Girl Erased
Last night I saw the movie, Boy Erased for many reasons. First of all, I wanted to support the LGBTQ community by spreading awareness and informing the public that conversion therapies are psychologically, physically and spiritually damaging.
Second, I wanted to embrace solitude while, I watched this movie. Intuitively, I knew in my heart that something would trigger PTSD and... it did. I started hyperventilating in the theater when the preacher running this program, in order to convert gay young men to becoming straight, was yelling with a Bible in his hands. He told one young boy during a sermon that God could not love him or accept him into His Kingdom. Once again the past rang in my ears, "God could not love me. God could not love me. God could not love me." The familiar intense sound pierced my hearing like a siren from a darker dimension. It was in that very moment of hatred, portrayed on screen, when I absolutely lost it. Staff and students also beat this boy with a Bible and encouraged other children in the congregation to do the same.
Although Victory Christian Academy (the reform school I was locked up into) wasn't a conversion therapy, they treated us as if we were untouchables to God. In this American hellhole for adolescent girls, shame was born so to speak and hid under the flag of religion.
To shun your child for being honest about who they are and then not accepting them into your so called kingdom (your home) is the cruelest possible sin that exists on this planet. To have a congregation make a child feel unwelcome in His Kingdom is speaking for a demonic god. The High Power of Love does not hate, separate or abandon. This doesn’t make any sense and does not sit right with my heart.
I am not that girl that has been erased. Nor will I rest until, we as a nation go down the right path and close down these torture camps ending further spiritual damage.
–Jeneen Miller
Boy Erased