I Survived Ex-Gay Therapy

A former patient speaks out

As Pennsylvania gets ready to debate a bill that would make it illegal to subject minors to conversion (or ex-gay) therapy (California is the first state in the nation to do so), a former patient speaks out about the torment it caused in his own life.

Truth Wins Out shared the video of Matthew Shurka. He’s a 24-year-old who at 16 was forced into six weeks of reparative therapy. His own father sent him into this so-called “ex-gay” therapy after Shurka came out as gay. Now, he says the experience was profoundly painful: “It was pretty horrible – it was basically living the life of how to become straight based off of stereotypes.”

He was in therapy for five years. “Those five years are bad,” he says. “You don’t ever really learn to accept who you are.”

Check it out: