January 27, 2026 • 46 mins
John’s marriage becomes the jewel in the ex-gay movement’s crown.
Soon the couple are everywhere: Oprah, national ad campaigns, even the cover of Newsweek. But beyond the spotlight, cracks are forming.
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Atonement: The John Paulk Story is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Goldhawk Productions in association with Marks Media Co.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode includes strong language.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I remember as the organ started playing the bridle march,
I looked down. It was a twenty five foot aisle.
I wanted a church with a long center aisle, and
there was canopies of white flowers over the aisle all
the way up that I had designed and created. And
so I saw her walk into the nave of the church.
(00:28):
She was on her father's arm, and she had this
absolutely beautiful white dress with a super long train and
her veil over her face. And as she started walking
down that aisle, it's like time was suspended for me,
(00:51):
and I had this flashback of my almost my entire
life that came before it, and all of the pain
and all of the hurt and all of the confusion.
And as she was walking closer, I felt like all
that was gone now. I cried all the way through
(01:16):
our vows. I just could not hold it in. So
when the ceremony ended, he said, and I'll pronounce you
man and wife, I lifted my hands up over my
head in a cheer, and I pulled her hand with me,
and I yelled out, we did it, We did it.
(01:40):
I think in retrospect, there was really a lot to that.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
This is atonement the John Polk story.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I'm John Paulk and I'm.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Kate's Holland Episode three, for Better.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Or for Worse.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Anne and I got engaged exactly four years to the
day that I arrived at Love and Action, the residential program.
I intended to take my quote steps out of homosexuality,
and just seven months after I proposed, we got married.
It was an elaborate affair. We picked out invitations, a
(02:21):
gold seal on every envelope. It was black tied with
stretched limousines, and a formal dinner. There was no alcohol,
of course, this was a conservative church, and we picked
our wedding attendants, five on each side. All the men
that stood up there with me were ex gay. Two
John Smid, my former house leader, was my best man.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Everybody was very emotional. John was very emotional because it
was like for him this potential lifelong dream of being
a normal guy, of being a married man, of having
a family. I mean, he was fulfilling a deep seated
dream in his life because he knew that he couldn't
have the other dream. So this was the best it
(03:04):
could be, and it was full of everything a wedding
can or should be. It was full of decorpes, it
was full of food, it was full of fancy clothing,
and I mean it was very, very elaborate, and I
think it was at the point that day it was
a very positive day.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
It was very magical and very much real and authentic.
This was not fake. This was not a play being
played out in front of the cameras. This was real.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
It was a royal wedding because of who John is.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
When I called my dad to tell him I was
getting married, he responded in his typical way, happy because
it was something I wanted.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
John's wedding was a great event, and I remember so
much the way it ended. It was amazing at the
reception party afterwards when he asked the people in the
audience who had been through reparative therapy to raise their
hand or stand up, and this vast number of people
(04:10):
rose from their seats, and I thought it was fantastic.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Vicky, my stepmom, was there too.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
Of course, it was very special because we knew what
the background was of John and Anne, and they were
moving forward and we had the greatest of hopes that
this had not been a mistake because who knew, you know,
and there was a lot of love there. There was
(04:38):
a lot of joy there, and I really loved being
there and being a small part of it.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
It was after we had set our vows that I
shouted out to all our friends and family those three
crucial words, We did it. There were a lot of
meanings that went along with that, like was this an
achievement considering why I went to love in action in
(05:09):
the four years previous? Yet it was an achievement. This
was a goal that you had and you won the
prize and was an achievement. It sounds horrible looking back
at that because it was like it would be saying
I'm using her to feel better about myself. That was
(05:34):
not anywhere in my thinking in any way. My feelings
actually were for her, were toward her, and I was
in love with this woman. It felt genuine. I did
love her, but was I really in love with her?
(05:58):
I was going in the path I believed where God
wanted me to go. So it's not one thing. It's
a culmination of many layers of things working together in
the direction that someone leaving homosexuality this path that we
(06:18):
would take, and I wanted to be her husband and
I wanted her to be my wife, and I wanted
that picturesque, stereotypical nineteen fifties life that had eluded me
all of my life. On the one hand, we were
your typical newly married couple. Of course, we'd never lived
(06:40):
together or been intimate together, as is the Christian way,
so we were finding our feet. We fought like cats
and dogs, two headstrong people butting heads. But on the
other hand, we were a story not just for our
church to celebrate, but one that could spread across the world,
a success and supposed proof that conversion therapy, or reparative
(07:05):
therapy as it's also sometimes known, works, And we had
no idea what we were in for. I think it's
fair to say that Anne and I became a brand,
a couple with a story to tell and the inclination
to tell it publicly. The first TV program we went
on started with a phone call with the producers. They
(07:27):
were looking for married couples where someone had been gay
and quote unquote changed, And so we went on the
first talk show and it was a whot. We were
telling our story and young, never having done something like
(07:48):
this before. From that point on, the phone kept ringing.
It was mainly local attention in Christian media. But just
a year after our wedding it went to the next level. Actually,
in nineteen ninety three, we ended up sitting on the
stage of the Oprah Winfrey Show. As you can imagine,
(08:09):
Oprah Winfrey was the apex of everything. And so I
remember we flew to Chicago. The whole night before, I
did not sleep a wink. Imagine sitting on stage in
that famous studio. There are hot lights beating down on you,
cameras pointing at you from every angle, a live audience,
(08:32):
and of course the woman herself. My goodness, to be
on Oprah Winfrey. That's almost worldwide exposure.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I've watched that tape from the Oprah Show and she
asked John, and I quote, so since you have left
this lifestyle, you have never had the desire to have
sex with another man.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And all of a sudden, I got scared and nervous.
I'd never been asked that question, and I said, no,
not anymore.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
John's exact answer was, over a period of time, the
desire to have sex with men started to go away.
It started to diminish because I was feeling more whole
and complete in who I was, and.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
The audience started to giggle and chatter as though that's
not believable. This statement on Oprah set the stage in
some ways how I would communicate this topic with audiences
and answered the question completely honestly, and she said, I
(09:44):
look at homosexuality in my life is something that every
once in a while lands on my shoulder and I
just flick it off like a bug. I love that answer.
I was mixed with fear. I did not want to
disparage our movement. I didn't want people to think it
(10:07):
doesn't work. And there's so much better way as I
could have answered that question. Because of course this wasn't
obliterated from my psyche. It was there even though I
did not engage in any homosexual behaviors. But to say
I don't struggle with it anymore, it wasn't entirely truthful.
(10:30):
I don't want to say I lied. It came out
as a lie, if you want to split the hairs.
At the time, I was mixed with fear. I didn't
know how to appropriately answer that question to where people
could understand it that you live in this balance of
maybe you struggle with something, but it's not your identity
(10:54):
or the way you live anymore. But that just haunted
me for years. The way I had answered that question,
I didn't want to disparage our movement.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I asked john stepmom, Vicki, and dad Norman about seeing
John in the media.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
It was an interesting time for me watching him and them,
because Anne was involved in that too, take their story
to the public. They did a good job of doing that.
I was a little uncomfortable because of the content of
the story, but that was a reflection of how I
(11:35):
felt about the whole reparative therapy thing.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I think I became uncomfortable about John's position and repairtive
therapy on the Oprah Show when there was a young
man on there, a gay man who had just almost
violently opposed to what John was doing, saying how John
had hurt people had changed their lives for the worse.
(12:01):
And that got me to thinking a little differently about things.
Speaker 6 (12:04):
Did you express that to John?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I don't know that I did, but I was deep
in the well of conversion therapy and x gay life.
I wanted to tell people my story.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
During those years. John wanted to be in the limelight,
he wanted to be outfront. I never did.
Speaker 7 (12:24):
I was placed there, and I took the opportunity to
give my message or tis to pour myself into whatever
we were doing. But John pursued those options and I
never pursued them like he pursued Oprah Winfrey. He pursued
these connections, so he was much more of a promoter,
(12:45):
and I.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Think he liked it. I think he liked being outfront.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And my story would continue to grow. Not long after
our wedding, Anne and I moved to Portland to be
closer to our families, and the conversation about babies began.
(13:09):
It wasn't a smooth road for us, and we suffered
multiple miscarriages, but with the help from a fertility specialist,
it finally happened for us. In nineteen ninety six, our
first son, Timothy or Timmy as I've always called him,
was born via C section. It was a dream come
(13:30):
true and I will never forget. I was sitting they
have her draped off like around her chest area, and
I was sitting in a stool next to her head,
stroking her hair and talking to her. And I remember
when we heard that first cry and we just started sobbing.
(13:52):
We were so excited and blessed, and I got to
cut his umbilical cord and then put him in my arms,
and I brought him over and sat him next to Anne,
where Timmy's face was right next to hers, and it
was absolutely just indescribable.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
How did becoming a father change you?
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I had had so many versions of myself and all
these different identities to me, and now I was a father,
and that is the label I loved the best. That
just felt so congruent with who I was.
Speaker 7 (14:38):
How you doing good?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Me?
Speaker 5 (14:41):
I know?
Speaker 8 (14:46):
I would describe my dad as a little larger than life.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
This is Timmy.
Speaker 8 (14:51):
He's funny, he's friendly, he wants to enjoy life. He's
very warm and comforting. If I really need help on
something I'm not sure how I feel about it, usually
I can go to him. Probably looked up to my
dad the most out of anybody.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
I always said, this picture of you, mate, you looked
like a little child movie star.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (15:17):
I feel like I'm about to start tap dancing in
this photo.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
We need the tie. Didn't she look cute?
Speaker 8 (15:24):
Oh yeah? It's all down hill from there.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Do you remember this?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Ann and I would go on to have three boys together,
and the house was well, the sort of chaos you'd
expect with a gaggle of little boys running amok.
Speaker 8 (15:38):
When I was a little kid, my dad had all
of these beautiful, like ancient Greek looking statues of like angels,
like the statue David type of style. You had like
six of these things all around the house, and we
would somehow find a way to kick a tennis ball
thirty feet in the air, slap the corner. I would
(15:59):
slap onto the ground and shattered into a million pieces,
and then we'd be panicking at home, like how do
we glue this together before Dad gets home? And we
broke every single one of those statues. I think by
the time I was ten.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Timmy describes him and his brothers as like having puppies
in the house. I completely agree, and despite their destructive nature,
they're the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Speaker 8 (16:26):
I feel extremely wanted, and it's definitely instilled a confidence
and a level of support as an adult too. So
I wouldn't describe me or any of my brothers as
being people who have like Mommy or Daddy issues. I
think we all feel very confident in our abilities and
confident in what we don't know, too. Is very important.
(16:48):
A solid family foundation of love too.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Anne and I were always open with Timmy about our
stories and how we got together.
Speaker 8 (16:57):
My parents, whether they agreed or just agreed with people,
always wanted to focus on like God loves everybody, so
and like growing up in a very Christian worldview, to
emphasize like, even for people that we disagree with on anything,
just remember God loves them too, and you should love
that person as well. And even my parents being focused
(17:18):
on what a lot of people with views even rightly
view as being anti gay and lesbian. They always tried
to infer on us that, like they're just they're people,
no matter what if you disagree with them, still love them.
So when I was a kid, we did not believe
that you were born gay, lesbian. It's something that occurred
(17:40):
to you as an adult. I don't know, I'm no expert.
I don't really you know my parents that was my
parents thing to be focused on all that. So I'm like,
I've got gay friends, I've got lesbian friends, got buy
and Trent, like whatever. People are cool.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Back in the late nineties, money was flowing far asked
into the ex gay movement. Bill Clinton was in his
second term and there was a rise in both liberalism
and the backlash against it from both the Republican Party
and the evangelical right. You were much more likely to
see LGBTQ plus people on TV. George Michael came out
(18:19):
in nineteen ninety eight, the same year Will and Grace launched,
and throughout the decade, mega churches were expanding rapidly.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Timmy was only a year old when I started working
with Exodus International, the umbrella organization I previously shared an
office with when carpooling with Ann. And then one day
I got a call from a guy who said he
was from a different group, one called Focus on the Family.
The man on the phone said they had been awarded
a two point one million dollar grant to start a
(18:51):
division at Focus on the Family dealing with homosexuality and gender.
We would like to see if you're interested in I'm
reviewing for this position.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Focus on the Family is an evangelical parachurch. It's still
going today. According to its own website, its outreach includes broadcasts, podcasts, films, websites, blogs,
and more, and they quote feature information, guidance, and practical
insights on everything from adoption to marriage, to media discernment
(19:25):
to pastoral concerns. Former Vice President Mike Pence attended their
events and said that the Trump administration supports them. And
it was started back in nineteen seventy seven by an
evangelical Christian man called James Dobson.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
He was a child psychologist at UCLA Medical Center and
he had written numerous numerous books on the raising of children.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
James Dobson died in August twenty twenty five, aged eighty nine.
It was an influential voice in American evangelical circles and
the religious right until the end, uncompromisingly anti LGBTQ, plus,
anti abortion, and anti feminist. Back when John received the call,
(20:15):
Focus on the Family had eight hundred staff members based
in Colorado Springs.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
They had some ninety individual ministries within Focus on the Family,
and so it was so highly respected to be offered
a job. Anne and I kind of jumped at that
and we flew to Colorado. Timmy and Tow and I
(20:46):
had nine separate interviews in one day and was next
to me. They were interviewing us together as a couple,
even though the job was for me. Why Why Because
Anne and I came as a set. You know, our
(21:07):
ministry was a set. Our story was as a married
couple who had changed and got married and had a baby.
So when you got me, in essence, you got her
too as well. Even though I would be heading this
division and she was staying home taking care of Timmy
(21:27):
and running our household, I ended up being hired, and
so what that meant was we had to pack up
and leave Portland and move to Colorado Springs. I went
into this organization and I had no idea really what
I was walking into. I really didn't.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
The job was as head of the Homosexuality and Gender division.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
This was a big fucking deal. One of the first
things that doctor Dobson wanted us to do was tell
our story to the entire staff, and as soon as
we did that, people had really never heard a story
(22:17):
like this before. The next thing that happened he said,
I want a book written by you two. We are
going to publicize you and publish you. And the next
five years became a very exciting, scary, heady, trailblazing period
(22:42):
of our life, one that would throw me further into
the spotlight and into the crosshairs of the community I
now call home.
Speaker 9 (23:00):
Pulk was my nemesis.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
This is Wayne Besson. He's an author, an activist, and
the executive director of Truth Wins Out, an organization devoted
to exposing conversion therapy.
Speaker 9 (23:13):
He is someone who I remember from my first moments
before I was an LGBTQ activist. I was trying to
come out and I saw him in anti gay videos
and he was telling a story and making all LGBTQ
people seem to be monsters. They know sex fiends. I
was a freshman in college when I saw it, and
(23:37):
I didn't believe him for a second, but I here
is some kind of visceral reaction to John from the
very moment I saw him, And it's so fascinating that
our paths eventually crossed, because this was someone who was
a roadblock to my own coming out, because of the
misinformation that was spread in this myth that was believed
(24:00):
by millions of people in the United States and more worldwide.
So I knew in order to live a rich and
fulfilling life, one where I was equal under the law
and could be happy and fulfilled, I needed to defeat
the message that John Pollock was peddling.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
With my book out, more and more people were taking
notice and asking me about leaving homosexuality. I loved speaking
about this topic. I felt I had a lot to
offer my life as an example, but more than just
my life, my understanding of the nature of sexuality in general,
be it heterosexual or homosexual. And I was looked upon
(24:43):
as an expert in this topic. There's a privilege in
being seen as heterosexual too.
Speaker 9 (24:50):
He's like, you know, a car wreck, and if people
can't keep their eyes off him, he evokes a reaction
he did with me.
Speaker 10 (24:57):
I hated him.
Speaker 9 (24:58):
I hated John Paul because he was very good at
what he did.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
In nineteen ninety eight, a coalition of quote pro family
organizations in Florida decided to take everything up agear. They
launched the Truth in Love Campaign. It aimed to promote
conversion therapy and to influence political legislation. The campaign reduced
the stories of x gay men and ex lesbian women
(25:26):
to illustrate it all to show their so called proof.
Speaker 9 (25:31):
The Truth in Love campaign was like a nuclear bomb
for the LGBTQ community.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
In nineteen ninety eight, Wayne was working for the Human
Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ plus advocacy group.
Speaker 9 (25:43):
We were making incredible progress at that time, and the
religious right knew this we were winning, especially with the
younger generation, and they had to go all the way
into clear war, and in fact they called the n
nineteen ninety eight Truth and Love campaign, the Normandy Landing
and the cultural wars. They thought they were going to
(26:06):
run us back into the closet, and they spent enough
money to back up what they were doing.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
It's reported that in nineteen ninety eight, Christian right groups
spent six hundred thousand dollars on advertising that promoted conversion therapy.
That's equivalent to nearly one point two million dollars today,
and of course paid promotion also led to journalists picking
it up organically.
Speaker 9 (26:33):
We were scared over this because this was a very
powerful message back by big organizations with a lot of
money and who had access to a lot of media.
So they were telling their story to tens of millions
of people in our country and of course internationally. So
we had to have response to this because we had
(26:54):
fought so hard for our gains and this was a
real threat to roll back our rights at a time
when we were beginning to win.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
So this campaign took the form of full page ads
in nearly every large newspaper around the country, from the
Atlanta Journal Constitution to the Dallas Morning News to USA
Today to the Washington Post, to the Chicago Newspapers and
(27:24):
New York New York Times, Los Angeles Times, on and on,
and Anne and I and several other ex gays were
featured in these full page ads. And boy, if you
thought the media storm was big before then, during the
year of nineteen ninety eight, I think I had done
(27:52):
over nine hundred interviews.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Way and again.
Speaker 9 (28:01):
Here I am, in my capacity, trying to educate people
that no, you can't just pray away the gay. It's
how we were born, it's who we are. And then
you had him going on there and saying, oh, yeah,
I found Jesus in a disco ball, and therefore I'm
straight now and I have a wife in it, kids
and those who want to believe that message are susceptible
to it.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
During this time, I got a phone call from Newsweek
and they said, we're interested in having you be on
the cover of Newsweek magazine. So it was just one
thing after the other, And I remember the photographer was
(28:43):
sent to us to photograph us in various poses together
around our house and with Timmy and headline read gay
for life, question mark the uproar over gay convert.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
On that cover, John's wearing a brown suit and a
gray shirt, smiling straight down the lens. His arm is
wrapped tightly around Ann's shoulders. On the inside pages, there's
a picture of John as Candy, his drag persona. In
another edition, there's a photo of John and Anne with
gardening tools in their hands. It's reminiscent of Grant Wood's
(29:21):
famous painting American Gothic, where the husband and wife stand
in front of their house and he holds a pitchfork.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
That meant during that week we would be in the
grocery store and there we would find ourselves in the
magazine rack, staring back. Of course, I enjoyed this. I
found validation in the attention too.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Boy, when you're.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
On the cover of Newsweek magazine, doors just continue to
open and open and open. I started traveling the country
more and more. I got paid to do this. I
did book signings and did books sign We made money
off the books that we sold. Our lifestyle was very nice,
(30:07):
it was intoxicating.
Speaker 9 (30:09):
The community was in a precarious situation at that time.
We did not have our rights. You still had a
raging HIV epidemics, so people were dying, and we had
to fight the religious right tooth and now for even
things like hospital visitation rights. And into this vicious brawl,
(30:30):
we had the religious right trying to bring us down
by putting up and uplifting people like John Paul to
invalidate our existence. They were saying, not only you don't
need equal rights because you're gay, they exploited AIDS and said, well,
you God hates you and you're going to die if
you have in this engage in this quote lifestyle, and
(30:53):
John helped forward that message with them, and it was
devastating and the community really felt it. When John was
speaking out against us. Most people didn't know anybody gay, lesbian, bisexual,
or transgender. All they knew were stereotypes, jokes about gay people,
(31:16):
nasty jokes, and so that made it very difficult to educate.
When you had people who were disseminating disinformation and betraying
us as evil. That hurt me, That hurt everybody else
in our community because we do encounter these people at
work on the street who would express these ignorance about
(31:38):
who we were because they well, we heard this from
this other guy change, so why can't you?
Speaker 2 (31:42):
As well as the wider community. The media attention both
and and I court had impacted those around us, people
like my stepmom VICKI.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
One time, I knew that John was going to be
on the back page of the big Oregonian newspaper related
to their experience with trying to get people out of
the gay community. And I was very nervous about it
because I had this very good friend and I wanted
(32:14):
to make sure that she understood that this was not me,
this was a daughter in law. So I invited her
to come up and go to lunch, and I remember
being really nervous about it because I didn't know how
she would respond, and I didn't want I didn't want
it to interfere with the kind of relationship we had.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
My son, Timmy saw the repercussions of my job and
platform play out.
Speaker 8 (32:41):
Two across the street that was a gay couple, and
they were super nice, very friendly to us and everything.
We were getting along great, and they found out what
my parents used to do and then they hated us
all of a sudden, and I remember thinking like, this
is really weird. Why does these two guys who live
across the street that I thought were nice, So they
were our friends mad at us all of a sudden
(33:04):
that was where the first thing clicked. Were like, oh,
more like there's something larger to the scenario that my
parents were a part of.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
As all of the present promotion and media attention was
going on, I was also trying to decide how to
spend the two point one million dollar budget I had
control over in my new job, and I had to
figure out what to do with it and what I
felt was the most important way to get the message out,
(33:35):
and we decided it would take the form of a
traveling conference, and we called the conference Love One Out.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yes, Wayne called his organization Truth Wins Out to contrast
with John's.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
So what I did is I put together the nation's
leading experts on this topic.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Experts in the sense that they were prominent voices with
qualifications who crucially agreed with John's message. The American Medical
Association and the American Psychological Association, the leading professional organizations,
condemn conversion therapy.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
So we had ex gay men and women who would
share their stories. We had experts in theology, we had
experts in child rearing. We started partnering with the National
Organization for the Research and Treatment of Homosexuality or NARTH,
and that was a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers,
(34:41):
and counselors who were approaching this more from a scientific perspective.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
NORTH still exists, but it has a new name, the
Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity. In twenty twelve,
the Southern Poverty lawcount so called it the main source
for anti gay junk science.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
And so I put together the founder of this organization,
doctor Joseph Nicolosi, who wrote a book called Reparative Therapy
of Male Homosexuality. Reparative therapy became the overarching phrase that
was used at that time, not conversion therapy, reparative therapy.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
In other words, this therapy repairs you. It repairs the
wounds that caused homosexuality.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
My Love One Out Conference launched in nineteen ninety eight,
the same year as the Truth in Love campaign. The
first was to be held in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
Wayne attended many.
Speaker 9 (35:51):
I saw John paulk speak many times, and I every
time I would be very upset when I heard it
because I knew it wasn't true. I knew John was
peddling a fairy tale about his life that was not accurate.
He was as gay as anybody else. He had not
changed one bit, and how do you prove that though
he's saying this and I'm saying this, and I think
(36:13):
the media at the time made it difficult because they
were saying he said, she said, he said, he said.
And that's why I set out to prove over and
over again that these people who said they had changed
really hadn't. Because if you don't do that, it's he said,
he said, she said, she said, And that's very damaging
(36:33):
to our community because when the media reports it like that,
parents with gay kids see this and they go, well,
why not give it a shot? Why not try? Well,
maybe because it's devastating to the child, But as long
as there is hope for change, there are people who
are going to try it. There are parents that will
enroll their children. It's done in love a lot of times,
(36:59):
but the results are tragic and very painful, and they
don't work.
Speaker 6 (37:04):
When he was on stage, how was the audience around
you reacting to his story?
Speaker 9 (37:10):
John Pauk was very good at his job, and he
could get the audience to cry on command.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
He could move them.
Speaker 9 (37:18):
He's a very good storyteller, and that's what you need
to do to succeed, because you're spinning a tail and
you have to get people invested in it. And he
was an expert at that. And so we saw the
parents holding their children and weeping as he spoke. We
saw people with their hands in the air, the evangelicals
(37:39):
reaching up to God because they believed his story. They
were seeing a miracle. They were seeing a miracle on stage,
and I saw a con man.
Speaker 10 (37:49):
That was the difference.
Speaker 9 (37:50):
But that didn't matter what I saw, mattered what they
saw because they're the ones with the children who were
going to be enrolled in these destructive, horrible ministries that
were going to wreck their lives.
Speaker 10 (38:11):
There's a level of conviction that John carried.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
This is Josh Coy. He's a good friend of mine.
In fact, we've known each other for about twenty years.
Josh came over to my place to speak with me
and Kate, So yeah, we go way back. But Josh
knew me before I knew him.
Speaker 10 (38:33):
Just a level of confidence, of competence, of conviction. If
I can alliterate that he carried, Oh and the cherry
on top of the cake, He's married to a female
and they made children together. I couldn't imagine anything else
that would seal the deal more so than just not
(38:54):
just talking about it, but then putting action to it.
And to me, that was a success story of a
lifetime hearing him, you know, talk about his colorful past
only to find God. You know, it's the it's the
classic Christian love story. You know that was just played out,
and you didn't see that often.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
What was John Michael on stage?
Speaker 6 (39:15):
Gay?
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
I hate to hear that, you know, you hate to
hear that because you want to think early straight. Yeah, yea,
but alas there you go.
Speaker 10 (39:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
The first time Josh and I actually met, we were
both in the Portland Fellowship and Exodus affiliated ministry. Prior
to that, Josh was on his own journey of trying
to change his sexuality.
Speaker 10 (39:39):
I knew John from a distance, like from his books.
I'd heard, you know, I'd seen Newsweek and in Oprah
and these different different media coverage he had had over
the years. But we were just but maybe a decade
of dissonance in terms of our stories playing out. So
I've always viewed him as ten years ahead of me
in this journey.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
For many years, Josh was involved in the organization Campus
Crusade for Christ, now known simply as CREWE.
Speaker 10 (40:06):
I was a conference host for almost a decade, and
so I would speak to thousands of college students in
the Midwest every year, and I would be a play
a pastoral role for those students, and I would also
I was a communications director for them as well. I
studied telecommunications and such and so really applied that and
felt a lot of joy and being able to have
(40:29):
a broad approach to ministry and being able to use
my skill and gift sets. Once I tapped into that,
I thought, man, this could be a functional replacement for
the desire to be gay. And so I decided to
kind of marry the ministry like a priest wood and
kind of relented the idea, Well, change is impossible because
it's not happening at least, and so I'm just going
(40:49):
to just give all my love and my energy to
this organization. And that's what I did for almost fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Josh was celibate for nearly two decades. He still longed
for change, and conferences were a big part of Josh's
work and how he found hope in the X gay world.
Speaker 10 (41:08):
I remember walking into my first Exodus conference in Wheaton, Illinois,
drove out there by myself after researching what was out
there for me, and the closest thing was in Chicago.
And I drove out there in my little Less ten
pickup and I had no idea what I was going
to get into. And I showed up in that chapel
and that was the most gay men I'd ever been
around in my entire life. I had never been around
(41:30):
another openly gay person and I walked in there. It
was like the largest gay bar in Chicago I had
ever seen. Was just I It was so comforting though,
because humor. I would not be here without humor, and
the way these men learned to joke about their struggle
(41:55):
was just so so refreshing. I was learning so many
extreme things about the struggle through the humor, because that's
what made.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
You laugh, you know, and you say gay men.
Speaker 10 (42:06):
But yeah, looking back, yeah, I mean it wasn't. It
definitely was not a room full of X gay men.
Change is possible was the big phrase Billboard's in Florida.
I remember bill Boards in Florida. Actually, before I even
engaged in this, I went down to the Alan Chambers
was the president of Exist International. We're still Facebook friends
today and I sat at his desk and I said, Alan,
(42:28):
I don't know you, you don't know me, but I'm
in town. Is this worth it? Is this possible? And
he goes yes. I said, you're telling me change is possible.
Why I start to invest in this? And he said yes.
I said, well, count me in.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Alan Chambers was the president of Exdus International for many years,
but in twenty thirteen he came out as gay. In
doing so, he issued a public apology for the harm
he and Exodus caused, saying we've been in prisoned in
a worldview that's neither honoring towards our fellow human beings
nor biblical. The young guy was simply looking for hope,
(43:08):
which John fulfilled.
Speaker 10 (43:14):
From a perspective of someone like you speaking on stage
and me sitting in the audience, metaphorically and quite literally,
I could go wow by the fact that he's on
stage speaking on behalf of Focus on the Family, on
behalf of another ministry, Portland Fellowship. He's made it. He's
it's just by association. I needed the hope, you know,
(43:34):
And so I would look at that person go and
they're making it. They're doing it just by association. I'd
never been offered more sex than when I was at
an Exodus conference.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Offered sex by other delegates, despite the fact that they
were all there to leave homosexuality behind the scenes. It
was a whole different story.
Speaker 10 (43:56):
I was loured into a hotel room by this cute
surfer boy whom I said no, two on the edge
of the bed when he says, if you want it,
it's yours, anything you want, and I said no, I said,
I told her I didn't know what to say. I
was very attracted to him, and I'm sitting on the
edge of the bed and I said, I want to win.
I've made too many right decisions and paid for this
fricking conference to make a poor choice with you now.
(44:21):
And that's the kind of mentality I had. I had
made too many right decisions, if you will moving forward
to compromise it for a single experience, right. And that
happened to me a couple of times.
Speaker 6 (44:32):
I don't know how quite how to phrase this, but
it's really interesting to me that you can be at
a conference that is telling you this thing works, that
you believe works, that you are looking for it to work,
and at the same time, right in front of your
face is evidence that it doesn't want to work.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
How do you ignore that?
Speaker 2 (44:58):
That would be our mindset Even then you're so you're
so invested in what you're doing because of your love
and devotion to Christ. It all starts there, and I
(45:19):
think that gets lost in all of this conversion therapy bullshit.
Speaker 10 (45:24):
And so going back to seeing John onstage as a
broken boy who was not pleasing to God or family
by default, I'm hungering for someone to speak with confidence
and conviction from a place of authority so that I
can simply have a little fucking hope.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
That's exactly who I wanted to be. But it wasn't
just about that. Underneath me wanting to spread my experience,
there was a truth of our movement's ultimate goal, one
that I personified in my role as the professional execus.
It all comes back to the central idea that homosexuality
is a changeable condition. Therefore, if it was changeable, it
(46:10):
was illegitimate. Homosexuality could not be a protected class because
it had mutable characteristics. It was about politics and it
was about the law. We wanted to combat pro gay legislation.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
That's next time on Atonement, The John Polk Story. Atonement
is a production of iHeart Podcasts and gold Hawk Productions
in association with Marx Media Co. For more podcasts from
iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(46:50):
wherever you get your podcasts.
This episode includes strong language.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I remember as the organ started playing the bridle march,
I looked down. It was a twenty five foot aisle.
I wanted a church with a long center aisle, and
there was canopies of white flowers over the aisle all
the way up that I had designed and created. And
so I saw her walk into the nave of the church.
(00:28):
She was on her father's arm, and she had this
absolutely beautiful white dress with a super long train and
her veil over her face. And as she started walking
down that aisle, it's like time was suspended for me,
(00:51):
and I had this flashback of my almost my entire
life that came before it, and all of the pain
and all of the hurt and all of the confusion.
And as she was walking closer, I felt like all
that was gone now. I cried all the way through
(01:16):
our vows. I just could not hold it in. So
when the ceremony ended, he said, and I'll pronounce you
man and wife, I lifted my hands up over my
head in a cheer, and I pulled her hand with me,
and I yelled out, we did it, We did it.
(01:40):
I think in retrospect, there was really a lot to that.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
This is atonement the John Polk story.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I'm John Paulk and I'm.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Kate's Holland Episode three, for Better.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Or for Worse.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Anne and I got engaged exactly four years to the
day that I arrived at Love and Action, the residential program.
I intended to take my quote steps out of homosexuality,
and just seven months after I proposed, we got married.
It was an elaborate affair. We picked out invitations, a
(02:21):
gold seal on every envelope. It was black tied with
stretched limousines, and a formal dinner. There was no alcohol,
of course, this was a conservative church, and we picked
our wedding attendants, five on each side. All the men
that stood up there with me were ex gay. Two
John Smid, my former house leader, was my best man.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Everybody was very emotional. John was very emotional because it
was like for him this potential lifelong dream of being
a normal guy, of being a married man, of having
a family. I mean, he was fulfilling a deep seated
dream in his life because he knew that he couldn't
have the other dream. So this was the best it
(03:04):
could be, and it was full of everything a wedding
can or should be. It was full of decorpes, it
was full of food, it was full of fancy clothing,
and I mean it was very, very elaborate, and I
think it was at the point that day it was
a very positive day.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
It was very magical and very much real and authentic.
This was not fake. This was not a play being
played out in front of the cameras. This was real.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
It was a royal wedding because of who John is.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
When I called my dad to tell him I was
getting married, he responded in his typical way, happy because
it was something I wanted.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
John's wedding was a great event, and I remember so
much the way it ended. It was amazing at the
reception party afterwards when he asked the people in the
audience who had been through reparative therapy to raise their
hand or stand up, and this vast number of people
(04:10):
rose from their seats, and I thought it was fantastic.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Vicky, my stepmom, was there too.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
Of course, it was very special because we knew what
the background was of John and Anne, and they were
moving forward and we had the greatest of hopes that
this had not been a mistake because who knew, you know,
and there was a lot of love there. There was
(04:38):
a lot of joy there, and I really loved being
there and being a small part of it.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
It was after we had set our vows that I
shouted out to all our friends and family those three
crucial words, We did it. There were a lot of
meanings that went along with that, like was this an
achievement considering why I went to love in action in
(05:09):
the four years previous? Yet it was an achievement. This
was a goal that you had and you won the
prize and was an achievement. It sounds horrible looking back
at that because it was like it would be saying
I'm using her to feel better about myself. That was
(05:34):
not anywhere in my thinking in any way. My feelings
actually were for her, were toward her, and I was
in love with this woman. It felt genuine. I did
love her, but was I really in love with her?
(05:58):
I was going in the path I believed where God
wanted me to go. So it's not one thing. It's
a culmination of many layers of things working together in
the direction that someone leaving homosexuality this path that we
(06:18):
would take, and I wanted to be her husband and
I wanted her to be my wife, and I wanted
that picturesque, stereotypical nineteen fifties life that had eluded me
all of my life. On the one hand, we were
your typical newly married couple. Of course, we'd never lived
(06:40):
together or been intimate together, as is the Christian way,
so we were finding our feet. We fought like cats
and dogs, two headstrong people butting heads. But on the
other hand, we were a story not just for our
church to celebrate, but one that could spread across the world,
a success and supposed proof that conversion therapy, or reparative
(07:05):
therapy as it's also sometimes known, works, And we had
no idea what we were in for. I think it's
fair to say that Anne and I became a brand,
a couple with a story to tell and the inclination
to tell it publicly. The first TV program we went
on started with a phone call with the producers. They
(07:27):
were looking for married couples where someone had been gay
and quote unquote changed, And so we went on the
first talk show and it was a whot. We were
telling our story and young, never having done something like
(07:48):
this before. From that point on, the phone kept ringing.
It was mainly local attention in Christian media. But just
a year after our wedding it went to the next level. Actually,
in nineteen ninety three, we ended up sitting on the
stage of the Oprah Winfrey Show. As you can imagine,
(08:09):
Oprah Winfrey was the apex of everything. And so I
remember we flew to Chicago. The whole night before, I
did not sleep a wink. Imagine sitting on stage in
that famous studio. There are hot lights beating down on you,
cameras pointing at you from every angle, a live audience,
(08:32):
and of course the woman herself. My goodness, to be
on Oprah Winfrey. That's almost worldwide exposure.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I've watched that tape from the Oprah Show and she
asked John, and I quote, so since you have left
this lifestyle, you have never had the desire to have
sex with another man.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And all of a sudden, I got scared and nervous.
I'd never been asked that question, and I said, no,
not anymore.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
John's exact answer was, over a period of time, the
desire to have sex with men started to go away.
It started to diminish because I was feeling more whole
and complete in who I was, and.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
The audience started to giggle and chatter as though that's
not believable. This statement on Oprah set the stage in
some ways how I would communicate this topic with audiences
and answered the question completely honestly, and she said, I
(09:44):
look at homosexuality in my life is something that every
once in a while lands on my shoulder and I
just flick it off like a bug. I love that answer.
I was mixed with fear. I did not want to
disparage our movement. I didn't want people to think it
(10:07):
doesn't work. And there's so much better way as I
could have answered that question. Because of course this wasn't
obliterated from my psyche. It was there even though I
did not engage in any homosexual behaviors. But to say
I don't struggle with it anymore, it wasn't entirely truthful.
(10:30):
I don't want to say I lied. It came out
as a lie, if you want to split the hairs.
At the time, I was mixed with fear. I didn't
know how to appropriately answer that question to where people
could understand it that you live in this balance of
maybe you struggle with something, but it's not your identity
(10:54):
or the way you live anymore. But that just haunted
me for years. The way I had answered that question,
I didn't want to disparage our movement.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I asked john stepmom, Vicki, and dad Norman about seeing
John in the media.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
It was an interesting time for me watching him and them,
because Anne was involved in that too, take their story
to the public. They did a good job of doing that.
I was a little uncomfortable because of the content of
the story, but that was a reflection of how I
(11:35):
felt about the whole reparative therapy thing.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I think I became uncomfortable about John's position and repairtive
therapy on the Oprah Show when there was a young
man on there, a gay man who had just almost
violently opposed to what John was doing, saying how John
had hurt people had changed their lives for the worse.
(12:01):
And that got me to thinking a little differently about things.
Speaker 6 (12:04):
Did you express that to John?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I don't know that I did, but I was deep
in the well of conversion therapy and x gay life.
I wanted to tell people my story.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
During those years. John wanted to be in the limelight,
he wanted to be outfront. I never did.
Speaker 7 (12:24):
I was placed there, and I took the opportunity to
give my message or tis to pour myself into whatever
we were doing. But John pursued those options and I
never pursued them like he pursued Oprah Winfrey. He pursued
these connections, so he was much more of a promoter,
(12:45):
and I.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Think he liked it. I think he liked being outfront.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And my story would continue to grow. Not long after
our wedding, Anne and I moved to Portland to be
closer to our families, and the conversation about babies began.
(13:09):
It wasn't a smooth road for us, and we suffered
multiple miscarriages, but with the help from a fertility specialist,
it finally happened for us. In nineteen ninety six, our
first son, Timothy or Timmy as I've always called him,
was born via C section. It was a dream come
(13:30):
true and I will never forget. I was sitting they
have her draped off like around her chest area, and
I was sitting in a stool next to her head,
stroking her hair and talking to her. And I remember
when we heard that first cry and we just started sobbing.
(13:52):
We were so excited and blessed, and I got to
cut his umbilical cord and then put him in my arms,
and I brought him over and sat him next to Anne,
where Timmy's face was right next to hers, and it
was absolutely just indescribable.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
How did becoming a father change you?
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I had had so many versions of myself and all
these different identities to me, and now I was a father,
and that is the label I loved the best. That
just felt so congruent with who I was.
Speaker 7 (14:38):
How you doing good?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Me?
Speaker 5 (14:41):
I know?
Speaker 8 (14:46):
I would describe my dad as a little larger than life.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
This is Timmy.
Speaker 8 (14:51):
He's funny, he's friendly, he wants to enjoy life. He's
very warm and comforting. If I really need help on
something I'm not sure how I feel about it, usually
I can go to him. Probably looked up to my
dad the most out of anybody.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
I always said, this picture of you, mate, you looked
like a little child movie star.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (15:17):
I feel like I'm about to start tap dancing in
this photo.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
We need the tie. Didn't she look cute?
Speaker 8 (15:24):
Oh yeah? It's all down hill from there.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Do you remember this?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Ann and I would go on to have three boys together,
and the house was well, the sort of chaos you'd
expect with a gaggle of little boys running amok.
Speaker 8 (15:38):
When I was a little kid, my dad had all
of these beautiful, like ancient Greek looking statues of like angels,
like the statue David type of style. You had like
six of these things all around the house, and we
would somehow find a way to kick a tennis ball
thirty feet in the air, slap the corner. I would
(15:59):
slap onto the ground and shattered into a million pieces,
and then we'd be panicking at home, like how do
we glue this together before Dad gets home? And we
broke every single one of those statues. I think by
the time I was ten.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Timmy describes him and his brothers as like having puppies
in the house. I completely agree, and despite their destructive nature,
they're the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Speaker 8 (16:26):
I feel extremely wanted, and it's definitely instilled a confidence
and a level of support as an adult too. So
I wouldn't describe me or any of my brothers as
being people who have like Mommy or Daddy issues. I
think we all feel very confident in our abilities and
confident in what we don't know, too. Is very important.
(16:48):
A solid family foundation of love too.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Anne and I were always open with Timmy about our
stories and how we got together.
Speaker 8 (16:57):
My parents, whether they agreed or just agreed with people,
always wanted to focus on like God loves everybody, so
and like growing up in a very Christian worldview, to
emphasize like, even for people that we disagree with on anything,
just remember God loves them too, and you should love
that person as well. And even my parents being focused
(17:18):
on what a lot of people with views even rightly
view as being anti gay and lesbian. They always tried
to infer on us that, like they're just they're people,
no matter what if you disagree with them, still love them.
So when I was a kid, we did not believe
that you were born gay, lesbian. It's something that occurred
(17:40):
to you as an adult. I don't know, I'm no expert.
I don't really you know my parents that was my
parents thing to be focused on all that. So I'm like,
I've got gay friends, I've got lesbian friends, got buy
and Trent, like whatever. People are cool.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Back in the late nineties, money was flowing far asked
into the ex gay movement. Bill Clinton was in his
second term and there was a rise in both liberalism
and the backlash against it from both the Republican Party
and the evangelical right. You were much more likely to
see LGBTQ plus people on TV. George Michael came out
(18:19):
in nineteen ninety eight, the same year Will and Grace launched,
and throughout the decade, mega churches were expanding rapidly.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Timmy was only a year old when I started working
with Exodus International, the umbrella organization I previously shared an
office with when carpooling with Ann. And then one day
I got a call from a guy who said he
was from a different group, one called Focus on the Family.
The man on the phone said they had been awarded
a two point one million dollar grant to start a
(18:51):
division at Focus on the Family dealing with homosexuality and gender.
We would like to see if you're interested in I'm
reviewing for this position.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Focus on the Family is an evangelical parachurch. It's still
going today. According to its own website, its outreach includes broadcasts, podcasts, films, websites, blogs,
and more, and they quote feature information, guidance, and practical
insights on everything from adoption to marriage, to media discernment
(19:25):
to pastoral concerns. Former Vice President Mike Pence attended their
events and said that the Trump administration supports them. And
it was started back in nineteen seventy seven by an
evangelical Christian man called James Dobson.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
He was a child psychologist at UCLA Medical Center and
he had written numerous numerous books on the raising of children.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
James Dobson died in August twenty twenty five, aged eighty nine.
It was an influential voice in American evangelical circles and
the religious right until the end, uncompromisingly anti LGBTQ, plus,
anti abortion, and anti feminist. Back when John received the call,
(20:15):
Focus on the Family had eight hundred staff members based
in Colorado Springs.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
They had some ninety individual ministries within Focus on the Family,
and so it was so highly respected to be offered
a job. Anne and I kind of jumped at that
and we flew to Colorado. Timmy and Tow and I
(20:46):
had nine separate interviews in one day and was next
to me. They were interviewing us together as a couple,
even though the job was for me. Why Why Because
Anne and I came as a set. You know, our
(21:07):
ministry was a set. Our story was as a married
couple who had changed and got married and had a baby.
So when you got me, in essence, you got her
too as well. Even though I would be heading this
division and she was staying home taking care of Timmy
(21:27):
and running our household, I ended up being hired, and
so what that meant was we had to pack up
and leave Portland and move to Colorado Springs. I went
into this organization and I had no idea really what
I was walking into. I really didn't.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
The job was as head of the Homosexuality and Gender division.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
This was a big fucking deal. One of the first
things that doctor Dobson wanted us to do was tell
our story to the entire staff, and as soon as
we did that, people had really never heard a story
(22:17):
like this before. The next thing that happened he said,
I want a book written by you two. We are
going to publicize you and publish you. And the next
five years became a very exciting, scary, heady, trailblazing period
(22:42):
of our life, one that would throw me further into
the spotlight and into the crosshairs of the community I
now call home.
Speaker 9 (23:00):
Pulk was my nemesis.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
This is Wayne Besson. He's an author, an activist, and
the executive director of Truth Wins Out, an organization devoted
to exposing conversion therapy.
Speaker 9 (23:13):
He is someone who I remember from my first moments
before I was an LGBTQ activist. I was trying to
come out and I saw him in anti gay videos
and he was telling a story and making all LGBTQ
people seem to be monsters. They know sex fiends. I
was a freshman in college when I saw it, and
(23:37):
I didn't believe him for a second, but I here
is some kind of visceral reaction to John from the
very moment I saw him, And it's so fascinating that
our paths eventually crossed, because this was someone who was
a roadblock to my own coming out, because of the
misinformation that was spread in this myth that was believed
(24:00):
by millions of people in the United States and more worldwide.
So I knew in order to live a rich and
fulfilling life, one where I was equal under the law
and could be happy and fulfilled, I needed to defeat
the message that John Pollock was peddling.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
With my book out, more and more people were taking
notice and asking me about leaving homosexuality. I loved speaking
about this topic. I felt I had a lot to
offer my life as an example, but more than just
my life, my understanding of the nature of sexuality in general,
be it heterosexual or homosexual. And I was looked upon
(24:43):
as an expert in this topic. There's a privilege in
being seen as heterosexual too.
Speaker 9 (24:50):
He's like, you know, a car wreck, and if people
can't keep their eyes off him, he evokes a reaction
he did with me.
Speaker 10 (24:57):
I hated him.
Speaker 9 (24:58):
I hated John Paul because he was very good at
what he did.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
In nineteen ninety eight, a coalition of quote pro family
organizations in Florida decided to take everything up agear. They
launched the Truth in Love Campaign. It aimed to promote
conversion therapy and to influence political legislation. The campaign reduced
the stories of x gay men and ex lesbian women
(25:26):
to illustrate it all to show their so called proof.
Speaker 9 (25:31):
The Truth in Love campaign was like a nuclear bomb
for the LGBTQ community.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
In nineteen ninety eight, Wayne was working for the Human
Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ plus advocacy group.
Speaker 9 (25:43):
We were making incredible progress at that time, and the
religious right knew this we were winning, especially with the
younger generation, and they had to go all the way
into clear war, and in fact they called the n
nineteen ninety eight Truth and Love campaign, the Normandy Landing
and the cultural wars. They thought they were going to
(26:06):
run us back into the closet, and they spent enough
money to back up what they were doing.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
It's reported that in nineteen ninety eight, Christian right groups
spent six hundred thousand dollars on advertising that promoted conversion therapy.
That's equivalent to nearly one point two million dollars today,
and of course paid promotion also led to journalists picking
it up organically.
Speaker 9 (26:33):
We were scared over this because this was a very
powerful message back by big organizations with a lot of
money and who had access to a lot of media.
So they were telling their story to tens of millions
of people in our country and of course internationally. So
we had to have response to this because we had
(26:54):
fought so hard for our gains and this was a
real threat to roll back our rights at a time
when we were beginning to win.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
So this campaign took the form of full page ads
in nearly every large newspaper around the country, from the
Atlanta Journal Constitution to the Dallas Morning News to USA
Today to the Washington Post, to the Chicago Newspapers and
(27:24):
New York New York Times, Los Angeles Times, on and on,
and Anne and I and several other ex gays were
featured in these full page ads. And boy, if you
thought the media storm was big before then, during the
year of nineteen ninety eight, I think I had done
(27:52):
over nine hundred interviews.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Way and again.
Speaker 9 (28:01):
Here I am, in my capacity, trying to educate people
that no, you can't just pray away the gay. It's
how we were born, it's who we are. And then
you had him going on there and saying, oh, yeah,
I found Jesus in a disco ball, and therefore I'm
straight now and I have a wife in it, kids
and those who want to believe that message are susceptible
to it.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
During this time, I got a phone call from Newsweek
and they said, we're interested in having you be on
the cover of Newsweek magazine. So it was just one
thing after the other, And I remember the photographer was
(28:43):
sent to us to photograph us in various poses together
around our house and with Timmy and headline read gay
for life, question mark the uproar over gay convert.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
On that cover, John's wearing a brown suit and a
gray shirt, smiling straight down the lens. His arm is
wrapped tightly around Ann's shoulders. On the inside pages, there's
a picture of John as Candy, his drag persona. In
another edition, there's a photo of John and Anne with
gardening tools in their hands. It's reminiscent of Grant Wood's
(29:21):
famous painting American Gothic, where the husband and wife stand
in front of their house and he holds a pitchfork.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
That meant during that week we would be in the
grocery store and there we would find ourselves in the
magazine rack, staring back. Of course, I enjoyed this. I
found validation in the attention too.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Boy, when you're.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
On the cover of Newsweek magazine, doors just continue to
open and open and open. I started traveling the country
more and more. I got paid to do this. I
did book signings and did books sign We made money
off the books that we sold. Our lifestyle was very nice,
(30:07):
it was intoxicating.
Speaker 9 (30:09):
The community was in a precarious situation at that time.
We did not have our rights. You still had a
raging HIV epidemics, so people were dying, and we had
to fight the religious right tooth and now for even
things like hospital visitation rights. And into this vicious brawl,
(30:30):
we had the religious right trying to bring us down
by putting up and uplifting people like John Paul to
invalidate our existence. They were saying, not only you don't
need equal rights because you're gay, they exploited AIDS and said, well,
you God hates you and you're going to die if
you have in this engage in this quote lifestyle, and
(30:53):
John helped forward that message with them, and it was
devastating and the community really felt it. When John was
speaking out against us. Most people didn't know anybody gay, lesbian, bisexual,
or transgender. All they knew were stereotypes, jokes about gay people,
(31:16):
nasty jokes, and so that made it very difficult to educate.
When you had people who were disseminating disinformation and betraying
us as evil. That hurt me, That hurt everybody else
in our community because we do encounter these people at
work on the street who would express these ignorance about
(31:38):
who we were because they well, we heard this from
this other guy change, so why can't you?
Speaker 2 (31:42):
As well as the wider community. The media attention both
and and I court had impacted those around us, people
like my stepmom VICKI.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
One time, I knew that John was going to be
on the back page of the big Oregonian newspaper related
to their experience with trying to get people out of
the gay community. And I was very nervous about it
because I had this very good friend and I wanted
(32:14):
to make sure that she understood that this was not me,
this was a daughter in law. So I invited her
to come up and go to lunch, and I remember
being really nervous about it because I didn't know how
she would respond, and I didn't want I didn't want
it to interfere with the kind of relationship we had.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
My son, Timmy saw the repercussions of my job and
platform play out.
Speaker 8 (32:41):
Two across the street that was a gay couple, and
they were super nice, very friendly to us and everything.
We were getting along great, and they found out what
my parents used to do and then they hated us
all of a sudden, and I remember thinking like, this
is really weird. Why does these two guys who live
across the street that I thought were nice, So they
were our friends mad at us all of a sudden
(33:04):
that was where the first thing clicked. Were like, oh,
more like there's something larger to the scenario that my
parents were a part of.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
As all of the present promotion and media attention was
going on, I was also trying to decide how to
spend the two point one million dollar budget I had
control over in my new job, and I had to
figure out what to do with it and what I
felt was the most important way to get the message out,
(33:35):
and we decided it would take the form of a
traveling conference, and we called the conference Love One Out.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yes, Wayne called his organization Truth Wins Out to contrast
with John's.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
So what I did is I put together the nation's
leading experts on this topic.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Experts in the sense that they were prominent voices with
qualifications who crucially agreed with John's message. The American Medical
Association and the American Psychological Association, the leading professional organizations,
condemn conversion therapy.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
So we had ex gay men and women who would
share their stories. We had experts in theology, we had
experts in child rearing. We started partnering with the National
Organization for the Research and Treatment of Homosexuality or NARTH,
and that was a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers,
(34:41):
and counselors who were approaching this more from a scientific perspective.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
NORTH still exists, but it has a new name, the
Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity. In twenty twelve,
the Southern Poverty lawcount so called it the main source
for anti gay junk science.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
And so I put together the founder of this organization,
doctor Joseph Nicolosi, who wrote a book called Reparative Therapy
of Male Homosexuality. Reparative therapy became the overarching phrase that
was used at that time, not conversion therapy, reparative therapy.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
In other words, this therapy repairs you. It repairs the
wounds that caused homosexuality.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
My Love One Out Conference launched in nineteen ninety eight,
the same year as the Truth in Love campaign. The
first was to be held in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
Wayne attended many.
Speaker 9 (35:51):
I saw John paulk speak many times, and I every
time I would be very upset when I heard it
because I knew it wasn't true. I knew John was
peddling a fairy tale about his life that was not accurate.
He was as gay as anybody else. He had not
changed one bit, and how do you prove that though
he's saying this and I'm saying this, and I think
(36:13):
the media at the time made it difficult because they
were saying he said, she said, he said, he said.
And that's why I set out to prove over and
over again that these people who said they had changed
really hadn't. Because if you don't do that, it's he said,
he said, she said, she said, And that's very damaging
(36:33):
to our community because when the media reports it like that,
parents with gay kids see this and they go, well,
why not give it a shot? Why not try? Well,
maybe because it's devastating to the child, But as long
as there is hope for change, there are people who
are going to try it. There are parents that will
enroll their children. It's done in love a lot of times,
(36:59):
but the results are tragic and very painful, and they
don't work.
Speaker 6 (37:04):
When he was on stage, how was the audience around
you reacting to his story?
Speaker 9 (37:10):
John Pauk was very good at his job, and he
could get the audience to cry on command.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
He could move them.
Speaker 9 (37:18):
He's a very good storyteller, and that's what you need
to do to succeed, because you're spinning a tail and
you have to get people invested in it. And he
was an expert at that. And so we saw the
parents holding their children and weeping as he spoke. We
saw people with their hands in the air, the evangelicals
(37:39):
reaching up to God because they believed his story. They
were seeing a miracle. They were seeing a miracle on stage,
and I saw a con man.
Speaker 10 (37:49):
That was the difference.
Speaker 9 (37:50):
But that didn't matter what I saw, mattered what they
saw because they're the ones with the children who were
going to be enrolled in these destructive, horrible ministries that
were going to wreck their lives.
Speaker 10 (38:11):
There's a level of conviction that John carried.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
This is Josh Coy. He's a good friend of mine.
In fact, we've known each other for about twenty years.
Josh came over to my place to speak with me
and Kate, So yeah, we go way back. But Josh
knew me before I knew him.
Speaker 10 (38:33):
Just a level of confidence, of competence, of conviction. If
I can alliterate that he carried, Oh and the cherry
on top of the cake, He's married to a female
and they made children together. I couldn't imagine anything else
that would seal the deal more so than just not
(38:54):
just talking about it, but then putting action to it.
And to me, that was a success story of a
lifetime hearing him, you know, talk about his colorful past
only to find God. You know, it's the it's the
classic Christian love story. You know that was just played out,
and you didn't see that often.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
What was John Michael on stage?
Speaker 6 (39:15):
Gay?
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
I hate to hear that, you know, you hate to
hear that because you want to think early straight. Yeah, yea,
but alas there you go.
Speaker 10 (39:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
The first time Josh and I actually met, we were
both in the Portland Fellowship and Exodus affiliated ministry. Prior
to that, Josh was on his own journey of trying
to change his sexuality.
Speaker 10 (39:39):
I knew John from a distance, like from his books.
I'd heard, you know, I'd seen Newsweek and in Oprah
and these different different media coverage he had had over
the years. But we were just but maybe a decade
of dissonance in terms of our stories playing out. So
I've always viewed him as ten years ahead of me
in this journey.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
For many years, Josh was involved in the organization Campus
Crusade for Christ, now known simply as CREWE.
Speaker 10 (40:06):
I was a conference host for almost a decade, and
so I would speak to thousands of college students in
the Midwest every year, and I would be a play
a pastoral role for those students, and I would also
I was a communications director for them as well. I
studied telecommunications and such and so really applied that and
felt a lot of joy and being able to have
(40:29):
a broad approach to ministry and being able to use
my skill and gift sets. Once I tapped into that,
I thought, man, this could be a functional replacement for
the desire to be gay. And so I decided to
kind of marry the ministry like a priest wood and
kind of relented the idea, Well, change is impossible because
it's not happening at least, and so I'm just going
(40:49):
to just give all my love and my energy to
this organization. And that's what I did for almost fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Josh was celibate for nearly two decades. He still longed
for change, and conferences were a big part of Josh's
work and how he found hope in the X gay world.
Speaker 10 (41:08):
I remember walking into my first Exodus conference in Wheaton, Illinois,
drove out there by myself after researching what was out
there for me, and the closest thing was in Chicago.
And I drove out there in my little Less ten
pickup and I had no idea what I was going
to get into. And I showed up in that chapel
and that was the most gay men I'd ever been
around in my entire life. I had never been around
(41:30):
another openly gay person and I walked in there. It
was like the largest gay bar in Chicago I had
ever seen. Was just I It was so comforting though,
because humor. I would not be here without humor, and
the way these men learned to joke about their struggle
(41:55):
was just so so refreshing. I was learning so many
extreme things about the struggle through the humor, because that's
what made.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
You laugh, you know, and you say gay men.
Speaker 10 (42:06):
But yeah, looking back, yeah, I mean it wasn't. It
definitely was not a room full of X gay men.
Change is possible was the big phrase Billboard's in Florida.
I remember bill Boards in Florida. Actually, before I even
engaged in this, I went down to the Alan Chambers
was the president of Exist International. We're still Facebook friends
today and I sat at his desk and I said, Alan,
(42:28):
I don't know you, you don't know me, but I'm
in town. Is this worth it? Is this possible? And
he goes yes. I said, you're telling me change is possible.
Why I start to invest in this? And he said yes.
I said, well, count me in.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Alan Chambers was the president of Exdus International for many years,
but in twenty thirteen he came out as gay. In
doing so, he issued a public apology for the harm
he and Exodus caused, saying we've been in prisoned in
a worldview that's neither honoring towards our fellow human beings
nor biblical. The young guy was simply looking for hope,
(43:08):
which John fulfilled.
Speaker 10 (43:14):
From a perspective of someone like you speaking on stage
and me sitting in the audience, metaphorically and quite literally,
I could go wow by the fact that he's on
stage speaking on behalf of Focus on the Family, on
behalf of another ministry, Portland Fellowship. He's made it. He's
it's just by association. I needed the hope, you know,
(43:34):
And so I would look at that person go and
they're making it. They're doing it just by association. I'd
never been offered more sex than when I was at
an Exodus conference.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Offered sex by other delegates, despite the fact that they
were all there to leave homosexuality behind the scenes. It
was a whole different story.
Speaker 10 (43:56):
I was loured into a hotel room by this cute
surfer boy whom I said no, two on the edge
of the bed when he says, if you want it,
it's yours, anything you want, and I said no, I said,
I told her I didn't know what to say. I
was very attracted to him, and I'm sitting on the
edge of the bed and I said, I want to win.
I've made too many right decisions and paid for this
fricking conference to make a poor choice with you now.
(44:21):
And that's the kind of mentality I had. I had
made too many right decisions, if you will moving forward
to compromise it for a single experience, right. And that
happened to me a couple of times.
Speaker 6 (44:32):
I don't know how quite how to phrase this, but
it's really interesting to me that you can be at
a conference that is telling you this thing works, that
you believe works, that you are looking for it to work,
and at the same time, right in front of your
face is evidence that it doesn't want to work.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
How do you ignore that?
Speaker 2 (44:58):
That would be our mindset Even then you're so you're
so invested in what you're doing because of your love
and devotion to Christ. It all starts there, and I
(45:19):
think that gets lost in all of this conversion therapy bullshit.
Speaker 10 (45:24):
And so going back to seeing John onstage as a
broken boy who was not pleasing to God or family
by default, I'm hungering for someone to speak with confidence
and conviction from a place of authority so that I
can simply have a little fucking hope.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
That's exactly who I wanted to be. But it wasn't
just about that. Underneath me wanting to spread my experience,
there was a truth of our movement's ultimate goal, one
that I personified in my role as the professional execus.
It all comes back to the central idea that homosexuality
is a changeable condition. Therefore, if it was changeable, it
(46:10):
was illegitimate. Homosexuality could not be a protected class because
it had mutable characteristics. It was about politics and it
was about the law. We wanted to combat pro gay legislation.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
That's next time on Atonement, The John Polk Story. Atonement
is a production of iHeart Podcasts and gold Hawk Productions
in association with Marx Media Co. For more podcasts from
iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(46:50):
wherever you get your podcasts.
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