Religious Right radio host Janet Mefferd cited a poem about Jewish persecution during the Holocaust to defend her support of gay conversion therapists battling laws that would make the abusive practice illegal.
Last Friday, Mefferd dedicated a segment of her show to defending faith-based gay conversion therapy, which she attempted to rebrand as “reparative therapy,” and claiming that LGBTQ activists have told “all kinds of lies” about conversion therapy. Mefferd said that liberals were “on a roll” in making conversion therapy for minors an illegal practice in various states and faulted Christians who were not standing with so-called “reparative” therapists.
“They’re going to come after the churches. They’re going to come after biblical counseling. They’re going to come after any sort of spiritual counseling, no matter how mild it is, no matter how inoffensive it is in terms of the processes that are used. They’re going to come after us next,” Mefferd said.
She then cited the famous Martin Niemöller poem “First they came…,” which was written in the aftermath of the Holocaust, to explain why she said she was defending gay conversion therapists.
“So we’re going to stand with them now. It’s kind of like the old ‘First they came for the reparative therapists and I didn’t stand up because I wasn’t a reparative therapist.’ It kind of along those lines,” Mefferd said.
