A survivor of conversion therapy describes how shame, coercion and ideology caused lasting harm—and why she believes young people need protection, not „fixing.”
In 1969, I was 20 years old, lost, and desperate for approval when I fell prey to a New York City cult that promised to redeem me from my sins. „You’ll go down in history as our first female conversion,” they said, offering to make me their poster child. I resisted. Hard. But they convinced me that to be my best self, I could not be gay.
I succumbed. With gratitude to the cult and its leader, I announced myself changed. An official heterosexual. In doing so, I set in motion years of confusion and suffering and later helped promote the same fake conversion treatment to others.
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My experience was not an aberration. In the late 20th century, conversion efforts expanded across the U.S.—especially in conservative Christian evangelical communities—driven by the belief that being gay was abnormal and could be changed. Since then, major medical groups have opposed the practice, and evidence has shown it to be ineffective and linked to increased depression and suicide risk. That is why more than 20 states have banned it in professional mental health treatment.
Now, the Supreme Court has reopened that door to harm. In its recent decision, the court has sided with a Colorado Christian therapist who argued that her right to free speech entitles her to counsel adolescents toward heterosexuality. The court’s decision will enable the overturning of her state’s ban on conversion therapy for minors and set a new precedent for other states. It means that when vulnerable young people are troubled by their same-sex attraction, a licensed therapist will be allowed to agree that they are sinful or defective, in need of being fixed.
Though framed as a free-speech dispute, this case is really asking whether licensed professionals may resume a discredited practice—signaling to parents and institutions that pressuring young people to distrust their own instincts is legitimate treatment. In other words: the normalization of harm reframed as care.
Today Lamb works at a Manhattan church with an inclusive faith philosophy.
Foto: fot. Courtesy Donna Lamb
My life, along with thousands of others, shows just how damaging the practice is. Like many young people in evangelical communities today, my shame was formed early. I grew up believing there was something horribly wrong with me in the eyes of God because I was attracted to girls. I tried to cast it out by sleeping with men, trying again and again to feel „normal.” It never worked. I developed constant anxiety and depression.
At 18, I left the Midwest for New York to study acting. I had talent but was broke. When a stranger offered cash in exchange for sex, I accepted. By then, sex with men had no feeling for me anyway. Before long, I was a high-end call girl, seeing several men a day to pay for acting school and using hard drugs to cope. Within a year, I spiraled into deep depression and quit sex work, but the damage remained.
Amid this darkness, an amazing thing happened. I fell in love with a woman. Here was the joy I’d always wanted but had come to believe was impossible for me. Hoping to shed my sordid past and be worthy of love, I started attending lectures by a philosophical group that promised self-improvement and redemption. Little did I know it was a cult. When my girlfriend left me, I collapsed. On the rebound , I pledged myself fully to the cult, remaining for 32 years.
If only I’d been allowed to accept myself when I was young, none of this would have happened.
For two decades, gay conversion was central to the cult I was a part of, which had been founded by a poet and self-styled philosopher. In 1971, its technique—an absurd series of grilling sessions —was featured on national television. This publicity brought a flood of calls from hundreds of terrified men around the country—many living in states where being gay was a crime that could land you in a psychiatric hospital or jail. Homosexuality was still categorized as a mental disorder.
As I pushed the cult’s gay conversion efforts, I convinced myself we were helping gay men and women achieve their goals. What we were really doing was exploiting them to promote our own leader and ideology.
How many people pushing efforts like this today are doing the same thing? Do they really care about the well-being of young people, or is it all about furthering their ideology?
Conversion therapy doesn’t work. Most of the cult’s „successes” eventually quit, but only after lying to themselves and their heterosexual spouses, engaging in secret same-sex affairs, or living for decades with fear and shame. We were deprived of what every human longs for—a chance to love honestly with mind, body and soul.
I will never fully recover from the years I lived under coercive control. What haunts me most is how I harmed others as I promoted the cult’s mass conversion campaign. Eventually, I escaped and reclaimed my identity. But I have spent years trying to forgive myself for my mistakes.
Today, I serve as warden at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Manhattan. Our mission is to feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted and offer hope to those in need, including the LGBTQ community. If only the evangelical right would do the same and protect queer young people instead of using faith to justify coercion.
My faith is strong, grounded in compassion and loving my neighbor as myself—the greatest lesson Jesus gave us. That is why I cannot stay silent. The Court is not merely reinterpreting free speech; it is legitimizing self-erasure in children and ignoring clear evidence of suffering.
The weaponization of licensed authority has no place in mental health treatment—or the law. Regardless of the intention, gay conversion therapy on young and vulnerable people is psychological abuse —whether sanctioned by the Supreme Court or not. Take it from those of us who lived it. ”
Donna Lamb is a writer and cult survivor who is completing her memoir about her years in a cult. Her Substack is Cults Recruit People. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.