'Boy Erased' author Garrard Conley on enduring gay conversion therapy: 'It's psychological torture'
Boy Erased, the new movie starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Lucas Hedges, tells the story of a teen who grew up in a deeply religious household and was sent to gay conversion therapy to change his sexual orientation after he was outed.
The film is an adaptation of Garrard Conley’s memoir.
Conley, who grew up in Mountain Home, Ark., knew he was gay as early as the third grade. “My teacher, Mr. Smith, he was my first crush,” he tells Yahoo Lifestyle. But the message that Conley repeatedly received from the Southern Baptist church he and his family attended was that being gay was a sin.
“The things that I would hear in church about LGBTQ people were almost always really negative,” he shares. “That kind of homophobia that was so blatant every day, it made me feel like a criminal, actually. It felt like I was hiding a big secret.”
He was outed as gay in the most horrible way during his first semester of college. While speaking with a friend whom he calls “David,” Conley says, “I had said to him in confidence that I had these feelings towards other men. Not to come onto him or anything like that, but just to tell someone that I trusted. Then later on in the semester, he raped me. After he raped me, he told me that he had raped a 14-year-old boy in his youth group.”
Conley told two friends about it. Their mother found out and called David to confront him. “And then he called my mom in retribution and said that I was gay,” Conley says.
Knowing that his religious parents — particularly his father, who was studying to become a Baptist minister — would have a difficult time accepting a gay son, Conley denied that he was gay at first. “Dad made me swear to God that it wasn’t true,” he says. “[But] my relationship with God was something I valued a lot. So I said, ‘No, I can’t lie. I am. I do have these feelings.’”
His parents called the Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn., which Conley says had a close connection with Love in Action — the gay conversion therapy facility Conley was sent to when he was 19. (The discredited and dangerous practice is now outlawed in 14 states and the District of Columbia, according to the New York Times.)
The program — then run by Rev. John Smid, who is now out and in a same-sex marriage — was an emotionally grueling experience for Conley. “I think it’s hard to convey just how terrifying that feels to have all the attention on you suddenly, but only in terms of you being a shameful object that’s unloved by God,” he says. “It’s enough for people to kill themselves; they did.”
Conley was at the facility for two weeks, but he says the negative effects of his experience there have left a long-lasting mark. “It’s psychological torture,” he says. “And it affects you for your life.”
He soon realized that he needed to break free. “You look through the past and you try to find a moment that explains what gave you courage or wisdom,” Conley says. “It was the moment when I sat across from an empty chair, and I was told to imagine my father sitting in that chair. And John Smid said to me, ‘Now, tell your father how much you hate him.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t hate him.’”
Smid kept pushing, saying that Conley was avoiding the imaginary confrontation, which wasn’t true. “These are ‘Christians’ who are telling me that in order to get closer to God, I need to use hate as a weapon against a person that I love,” Conley says.
A post shared by Garrard Conley (@gayrodcon) on Aug 14, 2016 at 8:09pm PDT
He stormed out of the auditorium. “I don’t know where I got the energy to do that,” he says. Conley’s mom, who was becoming increasingly skeptical about Love in Action, picked up her son and brought him home. “Dad said, ‘Did it work?’ Mom’s like, ‘Of course not. It didn’t work.’ And we swept it under the rug for 10 years.”
Conley says he would sometimes joke about his conversion therapy experience — likely as a way to cope — and continued not to discuss it with his family until a friend called him out.
He then slowly started to bring up the topic with his parents on the phone. “I don’t think you get to choose who you love,” he shares. “I do continue to love my dad.”
Conley, who remains close with his mom and now lives in New York with his husband, still attends the church of his childhood when he goes home to visit his parents. “I actually think it’s really important for people who have the ability and have the privilege like I do to go back into those spaces,” he says.
Reflecting on what he’s been through, Conley says, “I wish this had never happened. And yes, in the beginning of my book, I say sometimes I thank God that it did. The only reason I say that is so that I can help people get out of it.”
Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:
Bowling alley threatens to kick out a lesbian for using the bathroom: ‘My partner was so scared’
The Trump administration could erase civil rights for 1.4 million trans Americans. Here’s how.
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