As LGBTQ+ Persecution Rises, Changing Hearts & Minds Needs To Be More Than A Slogan

Personal empathy (situational or emotional) and loud protests both have a place in changing hearts and minds.

LGBTQ+ Persecution Ramps Up…

Conversion therapy manifests in different ways: support groups, Sunday schools, exclusive camps, licensed therapists, “biblical counseling”, pastoral discipleship. While much more work needs to be done, there are many conversion therapy bans in place to protect minors across the country.

Unfortunately, with another conversion therapy ban being challenged in the name of religious freedom and “talk therapy” free speech rights, it looks like many of these bans are likely to fall in the next four years; especially in red states.

Conversion Therapy Defined In Under 602 Words

These bans are part of an effort to maintain systemic bigotry against gay people. Conversion therapy, which teaches LGBTQ+ people to hate themselves due to stigmatized religion, can lead to substance abuse and suicide. This religious and social stigma also permeates the culture, causing (but not limited to) the following:

• A trans man being tortured by five people for weeks before being murdered.

• A conversion therapist sexually assaulting his clients. ←We have heard that story many times.

• The Federal government erasing or re-writing LGBTQ+ history from Stonewall of all places.

• As well as Trump’s hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center listing “drag performances” as one of the reasons he did so.

• The christian nationalists never-ending obsession to destroy my and any other gay couples marriages.

• And plenty of other examples.

Murder, sexual assault, erasing/re-writing our history, and silencing free speech (in the arts and in general) sound like persecution to me; and that’s just this week.

The ex-gay ideology that supports conversion therapy is based on stigmatized theology that empowers persecution and violence against LGBTQ+ people. It teaches that hatred against us is justified because they believe they are in agreement with God while they seek to destroy our lives and silence our voices.

Will ex-gay leaders make the same mistakes of the past? Yes, of course they will…

I have said many times that the only marketing campaign ex-gay leaders and advocates have is to try and co-opt identity politics and redefine language. It gets to the point that the pro-conversion therapy arguments simply become head-scratching white noise to the people they are trying to convert to their way of thinking.

I have already seen some ex-gay leaders doing the whole “pick me!” thing with the Trump administration and conservative influencers. That’s what we did during the Bush years. We raised a LOT of money and got put in front of the most powerful Christian nationalists at the time.

To bad we sold our souls to that world for around five years.

My only hope is that those doors are closed to those seeking to do what we once did. Consider this every single ex-gay person I worked with in those realms o’ so many years ago are now living their true authentic queer lives.

Ex-gays aren’t very reliable pawns. And that is a precedent I am glad to have helped set. :)

My Journey Into and Thankfully Out Of Christian Nationalism

Changing hearts and minds can work with an open-door policy interspersed with moments of resistance…

For me, the first step to changing hearts and minds was to change my own. After coming out of the church closet, I had (still do in some cases) tremendous anger and bitterness toward my former friends (especially those that are still ex-gay leaders), former church “family”, and really anyone who is not gay-affirming.

But the Divine kept pestering me. She kept saying, “Yeah, but Randy, you were just like them. You helped craft their language, did interviews, travelled the country, created resources, taught that toxic theology… and yet, you survived and made it out of that world. Why would you write off anyone from doing the same?”

The Spirit can be really annoying sometimes.

The key to changing hearts and minds is empathy (cognitive empathy at least, even if you can’t relate emotionally). I can’t claim to have an open-door policy if I bite people’s heads off once they come in. And I am not perfect and consistent with all of this sometimes, but staying in some sort of empathy is a state of being I try to keep.

Again, not perfect at it :)

It’s not our responsibility to convince anyone of anything or to even earn their approval. That said, living an authentic life, embracing both my light and dark aspects, is my best chance of becoming a safe person for others to interact with. By practicing openness, honesty, and answering questions simply and without lecturing fosters empathy and attracts others to leave the darkness.

Protests, though sometimes offensive, are necessary to start conversations and preserve equality. The resulting protests of Prop 8 passing changed my mind on the issue. Prop 8 dissolved gay marriage in California before the Supreme Court ruled in favor of it. Seeing the heartache and mourning in California’s streets broke my heart and changed my perspective. I had lobbied for Prop 8, contributing to the grief and pain. Seeing live feeds of the protests reached me differently than arguments with me. At that time, I wasn’t ready to walk through someone’s gay affirming door with questions, but the protests made me hear what needed to be heard. The protest reached me in a way that no amount of being yelled at would.

I believe having cognitive/situational empathy (whether you have emotional empathy or not) will keep the open-door policy open. Participating in peaceful protest will also change hearts and minds in a different way and can be absolutely necessary.

Humanizing others is the antidote to the venom of stigma.

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