{"id":11572,"date":"2026-05-02T06:18:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T00:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/in-conversion-therapy-dropout-a-survivor-exposes-the-discredited-practice\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T06:18:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T00:48:02","slug":"in-conversion-therapy-dropout-a-survivor-exposes-the-discredited-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/in-conversion-therapy-dropout-a-survivor-exposes-the-discredited-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"In \u2018Conversion Therapy Dropout,\u2019 a survivor exposes the discredited practice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p><iframe title=\"Everlit Audio Player\" src=\"https:\/\/everlit.audio\/embeds\/artl_zPrG2cNj97Q?ui_title_intro=Listen+now%3A&amp;client=wp&amp;client_version=3.1.5\" width=\"100%\" height=\"136px\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(RNS) \u2014 When the U.S. Supreme Court <a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2026\/04\/01\/lgbtq-faith-leaders-decry-supreme-courts-conversion-therapy-ruling\/\">passed down its 8-1 decision<\/a> against Colorado\u2019s ban on conversion therapy last month, Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez knew exactly what was at stake.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s because he spent eight years in conversion therapy, inundated with messages about the need to change himself to be accepted by his evangelical Christian faith community. Even after his exit from the \u201cex-gay\u201d organization Exodus International, Schraeder Rodriguez continued to work behind the scenes for evangelical powerhouses like Hillsong Church, Willow Creek Community Church and Elevation Church \u2014 but soon grew weary of being accepted for what he could contribute to these groups, but not for who he was.<\/p>\n<p>In his debut book, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B0FCCF9J8C\/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_i_2WZJEAKQ34RVHXMK9S6Y?linkCode=ml1&amp;tag=timothysrodri-20&amp;linkId=d8ec1277341c2cfe6e2b019b6beb1039\">Conversion Therapy Dropout: A Queer Story of Faith &amp; Belonging<\/a>,\u201d Schraeder Rodriguez gives an inside look at his attempt to \u201cpray the gay away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConversion therapy is not a thing of the past,\u201d Schraeder Rodriguez told RNS. \u201cIt is a clear and present danger, and data and statistics are one thing, but what changes hearts is people\u2019s stories and their experiences. I hope I am able to help others realize that they can be gay and loved by God.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>RNS spoke to Schraeder Rodriguez about his journey through conversion therapy and how the practice persists today. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. \u00a0<\/p>\n<h4>How did you find your way into conversion therapy?<\/h4>\n<p>I grew up in the Midwest, in the evangelical Christian culture of the late 1990s, early 2000s. I knew I was struggling with my sexuality but did not feel safe to talk about it. Anything said about homosexuality was through a lens of judgment. When I was 19, I had moved cross-country to Washington state to work with a youth pastor. Days before I was supposed to leave, he came across my internet search history. That was the first time I ever admitted out loud that I was struggling with my sexuality. Unfortunately, that youth pastor told me there wasn\u2019t a place for people like me in church, that I was broken. Of my own volition, I went to a Christian bookstore and found a book with a phone number to call if you needed help. At age 19, I made that call, and it was to Exodus International, which at the time was the largest conversion therapy organization in the world. That began an eight-year journey into conversion therapy.<\/p>\n<h4>How do you define conversion therapy?<\/h4>\n<p>Conversion therapy is a mix of pseudo-psychology and spirituality. In the 1950s and 1960s, therapists were trying to help people overcome homosexual tendencies. The premise is that sexual disorientation is the result of early childhood trauma, and through behavior modification and psychotherapy, it\u2019s possible to change sexual orientation. In the extreme cases, there was electroshock therapy and lobotomies. The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973, essentially disavowing the whole idea of conversion therapy. But the church picked up the ideas of conversion therapy and applied a spiritual layer to suggest that it would be possible for someone to become straight through an intimate relationship with God. In 1973, a group of people had the first gathering of Exodus International.<\/p>\n<h4>What did those methods look like for you?<\/h4>\n<p>There was a big emphasis on behavior modification, learning to lower the tone of your voice, to do away with female or flamboyant mannerisms, to watch what clothing you wear and to monitor what media you consume. The idea was, you do what you can to change the outside. You pray for God to change your inside. They also taught that men struggling with homosexuality didn\u2019t have the right kind of male relationships early on, and through puberty, that need was sexualized. Their solution was to develop relationships with men who can model a \u201cnormal\u201d relationship.<\/p>\n<h4>What does the research show us about the efficacy of conversion therapy?<\/h4>\n<p>In 2013 Exodus International publicly admitted that in their nearly four-decade history, they don\u2019t believe that they had seen anyone successfully change their sexual orientation. Since the 1970s, the psychological and medical community has said that conversion practices are harmful. Recent research found that folks who have gone through conversion practices are more than twice as likely to commit suicide. They have higher rates of alcohol and substance abuse, and because of those traumatic encounters, are less likely to be engaged with organized religion and are untrusting of therapeutic settings. It\u2019s been proven time and again to be more harmful than it was ever helpful.<\/p>\n<h4>What was the tipping point, for you? When did you decide to walk away?<\/h4>\n<p>I had been at some major Christian conferences, being in green rooms with some of the leading evangelical Christian mega church pastors, and realizing that if they knew the truth of who I was, my whole career would implode. After that realization, I didn\u2019t get out of bed for five days. I had a nervous breakdown, and I emerged from that knowing that I couldn\u2019t keep doing what I was doing. Rather than ending my life, I just decided I needed to end the way I had been living it and try to imagine what life could look like outside of conversion therapy.<\/p>\n<h4>What did your work with Christian ministries look like after that?<\/h4>\n<p>I was helping churches figure out how to use social media. I had a skill that they needed, and I needed a paycheck. Rather than being employed by churches, I decided to be a consultant, so I didn\u2019t have to sign statements of faith. Most of those churches, while they were not publicly affirming of gay people, weren\u2019t outspokenly against gay issues. Many were accepting of me as a person. But when the Pulse Orlando shooting happened in 2016, the deadliest attack against the LGBTQ community in U.S. history, churches went silent on social media.<\/p>\n<p>I drafted sample posts to acknowledge what was going on in Orlando, and sent them to churches, and none of them used those posts. I realized I was doing a job that benefited the churches and they had no regard for who I was as a person.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<hr\/>\n<h4>You were part of launching Church Clarity, an online resource to help people find out where churches stand on affirming LGBTQ people. What was involved in that?<\/h4>\n<p>We didn\u2019t want to pressure churches to change their theology. We just wanted them to be clear about what it was. We would score churches on the level of clarity that they had on their websites around issues that matter to LGBTQ people. Churches like Westboro Baptist Church, which is the \u2018God hates fags\u2019 church, they\u2019re very clear about their theological stance. Some of these more progressive churches, like Hillsong or Elevation, are very vague. I was able to use my insider knowledge to force these churches to say what I wanted them to say for so long. There have been thousands of queer people who have used Church Clarity to find affirming spaces where all of them are truly welcome.<\/p>\n<h4>What does the relationship between your spirituality and sexuality look like today?<\/h4>\n<p>After I moved to New York City in 2018, I realized I was still needing to heal from conversion therapy. I came to realize that I was struggling with alcoholism and addiction. So I found my way back into church basements, only this time, I wasn\u2019t praying for God to change my sexuality. I was believing that with God\u2019s help, I could become sober. Twelve-step recovery is a spiritual program of action, and it\u2019s all about defining a God of your own understanding. Recovery gave me God back. The God that I serve today is a God of love and compassion that cares about everyone. The biggest lesson I had to learn is that God\u2019s lack of an answer to my prayers to change me was an answer, because there was nothing about me that needed to change.<\/p>\n<h4>Where is conversion therapy persisting today?<\/h4>\n<p>Exodus closed in 2013, and after that, we saw a move to establish bans against conversion therapy nationwide. As of this moment, there are 27 states that have conversion therapy bans that ban the practice for minors in therapeutic settings. But the practice has only continued to grow, mainly in religious contexts, because there is a blanket exemption for anyone that\u2019s seeking conversion therapy under religious grounds.<\/p>\n<p>The Trevor Project last year released data that showed the number of LGBTQ youth exposed to conversion therapy doubled in a year\u2019s time. Social media is enabling a lot of these organizations that wouldn\u2019t call themselves conversion therapy ministries, but if you look at the core of what they are doing, it is just a repackaging of everything I heard when I was in conversion therapy: that who you are is a result of trauma, the gay identity is broken, that God can heal you. It\u2019s very insidious. It\u2019s sad to see a whole new generation of young people being taught to believe those things are true.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<hr\/>\n<p><!-- CONTENT END 1 -->\n        <\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2026\/05\/01\/in-conversion-therapy-dropout-a-survivor-exposes-the-discredited-practice\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) \u2014 When the U.S. Supreme Court passed down its 8-1 decision against Colorado\u2019s ban on conversion therapy last month, Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez knew exactly what was at stake. That\u2019s because he spent eight years in conversion therapy, inundated with messages about the need to change himself to be accepted by his evangelical Christian faith [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}