After Years of Tortuous Conversion Therapy, India's Openly Gay Prince is Fighting Back, Ryan Field Books

After Years of Tortuous Conversion Therapy, India’s Openly Gay Prince is Fighting Back

When I speak about the cultural appropriation of gay writers, actors, and other gay people in the arts deal with on a daily basis, it’s not because I’m a mean person. It’s because we…LGBTQIA…people have endured some of the worst treatment in the history of the world, and in some places, it’s still happening. I find it highly offensive when someone straight and white, male or female, tells me they have it worse. And I’m going to fight back. At least I know who I am.

With that said, here’s a story about a prince in India who’s been through some of the worst treatment of any gay man alive today. Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil came out as gay at the age of 41. But he knew he was gay at 12 years old. I knew at 3. Many of us ignore the feelings, but we know.

“The day I came out, my effigies were burnt. There were a lot of protests, people took to the streets and shouted slogans saying that I brought shame and humiliation to the royal family and to the culture of India. There were death-threats and demands that I be stripped off of my title,” Gohil told Insider over a phone call from the coastal state of Kerala.

Here’s more. And that’s only part of it. After years of enduring the horrors of conversion therapy, he’s now trying to make conversion therapy illegal.