Conversion therapy survivor says the Mormon church pays for its members to undergo it

Elena Joy Thurston, anti-conversion activist and motivational speaker.
Photo: Elena Joy Thurston

Last month, the American Medical Association (AMA) announced their pledge to advocate for banning conversion therapy everywhere. This was great news for many and a step toward bringing an end to the harmful and widespread practice.

“The most interesting response, I would say, is people saying, ‘They still do that? I thought that was done in the ’50s and ’60s. No one does that anymore,’” Elena Joy Thurston told LGBTQ Nation. “And, that’s where I was exactly four years ago. I didn’t know the term ‘conversion therapy’, I had no idea what it meant.”

Over four years ago, Thurston lived a typical “literal picket fence” life, as she once described it in a TEDx Colorado Springs talk. She was a Mormon-worshipping wife and mom of four.

Suddenly, her attraction to a friend of hers bought her to the realization that she may not be straight. “I was simultaneously grounded and feeling a high I had never experienced before — how could something that felt so good… be so wrong?”

Thurston tried to consume her thoughts with things like running and fly fishing, before turning to her husband and religion to help her. Immediately, she sacrificed all of her privileges in the church and public displays of belief. Facing excommunication from the religion she’d known since turning 16 years old, Thurston entered conversion therapy.

“I was 38 when I realized I was in the arena, I was face down in the dust — in fact, I wasn’t even on the arena floor, I was on the pit that I had dug myself,” she said in her TEDx Talk that came out this November.

She endured months of therapy (“two hours a day, four days a week”) that ended up costing several thousand and didn’t make her feelings go away — instead, it made Thurston feel suicidal and like a”failure” afterwards. Eventually, with the help of a few friends and her hobbies, Thurston found enough strength to file for divorce and come out to her kids.

Now, she lives in Arizona and happily takes her girlfriend on fly fishing trips while leading retreats when she’s not fighting to bring an end to the exploitative practice of conversion therapy. “I didn’t need to pray the gay away. Being gay had bought me more happiness than I’ve ever known,” she told her TEDx audience.

While there are conversion therapy bans popping up all over the continent, many only protect minors and some contain religious exemptions. New York City’s ban, for example, had so many loopholes…

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