Last month, the United States Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against a Colorado ban on conversion therapy, saying the 2019 law may violate freedom of speech. Arkansas native Garrard Conley is likely most known for his 2016 memoir Boy Erased, about his own experience with conversion therapy as a teenager. He has since become one of the most prominent advocates against the practice and has helped get bans like Colorado's passed around the country. Conley says he was hurt but not shocked by the ruling. He tells Ozarks at Large's Daniel Caruth that after poring over hours of court transcripts, his first thought was to call his mother, Martha, to get her reaction.
Conley: I only thought to call my mom about two hours after I'd been reading the document, to see how she was doing. She hadn't heard — she was getting her hair done at the time. My parents right now live in Mountain Home, Arkansas. And she was like, I'm getting my hair done, you gotta see it. And I said, well, I hate to ruin your day, but here's some information. And I said, what's your reaction? Because I was trying to see what her reaction would be so I could maybe write about it later. And she said, well, I'm just mad. And I said, well, fair enough. So my mom was kind of experiencing the emotion that I probably should have been experiencing. And then I called her back about 30 minutes later and she said, well, I just don't understand it, because this is speech in a licensed therapist's office, and speech is what harmed you. They didn't touch me. They didn't do electroshock therapy. They didn't give me some sort of chemical castration like they did in the past. But speech was enough to really mess up a long period of my life and my relationship with my parents and my faith.
Caruth: Going back, can you walk people through — I think most people, especially maybe if they haven't read your memoir, maybe have an archaic view or just a misunderstanding of what conversion therapy is and what it looks like, especially in these counseling scenarios and how that can be harmful.
Conley: Yeah, I mean, conversion therapy historically was much more intense. We have documented cases of lobotomies, of chemical castration, of electroshock therapy. And that's the dark history of conversion therapy. But the conversion therapy that I encountered in 2004 was from a place called Love in Action in Memphis, Tennessee. And they were a part of Exodus International, which was this big group of conversion therapy places. They relied on talk therapy and group therapy. I did six months of one-on-one therapy sessions with a licensed counselor at Love in Action, and then two weeks of an intensive program over the summer. And in those one-on-one sessions, the therapist would guide me into talking about any sexual fantasies I'd ever had. And then he would shame me. He would actually make a disgusted face and say, that's disgusting, over and over again — but while still wanting to hear all the details — and then he would give me a bunch of Bible verses to memorize. Which was funny, because I'm a pastor's kid and I'd already memorized them. I actually read the Bible. My dad was very, very adamant that I read as much of the Bible as I could. And so we would read together and talk about it. And my life had always been a process of encountering the Bible as a living text. And the counselor told me, no, this is how you have to understand it. You're asking too many questions. It's disgusting. You're sinful. You're going to drag your whole family down. And in that two-week period at Love in Action in Memphis, from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. they would reinforce that idea that we were shameful, that we were sinful, and they would use exercises that were based off of real therapeutic practice but took a wild detour. It took over a decade to recover from that. And one thing that I think people miss in these discussions of conversion therapy is that words themselves, if used over and over again — like brainwashing — have an effect on families. There's been a huge rebranding in the conversion therapy field. They're trying to present a softer side to this and they're saying, well, it's just talk therapy, it's not anything bad, when in fact being told over and over again something that's not true, from a person in authority, especially if you're a kid going to a therapist, can have very long-lasting damage.
Caruth: I know the Supreme Court ruling frames it in terms of speech, and it doesn't roll back all of the bans on conversion therapy. But what is the fear that this ruling will do in the future? What are the implications of it? And how can these organizations twist it to push more types of conversion therapy?
Conley: Well, they're already claiming victory. People are saying, well, now we're free to do conversion therapy openly. And so that's one fear. The other thing that concerns me immediately is the messaging, because my mom said that when she looked up conversion therapy back in 2004, there were just a bunch of pro-conversion therapy things and only a few links describing the harm. These bans on conversion therapy — they're symbolic, right? We know that most licensed therapists are not going to do this sort of thing, or at least we hope not. But it's really to say, hey, these are the social norms. We recognize that people that are LGBTQ exist. We're not saying that you're a topic for debate, that we can erase your existence by just debating you. That to me is a very scary message to send to kids. There are actual people saying it's a matter of free speech as to whether or not these people and these identities actually exist. I think that's very dangerous.
Caruth: Here in Arkansas, we don't have any bans on conversion therapy. I know there have been some lawmakers who've tried to put some laws in place — they've all died at the legislature. What message do you think that sends, that the Supreme Court, to one degree, effectively doesn't want to touch this issue and pushed it to a lower court? What does it send to your home state?
Conley: I think that people in my home state are already pretty aware of all these things. I mean, when I go back to Mountain Home and if I meet somebody who is not straight — I was at the movie theater once and the person giving me the popcorn was like, oh, I love Boy Erased and blah, blah, blah. It's really difficult to live here. And this person articulated so well something I'd never really put words to. They said, yeah, things are getting better everywhere else, and when I look at my phone I can see queer people represented, but it all looks like a fantasy to me. And that put me in the same place I'd been when I was a kid, when I would just happen to turn on the TV and there was a gay person on there or somebody different. Yeah, there may be all this information, there may be a wider world out there that kids are connected to, but they still see it often as a fantasy. So I'm not sure that these laws are a surprise to anybody. We're tough in the South. We know how many of these civil rights issues happen slowly over time. And even then there's still work in progress. I'm hoping that people that hear this have people around them that can support them. One of the things I always say to churches when I go visit — I'm still a person of faith and I still go to church and I visit churches and talk about this issue — I always say, I don't need you to agree with me at all. I just need you to treat me like a human being. And I need you to know that conversion therapy, as it has been practiced, is a form of torture, and you don't want to send somebody to that. You don't want somebody to feel that. Most often — and it's probably telling that they invite me in the first place — but most often those people, who have completely different political beliefs and come from a totally different understanding of the issue, will say, yeah, that's a good point.
Caruth: I imagine when you go to those churches or to groups here, you're talking a lot of times to parents who are in a situation similar to maybe how your parents were feeling. How do you bridge that divide? And how do you explain to them how organizations like Love in Action may have misled your parents into thinking that this was the only option for you?
Conley: I think the evidence speaks for itself from the people who were running these places. John Smid, who ran Love in Action, is married to a man now, living in Texas and doing gay car shows, which I think is a great detail. And he and everyone else that worked there has backtracked on what they said earlier. Alan Chambers, who ran Exodus International, the biggest ex-gay organization in the world, also said it was wrong and wrote a book about it. Pretty much every major actor from that time has come out — in more ways than one — and said, you know, this never really worked for me. I was lying to myself. Do I think it's OK to send a kid who's questioning to a Christian counselor? Sure, as long as that Christian counselor is not trying to use conversion therapy. There can be a conversation. But I don't think this whole cure idea is helpful. In fact, I think it's very harmful.
Caruth: You said that you're advocating for this and working to push forward with next steps. What needs to happen now that this case has gone through? How are you guys bolstering some of those bans?
Conley: The Trevor Project and the National Center for Lesbian Rights and several other organizations and law firms are currently working to change some of the wording on these bans to make sure that they reflect what the Supreme Court seemed to want — to make sure they don't infringe on free speech. So that's one thing that's happening. People like me, survivors of conversion therapy, we have our talking points. We pretty much all met and said, OK, how do we want to handle this? And one of the prongs that's really important for us is to emphasize the harm, because that's something that gets lost in the conversation. And it's easy to miss — no one on the Supreme Court thought that it worked, right? So that messaging is really important. And there has to be a way to get the message out that gender and sexuality were policed in conversion therapy, pretty historically. I was told that in order to be straight, I needed to walk a certain way, look a certain way, act a certain way, speak a certain way. And we were corrected if we didn't match up to a masculine ideal that they had. That had a very negative effect on a person like myself who doesn't have any gender issues that I know of. Whenever I was there, there was a version of me that I think was more in tune with who I was. And because of all the corrections, some people say that I'm really stiff or I don't express myself a certain way. And I'm always like, yeah, it's that reinforcement I got. And so I do wonder what kind of man I would have been if I hadn't been interfered with in that way.
Caruth: This case seems like it's part of a larger slate of cases on LGBTQ issues and civil rights. And for you, we've seen that manifest here a little bit in book banning, and for you as an author — your previous works have had strong LGBTQ themes. How does that affect how you write in the future? Do you fear being targeted or being banned, or does it reinforce that you want to write those things?
Conley: Well, I'm stubborn like my dad. So the minute that someone pushes me, I'm like, OK, let's go, even more. The book I'm writing right now is ostensibly, on the surface, about straight people. My characters are straight, but it's also about televangelism, and I think it's funny. So I have shifted a bit, but I don't think it's because of political concerns. If anything, the irony is that a book ban gives you more sales. I'll always probably be writing about religion and sexuality, whether or not that's straight or gay or in between, because it's a fascinating topic. Authors spend their lives searching for a theme that will carry them through all their books. And I guess for better and for worse, Boy Erased was my first book and it was the book I had to write. When the subject becomes life or death, like Boy Erased did, you feel an intense responsibility. I could have never predicted that that book would go on to be a New York Times bestseller, or would have been cited in legislation, or would have been a movie — any of those things. But when it happened, I realized the power of words. I was so grateful that I took it all very seriously when I wrote it. But yeah, no one's going to stop me. I'm going to keep doing it because I have seen the letters from kids around the country, and adults too, who say, this was exactly my experience, thank you so much for sharing this. And some people saying, I was going to kill myself the other day and I read your book. You don't forget those emails. So anyone that wants to fire me or ban my books, go ahead, because I'm not stopping.
Garrard Conley is an author and assistant professor of creative writing at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. He spoke with Ozarks at Large's Daniel Caruth last week.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
