Selects: How Conversion Therapy Doesn't Work

27:38So if you were like, I'm gay, I'm never going to be straight, I tried, but I don't have sex with men. you would be welcome in church. So what I was saying though is with Nicolosi's thing, there's something fundamentally wrong with it. And that if somebody came to you and said, I'm tired of being white or black or Hispanic. Or straight. I can't stand it. You wouldn't say, oh, well, let's figure out how to make you not black or white or Hispanic or straight. Let's figure out how to change you. They would say, any therapist worth their salt would say, well, no, there's a lot of great things about being white or black or Hispanic or straight.

28:18And let's focus on that so that you can own your identity. Conversion therapy does the opposite. It says, yes, let's figure out how to get the gay out of you. Let's change your identity because this group of society has said that it's unacceptable. That's right. And that is an extraordinarily damaging position to come from. And that is the basis of conversion therapy. Yeah, and as we'll see later on, the AMA's official stance is that it is, and we'll read the quote later, that it is a damaging prospect and creates real harm. An American prospector. So this approach by Nicolosi has four steps to it.

29:00The first one is interesting because it's the disclosure of the therapist's personal, professional, philosophical, and religious views on homosexuality, which includes, Nicolosi says, the gay affirmative therapist also discloses his philosophical views to the client. But from a gay affirmative perspective, does he just put that in there to like cover his bases? No, it's true though. Because you wouldn't send your son or daughter to a gay affirmative therapist to convert them. Into, right. You know? I think this is what he's saying. You've been to therapy before, right? Sure. Have you ever noticed that when you first, your first session, the therapist tells you a lot about themselves and what they think about mental health or life or whatever?

29:47Yeah, and I'm always like, wait a minute, what about my problems? Yeah, I thought we were talking about me. I'm getting charged for this? I don't care about your family.

29:57that's what he's saying that they do but because this is about being gay that's what they're going to talk about is their views or whatever interesting they're going to share their opinions of it and that they think that there's problems with it you know what my line is at the therapist when they do all that stuff I'm like great that's really interesting at the end I'm like you want to start the clock now? right nice either that or I can prorate Number two of the four steps is encouragement of the client's inquiry. So basically asking the client the questions, examining their feelings to try and discover like what lies beneath.

30:38Right. Number three, resolution of past trauma. If it is in fact one of the reasons they suspect this person has gone down the road to homosexuality. and then education regarding features of homosexuality, which includes everything from what motivates you to do this to you know that if you are gay, then this lifestyle ends in a very bad way for you. Right, that there's a lot of physical harm, social harm. Emotional harm. Yeah. Right. So what's weird, though, is like I can't – Nicolosi is like a tough person to paint with just one brush. even though I totally disagree with what he dedicated his career to.

31:23He doesn't seem, at least from what I've read, including that American Prospect article from somebody who was a patient of his for years. He doesn't seem to have been like any sort of evil man or anything like that. I don't know if he just thought like this was a real thing and he was really helping people or what. But for example, there's this one quote from Gabriel Ariana who said that, he had been like experimenting with sexual encounters with other men as a teenager. And he said that he'd been meeting men off of the internet. And he told Nicolosi, like he's like, I trusted the guy enough to share this in therapy.

32:01And he said that Nicolosi told, he said, he told me to be careful meeting men off the internet, but that I shouldn't dwell on it or feel guilty. He said, my sexual behavior was of secondary importance. If I understood myself and worked on my relationships with men, the attractions would take care of themselves. I just had to be patient. which is, I mean, it's a pretty great thing for a therapist to tell a patient. Right. Don't dwell on it. You know, don't feel guilty. Just, you know, accept it and move on and learn from it or whatever. But then the second part. Right. That's where it goes downhill.

32:31Yes. And so the thing is, though, with conversion therapy in most cases, Nicolosi is, like, he's almost a shining example in a weird way, whereas other people associated with it are, it's very easy to paint them with just one brush. Yeah. You know. So we should talk a little bit about the argument against, a little bit more about the argument against, which includes a little bit more history. You know, we talked about the earliest stages of conversion therapy in the late 1800s. But it really kind of picked up steam in the United States in the 1960s when the civil rights movement, you know, when gay people started coming out of the closet more, presenting themselves more in public, gay bars popping up, things like that.

33:16Stonewall? Stonewall, of course, which, you know, anytime something like that is becoming a little more accepted in the mainstream, there's going to be another side that really roots down and digs in. And that's sort of how the modern gay conversion therapy movement was born, was out of homosexuality becoming more accepted. Yeah. I read a really interesting journal article from 2007 by Robinson and Spivey. It was in Gender and Society, the journal. And they basically looked into the ex-gay movement, not necessarily the psychology community's basis of it, but later on the adoption of it by the Christian right.

33:59And they explained why the Christian right would be interested in that. And they were interested in it and dug in, like you said, because they saw homosexuality and feminism in particular as signs of a decadent society that would eventually cause us to crumble and collapse. And this is according to Robinson and Spivey. I haven't actually interviewed anyone on the Christian right who believes this. But they are academics, and this was a peer-reviewed journal. That masculinity is the antidote to that. It's the antidote to homosexuality. It's the antidote to feminism. And that it was up to each man to be a strong leader among women and children and to be as masculine as possible.

34:45That's how you did that. Yeah, I mean, I heard sermons every Sunday. Well, not every Sunday. But I heard sermons on many Sundays where they were still saying, wives, submit to your husbands straight out of the Bible. You know? Yeah, and like most of the antidote is, dads, you're being way too passive. You need to step up and be the leader of your family. but also moms, you can help by saying, oh, you have a question? Ask your father. I defer to your father. Go ask your father. Right. And just, yeah, being passive. Well, which goes back to that triad you mentioned earlier about the domineering mother, the passive father equals gay son.

35:26That's basically the basis of the whole thing from what I could tell, is that at least among the Christian right, that if the father is not the dominant and leading figure in the family, that's where the trouble comes from, and that can produce homosexual children. Interesting. Yes. So something we failed to mention as part of the AMA's change in 1972, or was that the APA? APA. APA. was they said, and this is an important distinction, is that homosexuality they deemed a normal variation, not deviation, but a variation in human sexual orientation and like other normal sexual orientations can't be changed.

36:15In other words, you can't make a straight person gay any more than you can make a gay person straight is what that equals. And because of that, as we'll see later on, that became the basis for this idea that conversion therapy is in essence a fraud. Right. Because it purports to do something that can't be done. That's right. Should we take another break? Oh, man, really? They're coming hard and fast. We can wait if you want. Like men swinging scythes in sweaty shirts on the field. Yeah, let's take another break and we'll talk about what might happen in conversion therapy right after this. Oh, the stuff we learn from Josh and Chuck Stuff you should know New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever.

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39:40Alright, Chuck, I'm excited about this part. you're excited about the horror show of conversion therapy. It's not all horror shows. Some of it is just outright laughable. Yeah, so statistically about— Also, I'm sorry, everybody. I want to say something, too. Okay. We typically try to be super objective. Uh-huh. This one is very tough. We have science on our side, too. This was really hard for me to research. Yeah. Nothing is ever hard for me to research. This one was. It was like turning over a log and finding it like maggots writhing underneath. That was what researching this one was like. I just kept putting it off.

40:17I know. I would just keep leaving it and just going and watching like The Office or something like that. Just anything but researching this. Because it's super sad. It is. That children are taken at their most vulnerable time in adolescence when they don't know what's going on. And they're told that they're wrong and they're sinning and they're dirty. That is a part of why it's sad. Another part to me of why it's sad is that the idea that grown-ups would direct this much thought and attention and effort into slamming their head up against a wall to try to change someone else to a way they think they should be.

40:58Right. That, I think, is at least as sad to me as the children being misdirected like this. because a kid can go on and grow up and be like, geez, my family was super messed up. I'm really glad I don't speak to them anymore because I'm much happier over here. Well, that can happen in the ideal circumstance. Sure. Or the ideal circumstances that the family's just like, hey, we're really screwed up. We're really sorry. Right. We love you no matter who you are. Yeah. But the idea that there's a group, a social movement dedicated to just eradicating another group of people. Yeah. I find that very hard to swallow.

41:38Yeah, agreed. So apparently statistically about or close to 700 ,000 people in the United States have undergone conversion therapy. And we should mention that it's a real problem in places like Africa and Asia and South America. Yeah, where you can still be in prison for being gay. Yeah. Like Uganda is a big place for that. Conversion therapy is like on the rise in those places and other places. Right. But we're talking about the United States in this case, 700 ,000 people. And like we said, sometimes it is with a licensed therapist. Sometimes it's done by a religious advisor in a basement or at a church.

42:21You know what that reminded me of is another thing we need to talk about sometimes is exorcisms, like church exorcisms. Oh, we've done exorcisms. We did like straight up Roman Catholic exorcisms. Oh, okay. I'm talking like the kind that somebody does in the basement of their house because they're supposedly an exorcist or something like that. Sure. Backdoor exorcism? Basically, yeah. Black market? You'll see. You'll be like, oh, man, we should be talking about this. All right. Well, I agree already. I trust you. Okay. So the AMA says that conversion therapy programs may utilize harmful psychological techniques.

42:57we were talking earlier about aversion therapy and given chemicals they can still be given noxious stimulus and I didn't see exactly what that entailed or could entail there was a guy named Robert Gilbraith Heath who was the father of implanting electrodes into the brain to deliver shocks and one of the things he directed that toward was curing gay people I don't think anyone in their basement is implanting electrodes or whatever. But there are things like giving people like nausea inducing medications is one. Showing them pictures that might nauseate them and then figuring out how to associate that with masturbating to thoughts of other men or something like that.

43:44Yeah, I mean we should talk about a few of these specifically. I mean all you have to do is look up on a search engine conversion therapy horror stories and there are plenty of people out there saying what happened to them. Yeah, look up also conversion therapy, super happy fun stories, and you're going to come back with almost nothing. Google zero results. There was one teenager who said that he was forced to wear a backpack with 40 pounds of rocks 18 hours a day to just signify the physical burden of being gay. Right. One person's family gave them a fake funeral, closed casket funeral in front of him, where they said that he died of AIDS and they said their final goodbyes because he went down the sinful path.

44:27Pretending he wasn't there, like that he was dead and in the casket. Yes. Talking about him in third person. That's right. His family. One reported being told to strip naked in front of a mirror and say disparaging things about themselves. I just do that normally, though. Well, I did read one account where they basically said the whole idea is to break you down to nothing in the worst way possible and then builds you back up again in the image that they want. So I get the impression that that is one route, but that is not necessarily what you're going to get at any place you go for conversion therapy.

45:01There's other ones that say— That's the problem is we don't know because so many people don't talk about it. Right. There's some that you would go to that say, okay, we're not going to abuse you or anything like that. But the basis of our beliefs in this is that you are gay because either you had an absent father, a domineering mother, some combination of the two, or you always like wanted to be like loved and, you know, popular among your male peers and you didn't get that. So now you are misdirecting this need, this unmet need, toward having anonymous gay sex on the dance floor with some dude in Miami or whatever.

45:46So we need to figure out how to meet that need and have you hang out with guys who will tell you how cool you are and how popular you are. Yeah, like tailgating or something. Kind of. And while we're at it, we're going to do that by accenting the masculinity. We're going to teach you how to be masculine so that you can hang out with dudes in the real world and they will think you're cool. So things like we're going to teach you how to change the oil in your car. We're going to teach you to sit without crossing your legs. No joke. There was a guy who's kind of— You're going to teach how to man spread on the subway.

46:22There's a guy who's kind of a prominent thinker. I think he was—I saw him as a sexologist, maybe a Christian sexologist. Gerhard van den Ardluig. It's pretty great. I think I nailed it. He said that homosexual men need to unlearn avoidance of getting their hands dirty, doing manual work like chopping wood, painting a house, using a shovel. I say no thanks to all three. I'd chop wood. That's kind of fun. It is fun. And that not necessarily just here's an ax, start chopping wood, you're going to just suddenly become cured, but that that is part of it. Right. And in this thought, this tack where they're not abusing you, they're not degrading you or anything like that, they're teaching you masculinity and manliness, that the ultimate aim and goal of that is to go get married and have a kid.

47:12Right. Or kids. Right. And that that is a big part of conversion therapy, or it was for a very long time, was saying you might still be gay or whatever, but you're not really gay. You're now married and you have a kid and that is what you're dedicating yourself to. That's right. You're a wood chopping, football throwing dude. With a pencil thin mustache. Oh, no, no, not that. So in 1974, we should talk about George Reckers. He was a psychologist who tested whether or not this was an effective treatment. And he had a four—this wasn't his boy, but this was his client. I guess client's a weird way to put it.

47:57This child was forced to go to this person at four and a half years old. And this is a boy manifesting, quote, childhood cross-gender identity. And they said this is based on the clothes that this boy wears. And now, of course, looking at this, it was probably a transgender child. Yeah, or gender fluid. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to tell because this was 1974 and the way they wrote about it, it's hard to kind of piece it together. Yeah, and it's also like just how much of this behavior did this child exhibit? Like it makes it seem like this is all the kid did was act like a girl when he was a boy.

48:33Right. What else was he into? What else, you know? Yeah. It's just such a narrow picture of the subject. Of course. So in the end, Wreckers did something super damaging. He trained the boy's mother to be the therapist. Like, here's what you need to do so this kid can get 24-7 therapy from you. And basically punish feminine behaviors, reinforce masculine behaviors at all times. And they said that, hey, this is working because every time this boy gets punished for doing something feminine, He stops and like chops wood or throws the football and gets a reward. So because he's four and a half years old, he's doing the things that their parents congratulate him for and reward him for.

49:16Right. And not doing the things that he's getting punished for. Exactly. The punishment is what stood out to me. It's just so sad that the mother was instructed to reject him, to basically ignore him when he acted like a girl, but not ignore him like pretend it's not going on. Like let him know that she is giving him the cold shoulder. and that that's how he learned. Right. That is just devastating. It's heartbreaking, and what's heartbreaking is this was used as an example. Like, see, this works. This four-and-a-half-year-old is now acting more masculine and is not going to grow up to be gay, and this child died by suicide at the age of 30.

49:54Like, that's the end result of this road. That's where it ends up. And that's what I meant earlier when I said, like, it does kind of work because it follows psychological techniques that actually work, but it works in kind of a bent way where, yes, you can train somebody. You can mold a four-year-old to behave in a certain way by conditioning them. It's possible. You can get somebody to do just about anything like that. But the ramifications, the results, the damage to the individual's identity that will eventually come out later are widespread and sweeping. Yeah. And that's the point. That's why you shouldn't monkey around with somebody's identity using proven psychological techniques.

50:35That's what's so evil about the whole thing. Yeah. I mean, my daughter's four and a half. I had a hard time even getting through this stuff. And then also, if somebody – this is the other thing too. If you're a conversion therapy advocate or activist or practitioner and you say, no, there are people out there who are distressed, who are experiencing psychological distress for being gay. Yes, that's true. I guarantee that there are people like that out there. But directing them toward working on not being gay is not the answer. Yeah, go to regular therapy. And learn to love that you're gay. And go find a church that accepts gay people.

51:11There's step two. Yeah, because they're out there. Let's talk about the science of it because the— We are so contributing to a decadent society. In 2009, there was a report from the APA Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation. Quite a read. And this was the actual final stance was sexual orientation change efforts can pose critical health risks to lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Critical health risks. Not emotional, not, I mean, it's part of emotional health too. Sure. But critical health risks. And if you read the review of research and peer-reviewed literature and the findings of what it can result in, it reads like the worst pharma ad disclaimer you've ever heard.

52:01Depression, guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, shame, self-hatred, hostility, dehumanization, betrayal, social withdrawal, substance abuse, stress, sexual dysfunction, loss of faith, and suicidality. And on that last note, homosexual teens attempt suicide more often than heterosexual teens. And then among those homosexual teens, you're twice as likely to try that if your parents have rejected you. And three times as likely if you have undergone conversion therapy. Three times as likely. Yes. Compared to a heterosexual teen. That's right. Man. Well, you have it. That was just the APA. A bunch of different associations, like legit medical and psychological associations have come out and condemned in no uncertain terms conversion therapy.

52:52Right. And all of these condemnations basically follow two different texts. One, there is no science backing up the idea that you can change somebody from homosexuality to heterosexuality. Right. And number two, there is science backing up the idea that trying to do that causes damage to the individual. So don't do that. And as a matter of fact, some countries and states in the United States have said, this is outlawed. You can't do this anymore, everybody, which is really touchy stuff because, again, the Christian right kind of adopted it. And we don't really infringe on religious beliefs, but that's how strong these condemnations have been.

53:39They're saying, we'll kind of start to wade into that with this one. Yeah, and we'll talk about the legalities of recent years in a sec. But before that, between the 70s and the APA's stance, changing things a little bit, then through the 80s and 90s where conversion therapy was really sort of hitting its peak, I think, in America, there were a few high-profile cases that were exposed that have helped sway things a little bit back to sanity in more recent years. Yeah, so before those high-profile cases, and I mean right before them, I think in 1998, a coalition of church groups got together and sponsored an ad campaign, something like a$600 ,000 ad campaign.

54:27Yeah. And things like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, all this. And this ad featured John and Ann, I believe, Ann Polk, both of whom were formerly gay, but were now ex-gay. And married. And married and had a kid. and said, gay conversion helps. And at the time, there wasn't a lot of ink on the other side saying, actually, this is totally discredited. And it captured everybody's attention. And this is when the Christian right came in and said, we're going to make this huge push in the culture war. And it really worked. That's when that Newsweek story came out. Yeah, they were on the cover of Newsweek.

55:03He was the leader of an ex-gay organization called Exodus International. John Paul was. Right, and it brought a lot of attention. Yeah, he was the poster boy. Yes, and Exodus International in particular became one of two main umbrella organizations. They were kind of like the, I saw it put the spiritual version of the ex-gay movement, and then something called NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, was like the scientific branch of the ex-gay movement. And so Exodus International became a very well-known, prominent organization in the late 90s. But within two, three years, it would basically be the poster child for how conversion therapy doesn't work.

55:54Right, because John Palk is gay. In 2000, just two years later, he was photographed coming out of a gay bar in Washington, D.C. At the time, he refuted that. He didn't refute that he was there. He said, what you always say, I didn't know it was a gay bar. I went in there asking for directions. No, I saw he went in to use the bathroom. No. Either way. I just read the articles. And then they were like, but you were in there for a couple of hours. Did you get the directions and use the bathroom? It clearly says Blue Oyster in neon. Have you not seen the Police Academy movies? That was the name of it in the Police Academy, right?

56:33The Blue Oyster bar. Oh, goodness. And John Palk, we should say, now lives life as a gay man and is a chef. He's been on, like, some celebrity chef shows. Is that right? Uh-huh. Cool. And he is— Living his best life. He's living his best life from what it looks like. So he's no longer married any longer to Ann. Actually, that I don't know. Because there are some, but we'll keep going. I don't think he is. But there are a couple of people that are. There was in 2003, Michael Johnston, he was another person touted as an ex-gay success story. Founder of National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day. He actually was found out to be having sex with men that he met online and infected them with HIV.

57:24Very big deal. And then there's Ted Haggard, of course, in 2006. I remember this. Yeah, he was a preacher and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, or was at the time, I guess. Very much an anti-gay leader in the religious circles. And this one sort of unfolded little by little, like, hey, this guy came out and said, this guy had a relationship with me for like three years. We did crystal meth together. And then Haggard came out and said— So cliche. You know what? I have to admit I sinned. I bought crystal meth, but I didn't use it. I threw it in the trash because I wouldn't succumb to the sin.

58:04Is that what he said? Yeah. He says he did buy crystal meth because I assume that was proof. And he said that he didn't use it at all. He threw it in the trash before he used it where the other guy was like, no, we did tons of meth and had gay sex a lot. Oh, I know what he's talking about. On like day four of us staying up, he like freaked out and threw it in the trash, but then he went back and got it. And the proof was that he paid for it by check. Maybe. No. No, probably not. I don't think meth dealers take checks anymore, do they? I don't think so. And then he was outed by having a relationship with an underage boy, a sexual relationship.

58:42This was Ted Haggard again? Yeah. Wow. And the boy sued, and it was settled by the church with a dollar figure. I think it was like$180 ,000. And then finally in 2011, Ted Haggard comes out and is like, all right, so I did have a relationship with a boy, but we never touched each other. I just masturbated in front of him. I threw him in the trash. And in 2011, he said, you know what? I'm bisexual. I'm going to admit it. I am bisexual, but I am going to choose to live my life as a faithful heterosexual husband to my wife. I wonder if after he admitted that, it came out as bisexual, what that felt like.

59:24If he felt like a weight was lifted or if the anxiety associated with it was just so much or what his wife knew or didn't know or thought about it. I'd be very curious to know what life has been like for him after that. I mean, he's a preacher again. Because, I mean, more power to him if he's like, I'm a Christian and I'm just not going to have gay sex. That's as much a personal choice as having gay sex. You know? I mean, the whole underage boy thing, that's a huge problem that I think I'm hoping was addressed. But I wonder what his life is like now. Well, I mean, like I said, he's preaching again, I think, in Colorado.

1:00:04He's probably a Stuff You Should Know listener. Haggard, right in. Yeah, we'd like to hear from you, sir. You want to talk about the law? Because right now... Oh, wait, there was one more. Chuck, there's a big one. Who? Alan Chambers? Yes. So John Polk, when he was outed cruising the Blue Oyster in D.C. back in 2000, he was running Exodus International. Yes. He was replaced a couple years later by Alan Chambers. And about a decade after Chambers took over Exodus International, he said, I'm gay. I've been gay. Conversion therapy doesn't work. We're shutting down Exodus International. Yeah, and I apologize to the LGTBQ community.

1:00:45Yes. So within about a decade or so of the Christian right adopting the ex-gay and conversion therapy pillar post as part of the platform for their culture war, the biggest organization, one of two biggest organizations dedicated to conversion therapy said, it doesn't work. We're sorry, gay people, for all the damage we've done. Yeah. That's a pretty big turn of events. It is. So, yeah. Yet it still continues. So that led to, yeah, so that led to a bunch of laws that are trying to keep it from continuing. Yeah, and the laws are basically usually around minors saying you cannot force a minor to do something like this.

1:01:25Right. Not, hey, the whole thing is outlawed. If you're an adult and you want to go do this, then that's up to you. As of 2019, this year, 18 states in Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico have similar bans enacted. And also it's important to point out that those bans are about the legitimate scientific community, like you will have your license revoked. It doesn't say anything about a preacher that you go to or a youth counselor or any sort of non-licensed church therapist. Right, it's only scientists or licensed counselors or psychologists or psychiatrists or doctors, I'm sure, who can lose their license if they practice it.

1:02:07That's right. But yeah, that's because there's religious freedom. I guess you can still do that to minors, though, if it's a religious group doing it? That is what I'm not sure about. So for them— Well, it depends on the state. So there was a group or there was a counseling organization called Jonah. And Jonah... Is this Goldberg and Burke? Yes. They ran Jonah, which stood for... I can't find it anywhere. I got it here. Jews offering a new alternative for healing. Okay. They were not only found practicing in New Jersey conversion therapy, so they both lost their licenses. They were also sued in a civil suit by former patients for fraud and lost.

1:02:56It's interesting. I mean, you think about it. Like, wait a minute. If this is not possible and you're charging people for it, that's fraud. So they had like a$3.5 million settlement levied against them and lost their licenses. But then they just set up shop under another name apparently the same year of the verdict in the civil suit. But for the most part, if you're a state and you pass a law banning conversion therapy to minors among medical practitioners or counselors, the courts are going to uphold that law. Yeah, it's been upheld in California and New Jersey. Most of the challenges are on the grounds of free speech.

1:03:36and the New Jersey, when they upheld the New Jersey, or maybe it was Maryland, the judge said, we're not infringing on your free speech. You can say whatever you want, but you can't practice this therapy. That's different than free speech. You can believe what you want and say what you want, but you can't do this as part of your licensed therapy. It's the same thing as like if you carry out quack cancer treatments that is harmful, like you're poisoning your patients or whatever. And like they become – they lose the use of their arms and legs because of a treatment that you gave them for cancer that the American Medical Association has specifically said is damaging and harmful.

1:04:22you're totally going to get held accountable for that. You're lucky to just lose your license in that case. This is the exact same principle. Yeah, for sure. So because it deals mostly with minors or exclusively with minors, the courts have upheld it. But New York City actually is widely considered to have overstepped its bounds and actually misstepped in this kind of culture war about conversion therapy in banning the practice among minors and adults. Right. And that got New York City sued. And New York City was like, well, the Supreme Court's actually gotten pretty conservative lately. I don't know if we should test this.

1:05:01And they repealed the ban. Yeah, as a strategy. Right, to keep it from getting tested in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court could say, no, all laws against conversion therapy are unconstitutional. You can't outlaw it or ban it in any form. Yeah, and I think the Supreme Court already refused to hear one case. Which actually upheld the state's outlaw of conversion therapy. Right. Yeah. Very interesting. There's a movie I haven't seen yet called The Miseducation of Cameron Post. It's a 2018 film from the 2012 novel by Emily Danforth. I haven't seen it yet, but it's about a girl who undergoes conversion therapy.

1:05:41And it's Chloe Grace Moritz? You know her? I do. I can't put the face with the name, but I know both. Yeah, you've seen her for sure. Sure. If you want to know more about arrested development, conversion therapy, all that stuff, you can, well, I guess start researching online, see what you think. And since I said see what you think, it's time for Listener Mail.

1:06:07I'm going to call this complaint, pedantic complaint. Okay. I write to complain. Josh, in the episode on historic districts, you kept referring to them repeatedly with the indefinite article and rather than a. And historic district. I said and? That's what he says. That sounds unusual. I don't usually do that. Really? I guess I was just being unconsciously correct. So is that correct? Yeah. So what's the rule? Because I don't even know it. Huh? What I just said. That's the rule? That's the rule. What I say? Mm-hmm. Okay. I try not to exercise it too much. Okay, good. Only when I'm right. Joe says this, I realize this infuriating practice has become popular in recent years in the U.S.

1:06:50I feel passionately that it must be discontinued, especially primarily by those voices are attended by large audiences like you. You are no doubt aware the letter H is a consonant, necessitating, geez, the use of the indefinite article A rather than an. Citation, all grammar books ever. I should limit the scope of my gripe with an important caveat, Cockneys. They should probably continue to say Ann because they pronounce it historic. This guy doesn't even know that the rhyming slang episode is coming out. How weird. But guys, that's not really what I write today. I love the show. I wanted to tell you, I wanted to wait for a halfway plausible pretense to make the email a little more fun, which I hope this has been.

1:07:28Any chance on an episode of How Pedantry Works? Keep up the good work, Joe. Thanks, Joe. He's spoken fun. Turns out he's good peeps after all. Yes. Is the and before an H, is that a thing? Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. Is it? Yeah, I think, I don't know if it's proper or not, but I understand where it comes from because the vowel that comes right after the H is usually so heavily pronounced in relation to how it's pronounced when it comes after other consonants, like anhistoric. An historic district sounds okay. An honor. An honor. A honor. Which one sounds better? Like I was bestowed an honor.

1:08:06Yeah, now say it the other way. But you wouldn't say in high school I had an history teacher that was great. You know, it's really weird. Did Joe tell you to say that? No, I just thought of it because in historic. I had a history teacher. I had a historic. Yeah, both work. How about this? We're both right, Joe. Try not to focus on such stupid stuff. I'm curious if there is. I really want another rule now. Because I know it's a consonant, but if people are saying it these days, is that just some sort of fighting the system? That's the descriptivist way. The prescriptivist is like, no, it's this way.

1:08:45Right. Joe's the prescriptivist here. We're descriptivists. All right. I think we've proven ourselves there. Maybe we should launch a side podcast called The Descriptivists. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah? Almost has like a Civil War era folk band feel to it. We'd have to curl the cues, though. That's fine. We're not going to do that. We could get fake ones that we just took on and off for publicity. Right. Scalp mob. Right. If you want to get in touch with us like Joe did, have a little quibble, a little gripe or praise or whatever, you can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com and check us out. Our social links are all up there.

1:09:21You can also send us an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

1:10:01Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement, the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. You might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. John has never been anything but gay, but he really tried hard not to be.

1:10:40Listen to Atonement, the John Palk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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