Thank You For Raising Your Voices against ‘Conversion Therapy’: This is how you made change possible

Dear Amazing & Lovely People,

This past weekend, you got together online, cupped your hands into a collective megaphone & broadcast against institutionalized, algorithmic homo/trans-negativity. And you actually did it.

You took it down.

A quick chronology for those who came in late:

Last week, we put out our podcast ‘The Due Normal‘ featuring queer affirmative counselors Shruti Chakravarty & Pooja Nair. It focused on the issue of ‘sexual orientation conversion therapy”. In the podcast, Shruti & Pooja mention how easy it was to find such services. Based on the comment, we did a little bit of googling & duckduckgo-ing and came across a website offering the atrocity at a click of a button and another with suspiciously allied content. We published a blog out of it.

On Saturday, we put it up on social media and tagged the two offending websites. And initially, our posts were met with routine denial.

But that’s where you stepped in. You took on the cause. You took on the labor of explaining it to the platforms. You put your hearts and emotions out there in public. You rallied. You got your friends in. And you were relentless.

At its crescendo, what we were seeing on our social media feed was beautiful impromptu rebel music by a rainbow orchestra of queer folk, allies, parents, counselors, doctors, the young, the old and every one in between and all over.

And you were at it until the websites had no option but to relent.

Profuse apologies were issued. And action was taken.

One website took down all related pages. The second has promised a thorough clean up. They’ve taken down a few of the pages but they clearly need a little more pointing out of the problem areas. We will continue to monitor their follow up to the best of our abilities. (Also, we do acknowledge that when they finally agreed to act, the websites did act swiftly.)

This is no huge needle move. But it’s a tick and a tock towards change. At the very least, it’s one less thing to worry about when it comes to keeping some of our most vulnerable children safe from prejudice and harm.

It was your fierce & open voices that made it possible. You came together from all across to create a beautiful and affirmative moment of possibility. And thank you for that.

If this is any kind of victory, it belongs to you.

Much Love & More Strength,

Aarambh

#QACP

Click here for a comprehensive list of queer friendly & queer affirmative resources put together by the Mariwala Health Initiative