A gay Christian who spent years in conversion therapy shares his story in a new memoir that pulls back the curtain on megachurch culture—arriving as a recent Supreme Court ruling threatens bans on the practice across the U.S.
Conversion Therapy Dropout by Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez releases May 5 and offers a look at the author’s eight years of trying to “pray the gay away” while working behind the scenes at some of the most influential evangelical megachurches.
In an interview with Windy City Times, Rodriguez said he wants the book to offer hope at a time when conversion therapy bans now face legal challenges.
“It’s odd timing, but I’m grateful to have the opportunity to share my story and hope it empowers more folks who have gone through what I have to share their own experiences,” Rodriguez said. “We need that right now because the only way we can change hearts and minds is with our stories.”
Rodriguez, who lived in Chicago and worked at a downtown megachurch during the final years of his conversion therapy, will return to the city May 8 for a release party at City Lit Books, 2523 N. Kedzie Blvd. The free event will feature a reading, signing and conversation with writer Kathy Khang.
“Chicago was both the place of my breaking and of my remaking,” Rodriguez said. “The community and friendships I forged in Chicago are what held me through that devastating process of coming out of conversion therapy and discovering who I am as an openly gay man, so I’m excited to come back.”
Rodriguez is one of more than 700,000 people in the U.S. who have undergone some form of conversion therapy, a practice widely discredited by major medical and mental health organizations as harmful, ineffective and linked to long-term psychological damage.
For Rodriguez, the practice was something he opted into, taking the form of weekly sessions with a therapist who framed his sexuality as the result of trauma.
“It felt like any normal therapeutic session—only everything I shared in that space was used as proof by my therapist that I am the way I am because of things that happened to me,” Rodriguez said. “It didn’t feel harmful on the surface, which is why I stayed in it for as long as I did.”
The book also delves into Rodriguez’s work running digital marketing for several of the world’s largest evangelical Christian pastors and megachurches, including Hillsong Church, Elevation Church and Willow Creek Community Church in northwest suburban South Barrington.
Throughout these experiences, Rodriguez’s sexuality never changed, but his faith was shaken as he witnessed the hypocrisy of institutions promoting love and belonging while pressuring gay people into silence.
“I eventually had a nervous breakdown and there was a moment I contemplated ending my life because I just knew I couldn’t keep living the way that I was,” Rodriguez said.
A turning point came when a friend invited him to attend a conference for queer Christians. Although hesitant, Rodriguez went—and had an epiphany during a prayer at the event.
“Instead of praying for God to change me, I said, ‘Thank you for making me gay,’” Rodriguez said. “And I realized that God’s lack of an answer to my prayer was the answer that there was nothing wrong or broken with me that needed to be fixed.”
That moment was “the beginning of a very long journey,” Rodriguez said.
In the book, Rodriguez traces that journey—one of self-discovery after leaving conversion therapy and coming out at 28, disentangling himself from the church and working through its long-term impact.
“I had almost a whole decade of my life to make up for that I had lost in conversion therapy,” Rodriguez said. “So this book is not just about what happened to me in conversion therapy and how I got out, but also about the longer term things I had to work through.”
After leaving the church in 2016, Rodriguez said he struggled to reconcile the role faith had played in both shaping and harming his life. But that began to shift in 2021 when he got sober and reengaged with faith through recovery spaces—this time in community with other LGBTQ+ people.
“I found myself again in church basements—but this time with gay people talking about how to stay sober by having a relationship with God,” Rodriguez said. “Sobriety gave me a new understanding of who God is to me today. It’s not the God of my past, but one that loves me.”
That experience ultimately led Rodriguez to cofoundChurch Clarity, a crowd-sourced, volunteer-run database that evaluates how clearly Christian churches communicate their policies on LGBTQ+ inclusion and women in leadership.
The website aims to help LGBTQ+ people find affirming faith communities and avoid churches that present themselves as welcoming while maintaining exclusionary practices.
Rodriguez said he hopes Conversion Therapy Dropout can offer that same sense of clarity and affirmation to others navigating their own identities.
“I just want people to know that there is nothing broken about them,” Rodriguez said. “That who they are is loved and valued—and that they are not alone.”