Some mental health experts are advocating for religious trauma to be considered an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Kellen Swift-Godzisz, 35, said he doesn’t go on dates, struggles with erectile dysfunction and is hesitant to trust people. For more than 20 years, he’s experienced intense bouts of anxiety and depression that have had a “major hold on his life.”
“Imagine being told by everyone you trusted that you’re going to hell because you like men,” Swift-Godzisz, a marketing project manager living in Chicago, told NBC News.
At just 11 years old, Swift-Godzisz recalled, he would sit in his bedroom every night praying or writing letters that said, “Please God, remove my affliction of same-sex attraction,” and would then store each letter in an overflowing shoebox in his closet.
The word “still” makes it seem like the cause of the religious trauma was solved. It wasn’t, so of course people are still traumatized.
For real, I’m pretty sure the city of Philadelphia is still stuck using a Catholic adoption agency that refuses to place with gay couples for it’s foster care because the Supreme Court won’t let the city ditch their bigoted asses
Being traumatized by the amount of power religious conservatives hold over all of our lives is rational