{"id":2845,"date":"2026-04-07T05:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T23:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/he-survived-conversion-therapy-the-supreme-court-just-made-it-legal-again\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T05:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T23:30:16","slug":"he-survived-conversion-therapy-the-supreme-court-just-made-it-legal-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/he-survived-conversion-therapy-the-supreme-court-just-made-it-legal-again\/","title":{"rendered":"He Survived Conversion Therapy. The Supreme Court Just Made It Legal Again"},"content":{"rendered":"
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— Tim Schrader Rodriguez spent eight years trying to “pray out the gay.” He modulated his voice. He stopped listening to music with female lead singers. He sat weekly with a therapist who watched him come apart — and said nothing.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that therapists have a First Amendment right to pursue conversion therapy with their patients, upending a Colorado ban on the practice.<\/p>\n
This isn’t history, nor is it a Colorado-only case. Bans that advocates spent years winning in state after state will unravel.<\/p>\n
The number of LGBTQ+ youth being engaged in conversion practices nearly doubled in the last year alone — from 10 to 20 percent.<\/p>\n
What Tim’s story makes clear is how ordinary this harm looks from the outside. It’s not electroshock. It’s not boot camps. It’s a weekly therapy appointment. It’s a trusted relationship. It’s the promise that if you pray hard enough and want it badly enough, God will change you.<\/p>\n
And when it doesn’t work, the program tells you that’s your fault, too.<\/p>\n
Amanda Henderson talks with Tim this week about what eight years inside that world actually felt like — and what it means that the one protected space survivors thought they still had is now gone.<\/p>\n