Surviving the "Cure" of Conversion Therapy (with Lucas Wilson)

Apple Podcasts  |  Spotify  |  Other Apps

 

Introduction – 0:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Welcome to Relationscapes, the podcast where we explore the complicated landscapes of relationships, gender, sexuality, race, and more. I'm journalist Blair Hodges in Salt Lake City, and our guide in this episode about conversion therapy is Lucas Wilson.

LUCAS WILSON: Once folks started really catching on to how dangerous these practices are, but also how ineffective they are, when a number of the leaders of this movement were found out to be, you know, behind closed doors or at gay bars, whatever, doing things that they, quote, unquote, “shouldn't have been doing,” they lost a lot of credibility.

BLAIR HODGES: Being gay is a sinful disease. At least that's what Lucas Wilson and millions of others were taught. Growing up in conservative Christianity, the church didn't just diagnose them. It also promised a cure. They said healing and salvation were possible through something called conversion therapy. But as Lucas and other survivors reveal in his book Shame-Sex Attraction, that cure wasn't therapy at all.

It actually caused deep psychological and spiritual harm. Behind the false promises and extreme tactics of the ex-gay movement were leaders whose own hypocrisy was exposed for the world to see. The ex-gays were still gay. Every major medical association has condemned conversion therapy as dangerous fraud. Twenty-five states have banned its practice, including here in conservative Utah.

And yet, as I record this, in 2025, conversion therapy is staging a comeback. The Supreme Court's conservative majority is likely to overturn those bans, threatening to breathe new life into a practice that Lucas says was never about healing. It was about control.

Lucas Wilson joins us right now to talk about the witness accounts he documents in his book Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy.

 

Luke's Personal and Academic Experiences with Conversion Therapy – 02:15

 

BLAIR HODGES: Lucas Wilson, welcome to Relationscapes.

LUCAS WILSON: Hello! Thank you so much for having me.

BLAIR HODGES: We're talking about conversion therapy, and you're not just someone who studied conversion therapy academically. You've actually gone through a type of conversion therapy yourself. And I wondered how it feels for you to talk about that more personally, because you can approach it like a scholar, but this is very personal to you. So what does it feel like to be talking about the book?

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah, you know, I don't really struggle with talking about my experience. I think for a lot of folks who underwent conversion therapy, that they were, in a definitional sense, traumatized by their experience. And I don't know if I can say that I was traumatized. Not to say that it wasn't difficult, not to say that it wasn't damaging, because both of those descriptors would be accurate, but traumatizing in a clinical sense is not necessarily—doesn't necessarily map onto my experience.

So for me, although it's something that is, you know, tough, it was tough to go through, I would say that now it's something that I have both enough distance and I've done, I would like to think, enough emotional and intellectual work on the topic to, you know, come to terms with what happened to me in a very literal sense. Right? Like, to come to terms, to find terms or to find language to describe what happened, I think is the first step.

And for me, I did have the privilege of going through graduate school and writing and thinking about this topic, you know, extensively. So it really did give me the time and it gave me the space to think through and to feel through a lot of what happened.

But for me, now I know my experience. I talk about it all the time. It's something that I've talked about in an academic sense, but also, again, in a personal sense on different podcasts and YouTube channels and radio stations, that kind of stuff. And so at this point, it's something that is just part of my story.

And it is exactly that part of my story, not my whole story. And it's not who I am. It's just, you know, part of what happened to me and part of my, my history. And so I wouldn't say that it's all that difficult at this point, especially just the fact that I talk about it so often.

But again, this is not to take away from the fact that this is a damaging, death-dealing practice that hurts a lot of people. And for a lot of folks it is a traumatic experience. I just can't say that for myself. And I'm quite glad that I can't say that for myself for obvious reasons. Right? Like, you don't want that to be something that defines your experience being trauma.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, I wonder if it gave you any sort of survivor's guilt about it at all, in the sense of, like, now you've learned about other people who have had it worse. Did you ever have to reckon with those kinds of feelings?

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah, I don't know if I've had that. I mean, I think that both researching the topic and specifically writing this book—or editing this book, I should say more accurately. And the book is a collection of 17 stories written by conversion therapy survivors, one of whom is me. And then I wrote the introduction, which is, you know, an academic approach, albeit in a very accessible format, a discussion of the histories and the practices of conversion therapy.

And so for me, doing that research, realizing the breadth of experiences, realizing that my experience is not the only one, and seeing, oh gosh, this happens here, here and here, whether it be a religious context or a secular context, whether that be in a group setting or an individual setting with a pastoral counselor or, you know, a licensed therapist, whatever it might be.

And also even in a familial context. Right, right. So I think all of these different experiences showed me that—or, you know, researching the topic and seeing this in the literature allowed me to realize that my experience wasn't the only one. And seeing that, you know, some folks had it really, really bad. Right?

Like, there are a number of folks that I know—they're not included in this collection—but a number of folks I know who underwent electroshock therapy. Thank God that wasn't my experience. There wasn't that physical, in a painful sense, experience. For me, there were physical aspects—we can talk about that later—but it wasn't like that for me. So hearing that and reading about that is certainly—I don't know if I would say I have survivor's guilt. I would just say that I feel awful for the people who experience that.

 

Conversion Therapy Defined – 06:05

 

BLAIR HODGES: Before we dive in, then, to your direct experience, let's define conversion therapy in general. How do you define it? What are the parameters of it for your book and for your study?

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah. So there are different names for conversion therapy. Really at this point, one of the main sort of terms that's used instead of just conversion therapy, talking about it in a greater sense or a broader sense, is conversion practices.

Conversion practices are definitionally the attempt to change an individual's sexual orientation or someone's gender identity or gender expression.

And so if anything, if someone is, again, it's not just what happens in a church basement or just what happens behind closed doors in a pastor's office. And this happens in a multiplicity of contexts. Right? And so it's efforts to see that someone's gender or sexuality be changed because they believe that someone's gender or sexuality is dirty, is damaged, is, you know, sinful.

And again, we can use a number of descriptors, but that there's a negative, a state of unnatural sort of orientation or identity or expression. Exactly. And so I think that really it's seeing someone's non-normative sexuality or gender as wrong and trying to change that, to “fix” that, quote unquote, to align it with the heteronormative model.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And that can include things like talk therapy, support groups, prayer practices, forced celibacy, aversion therapy—which is introducing, like, electroshock, where if you get excited or if you get turned on, then they'll shock you, or they use terrible smells. Also exorcism and other religious practices.

And as you said, tactics can span the secular to the religious. It's not necessarily confined to one or the other category. It sort of transcends those categories.

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah. I won't name the university, but I was recently asked to do a teach-in at a university in North America. And the reason I was asked was because there were students in this program, a counseling program, and it's a really prominent university, which is all the more troubling that they have identified a number of the classes that have been teaching conversion practices, albeit masked as medical care.

And, of course, conversion therapy is not medical care. Conversion therapy is not care. It is damaging pseudoscience that has been debunked for a very long time and harms the folks that it is, quote unquote, trying to “fix.” And so I think that, again, we oftentimes think of conversion practices as something of the past, that it's no longer happening, which is a myth.

It is continuing to happen and happens at an alarming rate within ecclesial or church contexts. But on top of that, it's not just the religious conservatives who are doing this, though, of course, I will say that disproportionately, it is happening within religious spaces. But it is also happening in a number of other contexts, particularly medical or counseling contexts.

It's just that either the folks who are practicing it don't know what they're practicing, in the sense of, “Oh, this falls under the umbrella of conversion practices,” or they do, and that's even more terrifying.

 

Conversion Therapy Keeps Adapting to Survive – 09:10

 

BLAIR HODGES: I mean, the irony to me is, as you talk about, LGBTQ+ communities have gained a lot of social acceptance and civil rights over the past several decades, and the progress has been uneven. We have a long way to go. But there's been an increase in acceptance of queer people that's not guaranteed to continue.

And it seems like the efforts of conversion therapies and practices can intensify the more being gay is accepted, because then the pressure's on even more, like, “Oh, we need to stem this tide.” So instead of conversion therapy just disappearing, it can almost intensify or become even more urgent the more gay people are accepted in society.

LUCAS WILSON: I think that's absolutely true. And a big part of it is that in the past, like the ex-gay movement—which really was at its peak in, you know, the 90s into the 2000s as well—they were trying to go mainstream. They were trying to make it so it wasn't just religious crackpots practicing conversion therapy.

And also those who were undergoing conversion therapy, they tried to make it something that they were advertising in major newspapers, on billboards, all this kind of stuff. They were trying to make it visible. However, once folks started really catching on to how dangerous these practices are, but also how ineffective they are, when a number of the leaders of this movement were found out to be behind closed doors, at gay bars, whatever, doing things that they, quote, unquote, shouldn't have been doing, they lost a lot of credibility, right?

And Wayne Besen is really the person who was exposing a lot of these folks. Truth Wins Out is his organization and does fabulous work. And so once we got into the 2000s, and again, social, cultural, and societal understandings of queer communities were changing—like in Canada, 2005, gay marriage is legalized; in the US, 2015, gay marriage is legalized—you see cultural acceptance of queer communities codified in law. And of course, that changes public opinion, etc.

But the thing was, once homophobia and transphobia were no longer socially normalized the way they were before, we started seeing conversion practices go into the dark.

They started using a lot of primistic language, dog whistles. For those of us who have our ear to the ground—pastoral counseling, biblical counseling, biblical worldview counseling, or whatever dog whistles they wanted to use. 

They were doing this behind closed doors. And so, yes, I think 100%, these communities—the ex-gay movement—really went underground in a way, or at least just not in the public spotlight or the public purview. Instead, it was going into these mega churches where ex-gays were sharing their testimonies.

The CHANGED movement out of Reading, California—Bethel, the church—there's a big church and campus, or college, whatever you want to call it, if we can even call that a college. But, you know, this whole sort of culture out there, they started the CHANGED movement, where again, it's just not saying, “Oh, we're no longer the ex-gay movement, we're the CHANGED movement.” Which, if you first look at the CHANGED movie, you don't know what that is. If you see the ex-gay movie, you're like, “Oh, I think we know what that means.” Right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, like it's a "good" rebrand.

LUCAS WILSON: Exactly. And so it's just gone underground. I think that makes it all the more terrifying because it's, you know, a crime. Like, for instance, in Canada, conversion therapy is illegal. And so up until the nationwide ban, conversion therapists wrote their advertising, their, you know, their services—if we can call those services—and not all of them, but again, some of them had already started changing their language.

But once the conversion therapy ban was put in place, these organizations were forced to go underground. And, like all crime, crime just goes underground. When you know you can't do something, you just do it behind closed doors, in the shadows. And that's what's happened with conversion practices in a lot of these places.

Especially since either it's illegal, or it's just not socially or societally acceptable to do these things, they just change the language but continue to do what they do, albeit in a more obfuscated or masked fashion.

 

Conversion Therapy in the Courts – 13:14

 

BLAIR HODGES: Has anyone been making a harm reduction argument against making conversion therapy illegal? The idea that, “Hey, this needs to be legal so it can be regulated,” and if we make it illegal, then it just goes underground. Is anybody making that legal argument to try to protect conversion therapy legalization?

LUCAS WILSON: Not that I know of. I mean, there have been different approaches to banning conversion therapy, whether it be in a nationwide ban, a provincial or state ban, or a municipal ban. And so, if we're thinking about the JONAH case out in, I believe, New Jersey—

BLAIR HODGES: This is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group, JONAH.

LUCAS WILSON: And this group, the approach that the folks who were going against JONAH—the Ferguson v. JONAH case—Michael Ferguson and the other class action lawsuit plaintiffs—they were using the approach of consumer fraud. That they’re promising a service that doesn't work. And so if you're saying that this works and it doesn't work, and we know it doesn't work, then you shouldn't be doing this.

And they won. So that was one approach, right? There are other approaches where this is just, again, definitional abuse according to the UN Report on torture. This is torture. Right? So if we're talking about abuse, we're talking about torture. If we're talking about damaging practices, every single legitimate medical and professional society or organization has condemned these practices.

And so when all of the medical community, all of the psychological community—and again, pick your community—when they've all condemned it, I think that's reason enough to say no, or to ban these practices. So the evidence that these organizations have produced has been used to say, “This is harming people, this shouldn't happen.”

That's really been the approach for a lot of different bans, whether nationwide, municipal, state, or provincial.

BLAIR HODGES: And we might as well mention right now, as we're talking about this, the Supreme Court just announced in the United States that it would take up a case from Colorado that is challenging the state law there that prohibits conversion therapy. They're going to take this case up to decide whether states can restrict conversion therapy.

So it's on the radar right now. What are you thinking about the possible outcomes? I know you're in Toronto, so—and people might have picked up how you say “a-boat” and things like this [laughter]. So you're up there in Canada. As you're looking down at the United States here, who apparently you might be joining us soon, right? It's the 51st state, so.

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah, yeah!

BLAIR HODGES: But what are you thinking of the American landscape as you know they're taking up this case?

LUCAS WILSON: Well, first of all, I can never hide from my accent. I remember when I moved to the US for schooling. I tried to hide my accent. I was like, “You know what, I'm just gonna, like, hide my accent, neutralize it, make it so they can't hear me.” And then I think it really backfired because when I came home, she lets sit me and she goes, “What the hell? Why are you talking like that?” I said, “Like what?” She says, “Your accent's so strong.” And I was like, “Shut up.” It obviously didn't work anyway.

BLAIR HODGES: No, you fixed it. You converted it.

LUCAS WILSON: I did. Gave it a good-old college try. So I was not very effective at changing my sexuality or gender, but I was apparently able to change my accent and just thicken it. I don't know.

So thinking about the Supreme Court, I'm terrified about that.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, me too.

LUCAS WILSON: What's going to happen? Because I don't think it's going to turn out well. I mean, even when—I believe it was 2019—there was a case that was proposed to go before the Supreme Court, and it was struck down. They said no, but three of the justices at the time said that they would have taken up the case.

And of course, what they're saying is that they would make conversion therapy legal without saying it. So this time around, I mean, again, there have been some surprises recently with the Supreme Court, but the surprises have not been the majority. And so there's always the possibility, right, that this could turn out favorably. But I just don't see that happening.

I see this as a backdoor way of legalizing conversion therapy nationwide. And I think that it's something that even with the Alliance Defending Freedom—the ADF, who's bringing forth the case, Tristan Wagner—they're saying that the state shouldn't impose their views on free speech and limit free speech based on their political or ideological views.

And of course, that's exactly what they're doing. That's exactly what these conversion therapists are doing. They're trying to mask their work—which, again, is definitional conversion therapy or conversion practices—as medical care. And conversion practices have never been medical care and never will be medical care. All the science supports that.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And it conflates medical care with speech, too. They're trying to make it a free speech argument, but these are practices. There are gray areas there, I get that. But it can't be simplistically framed as, “You're restricting our freedom of speech.” They're free to say that being gay is wrong or that you should want to change it. What they're not free to say is, “We have this path that will work for you,” when it doesn't work and when it's very, very harmful for most people who go through it.

LUCAS WILSON: Right. And that's the thing. It's not free speech. It's conduct. And it's professional conduct. And although you might be a medical doctor, you might be a counselor, you might have beliefs about whatever, those beliefs cannot interfere with your practice. Exactly that. It's practice. It's conduct.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. If I'm a medical doctor and I believe that jumping in a pool of suntan lotion will cure your cancer, and I start introducing that and billing and selling that to the public, it would be right for the state to come in and say, “This person's a crackpot. This doesn't work.”

You can't use your medical license to advance this therapy. That doesn't work. You can't do that.

LUCAS WILSON: So, yeah, it's just crazy, right? And they're trying to legislate abuse as medical care. And again, no one should ever have to go through therapy after going through therapy. Quote, unquote, “therapy.” Conversion therapy is not therapy.

BLAIR HODGES: Double therapy, I'm saying.

LUCAS WILSON: And so I think that, again, people say, “Shouldn't people be able to consent to what they're calling free speech?” More accurately, medical practice or medical conduct—you shouldn't be able to consent ever to abuse. Right? That doesn't make sense.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

LUCAS WILSON: And so, but again, I just have no hope for what's going to happen with the Supreme Court. I hope that, you know, well…

BLAIR HODGES: On the same page there.

LUCAS WILSON: It's terrifying. And I think we know the conclusion of what's going to happen. We have our fingers crossed.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, it's frustrating too, because here in Utah, we—Utah outlawed conversion therapy in a surprising move. It's a very conservative state. Salt Lake City, where I live, is quite liberal. It's a blue dot in a red state. But it took a real coalition of conservatives to make this happen, because here in Utah, conversion therapy had borne such poisonous fruit.

And so it's sad to me that a conservative state like Utah could have made such positive progress only to see the federal government step in and take that progress away. On a local level, it hurts. And then also to think about how that could spill over into other countries. I think of, like, how the UK has the Cass Report about transgender people. Right? It's a very problematic report. It makes inaccurate claims about trans care, especially for young people.

And then we have people in the United States, conservatives, pointing to that and saying, “Oh, look at that. See? Even they're doing it.” So I'm afraid of the United States being an example to other countries. I don't know how firm it is in Canada, but I would worry about conservative or reactionary folks in Canada saying, “Well, the United States just made it legal. What are we doing? We need to follow suit.”

So I'm also afraid of the ripple effect.

LUCAS WILSON: I mean, and that's the thing, right? These practices are not specific to the US, though. The ex-gay movement really did balloon in the US, and it did—yes, Australia had conversion practices, conversion therapy groups before, and they have a strong contingent there who promote and practice conversion therapy.

The US really is sort of the birthplace of these practices when it comes to a very religious approach. However, these practices have been exported. Right? Why would Canada have to have a nationwide ban if it weren't for the fact that this was happening in Canada? And then you go to other countries.

If you go specifically, like you said, different Western countries. But again, this is something happening across the nation. This is a global movement, and there are global connections that are really terrifying because this movement has a lot of money. We see the effects in other countries—Uganda, UK, Brazil, et cetera.

BLAIR HODGES: Right. That's Lucas Wilson. He's an interdisciplinary scholar of history, religion, and literature, and we're talking about his book Shame-Sex: Survivor's Stories of Conversion Therapy.

 

Liberty for Luke – 21:52

 

Let's talk about your experience, Luke. You were at Liberty University. This is a conservative Christian university in the United States. And you found that, you know, you might have wondered when you got there if you were the only gay guy on campus, but you found that wasn't true.

Tell me about your experience at Liberty and what you went through.

LUCAS WILSON: You know what? I always had this big plan. My big plan was that I was gonna go to Liberty. And once I got there, I just kind of assumed there were other gays because I was gay. And so I thought, you know, when—

BLAIR HODGES: I get it. So you figured—

LUCAS WILSON: Okay, well, this is it. I had this—I was always sort of one foot in, one foot out. Though I would always… I always say now I was more one foot in this tomfoolery of Liberty and evangelicalism. But I did have one foot out because I didn't come from a Christian home.

I came from an agnostic home. My dad was agnostic. My mom was sort of haunted by her Baptist demons. But at the end of the day, it wasn't really a religious home. We didn't talk about God. We went to church when I was really young, and then whenever we did go, you'd come home and shut the hell up about Jesus. You didn't talk about Jesus. That was sort of it.

So I didn't really have a religious background. I think I always had a little bit of critical distance and critical awareness outside of the church, which I'm very thankful for.

But when I was planning to go to Liberty, I did know that they had a conversion therapy program. And I did want to go to Liberty because of that program. But I said to myself, when I get there, I'm going to go have fun with Christian guys. Because I didn't want to be a bad witness in high school to non-Christian gay guys.

I didn't want them to think, “Oh, aren't you a Christian? And yet you're going on a date with me?” I didn't want that sort of bad PR for Jesus. So I thought to myself, when I get to Liberty, I'm going to date Christian boys. And then maybe my junior or senior year comes around, I'll go to conversion therapy.

And I didn't call it conversion therapy. I just called it pastoral counseling. And I would go fix it, find a wife—any wife would do—and then go back to Canada, and the rest would be history.

That plan certainly didn't work out. I got to Liberty, and about two weeks into my time there, on every dorm, there were two resident advisors. Under them, two spiritual life directors. Under them, a bunch of prayer leaders. And then under them, the rest of us, plebeians who weren't spiritual enough to be on leadership.

I had one of my spiritual life directors, he made a move, and I, of course, said yes.

And then afterwards, he wouldn't talk to me. He sort of excommunicated me. I became so sad. I've never really been a sad boy, but I was a sad boy then because he wouldn't talk to me. It was your first, like, romantic—if we can call it romantic—experience.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

LUCAS WILSON: And then all of a sudden, he doesn't talk to me. So I was distraught. I was so sad because I didn't have anyone I could talk to. I was on a campus where if anyone found out what I did, I could either be fined or expelled. I was terrified they were going to tell my mom because, knowing Liberty, I would only expect that they would.

So I was sad. I fast-tracked my plan and decided I was going to meet with this pastor on campus I knew about, who worked with two groups of students: those who were quote-unquote addicted to porn—you can't be addicted to porn—and those who were addicted to homosexuality. You can't be addicted to homosexuality. Neither of these things. There's no science to back it up.

Anyway, this is something I'm working on for an article, but that's beside the point. All this to say, I knew about this guy—Pastor Dane Emmerich. He was a paid university employee tasked with working with these two groups of students.

I think it was largely because he wanted to work with them. Looking back, I can understand why: he was a quote-unquote ex-gay, married with children and grandchildren. I think this was his outlet to sort of live vicariously through the queers on campus.

So I went to this pastor, and for four years, I went through his one-on-one conversion therapy program. I only went once to his group program. And that's what I write about, that group experience, in the book Shame-Sex Attraction.

BLAIR HODGES: And you say it wasn't the coolest group of people. [laughs] It seemed like you got there and were like, oh, I don't know how I fit in here.

LUCAS WILSON: Well, that was it. We can fast forward to the group because the group was after a few years of being in the one-on-one program.

The group program—yeah, you always wondered, like, who's in that group? Hopefully it's a bunch of handsome guys. And when I got to the group, it was mostly the guys you kind of expected to be there, who you didn't find cute.

On top of that, it was just a sad group. You walked in, and you were like, oh my God, look at this. Nonetheless, there was one guy that I met, and that's part of the story.

Putting the group aside, the one-on-one program really does map onto a lot of folks’ expectations for what conversion therapy is. It aligns with what a lot of people assume is conversion therapy. For me, that was meeting with this pastor on a really regular basis for over the span of four years.

We talked. It was talk therapy. In the beginning, it was this pseudo-Freudian approach to human sexuality: what was your relationship like with your mom, your dad, your siblings, your friends—whoever?

BLAIR HODGES: Wouldn't it be like, if your mom was too close to you, that made you gay? Or if your dad was too distant, that made you gay? They would find these family dynamics that caused it.

LUCAS WILSON: That was it. It was like an all-you-can-eat buffet: take what works and leave what doesn't. For me, my mom was overbearing, wild and crazy—Cheryl, Cheryl's a wild human. My dad was arguably more involved in my life than my mom. He was phenomenal, and I was very close to him.

BLAIR HODGES: And so see, that should have offset it. Made you not gay. [laughter]

LUCAS WILSON: That's it. I should have been at least bisexual. But that didn’t work.

So yeah, we started with that, and then we would talk about those relationships and sort of hash them out. It always came back to that: your relationship with your mom, something with your dad. That kind of stuff.

That conversation then framed the rest of our meetings. Every time we met, we would read parts of scripture. I had a manual—Alan Mettinger's Growth into Manhood, Resuming the Journey. That was my conversion therapy manual. I still had a copy, but I lost it in a move. I'm still very ticked off about that.

That book framed our conversations. He would pray for me every time—I never prayed for myself, which I think is indicative of conversion practices: he was interceding on my behalf, not me speaking for myself.

We always talked about my slip-ups and my victories—times I gave in to temptation and times I overcame temptation.

 

Invasive Questioning – 28:37

 

BLAIR HODGES: Would they get specific about this? Like talking to you about lustful thoughts, masturbation, pornography? Was there shame attached to that? Some people experience that as personal growth, some find it deeply damaging. How was it for you talking about those really personal things?

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah. To answer the first question, it was incredibly detailed. He asked very invasive, very personal questions: what kind of porn do you like, when do you masturbate, why do you masturbate?

BLAIR HODGES: Very sus.

LUCAS WILSON: Oh my gosh. Looking back, at the time I was so evangelical, and evangelicals have no understanding of personal boundaries. We share everything, confess everything. It’s a culture of breaking down walls.

That’s incredibly dangerous for mental, emotional, and in many cases, physical well-being. I was part of a culture that privileged sharing everything. There were no limits to what I shared. Looking back, it’s bizarre and creepy.

To answer the second part—was there shame involved? At the time, no. Pastor Dane has explicitly said that his goal, and I believe he was well-intentioned, was actually to get rid of the shame for us.

Within evangelicalism, homosexuality is framed as the worst sin—the epitome of depravity. He was trying to work against years of us being taught, explicitly or implicitly, that same-sex attraction was bad.

And again, he did believe it was wrong.

 

Guilt and Shame – 30:53

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, like God's going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. It's the worst, grossest thing. Which is interesting, because he knew you'd internalize that, and one of his steps was to get rid of the shame. Being gay was still wrong, but he wanted to take the edge off, almost like giving ibuprofen.

LUCAS WILSON: That was it. And so I think that he was trying to, yeah, exactly, defang how we understood ourselves. And so there was a reframing. So it wasn't that he wanted us to feel ashamed of ourselves, even though the rest of Christianity absolutely scripts you into being ashamed of everything and every part of your being that is in alignment.

But with him, he was trying to take away the shame, but he was trying to instead replace it with guilt. And if we can differentiate guilt and shame by way of saying, okay, guilt is like if you're in the court of law and you've stolen something: you're not a bad person. You just did one bad thing, and we're going to slap you on the wrist, give you a $5 fine, and then you're going to go on your way. You're not going to think of yourself as bad or a thief. You just stole something once, but that doesn't define you.

Now, shame is where it's not just that I've done something bad, it's that I am bad. It's where the action is internalized, or, sorry, the negative emotion attached to the bad action is internalized and understood in the context of—you yourself are bad, you yourself are dirty, you yourself are, you know, deranged or whatever.

And so he was trying to get rid of that understanding of ourselves and say instead, well, whenever you have a slip-up, whenever you have a moment where you give into temptation, that's not defining you, that's just defining that moment. And I think in part this was a way of him because they always said that we weren't gay, we weren't, we didn't have a homosexual orientation.

BLAIR HODGES: Like it's not your identity.

LUCAS WILSON: Exactly. And it was a way of separating the individual from the action. So saying, "you're not gay, you are just struggling with same-sex attraction." I think it all worked together where, yes, he was trying his best to separate the shame because there obviously are a lot of negative consequences for that. But on top of that, he was really trying to reorient how we understood ourselves.

What I always say, though, is that although he was trying to get rid of the shame and instead replace it with guilt—which, again, I love that that was his job, right? Like, to guilt us—but to replace that, he obviously wasn't effective. Because what happened for me was that, yes, when I was at Liberty, every time I'd go and talk with them, it almost felt like, in some ways, Catholic confession, where you go and you say, oh, I've done this, you know, and you ask the Catholic priest to forgive you. I never asked Dane to forgive me because within Protestantism, I talked to God directly.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

LUCAS WILSON: And so every time I did feel some sort of absolution, I felt a little bit like, well, you know what? That was just me struggling in the moment. I feel better. However, when I graduated and I no longer had Dane, and I was out in the world, I started to realize, oh ****, things aren't changing. Well, I wouldn't have said that exactly because, you know, you're not supposed to swear, but—[laughter]

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, you're not supposed to?

LUCAS WILSON: No, that's not okay. So I would say, oh, gosh, you know, I'm not changing. And I wasn't changing, obviously, because, like—

BLAIR HODGES: Gee willikers!

LUCAS WILSON: Gee Whiz! And so it was like I no longer had that sort of outlet to get rid of those negative feelings, that guilt.

So I started to realize, okay, it's not just that I struggle with same-sex attraction in the sense of dealing with it on an individual, discrete basis. I started realizing, well, I'm gay. I'm not what I thought I was.

And I always thought—within evangelicalism, you always think, well, God is perfect and God wants me to change according to so much of evangelical theology and also so much of what they had taught me. So if I'm not changing and God is perfect, the problem's not God. The problem's obviously me. And again, when you see yourself as a problem—that's a problem. And that's when the shame really kicked in, where all of a sudden I was realizing, well, God's perfect, I'm not. God's unchanging, I'm also not changing in this sense. So therefore, I'm the problem, I'm the issue.

And so that guilt turned into shame, and that shame turned into self-hatred. That self-hatred turned into a very negative relationship I had with myself for quite some time. Again, I would like to think at this point things have changed for me, and perhaps there are some residual negative emotions attached. However, I would say that I think I'm decently adjusted. Maybe I'm just deceiving myself. That's for a therapist to figure out. But all this to say is that, for me, the shame wasn't in the moment. The shame was the enduring fruit of my time in conversion therapy. And that's the case for a number of people, but not for everyone. Like you said, a lot of people do feel shamed in the moment, and it's something that lasts for a very long time.

 

Luke's Faith Deconstruction and Self-Acceptance – 35:19

 

BLAIR HODGES: What was the major tipping point for you that finally let you say, I don't believe being gay is wrong?

LUCAS WILSON: So for me, I always say that grad school saved my life. I went and did my master's in English afterwards. And I remember that was really just a transitionary period because I went and did my master's in theological studies after that. And when I was in my first master's program, I was reading texts and voices and authors and talking to people who I'd never really talked to in an academic sense. Like, obviously, I talked to friends and family who weren't Christians, but never in an academic setting. And so doing that for the first time, I was having conversations that were so different from the conversations I had had before.

And so I started hearing other people's opinions that were very different from mine. I started to question some of my own deeply held personal beliefs and being exposed to voices that were very different. I mean, even just reading Jewish authors who have no problem protesting God.

And it's funny that Protestants are Protestants because they're supposed to protest, but they're really processing the Catholic Church, not God. And so I was reading these authors who were fighting with God, and I'm like, who are you? Who do you think you are, author?

BLAIR HODGES: The Book of Job, basically.

LUCAS WILSON: Exactly. Taking the biblical model, right? And so I started reading these different voices, and I was blown away. And then, again, there were the folks I was reading—different authors who were approaching gendered sexuality. I'd never read these texts. I'd never come in contact with these arguments.

And that, for me, was really, really helpful. I think, ultimately, one of the breaking points—not the breaking, but one of the breaking points—was when I was sitting in a Hebrew Bible class, listening to a professor speak, and all of a sudden I realized I don't believe that the Bible is God's word. I think these are words about God. <p>For those outside of the evangelical world, that probably sounds like the smallest difference. But for those within, it is a terrifying difference.

BLAIR HODGES: It's everything. You would have thought that the Bible's perfect, it's God's will, it's inerrant. And now you're seeing it as a human product. That's a huge shift as a religious believer, for sure.

LUCAS WILSON: And it changes so much. And it frees you up in a lot of ways, right? It frees you from the necessity to take everything in there as gospel truth in a literal sense, like good news truth. So I think that, for me, was this wild moment that really allowed me to change how I lived my life.

But even before that—and I did this before I even had that realization—was that I decided that when I moved to Nashville, from Ontario, for theological studies, I said to myself, when I get there, I'm not going to put my theology first. Instead, I'm just going to live and then theologize later.

So, obviously, theology, at the end of the day, really is just theory, right? It's just theory about God and looking at God—or the world around us—through this sort of God lens. I was like, I'm gonna live my life and then think about God after, and see how that works out and where that takes me.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

LUCAS WILSON: And again, that's also a terrifying move. I still don't fully know how I came up with that idea, because, to be honest, it was not ever within my vocabulary to do that or to think that—but I did. And it changed how I lived my life, obviously, and it changed, in turn, what I believed about God.

As I was going through this rigorous academic program, while at the same time saying, I'm just going to live my life and see where that takes me, it really came together in a way that allowed me freedom from this really constricted and constricting religious community that, ultimately, was my exit out.

And thank God it was, because at the end of the day, if I didn't go to grad school, I think I would probably be married to a woman with children and living an unbelievably unhappy life that would eventually blow up, and I just wouldn't be able to take the pressure anymore. And I know folks from Liberty University, or those in therapy, who have left that world because they entered that world. And I think I would have been on a very similar path. I'm just very thankful that that's not where I am.

BLAIR HODGES: Do you consider yourself still a religious believer? Do you still have a practice?

LUCAS WILSON: No. I did, up until I was really about 27, when I was still clinging to some sort of religious identity. And I think it's just because I didn't want to give it up fully, though. I didn't believe in half the stuff I used to believe. And for me, I gave up my faith—because I couldn't intellectually hold on to it anymore. I realized so many of the inconsistencies within scripture. I realized the historical inaccuracies within scripture.

And then, on top of that, even just on a moral or ethical level, I couldn't understand how there could be a good God who would allow all of the—as we say in the academy—that happens in the world. It just wasn't intellectually, emotionally, morally, or ethically honest. And so I had to give it up.

People, oftentimes, will go from one religious tradition to another or one orthodoxy to another. I'd like to think I didn't. Maybe some might say the academy, for me, is my new sort of spiritual home. But I don't consider it spiritual. I consider it very much intellectual. And ethical. But, yeah, I don't identify as a spiritual person and I don't miss it.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Luke Wilson. We're talking about the book Shame: Sex Attraction: Survivors' Stories of Conversion Therapy. And Luke is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. And I'm going to mispronounce this—Mississauga, I think. Is that right?

LUCAS WILSON: You did it perfectly. [laughter] 

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, I did it. Okay. University of Toronto, Mississauga. Okay.

 

When Religion Borrows From Fringe Science – 40:52

 

BLAIR HODGES: Well, we've talked a lot about religion, but what people might not know is that conversion therapy grew out of scientific ideas. It wasn't just religion that came up with these ideas. And during the 19th century, as you talk about in the book, people came to see "homosexuality"—the term they used at the time—as an abnormal human desire.

They knew it existed: some men were attracted to other men, some women were attracted to other women. They weren't necessarily thinking in terms of trans or other gender identities, just sexual attraction. And so they thought, if this is some sort of medical or natural abnormality, then there must be some kind of cure for it.

And so they came up with different surgeries. They came up with things like, "We're going to inject bull semen into your testicles," or other medical procedures. They weren't necessarily religious. Some of these doctors were religious themselves, but they were thinking of it in terms of science.

And then there was a psychological turn. We need to use psychoanalysis. We need to use psychotherapy to do this. And it wasn't until the '70s that religion really hopped on board. You mentioned Exodus as one of the main groups that did this, but at that time they started to want to adopt those scientific methods just as they were falling out of favor with the science.

Take us to that moment and what you see, the intersection there between science and religion.

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah. I the 1970s, the first ex-gay group within an ecclesial or religious context was in Australia. But in the U.S., specifically, this was happening in Southern California. There were a few different organizations that started cropping up in the early to mid-70s. By 1976, that's when Exodus forms.

And so what we find is that when these different organizations were coming up, they were using, in the beginning, a spiritual approach to changing one's sexual orientation. They were really reliant—fully relying on God. Those bracelets all the Christian kids would wear. FROG.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, see, I'm Mormon, so we missed out on all the evangelical stuff. We had our own thing, like the "Choose the Right" CTR ring.

LUCAS WILSON: Oh gosh, that sounds like fun.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

LUCAS WILSON: So they were fully relying on God, frogging. But the problem was that they were a smaller community, and they weren't really outside of the religious community. And again, these are conservative religious communities.

BLAIR HODGES: Not plugged into science.

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah, not yet.

BLAIR HODGES: Right. Probably skeptical of it.

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah, they were still waiting to plug into science, and we think that might change them eventually. But here we are. The '70s—they form Exodus. It's this network of different ex-gay groups across not just Southern California, but other places as well.

And again, the movement starts building momentum. We get into the 80s, and that's when they really start trying to use science. And again, I use "science" very loosely to back up their beliefs. What they were looking for was credibility. They wanted some sort of scientific backing to say, "Hey, look, so-and-so with a PhD agrees with us and verifies what we're saying," and legitimates what they're saying.

BLAIR HODGES: There's cultural validation, too.

LUCAS WILSON: Exactly. And on the other side, for those so-called researchers—ex-gay researchers and the PhDs lending support—they also benefited. It became a symbiotic relationship. You had people saying, "We need the science to back it up," and then the scientists or researchers using these organizations to get money. One side gets money, the other gets legitimacy.

Elizabeth Moberly, a Christian psychologist, is one example. She lent her writings and research to these groups. Later, in the '90s, NARTH is formed—Joseph Nicolosi eventually becomes the leader. These organizations are trying to offer credibility.

And we see that these two groups feed off each other. The "research" and fringe science from these scientists are not respected by the wider scientific community. These organizations tried to make it seem true, but it consistently gets debunked. Yet this is when the Christian right latched onto the scientific community to legitimize their ideas—which, of course, were not accurate.

BLAIR HODGES: It's so interesting to see them picking up these so-called scientific methods just as they had basically been disproven by the scientific methods. So when scientists, when therapists and psychologists were trying to work on gay people—I mean, being gay was in the DSM—it was like a diagnosis of a human defect, right? 

They ended up taking that out not because of social pressure, including gay people saying, "There's nothing wrong with us, stop trying to—" because their practices were harming people. So the actual outcomes of these attempted scientific practices had been thoroughly discredited around the time Christian organizations began adopting them for credibility.

 

Moral Injury and Other Negative Outcomes – 46:36

 

BLAIR HODGES: Let's talk about some of the consequences, some of the outcomes that have been documented and proven. What happens to people when they go through conversion therapy? What kind of adverse effects does this so-called therapy have on people?

LUCAS WILSON: Well, there are many effects, including, well we've talked about a few of them: guilt, shame. We've talked about depression, anxiety, increased risk for suicidal ideation, increased risk for homelessness. There are numerous psychological and spiritual effects. We can talk about that. There are spiritual harms that have been documented in different approaches to that.

BLAIR HODGES: Talk about the moral injury part of it. That's something I think gets overlooked.

LUCAS WILSON: So moral injury—it's this idea that, I think a lot of people don't necessarily think of this as a function of conversion practices. But moral injury is when you have implicated yourself in the victimization of others, and how you feel based on that.

Like, I can think of the number of—I mean, it wasn't too many, but there were people I was pushing in the direction of—if they were gay—saying, "There's an exit for this, there's possibility for hope, there's possibility for victory in Jesus. We can overcome this." I didn't use the term conversion therapy because that wasn't in my vocabulary at the time.

By pushing them in that direction—toward "righteousness," quote-unquote—I can think of a number of my friends at Liberty University. When it did come out that we were both struggling with same-sex attraction—quote-unquote "gay"—I would push them in the direction of righteousness, even in the story I write about in Shame-Sex Attraction, where what happened between that guy and I, that I write about.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. You really kind of were drawn to each other. And when you went away for the summer, you would… I don’t remember what software you were using. Skype? Zoom?

LUCAS WILSON: It was Skype.

BLAIR HODGES: It was Skype. May it rest in peace—it’s gone now. But so you were Skyping, and you'd hold each other accountable, but also kind of flirting with each other. It was kind of this little romance. Years later, you saw him on Facebook. I think he's married, in a mixed-orientation marriage, maybe in the closet. But yeah, it was a sweet little romance.

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah, it was a sweet romance. But I think the other part of it, right, is that it's the moral injury. I was pushing him toward what he ultimately chose, which was forced heteronormative monogamy in the context of a quote-unquote straight marriage. He's not straight. His wife, I believe, is.

But it's this, again—that's moral injury, where I pushed this guy to go toward that. At the end of the day, yes, I understand that he has full autonomy to make that decision or not.

BLAIR HODGES: Sure.

LUCAS WILSON: But that's an example of moral injury, right? Where I pushed him. I was complicit in his victimization. I was complicit in my own victimization. Right, yeah. But I think that's what we're talking about when we're talking about spiritual harm. And that's at least one component of it. Some people have PTSD, right?

Where I know one guy, and his experience—his lived experience, or the way he lives his life on a day-to-day basis—in so many ways goes back to his experience in conversion therapy. It's what he constantly thinks about. And again, that's one example of many.

And, you know, there are also physical harms, right? Some people who have undergone electroshock therapy and aversion therapy—this kind of stuff—there's humiliation for what they did. I still think to myself, like, to be honest, when I first came out as a conversion therapy survivor, I didn't think about how this was going to be, how people would see me.

And, again, so much of my life is not conversion therapy. That was four years of my life. I would like to think I'm a well-rounded person. Maybe I'm not, maybe I'm a one-trick pony, but who knows. But the thing is that people see you like that, and then people start looking at you with those eyes.

They look at you and like, "Oh, you're such a victim," or "I feel bad for you." That sort of pity—and it's not a fun feeling, right? Like, I still to this day think, gosh, I don't want people to see me as a victim. I know that I was victimized. I know what happened to me was wrong. But there's that as well.

So these are just some examples, some anecdotal, some based on peer-reviewed research. But all of this to say: conversion therapy results in a multiplicity of consequences, and they are negative. Right? These are things that in some cases lead to people's death.

And I think what we have to understand, again: you shouldn't have to go to therapy if you underwent therapy. But this is abuse. This is something that takes advantage of vulnerable people in high-control religious contexts—oftentimes, not always, and particularly youth, but if not youth, people in their 20s and 30s. But it goes beyond that.

And what happens is these folks have to deal with a number of death-dealing consequences, and in some cases literally death-dealing consequences, because of their time in conversion therapy.

 

Conversion Practices in Everyday Life – 51:26

 

BLAIR HODGES: As I was reading the stories you collected in your book, I noticed some similar patterns. All of them were told there was something wrong with them. All of them talked about shame and humiliation. Then a cure is offered to them, and then the cure starts hurting, and then they reach a breaking point and try to shift into recovery away from that pain.

But for all those similarities, they're also very individual stories. It was interesting to see the range of different experiences as you were putting the book together and gathering these stories. Are there any that really stood out to you, surprised you? Any that you still think back on?

LUCAS WILSON: There are different stories that stand out for different reasons. One story that really stands out is Nathan Z's story. Away in a way, and his story—he underwent conversion practices in the context of his home with his parents, specifically his mom. And she was, from what he describes, from a Chinese cult.

So, you know, reading his story and the high-control sort of nature of his domestic life was awful.

BLAIR HODGES: Right?

LUCAS WILSON: Like, every aspect of his life was controlled. And anything that he—his exit out from that world was really… he had to find a way to carve out a path that allowed him out of his home. And it felt sort of like an escape story.

But throughout that time that he was at home, his mom was trying to change his sexual orientation.

For me, it was one story of many that really expanded how I understand conversion practices. It's not just what we think of when we think of conversion therapy. And like Garrard Conley's Boy Erased, which is phenomenal, we're standing on his shoulders. He's one survivor whose story really pushed the narrative of how damaging conversion therapy is in the mainstream.

But rolling back and going into the collection, thinking about Nathan's story—that for me was wild, because I just hadn't really thought about how ubiquitous conversion practices can be and are. That expanded my understanding of conversion practices. Not just that I underwent conversion therapy at Liberty, and not just that Nathan underwent conversion therapy in the context of his home, but both of us underwent it, and I would ultimately argue every queer person experiences conversion practices in a broader sense.

Right. Any one of us who were told as a kid, "Don't sit like that, you look like a little boy," "Don't play with that toy, you sound gay when you talk like this," whatever it might be, "Oh, don't watch Drag Race" or "you're not going to watch America's Next Top Model," whatever it might be, right?

These are conversion practices. They're direct or indirect messaging that communicates to us, "It's not okay to be us. We have to align ourselves with the heteronormative script." And so Nathan's story really expanded my understanding of conversion practices because I was like, oh, it's not just that formal setting. It's also the informal messaging we receive throughout our lives.

And so that's another story I would say really stands out.

 

Self-Inflicted Conversion Therapy – 54:13

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, you just reminded me of one that stood out to me. The name they go by in the book is D. Apple. They were kind of this perfectionist, homeschooled kid. And she basically talks about wanting to perform conversion therapy on herself. She was like the main conversion therapist in her story. Part of the problem is she saw no role models in her life of gay people. Being gay was just wrong.

Being homeschooled, she was very controlled. She lived in this bubble and tried conversion therapy on herself, which, yeah, came as a surprise. Like, oh, yeah, conversion therapy can happen because you're meeting with a therapist, a pastor, or family members who are doing this. But in her case, it was herself.

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah. And I think that's one thing that oftentimes gets overlooked. Like, we have a quote-unquote "conversion therapist." And I always love with evangelicalism or just this topic in general—it's safe to put quotes around everything: "conversion" therapist, conversion "therapist." Everything needs quotes.

For her, when she becomes her own conversion therapist—I think a lot of us became our own conversion therapists after we left conversion therapy. We were supposed to be the perpetuators of this mindset, this ideology, and these practices. We were the ones to go out and do this to ourselves later, once we no longer were with our conversion therapist.

And again, this goes into the gay community, the queer community—more broadly the LGBT community—we all became our own jailers. We all became our own monitors of our gender expression and identity and also our sexual orientation. We were forced into policing ourselves, right?

And we were all forced into changing how we act, how we are, and what we feel, or trying to. At least most of us were very unsuccessful. By that, I mean in orientation change, maybe in how we express our gender. We had to find techniques or methods to mask that, where we pass.

BLAIR HODGES: Right.

LUCAS WILSON: But obviously, in every other case, we're not like—our identity, our actual identity and orientation… blah, blah, blah. So what I will say is that what we see with Dee's story is that she was her own conversion therapist. But again, I think if we are to zoom out, we see that everyone really has to become, at some level, their own conversion therapist if they underwent conversion therapy.

And then in a broader sense, so many queers really became their own because they were pushed into that. And it's always funny when people talk about this idea of, like, "Oh, I wanted to change," or people will say, "I wanted to become straight." Right?

And it's like, none of us wanted to become straight. None of us wanted to be anything other than what we are. But we're pushed to want, and we're made to want these things because we're told for so long, "This is disgusting, this is dirty, this is damaging, this is going to send you to hell."

Of course, we don't want to go to hell. We don't want to be gross and dirty and seen as other by other people. And so although people became their own conversion therapists, although people went to conversion therapy, although they said that they wanted this, it was really because they were made to want this.

And there was this sort of cruel optimism that one could change. And then, of course, one never changes. I think that's something really important to note.

 

Resisting Tidy Story Endings – 57:19

 

BLAIR HODGES: Another thing I wanted to ask you about is that so many of the stories resist a tidy ending. They don't sew everything up and make us feel all better. The stories often leave us hanging. We get to see a picture of what it was like for people during a part of their story.

Tell me about that decision to leave readers uncomfortable and not resolve everything for us.

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah. So some of the stories had different endings, and I worked with authors to make sure that we cut those endings off. Not in the sense of saying this didn't happen or that I was changing their narrative. No, I was simply putting a—what's the word?—a frame on their narrative.

For me, I could have talked about how I grew up on 84 Glenn Park Road, which is true, but I didn't include that in the story. Does that mean my story is no longer valid or accurate? No, it is. It just didn't include that part of the narrative.

For them, I said, "Okay, let's start here, and we're going to end here." Why? Exactly, like you said—to leave readers in that state of uncomfortability. I wanted, in some small way, to leave readers where they have to sit with the weight of what happened to the author.

They're never going to know what it's like to go through their experience because they weren't there, and they never will. However, in some small way, I wanted readers to sit in that discomfort and say, "Okay, I know that."

As humans, I think it's pretty human to want narrative resolution. We want a bow on a story at the end and everything to be fine, God on the throne, and the rest be whatever good. However, that's not how the story ended for a lot of people.

Yes, maybe down the road, eventually they got to a point where they are in a better place. In fact, all of the authors included in the collection did get to a better place. We know that in part by the fact that they submitted their stories and that they are…

BLAIR HODGES: They're here.

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah, they're still here. That part isn't taken out. I never wanted to indicate or make it seem as if these authors live in abject misery. From my understanding, none of them do. All of them are quite successful in doing their thing and living their queer lives, which is great.

However, I wanted readers not to be satisfied at the end, because for those of us who went through this, we weren't satisfied.

BLAIR HODGES: Like "Oh, it all worked out."

LUCAS WILSON: You know what I mean? Yes, it did work out for us down the road, but I want people to know that for a very long time, it didn't. For a very long time, it was incredibly difficult. For a very long time, it was miserable to be us, in part because of conversion therapy, and also for a lot of people because of their religious environment.

I think that editorial decision really spoke to my desire for people to have a small window into conversion practices, to sit with the weight or extremity of what folks went through, and not have that resolution because for us, it wasn't resolved for quite some time.

 

Broadening the Scope – 01:00:05

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, and I like how you call it that small window. So not only small in terms of the frame you put around it, but you also mention in the book that there are representational shortcomings. There's a pretty broad range here, but you also say you wish you had more people of color. You wish you had more trans representation. But this is a book that you'd like to see as a beginning of a conversation.

LUCAS WILSON: Right. Exactly. So what happened with the collection is I put out a call for folks who would be interested in submitting a story. At the end of the day, you could only include the stories that were submitted. And so for me, the stories that were submitted were the stories that were included in the collection, plus a few others that I ultimately didn't select.

But, you know, I wish there were more voices that were different from the majority. The majority in the collection are from high-control, conservative Christian contexts. But there is one secular context, there is one Orthodox Jewish context, there is one from a, again, like this Chinese cult.

For me, I would have loved a broader range and a broader diversity of voices. But at the end of the day, you can only really include what's submitted. What's important to note is that people of color are disproportionately affected by conversion practices in comparison to white folks. That's something I wanted to note, and I noted it at the very end of the collection in the afterword, which was initially in the introduction, but it was actually moved to the afterword. It was not my choice, but neither here nor there. Just want to make that clear.

BLAIR HODGES: Call them out. Call out your editors. [laughs]

LUCAS WILSON: No, man, they were great. That was just one thing I didn't agree with. But who am I? At the end of the day, the story's in there. They do provide a variety of narratives, but I wish we could have had more. There are no stories from a Muslim context, and we know there are a number of conversion practices happening in Muslim contexts.

I wish we could have had more, and maybe that's the next collection, maybe the revised edition. But for now, we have the stories that are included. And again, I think the stories that are included are so well told, and I'm so thankful for the voices that are in the collection because the folks in there are just fabulous.

 

The Power of Stories – 01:02:17

 

BLAIR HODGES: Ultimately, what do you think about the power of stories? Why is telling the stories an important part of opposing conversion therapy practices? Why not just point to the science and the stats? We can show, "Here's how it harms, here's the statistics, it's not a successful practice." You're wanting us to enter the life of people. What does that do for us?

LUCAS WILSON: I am a literary critic, which sounds like I criticize literature, but that's not really what I do. I read literature, I read stories for a living, and I talk about different themes, different trees that we can pull out from these pieces of literature. These pieces of literature that I research are, I think, super important because they teach us a lot about sexuality. They use a lot of agenda. They teach.

For me, my past research was actually on intergenerational trauma, so we can learn a lot from stories. Granted, if I'm reading a study—about epigenetics, or sexual abuse—that's one thing, and that's one approach. It's super important and necessary. But if I'm trying to change people's minds, I'm not coming necessarily with the facts and figures in the same way that I would bring a story.

I think stories have such an emotional and affective valence that allow for a different way of meeting someone where they're at. You can tell someone all day long that conversion practices are harmful, but if I show you, as opposed to telling you, that's a different approach.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. If you take us to the guy huddled in the closet with a bag of dog crap, smelling it when he thinks about men and how often he had to do that. And how that guy, I think, was going through conversion therapy for like 25 years, a long time. Yeah, you're right—the stats matter. But when we have to think about sitting in a closet with dogsh*t in a bag, it's a little bit different.

LUCAS WILSON: Yeah. And that's the thing. I think there's a creative writing principle: show, don't tell. So instead of telling someone, "I'm ashamed," and of course, the title Shame-Sex Attraction, you know, even the cover itself has this person covering their face.

What we do when we are ashamed—we avert our eyes, we look down, we cover our face, the countenance, we want to hide our personhood. Oftentimes, how we understand our person, or the concentration thereof, is our face.

Showing someone covering their face versus saying, "I'm ashamed"—those are two different things. I think the reason why that is the case and why we do that is really for that emotional experience.

Why do we watch movies? Why do we watch TV? Why do we read books? We do it because we can. All these movies, books, and TV shows are teaching us a lot about a lot of things, but we learn in a different way by consuming art. And this is art. This is not an academic approach to the topic. This is art. These are narratives. These are literary accounts of what happened.

For me, that speaks to that affective level where we engage with texts—whether that be a film, a TV show, or a book—we engage with these texts very differently than we do the facts and figures. And again, there are times and places for those facts and figures, but there's also a time for those emotional texts that really bring up a lot within us that can change people's minds in a different way.

Granted, am I saying that this collection is going to change people's minds about conversion therapy? No. I don't think even this book will ever make it into the hands of those people who should be reading it, whose minds I would hope would change.

However, if it's that one person who reads this collection and says, "Oh, geez, I see either myself in this," or "I see how I've been complicit in this," whatever it might be—that's, I think, at the end of the day, a goal that's worthy of having.

BLAIR HODGES: If you can't convert any of the conversion therapists, you're at least offering some catharsis and recognition, I think, for people who have been through it. And even that, I think, would be enough—just for people to feel seen and connecting with other people who've experienced what they're experiencing.

LUCAS WILSON: That's it.

And I think that, for me, really is much more of a goal than changing people's minds. I have no illusion that any conversion therapist is going to read this, or that any evangelical is going to read this. I hope that everyone buys this book and sends it to their local church. I think that'd be kind of the most hilarious thing ever.

But putting that aside, I think what I am more optimistic about is that when folks who have undergone conversion practices read this book—or those who don't even know they underwent conversion practices—they suddenly see themselves and say, "Oh, gosh, I resonate with this. I see myself here." That's really the goal.

Yes, I would love for people to change their minds, but I'm a pessimist, and I don't believe that's going to happen. More realistically, queers—specifically those who underwent conversion practices—read this, see themselves, and find some sort of catharsis or resonance in some way.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Lucas Wilson. We're talking about his book Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors' Stories of Conversion Therapy. Lucas is a postdoctoral fellow at University of Toronto, Mississauga.

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises – 01:07:20

 

BLAIR HODGES: We always like to end and wrap things up with "Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises," Luke. I'm going to ask you if there's anything now that the book—this is a brand new book, you maybe already kind of spoke to that you wanted more representation, so regrets,  I think we kind of covered that.

Were there any challenges or surprises that you want to highlight in the process of making this book? 

LUCAS WILSON: I think maybe I could name two challenges. One being that, you know, when you work with authors—I taught for like 10 years at the college and university level, which I don't miss, if I'm being completely honest.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. [laughs]

LUCAS WILSON: Believe it or not, that job was a thankless job. That job was a job where you constantly felt… once grades were involved, it just felt like an uphill battle because students want an easy A and they don't want to work for it. And then you get blamed for that, not doing well, and you're like, that's not how this works.

But I think that when I was working on these stories, again, it wasn't like teaching because, thank God, I wasn't grading anyone here. And so it took away that weird tension that always sort of is inherent to engaging with folks’ work that way. So it was very different, thank God, in that sense.

But that wasn't the challenge. The challenge was that you're not only engaging with writing—you’re engaging with very personal writing that oftentimes has a lot of traumatic sort of resonances.

BLAIR HODGES: Right.

LUCAS WILSON: And so working with people and having to really make clear what I'm doing when we’re workshopping this piece—because it often took anywhere from three to six rounds of edits with folks, really detailed edits—working with authors, having to differentiate and say, hey, your writing is not you.

It certainly is a product of you. It's a reflection of you in a lot of ways, but it's not you. My job here is not to change the story or the content, because that's simply not my job. My job instead is to make sure that the form and how you tell the story is as strong and as great as it can be. And so let's work there. Most contributors were okay with edits, and many had done this before, but there were some where we had to negotiate and navigate that space of saying, hey, this isn't you. Let’s make sure that you know I think you're phenomenal. I think your writing is phenomenal, but let's just bring it up to the next level.

That was certainly a challenge—again, not a big challenge, but a challenge. And it was also a fun process, too. I think it's great when you're able to work with someone to make their artistic output as great as it can be. So that was phenomenal. As well as a challenge. But again, it was also very fun.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Again, the book is Shame-Sex Attraction, and Luke, it's been really cool talking to you about it. I appreciate you taking the time.

LUCAS WILSON: Blair, thank you so much for having me on the show. This has been too much fun.

 

Outro – 01:10:05

 

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for listening to another episode of Relationscapes. If this is your first episode, welcome. I hope you'll check out some of the other discussions on the show. There are a lot of different topics to choose from, and I hope you'll take a second to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts.

I noticed—I say this in pretty much every episode, I invite people to do this, but it's usually not until I post about it on social media that I get some new reviews. So listeners, I want to hear from you. I want to hear from people who just listen, not necessarily following me on social media. Let's hear what you have to say about the show. Also, you should follow me on social media if you're there. Instagram is kind of the main place where I'm at. And TikTok. And of course, you can also rate the show on Spotify.

Mates of State provides our theme song. I'm your host, Blair Hodges, a journalist here in Salt Lake City. And I'll see you again soon.

 

[Note: Transcripts are edited for readability.]