14: Gay Conversion Therapy: Pseudo Science is Destroying Innocent Lives
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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.

Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.

Hi friends, how are you today? I hope you're having a wonderful day so far. My name is Bailey Sarian and I'd like to welcome you to the Dark History Library. Hello, hi, how's it going? This is a safe space, okay, for all of you out there who are a curious cat like myself and you're like, hey, I'm going to go to the Dark History Library.

History was like really boring in school. It seemed like we didn't really learn anything. And this is where I come in, okay? I come in and we're like, hey, let's learn together. Let's learn about the dark, mysterious, dramatic stories that our teachers never told us about.

That's right, baby. So I was going down this rabbit hole. I know, big shocker. I know. But I got into reading a bit more about conversion therapy. And like, I honestly had heard of conversion therapy once before, but I didn't know exactly what it was. It turns out it's bad. Oh, it's real bad. Like real, real bad.

It's apparently this thing that extreme religious groups and sometimes even doctors do where if they think a kid is gay or even transgender, they send them to something like a camp to try and convert them to a straight kid. Yeah, that's a thing. Now, when I hear the word camp, at least when I hear the word camp, I think to myself like, oh my God, bunk beds, campfires, schmoresh, you know, like, yeah.

Teaming up with your friends to defeat the serial killer that's on the loose. You know, camp things. Normal camp things. It's so fun. Well.

These camps were not like that at all. So let's ignore that. No s'mores there. The more I learned about these camps, the more disgusted I was. And actually, I probably won't even give you all the dirty details because it's honestly just straight up torture. It's abusive. I mean, obviously you can't change if someone is gay or trans. Like, that's not a thing. Hi. Like, for example, I can't change that I used to love Lisa Frank.

even though the owner of the company is the absolute worst. I mean, I still can't change that I might love a lot of it. I mean, look at how cute this stuff is. Like the tigers and the rainbows. It's so cute. I love it. But like, don't tell anyone I love it. But like, I kind of love it. Well, I wanted to really understand what it's like at these places because they are so mysterious and very secretive.

Like they are really good at hiding what goes on there. And the only way we can really learn about them is by the people who experienced them firsthand.

Now this led me to the story of a kid who went to one of these camps. What drew me to his story was that he was a normal kid who didn't even mean to like bring all this attention to the camp he went to. And the attention kind of found him because he was posting about it on MySpace. Oh my God, I know. Do you remember MySpace? Hi, MySpace? Yes, I used to be like a straight up queen of writing MySpace code. Remember the cute layouts? Remember? You member.

Well, if you don't, remember, don't tell me because it'll make me feel old. God damn it. But basically, MySpace was like Facebook before Facebook was Facebook. Except MySpace honestly was just way cooler. It was like the true Wild West of social media back then. Anyway, going viral, I'm using quotes here, wasn't really a thing yet. But this kid, he kind of went viral. Oh, yes, he did. So let me open up my dark history book.

And let's get into today's story. We're gonna start off with a boy named Zach Stark. Now, Zach was like any other teen in 2005. He was going to high school, he was hanging out with his friends, and he was on MySpace. Oh yes. And if you didn't know, like on MySpace, you can add a title to your page, and usually you could pick a song, or you could pick some kind of edgy quote to put in your profile. And Zach put "Stereotype me if you dare" as his quote.

Okay, love that, great. And on his page, he was open about being gay to his 213 Myspace friends. It was a place where Zach could like really express himself in a way that he honestly couldn't do in real life. And that was the beauty of the internet this time, you could hide from reality and be whoever you wanted to be. So for Zach, it was a safe space to talk to his friends and honestly just be himself.

Great, we love that, Zach. Now there was this one day where Zach made a pretty sad post on his MySpace. Now he was saying that he tried to come out to his parents and he was talking about how it just didn't go over too well. Zach's parents were Christians who attended church and they had very traditional values. Like this was Tennessee in 2005. The world has changed a lot since then.

I mean, has it? I'm sure that's debatable. But they fully believed their son was going to be spending eternity in hell just for being gay. They were afraid for him, but also just disappointed with their son, feeling as if they had failed as parents. They didn't understand what it meant to be gay. And they just assumed he was acting out and that he just needed to like, I don't know, he just needed to get on the right path. They're like, just go take a nap. Sleep it off. You're not gay. Go take a nap.

You know, those kind of parents. After thinking it through, they came up with a solution. Zach had to change that part of himself. No ifs, ands, or buts. His parents believed he was living with a light switch in his head where he could just like turn off the gay. No more gay, off.

voila, gay be gone, you know? And through the church, they heard of a method that could potentially help Zach quote unquote change himself. They recommended sending Zach to a gay conversion camp, a place where they could flip the switch. So the parents did just that.

After Zach made the first post about coming out, he kept posting about the conversations with his parents, like everything that was going on between them. And before he left for the camp, they sent him the rules so he could, like, get ready, I guess. And Zach ended up posting the rules on his MySpace page for everyone to see.

Oh yeah, he did. He exposed them. Now these rules were so crazy. For example, journals and diaries were banned because they wanted you to tell camp counselors what you were thinking all the time. So like there was no secrets allowed. Secrets don't make friends, but friends make secrets, you know? So if you were daydreaming about french fries or something, you had to tell them. I don't know why. They're just nosy.

They also had this thing called safekeeping. Oh yes. You see, once you arrived at the camp, they would lock you in a room where you weren't allowed to talk to anyone or even look at anybody. Most of the time you were completely alone and the only thing you could do in this room was read the Bible.

Total bore, you know? You couldn't wear any unpure clothes while you were there. So you couldn't wear sleeveless shirts or brands. Like Abercrombie was super hot at the time. So it was like, you can't wear that. You just had to wear basic whatever clothes.

Close. You get it. I mean, the list really goes on. I think you get the idea. It just kind of sounded like someone just decided to make a list of all the things that could make someone miserable and turn it into a place you could physically go to. This is what Zach was getting ready to walk into, and people were really connecting with his story. Because this wasn't the first or only conversion therapy program in America, 90%.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands of places like this all over. And Zach's story made others like start talking about their own experiences at similar camps. So now it's kind of going viral at this point. People are getting really mad about what his parents are making him do. I get it. I would be mad too. You would be mad. We're all mad. We are all, you're a mad bird. We're all mad. Okay. People were upset about

that there were protests that started popping up outside the camp, plus outside other churches and areas where these camps existed. And it was starting to get some real attention. Even the New York Times wrote about Zach and his story. But of course, that didn't stop Zach's parents. They still thought Zach's soul was in danger of going to hell. So they wanted to like try and save them, even if it would be emotionally and physically traumatizing. They didn't care.

So Zach still went. But what's really crazy is that we don't really know what happened to him there. But what we do know is when he came back, he was totally different. He didn't want to talk about the camp. He just didn't want to talk in general or beyond MySpace. And he just kind of disappeared from the public's attention. Something happened to him at that camp that forever changed him. So did the conversion work? Was that what they wanted to happen? That's the question here.

Well, Zach's story isn't the only one. Hundreds of thousands of kids and adults have attended these camps over the last 50 years or so. And the fucked up thing is that they're still legal in most states. The Trevor Project even found that recently almost 15% of young gay and trans people have experienced some kind of conversion therapy in the last year alone. And thousands more will probably attend them in the future.

So how is it that these camps are able to even get away with this? Why do these camps even start in the first place? Why can't we just send kids to like those fun summer camps where we tell scary stories and like make out with each other? You know? I don't know. Why can't we just have nice things? I guess we'll find out after the ad break. BRB!

There are very...

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This is an ad by BetterHelp. What?

What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.

Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.

Okay, we're back. Hi. So for us to understand how we get to the point of creepy conversion camps, you have to know that this all started because of two big things. A long time ago, homosexuality was viewed as a mental health issue. And then some people decided to make money off it, even after they realized, you know, it never was a mental health issue.

So let's rewind to that time to get a better idea of where all this came from. You with me? Okay, good. Great. Let's go. Back in time. We're here. Homosexuality or being gay or lesbian is something that is not a new concept, you guys. Groundbreaking information I'm giving you, I know. It's been around since basically forever. Not just in humans, but in animals too. Let me just state this from the top.

"This is a natural thing that happens in all animals." Oh, and if we think about it, honestly, we probably know like way back in like the beginning of Earth days, there was probably some caveman on caveman love going on. I mean, those winters were brutal. They had to stay warm, okay? Everyone needs love. Everyone needs to be held. It's fine.

The Greeks, let me tell you about the Greeks. Were you there? I wasn't there either, but I heard the Greeks were all about fucking. Oh yeah. They had boats dedicated to fucking. All their stories were about fucking. Yes. Their paintings?

Fuckin' yeah. They had built this whole society on gay sex and honestly, it's a beautiful thing. They just embraced it, embraced the body, embraced the sexuality of it all. One of the things the Spartans did to prove their masculinity in the military was have sex with each other.

Yeah, like what's manlier than loving a man? Oh, it's been around y'all. By the way, did you know about Caligula? Well, he's actually very problematic depending on who you ask, but he was a Roman emperor and everyone hated him, honestly, but he had this boat and I'm not kidding you, it was a full-blown sex boat.

Yeah, just a massive boat for sexing each other up. Like a cruise, men on women, women on men, men on men. There was horses trotting around. They weren't involved, but like...

It was just a boat of love. Love boat! That's probably where they got it. Love boat. I mean everyone back then just had it figured out. Like let's get back to that. Just let people be. Anyways, I'm sorry I got really off track there. But back in the early 1900s, many psychologists were like, "Yay! Gay!" Because to them it wasn't hurting anybody. Like they technically called it a mental illness, but not something that kind of had to be treated.

It was just kind of like, oh yeah, sometimes people are gay. Anyways, how about that Dodgers game? But then along comes a psychologist named Sandor Rado. This guy took the early work in psychology and, you know, changed it a bit. Dr. Rado started to claim that, hey, isn't being gay kind of weird? You know, and also isn't like mental illness kind of weird?

Hey, maybe people who are gay are sick and not natural and maybe God doesn't like them. That's what he's saying. I'm not saying that. I don't know why. I mean, honestly, he probably had to be smoking some crack to come up with ideas like that. That was a good rhyme, Bailey. I know.

And America was like, "Hmm, you know, he's a doctor. So he must be right." So now the fricking doctors are calling gayness wrong and a disease. And America is honestly totally into it because what do we know here? America just loves attacking its own people for no damn reason. This always happens. I mean, it's so embarrassing of us.

Dr. Rado's whole thing was that homosexuality was not natural and it was just a result of bad parenting or trauma. Plus, at the time, and still today, people believe that God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And what's also funny about this ding-dong is that he said homosexuality was addictive.

I'm giving a side eye if you're listening to this on the podcast. Side eye. It's addictive. Now because of this doctor and the way his ideas were being accepted, homosexuality started to look a bit more like a moral issue instead of a health issue. And whenever you start bringing morals into it, here comes God always with something to say. So now he brought the church into it. Way to go, you know? Now God's mad.

Doctors are involved. At this point, it's just like, why are we doing this? Doesn't anyone have anything better to do? You know, it sounds like I'm just explaining the history of homophobia, but I promise you this ties into conversion therapy. Shush, just listen to my story, okay?

Once society had agreed that homosexuals were sick in the head and doing something wrong just by who they chose to love, it was very easy for people to start thinking of it as a crime. Great, now God, doctors, and now the cops are mad at gay people. They literally called these laws, quote, sexual psychopath laws.

Basically, they say that if you were gay or, like, maybe you like doing gay stuff with your friends, you should go to jail. Mm-hmm.

You're a menace to the public. You're a psychopath. Obviously, none of this is true. It's just complete panic. Like, they really thought that gayness was the same as being a pedophile or a rapist. That was considered the same freaking crime. Everyone who says they have a good gaydar does not, they lie. The only way to get caught and go to jail was literally getting caught in the act.

So, you know, there would be like undercover agents and stuff trying to seduce men to arrest them. It was messed up. Why were they doing that? Like there's honestly way better things they could be spending their time on, right? Yeah, great. I'm glad we settled this.

So, wow, let's review. At this point, homosexuality has gone from a simple act to a crime you can go to prison for. I know, it's just like, it's a big jump, people. And everyone wanted a solution to these criminals roaming around looking for your hot dad coming for you. I mean, they're scared of these psychopaths in the street coming for everyone.

Well, eventually, gayness stopped being criminalized by law, but the damage was already done. Society and churches and your Aunt Rita all thought gay people were disgusting perverts. It didn't help that the 1970s saw this huge explosion where religion started to influence how we look at gay people in a very big way.

All these little things create an environment for people to go even harder and double down on the idea that God was mad at gay people. And if gay people wanted to live, they had to change. It's really sad, actually. History's fun, isn't it? Did I say fun? I mean, it's pretty fucked up. Well, let's take an ad break, shall we? Let's do that.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

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So, hi, welcome back. It's 1973. Now go put on a poncho, babe. Because, like, look, if you don't have one, you need to go buy one. Because shit is about to hit the fan. It's gonna go all over you. Poncho will protect you.

At this point, homophobia is common everywhere. A lot of churchgoers who were gay wanted to stop being gay and they wanted to be good little Christians and go to heaven, not prison. So they wanted to fix themselves. So these little groups start popping up all over the country where men and women would get together and try to work through their problem, quote, quote, problem of gayness to see if they can like get to the root of it and change it.

Now these three guys named Frank, John, and Kent, they founded an organization called Love and Action, which honestly sounds great, right? Like love and action, like peace and love.

Ugh, you know? Great, we're loving it, we're moving. Peace and love. Anyway, not to be a downer, actually I love being a downer, this is dark history where I'm a professional downer. The organization called themselves an ex-gay ministry and they pushed people to convert to a straight lifestyle. No more homosexuals here, nay nay. We knew this was coming, don't act surprised.

They thought that gay people could be converted through the use of prayers and repentance and other methods, but we'll get into that. So Frank and John were two gay guys, which is not a joke, like they were indeed gay guys who started talking about their struggles with their identity and realized that there were a lot of people who were also going through the same thing. Like they were struggling with urges that they couldn't be feeling.

They claimed that they had found God and renounced all their homosexual tendencies. They treated it kind of like Alcoholics Anonymous and basically just a group of people who get together and they talk about how much they wish they weren't gay.

and they would pray about it. And they even had a 12 step program to help them get over it. It was really only for adults when they first started out, but as time went on, they noticed people in other cities were creating their own little prayer gay anonymous groups. So they made it official and brought in their straight friend Kent, and that's how they came up with the name Love In Action Together.

This kind of sounds innocent at first. Like if you want to sit around with your church friends and be mad at yourselves, then, you know, that's your business. But that wasn't all it was. As it got bigger, they started to use different methods besides praying to try and change people. Prayer wasn't working like they had hoped. And plus, prayer is free. You know what I'm saying? They're trying to make some money.

Like they don't want people to think that they could just go and do this on their own. They want them to need love and action to help them. They legit called it quote,

That way they could say that God was able to heal them. So when it got bigger, they would expand their little meetings to seminars with stories about people who were recovered. And then the seminars got bigger and turned into weekend retreats. And they started publishing books and cassette tapes. Do you remember cassette tapes? Shout out to you, cassette tapes. And they even made full-on treatment centers like some kind of weird rehab. By the way,

By the early 2000s, they had an annual budget of $750,000 and a giant treatment center in Memphis. They relied on tight control over the people who entered the program. Like boys, they always had to shave their face and girls, they had to shave their armpits. And if you had a single gay thought in your mind, you had to report it to a counselor immediately. Like it was very intense, very strict.

It's kind of funny if you think about it because they thought like beards are so sexy that anyone with a beard will immediately be irresistible to another man and that's why they need to shave. And armpit hair, I mean who cares? What would they do like armpit checks every once in a while? Like she's got stubble, she's a witch. So really quickly this is a side note but if you're watching over on YouTube,

I'm telling you it's gay. We took a little break and I ate some candy, so just ignore that. Okay, hi, thank you so much. Anyways, back to the story. The whole program was designed to defeminize gay men or refeminize lesbians. Love and Action would end up being one of the largest conversion therapy organizations in history. So then I was thinking, like how do you convince people that it's actually working?

Like it really doesn't seem like it's a good option for anyone. Period. End of story. The end. Close the book. Goodbye. You know? Well, when you want someone to believe you about some fake treatment, all you need is one doctor who's willing to say whatever you want, because then you can say, look, a doctor said it. Yeah.

Like when my doctor said that alcohol kills germs, I'm like, I'm about to be completely germ free. You know, like let's do some fucking shots, you know?

This is kind of what Love in Action decided to do. Some doctor was recommending shots, even though by the 90s, the medical community no longer considered homosexuals mentally ill or anything. But there was one doctor who was willing to spew all sorts of lies about gay people and just tell Love in Action whatever they wanted to hear to get their money. Of course, money.

Money, money, money. Money is the problem of literally everything. Am I right? Thank you for agreeing. Okay. So this doctor's name was Joseph Nicolosi. Now, did you know, a little fun fact if you didn't know, but did you know that doctors are supposed to take an oath that says they will do no harm? Yeah, they do that. And I think big Joey over here missed that day in doctor school because he and his followers ended up doing so, so much harm.

But before we get into that, let's take a little ad break. Oh, I was just talking about how money's evil. Isn't that funny? Let's take an ad break. I got bills to pay. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.

So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

This is an ad by BetterHelp.

What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.

Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash DarkHistory today to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash dark history. Okay, so Joseph Nicolosi, I'm going to call him Joey. Same shit, different day. He was a doctor, you know. Sometimes you just do some stuff and you become a doctor. Great. Anyways, Joey got his Ph.D. in psychology. Right around the time both the gay rights movement and the religious anti-gay movement were exploding in the 70s.

He wrote a couple papers about how he thought homosexuality was something that was a disorder and needed to be fixed. And it didn't take long for the Christian crowd to find him. And they were perfect for each other. It was like a match made in heaven. They're like, yay, yay, you know?

They wanted a doctor to tell them that they were right. Joseph wanted patients who could tell him that he had healed them. Joey or Joseph or whatever we're calling him, he wanted to be a pioneer in something and he didn't want to just follow the status quo. He wanted to be the guy to do something totally original. So he was just kind of like, wow, you guys, like I'm really into this stuff. You know, like I have a bunch of ideas about homosexuality.

give me your kids i'm gonna do some stuff and give me some money and they won't be gay anymore if it doesn't work it's your fault that was my attempt at being him thank you uh because you know he didn't really know if any of this would work and he always had an excuse for the people who said his treatments didn't work

Joey's whole treatment plan revolved around training kids to be straight from a young age. Otherwise, they would naturally become gay. And like his ideas of things that could make your kid gay was so, it was different. He's like, your kid likes art? Gay. Oh, your kid gets shy sometimes? Gay. Oh, your daughter doesn't like to be outside?

Hide your power tools. Definitely gay. Definitely gay. Guess what? Everything, everything's gay. Everything was gay in his eyes. Because you know what? Gay equals money to him. Let's be honest here. Obviously this isn't me talking. Yeah, like this is genuinely the doctor, that Joey guy, and it was all his wacky ideas. But people were just eating it up. His main talking point was that everyone is straight and just some people have a little homosexuality problem. Just like a kid.

little side problem like a rash or something it's easy to fix you know just put some cream on it it's not like it's a fabric of your being or anything nobody wanted to believe that gayness was a combination of who you are as a person and how you were raised joey nicky grossy

Isn't that funny? He built his career on a culture of fear. He capitalized on stereotypes, and although he himself didn't base his work on a religious foundation, it was very, very easy for religious people to use his work to justify their beliefs.

And he became the guy that places like Love and Action would use to make their weird, funky camps sound more legit. I mean, if a doctor is involved or backing it up, you're gonna think maybe there's something to it, right? It's like with anything. You just need one doctor to give you the green light and then people are going to believe it and run with it.

The actual methods that Joey Nicoluser would use were both emotional and physical abuse. Now the technical term is called aversion therapy, which sounds quite legit, doesn't it? It does. But it's honestly super fucked up. Now the idea is to apply pain at the same time that you are having homosexual thoughts, which supposedly this would cause your brain to like think of pain when you see gay stuff.

Yeah. For example, like it could be something as simple as making someone watch porn. And when they're getting a little too excited, you know what I'm saying? He would snap a rubber band on their wrist and it would be like, which

Which is super toxic when you think about it because I remember when I was growing up, I was on a diet and they suggested doing this. You put a rubber band around your wrist and whenever you wanted to overeat, you would take the rubber band and flick your wrist. And I'd be like, bam, bam, like going crazy because a bitch was hungry. You know, like sometimes you just can't stop. The rubber band did not stop me. But, um...

i'm here to say it didn't work anyways what i'm getting at is yeah that that's a thing and it wasn't just like a little rubber band to the wrist there was actually way worse things sometimes it would be forcing them to puke yeah like if you're watching gay porn you get excited throw up other times they would give them a full-blown electric shock

Now there were other methods too that were way worse than those, but I don't want to fully ruin your day by just getting into those really awful details. Just know that there were pain treatments that were legit torture and so painful that they would have to tie people down while they received this freaking treatment, as they called it.

There was nobody else who was still really pushing these treatments from a medical standpoint like this loser was. So he was just really out there on his own. In fact, the mainstream medical industry clearly stated that none of these were effective.

That didn't stop religious organizations like Love and Action from just eating it up. Joey Nicolosi was validating what those groups believed, and those groups were giving him plenty of test subjects. So he was coming up with new types of treatments all the time. Nobody really knows why, because it doesn't make sense, but he thought watching straight porn could help cure someone of homosexuality.

Like maybe it just hadn't occurred to them to think of the opposite sex yet. Like, "Hey, have you tried doing it this way?" Of course it didn't work, Joseph. That was a very stupid idea. It just made everyone extremely uncomfortable. And remember, a lot of his patients were kids. It was kind of weird, okay? Deeply, deeply weird. Actually, when you think about it, I think that's a crime. Yeah, that was probably definitely a crime. Yeah. Let's pause for an ad break, shall we?

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Hi, welcome back. I miss you so much. Did you miss me? Okay, great. So don't worry, Joseph Nicolosi, he dies at the end of this. So, you know, at least we're going to get something good out of this. But remember in the beginning, I talked about Zach Stark from earlier. He was that kid who posted on MySpace about the conversion camp, his parents, you know, they were going to force him to attend this place. Well, we never found out what happened to him at the camp.

But what we do know is that it turns out the camp he attended was Love in Action. Ain't that some shit? And remember how I mentioned that his post went kind of viral and everyone was talking about it and there were like protests and shit?

Well, it wasn't for nothing because this led to an investigation by the state of Tennessee into love and action on allegations of child abuse. What? Gotcha, bitch, you know? Yeah, good. Finally, these investigations went back and forth for years, but eventually the state dropped the charges because they couldn't find any proof of child abuse. Give me a break.

Let me go investigate it. I could find some answers. I want to go undercover. Have some like goggles with a hidden camera. Like, "Hi, my name is Martha. I like taco salad." You know? I could do it. I can uncover the mysteries. The silver lining of this investigation is that it caused so much inner drama within the organization that the leader of it stepped down because it had become so unhealthy there.

Yeah, like he woke up one day and was like, you know what? I think this is kind of bad. Plus the original founders of the organization, John and Frank, who I talked about before, do you remember? Great.

They left around the same time because their own friends who went through the program, they were committing suicide afterwards because they were just afraid that they would never be healed. They were all realizing the terrible damage that the program was doing and they started backing away. Like, we don't want to be a part of any of this. And like clockwork, all these guys end up coming out of the closet and saying that they wish they could take back what they had done out there.

I mean, good for them. They came forward with their truth. But at the same time, they ruined so many lives. So it's like, it's hard to be happy for them. You know, like, I think you're probably going to hell for sure. Like, you sealed that deal, sir. I mean, who am I though? I don't know. I don't judge.

By the way, Love in Action also fell apart after the Tennessee lawsuit. Recruitment was way down. There was all kinds of drama within the organization, especially with the founders all leaving. So they were broke, they lost all credibility, and they officially shut their doors for good in 2012. Well, there were thousands of kids that went to these camps. And I want to tell you about somebody who was a survivor.

Their name is Sam Brinton. When Sam was in middle school, they were hanging out with their bros, just hanging out, and like one of the other kids pulls out a Playboy magazine. You know, like normally, well not normally, but most straight kids, they get pretty excited to see some boobies. They're like, oh shit, boobies? Hell yeah. And like you never forget this moment. So I hear.

but sam was like father son holy spirit no thank you i don't like titties you know like that's okay and they thought the right thing to do was to go explain to dad you know like hey dad i was able to resist temptation so they tell their dad and dad's a little suspicious she's like hmm i guess good for you but like you didn't like those titties a little bit

And Sam goes like, "No father, I wouldn't dare to enjoy a woman's body. I like my friend Dale." And this is where it turns. Now Sam's Baptist dad sees red. He goes into a full blown rage mode. Next thing Sam remembers is waking up in the emergency room and Sam knows for a fact they did not fall down the stairs.

Sam would continue to endure their father's rage and end up in the emergency room many, many more times. Unsurprisingly, this tactic was not working, and Sam was still having gay feelings. So that's when Sam's parents told them that they want to try therapy to quote-unquote fix this problem. Sam's parents were buying into the shit that they were hearing from the church.

that if they didn't fix their kid, they would be failures as parents, their kid would die of AIDS, and most likely go to freaking hell. So Sam starts conversion therapy. This counselor goes on to tell Sam that nobody is gay, no such thing, you know?

and that they're the only gay person in the whole world, which was purposely used to make them feel alone and in need of more help. The church told Sam that they were an abomination, and the counselor even told Sam that all gay people have AIDS and would show them pictures of people dying from AIDS. So of course, like, that terrified Sam. I mean, that would terrify any person, especially a freaking kid. And when that didn't work,

the counselors switched to some of those really gruesome tactics that I was talking about earlier. And I'm not gonna repeat them because it's fucking gross, okay? They were basically using interrogation tactics that the government does to terrorists. For what? You know?

Sam went back into the closet to protect themselves. The therapy didn't work, but Sam said it did so that the therapist and parents would just stop hurting them. This is how it went for thousands of kids at these camps too. And like in Sam's case, it's not even a camp. Sometimes it's a therapist's office or your church basement or a little weekend retreat where they make it sound like it's fun and healing.

It's actually the opposite of that if you haven't caught on. People like Sam come out of that sometimes with damage they didn't even have before. And this damage can lead to what is the absolute most harmful effect of conversion therapy, suicide. A recent study shows that the LGBTQ individual between their teens and 20s who underwent conversion therapy are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide multiple times.

Now you're probably wondering, like I was wondering, how is this even legal? How is this legal? You know, whoever Sam's therapist is should be in jail, right? I agree. Yes. The church is allowed to do this because the government is not allowed to tell the church what it can and can't do, especially if people are agreeing to do it.

And I hear you, goddammit. There's no way any kid would want to do this. Well, it's not up to the kids. It's up to their parents. If their parents are agreeing to let someone do this to their kid, then it's allowed. And it's technically considered a therapy. It's supposed to be a type of cure. Hmm.

Teens were getting enrolled in this without their consent. And that's how a lot of these kids end up in this type of therapy in the first place. And this, again, is still legal in about 30 different states. The reason is it's automatically legal. The only place it's not legal are places where they have to specifically say...

Quote, I'm laughing because, like, they have to specifically say, you can't torture children in the name of God. You can't do that here. Like, it's sad that they even have to make that clear. You think, you know—

That would be the obvious. There are a couple of quote unquote success stories though. People who say that the therapy worked on them and they aren't gay anymore. Just like anything with pseudoscience, it's hard to verify. And a lot of the reformed people end up going back to being gay later in life. Some of the most famous ex-gay preachers from the 90s have rejected all of their teachings and gone back to living their life openly as a gay person.

Great, good for you. Everyone deserves that. Live your truth. Now normally in a story like this, I like to follow the trail of money to see like what's really going on because money will tell you everything.

But, of course, we can't follow the damn money because churches don't have to file taxes. And they use a series of shell corporations and fake companies to hide. Pussies. We can't see the true owners of these camps or where the money is going when people pay for these therapies. But they're everywhere.

They're behind you, look out, you know? Even their donor lists are buried. They have all sorts of different names so they can hide and not get in trouble. Let me put it like this. I did an episode on MKUltra, remember? Anyways, it was a secret mind control project where like 99% of the information, it just wasn't available anymore.

because it got burned whatever that my friends was an easier story to tell than the story of these gay conversion camps because like there's the information is extremely limited i'm telling you who's down to go undercover we could get little like cameras in our glasses i'm down let me know let me know sam would go on to graduate from mit and go to switzerland to testify against the use of conversion therapy in front of the united nations committee against torture

where they were moved to tears. I mean, really think about that. Really think about that. Like these people are hardcore torture experts and they were crying when they heard Sam's story. That's the level of fucked uppery that we are dealing with here. Sam is doing important work with the Trevor Project where they speak publicly against conversion therapy. That's a survivor right there.

It wasn't until 2009 that the use of conversion therapy was officially condemned by the American Psychological Association. Little too late if you ask, but that's totally fine, you know, glad they got to it.

Cool. We have to honor their survivors, but also the ones who didn't make it. The Trevor Project quotes the Williams Institute and estimates that 700,000 people in the United States have gone through conversion therapy, and at this rate, thousands more will continue to be subjected to it for years to come. So if anyone out there is listening and is dealing with some version of conversion therapy, stay strong and know that you are not alone and that I,

We love you. I mean, there's kind of good news in here. In 2017, Joseph Nogalosi died. Is that good news? He lived a very long life. I wonder if he's tried just like not being dead. Nobody's really dead. Everyone is alive. Being dead is just a choice. There are just some people that are struggling with death. That's all. We should pray for him. You hear how dumb that sounds?

You get it, right? Are you getting it? Okay, great. I wish you were alive to hear how dumb that sounds, is what I'm saying. Yes, Nicolosi is a disgusting villain, but it's deeper than that. As long as there's homophobia, there's always going to be conversion camps. Nicolosi is dead, love and action fell apart, but

but conversion camps still thrive. When Love and Action shut its doors for good in 2012, other companies sprouted up right away to swoop in and terrorize children in their place. It's so ingrained in culture to view gayness as impure or disgusting, and that is rooted in dumb, ignorant science from like forever ago. I mean, we stopped doing lobotomies because that shit didn't work. We stopped putting cocaine in everything because...

It was too fun? I don't know. But for some reason, extremists will still hold onto the treatment and won't let it go. Focus on something else. Pay attention. Let's get a hobby here, you guys. Try gardening. Maybe leave kids alone. Well, everyone, thank you so much for learning with me today. Wasn't it fun?

Yeah, it was a blast. Great. Remember, don't be afraid to ask questions to get the whole story because you deserve that. Not even you deserve that. We deserve that. Now, I'd love to hear your reactions to the story, so make sure to use the hashtag darkhistory so I can see what you're all saying.

Join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs. And also come on down and catch my Murder Mystery makeup which drops every Monday. I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your day. You make good choices and I'll be talking to you next week. Yay! Dark History is an Audioboom original. This podcast is executive produced by me, Bailey Sarian.

Kimberly Jacobs, Chelsea Durgin from Slash Management, and Fanny Baudry from Wheelhouse DNA. Produced by Lexi Kiven, Daryl Christon, Spencer Strassmore, and Claire Turner. Research provided by Thomas Messersmith.

writers Jed Bookout, Michael Oberst, Joey Scavuzzo, and me again, Bailey Sarian. Today's historical consultants, we want to thank Sam Brinton, survivor and advocate against conversion therapy. You can find Sam on Twitter, where they give daily hashtag conversion therapy news at S Brinton, B-R-I-N-T-O-N.

Tanya Erzen, PhD, Associate Professor and author of Straight to Jesus, Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement. Casey Pick Esquire, Senior Fellow for Advocacy and Government Affairs at the Trevor Project. Check out the Trevor Project's campaign to end conversion therapy. I'll put the link in the show notes. And me again, I'm your host. Hi, Bailey Sarian. Okay, bye.