When Christian organizations start talking about how they don't do conversion therapy, that they know "pray away the gay" isn't really possible, but that being gay is still terribly morally wrong, terribly sinful ... you'd best look closely at what they're actually doing.

Every single time I've examined their literature and looked into their practices, I've seen evasive denials of conversion therapy, and then one claim after another that "maybe you really can change. There's hope! Trust God!"

They just can't stop selling that nonsense.

It doesn't matter how much data demonstrates the falsehood of their claims, they just don't care. If Conservative Christianity does anything extraordinarily well, it's denying data and teaching people to disbelieve facts and evidence.

I mean there's a reason there's a great big Noah's ark replica in the middle of America, standing in close proximity to a museum set up to show people that the Earth is no more than 6,000 years old.

There's a reason why conservative Christians are overwhelmingly likely to claim human-made climate change is not happening.

There's a reason why conservative Christians are more likely than most Americans to oppose vaccination for children.

There's a reason why conservative Christians tend to be the people who refuse to take the simple step of wearing masks during the COVID crisis.

It's because their religious leaders teach them that science is false, and that faith trumps human knowledge.

And so they just continue using whatever slippery words they can to push conversion therapy, because they genuinely don't care about data and evidence.

They think it's all a grand conspiracy theory anyway.

That's pretty much what conservative Christianity has turned into today.