Gay people of Reddit , who had to attend gay conversion camp for some reason. What is your story?

1. my story isn’t that bad, but this specific camp made us list our hobbies and likes and such. they’d put up pictures of conventionally attractive dudes in the middle of an activity (my favourite thing i listed was ‘drawing’) and ask us how we felt about them. gradually they’d take away one small thing that we liked (for example theyd take my pen, then pencil, then notebook) and asked how we felt about the dudes again. eventually we sat in an empty room as they asked us how we felt. i think this was an attempt to make us associate seeing hot guys with losing everything we loved, but it was so horribly done that i cant imagine whoever thought of that was over the age of 10.
   — walanis


2. It wasn't a camp, but I was raised by Scientologists and they have a sort of conversion therapy they use to cure all "aberrations" like asthma and homosexuality. It's funny since L. Ron Hubbard doesn't actually say much about homosexuality. The only thing my seniors could show me said that homosexuals are constantly stuck in the same "tone" on the "tone scale," which is basically a chart of human emotions that places failure, apathy, and body death as low emotions, and happiness, creativity, and total knowingness (his word not mine) as high emotions. He believed all homosexuals were stuck at 1.1 on the tone scale, the number for covert hostility, which means that all gay people are supposedly full of secret, evil intentions. That was a bad place to be on the tone scale, and he believed that it was based on false purposes that you were holding onto. I won't go too off-topic with all the Scientology background, but L Ron Hubbard made up a lot of words and it's always hard to talk about without some translating. So there's this process called the False Purpose Rundown that is very expensive to receive, but you are also required to do it if they find out you have this abberant behavior. I worked as an auditor in training at a local org (what they call churches) from the age of 11 up until I was 15 and performed two of these rundowns for two different gay men. The process is a mix of forced confessionals/interrogations, a lot of repetitive, hypnotic questions, and some other nonsense. It was heartbreaking both times, because these men genuinely wanted to change. They would sit in my office, crying, begging for the realization that would finally make them straight. Eventually a realization would come, but nobody was cured, just more repressed. Both men got in trouble later for their aberrant behavior, and I got in trouble for not actually curing them. So being a gay teen at the time, I did not have a lot of faith in the process, but still felt like I was a disgusting pervert. I spent my nights doing the Scientology version of praying the gay away. Scientology states that if you believe something with total certainty, you will just believe it into existence. Scientologists also believe that they are the reason the Berlin wall fell, so if we can make a wall fall, surely we can change our orientation, right? It didn't work. Because of a medical condition and some anonymous abuse concerns from neighbors, I was allowed to leave staff and I got to be a normal 15 year old with a 2nd grade education and no connection to anyone in the real world. So I decided to come out to my dad like a complete idiot, and he tried to take me to the org so they could fix me. I ran away and lived at our library for a few weeks, but I was worried about my mom and my survival skills were terrible. I went back home and he took me to the org. I was usually a very, very obedient kid, but not being wholly in the church gave me a little confidence that there was a world outside, and I did a lot of secret reading about sexuality at the library, which wasn't allowed. The attempt to convert me wasn't successful, and I tried to stop engaging with them. They are tenacious to say the least, so it wasn't actually my decision, and the process was pretty devastating. On one hand, my feelings felt valid, but I had been so thoroughly indoctrinated that it was hard to understand what was right. They were trying to groom me to get me back on staff since I'd already done so much training, and they thought this little aberration would be an easy fix. My dad's church was also being much kinder than my old one since I wasn't on staff there, and that was very confusing to me. But one day three men showed up to my house, angry that I was taking too long and bogging down the process. They yelled at me on my lawn for a while. At one point I got into a yelling match, my first in my life. Looking back, I'm amazed I talked back to them. The one man did most of the talking and asked me why I didn't just decide to be straight. I asked him if he could just decide to be gay if he wanted, and he said he could. All of my learning at the library taught me that this man was probably bi, and that gave me an indescribable feeling: for the first time, I realized I knew something that the church didn't. And I probably knew even more things, and there was even more to learn in the world outside the church! I ran away from the three men and hid at a park like some kind of lizard. Shortly after all this, my dad was forced to excommunicate my mom who was relatively bedridden and suffered from a lot of undiagnosed physical and mental disorders. Sometimes she would walk outside naked or hit her head against the wall repeatedly. She had 30 days to leave the house. This was great timing, so I bought an old car with some money I saved and drove her to a new city in a different state. We started life again, homeless in a strange place, but free. This was all 11 years ago. I live with my partner now and have a happy, boring life. We have a dog and friends, and so many books! My mom is now mentally and physically healthy and completely self sufficient. I forget about the journey it took to get here, but I'm so grateful for the life I have.
   — DangerTurnip


3. My parents took the "we love you but we want to fix you" approach when I came out (as opposed to "you're an abomination"), so I had it a lot easier than others in this thread. I was 18 at this point, but they threatened to stop paying for my tuition and expenses if I didn't try to change. They started making me see a therapist twice a week. She seemed normal enough, albeit with a heavy Christian bias. I had zero intention of converting, but we didn't talk about sexuality so much as my relationship with my parents and stuff like that, so I let my guard down and opened up a little. Turns out the whoke thing was a trap. She told my parents everything I'd told her and started letting them sit in on our sessions. They all ganged up on me and used the complaints I'd made about them in confidence (I thought) against me. It ended up destroying my relationship with my parents and turning me off to therapy completely. I decided the tuition money wasn't worth the stress and the ultimatums and just moved out. I had a very rough time for a few years after that, but now I'm financially self-reliant and back in school. I've since met people who were electrocuted or had exorcisms performed on them, so I'm pretty grateful things worked out for me the way they did, but I'm sharing my story just to point out that these more "mild" forms of conversion therapy can still be very traumatizing.
   — twink_twank_twunk






4. I'm a guy. So when I was 14, I was 100% a virgin and hadn't even kissed anyone. I'd been looking at and printing pictures of nude men (because I'm gay). My mother found them and asked my relatives what to do. I ended up at a church-sponsored conversion "camp" for six weeks. I wasn't fully aware of what the place was at the time other than that I was in trouble coz of the porn and it was church-related. It wasn't what you're probably imagining. It was basically an old mall that was empty and it was being converted into a weird church. There were maybe twelve kids there that I knew of, but TONS of adults (like 80ish). To this day, I don't know why they were there... if they were looking for conversion or maybe they were church employees. It was a bit like being at church with mostly all adults. Kids were kept apart. You didn't go outside. The food was like concession food (nacho bar was about all I ate). And lots of Kool-Aid. There was worship every evening in a space with a glass ceiling and it was very awkward. I would mostly stare up out the ceiling. The practice there did involve a lot of things that I believe are now illegal: shock therapy, using heterosexual porn, and isolation. I was a polite kid and was really compliant to what they wanted, so I actually think I was let off easy for the most part. The weirdest thing about this place was communal showers (there was nowhere to shower alone). Going and showering was my favorite thing because, well, I could see naked guys. I would shower as frequently as I could and take my time. After about two weeks, one of the men working there came into the showers while I was in there. He was much older, grey hair, moustache. I kept lookng at him (which is gross to me now). I remember being both scared and excited, but ultimately what he did was rape and it wasn't pleasant or something I wanted. I bled scary amounts and it was later told to my parents that I had been sticking things up my butt. I wasn't. It happened more times. For a long time after this, I would cry thinking of it and I still have some hang-ups today from it. It was scary more than anything. Around the time I was 18, I found out they had made the place into a church and private school. However, they faced problems when a bunch of scandals broke out about their conversion camp. The church and school both went under, and then the history of rape also came out. A few years after that, I broke down and told my mom all about what had happened. I don't think I could have broken her heart more. She was so apologetic and... she's a great mom now. She changed her mind on a lot of it and didn't know how to handle homosexuality. The only thing that bothers both of us is that I was afraid to talk to her about it then... and that if I'd spoken up maybe things would be better for some other kids who ended up at that awful place. Probably the weirdest thing in all of this: I ended up buying a house a mile from that awful horrible place. I drive by it once or twice a week. It's abandoned now. It has no power over me. It is just weird that I ended up so near that place.
   — throwawaytheprayaway


5. I remember all too well the moment I realized that this was going to be a long difficult summer for me. On arrival we were given extensive forms to fill out. Questions about hobbies/ likes/ dislikes and all that kind of thing. Least favorite smell was an interesting question on the form, my 17 year old self thought. On the 2nd or 3rd day in I was given some, in hindsight, incredibly laughable gay erotica (probably a strong word) and allowed to return to my room. Or at least what you would expect a particularly naive grandparent in the 1990's to give you, anyway. As soon as I returned to my room I heard some commotion outside the door and then the pungent smell of curry slowly seeped into my room. Waves of the smell came through periodically over about 3 hours. This was the smell I had listed on the form and this was their attempt at making me straight by associating attractive men with the smell of curry,
   — ShaneMcDeath


6. I'm not sure this qualifies but my stepmonster kept forcing me to go to a church camp every summer that she picked out. The counselors went out of their way to tell me how 'bad' gay people were, how they were going to hell, how they were terrible people who touched small children, standard 'anyone different is a monster' bullshit. The adults liked to follow me around to make sure I wasn't, ah, *too friendly* with the other girls. I couldn't even go change to get into the pool without an adult present. They seemed to be convinced that I was one of them there evil gays and would force myself on another girl. So instead all the grown ups spied on me, at age 12, while I was alone- even changing, going to the bathroom, swimming, etc. Once a counselor said she *had* to come into the toilet stall with me while I changed my tampon to make sure that's what I was doing. Oh, and I shouldn't even use tampons because that would make my vagina shaped funny and my husband wouldn't want to have sex with me. So I had to change my tampon with the stall door wide open and two counselors watching me, asking me if I masturbated and telling me how my future husband wouldn't like that. I actually used to like to sing, so they'd force me to sing religious hymns over and over and over until my voice gave out, and even wrote a special "gays are going to hell" song just for me that they forced me to sing to them whenever they wanted. If I refused, they'd lock me in the canoe storage while everyone did whatever. I started to hate music. I wasn't allowed to sit with boys (I honestly don't know why) at lunch, and counselors took it upon themselves to steal my food right off my tray and refuse to let me go get more because I'd "never get a husband if I was fat". I said I didn't want to get married anyways and they acted like I'd stripped naked and ran in front of the pope. One year attendance was really down for this camp, and I heard a girl in my cabin talking about how her parents almost hadn't let her come this year because last month a male counselor had gone into a cabin and been caught raping a young girl. What surprised me was my lack of surprise. Even when I tried following their rules or playing their games it wasn't enough. I wasn't allowed to play kickball or baseball or anything with the other kids, and when I tried to sign some songs instead of singing, they taped my hands together so I couldn't because "we don't know what you're saying. You could be saying anything and pretending it's the song lyrics." I guess they thought I was sending out my gay signal? Who knows. Anyways, I finally, *finally* aged out of the camp and my stepmonster was so pissed we couldn't afford to send me to the "adult" camp (ages 15+) out of state. So I didn't have to go anymore. My younger sister later told me she'd asked about the camp after I'd moved out and her mother- my stepmonster- said there was no way in hell she'd send her child there. Apparently there have been lots of accusations over the years from kids that were swept under the rug but eventually someone finally fucking investigated and the camp was shut down. So it might not have been a conversion camp, but I think that's what they were going for.
   — heyomeatballs






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   — [deleted]