Standing at the corner of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn Blvd in Dallas for over 150 years, Oak Lawn United Methodist Church has served Texans of faith, including members of the LGBTQ community. Through its inclusive efforts, the church is a leader in providing resources for all Texans. And through a sign of symbolic strength, the church continues to commit to standing up for equality.
On Oct. 9, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered all decorated crosswalks across the state to be removed within 30 days or risk losing essential funding from the state’s transportation department. The rainbow crosswalks are a major pillar of the community across Houston, Dallas, Austin and more, and have been in place as early as 2017 as a visible and popular show of support for LGBTQ Texans in their hometowns.
In Dallas, the rainbow crosswalk was privately funded by the North Texas LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce through private donations and fundraising efforts in 2020. The crosswalks, which underwent a recent redesign that was also privately funded, are maintained by small business owners across Dallas’ LGBTQ neighborhood in Cedar Springs.
Though City of Dallas officials and local advocates continue to explore options to keep the crosswalks in place, members of the community have already begun to mobilize in response to Abbott’s efforts. Last Saturday, local community leaders, including Cece Cox from Dallas’ Resource Center and out State Representative Venton Jones, organized a rally at the city’s historic intersection of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn to speak out against the removal. On Tuesday morning, Oak Lawn United Methodist Church coordinated its own response.
Robert Garcia Sr. and Robert Garcia Jr., father and son and heads of security at Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, are leading the project to paint the stairs leading up to the church in LGBTQ pride colors. This project, Garcia Jr. said, is an opportunity for the church to show its solidarity and commitment to all Texans of faith, including members of the LGBTQ community.
“We’re trying to show them you can take away the colors here, but you can’t take it away from our church,” Garcia Jr. said.
Garcia Sr., who has family members who attend Sunday services, said the church community welcomes him and his family with open arms. Literally.
“You come in here and you’re family. Gay, straight, trans, Black, white,” Garcia Sr. said. “There are hugs everywhere. We’re not shaking hands here. Just hugs here and open doors.”
Earlier this week, Houston staged a sit-in protest as officials removed the rainbow crosswalk in Houston’s Montrose District. Less than a day later, the crosswalk colors returned, chalked in by residents. In Austin, drag artist and activist Brigitte Bandit and other organizers held a photoshoot on their crosswalk, and with help from Austin’s Fire Department, removed red paint thrown onto the crosswalk by protesters.
Though the crossroads on Cedar Springs may face an uncertain future, for Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, pride will not be erased. No matter what.
“If you like it, great! If you don’t, turn around. Look away,” Garcia Sr. said. “It’s as simple as that.”
Dr. Richard Isay is a modern hero who opened up the world of psychoanalysis to the LGBTQ+ community. He suffered through what we would call conversion therapy today, but after realizing it didn’t help, Isay fought for psychoanalysis to better serve the queer community.
Not only did he open the profession to gay people, but he also convinced psychoanalysts to stop treating queerness as a problem rather than an innate part of being human. And above all, he convinced the most homophobic psychological professional society to not just change its ways but become the first mental health organization to support gay marriage.
Isay was born in 1938 and attended college in the late 1950s. In his book Becoming Gay, Isay describes an infatuation with a fellow student, “Bob,” but felt it was just “a passing phase that would soon be replaced by an equally passionate interest in girls.” He dated women “infrequently” due to a lack of attraction and threw himself into his studies, partially as a cover for not dating.
“Although Bob and I engaged in casual sexual play, I did not label myself ‘homosexual.’ I did view my attraction to him as a serious neurotic problem since I was uncertain that I fell into the category of those ‘normal’ adolescents who simply had occasional thoughts about other boys,” he wrote.
Isay was very interested in the mind. He knew he wanted to be an analyst since his sophomore year of college, according to the 1994 book Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature by Mark Thompson. The interest wasn’t despite his concerns about his “neurosis,” but rather because of it, fearing he had “something terribly wrong.”
It’s important to note that psychoanalysis is different than other forms of psychotherapy. The kind of therapy most people today are familiar with is based on helping the client get out of harmful thought patterns—it’s the realm of CBT and worksheets. Psychoanalysis is the realm of Freud and focuses more on reconciling conflicting desires to change. Psychology Todayuses a helpful swimming metaphor to explain the difference:
“If you have fallen into a pool or were hit hard by an ocean wave, then you will have to overcome your fear of drowning and learn how to swim. Psychotherapists can help with both. Once you see this fear for what it is (a fear, not a fact) and learn to swim, then you will be more capable of managing your life when you find yourself in water again… [but] some people need an approach that helps them face and work with the fact that, at least in part, they don’t want to learn to swim. They may be frightened of moving forward or do not want to do the hard work it would take. Some might even fight to stay where they are because it suits them in some unconscious way to be drowning.”
As part of his training, Isay started seeing an analyst himself. For the next 10 years, he was subjected to a psychoanalytic version of conversion therapy. He said his analyst had figured out the root cause of his homosexuality, and how to “cure” it: “By becoming aware of the childhood fear of my father’s rage over my closeness to my mother, I would become less frightened of the mortal consequences of my heterosexual desire.”
He even married a woman, Jane, who was a book editor with an interest in psychology; the couple had two children. In 1979, he met his future husband, artist Gordon Harrell, and a year later, he came out to Jane.
“He sat down on the bed and said, ‘I have something I need to tell you.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m homosexual.’ At that moment, I saw my future collapse before my eyes. I got the chills and ran to take a hot bath. It gave me time to think and warmed me, but not for long. We spent the night talking and lamenting. On the plane home, we held each other and sobbed and planned. By the time we landed, we had decided to keep his sexual orientation a secret and stay married for the sake of the children,” Jane Isay wrote in a 2011 essay for The New York Times.
While as far as his children and close family knew, he was straight, Isay became a gay activist in his professional life. Isay was involved with the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), and in 1983, he courted controversy with a presentation to the organization titled “New Perspectives on Homosexuality,” where he argued against conversion therapy. He later became APsaA’s first openly gay member, leading some of his colleagues to stop referring patients to him.
In 1986, he wrote an influential book about how psychoanalysts should handle queer patients: Being Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development. Isay was one of the first to argue that, to paraphrase Lady Gaga, baby, we were born this way. Though the American Psychiatric Association (APA) had stopped considering homosexuality a disease in 1973, the APsaA hadn’t caught up yet, and its analysts commonly still treated being gay as a symptom of arrested development and something to be “cured.”
In addition, the APsaA had homophobic policies. When Isay started his career, gay people couldn’t become analysts at all. Even as that changed, queer analysts were still blocked from training others or advancing in the profession, according to the BMJ. In 1991, Isay ended up threatening to sue the APsaA with the help of the ACLU. APsaA backed down, though for years there seemed to be hard feelings between the organization and Isay. In a 1996 New York Timesarticle, Isay called APsaA “one of the most prejudiced and biased institutions in the country — like the CIA, the FBI, and the military.”
In the same article, APsaA member Dr. Roger McKinnon tried not to give Isay credit for making APsaA change its policy.
“Yes and no. Yes, in that he has been an advocate of it. No, in that he has made pejorative depictions that exaggerate the state of affairs,” McKinnon told the Times.
In his personal life, he came out to his children and divorced Jane in 1989. He was one of the first people in New York state to have a legal same-sex marriage when he wed Harrell in 2011, according to Gay Star News. Always ahead of the curve, he was fighting for gay marriage as early as 1989, far before the issue hit the mainstream. And by 1997, the APsaA had come around, supporting same-sex marriage following Isay’s policy proposal, becoming the first mental health organization to do so. In 2019, the APsaA also became the first mental health organization to apologize for its past homophobia.
Isay died of cancer in 2012. His passing received national coverage due to the impact he had on how the medical establishment saw gay life. Isay was proud to be gay, as he told Thompson in Gay Soul: “Being gay is an adventure because there are no guidelines for living our lives. We make them up as we go along. Sometimes I wonder what will happen when society is more accepting. Will we then become bound by convention? Life wouldn’t be as challenging. I like being a renegade.”
Dallas Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb refused to wear a rainbow armband during a game, Olympian Mollie O’Callaghan pledged to no longer compete if trans swimmer Lia Thomas is allowed to, and singer Sam Smith took issue with conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel, as two individuals, using they/them pronouns.
You might have seen these divisive posts on Facebook, you might even have been outraged by them or shared them, but they’re not real – they are anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation falsely framed as legitimate news content.
You only need to make a cursory Google search to see the claims can be easily disproven.
Sports editor David Evans, writing for Sportscasting, concluded the story about Lamb was fabricated because there is absolutely no source for his alleged quote nor did any reputable sports outlet run coverage on it.
Swimming Australia swiftly issued a public statement declaring the comments attributed to O’Callaghan, and subsequently fellow swimmer Kyle Chalmers, were fake.
Sam Smith has been the subject of online misinformation, claiming they are semibisexual. (Didier Messens/Getty)
As important as it is for those impacted by fabricated content to clarify when a piece of information is absolutely not real, the simple fact is that the truth alone is not enough to rectify the power of fake news in this predominantly digital-first era we live in.
At a time when social media fact-checking and moderation is in decline, algorithmic rules govern our social media feeds – often reinforcing our own unconscious biases and echo chambers – and the lines between reality and fantasy are increasingly being blurred by AI, it is more and more difficult for many people to consistently tell fact from fiction.
A user who viewed such fake anti-LGBTQ+ posts as referenced earlier and instantly believes it to be true, perhaps because of their own prejudices and/or lack of skills at verifying the validity of media, would be unlikely to purposefully seek out any fact-checking. They would not think they need to – they saw it on Facebook, you see, so it must be true.
A more discerning user, however, might instantly be able to tell the post is nothing more than clickbait and/or engagement farming, or at the very least it is misleading and perhaps twisting someone’s original words.
Indeed, there are large swathes of the population who believe they are good at spotting fake news but studies frequently find they are often overconfident and still extremely susceptible to it.
They, as much as those who come to their social media feeds with already prejudiced opinions towards LGBTQ+ folks, are being targeted by bad actors seeking to weaponise anti-LGBTQ+ content to sow division in society.
These bad actors create content with the purpose of reaching average people in a society, honing in on their fears and anxieties about the state and future of their community, outraging them and, ultimately, shifting their opinions on queer rights, legislation enacted by their government, the trustworthiness of their elected leaders and undercutting democracy as a whole.
Misinformation and disinformation – two distinctly different but intertwined concepts – are certainly nothing new and have been a part of the media ecosystem as long as verifiable news has been.
While misinformation refers to the spread of falsehoods via genuine misunderstanding or mistake, disinformation is far more sinister and instead refers to the process by which entirely false information is created, propagated and disseminated on purpose, with the aim of pushing a particular narrative or agenda to achieve a set of political goals.
Anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation, on the other hand, includes the far-right “groomer”conspiracy theory which inherently links LGBTQ+ people to vile child abuse, claims pushed by Donald Trump that school teachers are performing gender-affirming surgeries on pupils in classrooms, and the recent posts above falsely attributed to notable athletes and other famous names.
In recent months, there has been an increasing number of posts appearing on social media – namely Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram – which are stylised to look like the image-based breaking news posts often used by media organisations, despite the fact they are being posted by the furthest thing from a news source.
The posts are usually overlaid with a quote or headline and captioned with some sort of breaking news kicker and the start of what looks like copy for a published news story.
In many cases, the same post – using the same image and caption – is shared across various different pages for maximum reach.
Many of the posts consistently appear to be about trans rights, namely the hot button issue of trans inclusion in sports or specific gender identities, with many referencing trans American swimmer Lia Thomas.
In 2022, Thomas made history as the first trans woman to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association swimming championship. She has since become a key figure in the right’s war against trans athletes.
PinkNews was unable to verify who was behind the Facebook pages which are sharing the current wave of anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation.
Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference
However, similar tactics have been used by bad actors in the past and in national security circles as Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), which the EU defines as a “pattern of behaviour that threatens or has the potential to negatively impact values, procedures and political processes” wherein such activity “often seeks to stoke polarisation and divisions inside and outside the EU while also aiming to undermine the EU’s global standing and ability to pursue its policy objectives and interests”.
The report found that anti-LGBTQ+ FIMI is politically motivated and seeks to harden public opinion in opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, along with sowing divisions in communities and undermining democracy.
“The reach of FIMI cases targeting LGBTIQ+ goes beyond this community,” the report reads. “According to the evidence collected during the investigation, FIMI actors aimed to provoke public outrage not only against named LGBTIQ+ individuals, communities, or organisations – but also against government policies, the concept of democracy as such, and local or geopolitical events.
“While undermining LGBTIQ+ people was a common theme in many of the FIMI cases identified, the overarching narrative in many of them was that the West is in decline.
“By leveraging the narrative of decline, FIMI threat actors attempt to drive a wedge between traditional values and democracies.
“They claim that children need to be protected from LGBTIQ+ people, that LGBTIQ+ people get preferential treatment in sports and other fields – to the detriment of others – and that Western liberal organisations or political groups are demonstrably weak because they surrender to “LGBTIQ+ propaganda”.”
Fake content “keeps debates falsely alive”
Speaking to PinkNews, Dr Dani Madrid-Morales – lecturer in journalism and global communication at the University of Sheffield and co-Lead of the university’s Disinformation Research Cluster, said the style of anti-LGBTQ+ posts currently being shared on Facebook are “a very common approach that different actors use”.
Madrid-Morales noted that whilst political actors certainly use these coordinated strategies for a particular end goal, they are also used by isolated individuals who “benefit economically from creating this content that is highly polarizing [and] that’s likely to get a lot of engagement”.
He went on to explain that the content, of course, has a negative impact on the community it is focused on directly but “more broadly, it sort of keeps these debates sometimes falsely alive in the sense that in the political arena”.
“By keeping these debates really highly active on social media, certain groups benefit from being able to say, ‘oh, look, people are really interested in us talking about this’, because a lot of people on social media are discussing these topics and sometimes it’s very artificially inflated.
“We’ve seen that before with other topics, for example health disinformation and anti-vax campaigners, where they create false information.
“They use amplification techniques on social media to get that widely spread, and then they create the false illusion that’s a topic that people are really concerned about when in reality it’s not.”
An executive from CVS has demanded Gilead lower the prices of a new HIVprevention drug in an email .
Dr. Michelle Guardine, chief medical officer for CVS Caremark, sent an email to PrEP4All, an organization working on PrEP access, that has demanded the pharmacy chain cover the new drug Yeztugo, also known as lenacapavir. In the message, which was posted to social media, the executive said the reason CVS controversially refused to cover the highly effective pharmaceutical was a concern over costs.
“We believe that easy access to PrEP medications is critical for Americans who may be exposed to HIV,” Gourdine wrote. “Our formularies cover several PrEP options, both injectable and oral. For drugs excluded from our standard formularies, exceptions are available when medically justified.”
But she said Gilead has priced Yeztugo at $28,000 within the U.S., even though generic versions of lenacapavir will be sold in other countries for $40.
“It is clear, Gilead can lower its price in the U.S. for Yeztugo, and we continue to call upon them to do so,” the email reads. “It is inappropriate for branded pharmaceutical manufacturers to try to manipulate pre-existing guidelines with clinically similar products that are priced far higher than what’s already on the market.”
That is why CVS Health has not added Yeztugo to its list of recommended PrEP therapies, but the company will cover alternatives, according to Gourdine.
“In increasingly crowded therapy classes of highly effective options, a generics-first policy remains the best approach for affordability and, by extension, health outcomes,” Guardine wrote. “We will continue to urge Gilead to lower the U.S. price for Yeztugo.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in September issued guidelines allowing twice-a-year injections for Yeztugo, and found near 100 percent effectiveness in trials for patients remaining HIV negative. Gilead has touted the drug as a major medical advance.
“Yeztugo represents a transformative scientific advancement in HIV prevention—delivering high efficacy across broad, representative populations in clinical trials and approved as the first and only twice-yearly injectable option in the U.S.,” said Dr. Dietmar Berger, chief medical officer at Gilead Sciences.
“As we strive to reimagine the future of HIV prevention, the CDC’s endorsement of Yeztugo offers healthcare providers, public health leaders and communities clear guidance on an innovation that could help shift the trajectory of the HIV epidemic.”
Tryst Hospitality has joined the International LGBTQ+ Travel Association (IGLTA) as its newest Global Partner and is now part of an esteemed network of destinations and brands committed to advancing LGBTQ+ travel worldwide.
Tryst Hospitality, founded by entrepreneur and hotelier Tristan Schukraft (he/him), is redefining what it means to travel and celebrate as part of the LGBTQ+ community. With a growing portfolio that spans The Abbey Food & Bar in West Hollywood, The Tryst Hotels in Puerto Vallarta, Fire Island Pines, and San Juan, as well as DS Tequila in Chicago and upcoming locations in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, Tryst has become synonymous with inclusive luxury, elevated nightlife, and bold self-expression.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Tryst Hospitality as an IGLTA Global Partner. They’ve long been part of our network, and this next step is especially exciting as Tryst becomes our first LGBTQ+ owned hotel group at the Global Partner level,” said John Tanzella (he/him), IGLTA President/CEO. “We look forward to working together to support and connect the global LGBTQ+ travel community.”
“Tryst Hospitality isn’t just about where you stay,” said Tristan Schukraft, Founder & CEO of Tryst Hospitality. “It’s about creating spaces that celebrate who you are, wherever you are. The only things straight at our venues are the martinis. Partnering with IGLTA connects us with a global community that shares our belief that travel can be both liberating and transformative. Together, we’re making the world a little smaller, a lot gayer, and infinitely more welcoming.”
From poolside drag brunches in Puerto Vallarta to legendary tea dances on Fire Island, Tryst Hospitality’s destinations celebrate the best of queer culture where design, hospitality, and community come together. As an IGLTA Global Partner, the brand will collaborate with other international leaders to promote inclusive travel, support LGBTQ+ economic empowerment, and spotlight destinations where everyone can be seen, celebrated, and completely themselves.
About IGLTA & the IGLTA Foundation
The International LGBTQ+ Travel Association is the global leader in advancing LGBTQ+ travel and a proud Affiliate Member of UN Tourism. IGLTA’s mission is to enable authentic travel that enriches lives and connects the LGBTQ+ community and tourism industry. IGLTA’s global network includes 13,500+ LGBTQ+ welcoming accommodations, destinations, service providers, travel agents, tour operators, events, and travel media in 85 countries. The IGLTA Global Partnership program builds strong brand alliances, providing our partners with the context, vocabulary and research to elevate their support of the LGBTQ+ travel community. The philanthropic IGLTA Foundation empowers LGBTQ+ welcoming travel businesses globally through leadership, research, and education. For more information: iglta.org, igltaconvention.org or iglta.org/foundation and follow social media at @IGLTA and @IGLTAFoundation.
About Tryst Hospitality
Tryst Hospitality, spearheaded by Tristan Schukraft, is revolutionizing LGBTQ+ luxury travel and nightlife. Tryst Hotels offer luxury boutique gay hotels celebrated for their design, exceptional service, and vibrant experiences in premiere LGBT destinations like Fire Island, Ipanema in Rio, Puerto Vallarta and San Juan. The company also owns iconic venues The Abbey in West Hollywood, Circo Nightclub in San Juan, DS Tequila in Chicago’s Northalstead neighborhood and The Blue Whale, The Pavilion Nightclub, The Canteen and more in The Pines on Fire Island. With a portfolio that includes iconic LGBTQ+ bars, restaurants, hotels, and nightclubs, alongside MISTR—a telehealth platform offering discreet, free online access to PrEP and other STI services for the LGBTQ+ community and Green Qween, West Hollywood’s first and only LGBTQ+ owned cannabis dispensary—Tristan Schukraft truly embodies the title of “The CEO of Everything Gay.” Plan your escape to the world of Tryst Hospitality at trysthospitality.com.
New York City schools sued federal education officials Thursday over a decision to discontinue $47 million in promised grants because of the schools’ guidelines supporting transgender students.
City officials said the federal agency led by Education Secretary Linda McMahon cut funding without the required notice or hearing after deciding that policies letting transgender students play sports and use bathrooms matching their gender identity violate Title IX, which forbids discrimination based on sex in education.
The Education Department, in a September letter, set a deadline for New York City Public Schools to change the policies or lose current and future funding for 19 specialty magnet schools.
A prominent anti-DEI campaigner appointed by Meta in August as an adviser on AI bias has spent the weeks since his appointment spreading disinformation about shootings, transgender people, vaccines, crime, and protests. Robby Starbuck, 36, of Nashville, was appointed in August as an adviser by Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other tech platforms – in an August lawsuit settlement.
Since his appointment, Starbuck has baselessly claimed that individual shooters in the US were motivated by leftist ideology, described faith-based protest groups as communists, and without evidence tied Democratic lawmakers to murders.
Starbuck has long pushed vaccine disinformation, and he has amplified false claims made by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. As part of his anti-DEI push, Starbuck has also spread overheated claims and falsehoods about transgender and LGBTQ people. Starbuck also baselessly asserted that city officials in Portland were working with anti-fascists, and appeared to urge a violent response.
Read the full article. Starbuck has appeared here many times for leading boycotts and threat campaigns against major corporations for their pro-LGBTQ policies. In most cases, the targeted companies rolled back such policies or ended them entirely. Hit the link for much more. No paywall.
You don’t feel secure in your masculinity,” Sam Nieves remembers his licensed therapist telling him at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. “Go grab a Playboy and find a way to enjoy it,” the Mormon therapist told him.
“He told me I can’t be straight if I don’t go fishing with my dad,” says Nieves, who was 20 at the time. “He told me I needed to play more sports, listen to country music, stuff like that. He told me something was wrong with me.”
After these sessions, which lasted about a year and a half, Nieves started experiencing crippling shame and self-loathing. He eventually developed excruciating migraines and memory loss.
“My therapist just helped me find better ways to help me to hate myself,” Nieves, now 41 and living in Seattle, Washington, told Uncloseted Media.
Sam Nieves as a young adult. Photo courtesy of Nieves.
Fourteen countries have a national conversion therapy ban, while many more have state or provincial bans. In the U.S., religious leaders can practice nationwide, though licensed therapists are not allowed to apply it to kids in 23 states.
While research around torture and mental health consistently suggests the practice should be banned, almost 700,000 LGBT adults have received conversion therapy at some point in their lives, including about 350,000 who received it as adolescents.
Despite all of this, on Oct. 7 the Supreme Court heard arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case that challenges Colorado’s conversion therapy ban and—if overturned—would have implications for the rest of the states with bans in place.
While the verdict will likely not be announced until June, the court seems poised to overturn it, suggesting that restrictions on therapists might violate the First Amendment’s free-speech clause.
“I’m emotionally devastated for the children who will lose the protections we fought so hard to give them,” says Nieves.
Conversion Therapy and Self-Hate
Unlike many young Americans who are forced into the practice by their parents, Nieves—who was raised Mormon—opted to see a conversion therapist because his church community said that if he didn’t change his sexuality, he was letting them down.
“I actively didn’t want to be attracted to guys,” he says. “And so it was always this confusing, gaslighting situation where they would tell me to stop being gay, even if I wasn’t doing anything. I was trying really hard not to. That’s when [the church] referred me to conversion therapy.”
Sam Nieves in his 20s. Courtesy of Nieves.
Nieves’ therapist insisted that his mom was too overbearing and his dad was not actively parenting, causing him to be gay. As his therapist continued to recommend that he engage in stereotypically masculine activities, he began to withdraw, cutting off friendships and avoiding community gatherings. His Mormon upbringing had taught him to feel shame, but conversion therapy solidified it.
“Conversion therapy gave me validation for why I hate myself. It was just building on top of what the church had already taught me,” he says.
Nieves became depressed and eventually developed a mild type of dissociative identity disorder (DID), where he experienced one persona that carried shame and recognized he was gay, and another that tried to act straight. Headaches and mental fog were persistent. Thoughts of ending his life flickered through his mind.
“It was just nonstop, massive disassociation,” he says. “There was the Straight Sam and the Gay Sam. And the whole time, everyone was telling me Satan was working on me because something inside me was trying to be gay. So it was insane making. They were making me clinically insane.”
According to medical experts, repeated trauma like medical procedures, war, human trafficking, conversion therapy and terrorism can cause DID when it overwhelms a child’s ability to cope, causing their sense of self to fragment into distinct identity states as a survival mechanism. The trauma disrupts the normal integration of self, leading to symptoms like memory gaps, dissociation and distinct personality states.
When Hunter Mattison, a 29-year-old queer woman now living in Washington, was subjected to conversion therapy from her church and parents, she developed DID.
Raised in rural Idaho and immersed in an Independent Fundamental Baptist church that condemned queerness as sinful, the constant fear and shame brought on by her church’s conversion therapy program fractured her sense of self. She attributes her condition to repeated trauma that caused her brain to wall off painful memories.
“I didn’t know how to handle it other than just to check out,” Mattison told Uncloseted Media. “I still have a lot of memory gaps from the conversion therapy because of how intense it was. … Once I didn’t have the restraints of that church anymore, the memories started to return.”
Fear, Shame and Suicidal Ideation
Similar to Nieves and Mattison, Addy Sakler, who grew up in a conservative Protestant community in Ohio, says conversion therapy was “slowly killing” her.
“I figured I liked girls in kindergarten but did not have the language to describe it,” she told Uncloseted Media.
Sakler knew she wouldn’t be accepted at her church, so she put herself in conversion therapy throughout her young adulthood.
But it didn’t work. Sakler remembers the first sneaking moments of affection between grad school classes with her first crush. But after each kiss, the joy was followed by shame.
“We’d feel a lot of guilt and break up and immediately go repent,” she says. Both women were part of a church ministry that promised to “pray away the gay,” a 12-week program of lessons and deliverance sessions meant to convert them to heterosexuality. Instead, Sakler says, it nearly destroyed her.
Addy Sakler and her boyfriend before she came out. Photo courtesy of Sakler.
“I felt like a zombie walking around. I was depressed and I tried to commit suicide,” she says. “I was in the hospital for a month, two different times. It created a lot of trauma.”
Sakler says she was white knuckling it, trying to get through life as a “shell of a person.” She began cutting, hitting and hating herself because of the rejection from her church community.
Addy Sakler as an adult. Courtesy of Sakler.
“You believe what they’re saying. They’re telling you you’re broken and to be right with God you have to be heterosexual and if you’re not changing, then you’re being attacked by Satan.”
For nearly 15 years, Sakler attended conversion therapy conferences across the country, including one put on by the now dissolved Exodus International.
According to the Williams Institute, LGBTQ adults who have undergone conversion therapy have nearly twice the odds of attempting suicide and 92% greater odds of lifetime suicidal ideation compared to those who haven’t. Among LGBTQ youth, the numbers are higher, with 27% of those who experienced conversion therapy attempting suicide in the past year.
In addition, survivors experience disproportionately high rates of depression, PTSD and substance abuse. According to the findings from one Stanford Medicine study, the psychological harm caused by conversion therapy mirrors that of other severe traumas known to cause PTSD—like sexual or physical assault, the loss of someone close, or even experiences of war and torture.
Isolation and Families Torn Apart
When Curtis Lopez-Galloway told his parents he was gay at 16, they drove him two hours away from his house in southern Illinois to a conversion therapist who used the sessions to berate him for not trying hard enough to change into “the man that God wanted” him to be.
Curtis Lopez-Galloway as a teenager. Photo courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
Lopez-Galloway remembers being told that his attractions to other men were a symptom of a deeper lack of masculinity, that he needed to “study women to understand what kind of man he was supposed to be” and that he should “bounce his eyes, and change his thoughts to something else whenever he begins to have an attraction toward a male.”
Curtis Lopez-Galloway’s treatment plan, courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
He was given a treatment plan that involved limiting time with LGBTQ affirming friends, reading articles designed to redirect his attractions, and practicing what the therapist called “male characteristic activities,” such as taking charge and asserting control. He told his therapist that his marker of when things would be better was “life [going] back to normal.”
The therapist also worked with his parents, telling them they had failed by allowing the “gay agenda” to threaten their family and “let the devil get into the house.”
Lopez-Galloway, who now runs the Conversion Therapy Survivor Network, a nonprofit that connects survivors of the practice, recalls frustration and shame spilling into screaming matches that tore his family apart. “My parents were miserable, I was miserable, and we would just take it out on each other,” he says. “I went to [my therapist] for six months, and he just abused me and made life worse. It pushed me deeper into the closet and made me anxious and depressed.”
Curtis Lopez-Galloway as a teenager. Courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
“[My therapist] would use therapeutic ideas but twist them in a way that was trying to change sexuality. … He would try to manipulate me in that sort of way and really broke me down as a person,” says Lopez-Galloway.
We reached out to the center Lopez-Galloway went to for treatment but they did not respond to a request for comment. Lopez-Galloway says his parents now acknowledge the harm the therapy caused, and he says their relationship has improved.
For many survivors of conversion therapy, the trauma can last a lifetime.
Even 21 years later, Nieves still gets triggered. He dropped out of college during his last semester of counseling school because the practices were too similar to those manipulated and weaponized by his therapist. “The hardest part was fighting … to no longer be suicidal every single day,” he says. “I would say that’s the hardest part. … It’s the suicidality that you fight with once it’s over. “
Nieves and Mattison have both found support in Lopez-Galloway’s survivor network, where they meet weekly and heal together in community. Sakler has found healing in therapy for PTSD, and has found acceptance with her wife and her queer community in Sacramento, California.
Despite this, the trauma often requires undoing self-hatred and discovering self-worth.
“[We’re] constantly saying, ‘We don’t know who we are,’” Nieves says. “We don’t know how to enjoy life. We don’t know what the meaning of life is. We’re like The Walking Dead. Because just like how you break a horse, they broke our spirits. They told us everything about us was wrong and we needed to conform. But no matter what we did, we couldn’t conform.”
Even with these survivors’ experiences, along with countless testimonies from other Americans over decades, the Supreme Court looks poised to overturn Colorado’s ban, with multiple justices describing it as “viewpoint discrimination.”
Nieves strongly disagrees and advises kids who are experiencing conversion therapy right now to stay strong and ask for help when possible. “This may very well be the most difficult time of your life. For many of you, it’s going to feel like a living hell, and you may even pray for death every night. I know this, because this is how [I] felt too,” he says. “Often, [conversion therapists] break other laws. If you think someone might be breaking the law during your conversion therapy, please seek out a trusted adult and let them know,” he says.
Above all, Nieves tells kids to push through no matter what. “It can and will get better if you promise yourself that you deserve authentic joy, free of lies and coercion. Community is out there waiting for you, if you can just hold on for one more day, one more hour, or even just for one more minute.”
Robby Starbuck has built his reputation by attacking LGBTQ inclusion. He’s created a documentary called “The War on Children,” where he promotes the debunked conspiracy theory that suggests pesticides are turning your kids gay. He’s argued that Democrats are pro-trans because they want to allow men to follow women and girls in bathrooms. And he’s said that it’s “grooming for adults to have kids carry trans flags at a soccer game.”
But in the last year, Starbuck has become notorious as a key face of America’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement, leading boycott campaigns on social media. He’s successfully pressured corporations, including Tractor Supply, John Deere and Harley-Davidson, to cut down on their DEI programs and withdraw support for Pride events.
Despite having no background in artificial intelligence or content policy, Starbuck has now been brought in by Meta as an AI consultant. To resolve a defamation lawsuit made public in August, the company agreed to bring on the right-wing influencer to advise its AI systems on “political bias” and to reduce the risk of misinformation generated by its chatbot, which was the basis of the lawsuit.
“Meta and Robby Starbuck will work collaboratively in the coming months to continue to find ways to address issues of ideological and political bias,” Starbuck and Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan shared in a joint statement.
This move signaled an alarming retreat from the company’s previous effortsto protect queer voices and also signaled a legitimization of narratives that have long sought to erase them.
And it wasn’t an isolated move. It was part of a systematic dismantling of digital civil-rights protections, with consequences that extend far beyond our screens.
Hate Speech Overhaul
In January, Meta—which has a net worth of nearly $1.8 trillion—overhauled its hate-speech policies, allowing language once flagged as harmful to be tolerated under the guise of protecting “discourse.”
“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality,” the revised policy guidelines outlined.
This move doesn’t expand free expression; it legitimizes dehumanization. When platforms allow harmful language to flourish under the banner of neutrality or so-called viewpoint diversity, they create environments where targeted marginalized groups are bullied and silenced online. And it may already be happening: Human rights organizations warn that this shift has opened the door to allowing rhetoric portraying LGBTQ people as “abnormal” or “mentally ill.”
And after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, transphobia proliferated, with one user writing in the immediate aftermath: “If the first suspect isn’t a democratic lgbtq trans/fag then you’re looking in the wrong spot. Wow I despise that group of humans.”
As a tech founder who has built companies that bring people together online while ensuring those spaces remain safe and welcoming, I understand where priorities should lie when it comes to the user experience. I’m also aware that that experience can become dangerous for users if companies don’t feel like they have an ethical responsibility to protect their most vulnerable users.
In the first paragraph of Meta’s Corporate Human Rights Policy, the company says one of their principles is to “keep people safe” on their platform: “We recognize all people are equal in dignity and rights. We are all equally entitled to our human rights, without discrimination. Human rights are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.”
The policy also states that the company is committed to respecting human rights, including those outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was officially adopted by the United Nations. According to the U.N., “discrimination against LGBTI people undermines the human rights principles outlined” in that declaration.
As Zuckerberg and Meta dismantle the safeguards for LGBTQ users and greenlight discrimination against transgender people, they are quite literally not practicing what they preach.
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LGBTQ Censorship and Erasure
In addition to the policy shifts, Meta’s supposed neutral moderation has created an alarming false equivalency between the moderation of hate speech and of LGBTQ-affirming language.
For months, posts and content using LGBTQ hashtags—including #LGBTQ, #Gay, #Lesbian and #Transgender—were hidden from teen searches on Instagram, effectively erasing queer visibility from discovery, untilUser Magexposed the practice and pressed the company for an explanation. Meta later walked back the restrictions, calling them an error. “These search terms and hashtags were mistakenly restricted,” a company spokesperson said.
Other instances of LGBTQ erasure were intentional. In January, Pride decorations and queer themes in Messenger—such as the trans and nonbinary chat themes—quietly disappeared. To some, this may seem insignificant. But for our community, especially LGBTQ kids—nearly 40% of whom seriously considered suicide in the last year—the disappearance of these features sent a symbolic message that queer expression is expendable when corporate priorities shift.
Dismantling DEI and Ditching Independent Fact Checkers
Inside the company, the same backpedaling is underway. In January, Meta dismantled its DEI programs. The company eliminated its entire DEI team; ended hiring practices that ensured diverse candidates were considered for open positions; shut down equity and inclusion training programs; and terminated its supplier diversity program that sourced from diverse-owned businesses.
Without internal accountability, external protections inevitably weaken. When companies eliminate the voices that champion vulnerable populations from within, decisions increasingly reflect only majority perspectives.
Another safeguard to fall was in January, when Meta cut ties with independent fact-checkers and weakened moderation frameworks by ending proactive enforcement and raising the threshold for content removal—tools that once slowed the spread of misinformation, hate and violence. “Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg said in a videoexplaining the changes.
Without them, disinformation targeting LGBTQ people now circulates faster and wider. In fact, leaked training materials from Meta show that comments like “Trans people are freaks” and “Gays are not normal” are among specific content they would now allow to proliferate online.
LGBTQ advocacy organizations have documented the fallout. According to GLAAD’s 2025 Make Meta Safe report, 75% of LGBTQ users reported seeing more harmful content on Meta platforms since these changes.
Unfortunately, Meta’s new rules are part of a wider trend among other tech giants that signifies a broader shrinking of digital civil rights protections. By February, YouTube had removed “gender identity and expression” from its list of protected characteristics in its hate speech policy. And Google eliminated all diversity hiring targets and, in March, scrubbed mentions of diversity from its responsible AI team webpage.
The human stakes are enormous. For many in our community—especially those in hostile environments—social media represents one of the few spaces where they can connect with others and express themselves without fear.
Meta’s changes don’t just affect online discourse; they impact real access to safety and support. Queer-owned businesses that relied on Meta’s advertising tools to reach LGBTQ customers are left navigating uncertain policies. Queer kids discovering their identity are encountering fewer affirming voices and more hostile rhetoric. Trans individuals searching for community find their lifelines weakened.
Rights secured after decades of struggle can be unraveled quickly when massive companies like Meta shift their priorities. Gains that once felt permanent can be undone in a matter of months.
The LGBTQ community has fought too hard to see their digital rights undone by corporate settlements and backroom policy changes. We know that true neutrality doesn’t mean treating all speech as equal—it means recognizing that some speech seeks to silence vulnerable citizens.
We’ve seen this before, from separate but equal policies that claimed neutrality while enforcing segregation; to McCarthyism-era institutions that purged dissenting voices in the name of balance; to media “objectivity” that erased queer voices during the AIDS crisis.
While the medium has changed, the playbook remains the same. And our response must be to stand up, speak out and demand accountability.
This means pressuring Meta through public campaigns, supporting LGBTQ content creators whose reach has been diminished, and pushing for transparent moderation policies. It means calling out right-wing dog whistles like “neutrality” and “viewpoint diversity” for what they are—a convenient masquerade for corporate policies that discriminate against and attack marginalized groups.
Anti-LGBTQ+ right-wing activists are notorious for getting annoyed about almost anything, and the latest addition to the ever-growing list is the Gender Unicorn diagram.
Don’t believe that they’ll get annoyed about anything? Buckle up: we’ve got receipts.
A Christmas advert featuring Black actress Adjoa Andoh as Mrs. Claus, that saw her use they/them pronouns to refer to someone, also sparked the wrath of anti-LGBTQ+ figures, who called it out for being “woke”.
Countless brands, big and small, from Target to Tesco to Tampax, have also faced boycott calls from the right-wing community. But the latest outrage among the group is the realisation of the Gender Unicorn.
What is the Gender Unicorn diagram?
The Gender Unicorn (https://transstudent.org/gender/)
Simply put, the Gender Unicorn Diagram is a graphic that helps people understand the differences between gender identity, gender expression, sex, and attraction.
The graphic, created by Trans Student Educational Resources – a youth-led organisation dedicated to ensuring education is inclusive for all – shows a unicorn on the left-hand side with symbols on that are explained on the right-hand side.
Gender identity, shown on the unicorn through a rainbow-filled thought bubble, is explained as female/woman/girl, male/man/boy, or other gender(s). The diagram also breaks down gender expression, sex assigned at birth, physical attraction, and emotional attraction into distinct categories.
Underneath the definitions of each are further explained. Gender expression/presentation is explained as: “The physical manifestation of one’s gender identity through clothing, hairstyle, voice, body shape, etc. Many transgender people seek to make their gender expression (how they look) match their gender identity (who they are), rather than their sex assigned at birth.”
Why are so many right-wingers annoyed about it?
A quick search of the term “Gender Unicorn” on social media platforms such as X bring up various videos from right-wingers hitting out at the graphic.
Another commented of the graphic: “One person’s ‘innocuous teaching tool’ is many other people’s insidious grooming material.”
Right-wingers annoyance towards the graphic mimics political moves. The US government has demanded almost every state in the US remove sex education materials referencing trans and non-binary people.
