It was a magnificent day during the warm month of April, 2014 when young, early teenage me confronted my worst fear head on with the utmost courage and pride within myself that I never knew I had. “I… am gay.” I recall saying to my mother and father, this in turn invoking a bloodcurdling silence that saw me debating whether I had made the best or worst decision of my life. Fortunately, my deeply loving parents embraced this news and reassured me they cared not for my sexuality nor my flamboyancy but for my happiness and ability to accept myself for who I am. However, not all my same-sex loving peers are greeted to the warmth and affection that I was. With the slow but steady rise in the gay population in recent years comes a truly disturbing set of unwanted problems: self-doubters who disassociate themselves from loved ones due to fear of being recognised, homophobic fools with their childish impertinence and medieval few on …show more content…
Samuel Brinton, a non-binary (uses they/their pronouns) advocate for the LGBT movement and nuclear engineer in an interview with Elite Daily in July 2017, states that they were taken to a conversion therapist’s office just days after their father ‘punched them so hard that he went unconscious immediately’ for coming out to him even though they believed their father would be accepting of it. Brinton recalls the moment where their ‘hands were bound, placed in ice and pictures of men touching men, holding hands, were shown.’ Brinton also says: “Needles were stuck into my fingers… Electricity was shoved through my body as pornographic images – the very first pornographic images I would basically ever see – were shown to me.” How barbaric. How wrong. How inhumane. If this does not open the worlds eyes up to the true horrors behind the doors of the therapy room, then what will? This is the horrible truth that everyone needs to educate themselves