Cynthia Tarana

The Supreme Court last week decided whether states can ban conversion therapy—the practice of trying to talk, pray, or shame the gay out of someone. The case involves a Christian counselor in Colorado who says the state’s ban on the practice violates her First Amendment rights. The court was sympathetic. They ruled in her favor, 8-1, sending the case back to the lower courts with instructions that all but guarantee the ban will fall.

Here we are in 2026, and the Supreme Court just made it easier for licensed therapists to tell queer kids that who they are is a disorder that needs fixing. We have come so far and we have come nowhere at all.

Whatever the lower courts decide about free speech—and even two of the court’s liberal justices saw a legitimate First Amendment issue here—the argument underneath all the legal language hasn’t changed: that sexual orientation is a choice. That the right environment, the right pressure, the right amount of shame can redirect a person toward what someone else has decided is normal. I’ve been thinking a lot about that argument lately, because I happen to have some firsthand experience with what environment actually does to a person’s sexuality.

I will never forget the day I arrived at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. The moment we rolled up to the gate I could sense the heaviness—it was almost like a black cloud loomed over the entire place. Don’t get me wrong; County was horrible, but most of the people there had “short time.” Bedford was a max-security prison that housed lifers, and if it seemed creepy from the outside, it only got worse the moment I stepped inside. The buildings were dark and foreboding, the halls narrow and damp; and, as if that was not bad enough, the entire place was overrun with cockroaches.

Once brought into the reception area, I was put in a large room with a bunch of other girls who had arrived from various county jails. We were stripped of our clothes and led like cattle into an open shower. Out of nowhere, the COs started throwing what looked and smelled like lawn fertilizer at us. Looking back, the visual is almost comical, but at the time I was horrified. I was told this powder would get rid of any “lice” I had; as far as I knew, I was completely lice free, and instantly resented the treatment. As I pretended to scrub away imaginary bugs and tried to avoid the random handfuls of fertilizer being thrown my way, I felt both my dignity and identity slowly circle the drain.

That, it turns out, is the whole point. From the moment you enter the system, they start scrubbing away everything that makes you a person. They give you a number. They take your name, your clothes, your phone calls. Every time they strip something away it cuts deeper than you’d expect. You lose a lot more in prison than just your freedom.

I didn’t make many friends those first few weeks. Most of my time was spent trying to adjust to a very surreal situation; the fact that this was going to be my reality for at least the next two years was very overwhelming. It was only after I was sent to Albion (my somewhat permanent “home”), that I started to settle in.

One of my first jobs in Albion was working on the paint crew. There was a woman I worked with named Bauzo who took to me right away. She was several years older than me, and I guess she could tell I was a little out of my element (it wasn’t exactly a hard thing to recognize). After a few weeks of working with her, Bauzo told me to call her “Titi,” which means “Auntie” in Spanish. Every morning on our van ride to some random cell block, she would give me a little prison education; or as we used to say, “drop some knowledge on me.” They were invaluable prison-life lessons, and I felt grateful to have someone like her looking out for me.

I am not sure if it was my naivety of street life or the fact that I was so open to making the best of a really bad situation, but I loved learning about the women I met during my time there. At first glance our lives seemed so different; and they were in a lot of ways. But once you stripped away all the bullshit, our stories had a lot of similarities. Most of us had been survivors of some form of abuse or another, the majority of us were addicts, or had at least grown up around addiction, and pretty much all of us felt like we were the misfits of society. We were emotional wrecks a lot of days (especially after sharing in group sessions), but if we had nothing else, we had each other.

Relationships that are formed under oppression and during times of extreme hardship are some of the strongest bonds you will ever make. Just ask anyone who has ever been in the military — as odd as it may seem, the prison experience is very similar. I don’t recommend making that trip if you can help it, but the things I learned during my stay made me a better person.

Before I finished my two years in Albion, I had many “sisters,” “mothers,” “aunts,” and yes, even a girlfriend. The prison culture is a lot more complicated than most people expect, and the relationships forged there are not only sexual in nature. Prison has a way of breaking down barriers. There is something that happens when you are locked up far away from friends and family for so long. The human part of us wants to seek out anything it can in order to make you feel “human” again. If you can, you try to recreate those relationships that are missing. It’s a survival tactic. Was having a girlfriend a choice for me? Yes. Should my choice matter to you, or does it have an impact on your life? No.

I cared about my girlfriend a great deal during that time. We ate together, watched TV together, walked the yard together, and even went to solitary together. Most of my friends know I had this relationship. I’ve never been shy about it on my social media pages either. But right now it feels important to say it as loudly and as publicly as I can. Being human, and experiencing that humanity with whomever we choose, should never be something we are made to feel ashamed of. This is my coming out.

Cynthia Tarana is a heavily tattooed ex-con with no college education and very bad punctuation. She lives on Long Island, NY where she pays extremely high taxes, likes to drink, rage against the machine, and shop at the GAP. She is a regular contributor to The Chaos Section (thechaossection.com). Follow her on Bluesky @radical-feminist.bsky.social.