Madison Ald. Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford didn’t go through “the worst” conversion therapy, but the programming she did receive, informed by her evangelical roots, continues to affect her in ways she’s still discovering.
“I wish we could realize how much harm these programs do just on a personal level. So many of us are dealing with trauma inflicted on us by people who truly meant well,” Martinez-Rutherford told me. “We know from study after study how damaging conversion therapy is, if people just listened to survivors and believed them.”
But the harms of conversion therapy aren’t just being told to us by victims and survivors. Overwhelmingly, studies from medical journals and organizations confirm again and again the psychological and physical toll of this form of “talk therapy.”…