‘This has been a long road’: relief and excitement as NSW ban on gay conversion practices comes into effect

Chris Csabs, co-founder of SOGICE Survivors, says legislation banning LGBTQ+ conversion practices is a critical step – and urges survivors to keep telling their stories. Photograph: Rafqa Touma/The Guardian

Chris Csabs started going through so-called “conversion practices” at 16 years old. “I was extremely distressed about being gay and I went … to ask for help,” he said. He was then moved interstate to participate in a conversion course, exorcisms and counselling. But the damage inflicted had started well before that.

“What makes a 16-year-old seek that out?” Csabs said. “It was because I’d been doused in an ideology – that we now know underpins all conversion practices – that told me from a very, very young age that LGBT people are broken and that they are disordered and need to be fixed.”