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"Praying the gay away": trauma survivors crusade to ban conversion therapy

White House's call to ban "reparative" therapy for minors a welcome change as activists work to stop practice – but industry won't go down without a fight.

When his father's attempts to beat the gay feelings out of him failed, 11-year-old Sam Brinton was sent for conversion therapy.

"I was told I was the only gay left in the world, that the government had killed all the gay children, that I had Aids, that God hated me – a horrifying battery of lies which I had no reason not to believe because these were the people that were supposed to be helping me", Brinton said.

Then came the physical torture: forcing his hands into ice while showing him pictures of men touching men, wrapping his hands in coils that heated up painfully when he saw images of men hugging, showing him gay porn and giving him electric shocks.

Several suicide attempts later, Brinton, the son of Southern Baptist missionaries, realized he had only one viable option if he wanted to carry on living.

"In the end I had to lie and say I was cured just to get out of it", he said.

Brinton doubts he will ever completely be free of the trauma. "I'm definitely still processing. The hard part is because it happened long ago, a lot of it is mentally associated into my cognition. Therefore, every single time I shake a man's hand or get a hug, I'll have a small amount of shock hit me.

Source: The Guardian