Conversion therapy, sometimes called reparative therapy or sexual reorientation counseling, is an attempt to change a person's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. There is broad consensus in the medical community that sexual orientation and gender identity are immutable traits and that attempts to change these characteristics through conversion therapy or other means are not only unnecessary and ineffective, but also very harmful. In this week’s episode of In the Den, Jen talks with Ryan Kendall about his experiences as a survivor of conversion therapy, his powerful testimony in California’s Proposition 8 trial, and his current career as a civil rights attorney, working to protect marginalized people and give everyone a fair shot.
Special Guest: Ryan Kendall
Ryan is a survivor of conversion therapy who testified about his experiences in the Proposition 8 trial and in support of legislative bans in California, New York, and New Jersey. Ryan has worked as an advocate to eliminate conversion therapy, and his work has been featured in news stories, op-eds, scholarly articles, interviews, books, and theatrical performances. He is a graduate of Columbia University and the UCLA School of Law. Ryan is currently a civil rights attorney for the Systemic Impact Unit at Community Legal Aid SoCal.
Links from the Show:
Content Warning–some links contain homophobic language and talk of conversion therapy.
In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.
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Conversion therapy, sometimes called reparative therapy or sexual reorientation counseling, is an attempt to change a person's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. There is broad consensus in the medical community that sexual orientation and gender identity are immutable traits and that attempts to change these characteristics through conversion therapy or other means are not only unnecessary and ineffective, but also very harmful. In this week’s episode of In the Den, Jen talks with Ryan Kendall about his experiences as a survivor of conversion therapy, his powerful testimony in California’s Proposition 8 trial, and his current career as a civil rights attorney, working to protect marginalized people and give everyone a fair shot.
Special Guest: Ryan Kendall
Ryan is a survivor of conversion therapy who testified about his experiences in the Proposition 8 trial and in support of legislative bans in California, New York, and New Jersey. Ryan has worked as an advocate to eliminate conversion therapy, and his work has been featured in news stories, op-eds, scholarly articles, interviews, books, and theatrical performances. He is a graduate of Columbia University and the UCLA School of Law. Ryan is currently a civil rights attorney for the Systemic Impact Unit at Community Legal Aid SoCal.
Links from the Show:
Content Warning–some links contain homophobic language and talk of conversion therapy.
In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.
Connect with Mama Dragons:
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Donate to this podcast
JEN: Hello and welcome. You are listening to In the Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created out of our desire to walk and talk with you through this journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. We are so happy that you’re here with us.
Today we are going to be talking about conversion therapy and talking about fighting for human rights! Which is a beautiful combination of topics… but particularly perfect because of our guest today. Ryan Kendall is a survivor of conversion therapy who testified about his experiences in the Proposition 8 trial and in support of legislative bans in California, New York, and New Jersey. Ryan has worked as an advocate to eliminate conversion therapy, and his work has been featured in news stories, op-eds, scholarly articles, interviews, books, and theatrical performances. He is a graduate of Columbia University and the UCLA School of Law. Ryan is currently a civil rights attorney with the Systemic Impact Unit at Community Legal Aid SoCal. Welcome, welcome, welcome, Ryan to In the Den. We are so happy to have you here with us.
RYAN: It’s a pleasure to be with you.
JEN: I’m hoping we can start with the early years. Tell us about where you were born and what your early childhood was like. How was life in your family while you were an elementary student?
RYAN: So I grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. And I grew up in a very conservative evangelical family. I would say I grew up in the midst of evangelical royalty. Dr. James Dobson was familiar to my family. I don’t know if you remember Ted Haggard who used to be the President of the National Council of Evangelical Churches. I went to school and am still friends with his son, Marcus. And I went to a private Christian school my entire life. But I grew up in a very close knit, loving family. I was raised in the west side of Colorado Springs in a place called Manitou Springs, up on the mountain. And my mom was a preschool teacher. And at one point, we were in her class. And our parents would hand make our lunches and drive us to school and drop us off. And we’d have little notes in our lunches. And they’d take us to the library. It was a very comfortable, middle-class life.
JEN: It sounds like a TV show.
RYAN: Yeah. It was really idyllic in a lot of ways. I mean, my family had some complications so I’m a child of divorce. And so there was a bit of blending of families and blending of parents. But, all in all, my parents handled that really, really well. and so all of the parents were involved in the children's lives pretty equally. And we had family vacations and went to a family Christian camp every year in western Colorado. Our parents prioritized their children and I think one of the ways that shows is that they paid for us to go to private school for most of our life. And that was really expensive.
JEN: Yeah. It is.
RYAN: So our parents invested a lot. And I grew up with an older brother and my younger sister.
JEN: Move us into middle school. Was it more of the same?
RYAN: Yeah, I mean, because of the way my schools were structured, I never really knew what ages middle school were. So I went to, because I didn’t go to public school, essentially, ever. So I went to a school called Evangelical Christian Academy in Colorado springs, Colorado until the 8th grade.
JEN: OK. That’s at the end of middle school.
RYAN: And, eventually, I started being bullied by some of my classmates who were using slurs, calling me “Gay” and the F-word and all sorts of things because they had picked up on some stuff. And my parents took me out of that school and took me to another school called Pilgrim Christian Academy which no longer exists. It was a Wesly and Holiness school. Really lovely people, but very, very conservative. Folks didn’t have televisions in their house. The women didn’t cut their hair. They would always wear stockings and dresses and wouldn’t wear jewelry, so no wedding rings but really, really lovely people. And at about the age of 13, 14 my parents found my journal.
JEN: Wait, so back up a tiny, tiny bit for me. When the kids were bullying you, were you like, “What? That’s not true.” Or were you like, “Oh, no. They figured it out.”
RYAN: Oh, absolutely, “Oh, no. They figured it out.” And at the same time, kind of like, I have to engage in official denial with my parents so that my parents just think I’m just being bullied unfairly, right?
JEN: That’s what I was just going to say. Did your parents know what they were bullying you about?
RYAN: Right. Well, they knew what they were bullying me about. But they didn’t realize it was because the kids had figured something out, right?
JEN: OK.
RYAN: They just thought the kids were being cruel. And I, out of a survival instinct, kind of played into that. “I don’t know why they’re doing this.”
JEN: And how old were you when you figured it out, when you figured out you were gay?
RYAN: I was really quite young. I’m not sure exactly how old I was. I’m going to say somewhere between 10 and 12, maybe even a little bit younger. So, I was a precocious kid and I would read the Encyclopedia Britannica during lunch at school.
JEN: I love that.
RYAN: Which is something that no longer exists. So, for those listening, who don’t know, Wikipedia used to be in books called encyclopedias. And so I was researching various things and I came across the word homosexual. And I had to look it up in a dictionary. It was like, what is this big long word and what does it mean? And the definition was someone romantically attracted to people of the same sex. And it was a process, but I slowly realized that that was what I was.
JEN: So you’d been hiding it for at least a couple of years before the kids started bullying you?
RYAN: Right. Yes. That’s true. And all of this happened kind of around the time of Amendment 2 in Colorado. Your listeners may not be familiar with that. But Amendment 2 was a ballot initiative sponsored by Colorado for Family Values led by Will Perkins -- and, fun fact, I went to school with Will Perkins’ grand kids at Evangelical Christian Academy – which basically said that cities and counties and local state political subdivisions could not adopt anti-discrimination ordinances that included sexual orientation.
So they were prohibited from adopting anti-discrimination ordinances that covered gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans people. Although, I don’t think trans people were contemplated at the time Amendment 2 was adopted. And our parents were very politically active. So they would have us carry signs on Academy Boulevard in Colorado Springs every year on the anniversary of Roe V. Wade and also in support of Amendment 2. And so, as a little kid, I was being used as a prop in support of this law that was designed to target LGBT people.
JEN: So there was nothing in your mind about, “I wonder how my parents will react?”
RYAN: Oh, it was 100% in my mind because I was able to connect these things together.
JEN: But didn’t you already know how they were going to react? Like there was no hope.
RYAN: So, I knew it would be bad for me because back in the, I’m going to say ,early ‘90s that term ‘homosexuals’ was held up as a big threat to evangelicals and to the Christian community. And so I knew that this was bad for me within my own community and something that I had to hide. And I knew my parents wouldn’t react well. I was just so scared in the moment that I was more focused on keeping it a secret. I don’t think I ever really thought, like, how badly could this go? And had I, it went even worse than my wildest imagination would’ve led me to believe.
JEN: So how about your own personal – you were very actively religious and participating. How did your personal religious beliefs impact the way you were thinking about yourself while you figuring all of this out?
RYAN: Well, initially, it caused a lot of internal conflict. Initially, I had to reconcile the fact that my faith taught me that being gay was a bad and unacceptable thing with what I knew as myself, right? I knew I wasn’t bad. So that caused a lot of internal conflict until I kind of reached a resolution which was like, “Look, if love is wrong, then I’m just going to wrong. But I think maybe the faith is wrong about this instead.”
JEN: Did you ever have any intention of talking to your family and telling them about this?
RYAN: Not until I graduated from college.
JEN: So you were on the long trajectory?
RYAN: Yeah. I think on some level, I realized that I needed to be independent because, the way my family was structured, my parents had – and as all families are structured, but particularly my family – my parents had a lot of power and control over the kids, right? And in my mind, the order of the universe went: God and then parents and then children, in terms of authority. And so I knew that while I was under their control, this wasn’t something that I could really be honest about.
JEN: But they figured it out. Do you want to tell us about that?
RYAN: Yeah. When I was 13 or 14 years old, one night, my dad found the key to my locked file cabinet in my desk. And my dad was a police officer, and so he wanted to make sure that was the key and he opened up my drawer and found my journal and some other materials. And in that journal I had come out to myself. And I’d actually written those words, “I am gay.” And he found that and the life as I knew it ended that night.
JEN: I listened to your Prop 8 testimony and, I’ll be honest, I cried through the whole thing. I don’t want to push too deeply or make you remember things that are horrible, but anything you’re comfortable with, can you share with us at that point how things changed in your life?
RYAN: Right. So I went from this, I’m not going to say perfect, but this idyllic family to a very abusive environment. So my parents immediately started screaming at me, telling me I was going to go to Hell. This story is a little bit more amusing. You’ve got to find humor in the dark moments. So I was in the bath when my father found this journal. And my parents immediately started screaming, “Ryan get out here right now”! and I had just shampooed my hair. And I, like the little gay boy I was, said, “One minute. I need to condition first.”
JEN: That sounds like what they weren’t excited to hear.
RYAN: A little too in-character for them. And so I conditioned and then I left. And I was wearing a towel and they were freaking out. They had my journal. They had some other stuff. And it was like one of the slow-mo moments where you see your life flash before your eyes. And I knew “This is terrible.” So I quickly put on clothes. I actually put on my dad’s pants which were way too big for me. and I put on a pair of white sneakers. I don’t even think they were mine. And I ran out the back of the house, ran to another gay person’s house that I knew. He was a college student at the time. and I was gone for that night and didn’t come back until the next day.
JEN: Did you run after they did all the yelling? Was the yelling happening and you were doing the running or were you out of there before?
RYAN: No. They started yelling. I got dressed and fled. I took advantage of the opportunity while they were screaming at me to get out of there.
JEN: Were you worried at all that it would get physical?
RYAN: Yeah. I mean, I was terrified. I’d never been spoken to by my parents in that way before. I’d never really been yelled at like that. I’d never been threatened with Hell. I was terrified. I had no idea what to do. And I was a child, so I had no power or resources. So it was the scariest moment of my life.
JEN: So, out of context, without any experience of this is what happens when they yell, and this is what happens next, you just have nothing to go off of. It sounds so terrifying. So, you went home the next morning.
RYAN: Right. I remember that walk. So we lived on this block that had a dirt alleyway behind it. And I had to force myself to go home. It was willing one step in front of the other. And, when I got home, my parents sat me down and they basically outlined how they were going to put me in conversation therapy. They had contacted people at Focus on the Family and they had gotten some referrals. And they were going to send me to this series of therapists. And I was a kid with no power, so I just kind of went along with it because I had no choice in the matter.
But I think, to answer your original question, from then on the environment was very abusive, verbally and emotionally abusive. And, as I’m quoted as saying in my testimony in the Prop 8 case, my mother would say she was repulsed by me or that I was disgusting. She also said she wished she had an abortion instead of a gay son. Or that I had been born, in her words, mentally retarded or with down syndrome instead of being gay. And those were shocking things to hear and alienating, right? I mean, your family is supposed to be your safe place, right? They’re supposed to be the people who love you. And, unfortunately, with LGBT youth, family are often the first people to reject you. And it’s hard to describe the damage that that does because the one place in the world that you’re supposed to be safe is suddenly taken away from you and is then a threat to your well-being. And, when you’re a kid, you don’t know what to do. It takes away your sense of safety, your sense of identity, belonging, and it is just very, very damaging.
JEN: You’re going to make me cry right now. But I just can’t even imagine the intensity of having a parent talk to you like that when you’re already feeling so vulnerable. I want to remind our listeners – we’ve talked about conversation therapy before. But I just want to remind you that conversion therapy comes under different names. We need to pay attention. Sometimes they use words like reparative therapy. They’re going to repair something that’s broken. Or reversal therapy, like whatever happened, we’re going to rewind and start again.
But, basically, any attempt to make an LGBTQ person into a straight, cisgender person falls into this category. In addition to not working – it just doesn’t work. But far worse than that, it’s been proven to be harmful over and over again. Every major medical and mental health organization that has a statement, stands opposed to conversion therapy. I just want to make sure we’re really clear with anyone who’s listening that if you’re – a lot of our LGBTQ kids need therapy for a lot of different reasons. And we want to make sure that we are running a thousand miles away from anything that sounds like they want to fix our kids or make them not gay. So I just want to throw that in the middle. I don’t mean to interrupt your story, but I think it’s so important for everyone to understand how dangerous it is.
RYAN: I think it’s really important that you just said that and that you focused on it. So, when I was going to what we now call Conversation therapy, it was referred to as reparative therapy or reversal therapy. And just to briefly expand on that, what conversion therapy does, is it attacks the identity of the participant. It says that you are bad or wrong. There’s something wrong or broken with you. and when you’re a child and you receive that message, it worms your way into your soul and it is very, very difficult, if not impossible, to get that out, right? And so, just as a very small example, because this is something that’s haunted my entire adult life. The framing that there’s something wrong with me means that in any situation – still to this day although I work at it – I blame myself first because I’m the bad one. So, obviously, I’m wrong. And that does tremendous damage to people.
JEN: So there’s lots of different ways conversion therapy works. I, ten years ago, discovered electric shock therapy and the most repulsive things that I could even imagine. Sometimes it’s a little bit more sneaky, still harmful, but a little bit more sneaky. Are you comfortable sharing what your particular “type” of conversion therapy looked like? How that existed and how that impacted you?
RYAN: Sure. And it’s true there are places that will do more extreme versions, also use psychoactive drugs, physical abuse. Mine was all talk therapy. And I just want to emphasize for your audience that talk therapy was enough to nearly kill me. So, it is deadly dangerous. And because there is no science behind conversion therapy, it is literally made up. People used the word “Quackery”. I don’t like that word. People also call it “Snake Oil.” I don’t like that word either, but it is fake. There is nothing behind it. There was no real technique. I went to a succession of conversion therapists. The first one was just some random therapist who identified himself as a Christian therapist in Colorado Springs. I saw him for a couple sessions.
But then I went to an organization called NARTH which then was known as the National Association for Reparative Therapy of Homosexuality. They then changed their name to the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality because they’re trying to be undercover about what they do. And my conversion therapist was the infamous Joseph Nicolosi, who passed away a few years ago. And he didn’t really have, it was mostly a form of bullying. “This isn’t what your family wants for you. You’re going to die by the age of 30 from HIV/AIDS. This isn’t what God wants for you.” The one thing I remember him suggesting was that I try and act more masculine by working out and drinking Gatorade and focusing on women.
JEN: Gatorade?
RYAN: Yeah. I very distinctly remember that. But that just goes to show you, drinking Gatorade is not going to make me straight, right?
JEN: That’s horrible.
RYAN: Playing basketball is not going to make me straight. But that’s what they had, right? So, what it is, is a lot of social pressure trying to alienate someone from their identity. And that is damaging enough.
JEN: How did you go into it? Were you like, “OK. This really would be better. I hope it works?”
RYAN: No. The saying I use is, “I knew I was gay like I know I’m short and half Hispanic.” And I just never thought those facts would change. It was just part of my identity. And, on that level, I knew that this was never going to be effective. And so I went into the experience just wanting to survive it, wanting to make it through, wanting to get to the other end of this experience with my family where I no longer had to be emotionally and verbally abused, had to feel unsafe. And it sounds silly. I made no attempt to change because I didn’t think it was possible. And indeed, none of the people in conversation therapy with me changed. They were all still gay. They were just suffering in different ways because of their experiences.
JEN: Do you think it helped that you knew you couldn’t change? Was there some thread of sanity in the midst of all of it or smoothing?
RYAN: I think I had a very strong sense of self and that was probably protective because I think what happens is that, because of people’s preexisting beliefs or their fears about being gay, these things can really cause them to tear themselves apart on the inside. And they never really escape from it. I was able to make it through. Many people aren’t and struggle with their identities for the rest of their lives for as long as those lives are. Because, the thing is, when you tell people that there’s something wrong with them, it’s a killing discourse. It leads directly to self-harm, self-abuse, and suicide.
JEN: Especially when it’s something you can’t change. You can spend your whole life feeling like a failure, that God isn’t helping you change even though you’re trying so hard, or whatever. I love that you kind of had this internal, “That’s not true.” Like a protective factor, like you said. How old were you when you started this revision/reversal therapy?
RYAN: So, 13 or 14, I believe. Right after my parents found out I was gay, they started sending me to conversion therapy. First a local therapist in Colorado Springs and then to NARTH until I was 16 years old. So it was two, two and a half years.
JEN: That’s so long when you’re a teenager. That’s most of high school. How did you get out of it? What motivated you to stop?
RYAN: Well, first, I just want to point out something that I think is fairly obvious but that doesn’t get said a lot. We don’t do this for any other group in society.
JEN: So true.
RYAN: We don’t send short kids to tall conversion therapy. We don’t send evangelicals to atheist conversion therapy. We don’t send Hispanic kids to white conversation therapy. This is just not something we do. We only do it for LGBT people. And I also want to specifically say a version of this exists for trans folks and gender nonconforming folks and it’s just as damaging because all of this is based on conceptions of gender roles. But this experience, to get to your question, was horribly damaging. I was depressed. I was terrified. I was anxious. And I knew that I wasn’t going to make it out if I didn’t stop conversion therapy.
So, at one point, my dad got angry with me, dragged me down to our basement, locked me in a room to watch some videos by Focus on the Family. It was like “Gays in the Military” and some other video. And, at that point, I realized that this wasn’t getting better. I had to get out of the situation. It had been going on for so long. So I crawled out the window and ran away. And, at the age of 16, I surrendered myself to the Department of Human Services in Colorado Springs and they brought dependency and neglect charges against my parents and revoked their parental custody. And that was an extreme thing for a 16 year old child to have to do. I walked into the DHS office and I said, “If you send me back to my parents house, I’m going to kill myself.”
JEN: And at 16, did they put you in foster care? Did they work on emancipating you? Did you go to a group home? What happened? You were like a baby still.
RYAN: I was a child. I was not emancipated, so dependency neglect is a different proceeding. It’s where the state revokes your parent’s custody. Emancipation makes you a legal adult, essentially. Sorry. the lawyer in me is coming out.
JEN: You’re fine. I just didn’t know if they would be like, “Well, you’re 16. Let’s just go ahead and set you free.”
RYAN: Yeah. So emancipation is really hard to achieve and we looked into it at the time. But it just wasn’t an option for me. You basically have to be able to provide for yourself. And I was a kid. I didn’t have a job. So, what they did was they revoked custody from my parents and then reassigned it to my mom’s first husband who was, ironically enough, the person who found conversion therapy for me to go to and was perhaps the most evangelical member of the family. But I guess he promised not to put me back into conversion therapy and so they gave him custody of me. But, at that point, I was kind of out of control. No one could really – I had lost all faith in my family. And so it was basically a place to stay and a place to get some food and that’s about it.
JEN: It seems like, at that point, you would've lost, basically, faith in humanity.
RYAN: I mean, I was really self-destructive at that phase. So, I was 16 years old. I have been a very straight-laced kid. But I started abusing drugs very heavily because I was trying to kill myself, essentially.
JEN: Sometimes it’s just a slower version of that.
RYAN: Right.
JEN: I don’t know how big of a jump we’re taking here. You're 16, and then in 2010, the start of 2010, you’re in California, on a stand, testifying against the Proposition 8 law that had recently passed. How did you end up on that stand?
RYAN: Yeah. I mean, it was a long journey to get to that point. I was 16 years old. I dropped out of high school. I got a GED. And I tried to take care of myself which was a series of struggles and failures. I ended up failing out of college five times, failing out or withdrawing five times. I was working random jobs as a telemarketer or as a server. Eventually, I moved to Denver from Colorado Springs and started working there. And had some negative job experiences where I faced some discrimination for being gay and ended up going to the anit-discrimination office in Denver to file a complaint. And, when I was there, the head of that office said, “Hey, you seem pretty smart. The city of Denver is hiring. All you have to do is take a civil service test.” And I was 23, 24 at the time.
So I took a test and I ended up getting offered a job as a civilian employee of the Denver Police Department. And, at the same time getting to know folks there, I was appointed to the Denver GLBT commission, which is what it was known as at the time, which advised the mayor and city agencies on LGBT issues. And then the original case in California [inaudible] marriage. And that’s the case that established marriage equality in 2008 for a few months before Prop 8 took it away. and I was, at the time 25, I think. And I went on to CNN.com and I see this incredible story which really had such a dramatic impact for LGB people across the country and the world. It was this faint ray of hope. And, on the front page of CNN were two of the plaintiffs, Stuart Gaffney and his husband John Lewis.
And so I googled them and I found Stuart Gaffney’s email. And I sent him a very excited email congratulating him and thanking him for being a plaintiff in the Prop 8 case. And I said the Denver GLBT Commission to do something about this. We should celebrate this somehow. And so I then coordinated a letter from the commission which had to go through multiple rounds of the political process to get approved and sent out by the city. And we sent it out to 300 different people and organizations in California celebrating the decision and expressing our hope that the voters of California would let it stand because we knew the ballot initiative Prop 8 was going to be voted on a few months later. Through that process, I got to know Stuart Gaffney and told him some of my story. And then Prop 8 passed and it was devastating. But, Ted Olson, former solicitor General of the United states and a conservative appointee at the time, filed a federal civil rights case against Proposition 8 in the northern district of California. And the city of San Francisco moved to intervene and joined that case.
And the city attorney there, at the time, was Terese Stewart, knew Stuart and John and had reached out to them and other folks to address some of the legal issues in the case. And they had said, “Wouldn’t it be great for us if we could find someone who had gone through conversion therapy, had not been completely destroyed by it, but who could testify about this to show that really being gay is just who you are and that this is not something that can or should be changed. For legal reasons, there are very technical reasons why you would want that testimony. And by happenstance, Stewart was like, “I think I might know someone.”
JEN: I have a guy.
RYAN: I have a guy in Colorado. And so Stuart reached out to me and I immediately said yes, I would like to participate. And then I got a phone call from an investigator from the city and county of San Francisco and he went over my testimony and then fact checked me to make sure I was legitimate. And then the city started talking to me. I started talking to the attorneys and they started going over my testimony and then eventually listed me as a witness. and I was flown out to California to do witness prep and to be deposed by the ADF attorneys. They’re now called the Alliance Defending Freedom. But it used to be the Alliance Defense Fund. Fun fact, the new speaker of the house, Mike Johnson, used to be an attorney for ADF and wrote legal briefs in support of conversion therapy. And so those are the folks who deposed me and who were the opposition in this case. And that’s how I ended up getting to testify in the Prop 8 case.
JEN: I’m curious. I was moved this week when I watched it. We’ll actually put a link to your testimony in the show notes for anybody who wants to go watch it. It’s about the first 30 minutes of the link. But I’m curious about how that experience – because at this point you had a GED, right?
RYAN: Right.
JEN: And you were working for the state.
RYAN: For the city of Denver.
JEN: Sorry. The city of Denver. How did that experience of testifying impact you?
RYAN: Well, it changed and saved my life. I mean, I cannot describe accurately enough the difference in the trajectory of my life before and after that case. Before that case I was scratching out a living, working as an administrative assistant for the city and county of Denver. And then I get thrust into the middle of this high profile constitutional case. And I played a big role in that case. The judge in the case later described my testimony as the most emotionally impactful of the entire trial.
JEN: It’s painful.
RYAN: And I worked really hard on my testimony because I knew I was standing in, not just for myself, but for basically every LGBT person. And that was a tremendous responsibility to make sure that I did really well. And I took it very seriously. But I was suddenly surrounded by some of the smartest attorneys in the world, PhDs in economics, and they were treating me like an equal. They were engaging in discussions about ideas and concepts with me. and they had faith in me. And the fact that these truly impressive people had faith in me, helped me find faith in myself which is something that conversion therapy had destroyed. And so it’s not something that everyone can do who goes through this process, can get involved in this kind of thing and have their faith restored this way. But that’s what happened for me.
And so, at the end of the trial, they’re like, ‘Ryan, you’re really smart. You should go back to school.” And so I did. Immediately after the trial I really struggled. I had been retraumatized by living through my testimony again. And by finally admitting that all these bad things happened to me in a way I had not admitted before. Previous to this trial, I told my story as though it happened to someone else because it was just too painful for me to accept that it happened to me. So I was retraumatized by the trial, had a very bad suicidal episode. I did not attempt to commit suicide, but I was planning on it. I moved past that and had been really encouraged by these attorneys and other folks to go back to school. So I enrolled in community college while I was working for the city of Denver. And I did really, really well. And through grace and good luck, I found a pathway to getting admitted to an Ivy League University, Columbia University. And I was admitted and I did incredibly well there. I graduated in 2014, summa cum laude, phi beta kappa. And then I went to law school because I’d seen many, many times how lawyers can change the world for the better.
When I was a kid and I had gone through the dependency neglect proceedings, the court had appointed a guardian ad litem to represent my interests. And that was the first time I saw a lawyer do something to change my life. And then I get involved in this civil rights case where they’re literally changing the world. How could you not want to do that, right? I also, through my experiences, developed a really strong opposition to injustice. I just couldn’t tolerate it because I realized that my experiences had almost killed me. And the way we prevent it from harming other kids was to stop it from happening at all. And so I went to law school. I graduated in 2018. And now I’ve been a practicing civil rights attorney. I’ve entered my sixth year of practice where I work every day to right wrongs and to prevent injustices from harming people.
JEN: As I was listening to the attorneys cross examine you, all the way, 14 years and hundreds of miles away, I was feeling all sorts of rage at the way some people can weaponize the law. And it makes me so happy that there’s other people who are understanding the law and using the law to make life actually better for people. My youngest, actually, currently wants to become a civil rights attorney. They’re only 18 right now, so we’ll never know what happens. But can you talk to us, when you say you’re a civil rights attorney, what is that job? What is it that you do?
RYAN: Well, it takes on a variety of different aspects. Basically, I am a protector of the voiceless and the marginalized. People who don’t have power, I step in to try and make sure they get a fair shake. And that has manifested itself in a variety of different roles. Right out of law school, I worked for the ACLU’s national prison project in Washington D. C. where I represented people who are incarcerated in the state of Arizona because even people who do bad things have constitutional rights that deserve to be vindicated. At the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles where I worked for several years after that, I represented people in eviction and affirmative lawsuits as well. So I protected, probably 100 or more, people from losing their homes. And I also protected people, filed lawsuits against, landlords who had taken advantage of people or done really abusive things. I also helped intervene in a lawsuit during the pandemic because billionaire developers tried to take away COVID 19 protections from tenants. And I helped intervene in that lawsuit to make sure that those laws were upheld to protect all those low-income folks.
I’m currently in the Systemic Impact Unit at Community Legal Aid, SoCal where we take cases that affect large numbers of people in order to vindicate their similar constitutional rights or push the law in a way that protects as many people as possible. I’m currently involved in a case involving compliance with housing laws in Huntington Beach. But there are many other things that we are working on now that, unfortunately, I can’t discuss that are very exciting, some of which will impact all sorts of different people. And so it’s basically, I do what I can to move the levers of power through the court system and through advocacy and media to protect people, to give them a better life, to stand up for them, to make sure they get a fair shot. It’s the best job in the world and I hope your child is able to join us because we need as many good people as possible doing this work. What I will say is, I think there are more lawyers trying to make the world better than make it worse in this particular area.
JEN: Oh, good.
RYAN: There are plenty of lawyers that represent corporations but, in terms of, I think there are more trying to make the world better, than worse.
JEN: So you’ve done a lot with housing which is super cool. And I know you’ve done a lot with conversion therapy earlier when you first were [inaudible]. What sorts of things did you have an opportunity to work on when it comes to conversion therapy and are we seeing the impact of some of that work?
RYAN: Yes. We are seeing the impact of that work. So I basically kicked off the movement to end conversion therapy through legislation. I testified in favor of – So the National Center for Lesbian Rights which is a fantastic civil rights organization. They’re legal director Shannon Minter has wanted to do something about conversion therapy for a long, long time. But, unfortunately, most people think of the movie, “But I’m a Cheerleader” when they think of conversion therapy which is kind of like a comedy about conversion therapy. They don’t realize it still exists. It still exists. It is still practiced in every state of the union and across the world.
So Shannon called me up and said, “Hey, your story broke through. We’ve never found anyone’s story that broke through. Let’s work together.” And they came up with creative legislation to ban conversion therapy. The first was passed in California. I testified in favor of that bill in the legislature. I’ve testified in multiple states, New Jersey, New York. I’ve submitted written testimony. I spoke about it when Ted Loo, who was a state representative became a member of congress, he introduced a version of this called the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act in congress. I spoke at the press conference there. I lobbied Governor Brown to sign the bill when it was passed. But it's really my story and the stories of other folks who we’ve been able to stand up that do the work.
Story telling, as you know, is the most powerful tool that we have which is why you do this wonderful podcast. And it’s these stories that really change people’s hearts because they realize, “Wait. If I do this to my kid, maybe the outcome won’t be so good. Maybe my kid isn’t a Ryan. Maybe my kid will be one of those folks that hurts themselves.” Right? That’s why I’m talking to you today, to make sure that those parents realize that the most important thing they can do is to accept their child, to support their child, and the sooner they get there, the better because that’s what’s going to determine the outcome. We have seen these bills pass in a variety of states and cities. In fact, now they’ve passed in multiple places throughout the world.
We are seeing a legal pushback and we have a very conservative federal judiciary right now. So one of these laws has been struck down as unconstitutional in, I want to say the 11th circuit. It might be the 4th. I forget. Probably the 4th. And I think that has kind of arrested somewhat the ability to enact these laws. And the other reality is that hese laws don’t have a lot of teeth. So I’m not aware of any enforcement action under the California law which has been in existence the longest. But the point of these laws is to send the message that this is dangerous. This will hurt your child. And to make parents pause and really think, “Is this what’s going to be good for my kid?” because it’s not going to be good for your kid. Even my parents have said that had one of these laws existed, had they known about conversion therapy more, they would not have sent me to it.
JEN: I keep going back to that testimony. I watched a bunch of things and read a bunch of articles. But I keep going back to that Prop 8 testimony. I watched it, like I said it’s about 30 minutes, your part. And then I was sucked into watching even more testimonies. I spent way too many hours watching the other testimonies. And I’ve got to admit, I left feeling pretty freakin’ hopeless, helpless. The arguments being made 15 years ago, almost 15 years ago during this trial, are the same ones I hear on the legislative floor now in my state.
RYAN: It’s worse than that. It’s worse than that. We’re seeing the arguments that Anita Bryant made during the Save the Children Campaign made again today. Right?
JEN: Yeah. And they’ve kind of ramped it up even worse against trans people. And I don’t want to feel helpless. I want to feel empowered. So I’m hoping you can point me in the direction of some sort of hope. What do we do?
RYAN: Well, first, I want to recognize that it feels like we still have to fight these fights because we do. It’s a feature of American society that you can never stop fighting for these victories. But, if you look at the trajectory of history over time, things have improved. Things have gotten better. The climate has changed. So don’t lose hope because, while we still have to engage in some of the exact same battles and not just for LGBT people, voting rights, gender equality, all sorts of things we’re still struggling, but the trajectory of society has changed.
The most important thing your listeners can do, first of all, is to start at home by accepting their child and supporting their child and loving their child. That is gonna change that child’s life. And that is why they’re listening to this podcast. But the next more important thing people can do is to speak out and to be visible. To send a signal of acceptance. I think parents should join organizations like yours, like PFLAG. The world is a big and complicated place. I’ve had a big impact, but I started at home. And that’s all that people need to do is to start in their own community to speak out and stand up for others in their neighborhood, in their network because that will send a ripple out that will have a much bigger impact than you can ever imagine. Some queer kid will see that parent standing up for their child and realize, “Oh, Okay. I can be okay, too. There are people out there who support me.”
Then there are other things you can do. You can get involved in activism in whatever way is possible. And I think that’s really important, either in marching in parades or donating time and money or writing to people involved in the legislation. But being vocal and being active is really really important. That does so much for the work. And then sharing your stories. Storytelling is the most powerful tool that we have. It is one of the only things we know that changes hearts and minds. And sharing your story is something that can be done over a cup of coffee or it can be done in a blog or it can be done on a podcast. It is a tool that you take with you everywhere. Just get involved in any way you can because the smallest act can change someone’s life. And changing just one person’s life is the most heroic thing I can think of. And you can go on and change even more than one. So I don’t think people are powerless. I think people are powerful. And those little acts, those small acts of kindness and support really make a huge difference in their own communities and the world.
JEN: So this might be too personal and you can refuse to answer. But I’m really curious. It’s been almost a couple decades. How’s your relationship with your family now?
RYAN: Not great. In addition to conversion therapy, my parents had some of their own issues. And they were never able to overcome them .And I think they were never able to move into a space where they accepted me as I am. And so we rarely talk. We don’t really talk about anything of substance. I don’t think my parents actually know me as a person in the world which is unfortunate because I’m pretty awesome.
JEN: Indeed.
RYAN: But it’s also true for my siblings. My family just kind of imploded and never recovered. And that’s really sad and has left me kind of looking for home throughout my adulthood in a lot of ways still to this day. But, not all wrongs can be righted. You just right the ones you can.
JEN: Do you have a message? You’ve talked about so many of these things. Does anything that we might have missed, a message about conversion therapy, or human rights activism, or any LGBTQ people who might be listening? Do you have anything, a sort of message that we might have missed?
RYAN: The one thing I will say is for LGBT folks and kids who are listening who are having a difficult time, the most important thing to realize is that there is nothing wrong with you, that you are perfect just the way you are. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. And you, too, can have a good life. And it may be difficult and it may be a struggle, but it is worth sticking with it.
The message to parents is really the most important message which is: accept your kids as quickly as you can. You’ve got to do that work now. Because, by not accepting your kids, you’re doing real harm to them. And there’s science backing that up. Dr. Caitlyn Ryan with the Family Acceptance Project has shown that familial rejection leads to higher rates of drug abuse, suicide, lower educational attainment rates, self-abuse. This is the one thing parents can do for their LGBT kids that will make a huge difference in their lives and protect them is to accept them and support them. And it may be halting and it may be imperfect, but as the parent it is your obligation to get there as soon as you possibly can.
And then, finally it’s just that it’s important that people do whatever they can to support the rights of other human beings. It doesn’t have to be big, but it has to be something. And that’s it. I used to say, “Do something. Do anything.” Because that really makes a difference.
JEN: I feel that desperation sometimes. Do something. I don’t care what it is. Just do something. I do want to shout out that episode 2 of our podcast is Caitlyn Ryan talking about her work that you just referenced. So anyone whose ears perked up, you can go back and listen to episode 2 with Caitlyn Ryan.
I want to ask you, in your bio, it said that you’ve had an opportunity to participate in theatrical performances in your advocacy. And I’m super curious about that.
RYAN: So this is actually on YouTube. We could probably find it for the show notes. Dustin Lance Black – who I believe wrote American Beauty – did “8, the play” which dramatized the testimony of the Prop 8 trial. So if you don’t want to watch the 30 minutes of my testimony – although you should – you can watch kind of a dramatization of the entire trial. And in it, I believe Chris Colfer from Glee plays me. Although, as I like to say, “I do it better.” But also Chris did a great job. But it has a bunch of different Brad Pitt, a bunch of different actors, Morgan Freeman, who really do a very well done dramatization of the testimony. I was at the Ebell Theater in Los Angeles, there was also a showing in New York City which I got to go to.
Also, one of my dear friends in Colorado wrote a play in Colorado about the Prop 8 tapes that was done in regional theater throughout Colorado. And “8, the play”, itself has been produced in probably dozens or hundreds of locations across the country. And that’s just another great example of why storytelling is so important because it reaches so many people. And the reason that was done is because the tapes were not released until, I believe, this year or last year from the trial. You really aren’t allowed to video record federal trials. And so this may be the only federal trial that we actually have on video on YouTube, right? It’s just incredibly rarely done. It’s wonderful that it’s on LGBT issues. It really shows the power of what a trial can do .But it took a decade or more for those tapes to be released. So we had to do these theatrical performances instead because this just recently came to light.
JEN: I had no idea. Okay.
RYAN: I hadn’t seen that testimony until this year. I just had a very vivid memory of it. And then there have been books that also have kind of talked about this testimony as well. So, yeah. That’s why those theatrical performances exist, because they kept the tapes secret for so long. Which, if you think about it, is really a mistake because it generates even more interest in it. And if you watch the full trial, which no one has the time to because I think it was two weeks long.
JEN: I was a good eight hours in and I didn’t even scratch the surface.
RYAN: But you really do see their arguments fall apart. The arguments against LGBT equality and against marriage fall apart. And so keeping them under wraps just heightened the interest in them.
JEN: I’m so fascinated by that. Is it “8 the Play” like “took a bite” or like the number eight, like Prop 8?
RYAN: Yeah. It’s number eight. I think it’s just “8, the play” and I think you can find it on Wikipedia if you Google “8, the play” But it’s on YouTube and I’m happy to send you the link once we’re done talking.
JEN: Yeah. We for sure want that in our show notes. People are going to want to find that. I want to thank you for coming and talking with us today. Your story is emotional. I don’t know if everybody at home can feel the amount of emotion that I’m feeling, just this idea of this – you were a baby. You were 13 and all the sudden this idyllic, happy childhood where you were respected and honored and treasured just turned on you.
And I don’t know how to emphasize enough how important it is that we all work together to change the trajectory of those things so that no kid has to go through that inside of their own home. The lies that are being told in the media about LGBTQ people, the lies that we’re hearing on legislative floors about LGBTQ people increases the risk of every kid in their own home. And we need to end that. We need to stop those lies, even if it’s just with our next-door neighbor, one at a time, like you said.
But, in addition to this total despair and horror, your story also highlights how brilliantly you created an opportunity to respect and honor yourself and also give back to those who come behind you. It’s such a beautiful story and I like that you touched very clearly that that doesn’t mean it’s over. We don’t recover from these things. We get better a little bit at a time, but they stick with us, haunt us forever. You don’t really get over stuff. We’re all in the midst of the ugly all of the time. I appreciate how raw and vulnerable you’ve been with us. Thank you.
RYAN: Thank you so much for having me. And I want to thank you so much for talking about this issue, because this is how we do some of that work, by reaching even one parent who listens to this podcast. And while I am very fortunate and I’ve rebuilt my life, like you said, this trauma still haunts me. I’m now 40 years old and I still deal with it which is a long time to be dealing with something like that. But, also, let’s make sure other folks don’t have to.
JEN: Let’s save those kids out there. Thanks again, Ryan.
RYAN: Thank you.
JEN: Thanks so much for joining us here in the den. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. We’d also love it if you could take a minute to leave us a positive rating and review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. But, review or not, we’re glad you’re here. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can visit our website at mamdragons.org or follow us on Instagram or Facebook. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes.