Author Garrard Conley (L) and writer, director and actor Joel Edgerton Amanda Edwards/Getty Images Garrard Conley woke up today to learn the Supreme Court issued an 8-1 ruling limiting states’ ability to ban conversion therapy for minors, framing the practice as protected speech.
He was not OK.
When Boy Erased was published in 2016, Conley’s account of being forced into conversion therapy read like something from another era. The son of a Baptist pastor in Arkansas, Conley was 19 when he was given an ultimatum: attend a church-run program designed to “cure” his homosexuality or lose his family.
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What followed, as he recounts in the memoir, was a system built on confession, control and psychological pressure. He was subjected to six months of “therapy” sessions that demanded he invent sexual histories; assigned bible verses as punishment. At Love in Action, the program he ultimately entered, he attended exercises that mapped “sins” across family trees or required participants to scream at imagined versions of their parents. Teenagers were grouped with adults dealing with everything from marriage issues to more extreme behaviors — including pedophilia — all under the doctrine that “every sin is equal.”
His book was later adapted into a feature in 2018, directed by and starring Joel Edgerton, who played the closeted therapist who oversaw his “conversion.” Lucas Hedges played a loosely fictionalized version of Conley, while Nicole Kidman played his mother.
Conley, meanwhile, became one of the most visible chroniclers of conversion therapy’s harms, his advocacy helping fuel legislative bans across much of the country. The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Conley shortly after the Court released its historic decision.
Take us back to the beginning. What was Love in Action?
So in 2004, after I was outed to my parents, my father gave me an ultimatum: attend the program or lose connection to my family, my friends, my community. I was 19 — legally an adult — but this kind of thinking was something I’d grown up with in the church.
Conversion therapy doesn’t always look like a facility. Before I ever got to Love in Action, I spent six months in one-on-one talk therapy with someone connected to the program. He told me to reveal any sexual fantasies I’d had, in as much detail as possible. His response was always to be disgusted. He would give me a set of Bible verses to memorize for the next session. After a while, it felt like I had to make things up, because he was always suspicious — always suggesting I must have been hooking up with men in public restrooms. These were not things that were in my brain at the time.
And then you went to the program itself.
Love in Action had a scheduled two-week program called “The Source.” But they wanted you to stay much longer. They were encouraging my parents to put my college tuition toward conversion therapy instead and have me drop out.
The program used a 12-step model based on Alcoholics Anonymous to lead people out of what they called “the sin of homosexuality.” We had what were called “rap sessions.” We were placed with people dealing with bestiality, pedophilia, marriage issues, gender confusion, all under the idea that every sin is equal in the eyes of God.
The man who ran the camp, John Smid — who rather famously came out years later and is now married to his husband — his credentials, when my mother finally thought to ask, were that he’d been a marriage counselor and had worked with Alcoholics Anonymous.
There was also an arts and crafts component.
There was. We did what were called genograms — something that real therapists use, a kind of family tree showing patterns of trauma across generations. But in our version, next to your family members, you would write things like “AB” for abortion, a dollar sign for gambling, an “H” for homosexuality. It was meant to show how the sins of the fathers were responsible for why we were there.
And then one day, we were asked to make masks. We were told to show what we presented to the outside world — and then the ugly part inside.
Sounds like a RuPaul’s Drag Race challenge.
(Laughs.) I know, right? Every time I talk about this, it’s just so absurd now with this distance. I really think that if people weren’t completely destroyed by it, they could have made excellent drag queens. You definitely learn to think on your feet.
What was the breaking point for you?
There was something called the lie chair. You were asked to sit across from an empty chair and imagine your father in it, and to tell him how much he hurt you, how much you hated him. The assumption, based on some very watered-down Freud, was that I was gay because my father had been too distant and my mother too close. They were obsessed with how much male touch you received growing up. In any other context, it would have been wonderful. Not in this one.
I’d read 1984 in high school. And I remember thinking, “They’re asking me to hate my father. This is a Christian institution. They want me to hate him so I can be cured.” So when they told me to perform this exercise in front of everyone, I said, “I don’t hate him. I feel really confused about why I’m here and I don’t know why you’re making me do this stupid exercise.” And they said, “You’ve been lying the whole time. You haven’t been applying yourself.”
I got so angry that I stormed out and demanded my belongings back. They take everything when you arrive, your phone, your wallet, to look for what they call “false images.” I said, “I need my phone back.” They said, “Only in an emergency.” I said, “It is an emergency.” I took the phone into the hallway and called my mom.
Tell me about this morning.
I thought I was prepared for the ruling. I’d read all the documents. I’d been involved. But when I saw it in print, what it actually felt like was humiliation. It felt like being told that all of the work — all of it — was somehow unnecessary.
I called my mom and told her. She hadn’t seen the news yet. She said: “I’m just so mad.” And then she said something I couldn’t have put better myself: “What happened to you was speech. And speech does harm — especially from people you put your trust in.”
The ruling was 8-1, including two of three liberal justices.
That hurt more. When I read through the decision, it felt like reading an alien language. Not because it’s difficult, but because I can’t follow the logic. They’ve framed this as a speech case rather than a question of medical regulation. And what that tells me, reading between the lines, is that they’re treating the identity of gay, lesbian, and trans people as an idea that’s up for debate, rather than a scientific truth. Because of that, they’re willing to call this a belief issue.
You’ve been careful about the word “torture.”
I’m careful because I’m not saying every conversation in which someone explores their sexuality constitutes torture. But what I experienced was torture. And I think when someone — especially a licensed professional — tells you, over and over again, that what you’re experiencing is not true, that is a different thing. It closes a door on a person. It doesn’t give them options. It tells them there is only one way to be a healthy human being.
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