Filmmaker Zach Meiners hopes to shed light on the hidden and often deadly methods involved in so-called gay conversion therapy with a gripping new documentary.
HuffPost got a look at “Conversion,” which will be shown at the Landmark Century Center Cinema in Chicago on January 12, via the clip below. In it, LGBTQ rights activist Elena Joy Thurston recalls how her attempts to reconcile her queer sexuality with her Mormon faith led her to seek a “cure” for same-sex attraction.
“At 20 I got married. By the time I was 30, I had four kids,” Thurston explains. “I had a great friendship and a great marriage … but my youngest went to school and suddenly I had six hours a day to think by myself and I had these crazy thoughts like, ‘No, I really don’t like it the life that could” It wasn’t a possibility because I worked so hard to create that life. So I had to get rid of those thoughts.”
Watch a clip from “Conversion” below.
Viewers may recognize Thurston, the founder of an LGBTQ advocacy group known as the Pride and Joy Foundation, from her 2019 TED Talk about her experience with conversion therapy.
In addition to Thurston, “Conversion” highlights a number of other survivors, including Dustin Rayburn — better known as “RuPaul’s Drag Race” veteran Dusty Ray Bottoms — and Meiners himself.
Conversion therapy, sometimes referred to as “reparative” therapy, is unfounded and harmful treatment that attempts to change an LGBTQ person’s sexuality or gender identity. It has been explicitly discredited by the American Psychological Association and other major medical groups.
Currently, 20 US states have banned the practice of conversion therapy – which treats LGBTQ identity as an addiction, not unlike drugs or alcohol, and electroshock therapy – on minors. And in June 2022, President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to explore guidance clarifying that federally funded programs cannot provide conversion therapy.
However, the practice continues to be promoted within conservative religious communities. A 2019 report by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law estimated that 698,000 LGBTQ Americans between the ages of 18 and 59 have undergone conversion therapy at some point in their lives. About 350,000 of them received this treatment in their teens.
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A native of Kentucky, Meiners originally envisioned “Conversion” as a five-minute short film. Once he started reaching out to more people who had shared their experiences with conversion therapy, however, he realized he had enough material for a feature-length documentary.
“When I found out that my child’s conversion therapist was still actively practicing in my hometown, I was incredibly shocked,” Meiners told HuffPost.
The film had its world premiere at the 2022 Portland Film Festival last fall, where it was warmly received. In December, New Yorker critic Joshua S. Mackey praised the documentary as “more than a film, it is a catalyst for change”.
Conversion therapy has previously been dramatized — with varying degrees of success — in big-screen films like “Boy Erased,” “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” and last year’s Kevin Bacon slasher “They/Them.”
Calling the production of his film “a healing and empowering process,” Meiners wants “Conversion” to set itself apart from its Hollywood predecessors as a vehicle to encourage survivors to “talk about their change and know they’re not alone.” .
“Conversion therapy almost destroyed my life,” Meiners said, “and I knew I had to do something to prevent it from happening to others.”
