By 1962, donating blood or receiving blood transfusions with consent would lead to disfellowshipping. Thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses since 1962 could be alive today if they didn’t believe that accepting a blood transfusion would be worse than death itself.

I quickly learned that even outside of the Bible Belt, bisexuality was condemned. I didn’t know that the world outside of the church would perceive bisexuals to be untrustworthy and confused. Actually, encountering biphobia amongst heterosexual, gay, and lesbian people left me confused! “Pick a side!” They’d say like it was a sports game with two teams. And I wondered how dating and relationships had become so much of a game to people that love and attraction mattered less than appearance and perception. Purity Culture had seeped more into the Mainstream than I had thought. And the longer I was out of the Bible Belt, the more I noticed that Mainstream Society has a lot of unpacking to do with biphobia.

As a Christian Counseling student, I was taught spiritualized beliefs alongside the biopsychosocial model of mental illness. Biological predispositions, pervasive self-criticism, and social isolation are all predicting factors for mental illness. According to my Christian Counseling professors, if biological, psychological, or social factors couldn’t be found for a mental illness, then it had to be caused by spiritual factors.

Being “weird” was part of their brand. In a way, it worked. It drew people into these Evangelical groups, who felt like outsiders. Their loneliness took low effort to manipulate them. Evangelicalism shaped vulnerable individuals to serve their purposes. What happened under the radar, occurred in plain sight. The strangeness of it all was widely ignored by people with secure attachment styles.

Conversion therapy practitioners understand something very important about human psychology: disgust is powerful. It’s fast. It’s visceral. And once it’s learned, it can stick around for a very long time to control a person’s behaviors.

The beginning of joining a cult often feels like you’re the luckiest person in the world. You find friendship and/or romance with ease. Conversation flows easily. You don’t have guessing games in social situations anymore because you experience certainty that everyone around you shares the same values. It’s not just a one-off connection either. You get to see your favorite people at least once a week. Having this experience with one or two people would feel like a full-life for many. Now multiple that experiences by 10… 100… 1,000… 10,000… 100,000 people. Serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin ruches at high levels for people in these cults to experience what feels like the dreamiest life— until one day.

With my first couple of years in therapy, I expected my therapists to give me life-changing benedictions in our sessions and transcendental experiences of performing the ritual of self-care outside of therapy, but that didn’t happen. So I began to question, “Is therapy actually working?”

Abuse is not the same as conflict. And for those who experience family conflict rather than abuse, maybe going no contact isn’t the best decision for them. As for people who have been abused by their family members, it is important to take abuse seriously.

When euphemism is stripped away from Purity Culture, we can see the sexual harm for what it is— the precursor to The Rape Academy.