Russian Parents Are Kidnapping Their LGBTQ+ Children and Sending Them to Conversion Therapy Camps
Parents in Russia are hiring gangs of men to abduct their LGBTQ+ children and take them to conversion therapy centers, where they are held for extended periods and subjected to chemical and psychological practices banned in Western countries, according to a report from The Washington Post.
Survivors who escaped to the West said they were imprisoned inside expensive and isolated treatment centers, often amidst drug addicts and the mentally ill. They spoke of being given debilitating drugs, forced to perform hours of exercise and labor, beaten down emotionally and psychologically regarding their sexual and gender identity, and enduring regular beatings by staff.
Transgender nonbinary activist and journalist Ada Blakewell, 23, said her mother aided in her abduction to the Freedom Rehabilitation Center in Siberia. Blakewell, who uses she/they pronouns, said she was forced to swim every morning in an ice-cold river and endure a brutal physical regimen that left her vision blurred and seeing only white. Blakewell said she was also forced to perform “manly” tasks such as chopping wood and slaughtering chicken, pigs, and turkeys, as well as once being asked to castrate a pig.
https://www.advocate.com/world/russia-co...kidnapping
Parents in Russia are hiring gangs of men to abduct their LGBTQ+ children and take them to conversion therapy centers, where they are held for extended periods and subjected to chemical and psychological practices banned in Western countries, according to a report from The Washington Post.
Survivors who escaped to the West said they were imprisoned inside expensive and isolated treatment centers, often amidst drug addicts and the mentally ill. They spoke of being given debilitating drugs, forced to perform hours of exercise and labor, beaten down emotionally and psychologically regarding their sexual and gender identity, and enduring regular beatings by staff.
Transgender nonbinary activist and journalist Ada Blakewell, 23, said her mother aided in her abduction to the Freedom Rehabilitation Center in Siberia. Blakewell, who uses she/they pronouns, said she was forced to swim every morning in an ice-cold river and endure a brutal physical regimen that left her vision blurred and seeing only white. Blakewell said she was also forced to perform “manly” tasks such as chopping wood and slaughtering chicken, pigs, and turkeys, as well as once being asked to castrate a pig.
https://www.advocate.com/world/russia-co...kidnapping
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
