Last month, we launched our Protecting LGBTQ+ Youth from Conversion Therapy project, an attempt to use public records to learn more about the poorly-understood practice. But there are definite challenges to understanding the impact of conversion therapy in America, and we’re going to need help to get further into our investigation.

A MuckRock project launching today, “Protecting LGBTQ+ Youth from Conversion Therapy” seeks to use public records to gain a better understanding of the conversion therapy industry, governmental involvement in the practice, and the scope of its harm on LGBTQ+ youth.

Bayard Rustin was many things: He was a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, an advocate for Soviet Jewry, and, “a convicted homosexual,” according to his Federal Bureau of Investigation file. Despite being what many would consider a textbook lefty, Rustin also moonlighted for the Central Intelligence Agency. While that might seem like an irreconcilable contradiction for a man who sat in prison for two years because he refused to serve in World War II, but contradictions aren’t there to be reconciled, they’re there to confound.