. A lot of this stuff together for us.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. She did a good job on this.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So I like the additional histories you found out, though.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because this. So we will define it first and then we'll talk about some histories, but this stuff goes back way further than you would think. But what we're talking about today is called conversion therapy. Reparative therapy, Ex gay therapy, where reparative.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Therapy is trademarked, by the way. We should say, well, you couldn't hear.

[Josh Clark]

It, but under my breath I said.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

More like ts.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It was trademarked by a psychologist named Joseph Nicolosi Sr. So what? Conversion therapy is probably what we're going to mostly call it, though what it is is it's an alleged psychological theory and practice that is based on the idea that all people are born heterosexual. And because of.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Certain events, past traumas, usually.

[Josh Clark]

Traumas, typically. But also the family dynamics play a huge role. People who would otherwise are meant to be heterosexual can be accidentally steered into.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Homosexuality and therefore can be purposefully steered back.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

Cured.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yes, cured.

[Josh Clark]

Being gay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right. Back to the righteous land of heterosexuality.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And as you can imagine, that this is very popular with the fundamentalist Christian right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

And I mean, like, that's not even like a guess. Like it overtly is. They've adopted and taken on ex gay, the ex gay movement as basically one of the. What's it called in a tent pole? A tent post. Sure. One of the planks in the Christian rights platform for social change.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, it is a. It was officially part of the 2016 Republican Party platform, even. What? That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Well, wait, the whole RNC.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Which has been called the 2016 platform, has been called by far the most anti LG TBQ platform in the nation's history.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. I mean, yeah. If that's a plank in the party's platform, that's pretty significant. Like, they don't throw just anything in there.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, they don't.

[Josh Clark]

So with the ex gay movement and conversion therapy, I saw it described, at least back in the late 90s, as a front in the culture war that's as strong and as significant as abortion. Like, the Christian right in particular has basically dedicated itself to stamping out gayness and by converting gay people to straightness. The problem is there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that that is even possible.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And the problem is when you try and stamp out gayness, that creates a good beat that you can dance to.

[Josh Clark]

It makes that sound. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Stop stamping.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I had. Actually, I went to. Well, should I say this?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I don't know. Sure.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Why not? Because this is the truth. I went to a church camp once when I was a youth.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I figured a story or two like this.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

We're getting that. They talked about stomping your feet to the music or whatever they were playing, and they literally said, don't alternate feet because that's too close to dancing.

[Sponsor/Disclaimer Voice]

Wow. Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And these Weren't like. I mean, these were pretty mainstream Baptist church camps. It wasn't like I went to some snake handling thing. No, not at all.

[Josh Clark]

You did a really good episode on that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that was a good one. So anyway, stomp your feet, everybody. Just don't alternate.

[Josh Clark]

So you stomp them both at once, because that's just.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Stomp one foot. Just stomp your right foot.

[Josh Clark]

I was going to say that's just jumping lightly. Okay, so that's what we're talking about is conversion therapy. And like I said, it became part of the Christian rights kind of philosophy and part of their culture war. The culture war they're fighting. But it goes back way further than that. I think it was the late 90s when the right kind of adopted it. As a matter of fact, into the 19th century. There were people who subscribed to this, but they were all psychologists. This is back at the time when you could be a ghost investigator and say, I'm a psychologist. This is the times when you could say, this cigar reminds you of your mother. You know what I'm saying?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And you could be a psychologist. You could be a father of psychology at that point.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You dug up a great article from history.com called Gay Conversion Therapy's Disturbing 19th Century Origins by Aaron Blakemore.

[Josh Clark]

Nice attribution, Chuck.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, well, Aaron wrote a great article, and in it she talks about in 1899, this hypnosis. Well, again, in the days where you could be a hypnotist and be a legitimate scientist at the same time.

[Josh Clark]

Should I get into stage shows or psychology?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Where's the money? But he was German, of course, and he claimed to have turned a gay man straight after 45 hypnosis sessions and some other therapies. And that's sort of the first evidence of what we would later call conversion therapy starting up. Yeah. Although I'm sure even before that, people, they probably didn't call it conversion therapy, but if you were an effeminate man, you were no doubt probably beaten by your parents and shunned by your community. Right.

[Josh Clark]

I think one of the other things that's kind of a hallmark of this long tradition of converting people from being gay to straight or trying to is this idea that there's something wrong with you if you're gay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And that that idea can actually become hung up on the individual, the gay person, so that they actually do seek out help.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

In becoming straight. But the problem is in seeking that help, they're going to be frustrated and they're ultimately probably going to be. They're going to have feelings of shame, guilt, inadequacy, that they're not capable of helping themselves. There's something wrong with them. Why can't they just be straight kind of thing. And then if you're a minor and your parents are forcing this on you, then that raises a whole other can of worms, of ethical dilemmas.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

But from the outset, there were probably people who sought out hypnotists and other psychologists for help. It wasn't just people walking around kidnapping gay people and taking them off the street and trying to convert them.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right. It could have very well been some man that's like, wait a minute. I don't feel normal feelings because I'm looking at Joe out there in the field and things are happening, if you know what I mean, Doc. And they're like, well, come on in.

[Josh Clark]

Watching him swing that scythe and take his sweaty shirt off, wring it over his face, that kind of thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So just sit down and follow the wristwatch with your eyes, or I guess the pocket watch. That'd be a weird technique. Swing your arm.

[Josh Clark]

See, I'm moving my wristwatch.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But from that same history.com article there, she talks about some of the early attempts, like with electroconvulsive therapy, lobotomies. I think we even talked about some in the lobotomies episode.

[Josh Clark]

Man, they would give you a lobotomy for anything.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, sure.

[Josh Clark]

What about testicular transplantation?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Because that was a theory from a doctor, an endocrinologist named Eugene Steinoch, who thought that your testicles were the root of the problem.

[Josh Clark]

Well, a lot of people did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

There was like a.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You could have gay testicles, literally, and they would swap them out for straight ones.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And there's no. I could not find any evidence one way or the other that any of these testicular transplants worked or were successful.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I don't think they were, but I.

[Josh Clark]

Didn'T see anything that said, like, all of them just failed or whatever, but, like, what happened? And they just shrivel up and fall off or something.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So you mean if it actually, like, medically took to the body or.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's what I mean.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Saying, like, did it convert them? Did it work? Right, yeah, no, yeah, that's the answer. But, yeah, I didn't know that you could, in the 1920s, have a testicle transplant successfully.

[Josh Clark]

That's what I'm saying. Like, I surely. I mean, at some point, and we must have talked about this in the Michael Dillon episode, we talked about the. I don't think it was. But it wasn't a transplant. It was just a straight up removal, an orchiectomy, I believe castration.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

So.

[Josh Clark]

But at some point, testicles have been transplanted onto a person successfully. When did that happen, is my question.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

He probably did to a dog first.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But I mean, think about it like if it didn't work. Well, sorry, you're castrated now.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They probably didn't say sorry, though.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

No.

[Josh Clark]

But we took your gay testicles. The heterosexual testicles just didn't pan out.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But now you don't have any testicles, gay or otherwise.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Some of the other awful techniques that they would use back in the day were chemicals that they might have to make you wretch and vomit when you look at, you know, pictures of people of the same sex.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

That's called covert sensitization.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Yep. Or if you're cross dressing, maybe. Same thing.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. Or if look in a mirror and.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Be disgusted with yourself and retch and vomit.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And very sadly, if you have, say, like a. Someone you are in a relationship with that you love, they might show you pictures of that person and carry out aversive therapy or aversive conditioning. What's weird is you said these are things they used to carry out. From what I've seen, this stuff still goes on today.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, some of it.

[Josh Clark]

So what we're talking about, though, back in the 19th and most of the first half or so of the 20th century, this was all like the domain of psychology. And then eventually gay psychologists and other straight psychologists too were basically like, this is wrong. Like the science is not adding up. This is just incorrect.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. There were medical doctors too, though. It wasn't just psychologists.

[Josh Clark]

Right, sure.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So eventually, in 1973, the American Psychological association said, hey, big news. We're no longer going to classify. Homosexuality is a mental disorder.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And a certain part of the population went, yeah, it's 1972. Why did it take this long?

[Josh Clark]

Right, exactly.

[Sponsor/Disclaimer Voice]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But that was a big deal. And at that point, psychology mostly abandoned the idea that being gay was a disorder of any kind. And therefore there was no point in researching how to cure someone of being gay. And so it turned its back on this whole history of conversion. Conversion. But it didn't fully die away. And I believe starting in like the 80s, the Christian rite started to kind of pick up on it and kind of breathe new life into it again.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Think we should take a break?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That's a robust and a half setup.

[Josh Clark]

Is that? Oh, I thought we were already into it. Oh my gosh.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, it wasn't just the setup. It was more.

[Josh Clark]

You're right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

We'll be right back.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, the stuff we learn from Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know.

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And hi, I'm Kal Penn and we're the hosts of Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

[Ed Helms]

This week on the podcast I am sitting down with Jenny Garth, host of the iHeart podcast. I choose me to discuss the new Audible adaptation of the timeless Jane Austen classic Pride and Poor prejudice. This is not a trick question. There's no wrong answer. What role would I play?

[Podcast Announcer]

You know what?

[Josh Clark]

I can see you as Mr. Darcy.

[Podcast Announcer]

You got a little Colin Firth.

[Ed Helms]

Okay, that's really sweet. I appreciate that. But are you sure I'm not the dad?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm not Mr. Bennett.

[Ed Helms]

Here, listen to Earsay the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, so let's talk a little bit about. Because there's a couple of. A couple of schools of thought here, and I hesitate to call the one more bonafide. But, you know, there's conversion therapy that can happen at a licensed therapist's office. And there's conversion therapy that can happen in, you know, somebody's basement or the basement of a church.

[Josh Clark]

I was gonna say basement too.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Or a room. Doesn't have to be a basement.

[Josh Clark]

I know, but a basement makes it seem sinister.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

It's probably.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Probably why I said it. So there are two sort of ways that can happen. We're gonna talk a little bit about the first way. The patented Way Reparative Therapy trademark by Joseph Nicolosi Sr. That guy doesn't even.

[Josh Clark]

Get the Italian accent, man. And I don't blame you.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

He doesn't. Which we should say, by the way, in July of this year, Amazon stopped carrying his works on their website.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because they considered them. That they promoted fraud.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Which we'll get to.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Which is interesting.

[Josh Clark]

But this guy is like a psychologist. Yeah, he's a trained psychologist who basically said, I'm gonna take everything I learned and direct it toward curing gay people of being gay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I don't know much about. Do you know much about his religiosity or.

[Josh Clark]

I think he was Jewish.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

And born in Brooklyn, from what I understand. I read a really, really. Not a think piece, but a memoir in the American Prospect from American Prospector from 2012. Yeah, this is different. They're gold. By Gabriel Arana.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

It's called My so Called Ex Gay Life. It's definitely worth reading, but it's a great look at conversion therapy, but also is overlaid with his personal experience with it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Okay. At any rate, his contention was that, like we said, you develop homosexuality or homosexual feelings, at least because of a result of environmental conditions, childhood traumas, and they call it same sex attraction. Ssa. And that could stem, in his opinion, from a few different things. Desire for adventure, peer acceptance, loneliness or boredom or curiosity, approval or affection from males. A lot of this is centered on men, although it's certainly. Women have been involved in this as well.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we'll get to that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But a lot of them over. A lot of this over the years is making gay men straight.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But it's not exclusive to that.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's not.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

General rebellion, which is pretty funny. And then sexual molestation by another male.

[Josh Clark]

I think that is a very like. I think that the idea that that leads to being gay is very widespread in culture well beyond the Christian right or people who believe in conversion therapy. The idea that if you're sexually abused by a man or somebody of your same sex, you become gay, which is just wrong. But I think a lot of people still believe that. I know. That's what I thought when I was a kid.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's not wrong.

[Josh Clark]

Well, no, it's utterly wrong, but, yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And the whole basis of Nicolosi's theory, he takes back to a study from 1992 called Demography of Sexual Orientation in Adolescence. And this was an actual study from the Journal of Pediatrics that looked at patterns of sexual orientation in high school students in Minnesota. And what they found out was that younger teens in Minnesota in this study were more likely to express sexual confusion about their orientation when they were younger. And as they grew older, they were less confused about their sexual identity and orientation.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And that's a legit study.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And I think that probably anyone who's ever been an early teenager and a late teenager can be like. That sounds about right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. You know, but the extrapolation that Nicolosi did was what the problem is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So Nicolosi was saying, like, yes, that shows that, like, you're. You're in a dangerous place. Place earlier on. And that if a couple of things happen in a certain way, you can be veered off of this natural path toward heterosexuality into homosexuality.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And also, more dangerously, that means we got to get them while they're young.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So one of the other things that he really based his practice on was this family triad of a domineering over attendant mother, a passive, detached father, and a sensitive child. Boogie Nights in kind of. That was a good one in that. That that triangle, like, you would, like, almost certainly have a gay kid if somebody didn't intervene. So he decided, like, this was his career, was intervening in that kind of stuff. But that in and of itself has never been proven to create gay kids. Whether you believe in conversion therapy or not, if you have a domineering mother and absent father, and you're like a sensitive type who likes dolls even. Doesn't mean you're going to turn gay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

This is the basis of that, though, is that, yes, you will turn gay. And still to this day, this idea is allowed to live because science has never fully satisfied the question, like, are we born gay? Do we develop being gay? And it looks like it's on a pretty strong track toward a genetic basis of homosexuality.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But it's still. Nothing's definitive. And so people can say, well, maybe we do develop, you know, in adolescence, you know, being gay or whatever, because science has not filled this void quite yet.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And the way Nicolosi would write about this stuff and describe it is in a very sort of professional, innocuous type way where a casual reader might say, well, this seems totally valid and above board.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. A Newsweek reader or an Oprah viewer.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. This is one of the things, I think this is from one of his books, and this is how he describes the relationship from patient to therapist. The client has come to the therapist seeking assistance to reduce something distressing to him. And the RT psychotherapist agrees to share his professional experience and education to help the client meet his own goal. He. His own goal. The therapist enters into a collaborative relationship, agreeing to work with the client to reduce his unwanted attractions and explore his heterosexual potential, which, again, it seems very innocuous. And there are plenty of cases where a grown man or woman of their own volition goes and seeks this out.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But what they don't say is what happens many times is a parent forces their young child to do this.

[Josh Clark]

No, that's a big one. It's a big one. In this. That American Prosecut, Prospect Magazine, the author was, like, in his early teens when he went to Nicolosi's therapy, but he said everybody else in the group was in their, like, 40s or 50s. So it was definitely both.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But there's something here that's really important because, like you said, if you just read this stuff, it does sound innocuous. It's all very much based on things like cognitive behavioral therapy, like stuff that works. Which means that this works in a weird, twisted way, which we'll talk about, but not in the way it's ultimately meant to. It works in a bent way.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, do you want me to explain now? I feel like I should.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I take issue with the word works at all. There are situations where it might prevent someone from acting on a homosexual impulse.

[Josh Clark]

That's What?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I mean, yeah. But that doesn't change the nature of their sexuality.

[Josh Clark]

No, no. Right. And ultimately preventing someone or training someone to not act on their sexuality is damaging in and of itself and causes all sorts of other problems.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But maybe good enough for a really religious family.

[Sponsor/Disclaimer Voice]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You know?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Well, that's what I read is that over time, as the Christian right adopted the idea of, you know, championing the ex gay movement, that part of that was accepting gay people who refrain from gay sex.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So if you were like, I'm gay, I'm never gonna be straight. I tried, but I don't have sex with men, but I won't commit. Welcome in church. Yeah, yeah. So what I was saying, though, is with. With Nicolosi's thing, there's something fundamentally wrong with it. And that if somebody came to you and said, I'm tired of being white.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Or black or Hispanic or straight, I can't stand it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You wouldn't say, oh, well, let's figure out how to make you not black or white or Hispanic or straight. Let's figure out how to change you. They would say any therapist worth their salt would say, well, no, there's a lot of great things about being white or black or Hispanic or straight, and let's focus on that so that you can own your identity. The conversion therapy does the opposite, says, yes, let's figure out how to get the gay out of you.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Let's change your identity. Because this group of society has said that it's unacceptable.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And that is an extraordinarily damaging position to come from. And that is the basis of conversion therapy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And as we'll see later on, the AMA's official stance is that it is, and we'll read the quote later, that it is a damaging prospect and creates real harm.

[Josh Clark]

An American Prospector magazine.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So this approach by Nicolosi has four steps to it. The first one is interesting because it's the disclosure of the therapist's personal, professional, philosophical and religious views on homosexuality, which includes. Nicolosi says the gay affirmative therapist also discloses his philosophical views to the client, but from a gay affirmative perspective. Does he just put that in there to, like, cover his faces?

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

No.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It's true, though, because you wouldn't send your son or daughter to a gay affirmative therapist to convert them into.

[Josh Clark]

Right. I think this is what he's saying. You've been to therapy before, right?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Have you ever noticed that when you first. Your first session, the therapist tells you a lot about themselves and what they think about mental health or life or whatever.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I'm always like, wait a minute, what about my problems?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I thought we were talking about me.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm getting charged for this.

[Josh Clark]

I don't care about your family. That's what he's saying that they do. But because this is about being gay, that's what they're going to talk about is their views or whatever.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Interesting.

[Josh Clark]

They're gonna share their opinions of it and that they think that there's problems with it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You know what? My line is that the therapist, when they do all that stuff, I'm like, great. That's really interesting. At the end, I'm like, you wanna start the clock now?

[Josh Clark]

Right. Nice. Either that or I can prorate.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Number two of the four steps is encouragement of the client's inquiry. So basically asking the client the questions, examining their feelings to try and discover, like, what lies beneath.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Number three, resolution of past trauma. If it is in fact one of the reasons they suspect this person has gone down the road to homosexuality. And then education regarding features of homosexuality, which includes everything from what motivates you to do this to, you know, that if you are gay, then this lifestyle ends in a very bad way for you. Right.

[Josh Clark]

That there's a lot of physical harm, social harm.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Emotional harm.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, emotional.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So what's weird, though, is like, I can't. Nicolosi is like a tough person to paint with just one brush. Even though I totally disagree with what he dedicated his career to, he doesn't seem, at least from what I've read and including that American Prospect article from somebody who was a patient of his for years.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

He doesn't seem to have been like, any sort of evil man or anything like that. I don't know if he just thought, like, this was a real thing and he was really helping people or what. But, for example, there's this one quote from Gabriel Ariana who said that he had been, like, experimenting with sexual encounters with other men as a teenager. And he said that he'd been meeting men off of the Internet. And he told Nicolosi, like, he's like, I trusted the guy enough to share this in therapy. And he said that Nicolosi told me to be careful meeting men off the Internet, but that I shouldn't dwell on it or feel guilty. He said my sexual behavior was of secondary importance. If I understood myself and worked on my relationships with men, the attractions would take care of themselves. I just had to be patient, which is. I mean, that's a pretty great thing for A therapist to tell a patient, don't dwell on it, don't feel guilty, just accept it and move on and learn from it or whatever.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But then the second part is where it goes downhill. Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And so the thing is, with conversion therapy, in most cases, Nicolosi is like, he's almost a shining example in a weird way, whereas other people associated with it are. It's very easy to paint them with just one brush.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You know, so we should talk a little bit about the argument against. A little bit more about the argument against, which includes a little bit more history. You know, we talked about the earliest stages of conversion therapy in the late 1800s, but it really kind of picked up steam in the United states in the 1960s when the Civil rights movement, you know, when gay people started coming out of the closet more, presenting themselves more in public gay bars, popping up, things like that.

[Josh Clark]

Stonewall.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Stonewall, of course, which, you know, anytime something like that is becoming a little more accepted in the mainstream, there's going to be another side that really roots down and digs in. And that's sort of how the modern gay conversion therapy movement was born. Was out of homosexuality becoming more accepted.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I read a really interesting journal article from 2007 by Robinson and Spivey. It was in Gender and Society, the journal, and they basically, they looked into the ex gay movement, not necessarily the psychology community's basis of it, but the later on, the adoption of it by the Christian right. And they explained why the Christian right would be interested in that. And they were interested in it and dug in, like you said, because they saw homosexuality and feminism in particular as signs of a decadent society that would eventually cause us to crumble and collapse. And this is according to Robinson and Spivey. I haven't actually interviewed anyone on the Christian right who believes this, but they are academics and this was a peer reviewed journal. That masculinity is the antidote to that. It's the antidote to homosexuality, it's the antidote to feminism. And that it was up to each man to be a strong leader among women and children and to be as masculine as possible. That's how you did that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I heard sermons every Sunday. Well, not every Sunday, but I heard sermons on many Sundays where they were still saying, wives, submit to your husbands straight out of the Bible, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And like most of the antidote is dads, you're being way too passive. You need to step up and be the leader of your family. But also, moms, you can help by Saying, oh, you have a question, Ask your father. I defer to your father. Go ask your father.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

And just.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, being passive.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, which goes back to the. That triad you mentioned earlier about the domineering mother. The passive father equals gay.

[Josh Clark]

That's basically the basis of the whole thing from what I could tell, is that at least among the Christian right, that if the father is not the dominant and leading figure in the family, that's where the trouble comes from. And that can produce homosexual children.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Interesting.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So something we failed to mention as part of the AMA's change in 1972, or was that the APA APA APA was they said, and this is an important distinction, is that homosexuality, they deemed a normal variation, not deviation, but a variation in human sexual orientation. And like other normal sexual orientations, can't be changed. In other words, you can't make a straight person gay any more than you can make a gay person straight is what that equals.

[Josh Clark]

And because of that, as we'll see later on, that became the basis for this idea that conversion therapy is in essence a fraud.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Because it purports to do something that can't be done.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Should we take another break?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man, really? They're coming hard and fast. We can wait a bit. Like men swinging scythes in sweaty shirts on the field.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, let's take another break and we'll talk about what might happen in conversion therapy right after this.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, the stuff we learn from Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Support for the show Today comes from public.com. you're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side. The point is, you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's why they built an investing.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

Platform for those who take it seriously.

[Josh Clark]

On public, you can put together a.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

Multi asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there. Plus an industry leading 3.6% APY high yield cash account.

[Chuck Bryant]

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk paid for by Public Investing.

[Sponsor/Disclaimer Voice]

All investing involves risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities, options and bonds and a self directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Crypto trading provided by ZeroHash Complete disclosures [e-mail] Disclosures.

[Podcast Announcer]

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[Ed Helms]

Hey everyone, Ed Helms here.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And hi, I'm Kal Penn and we're.

[Chuck Bryant]

The hosts of Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

[Ed Helms]

This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Jenny Garth, host of the iHeart podcast. I choose me to discuss the new Audible adaptation of the timeless Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice. This is not a trick question. There's no wrong answer. What role would I play?

[Podcast Announcer]

You know what?

[Josh Clark]

I can see you as Mr. Darcy.

[Podcast Announcer]

You got a little Colin Firth.

[Ed Helms]

Okay, that's really sweet. I appreciate that. But are you sure I'm not the dad?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm not Mr. Bennett here.

[Ed Helms]

Listen to Earsay the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

Learning stuff is fun with Josh and Chuck. Solution now. All right, Chuck, I'm excited about this part.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You're excited about the horror show of conversion therapy.

[Josh Clark]

It's not all horror show. Some of it is just outright laughable.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So statistically.

[Josh Clark]

Also. Also. I'm sorry everybody. I want to say something too.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

We typically try to be super objective. This one is very tough.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

We have science on our side too.

[Josh Clark]

This was really hard for me to research. Yeah, nothing is ever hard for me to research. This one was. It was like turning over a log and finding it like maggots writhing underneath. That was what researching this one was like. I just kept putting it off. I would just keep leaving it and just going and watching like the office or something. Like anything but researching this because it's super sad.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It is that children are taken at their most vulnerable Time in adolescence when they don't know what's going on and they're told that they're wrong and they're sinning and they're dirty.

[Josh Clark]

That is a part of why it's sad. Another part to me of why it's sad is that the idea that grownups would direct this much thought and attention and effort into slamming their head up against a wall to try to change someone else to a way they think they should be.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

That. That I think is that that's. That's at least as sad to me as the children being misdirected like this. Because a kid can go on and grow up and be like, geez, my family was super messed up. I'm really glad I don't speak to them anymore because I'm much happier over here.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right, well, that can happen in the ideal circumstance.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. Or the ideal circumstances that the family's just like, hey, we're really screwed up. We're really sorry. We love you no matter who you are. But the idea that there's a group, a social movement dedicated to just eradicating another group of people, I find that very hard to swallow.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, agreed. So apparently, statistically, about or close to 700,000 people in the United States have undergone conversion therapy. And we should mention that it's a real problem in places like Africa and Asia and South America where you can.

[Josh Clark]

Still be in prison for being gay. Like, Uganda's a big. A big place for that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Conversion therapy is, like, on the rise in those places and other places. Right, but we're talking about the United States in this case, 700,000 people. And like we said, sometimes it is with a licensed therapist. Sometimes it's done by a religious advisor in a basement or at a church.

[Josh Clark]

You know what that reminded me of is another thing we need to talk about. Sometimes exorcisms, like church exorcisms.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

We've done exorcisms.

[Josh Clark]

We did, like, straight up Roman Catholic exorcisms.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

I'm talking like the kind that somebody does in the basement of their house.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

Because they're supposedly an exorcist or something like that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Sure. Backdoor exorcism, Basically black market.

[Josh Clark]

You'll see. You'll be like, oh, man, we should be talking about this.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, well, I agree already. I trust you. Okay, so the AMA says that conversion therapy programs may utilize harmful psychological techniques. We were talking earlier about aversion therapy, and given chemicals, they can still be given noxious stimulus. And I didn't see exactly what that entailed, or could entail.

[Josh Clark]

There was a guy named Robert Gilbraith Heath who was the father of implanting electrodes into the brain to deliver shocks. And one of the things he directed that toward was curing gay people. I don't think anyone in their basement is implanting electrodes or whatever, but there are things like giving people like nausea, nausea inducing medications. Is one showing them pictures that might nauseate and then figuring out how to associate that with masturbating the thoughts of other men or something like that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, we should talk about a few of these specifically. I mean, all you have to do is look up on a search engine conversion therapy, horror stories, and there are plenty of people out there saying what happened to them.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, look up also conversion therapy super happy fun stories and you're going to come back with almost nothing.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Google 0 results. There was one teenager who said that he was forced to wear a backpack with 40 pounds of rocks 18 hours a day to just signify the physical burden of being gay.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

One person's family gave them a fake funeral, closed casket funeral in front of him, where they said that he died of AIDS and they said their final goodbyes because he went down the sinful.

[Josh Clark]

Path pretending he wasn't there. Like that he was dead and in the casket.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

Talking about him in third person.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right, his family. One reported being told to strip naked in front of a mirror and say disparaging things about themselves.

[Josh Clark]

I just do that normally, though.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, I did read one account where they basically said the whole idea is to break you down to nothing in the worst way possible and then build you back up again in the image that they want.

[Josh Clark]

So I get the impression that that is one route, but that is not necessarily what you're gonna get at any place you go for conversion therapy. There's other ones that say that's the.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Problem is we don't know because so many people don't talk about it.

[Josh Clark]

Right. There's some that like, you would go to that say, okay, we're not going to abuse you or anything like that, but the basis of our beliefs in this is that you are gay because either you had an absent father, a domineering mother, some combination of the two, or you always wanted to be loved and popular among your male peers and you didn't get that. So now you are misdirecting this need, this unmet need toward having anonymous gay sex on the dance floor with some dude in Miami or whatever. So we need to figure out how to Meet that need and have you hang out with guys who will tell you how cool you are and how popular you are.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like tailgating or something.

[Josh Clark]

Kind of. And while we're at it, we're gonna do that by accenting the masculinity. We're gonna teach you how to be masculine so that you can hang out with dudes in the real world and they will think you're cool. So things like we're gonna teach you how to change the oil in your car. We're gonna teach you to sit without crossing your legs. No joke. There was a guy who's gonna teach.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You how to man spread on the subway.

[Josh Clark]

There's a guy who's kind of a prominent thinker, I think, I think he was. I saw him as a sexologist, maybe a Christian sexologist. Gerhard van den Ardluig. It's pretty great. I think I nailed it. He said that homosexual men need to unlearn avoidance of getting their hands dirty, doing manual work like chopping wood, painting a house using a shovel. And that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I say no thanks to all three. I chop wood. That's kind of fun.

[Josh Clark]

It is fun. And that not necessarily just here's an axe, start chopping wood. You're going to just suddenly become cured. But that, that is part of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And in this thought, this tack where they're not abusing you, they're not degrading you or anything like that, they're teaching you masculinity and manliness, that the ultimate aim and goal of that is to go get married and have a kid.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Or kids.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And that, that is a big part of conversion therapy. It was for a very long time was saying you might still be gay or whatever, but you're not really gay, you're now married and you have a kid and that is what you're dedicating yourself to.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. You're a wood chopping, football throwing dude.

[Josh Clark]

With a pencil thin mustache.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, no, no, not that. So in 1974, we should talk about George Rkers. He was a psychologist who tested whether or not this was an effective treatment. And he had a four. This wasn't his boy, but this was his client. I guess client's a weird way to put it. This child was forced to go to this person at four and a half years old. And this is a boy manifesting childhood cross gender identity. And they said this is based on the clothes that this boy wears. And now of course, looking at this, it was probably a transgender.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Or gender fluid.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I Mean, it's hard to tell. Cause this was 1974 and the way they wrote about it, it's hard to kind of piece it together.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And it's also like, just how much of this behavior did this child exhibit? Like, it makes it seem like this is all the kid did, was act like a girl when he was a boy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

What else was he into? What else? You know, it's just such a narrow picture of the subject.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Of course. So in the end, Wreckers did something super damaging. He trained the boy's mother to be the therapist. Like, here's what you need to do. So this kid can get 247 therapy from you and basically punish feminine behaviors, reinforce masculine behaviors at all times. And they said that, hey, this is working because every time this boy gets punished for doing something feminine, he stops and like chops wood or throws the football and gets a reward. So because he's four and a half years old, he's doing the things that their parents congratulate him for and reward him for.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And not doing the things that he's getting punished for.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

The punishment is what stood out to me. It's just so sad that the mother was instructed to reject him. To basically ignore him when he acted like a girl, but not ignore him. Like pretend it's not going on. Like let him know that she is giving him the cold shoulder and that that's how he learned.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

That is just devastating.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It's heartbreaking. And what's heartbreaking is this was used as an example. Like, see, this works. This four and a half year old is now acting more masculine and is not gonna grow up to be gay. And this child died by suicide at the age of 30. Yeah, like, that's the end result of this road. That's where it ends up.

[Josh Clark]

And that's what I meant earlier when I said, like, it does kind of work because it follows psychological techniques that actually work. But it works in like kind of a bent way where yes, you can train somebody, you can mold a 4 year old to behave in a certain way by conditioning them. It's possible you can get somebody to do just about anything like that. But the ramifications, the results, the damage to the individual's identity that will eventually come out later are widespread and sweeping.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And that's the point. That's why you shouldn't monkey around with somebody's identity using proven psychological techniques. That's what's so evil about the whole thing.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, my daughter's four and a half. I had A hard time even getting through this stuff.

[Josh Clark]

And then also if somebody. This is the other thing too. If you're a conversion therapy advocate or activist or practitioner and you say, no, there are people out there who are distressed, who are experiencing psychological distress for being gay, yes, that's true. I guarantee that there are people like that out there. But directing them toward working on not being gay is not the answer.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, go to regular therapy and learn.

[Josh Clark]

To love that you're gay and go find a church that accepts gay people. There's step two.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, because they're out there. Let's talk about the science of it. Because the.

[Josh Clark]

We are so contributing to a decadent society.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

In 2009, there was a report from the APA task force on appropriate therapeutic responses to sexual orientation. Quite a read. And this was the actual final stance was sexual orientation change efforts can pose critical health risks to lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Critical health risks. Not emotional, not, I mean, it's part of emotional health too, but critical health risks. And if you read the review of research and peer reviewed literature and the findings of what it can result in, it reads like the worst pharma ad disclaimer you've ever heard. Depression, guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, shame, self hatred, hostility, dehumanization, betrayal, social withdrawal, substance abuse, stress, sexual dysfunction, loss of faith and suicidality. And on that last note, homosexual teens attempt suicide more often than heterosexual teens. And then among those homosexual teens, you're twice as likely to try that if your parents have rejected you and three times as likely if you have undergone conversion therapy.

[Josh Clark]

Three times as likely? Yes. Compared to a heterosexual teen.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right, man.

[Josh Clark]

Well, there you have it. That was just the apa. A bunch of different associations like legit medical and psychological associations have come out and condemned in no uncertain terms conversion therapy. And all of these condemnations basically follow two different texts. One, there is no science backing up the idea that you can change somebody from homosexuality to heterosexuality. And number two, there is science backing up the idea that trying to do that causes damage to the individual. So don't do that. And as a matter of fact, some countries and states in the United States have said, this is outlawed, you can't do this anymore, everybody. Which is really touchy stuff because again, the Christian right kind of adopted it and, and we don't really infringe on religious beliefs, but that's how strong these condemnations have been that they're saying. We'll kind of start to wade into that with this one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And we'll talk about the Legalities of recent years in a sec. But before that, between the 70s and the APA's stance changing things a little bit, then through the 80s and 90s, where conversion therapy was really sort of hitting its peak, I think in America, there were a few high profile cases that were exposed that have helped sway things a little bit back to sanity in more recent years.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So before those high profile cases, and I mean, right before them, I think in 1998, a coalition of church groups got together and sponsored an ad campaign, something like a $600,000 ad campaign in things like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, all this. And this ad featured John and Ann, I believe Ann Polk, both of whom were formerly gay but were now ex gay and married. And married and had a kid and said, gay conversion helps. And at the time, there wasn't a lot of ink on the other side saying, actually this is totally discredited. And it captured everybody's attention. And this is when the Christian right came in and said, we're gonna make this huge push in the culture war. And it really worked. That's when that Newsweek story came out.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they were on the COVID of Newsweek. He was the leader of an ex gay organization called Exodus International. John Paul was right.

[Josh Clark]

And it brought a lot of attention.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he was the poster boy.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And Exodus International in particular became one of two main umbrella organizations. They were kind of like the. I saw it put the spiritual version of this, the ex gay movement, and then something called narth, the national association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality was like the scientific branch of the ex gay movement.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And so Exodus International became a very well known, prominent organization in the late 90s. But within two, three years.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Two.

[Josh Clark]

It would basically be the poster child for how conversion therapy doesn't work.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Because John Paul is gay. In 2000, just two years later, he was photographed coming out of a gay bar in Washington D.C. at the time. He refuted that. He didn't refute that he was there. He said what you always say. I didn't know it was a gay bar.

[Josh Clark]

I went in there asking for directions.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, I saw he went in to use the bathroom. So.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Either way.

[Josh Clark]

I just read the articles and then.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

They were like, but you were in there for a couple of hours. Did you get the directions and use the bathroom?

[Josh Clark]

It clearly says Blue Oyster in neon. Have you not seen the Police Academy movies?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That was the name of it in the Police Academy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

The Blue Oyster Bar.

[Josh Clark]

Din din din, din, din din din din.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, goodness. And John Paul we should say now lives life as a gay man and is a chef. He's been on like some celebrity chef shows.

[Josh Clark]

Is that right?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Uh huh. Cool. And he is living his best life. He's living his best life from what it looks like.

[Josh Clark]

So he's no longer married any longer.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

To Ann, actually, that I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

Because there are some. We'll keep going.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I don't think he is, but there are a couple of people that are. There was in 2003, Michael Johnston. He was another person touted as an ex gay success story. Founder of National Coming out of Homosexuality Day. He actually was. He was found out to be having sex with men that he met online and infected them with hiv. Very big deal. And then there's Ted Haggard, of course, in 2006.

[Josh Clark]

I remember this.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he was a preacher and president of the national association of Evangelicals. Or was at the time, I guess, very much an anti gay leader in the religious circles. And this one sort of unfolded little by little, like, hey, this guy came out and said, this guy had a relationship with me for like three years. We did crystal meth together. And then Haggard came out and said, so cliche. You know what, I have to admit, I sinned. I bought crystal meth, but I didn't use it. I threw it in the trash because I wouldn't succumb to the sin.

[Josh Clark]

Is that what he said?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he says he did buy crystal meth. Cause I assume there was proof. And he said that he didn't use it at all. He threw it in the trash before he used it. Where the other guy was like, no, he did tons of meth and had gay sex a lot.

[Josh Clark]

He said, oh, I know what he's talking about. On like day four of us staying up, he like freaked out and threw it in the trash. But then he went back and got it. And the proof was that he paid for it by check maybe.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, no, probably not. I don't think meth dealers take checks anymore, do they?

[Josh Clark]

I don't think so.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And then he was outed by a. Having a relationship with an underage boy. A sexual relationship.

[Josh Clark]

This was Ted Haggard again?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And the boy sued and it was settled by the church with a dollar figure. I think it was like 180 grand. And then finally in 2011, Ted Haggard comes out and is like, all right, so I did have a relationship with a boy, but we never touched each other. I just masturbated in front of him.

[Josh Clark]

I threw him in the trash.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And in 2011, he said, you Know what? I'm bisexual. Of course I'm going to admit it. I am bisexual. But I am going to choose to live my life as a faithful heterosexual husband to my wife.

[Josh Clark]

I wonder if after he admitted that it came out as bisexual, what that felt like. If he felt like a weight was lifted or if the anxiety associated with it was just so much or, you know, what his wife knew or didn't know or thought about it. I'd be very curious to know what that, you know, what life has been like for him after that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I mean, he's a preacher again because.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, more power to him. If he's like, I'm a Christian and I'm just not going to have gay sex. That's as much a personal choice as having gay sex. You know, I mean, the whole underage boy thing, that's a huge problem that I think I'm hoping was addressed. But I wonder what his life is like now.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I mean, he's. Like I said, he's preaching again. I think in Colorado.

[Josh Clark]

He's probably a.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

Stuff you should know.

[Josh Clark]

Listen, Haggard right in.

[Sponsor/Disclaimer Voice]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

We'd like to hear from you, sir. You want to talk about the law? Because right now.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, wait, there was one more, Chuck. There's a big one.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Who? Alan Chambers.

[Narrator/Guest Speaker]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

So John Paulk, when he was outed cruising the blue oyster in D.C. back in 2000, he was running Exodus International.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

He was replaced a couple years later by Alan Chambers. And about a decade after Chambers took over Exodus International, he said, I'm gay. I've been gay. Conversion therapy doesn't work. We're shutting down Exodus International.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I apologize to the LGTBQ community.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. So within about a decade or so of the Christian right adopting the ex gay and conversion therapy pillar post as part of the platform for their culture war, the biggest organization, one of two biggest organizations dedicated to conversion therapy, said, it doesn't work. We're sorry, gay people, for all the damage we've done. That's a pretty big turn of events.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It is.

[Josh Clark]

So. Yes.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yet it still continues.

[Josh Clark]

So that led to. Yeah, so that led to a bunch of laws that are trying to keep it from continuing.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And the laws are basically usually around minors saying, you cannot force a minor to do something like this. Not, hey, the whole thing is outlawed. If you're an adult and you want to go do this, then that's up to you. As of 2019 this year, 18 states in Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico have similar bans enacted. And also it's important to point out that those bans are about the legitimate scientific community. Like you will have your license revoked. Doesn't say anything about a preacher that you go to or a youth counselor or any sort of non licensed church therapist.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It's only scientists or licensed counselors counselors or psychologists or psychiatrists or doctors, I'm sure, who can lose their license if they practice it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

But yeah, that's because there's religious freedom, I guess. You can still do that to minors, though, if it's a religious group doing it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That is what I'm not sure about. Well, it depends on the state.

[Josh Clark]

So there was a group or there was a counseling organization called Jonah and.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Jonah was this Goldberg and Burke?

[Josh Clark]

Yes, they ran Jonah, which stood for I can't find it anywhere.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I got it here. Jews offering a new alternative for healing.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. They were not only found practicing in New Jersey conversion therapy. So they both lost their licenses. They were also sued in a civil suit by former patients for fraud and lost.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It's interesting. I mean, you think about it like, wait a minute, if this is not possible and you're charging people for it, that's fraud.

[Josh Clark]

So they had like a $3.5 million settlement levied against them, but. And lost their licenses. But then they just set up shop under another name, apparently the same year of the verdict and the civil su. But for the most part, if you're a state and you pass a law banning conversion therapy to minors among medical practitioners or counselors, the courts are going to uphold that law.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's been upheld in California and New Jersey. Most of the challenges are on the grounds of free speech. And the New Jersey, when they upheld the New Jersey, or maybe it was Maryland, the judge said, we're not infringing on your free speech. You can say whatever you want, but you can't practice this therapy. That's different than free speech. You can believe what you want and say what you want, but you can't do this as part of your licensed therapy.

[Josh Clark]

It's the same thing as if you carry out quack cancer treatments that is harmful. Like you're poisoning your patients or whatever. And like they become. They lose the use of their arms and legs because of a treatment that you gave them for cancer that the American Medical association has specifically said is damaging and harmful. You're totally going to get held accountable for that. You're lucky to just lose your license in that case. This is the exact same principle.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

So because it's deals mostly with minors or Exclusively with minors. The courts have upheld it, but New York City actually is widely considered to have overstepped its bounds and actually misstepped in this kind of culture war about conversion therapy, in banning the practice among minors and adults.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And that got New York City sued, and New York City was like, well, the Supreme Court's actually gotten pretty conservative lately. I don't know if we should test this. And they repealed the band.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. As a. As a strategy.

[Josh Clark]

Right. To keep it from getting tested in the Supreme Court. Where the Supreme Court could say, no, all laws against conversion therapy are unconstitutional. You can't outlaw it or ban it in any form.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I think the Supreme Court already refused to hear one case which actually.

[Josh Clark]

Upheld the state's outlaw of.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Conversion therapy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Very interesting. There's a movie I haven't seen yet called the Miseducation of Cameron post. It's a 2018 film from the 2012 novel by Emily Danforth. Haven't seen it yet, but it's about a girl who undergoes conversion therapy. And it's Chloe Grace Moritz. You know her?

[Josh Clark]

I do. I can't put the face with the name, but I know both.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You've seen her for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. If you want to know more about arrested development, conversion therapy, all that stuff, you can. Well, I guess, start researching online, see what you think. And since I said see what you think, it's time for listener mail.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm gonna call this complaint pedantic complaint.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I write to complain. Josh, the episode on historic districts. You kept referring to them repeatedly with the indefinite article an rather than a. An historic district.

[Josh Clark]

I said Ann, that's what he says. That sounds unusual. I don't usually do that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Really?

[Josh Clark]

I guess I was just being unconsciously correct.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So is that correct?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So what's the rule? I don't even know it. Huh?

[Josh Clark]

What I just said, that's the rule. That's the rule, what I say.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

I try not to exercise it too much. Only when I'm right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Joe says this. I realize this infuriating practice has become popular in recent years in the US I feel passionately that it must be discontinued, especially primarily by. Those voices are attended by large audiences like you. You are no doubt aware the letter H is a consonant necessitating. Geez.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

The use of the indefinite article A rather than an all grammar books ever. I should limit the scope of my gripe. With an important caveat. Cockneys. They should probably continue to say, and because they pronounce it historic, this guy.

[Josh Clark]

Doesn'T even know that the rhyming slang episode is coming out. How weird.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But, guys, that's not really what I write today. I love the show. I wanted to tell you. I wanted to wait for a halfway plausible pretense to make the email a little more fun, which I hope this has been. Any chance on an episode of How Pedantry Works? Keep up the good work, Joe. He's poking fun.

[Josh Clark]

Turns out he's good peeps after all.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Is the and before an H? Is that a thing?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I didn't know that. Is it?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think. I don't know if it's proper or not, but I understand where it comes from because the vowel that comes right after the H is usually so heavily pronounced in relation to how it's pronounced when it comes after other consonants like an historic.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

An historic district. Sounds okay.

[Josh Clark]

An honor. An honor. A honor. Which one sounds better?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Like I was bestowed an honor?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, don't say it the other way. But you wouldn't say dog vomit.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

In high school, I had an history teacher. That was great. You know, it's really weird.

[Josh Clark]

Did Joe tell you to say that?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, I just thought of it because.

[Josh Clark]

And historic history teacher. I had a historic. Yeah, both work. How about this? We're both right, Joe, try not to focus on such stupid stuff.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm curious. I'm curious if there is a. I really want to know the rule now, because I know it's a consonant, but if people are saying it these days, is that just some sort of a fighting the system?

[Josh Clark]

That's the descriptivist way. The prescriptivist is like, no, it's this way.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Joe's the prescriptivist here. We're descriptivists. All right, I think we've proven ourselves.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That maybe we should launch a side podcast called the Descriptivists.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that's a good one.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Almost has, like, a Civil War era folklore band feel to it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

We'd have to go curly Q's, though.

[Josh Clark]

That's fine.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

We're not gonna do that.

[Josh Clark]

We could get fake ones that we just took on and off for publicity.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right, Scout mob.

[Josh Clark]

All right. If you want to get in touch with us like Joe did, have a little quibble, a little gripe or praise or whatever, you can go on to stuffyou should know.com and check us out. Our social links are all up there. You can also send us an email to Stuff podcast iheartradio.com.

[Podcast Announcer]

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[Josh Clark]

Know is a production of iheartradio for.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

This is an iHeart podcast.