Name: Ayelet Kurtzman

Social Justice Group: 2021-2022, Conversion Therapy & “Panic” Defense

Date of Fieldwork: March 31, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Logan Casey at Movement Advancement Project

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :

On March 31st, 2022, my group had the pleasure of interviewing Logan Casey (he/him.) He is a trans and queer man that is the senior policy researcher and advisor at an organization called MAP. One thing that Logan does is overlook the equality maps that MAP produces such as this one that shows the progress of conversion therapy laws in the U.S.: https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/conversion_therapy

Logan told us that lgbtq+ discrimination and the laws against it vary greatly from place to place. It is difficult for the federal government to to pass laws against conversion therapy, so it is often done at a state or council level leading to different restrictions in different places. Some places have no restrictions at all which makes it very common, despite popular belief. Many people think that conversion therapy is a thing that used to happen when in reality it is still all too common today. In the U.S. only, an approximated 698,000 queer adults have gone through some form of conversion therapy in their life

Overall it was amazing to talk to Logan and we learned so much from him. Homophobia and transphobia are such big issues today and it’s so important that as many people as possible are educated on these issues. We are very excited that we got this opportunity to learn about this so that we can spread the word to other people.