Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — who was spotted yesterday in an FBI raid on the election offices of Fulton Country, Georgia (a county that Donald Trump targeted in his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election) — has ties to anti-gay organizations in her home state of Hawaii, including one that promoted conversion therapy, the widely debunked practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

But does Tulsi Gabbard support conversion therapy? We took a closer look at her history and words about the subject. It seems that while she disavows conversion therapy for sexual orientation, it’s less clear whether she supports conversion therapy for gender identity.

Related

Tulsi Gabbard is a mixed bag of pro- and anti-LGBTQ+ views

What is Tulsi Gabbard’s connection to conversion therapy?

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Gabbard worked for The Alliance for Traditional Marriage, an anti-gay political action committee (PAC). The PAC spent over $100,000 to convince Hawaiian voters to pass Amendment 2, a November 1998 ballot measure allowing the state legislature to restrict marriages to opposite-sex couples (effectively banning same-sex marriage in the state). Gabbard was 17 years old at the time of the vote.

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Gabbard’s father, Mike, was a prominent anti-gay activist in the island state. He served as the director of Stop Promoting Homosexuality, on the steering committees of the National Campaign to Protect Marriage and the Hawaii-based coalition, Save Traditional Marriage, and also hosted an anti-gay radio show, Let’s Talk Straight Hawaii, CNN reported.

Tulsi Gabbard was quoted in a 2000 press release from The Alliance for Traditional Marriage in which she blamed “homosexual activists” for opposing her mother Carol’s campaign for a seat on the Hawaiian State Board of Education, stating, “This war of deception and hatred against my mom is being waged by homosexual activists because they know, that if elected, she will not allow them to force their values down the throats of the children in our schools.”

“Working with my father, Mike Gabbard, and others to pass a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage, I learned that real leaders are willing to make personal sacrifices for the common good,” Gabbard told The Honolulu Star-Bulletin during her run for the Hawaii state legislature in 2002. “I will bring that attitude of public service to the legislature.” 

During a hearing on a bill to ban same-sex civil unions in Hawaii in 2004, Gabbard said, “To try to act as if there is a difference between ‘civil unions’ and same-sex marriage is dishonest, cowardly, and extremely disrespectful to the people of Hawaii. As Democrats, we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.”

The Alliance for Traditional Marriage’s website, which appears to have been written by Gabbard’s father, had an FAQ that promoted conversion therapy and groups that push it.

What did Mike Gabbard’s organization say about conversion therapy?

The Alliance for Traditional Marriage’s website contained the following text promoting conversion therapy:

Can homosexuals change their sexual orientation?

Yes, of course. The bottom line is: We don’t accept the fictitious homosexual or gay identity. Homosexuality is a behavior, not an identity. In other words, there is no such thing as a homosexual or “gay”. Historically, the word “homosexual” didn’t exist until the mid 1800s, and when it was originally coined it referred to “homosexual attractions” not an entity or person known as a “homosexual.” These labels are simply political constructs created by homosexual activists to achieve their goal of societal acceptance. Our position is this: Humans are born heterosexuals. It’s simple, just check the plumbing. The vast majority of us have sexual desires for the opposite sex, while a small minority have homosexual, bi-sexual, or omnisexual desires. Then you’ve got some people who have sexual desires for children, animals, dead bodies, or whatever.

So what we’re dealing with here are tendencies, desires, feelings, urges, and behaviors, not personal identity. The major question to consider is: Can a person control their sexual desires and urges? Obviously, the answer is yes. A married man meets an attractive flirtatious woman in the supermarket who says, “Come home with me.” Whether he turns her offer down because he’s afraid he’ll get AIDS, or whether he’s motivated out of love for his wife, the fact is: he said no to that sexual urge. He controlled his mind.

Similarly, for those who experience the urge for sexual activity with someone of the same sex, it’s possible to overcome those sexual desires, no matter how powerful they may be. It is possible to redirect or rechannel that sexual energy in a different direction.

Compulsive sexual craving, regardless of one’s so-called sexual orientation, is a spiritual problem. Because we are by our very nature, active, loving spiritual beings, we crave love–we want to love someone and we want to be loved. Because this is a spiritual craving, it cannot be satisfied in the material dimension. The only person who can satisfy this craving is the Supreme Lord, our dear Father, our dear Master and Friend.

This is why Lord Jesus Christ commands us to love God with all our hear, mind and being. Actually, if you read the Koran, the Vedas, the Torah–the message is the same: place your love, first and foremost on God. He is the only source of real happiness, real fulfillment, real love.

So, to answer your question, yes a person can change. A person can walk away from homosexuality if they are repentant, sincere, and determined. For many, it’s a very difficult path. But thousands have successfully left the “gay” lifestyle.

There are some excellent “ex-gay” organizations out there such as Exodus, Courage, and Homosexuals Anonymous, made up of former homosexuals–both men and women–who are actively helping those who struggle with homosexual desires. In addition, the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), a group of dedicated psychologists and psychiatrists has a remarkable success record in helping people who experience homosexual tendencies or urges to overcome those desires.

Despite the website’s claims, homosexual behavior has a long evolutionary root in human ancestry; such behavior is not considered a mere “craving” or a mental illness (unlike a desire to have sex with children, animals, or dead bodies — which are only brought up by anti-gay organizations to inspire disgust and outrage against gay people).

Furthermore, numerous LGBTQ+ affirming churches do not consider homosexuality to be “a spiritual problem” or a sin of temptation or lust. Every major medical and mental health organization opposes conversion therapy because research shows it to be harmful and ineffective.

Also, regarding the other organizations named in the FAQ: Exodus International shut down in 2013 after its founders admitted that they were still totally gay; Homosexual Anonymous, which seems now-defunct, was co-founded by Colin Cook, who resigned after a scandal in which he allegedly had sex with 12 male clients; and, NARTH (which changed its name to the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity), faced a scandal in May 2010 when its former officer and scientific advisor, George Rekers, was caught vacationing with a 20 year-old gay escort he met at RentBoy.com.

Does Tulsi Gabbard support conversion therapy?

In 2017, Gabbard supported the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, federal legislation to prohibit anti-LGBTQ+ conversion therapy. In a March 2019 CNN Town Hall, speaking as a Democratic presidential candidate, Gabbard said that she never personally supported conversion therapy.

“I personally never supported any kind of conversion therapy, I never advocated for conversion therapy, and frankly I personally never knew what conversion therapy was until just the last few years,” she said.

“I was raised in a very socially conservative home. My father was Catholic. He was a leading voice against gay marriage in Hawaii during that time. Again, I was very young, but these were the values and beliefs that I grew up around,” she added.

She then noted that, while serving in the U.S. Army during a deployment to the Middle East, she “saw firsthand the negative impact of a government attempting to act as a moral arbiter for their people, dictating in the most personal ways, how they must live their lives.” This “contradicted with some of those values and beliefs that I grew up with,” she admitted.

“I also served with gay and lesbian and trans service members,” she continued, “and we became very good friends, and knew in the most deep and visceral way that I would give my life for any one of them, and I knew that they would do the same for me and serving there overseas, being in a place where race or religion or orientation, these were things that didn’t matter because we were focused on our mission of service. So these experiences caused me to go through some soul-searching myself.”

She then noted that, during her six years serving as a Hawaiian representative in the U.S. House, she supported the Equality Act, the repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, the Restore Honor to Servicemembers Act, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Safe Schools Improvement Act, and the Equality for All Resolution.

She also highlighted her receiving a 100% positive legislative rating from the Human Rights Campaign during that time.

In January 2014, Gabbard released a four-minute video apologizing. In it, she said, “In my past, I said and believed things that were wrong, and worse, they were very hurtful to people in the LGBTQ community and to their loved ones.”

Did Tulsi Gabbard undergo conversion therapy?

While there’s no evidence to suggest that Gabbard herself underwent conversion therapy — she has been twice married, both times to men — she reportedly grew up in a fringe off-shoot “cult” of the Hare Krishna movement known as the Science of Identity Foundation.

A 2017 New Yorker profile noted that Gabbard’s parents “joined the circle of disciples” surrounding the group’s founder, Chris Butler, when the family moved to Hawaii in the 1980s. As a child, Gabbard spent two years at “informal schools run by followers of Butler,” and Gabbard has referred to Butler as her “guru dev” or spiritual master.

While Gabbard claimed to have never heard Butler “say anything hateful, or say anything mean about anybody,” in a 2017 Medium post, former Science of Identity Foundation member Lalita characterized Butler as “an abusive, misogynistic, homophobic, germophobic, narcissistic nightmare.” Lalita wrote that, as a child, she was forced to listen to Butler’s taped lectures on topics like “how evil and out of control gay people were, how women were inferior and subhuman [sic] and should be controlled by their husbands.”

Another former member told The Independent in 2022 that new Science of Identity Foundation recruits were taught to be “highly homophobic.”

According to The New Yorker, “In the 1980s, Butler excoriated same-sex desire; he wrote, for instance, that bisexuality was ‘sense gratification’ run amok, and warned that the logical conclusion of such hedonistic conduct was pedophilia and bestiality.” However, the New Yorker article noted, “Butler seems to have deëmphasized the issue: There is no mention of homosexuality on the foundation’s website, or in his recent teachings.”

In 2020, Butler — who is also known to followers as Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa — addressed his position on homosexuality in a Q&A posted by the Science of Identity Foundation’s Medium account.

“I made the decision a long time ago not to put so much emphasis on sexual morality, and rather focus on God’s unconditional love for all of us, regardless of our sexuality, our tendencies, desires, faults, flaws, or sins,” he said.

However, he added, “Every scripture of every religion denounces sexual relations between people of the same sex. And it would be the height of arrogance for me to reject God’s loving guidance on this issue.”

Butler explained that his “combative” language around homosexuality in the past was due to his lack of “empathy for people’s personal challenges of dealing with their sexual desires,” and credited encountering students who he said “were struggling with homosexual tendencies” for his change in tack.

In 2017, Gabbard told The New Yorker that she had discussed same-sex marriage with Butler “perhaps a while ago” and that they disagreed on the issue.

In January 2025, The Daily Beast revealed an audio recording from the late 1990s of Butler spewing anti-LGBTQ+ hate in a profanity-laced lecture to his disciples, in which he called gay relationships “sinful, ugly, unhealthy, and unnatural,” and denounced the existence of “f*gg*ts” and “d*kes” and secular society’s acceptance of them.

Tulsi Gabbard may support conversion therapy for transgender people

In 2022, Gabbard announced her disaffiliation from the Democratic Party, citing issues with the party’s “wokeness” and “anti-white racism.” She then announced her newfound membership in the Republican Party. In her final months in Congress, she co-sponsored the anti-trans “Protect Women’s Sports Act” and endorsed Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits public school students from receiving instruction on LGBTQ+ issues.

In November 2022, Gabbard released a Facebook video stating that the number of kids who identify as transgender and those receiving gender-affirming care has risen over the past five years due to “the radical ‘woke’ agenda being pushed on our kids by so-called ‘healthcare professionals,’ [mainstream]/social media, and even [President Joe] Biden directly.”

“This is very intentional, and it’s the consequence … [of] rejecting the existence of objective reality, by rejecting this most fundamental truth of the differences between a biological male and female,” she said.

She also claimed there are no long-term studies on the effects of these “dangerous treatments on our kids,” but then contradicted her claim by saying that hormone therapy and puberty blockers harm cognitive development.

Evidently, Gabbard opposes gender-affirming care for trans youth, something that advocates say forces trans children to de-transition and identify with a sex and a body that do not match their gender identity. Some opponents of gender-affirming care for trans youth have advocated for forcing trans kids into mental health counseling, something that trans youth advocates say is a form of conversion therapy that would try to convince trans kids that they’re not actually cisgender.

While it’s unclear if Tulsi Gabbard supports conversion therapy for trans youth, she is part of a presidential administration that has called “gender ideology” a form of “indoctrination.” Some Republicans have pushed legislation to require health insurance companies to cover services related to de-transitioning, including “conversion therapy” to turn trans people into cisgender individuals. 

Tulsi Gabbard’s views on conversion therapy are unclear

As Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard won’t likely be making any statements about conversion therapy in the near future, unless it becomes an emergent matter of national security. But her past record shows that, despite disavowing conversion therapy, she opposes any public school curriculum that affirms the identities of LGBTQ+ students.

However, since the Republican-leaning U.S. Supreme Court is about to hear a case challenging bans on the practice (which are in place in at least 23 states), the practice could soon make a comeback and harm even more LGBTQ+ youth and adults, especially as the White House increasingly designates gender-affirming care as a form of child abuse.

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