 I was a very precocious kid, so one day I ended up looking up the word homosexual in the dictionary. Something along the lines of a romantic attraction between members of the same sex, and it slowly dawned on me that that's what I was. So given your prior testimony about homosexuals, how did you feel when you realized that you were gay? Well, once I realized what a homosexual was, I was scared by that. I realized that this was bad news for me, so I hid it as far away from everyone as I could. And around this time did you talk to anyone about being gay? When I was in the seventh grade, I remember being taunted about being gay. I was called faggot, I was called a homo, a queer. It was scary going into that building. Realizing these kids were taunting me with a word that was so close to the truth. I would go home crying. Did your parents ever find out that you were gay? When I was 13 years old, my parents discovered my journal, and for the first time I had admitted to myself that I was gay, and I had actually written those words, and they found that and read it. What happened when they read that journal? They were very upset. They were yelling. I remember my mother looking at me and telling me that I was going to burn in hell. It was shocking. I had never heard anything like that from my mother. I mean you don't get much worse than eternal damnation. And what is NARTH? NARTH stands for the National Association for Repairative Therapy of Homosexuality. It's a reversal therapy organization based in Encino, California. And how long were you at NARTH? From what ages? 14 to 16. And during the time that you were at NARTH, how was your home life? My mother would tell me that she hated me. Once she told me that she wished she had had an abortion instead of a gay son. She told me that she had wished I had been born with Down syndrome, or that I had been mentally retarded. Who did you meet with at NARTH? I met with Dr. Joseph Nicolowski. Where would you meet with Mr. Nicolosi? I did actually fly out to California to do in-person sessions. I recall Nicolowski saying that, you know, homosexuality is incompatible with what God wants for you, and your parents want you to change, and that this was a bad thing. And were you given any advice on how you would be able to suppress your homosexuality in these therapy sessions? I remember it was a general admonishment, but not a specific technique, no. No further questions, Your Honor. Mr. Cooper, you may cross-examine. Mr. Kendall, have you ever lived in the state of California? No, I have not. Have you ever read a scientific study addressing the concept of sexual orientation? Isn't that true? That is true. And is it also true that you have never studied whether a person's sexual orientation can change throughout the course of his or her lifetime? No, I haven't studied it. And nothing involved in this conversion therapy was your decision. It was all your parents' decision, isn't that true? Yes. And at some point, you communicated to your parents your objections to the counseling treatment, but your parents compelled you to go against your will. That is correct. Your only goal for conversion therapy was to survive the experience. Isn't that true? Absolutely true. You didn't have the goal of changing your sexual orientation. I'm sorry, correction. You didn't have the goal of changing your sexual attraction. Is that correct? That's correct. Indeed, you admit that you did not truly want to reduce your sexual attraction to persons of the same sex. Isn't that true? That's correct. It's my experience that people don't want to go to programs like NARTH. Well, you acknowledged in your deposition that some people report to have effective results with this conversion therapy. Isn't that true? Yes. I have no further questions. And was this therapy successful in that you were able to suppress your homosexuality? Nope. I was just as gay as when I started. While you were in conversion therapy, were you introduced to any people who purported or were purported to you to have successfully undergone conversion therapy? I remember during one of the group therapy sessions, Nikolowski trotted out his perfect patient, the guy who had been cured of his homosexuality, and his name was Kelly. And did meeting Kelly have any impact on your views of conversion therapy? I remember once when Nikolowski stepped out of the room, we were talking amongst ourselves, and Kelly told me that later that night he was going to a gay bar and that he was just pretending to be cured for the sake of his family. And why did you stop going to reversal therapy? During this whole thing, my life had kind of fallen apart. I didn't have the world that I grew up in. My faith, which was very important to me, my family, which was even more important to me, everything had just kind of stopped and I just couldn't take anymore. And I realized at one point that if I didn't stop going, I wasn't going to survive. What did you mean by that? I would have probably killed myself.