Sympathy, Attention, & Money (SAM): The Roots of Colonial Conversion Therapy Survivor Activism

As the infamous saying goes, “Hurt people, hurt people.” 

Often in conversations I have with prominent Canadian Conversion Therapy (CT) survivor Matt Ashcroft, he and I find ourselves frequently reflecting on the toxic behaviors of those within CT survivor activism. As Matt has astutely pointed out...

"Conversion therapy survivors often behave like the 'therapists' they claim to hate and claim to be advocating against."

Spanning both conversion therapists and those that survive their egregious psychological abuse, there is a strong commonality among them– their desire for sympathy, attention, and money (SAM). 

When viewed broadly, SAM is a large part of what creates the overarching context of conversion therapy both within the church and within survivor activism. A lot of what we see stems from years if not decades of learned behaviors while actively undergoing conversion practices during their formative years of psychological growth and maturation.

Survivor Stories

The stories of CT survivors are all very similar and familiar, a kid grows-up in a conservative religious household and starts gaining some level of awareness within themselves that they are different than their peers; as their growth continues, they start feeling an internal sense of shame due to being continuously surrounded by anti-2SLGBTQIA+ rhetoric within their conservative religious environment. 

They become accustomed to hearing messages about eternal damnation in hell, about homosexuality or “transgenderism” being a sin; seeing signs by the Westboro Baptist Church stating, “God hates f*gs”–all while continuously being bullied at school for being different; or seeing their parents at home reading anti-2SLGBTQIA+ literature from Focus on the Family. All of this occurs within an environment where they experience repeated parental lecturing on changing how they walk, how they talk, how they dress, how they express; essentially changing all levels of mannerisms that could make them be perceived as anything other than cis-gender and heterosexual.

As you can see, all too many 2SLGBTQIA+ people grow-up under the authoritarian rule of conservative religion where every ounce of their existence is controlled at all ends, in church, in school, at home, and even beyond in places like conversion therapists' offices and conversion camps.

It doesn’t take a Physician or Psychologist to see that growing-up in such an environment is destructive to their psychological health/stability and that this continual assault against one’s personhood is fundamentally inhumane.

The resulting physiological and psychological harm caused by years of existing within these environments creates conditions that are antithetical to raising healthy human beings. 

All humans require both physical/psychological safety and nourishment to learn, thrive, and grow; especially in a way that is open to their ever developing sense of self as they age and mature.  However, for many survivors of conversion therapy and high control religion, they often grow-up without the necessary conditions for human flourishing including receiving loving and non-judemental affection from their parents, a baseline supportive, open, and accepting environment, and also having people around them that sympathize/empathize with the struggles they face between their religious upbringing and their internalized sense of self. 

This lack of proper attention, care, nurturing, and affection during important stages of development in both their childhood and young adult years; that is often co-opted by conversion “therapists” has strongly contributed to many of the behaviors of present day survivors'-- mainly the need for SAM as they attempt to advocate against conversion therapy.

Pointing this out should not be seen as chastising survivors of conversion practices or psychological abuse but to provide a look into the insidious behaviors often perpetuated by a community deeply harmed by sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts (SOGICE). 

What is outlined above may well inform current behavior but it should never be an excuse for the mistreatment of other survivors; nor does one’s history absolve them from accountability for their present actions. 

Embodying this awareness is the point at which survivors begin untangling their past and begin confronting harms they have perpetuated from their own actions here and now.

SAM Behaviors

In the conversion therapy survivor space, we see survivors seeking out SAM in the following ways…

• Drowning out black & brown survivor voices by consistently centering white survivors

• Perpetuating self-centered advocacy over collaborative advocacy

• Replicating the manipulative behaviors of conversion therapy leaders in anti-conversion therapy advocacy

• Running advocacy with the same authoritarianism as the church

• Steamrolling survivors with credible experience fighting conversion therapy legally and politically

• Former conversion therapy leaders who profited off of the suffering of vulnerable 2SLGBTQIA+ people now profiting off of “healing” those same survivors

• Advocating against conversion therapy without understanding the full context and history of the movement

• The need for survivors to constantly be seeking media attention rather than committing to the harrowing work of fighting for the justice of all survivors

• Pathologizing other survivors during times of disagreement; I recall Matt was once called “Schizophrenic” by another survivor

• Plagiarizing off of survivors meticulously detailed work all to bolster their own career and perceived conversion therapy expertise 

In full, these relentless behaviors have created a profoundly toxic CT survivor space that is deeply racist, colonial, and hierarchical in many of the same ways of conservative religious environments themselves.

If conversion therapy survivors wish to make substantial changes in their efforts to prevent conversion practices globally, they must first clean up their own house as it is abundantly clear that…

Colonial religion + colonial therapy = colonial activism

This awareness necessitates that CT survivors begin the vital work of decolonizing their own mind away from the colonial and white supremacist ideologies that were indoctrinated into them throughout their tenure not only in conversion therapy but more broadly within the conservative religious theology they grew-up learning. 

To understand the importance of this, some historical perspectives on conversion therapy will be helpful.

Historical Perspectives

In context, conversion practices throughout time have enmeshed themselves in broader conservative religious movements like the “ex-gay” movement of the 1970s and beyond involving the likes of Love Won Out, Exodus International, JONAH, Hope for Wholeness, and Love In Action; to the more modern organizations like The Changed Movement, Journey Into Manhood, Restored Hope Network, Courage International, and the countless number of private “licensed psychotherapists” like Kaley Chiles; the recent plaintiff in the Supreme Court case Chiles v. Salazar who desired to integrate her conservative religious ideologies into private “therapy” sessions all under the guise of “freedom of speech”.

You can learn more about this in my published article entitled, The U.S. Supreme Court Likely Green Lights ‘Conversion Therapy’ for Minors where I provided evidence-informed context from peer-reviewed journals which outline the deleterious physiological and psychological harms that persist among conversion therapy survivors.

We now know that on March 31, 2026, The U.S. Supreme Court was undeterred by the extensive warnings detailed by professional medical and psychological societies; thus, the Court ultimately sided with Chiles and officially designated talk therapy as protected speech. Little did Chiles or The U.S. Supreme Court conceive that the state of Colorado would pass new legislation called the Civil Actions for Conversion Therapy Survivors Act (HB26-1322) that removes the statute of limitations and allows conversion therapy survivors to sue licensed mental health professionals for conversion therapy related damages. 

From the onset of these barbaric conversion practices in the 20th century, many pro-conversion therapy advocates believe that through ardent faith, fasting, prayer, and homoerotic rituals, that one’s strongly internalized sense of gender and/or sexual orientation is changeable through the merging of psychotherapeutic mental gymnastics with conservative religious dogma.

The singular commonality among all of these “therapies” is rooted in a colonial imposition of compulsory cis-gender heterosexuality; the idea that birth sex aligning with gender expression (cis-gender) and opposite sex attraction (heterosexuality) are what is perceived as natural and ordained by God. 

As colonialism and white supremacy have done throughout all of human history both presently and historically, they have sought to force their ideology on the world at large through religious conversion, through repression of transgressive expressions of gender and sexuality, and through violence, torture, racism, dehumanization, and other imperial tools of the fascist state.

This legacy of conversion therapy and the extensive history of colonialism and white supremacy that it has itself entangled within is fraught with unremitting abuse; in turn, creating many of the conditions of which Matt and I have spent many years reflecting on together. 

It is no longer acceptable to have CT survivors participating in the behaviors mentioned above, nor is it admissible for Trevor Project’s former Vice President of Advocacy & Government Affairs, Sam Brinton, at a New York Coming Out event at The Grand Hyatt to state, “I told you I lived in South Africa. I lived in an AIDS orphanage. I just never saw a white person with AIDS.”

As this perfectly displays, conversion therapy survivors cannot continue fighting against these abuses while also replicating the harms of the abuser and colonizer. Our personal trauma is never an excuse for treating other survivors or advocates poorly, this includes the rampant racism within conversion therapy advocacy.

Rather than perpetuating SAM behaviors, true advocacy requires ongoing self-reflection, healing, accountability, and active collaboration with other survivors to reign in the terrors conversion therapists are endlessly inflicting on susceptible 2SLGBTQIA+ persons, especially our youth.