Outlaw LGBT conversion therapy in New York

February 23, 2015 by MATHEW SHURKA

At 16, I told my father about my attraction to other boys. He told me he loved me and that I had his everlasting support.

Growing up in Great Neck, I was raised in a traditional Jewish home. My parents didn't know anyone who was openly gay; nor did I. As naive as we were, none of us knew how to react to my coming out or whether there was anything to react to. My father began to express his fears for me. What would happen if I got bullied or harmed? What would happen to my family life? Career?

So he began to search for a counselor and found a "conversion" therapist, a state-licensed psychotherapist who believed he could convert homosexuals to heterosexuals. The therapist explained that there is no such thing as homosexuality and that homosexuals suffer from a psychological condition. He said the younger an individual recognizes his same-sex attractions, the easier it is to change, especially those minors who haven't experienced gay sex.

That was me.

I was inexperienced. And out of fear for my life, afraid of losing my father's approval, and unwilling to confront coming out to my peers, I began five years of conversion therapy.

The first steps to curing my homosexuality included spending as much time as possible with the other boys at school. The "male-bonding" would heal nonexistent traumatic wounds from early childhood. Simultaneously, I was told to stay away from girls to keep from learning effeminate behaviors. Staying away would also allow women to be the mysterious opposite sex that I would eventually interact with in my heterosexual life.

This estrangement included my mother and two older sisters. For three years, my mother and sisters and I had minimal to no interaction while living in the same home, a grueling and painful process.

My depression and anxiety increased, and I got failing grades at school.

When I began having sex with women, another so-called sign of heterosexual affirmation, I experienced more panic attacks. I was pushing myself to have sex with women to prove the therapy was working. My ability to have sex with women began to fail as my panic attacks worsened. The therapist advised my father to get me Viagra because he couldn't prescribe it to a minor, so that I could perform with women.

I suffered extreme depression and contemplated suicide. I was a healthy young man, and I believed I was disabled. In my five years of therapy, I worked with four therapists, and met hundreds of minors attempting to cure themselves for the approval of their parents, communities and religions. Teens today commit suicide from such practices. Rejected lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender teens are eight times more likely to commit suicide. Conversion therapy broke apart my family, subjected me to panic attacks, and kept me unstable with my education and employment. This harmful practice has been condemned by major medical and mental health associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association.

In the last few years I have healed my pain through general and affirming psychotherapy, something that was very hard for me to trust. I am becoming the healthy and happy gay man that I was meant to be. I deal with the effects of my therapy every day and I am proud to be alive and share my story. Today, at 26, I finally have my whole life ahead of me as I did when I was 16.

California, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. have outlawed conversion therapy. Unfortunately, it's still legal in New York for state-licensed therapists to practice such therapy on minors without their consent. There's a proposal in Albany that would stop that and protect parents from ill-advised therapy and kids who need support as they figure out who they are. Let's make this the law so that not a day goes by when it's legal to harm children.

Mathew Shurka is a national advocate for banning conversion therapy for minors.

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