The Truth About Conversion Therapy (with survivor Drew Amstutz)

How To Not Lose Your Sh!t

Red Wine & Blue

Parenting, Health & Fitness, Kids & Family, News, Mental Health, Politics

4.7 • 892 Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On March 31st — just two weeks ago — the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Colorado couldn’t ban conversion therapy for minors. They called it a matter of “free speech.” But to the nearly 700,000 LGBTQ+ Americans who have gone through conversion therapy, it’s a lot more than an abstract issue about free speech. It’s a trauma they’re still dealing with, even if it happened to them years or decades ago. One of those 700,000 is Drew Amstutz, Red Wine & Blue’s Chief of Staff and all-aroun...

Transcript

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0:00.0	When things like what happened with the Supreme Court case come down on your phone, there's nothing
0:07.5	else you can do in that moment than to just let go and say, you know what, we'll worry about this
0:12.3	tomorrow. I'm going to fight, but I'm not going to fight right now, because right now what
0:16.7	I need most is community and I need connection.
0:26.1	We came to make a change.
0:27.5	Hi, everyone.
0:29.4	Welcome to How to Not Lose Your Shit.
0:34.0	I'm LaFonda Cousin A Part Time, Yoga Instructor, Self-Care Advocate, and the Chief People Officer here at Red Wine and Blue.
0:36.3	And I'm Katie Paris, the founder of Red Wine and Blue. And LaFonda, can I just say I love the way you say the title of this podcast every single time? Really? Yeah, I don't know. Just like there's a cadence about it. It almost like makes me feel like I'm not going to lose my shit. Okay. Well, thank you. I'll try and keep doing that. I don't know how
0:55.0	I'm doing it. Katie, this week was amazing. So this week we had Drew on our podcast. Drew Amsteads is our
1:06.8	chief of staff at Red Wine and Blue. And he started with us almost five years ago as an intern.
1:13.2	Crazy. And then quickly became an important part of the organization. And I don't think
1:19.4	either of us could really do our jobs without Drew. I know I couldn't. So I'm not going to ask
1:27.4	you to tell me what you thought about the podcast. I'm not going to ask you to tell me what you thought about
1:29.3	the podcast. I'm just going to ask you how much you loved you. I love it so much. I mean, it blows by
1:35.8	mind that Drew first came to us as an intern. He played an incredible role in the organization,
1:41.8	really from day one. And today's conversation meant so much to me
1:47.2	because Drew does project such competence, such joy, honestly, that I think sometimes people
1:56.1	can almost think he doesn't have a care in the world. The reason why we had Drew on now is two weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled that states
2:05.1	can't ban conversion therapy.
2:08.4	And Drew, during this episode, shares with us his very personal story of going through
2:15.8	conversion therapy himself.
	...

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