My best friend grew up in the same world as I did—that is, under the so-called "big tent" of evangelical Christianity. We were both taught that the only correct way for a man to be was straight and chaste. For me, this carried its own stigma, as I absorbed a notion that sexuality was something to be reserved for a hidden, shameful corner of my mind. For my friend, it carried a double bind: not only did he believe he was a sinner for the thought crimes of love of lust, but his sexuality would forever have to be confined to an even more furtive corner.

My best friend is gay, and when he first came out to me, it was in the form of an apology. He told me he was sorry if the truth of his identify made me retroactively question our closeness. I assured that no, I did not feel hurt or betrayed. By this point in my life, I had shaken off the stigma of my own sexuality, and my best friend's revelation awakened me to his years of silent suffering—of believing there was something fundamentally broken in him.

My best friend moved from the town we grew up in. He left an academic scholarship at a secular college to attend an evangelical college in a deep red state. He underwent conversion therapy to heal himself of the part that was "broken." He spent years in self-recrimination, surrounded by friends who could not understand the struggle inside him.

My best is a wonderful, brilliant, loving human being. And I now see how conversion therapy robbed him of the freedom to be himself. Today, he is free, but no one else should be subject to such psychological torture.