Dr. Bobbie Glass

Dr. Bobbie Glass has spent nearly five decades as an educator in Louisville, Kentucky, teaching students from kindergarten through the doctoral level and training the teachers who come after her. She is an openly transgender woman, a person of deep faith, a longtime advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, and a conversion therapy survivor. She speaks about the practice not from theory but from her own life.

Her testimony is something quiet and, for a parent of faith, harder to look away from: an account of what conversion therapy teaches a person to believe about themselves, and how long that belief can outlast the sessions. "For years I thought healing meant changing who I was," she says. "It didn't."

Today, she is on the other side of that. She has contributed to two documentaries about faith and conversion; she has reconciled her faith with who she is, and she says plainly what she once could not imagine saying. "I'm sharing my story," she explains, "because I hope it helps people understand the real human impact of these practices."

Snapshot of This True Story:

• Dr. Bobbie Glass is a Louisville, Kentucky educator and LGBTQ+ advocate, an openly transgender woman, a person of faith, and a conversion therapy survivor.

• She describes conversion therapy not as care but as being taught that who she is is unacceptable, and she notes that many who enter it are sincerely trying to honor their faith or make their families proud.

• In her account, the deepest harm came not during the practice but in the years afterward, as she worked to trust that she was not broken or defective.

• Her healing began when people stopped trying to change her and instead helped her tell the truth about her own life.

• Contributing to the documentaries 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture and Conversion became part of that healing and helped her see that she was not fighting God but untangling fear from faith.

• Her message to families is to listen first, and her message to fellow survivors is that healing is possible.

"It's About Teaching Them That Who They Are Is Unacceptable"

Conversion therapy is not health care, and it does not make anyone healthier. That is the settled position of every major medical body in the United States, which has reviewed the evidence and found the practice both ineffective and harmful. Dr. Glass describes the same truth from the inside.

"I wish people understood that conversion therapy isn't about helping someone become healthy," she says. "It's about teaching them that who they are is unacceptable."

What makes her account land is her refusal to caricature the families involved. She knows why people walk through the door. "Many people enter into it sincerely wanting to honor their faith or to make their families proud of them," she says. "What they get instead is fear, shame, a boatload of self-loathing, and the belief that God's love depends on them becoming someone else."

That is the quiet mechanism beneath the marketing language. Whatever the practice is called, its lesson is that a person is broken as they are. And that lesson does measurable harm.

The Wounds That Outlast the Program

Ask when conversion therapy stops hurting someone, and Dr. Glass has a precise answer: much later than most people assume. The lasting damage, in her telling, was not confined to the practice itself.

"The deepest wounds weren't what happened during conversion therapy," she says. "It was how many years afterwards that it took for me to begin to trust that I wasn't broken or defective. It took me years to begin to not fear and to trust my own heart."

Researchers describe the same long tail. A 2020 study in JAMA Psychiatry, drawing on nearly 28,000 transgender adults, found that those who had been subjected to conversion efforts had markedly higher rates of psychological distress and roughly double the odds of a lifetime suicide attempt. The Trevor Project's research similarly finds that LGBTQ young people put through the practice are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide. The documented harms run through depression, anxiety, trauma, and an elevated risk that follows people well into adulthood.

Her phrase for the recovery is worth sitting with: she had to learn to trust her own heart again. That is the size of the wound conversion therapy leaves.

Untangling Fear From Faith

For families of faith, the hardest question is whether loving God and loving their child can coexist. Dr. Glass lived inside that tension, and she came out the other side of it.

"Healing began when I met people who stopped trying to change me and started helping me to tell the truth about my own life," she says. Working on the documentaries 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture and Conversion became part of that work. "They helped me realize that I wasn't fighting God. I was trying to untangle fear from faith."

That distinction, fear versus faith, is the one so many survivors describe losing inside these programs. Dr. Glass came to see her questions differently. "Asking questions is not the opposite of faith," she says. "Sometimes it's the deepest expression of faith."

Her experience mirrors what the research shows about families and belief. The Family Acceptance Project found that high family rejection in adolescence is one of the strongest predictors of later harm, and that religiously grounded families sometimes struggle most to respond with acceptance. It does not have to be that way. Faith and a child's safety are not opposing forces, a truth that sits at the center of the resources here for parents who love both their God and their kids.

"Every Debate Involves a Real Human Being"

The public conversation about conversion therapy often gets argued in the language of policy, rights, and doctrine. Dr. Glass asks people to remember what is underneath all of it.

"I hope people remember that every debate about conversion therapy involves a real human being," she says. "And before trying to change someone and replace their identity, listen to them. Compassion begins with curiosity, and listening has the power to save lives."

That is not only a moral appeal; it tracks with the evidence. The same research that measures the harm of rejection also measures the protection of acceptance. When families respond to an LGBTQ child with support rather than correction, rates of depression and suicidal behavior fall sharply. A parent who chooses to listen is not conceding anything. They may be performing one of the most powerful health interventions available to a young person, and it costs nothing.

Healing Is Possible

The most important part of Dr. Glass's story is where it lands, because she did not always believe it had a landing place.

"If you're a conversion therapy survivor, I want you to know this," she says. "Healing is possible. I never thought I'd be able to say that, but today I can."

Her healing did not require abandoning her faith. It required the opposite: learning, in her words, that "authenticity and faith don't have to be enemies." She is a person of faith today, an educator and advocate who has spent her life helping other people feel less alone, and she offers her own story as evidence that the belief conversion therapy instills, that a person is broken and unlovable as they are, is not the final word.

For a parent weighing what to do, that is the note to hold onto. The child in front of you is not a debate. And healing, even after harm, is possible.

Key Lessons from Dr. Bobbie's Story for Parents

Conversion therapy is not health care. Dr. Glass is direct: the practice is not about making a person healthy, but about teaching them that who they are is unacceptable. Every major medical authority that has reviewed the evidence agrees it does not work and causes harm.

The harm does not end when the program does. Her deepest wounds came in the years afterward, in how long it took to trust that she was not broken. Research on long-term distress and suicide risk reflects exactly that lasting cost.

Sincerity does not make it safe. Most people enter conversion therapy trying to honor their faith or their family. Good intentions do not change what the practice teaches a child to believe about themselves.

Faith and authenticity are not enemies. Dr. Glass did not have to choose between God and her own truth. Her questions turned out to be an expression of faith, not a betrayal of it.

Listening can save a life. Before trying to change a child, she asks parents to listen to them. The evidence agrees: family acceptance is one of the strongest protections a young person can have.

Share Your Own Story

If this account resonated with you and you'd like to share your story, please feel free to share your own experiences surrounding conversion therapy in any capacity. We look forward to hearing your story.