Prospective foster parents in Australia just sued an agency that refused to work with them because they say they would try to “overcome” the sexuality of children in their care. The couple are using legal arguments popular among conservative Christians in the United States, and their lawsuit illustrates the dangers of religious privilege, demonstrating the moral and intellectual weakness of conversion therapy proponents.

When I was a teenager, the pastor of my church offered to send me to a program to “heal” my homosexuality. My jaw dropped in shock and my heart exploded into overdrive.

When the youth pastor and I stepped into the office, I knew something was wrong, but I had no clue the youth pastor was about to out me as gay, something he couldn’t know for sure.

They replied that homosexuality is a “sin that can be resisted,” saying they would help the child “overcome” their sexuality.

The senior pastor was a kind, moderate man who treated me like a beloved member of his Christian family. He put his arm around me and told me not to worry about my single mom paying for the expensive summer camp. Of course the church would take care of it!

Out of love.

I stood there in his office, eyes watering and cheeks burning with humiliation. I wasn’t JUST angry that the youth pastor had outed me over my less-than-subtle crush on another boy. I was terrified I’d lose my resolve to be me, whatever the consequences.

Somehow I found the strength to tell the pastors no.

Only weeks before, I had finished a long process of agonized soul searching. At the ripe old age of 16, I had made a firm (frightening!) decision that I must grow into the man I was born to be, regardless of faith and family consequences.

I lucked out, really, even though I’m still paying consequences today.

If the youth pastor had outed me sooner, I probably would have leapt at the senior pastor’s offer to attend that camp. Before my period of agonizing soul searching, I yearned desperately for a path to “normal.”

I was luckier than I realized

I had no idea how dangerous conversion therapy is, how much suicide it causes among Christian teenagers. I didn’t know the kids most at risk for severe depression and suicide attempts are the ones who enter programs voluntarily — that the more they sincerely desire to change, the more likely they are to suffer severe depressive episodes and even try to kill themselves.

Background: Conversion therapy is in the news again in the U.S.

Fast forward decades and conversion therapy is hot, one more element of our blazing culture wars. Most Americans say they oppose it, and lawmakers in 20 states have outlawed it for minors. Legislators believe the sexuality experts who tell them how dangerous the practice is.

But in Florida, a federal appeals court just overturned two municipal bans, and LGBTQ advocates fear the Supreme Court might overturn bans nationwide.

Conservative Christians, including Evangelicals, Mormons, and some Catholics, insist efforts to change or suppress sexual attraction are religious practices they must be free to impose on children, even if (or, more usually, denying strong evidence that) such practices cause great harm and are doomed to failure.

Overturning bans would have been unthinkable even a year ago, but with the Republican Party’s successful radicalization of the courts, religious institutions are gaining enormous power to enforce their beliefs, even when those beliefs are demonstrably false and harmful.

The Australian case: parents say they will help LGBTQ foster kids “overcome” sexuality

According to new reports, an Australian couple in Perth filed an application in January 2017 to become foster parents with a state-run family services agency. During the assessment process, the married couple who identify as evangelical Christians and have children of their own, answered a routine question about how they would handle a foster child who might come to identify as LGBTQ.

They replied that homosexuality is a “sin that can be resisted,” saying they would help the child “overcome” their sexuality.

In September 2017, the agency denied the couple’s application, saying in a letter that they “did not meet one of the five competencies required of foster parents by the [Department of Communities], providing a safe living environment.”

The prospective foster parents have sued

The agency attempted to get the case dismissed on the grounds their decision followed religiously neutral state requirements, but the couple’s case has proceded and will be heard in a State Administrative Tribunal process next month.

The couple told The West Australian, “We hold traditional Christian views on how the Bible teaches us on sexuality and marriage.”

They did not explain why they believe faith in the Bible should justify hurting children, presumably unaware of the futility of “overcoming” sexuality or the harm inherent in the attempt.

Like the conversion therapists who sued in Florida, the couple complain that they have been discriminated against on the basis of religion. “We do feel we have been discriminated against and also we felt that if we were quiet about this and didn’t say anything about it, it could potentially harm or limit any people with the same Christian values as ours from fostering.”

The harm of attempting to change or suppress sexuality is well established and not a function of religious faith

When famed British mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing killed himself after being outed and prosecuted for being gay, he wasn’t being merely stubborn. He wasn’t refusing to change who he was out of pique. He knew, just as I knew years ago standing in that pastor’s office, that trying to stop being gay is impossible.

Today, the evidence is even more clear. The science is in: same-sex attraction is a natural, innate biological condition for a small minority of human beings. We have always existed and, absent eugenics or something equally horrible, probably always will.

Attempting to change causes nothing but harm. Denying who we are or trying to live without loving sexual intimacy causes nothing but despair and distress.

Any religious belief system that tries to deny the reality of human sexual variance is doing nothing but hurting people. Churches might as well continue to cry, as they did in the time of Galileo, that despite all evidence, the sun revolves around the earth.

But just as we know the earth revolves around the sun, we know same-sex attraction is innate and not subject to change — despite religious insistence to the contrary.

Religion must never be privileged to hurt people

I don’t blame my pastor from all those years ago. I believed his assurances then as I believe them now: he loved me and wanted what was best for me. The trouble is he was wrong about what was best.

His religion did not qualify him to have an opinion about human sexuality. His education had given him no expertise in human sexuality. If I had followed his loving but mistaken advice, I would likely have suffered great harm.

Proponents of sexuality conversion are morally and intellectually bankrupt. They are either denying empirical knowledge about human sexuality or choosing to ignore it. They are elevating uninformed faith over both knowledge and love for their fellow humans.

LGBTQ people are fully equal and fully human. Our sexuality is real no matter what religious dogma claims, and trying to change it causes misery and enormous harm.

Courts must disregard religious faith in favor of actual human knowledge. LGBTQ people’s health and lives depend on that.

James Finn is a former evangelical Christian, former Air Force intelligence analyst, long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, an essayist occasionally published in queer news outlets, and an “agented” novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to jamesfinnwrites@gmail.com.