Even though the Supreme Court is currently considering Chiles v. Salazar, a case that could overturn the bans on conversion therapy for minors currently in place in 27 states, longtime LGBTQ+ activist Wayne Besen says these bans don’t stop a majority of those who actually offer services to change people’s sexual orientation or gender identity: namely, unlicensed religious counselors and life coaches working with so-called ex-LGBTQ+ organizations.

“The term ban is inaccurate,” Besen told LGBTQ Nation. “Show me: Show me one conversion therapist who has been put out of business because of these laws.”

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Besen is executive director of Truth Wins Out, an organization that combats anti-LGBTQ+ religious extremism and misinformation. He’s also the author of two books covering the history of conversion therapy and ministries that offer it, and he argues that he personally has helped shut down more major conversion therapy organizations — by helping expose their pseudoscientific methods and the hypocritical actions of their closeted leaders — than any state laws have.

These state laws are mostly “symbolic,” Besen said, and only address 5% to 10% of the people actually offering conversion therapy.

“They have large loopholes for religious practitioners that you could drive a Mack truck through,” he said, noting the exceptions these laws provide for religious expression and free speech.

“Symbolism matters, and when people see there’s a ban, it does lower the stature of the practice,” he conceded, but he also believes these laws are mostly ineffective.

“The most powerful and active ex-gay conversion organization in the country, if not the world, The Changed Movement, is based in Redding, California, which is a state that supposedly bans it,” he explained, noting that the group can operate because it presents itself as a religious group.

State laws against conversion therapy are also especially “obsolete” in the internet age, when a parent can enroll their child in a conversion therapy program located outside the U.S. with just a few clicks, Besen said.

Contemporary support for conversion therapy is tied up in a larger international Christian nationalist movement that involves U.S. anti-LGBTQ+ organizations that queer activists have been fighting for decades — like the American Family Association, the Claremont Institute, the Family Research Council, and other groups that supported Project 2025, the president’s blueprint for his second term that seeks eradication of LGBTQ+ civil rights at the federal level — but also reaches to other far-right groups in Britain, Hungary, Africa, and elsewhere, he added.

Some states have prohibited conversion therapy by using consumer fraud laws, essentially shutting down paid businesses that violate state regulatory business statutes by using false advertising to market harmful and ineffective services. Such a law in New Jersey was used to shut down Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) in 2015. Besen, working with the Southern Poverty Law Center, convinced a unanimous jury that the group was liable for consumer fraud. A judge ordered the group to permanently close, and it has been defunct ever since.

But while consumer fraud laws effectively get around free speech and religious expression loopholes, they require much more time and money, Besen said, because prosecutors must first collect extensive evidence, find witnesses, and then go to trial.

Major LGBTQ+ groups like the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Trevor Project have raised money and public support for state laws against conversion therapy. But Besen feels they should have changed tactics in 2020 after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Otto v. City of Boca Raton that local ordinances against conversion therapy for minors are unconstitutional. While other circuit courts affirmed that such laws are constitutional because they only regulate professional conduct of licensed professionals, the 11th Circuit held that these laws unconstitutionally restrict free speech protected under the First Amendment.

“The writing was on the wall at this point,” Besen said. “For six more years, we’re talking about bans, when it was obvious to anybody with any political knowledge whatsoever that the courts were changing — that Trump stuffed the courts with MAGA, including the Supreme Court — that the world changed, and that this was very likely to all be overturned by the Supreme Court.”

If the Court does overturn the state laws, something that Besen says seems very likely, he believes activists will have to revert to tactics that worked to publicly discredit conversion therapists during the early 2000s: close monitoring of these groups and increasing visibility and messaging through social media to help expose their leaders as hypocrites who make outrageous and untrue claims that publicly discredit them.

Such tactics helped expose closeted ex-gay leaders like John Paulk, George Rekers, and Alan Chambers and led their organizations to be widely mocked online and on late-night shows, and for their organizations to either disband or reorganize under new names.

“If we lose this case in the Supreme Court, I would urge people not to get too depressed over it, because conversion therapy didn’t work in the past, it doesn’t work today, and it will never work in the future,” Besen said.

A Supreme Court loss “will be fairly or unfairly seen as a setback and a reversal in rights, even though the possible impact isn’t going to be very strong,” he added, voicing hope that a loss could serve to mobilize people against the growing threat of Christian nationalism.

Besen acknowledges that the conversion therapy landscape has changed somewhat with Republicans’ national crusade to eradicate trans people out of existence and to legitimize “gender exploratory therapy,” an anti-trans form of conversion therapy, by encouraging medical and mental health professionals to administer it to trans youth.

“This is a whole different, much more difficult messaging challenge for our community, and we have not come to a consistent place with it right now,” Besen said, noting that it’s an emotionally charged issue involving young people, detransitioners, and an American public that is largely opposed to trans people participating in sports or using restrooms that align with their gender identity.

“There hasn’t been great, cohesive messaging on that… but it’s going to have to come from some major organizations that have to pull it together, like The [National LGBTQ+] Task Force, HRC [the Human Rights Campaign] and GLAAD,” he said.

“We’re in the worst possible position right now, where we’re not fighting hard like we did, for example, for marriage equality,” he continued. “Leading activists need to get together with the biggest organizations that have money and decide what we’re going to fight for and what we’re going to retreat on [regarding messaging around sports, gender-affirming care, workplace and education discrimination, and other trans rights], and make some real decisions at this point, because I think that’s what’s killing us… You have to make a decision right now. We’re just stuck in between, and until that decision is made, we’re going to continue to lose.”

In the meantime, Besen encourages survivors of conversion therapy to keep speaking out, for social media users to share their stories, for allies to join political organizations that oppose conversion therapy, and for everyone to aggressively stay involved and fighting because history has shown “there is no finish line,” that anti-LGBTQ+ forces are “always going to try and come back,” and that Christian nationalists controlling our federal government are trying to impose a future that monitors and controls people’s sexual behavior.

“They just cannot win under any circumstances,” Besen said. “People need to understand that and fight for their lives, because that’s what’s on the line, that’s what our opponents want for us.”

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