Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Conversion Therapy Part 2

Episode Date: June 17, 2017

This week, we conclude our series on "conversion therapy" with the religious aspect of this horrific "treatment." Trigger Warning: The treatments used in these "therapies" were upsetting, and those sensitive to hearing about them may wish to avoid this episode. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. I'm ready and welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tour of Miss Guy and Medicine.

I'm your co-host Justin McRoy. And I'm Sydney McRoy. Well, you gave the pre-boarding announcement last week. So I'll try this week. Hi. This week we're going to be continuing a two-part series about conversion therapy. It's to celebrate Pride Month, which may seem like an odd fit, but we figured it's just as important to reflect on everything that these communities have been through.

So we're going to talk about Regis therapy, and it, Sydney has warned me that it gets pretty rough so If you are concerned that something that might be triggering for you or what have you Just go ahead and hop off here and we will pick you back up next week Thank you, Dustin that being said So if you haven't listened to our episode from last week and you're a bachelor's of this one, I would actually recommend you go back and listen to it because I kind of recounted the history of the idea of conversion therapy where it came from specifically in the psychiatric community, the early theories on it from Freud on, and the revolution that took place within the medical community as we began to

perceive sexual orientation as just a fine way of being that is not in any way an illness or pathological is just different from heterosexuality and is just as okay and isn't something that needs to be diagnosed or treated or anything like that. So we've already kind of gone through that history. just is okay and isn't something that needs to be diagnosed or treated or anything like that. So we've already kind of gone through that history. And it's a good story that ends with us removing homosexuality from the diagnostic manual of psychiatric disorders and condemning conversion therapy. And if that were the end of story, that would be great. But

unfortunately, that isn't. So to kind of take it back, as I mentioned before, same sex relationships were common throughout history, especially in ancient Greece and Rome. And while there were very specific kind of cultural rules about who could penetrate who and where, it was generally okay for men to have same sex relationships. And it wasn't spoken as often for women, but it was generally okay. This changed in the third and fourth century as there was this kind of social revolution of sorts

as Christianity spread. there was this kind of social revolution of sorts as Christianity spread. And you began to see laws that made same-sex relationships will one, illegal and two, punishable by death in some circumstances. And a lot of this came as you began to see more and more kind of churches and government bodies intertwined. And they would begin to condemn anybody who didn't engage in what they believed,

the only acceptable sexual relationships and find them and hunt them down and try to prove if they wouldn't admit to their behavior, try to prove it with horrible things, like invasive examinations of the anal area to look for evidence that they'd ever engaged in anal sex and things like that to prove their guilt. And it was really that kind of combination of religion and government that led to...

Always a successful cocktail. Exactly. That led to the criminalization of any kind of same-sex attraction, you know, same-sex intercourse, anything like that, certainly relationships. So this led to the criminalization of the LGBTQ community and their persecution for many years, but just as things were kind of improving, as we talked about in the sort of the 1970s, in the medical community, as they were rejecting the ideas that being gay was an illness and speaking out against conversion therapy, those religious forces from long ago came back.

So since the 70s, ex gay Christian ministry organizations have been trying to convert gay people. You're obviously using like ex gay, like it's a gross term. And obviously it's like he or using massive, and we clarified last week, which is a specify massive air quads anytime that you feel that we are probably airquoting. X, gay is a bonkers term. Well, and it's a term that they use. Let me clarify. Yeah. People who still would lie to you and tell you this kind of therapy works would say that

they are quote unquote, X, gay. And these organizations have been trying to convert gay people through a mixture of Bible study, group therapy, some things like a version therapy, which we've already talked about, which has to do with making somebody feel really bad about themselves, who are having same sex attractions. And I imagine mainly guilt, I would have to say. There's a heavy dose of guilt in all of this. In fact, in 1969, the same year as Stonewall, the same year that, as we talked about in the last episode, we saw this huge kind of, the revolution really began, especially in the

medical community responding to it, love and action, which was a huge, so ex-K ministry was formed. Is that the Chick-fil-A one? Is it the one the Chick-fil-A was for any two? Maybe. It's gone now. Keep going. I know. I think it's gone.

Although a lot of these places, it was hard to figure out which ones were still around and which ones weren't, because they've all kind of changed their names and they're hiding now. In 1976, Exodus International was formed. And this was a huge ministry again since closed, but it does still operate worldwide as the Exodus Global Alliance. And they would claim a 30 to 50% success rate if you were willing to send your loved one to them to heal their same sex attractions.

I was wrong. I don't think it's love action is the, the, yeah, side, no. I got that one. These were both serious. There was a love and action day at a Chick-fil-A recently, but it sounds just like a nice different. I don't think it was related to this. I think. All right, so those are two different things. Whatever you think of Chick-fil-A, this has nothing to do with them. This is not Chick-fil-A related, except in the ways that it obviously is, but it's not specifically

a Chick-fil-A related ministry. A lot of gay conversion ministry has to do with praying, a lot of praying, kind of asking for your creator to heal you of these impulses. And then a lot of therapy sessions, usually with like a religious counselor, so like a minister, somebody else who would be not just coming from a counseling perspective, although they could be, but also from a from a face-based perspective. Usually one who would claim to also be what they would call ex gay. So somebody who they who would say, I was like you and I had these same desires and I was able to suppress them, desire the opposite sex and move forward.

And now I'm just crazy, just crazy about the babes, you know, like me, you could be like me and just be babe crazy. And again, the idea was to help you reject your impulses and try to embrace a heterosexual lifestyle. Every major religion, I keep, I said Christian earlier, please know every major religion kind of form their own groups to do this within the US. There were, there were many different Christian denomination groups. There were also Jewish groups like Jonah that formed to do this same kind of ministry specifically based in their faith. And they each had kind of their own way of going about it and their own false prophets who were the charismatic leaders of these groups. And they would take out huge ads and newspapers and magazines to mainly targeted at parents. Send us your kids, we'll fix them.

And there were camps. Obviously, we've all heard of them. There were camps that were started that were like summer camps, except they were specifically for parents to send children. If their children were exhibiting what they considered gay tendencies or had already said that they had same sex attraction. And these parents would be scared and pressured into sending their children so that their kids could pray and be saved.

But this wasn't enough for some people. So this is happening, this is big. There was like famously like a cover of Time Magazine where there was a couple and they're the the man claims that he formerly was gay and the one claims she formerly was a lesbian and now they're married and together and Our life is so happy and we're so thankful for these groups. These religious groups that saved us and so the in this in this milieu came Joseph Nicolosi. This is in 1992, he forms North, which was the national organization for research and therapy of homosexuality. I don't know why it's not North for the life of me. I don't know why it's not North, but it's North. And he wrote some pretty awful books. That's what pinky from pinky and the brain needs to sell a tie, right? They're just big pinky and the brain right?

Right. Right? That's where it came from. That's where it came from probably. So in Hebrew awful books, things like a parents guide to preventing homosexuality and things like that. And the goal was to, as he put it, help gay people reach their heterosexual potential.

I don't know that I've ever reached my heterosexual potential. I feel like I'm, I guess not. Through what he called reparative therapy, this is where we really first see that term. If you've heard the term reparative therapy, it's actually a very specific kind of conversion therapy. The two are often used interchangeably, but it's really specific to this tradition

from this guy. So he enlists a bunch of other homophobic therapists and doctors to come help him in this effort. And he also partners with religious organizations. So he can do it both, he wants to do it both ways. He wants to get medical professionals, psychologists, therapists, social workers, who still, even though all of their major organizations

have rejected this, who still believe in conversion therapy, and he wants to bring in the religious organizations as well so that they can also use the religious angle on patients. And he actually, you can see that in that he worked out of a clinic that he called the Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic, very clearly combining the religious and pseudo-scientific aspects of this. And he would use a mixture of sessions with things like, again, confrontational therapy in the tradition of burglar, which is confrontational therapy is, I think we've mentioned before, is basically abusing emotional abuse. Yeah, you just yell and scream at somebody. Aversion therapy.

So again, the same things we've heard of before, have somebody recall a time when they had a same-sex fantasy or attraction, and while they were calling it, or show them a picture of something, have them, something as simple as snapping a rubber band on their wrist every time, to kind of link a painful stimuli with this or things as serious as electric shocks or

medications that would make you vomit every time. He was also a huge fan of showing people pornography and treatment. So this was yeah this was kind of a big sticking point as we kind of get to the end of this group later, is that especially heterosexual pornography in the thought that, well, if I just show you enough men and women having sex, you'll kind of get over this. He also would promote the idea that if we could just get specifically for men in this case, if we could just get men acting more masculine, which men. So specifically what he recommended were things like drinking gatorade, that if you would

just, if you want to stop being gay, I wonder why they print out on the label about how it cares you of being gay. I'm so happy to have an answer to that. If you want to stop being gay, here's what you do. You look at this picture of boobs, and you drink this Gatorade. At the same time. And then I would highly recommend that you call all of your male friends dude. Because that's, I don't know what's more masculine. You should have manufactured this on Gatorade bottle that had pornography printed on the labels.

Because that would, that would be. Killed two birds with one stone. Yeah. Right. And like you open the cap and underneath it says great job, dude. Great job, dude. Now, and this seems like funny and harmless.

He also did things like beat people. Oh, well, now I feel bad about joking around to me. These kind of, this way of like inciting violence was also not just to hurt somebody into rejecting the thing you wanted them to reject. What was also considered like a masculine behavior. Like this was also like increased masculinity, you know, fighting was supposed to be very masculine. So if you fought more, you'd be more attracted to women.

He claimed that, and I've already mentioned that a lot of these therapies were targeted at children, largely because you would have adolescents who would just begin to kind of voice their sexual preferences or kind of reveal to their parents, especially at the time and society when, and I mean, this is in the, now let me say, this is in the 90s, so this isn't that long ago, but I think we can all agree that societal acceptance of the LGBTQ community has changed tremendously since the 90s. So even then to come out as gay in 1992 would have still been a kind of a big deal for a lot of people in a lot of

different communities. And there were a lot of parents who initially would have been reacted with fear and anger and have no understanding and no resources. And here you have this guy who's writing endless books about it and who's publishing articles and ads in newspapers and magazines and saying, I can help you, I can fix your kid, and I can recognize and cure homosexuality and patience as young as three, with his claim, that if you could send me your three-year-old, and I could tell you if they might turn out to be gay or lesbian, and I can prevent it for you. So again, a lot of these people were kids. And conversely, you know, he would get parents to send the children to his programs.

And then once the kids would get there, he would tell them that their parents are to blame for them feeling the way they feel, for them having the attractions that they have. And he would usually try to tie it to some kind of abuse or neglect, whether or not this ever existed. And then he would, if he couldn't find anything like that, he would say, you know, it was probably just because your parents didn't hug you enough. And he would say horrible things like, fathers hug your sons, because if you don't, some other man's going to those were his taglines so so so that's the thing he would he would trick these parents into sending their kids there and then he would convince the kids that their parents were terrible people

Because not because they sent them to this awful camp, but because they were the reason that they had these same sex attractions. same-sex attractions. And he also had this wild belief that at any given time, specifically for men, this was aimed at men, you had to be vigilant because at any given time, a man who was already heterosexual would be at risk for becoming gay if they experienced some sort of failure in their life. And so this constant fear that if you didn't get a promotion you wanted or I don't know, you lost it a round of golf that you might start becoming gay. Explain Barry Manolo then, he's gay and everything he does is turns a bold. I mean, hasn't failed anything 50-some odd year career. I don't think I've named a single thing that this guy got right. So, that's just added to the list.

Well, folks, I'm going to go scream for 10 minutes straight because that was all really horrible. And then we're going to take a break and go to the building department, right, Sid? And let's tell you about some of our sponsors. So where are we then? Well, Justin, I'm about to tell you how things fell apart for NARTH. Oh, well, that's something. So a couple of things happened to this really just horrible organization that began to lead to its demise.

First of all, there was a doctor, Berger, who is a member of their scientific advisory committee, who wrote a paper in 2006. Dr. Burger. That was burglar burglar. Yeah, and in it he said, you know, there are a lot of kids who go to school who are already kind of exhibiting some of these same-sex attractions, or maybe they are non-gender-conforming in terms of their dress or their mannerisms, just not fitting what they considered at the time,

standard binary gender roles, right? And he said, you know, the right way to treat these kids, parents, teachers, the way to handle these kids in your classrooms is to just let whatever happens happen. So let's say that all the other kids tease and bully and taunt and humiliate the child who is different. Let it happen.

They need to feel shame. They need to feel shame. They need to feel guilt. And they need to be harassed for who they are. So basically, it's fine. Just let the natural order of things and let these kids be, you know, victimized by other children. So this was published and this was not received well. No matter what you thought of the LGBTQ community, what you thought of North, what you thought of conversion therapy,

the idea that parents and teachers should be condoning that kind of harassment was not well-exha- You say you don't think teachers and parents should be deputizing their kids to bully people, but it seems like kind of a bad idea That was pretty pretty well rejected. That was in 2006 now soon after that I guess another member who thought well, oh burger He man, he got the spotlight for that one. I'm gonna try to take it up a notch

He wrote a piece and this has nothing to do with the with their already persecution of the LGBTQ community. He decided to go a whole other direction and write a piece on their website, which kind of tried to justify slavery. Hey, how's your community going? It seems to be pretty bad. It seems like maybe some unorthodox opinions. Yeah. Yeah.

And maybe they're just rampantly trying to buffend everyone now with these horrible opinions. So these are really these two events really started to lead to the downfall of North and more and more people deciding this organization really wasn't for them and kind of alienating themselves from the more fringe members of the medical community that had still kind of embrace them. And the kind of the end of it for the most part happened actually earlier this year when Dr. Nicolisee died. So he just died earlier this year.

And with that, his practice closed, the Thomas Aquinas psychological clinic closed. And there are other doctors and therapists who learn from him and who are still out there doing these things, but the giant organization, as it were, has mostly ended. Now, do not be fooled, though. It is difficult to find an earth under that name

on the internet, but that is because they go by a different name now. The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity. But again, do not be fooled. They are very much the same. Even though I think that I don't have evidence of this, I think they are moving away from, at least from what I've read,

they're moving away from some of the more overtly physically abusive therapies. The emotional and psychologically abusive therapy that is conversion or repair to therapy is still being done. And as a result of this, there are states that have specifically barred them from seeing children, some states.

That's something, I guess. Not all. Most of the other organizations, things that I mentioned, like love and action and Exodus, they they they fell apart and a lot of the reasons these aren't the only groups, a lot of the reasons that these organizations fell apart is because the leaders came out and said we were wrong and we're sorry and we're disbanding this group because in most cases I'm gay and I'm still gay and I've always been gay and it never worked the people running the groups

Yeah, in many cases they were disbanded and their leaders went on to you know Mary their partners and You know live out the rest of their life as they truly were and apologize for all the harm that they did you know, live out the rest of their life as they truly were and apologize for all the harm that they did. Even the couple that was on the cover of a magazine was was later. That was same thing happened. It's just because you can't it's not it doesn't work. It doesn't work.

And so a lot of these organizations started disbanding because they said, you know what this doesn't work. And that was great. And it's wonderful that these people realized they were wrong and apologized. But the problem is that this didn't they didn't stop doing this at least for the most part until about a third of the LGBTQ youths in America had been treated in some way with conversion or reparative therapy. One in three. I said this in the previous episode, but I want to reinforce this again, conversion or repair of therapy, whatever you want to call it, has been found to lead

to depression, anxiety, self-destructive behavior, drug abuse, homelessness, and suicide. Even now, while it has been discredited by essentially every major medical organization and decent person, including the AAP. I'm a member of the AAP, and one of the first things I did as I started doing this research was go look up our position statement. Yeah, we cool, okay. Yeah, I wanna make sure I can still be a member.

Yeah, and the AAP included. But organizations like the APA and the National Association of Social Workers, they have all said this doesn't work, we don't recommend it, this is not something that it can be harmful, they've all made that statement, it can do harm. That being said, and that's great, that's wonderful that everybody's rejected it.

That being said, nobody's stopping any of their members from doing it. So just because the National Association of Social Workers or the American Psychiatric Association says, this doesn't work, you shouldn't do it. If one of their members is performing it on people and harming them, it's not like they're taking their license away or formally reprimanding them or helping them get accused of malpractice or anything like that. So there isn't a lot of aggressive action taken to stop members from doing it. So some still do. There have been some individual state court cases that have been effective in punishing specific

groups. And like I already mentioned, especially groups that target children. There are multiple states where it is no longer legal to target children with this kind of therapy. They haven't been able to do that for adults, because the idea is that they're making the choice on their own. Even though, again, it's essentially malpractice when taken from a medical perspective. And this refusal, like I said, of the major medical organizations to condemn it

allows psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers and counselors and basically anybody else in medicine who still believes this way to help organizations like the new incarnation of North and there are many other like it to continue in their work, especially the ones that are kind of partnered with religious organizations. They're still in business, they're mixing medical treatment therapy, religious confrontation, try to force people to change who they are. Some of the more recent things that have come out that I've read, a lot of this came from

a trial against Jonah, which is a Jewish organization that attempted to change people's sexual orientation through, again, therapy, but also bizarre treatments, like having people stand in front of a mirror and remove one piece of clothing at a time as they said mean things to themselves, and then touching themselves with a therapist in the room. I mean, with the doctors and things in the room, re-enacting past sexual abuses, things like group nudity and cuddling, like as these bizarre ideas, like this is how you are, this is how you learn how to be comfortable with other men in a non-sexual way. We're all going to get naked together. I mean, a lot of these

are kids again. Weird things like hold these oranges and they represent testicles. Okay. Yeah. There are other fruits. I mean, out there, don't have to pick oranges. The oranges? Yeah, that's just a bad juice. You don't want to give oranges a bad rap. Well, they're way too big. Are they not?

The fluency. I don't know. I don't know what it makes sense. I know. It's nonsensical. It's all nonsensical. They do the same thing with like the confrontational therapy where they tell people that you're I don't know what it makes sense. I know. It's nonsensical. It's all nonsensical. They do the same thing with like the computational therapy

where they tell people that you're bad and you're gonna die sooner and you're gonna have a miserable life that call them gays slurs. They're made, again, the parents are blamed for it. So their one specific treatment was that they would give them pillows and say this pillow represents your mother. What I want you to do is hit it as hard as you can

with this tennis racket until your hands bleed. So that you punish your mother for doing this to you. That group specifically lost their their court case and was not allowed to do that anymore. Thank goodness, but these are these are religious organizations that are doing this stuff. Yeah, and again, they do it in conjunction with people who claim to be medical professionals who have the degrees and the licenses, even though I would not call them medical professionals by any stretch. So they're saying that it's scientific. It's not. They also, there are some

groups who have tried to play this middle ground, which I think is just as bad, that where they say, you know what, maybe you can't change, but we can at least help you stay celibate forever, which is just so incomprehensibly sad to even think about. But that's how some people have found their religious middle ground. While we won't persecute these people, we'll just tell them not to ever have sex or have a relationship or experience romantic love. And then they'll be fine. And these are people who were assuming want to, by the way, I'm not saying it's bad. If you don't want to experience romantic love, that's not your thing. That's not your interest.

That's fine. But these are people who, as far as we know, still want to. And this isn't just in the US, in other places, this is happening in South Africa, gay men and boys are often forced into conversion camps, where you just basically do a lot of hard labor. The thought it'll make you really masculine, if you just do a lot of hard labor. And it's all that I was some gay to write, you read, you read, you read, after a year. Exactly. Call everybody dude. Yeah. And you know, the only thing that has helped has been the tireless work of groups like the Human Rights Campaign, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, all these different organizations who have kind of taken the route of finding

ways to challenge these groups from different angles. So like for one instance, there was an organization called People Can Change. And they actually challenged them to the FTC and the Federal Trade Commission because their marketing claims are false. You're right. You drive, fix anybody, you're lying.

So they're all, since it's all based on lies, they're actually challenging them and court through that way, which is a really, and that's also been very successful. And again, the main thing about all this, in addition to the fact that it's incredibly harmful,

entirely discredited by the medical organizations, and is based on a diagnosis that isn't a diagnosis at all, it doesn't work. It just doesn't work. And they've done studies to go back and see it at any of this therapy work. There was a very famous case where a doctor spitzer, a very famous psychiatrist, had actually done a study where initially he had said, you know what, maybe in some cases this therapy can actually be successful. Well, in 2012, this was a huge blow to the conversion therapy world. He came

out and said, my study was wrong. I've reviewed my data. I was wrong. I drew terrible conclusions. I should never have done it. It was incredibly harmful. Please forgive me for this. I've done huge harm. This was wrong.

You can't. There's nothing wrong with lesbian people or gay people or bisexual people or transgender people. There's nothing wrong with this community. There's nothing wrong with this community. There's nothing to fix. And none of these things you're doing work at all and they only do harm. I want to clarify something real quick. You've mentioned LGBTQ a few times. Am I correct in assuming even though we've talked about this quote unquote therapy of being

applied to gay people, like did you come across in the new research, the same principles being applied to transgender people? Definitely. Anybody who they would have considered, I mean, kind of from their terminology, deviant from what they would consider traditional gender roles, gender behavior presentation. So yes, definitely you would have been, you would have been subjected to the same kind of treatment, whether you were transgender or gay or lesbian or bisexual or anything other than heterosexual cisgender. Anything else was unacceptable throughout history and in these various groups.

A lot of historically, a lot of the treatments focused on gay men initially. They were victimized initially, but everybody was. That's not to say lesbians weren't, but you see, like, historically, a lot of focus on just like everything else, just like everything else is focused on men first. Oh, yeah. You guys have it so hard. No, I'm not that in like a way. Yeah, men, I don't know. No, but I mean, yes, all members of the LGBT community were certainly victimized equally and then different groups by different organizations and to varying extent. So certainly, I am not saying that any member of this community was not persecuted and isn't continued to, doesn't continue to be by these groups to this day.

I did find this fact that I thought was very interesting for all of those people out there who do practice conversion therapy or believe that it is wrong to be well gay The venn diagram of which I assume does not overlap with these others audience. No Extremely properly probably thin crescent would I would hope not I would hope not but it also is important to know this People who are prejudiced against the LGBTQ community die on average two and a half years earlier than the rest of their decent human peers. Hey, well, so at least we get to end on a happy note. I tell you, Justin, when doing this, doing these episodes, doing these episodes has, it was really hard to read about all these horrible things

that have been done, but not nearly as hard as it would have been to go through them. So I'm not in any way saying that it was, but it really made me step back as a physician and think like there were a lot of doctors involved in this stuff. And they did terrible things. And I started to worry, you know, is that something that at any point, like as a physician, I could be doing something that will look back on in a hundred years and say, what a monster she was and her peers and her colleagues to do that kind of thing. And I've thought about this long and hard. I've done a lot of soul searching. And I think the difference.

I don't think that I am. I think probably we're going to learn a lot and there are things that I'm doing that are wrong right now, that we're all doing that are wrong. And we'll learn how to do it better. But everything I do, and I think most people are this way. I believe that, most people are this way. I am led by my true love and compassion for the human race.

And I think that if you are led by that, by the acceptance of all of us as equal humans on this planet, you won't do things like this. The only refusal to believe that or accept that or embody that or an inability to feel that would lead you to do these things. That goes ditto for me except for the parts in this episode where I have audibly and inaudibly wish to have them on people. So I don't want that to seem to have a critical for sure. But I just want to say real quick, this might have seemed a weird choice for pride month, I guess,

but I just would like to, as a straight dude, I would just like to say, probably people, I think a lot of people probably think of that as individual pride, pride in who you are and your own sexuality and gender identity and what have you. But I hope that if you take some of the positive away from this, I hope it's additional pride in your communities and the community that you share together because I think that it is just staggering that how much

that you have had to endure and how much people in this community before you have had to endure just for the right to love who they love and be who they want to be and I think that that's really inspiring. So be proud in yourself and who you are 100% but spare some pride for this community that you're part of and how hard they have fought and how far they have come because it's pretty astounding.

I agree. And for the rest of us who would consider ourselves allies, another thing that you might consider, I mentioned the human rights campaign. Yeah. They have done a lot of the work in taking on these different groups. You can always donate to the human rights campaign

at hrc.org. You can come and remember there. There's also like I mentioned groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center who do a lot of hard work. Oh, should you give the high donations to some groups. Wouldn't that be nice if you could pay money to take money away from the back? I, well, you, you can in a sense, there are obviously, uh, we, you mentioned

Chick-fil-A before and they're not doing it now, but they were previously supporting groups that, uh, practice conversion therapy and finding out businesses that you patronize, finding out if they are donated money to organizations that That do this kind of thing Is a good thing because then you don't go there and don't buy their things anymore and I think that's a great message to send Is I won't support organizations that will that will fund this kind of stuff? Yeah, and do you know voting for like you play, kind of going back and forth on it. I'm not sure.

I know. I know. I know I thought that they had stopped. I thought I read this out, but I. Yeah, but, um, but do your research on those things? I think that's always good. And then, uh, you know, don't vote for political candidates who, um, endorse this kind of therapy for like, I don't know, vice president or anything like that.

Um, or certainly at any level of government because they're wrong and it's unscientific and they're wrong and it's dangerous and it's harmful and it shouldn't be practiced. So there you go. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks to taxpayers for using their song medicines as the International Rob Program. Thanks to MaximumFund.org Network and that's going to do it for us. So until next week, my name is Justin McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org

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