February 3, 2026 • 50 mins
John looks back at the spiritual wreckage the ex-gay movement leaves behind - and the lives it destroys.
Publicly, he’s its polished poster boy. But behind the public halo, he’s drowning.
—
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 references to suicide from the start and
uses historical language about it too. There's strong language and
discussions of disordered eating.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I did not realize during the years that I was
in this movement I was causing harm to anyone. I
literally and honestly had no idea that that was the result.
(00:36):
By nineteen ninety eight, I'd spend a decade in the
X gay movement. I was living as an ex gay man,
making my living off my story, my family's story, and
preaching about how conversion therapy works. And while I can
say I did not realize I was harming anyone, the
(00:57):
evidence of the devastation was right in front of me.
If only I'd looked. Here is a picture of the
year I came to love and action. There I am
looking very cute, very George Michael.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Right there, you're PALTI.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, patting. And these were guys that I was in
their program with. And this man next to me committed
suicide because he came from a very very strict evangelical
family and he felt he could never live up to
their expectations of him, and he put a gun in
(01:40):
his mouth because he couldn't change. This is atonement. The
John Paulk Story. I'm John Paulk and I'm Kate Holland.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
This is episode four The Gospel according to John.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
When I took the job at Focus on the Family,
Anne and I, along with baby Timmy, moved to Colorado Springs.
The red carpet was rolled out for us and we
were living in a community of like minded people. Our
social lives revolved around my new role too, and I
was working at the heart of it all in the
public policy division of Focus. I didn't even know what
(02:30):
public policy was. I was head of the Homosexuality and
Gender division. I launched my conference Love One Out, I
wrote books, I did interviews, all for one aim to
educate a primarily conservative Christian audience about the origins of
(02:54):
homosexuality from our perspective, where it comes from, what the
Bible says, and ultimately to influence public policy. That was
the crux of it. It went way beyond individuals or
single families. It was about combating the so called pro
(03:14):
game movement.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
The religious right does a lot of lobbying across the
United States, much of it is in public. At one stage,
James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, had
a radio show that was reportedly heard daily by more
than two hundred and twenty million people in one hundred
and sixty four countries. But other policy influencing happens behind
(03:40):
closed doors.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
There was a private, hidden group called the DC Group,
as in Washington, d C. This was a group of
representatives from the major conservative ministries of the day that
met once a month in Washington, D C. And the
(04:03):
whole goal of this group was to plot and strategize
how to topple homosexuality. This was mostly a public policy
group dealing with political issues and legislatures, etc. Etc. And
they thought they had found the solution, and that was
(04:25):
used the story of former gay men and former gay
women to illustrate the story that change was possible. So
I wasn't only to speak to the media and to
conference guests. Is a matter of fact. One of the
first things that Anne and I did is they had
us travel to the state of Hawaii. Timmy was still
(04:47):
in a bascinet, so we would carry him around and
we would walk through the halls of the Hawaii state
capital and Honolulu PLoP our baby on the desk of
some states telling them why homosexuals did not deserve equal
protection under the law. I was upon in that chess game.
(05:10):
My story was used to further a bigger agenda against
gay rights. My whole livelihood, our reputation, our public persona,
our message was solely based on the fact that Anne
(05:34):
and I were the embodiment of change. I was John,
the professional ex gay.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
The way I see this, it's you change hearts, you
change minds, then you change laws.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
When it comes to the public policy side of my position,
I was never ever comfortable with that role. Frankly, it
held no interest to me. I did everything I could
to steer myself away from that, and it was as
(06:16):
though I had my agenda and they had their agenda
for me.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
In November nineteen ninety eight, Hawaiian voters passed a constitutional amendment.
It gave the state to the power to define marriage
as between a man and a woman, effectively banning same
sex marriage until twenty thirteen. This advocacy from pro conversion
therapy groups is very powerful and they had success whilst
(06:42):
John was a part of it. Casey Pick from the
Trevor Project says these groups are continuing to influence legislation today.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
This is a practice existing on the fringes that is
targeting particular communities and that does its best getting by
in the shadows. But the forces behind it have been
very focused for a very long time. So the legal groups,
(07:13):
the advocacy groups that are encouraging conversion therapy, that are
promoting the idea, especially today, that gender identity can be
controlled and changed, they are all part of a coherent
movement that is interconnected and that is very overt about
(07:34):
its agenda. So you are seeing powerful group of funders
and advocacy organizations and communications teams and lawyers that are
deeply invested in the idea that sexual orientation and gender
identity can be changed. If it's something that can be changed,
(07:57):
then why protect you from discrimination at your job, why
allow you to marry the person of your choice. So,
in some ways, conversion therapy, while it's an issue that
hasn't been at the forefront of everybody's mind, especially now
when we're talking about things like participating in sports, access
(08:19):
to bathrooms, healthcare, marriage, military service, all these big things.
The idea that you can just change somebody's sexual orientation
or gender identity and that this is something that should
be changed underlies.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
All of that.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I think This also maps onto broader goals of conservatism
that affect us all. LGBTQ plus or not. These ideas
impact the role of women in society. There's a fundamental
underpinning to much of it that a woman's role is
in the home, rearing children, and it's about money and power.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Too, and so really there there are powerful groups that
are pushing those because it's the foundation of everything else
they do to silence and suppress LGBTQ people.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
When I was telling my story of how I became
an ex gay, I didn't think that I was living
a double life, but there was definitely a split in
my emotions. Externally, I was on top of the world.
I was respected a celebrity in the Christian sphere. But internally, well,
that was a slightly different story. I remember Anne saying
(09:36):
to me once, just be honest with me, Just be
honest with me about your struggle or struggles. And by
this point my struggles were creeping up. We'd been married
for about six years. They weren't on the outside, but
(09:57):
the way they started manifesting was in and secretive pornography use,
and well, you know, I had starting watching pornography at
the age of fourteen in junior high at my stepdad's
sixteen millimeter videos. So it was a very difficult struggle
(10:18):
for me to try and shake, and as a Christian
and now a national Christian leader, Oh my lord, can
you imagine if people found out I watched pornography from
time to time. At the same time, my drinking started
to increase. The sobriety I'd found in AA when I
(10:43):
was previously out was gone. When I was representing Focus
on the Family, of course, there was no alcohol use permitted,
but as I began traveling more, speaking at churches hosting
Love One Out, I'll never forget that day that I
was told sixty minutes wanted to interview me. I'm like, good, Lord,
(11:09):
were there, And I remember traveling to Manhattan and getting
off out of the car limousine, of course, and sitting
across from Leslie's stall being interviewed by sixty minutes. This
had become my life. So the idea of being utterly
(11:30):
honest and forthright was not something I felt safe doing
because there was no thought to me I would ever
revert back to being homosexual. That was not my desire
in any way, but it increasingly became something that I
(11:55):
was having to push down. That is the best way
to describe. It's like I put my hands one on
top of each other in front of my sternum and push, push,
push it down into my abdomen, into my soul area.
(12:15):
I had to push it down.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
As John's public image rose, his appearance changed too, something
that didn't go unnoticed by Joseph Nicolosi from nath the
psychologist and one of the leaders of the movement, whom
John often shared the stage with.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
I began to gain weight, and one day doctor Nicolosi
pulled me aside we were traveling. He said, I'm concerned
about your weight gain, and I thought, why is this
any of your concern? He said, if you gain weight
(12:54):
and become overweight, people will think you're compensating. I knew
exactly what he meant. In other words, I'm eating my feelings.
I'm burying my homosexual struggle in food and eating and
overeating is a very tangible signal that something's wrong. For
(13:18):
the movement, it was about protecting the image, but I
felt that there was a reason to gain weight. If
I got morbidly obese, he would keep men away from
me because I would no longer be attractive, and that worked.
It was false. It wasn't solving anything, but it took
(13:42):
care of the temporal issue of keeping men away from me.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
John's friend Josh struggled too, but in the opposite direction.
He showed us a picture of him at a conference.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
That's me and the red I gotten skinny. I'd lost
one hundred and fifty pounds. Because if I couldn't control
my sexuality, I was to control my weight. So I
began to focus on and I called my nine hundred
calorie a day diet a fast to remind myself that
what I had struggled with in a way to do
something about it. Looking back, my nutrition says that sounds
(14:17):
like an eating disorder.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
And this was.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Literally last year. She said this. I thought, oh, I
think you might be right. Yeah. In those conferences, man,
we were clinging to each other for hope, like we
were just each other's life rafts. Man. I had a
friend in every state and some in Canada even that
I would network with to support. When we'd fly to
each other, we'd call each other, how are you doing?
(14:38):
It was just I needed that system to stay afloat.
Living in rural Ohio. You know what I mean, there's
nobody to look to for support.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
But it wasn't just food that Josh was controlling.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
I'd never let my family ask if I was happy.
I didn't think that was a fair question as a
person who struggled with same sex attraction. My mom asked
me that one day, are you happy? I said, Mom,
please don't ever ask me that questioned again. I'd be
doing fifty six other things right now if I wanted
to be happy. So I never thought that was a
fair question for somebody to ask me. But outside of
the church, and this is why I can hear the
(15:11):
critics saying, now, well, he's given himself over. Of course
he's happy. Of course he's feeling quote unquote free. I
would say the least shame I've ever felt, and the
most free I've ever felt, is being an openly gay
man who's accepting his gay identity. I felt sometimes more shame,
I know I did in the context of the church
than I do outside of the church.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And of course they could explain that. Of course, say
you could explain that you know your feelings are never legitimate,
because they'll say, well, your feelings are as fallen as
the rest of you. Your feelings are sinful. Yeah, your
desires are sinful, but your feelings are too. There is
no legitimacy in anything we say.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
It was almost like you were being gas lit by
the church. Oh you're feeling this way, you shouldn't be,
or you should feel this way or think this way.
There was always a response or an explanation for the
way that you should go, you know, or who you
should be. There was always an interruption, there was always
a response. I don't know. It was just frustrating, felt circular.
(16:14):
The arguments, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
It's a catch twenty two. You're happy now you're out
as gay. Well, that's because you've fallen too sin You
were unhappy trying to be x gay. You weren't trying
hard enough.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Well, there is safety in giving pet answers, and I
found in my own journey as an ex gay leader,
pet answers formulaic answers were part of my repertoire. Oh
you think you might be gay, Come into my office,
(16:49):
sit down, and in an hour I can figure out
if you are or if you are not, and if
you are, exactly why you are.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Josh's path to living as an openly gay ma'am was
not one he thought he would ever journey down.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
I was going to be a professional Christian, you know,
just progressing till the day I died. That's what was
my trajectory. I really did.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
While Josh and I have talked about our shared experiences
many times throughout our friendship, sitting with him in my
apartment recording, this was surprising. He shared stories we'd never discussed.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Early on in my experience with campus crusade, I remember
when I first felt different as a staff member and
being gay at the same time. The director at the
campus at that particular chapter said, you're going to have
a short leash as a person who deals with homosexuality
under my leadership. You have a one strike policy and
(17:43):
if you are to mess up, quote unquote, you're gone
and you will be required to resign. And living in
an unresilient, unsustainable way. Not having true alternatives to not
being gay, my sexuality was looking for an escape, and
I found my self compromising sexual activity by calling a
(18:04):
phone sex line. And I remember being the transparent confessor
of my sins that I was telling my roommate at
the time, and my roommate reminded me aren't you supposed
to tell the director that this happened? And I said,
you're right, And I ended up confessing that I was
required to read a statement aloud to about fifty students
(18:27):
and other staff exactly what happened, telling them Number one,
I'm gay or struggle with the same sex attraction. Number two,
I decided to have phone sex. And three, I'm submitting
my resignation. And I'm just a crying mess in front
of this whole group of students and staff. Yeah, and
(18:48):
that happened. That was really embarrassing, And I've never seen
anyone have to do that with any other sin. And
I don't know if that wasn't about face or a
way for them to control their image or their risk
as an organization for me to do that, but then
that's what I left. I left. It was kind of
a forced outing number one, and then almost like a
(19:08):
shame shaming session or something to make an example of
myself to these people. I don't know, because I had
a very front facing role with this organization at the time.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I know, and you're right, homosexual issues are dealt differently
than everybody.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
I think still to this jests. Yeah, And I thought
to myself. I haven't touched another man. I mean I
was on the celibate road. I was, you know, six
or seven years in. At that point, I was even
a person that looked at pornography. I took pride in that,
you know, not having looked at porn you know, I
think there was an incapacity to manage someone like me.
But at the same time, I'll never forget the same
(19:46):
person because we would get in trouble for masturbating, by
the way, as Christian boys or men, even to this day,
and I remember this particular. I think the leader is
actually a closeted gay man, to be honest. He would
always hammer me about masturbation. Did you masturbate today? Did
you masturbate today? It was persistent, and if you masturbated,
it was you had sinned.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And I remember, because you had fantasy that would go
with it or none?
Speaker 5 (20:11):
What if I was just biologically it needed a release
if you will, you know. And I remember one day
he's married with kids, and I remember one day going,
when's the last time you masturbated? I decided to ask back,
and yeah, he puts his head down. He goes last
night in the shower while my wife was in the
(20:33):
bedroom and I thought, you've been I let him hammer
me with that shit for years.
Speaker 6 (20:43):
I think very few people have understood just how much
toxic religious teaching embeds itself in people's minds and experiences.
It manifests it in myself.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
This is Reverend Brandon Robertson. He's a progressive Christian and
the pastor of Sunnyside Reformed Church in New York City.
He also happens to be gay.
Speaker 6 (21:05):
Five years ago, I would have said I didn't really
have religious trauma. But as I started working in therapy
and kind of looking at the subconscious voices in my
own head that make me feel guilty if I engage
in a gay sexual relationship, or if I'm teaching theology
or ethics that are contrary to what I learned in
(21:25):
my conservative church. It's so easy for those subconscious voices
to bubble up, and so I've done a lot of
work to really identify what those are in my own
life and reframe and see both my theology and my
ethics and the way I live in the world in
a different light. But then I also, as a pastor,
have had the honor but also horrifying experience of sitting
(21:47):
with people who are sixty years old who have just
come out of the closet in the past couple of
years and come to me and say, I still fear
hell every single day of my life.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Brandon's candidate It's a New Testament at Drew University. An author,
he's also known as the TikTok pastor, creating videos about
theology and progressive Christianity.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
I think the way that I explain religious trauma and
fear to non religious people is to think about the
idea of being told from childhood that your salvation is
contingent upon believing the right things and living the right way.
It's ingrained in people throughout their whole lives. It's not
just that you'll be rejected from a church. But the
(22:35):
conservative Christian movement uses Versus Revelation Chapter twenty one, which
is the final book of the Bible in the New Testament,
which talks about a lake of fire that burns with
fire and brimstone for all eternity. And it's got this
horrifying line in it that says the smoke of their
torment rises to the throne of the Lamb day and
night for all eternity. It's this idea that if you're
(22:57):
not with us and walking in our path, that for
all eternity, you're going to be tortured, suffering, and separated
from God and from everyone you know and love. That
sounds crazy, I know, to people who are not raised
within it. But if that is the worldview that you
walk through the world with for even five years, but
(23:19):
most people for thirty forty years, then of course that
fear is going to have an outsized influence in the
way that you interact with the world. And I even
think in the United States context, the modern Christian nationalist
movement is born out of people who earnestly are afraid.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Brandon didn't grow up in a religious family, but age
twelve he started to attend a fundamentalist Baptist charge in Baltimore.
Speaker 6 (23:44):
And it was during that time that I was just
starting to hit puberty and start thinking about sexuality and attractions.
But I also immediately was drawn to this idea that
there was a God who created me and had a
plan for my life. And so I dove headfirst into Christianity,
and within a year or so, I was hearing sermons
(24:05):
from the pulpit about the sin of homosexuality and the
danger of the gay agenda. And so it became very
clear early on in my puberty journey that even though
I experienced same sex attractions, so to speak, that this
was not acceptable in my tradition or in my church.
And I ended up going off to Moody Bible Institute
in Chicago for college, which is an evangelical school that
(24:28):
trains pastors. Moody is traditionally evangelical, very fear based theology,
but it's in the heart of downtown Chicago, and so
as soon as we would walk off campus, the theology
we were learning would contradict the reality we saw on
this beautiful, diverse city. And that happened many times.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
For me.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
It was when I hung out with Muslims and recognized
that these were not evil, demonic people who worshiped a
false God, but had the same values that I had.
Or when we went down to Boystown, the gay neighborhood
in Chicago at the time, and saw queer people who
were not just all about sex, drugs, and rock and roll,
but we're living full lives that looked a lot like
(25:08):
our lives as evangelicals. And so my theology really started
to shift in that period, and I was studying the
Bible in an academic setting, which started to help me
ask some questions about what the Bible actually taught. And
when I started asking those questions, one of my moody
professors called me into her office and basically said, we
(25:28):
think that you are going down a dangerous path, and
if you would like to graduate, we want you to
do a year of conversion therapy in order to prove
that you are aligned with us on sexual ethics. And
the dean of students literally said that our only hope
is that you don't graduate and start waving rainbow flags.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
For the entirety of his final year, Brandon started meeting
with a professor for a mode of conversion therapy called
healing prayer.
Speaker 6 (25:57):
The version of healing prayer I went through was based
on a modality by a woman named Leanne Payne, who
has written a number of books on healing homosexuality. And
it's at once deeply mystical and spiritual, and so it's
very enticing to a lot of people, but it's rooted
in the same pseudo psychology that clinical conversion therapy is
(26:19):
rooted in, which is again that trauma in your past,
distant father and over attached mother equals a gay child,
and that if you just heal that trauma, you can
heal your sexuality. So a healing prayer session for me
in college would look like walking into this professor's office.
It was quite strange because we're Evangelical Christians, so we
(26:42):
don't use things like holy water or crucifixes, but in
healing prayer we did. And so there would be a
vial of holy water sitting on her desk, a crucifix,
and essentially we'd start praying and we would ask God
to bring up a traumatic memory for my past. And
I'll give an example of one that stood out for me.
My mom had long told me a story of being
(27:05):
an infant. My dad was an alcoholic, and one day
my dad passed out drunk while I was left in
a crib crying apparently for a number of hours, and
my mom came home to find me with swollen eyes
and a hoarse voice, and it was just this traumatic
moment for her. And that memory emerged for me in
(27:25):
one of these prayer sessions, and so we would then
invite Jesus to step into that memory. What would it
look like if Jesus had come into the crib and
picked you up and soothed you, instead of you laying
there feeling abandoned without your dad. And once that new
memory had time to process and you felt the comfort
of being comforted by Jesus in your crib, she would
(27:48):
then take out the bottle of holy water and typically
anoint my chest, my head and ask God to cut
off any of the bindings that had on me and
had put into my soul. And I would do that
once a week my conversion therapy. When it really hit
a breaking point was when the end of that year,
(28:10):
my professor realized that I wasn't being healed very much,
and so she sent me to a church in Wheaton,
Illinois called the Church of the Resurrection, and that particular
session of healing prayer this kind of intense one. I
was brought into a room with one of my Bible
college friends who I had kissed. He was a boy,
and we had this kind of sexual sin moment, and
(28:30):
so they sent us off here. We had to confess
our lusts for one another in detail in front of
this group of people, and then they separated us into rooms,
and that day I was taken into a room with
two pastors, and they used holy water to anoint my head,
my chest, and they even dripped it over my nether regions,
we'll say, and started speaking in tongues over me and
(28:55):
really trying to pray out whatever this deep seated sins.
And it was in that moment after I walked out
of that healing prayer session that I remember looking at
my friend who was there with me, and literally saying,
this is bullshit, Like this is insane, This has nothing
to do with the Bible. This is not our faith,
(29:17):
and it's not working.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
There's something quite as you say the crucifix and the
Hodie water, it sounds like an sort of almost exorcism
type imagery.
Speaker 6 (29:31):
No, totally. And again what's so strange is that Protestants
don't generally use these things. We don't believe in those things,
at least not to the same degree that like a
Roman Catholic might. And yet when it comes to the
issue of LGBT people, there is this willingness to go
to extremes. There is a willingness to see things as
demonic rather than even just a sin struggle or something
(29:55):
like they might address any other type of sin, and
for the record, I obviously I don't believe being gazes in,
but there's this heightened awareness that if you don't deal
with this, it's a danger to your soul but also
to the community around you. And that's what results, I think,
in this really intense intervention in people's sexual orientation and
(30:17):
gender identity. At the end of that year of healing prayer,
I knew two things. One that I had not been
healed of my sexuality, and that too, the religion I
was a part of did not look like the religion
I saw in the mouth of Jesus in the Gospels,
who didn't say much about sexual ethics and who taught
(30:37):
a lot more about love than fear. And so that
brought me to a place where I began really exploring
what my identity as a gay Christian future pastor might
look like.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
When I was first in the X gay movement, it
was John Smid who guided me through it, and his
arguments for conversion therapy were based on the interpretation of
a few selective verses.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
The only thing we had to go by were six
or seven Bible passages that appeared in our interpretations appeared
to say that being in a same sex sexual relationship
was sinful. I took it at face value. I never
really studied it myself because other people had studied it,
(31:28):
and I just took what they had to say, which
I admit was was my own fault for not looking
into it more closely. But the only thing I would
have looked at was something that was already stating those
as facts. I would not have allowed myself to look
at any progae theology or progae reading or materials, because
(31:49):
we always taught that that was wrong, that you shouldn't
do that, that that was tempting, or that was something
you shouldn't look into. I mean, like, for example, the
passage about sodom goemor that was the one that stood
out to me the most, because culture has labeled male
gay behavior as sodomy based on a scripture that does
(32:11):
not in any way teach that they were dealing with homosexuality.
It wasn't even there, That's not what they were doing
with at all, and the culture has used that word
to label male sexuality with men as sodomy.
Speaker 6 (32:28):
The Bible is used to defend conversion therapy pretty much
based on the six so called clobber passages that seemingly
condemn homosexuality or same sexual relationships, and also conversion therapy
people and X gay people would appeal to stories of
miraculous conversions and healings in scripture. But what I've discovered
(32:49):
in my ten years now as a biblical scholar is
that most conservative Christians are actually biblically illiterate. And I
don't mean that in an offensive way. I mean the
These are the people that claim to build their lives
on the Bible. But if you do a modicum of
biblical scholarly research, you will find that there's not a
(33:10):
verse from Genesis to Revelation that condemns anything like loving
consensual same sex relationships. Unfortunately, the people in the X
gay movement in particular are the ones that are hyper
fixating on identities and making it what makes or breaks
someone's true faith. You can't be gay and Christian. You
can't be trends and Christian, and that goes against the
(33:33):
entire grain of the entire New Testament. And so when
you bring those two things together, you really don't have
a biblical leg to stand upon. But most Christians are
not willing to do even a little bit of research
into the culture context language of the Scripture to understand
how the ancient world saw sexuality and gender and how
different that is from the world that we live in today.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
That John it was based on one one verse in
the Bible, just one. It's in firse Corinthians six, passage
nine through eleven. Or do you not know the unrighteous
will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Neither fornicators, idolators, gossips,
(34:18):
et cetera, nor homosexual offenders will inherit the Kingdom of God.
That's part one of the verse. The second part is,
but such were some of you? You were washed, you
were justified, you were sanctified in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and in the spirit of our God.
(34:40):
I remember it as it were yesterday. And that passage
was the hope when it said and such were some
of you? In other words, you could change first.
Speaker 6 (34:58):
Corinthian six' nine is one of the other very common
verses from The New, testament and depending on what translation
you're reading in Your English, bible it seems really. Clear
in Many english translations it says no homosexual offender will
enter The kingdom Of god something along those. Lines but
as a great deal of research recently has revealed the
(35:21):
word homosexual did not appear in The English bible until
nineteen forty, six when the translators of The Revised Standard
version of The bible were wrestling with this Mysterious greek word.
Arsenoquoitai the word arsenoquoitai did not exist in The greek
language until it appears In First corinthians by the Apostle,
(35:41):
paul Meaning paul invents this. Word the reason we know
this word does not mean homosexuality or homosexual offenders is
because there are at least thirteen other words In Quoina
greek from the first century that refer to various same sex,
acts same sex, attraction same sexual. Relationships paul would have
(36:02):
used one of the words that the common person would
have understood if he was trying to condemn same sex,
sex same sex. Relationships, instead he invents the.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Word so What brandon's saying is that there were words
that meant gay that were in common use When paul was,
writing words that would have been understood by the. Reader
so he must have meant something, else because otherwise he
would have just used one of the ones to mean
gay already out. There that new word ars na koitai
(36:31):
is the one that was later translated in the twentieth
century to mean, homosexual And brandon, says the Word paul
invented was based on a phrase used earlier in The,
bible in The Old, testament and what that word meant
there is What paul was actually.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Condemning all of this is.
Speaker 6 (36:49):
To, say What paul did was look out at his
world In corinth and realized that there was a practice
going on that he did not have a word to,
describe but he thought it was the same thing that
was happening in the book Of. Leviticus what was happening In, Leviticus,
Well Leviticus chapter eighteen is an entire, chapter devote it
to condemning the practices of the pagan nations Of egypt And.
(37:10):
Canaan there was no widespread homosexuality or gay, marriage but
what was common was men of higher social statuses, abusing
raping people of lower social, statuses slaves or people of different.
Cultures and we have ample evidence in first Century roman
law that if you were A roman citizen and a,
(37:32):
man you were permitted legally to have sex with anybody
of a lower social status than. You and there was
no legal recourse for. Them they were not treated as
the same level as humans.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
As you, were according to this, reading because there was
no word to condemn the rape of lower class, People
paul invented a new.
Speaker 6 (37:52):
One and the last reason we know that that's probably
What paul was talking about is that in One corinthian sixt'
nine and the other Places paul uses. Arsenocoitsie in The New,
testament it's always in a list called a vice, list
and it's always tied to economic, exploitation, idolatry and. Abuse
so some of the other sins listed in that same
(38:13):
list that Arsenocoits i appears in is, prostitution is idol.
Worship slavery is sometimes in the, list so that contextualizes
whatever Behavior paul is referring, to which again is nothing
like loving consensual same sex.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Relationships For, brandon his biblical understanding and his entire faith
comes from The First book Of. John in The New,
testament it Says.
Speaker 6 (38:39):
God is, love and Perfect love casts out all fear
because fear has to do with. Punishment that verse teaches
me that anytime someone is speaking on behalf Of god
and stoking, fear especially fear of. Punishment we can be
certain that they are not speaking For, god Because god's
love expels, sphere especially fear of.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Punishment, yet when fueled by, fear the consequences of conversion
therapy can be devastating and have real world. Impact many
people have told their accounts of conversion therapy and its
link with suicide and suicidal.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Ideation during the TIME i was, there there was one
suicide attempt by someone and it was really really it
was really devastating because a person went missing and we
couldn't find.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Him former house leader and director Of love And Action
John smid again.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
And eventually a person drove down the road that he
worked with and recognized him walking out of a. Field
it just. Happened this person that knew him happened to
drive down the road and, say, hey that's so and,
so and they called the authorities and they came and found,
him and he had suicidal ideation societally. Attempted very devastating
(39:59):
for the people for, him he did not. Complete, thankfully
he's moved on and over his life he's reconciled his
sexuality and thankfully he's still. Here we did not have
a lot of that during the YEARS i was, there but,
honestly since two thousand and, eight there have been several
(40:20):
people who have suicided that went through our program years
after the, Program and ALL i can say to that,
is you, know suicide is a very very complex, thing
and it is a combination of, emotional, spiritual, physical chemical.
(40:40):
Realities and in all, honesty WHAT i can say is
that the premise that being gay is sinful and wrong
and it breaks a relationship With god and it's a
shameful thing to experience absolutely plays into people who are suicidally.
Attempted in all, HONESTY i can't say that we caused
(41:04):
people to commit, suicide BUT i can say that we
were absolutely a part of that scenario for many people's,
lives and for that we are.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Accountable one former participant Of love And action told the
media that In october two thousand and, four during a
one on one, Session John smid said to, him, quote
it would be better if you were to commit suicide
then go back into the world and become a homosexual.
Again the man explained that quite a physical death with
(41:38):
my soul, intact was much preferable to a spiritual. DEATH
i put this To John, Smid.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
NO i didn't say. That i'll tell you WHAT i.
Said this was a guy that was a young man
that was in our program In, california and he had
been going against the program secretly to attend pro gay
meetings with a pro gay organization that was In Marin
(42:06):
county at the. Time when we found out that he'd
been doing, THAT i sat down with them and met with,
them and my words were Which i'm accountable for these. Words,
However i'm not accountable for the words That i've been
quoted as. Saying there is some difference IS i said
it would almost be better if you were dead then
to go back and be involved in. Homosexuality and SO
(42:27):
i did not say commit suicide at. All but in
my conviction at the, time and in our culture and
an evangelical world that we were, in especially the little
tiny cultist church we were a part, of we believed
that being gay was one of the most serious sinful
issues anybody could have in their, life and that it
(42:49):
would seriously damage their relationship With god and seriously affect
any future that they might have socially or. Relationally some
theological perspectives within Evangelical christianity and Non Evangelical christianity is
that being gay could cost you. Eternity there are some
(43:09):
that believe that if you're actively gay and you die,
unrepentant you will absolutely go to the fire burning. Hill
SO i took that so seriously in that conversation THAT
i really wanted him to take it seriously as, Well
(43:30):
and that ended up becoming a part of an interview
in a local newspaper in Northern, california which then went,
viral and that is one of the most quoted things
THAT i supposedly have. Said i'm super thankful that he
AND i have spoken and have gone back through that
(43:50):
conversation and have cleared the air and reconciled both of.
Us i've listened to, him and he listened to, me
and so on a personal, LEVEL i haven't spoken with
him in quite a number of years, now BUT i
believe that he's reconciled in being gay and as a,
person and that things are well for. Him BUT i,
(44:11):
MEAN i take that very seriously THAT i was so
strongly convicted AND i conveyed that to him in such
a way that absolutely can be conveyed in a majorly
wrong and shameful.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Way i'm not sure that there's really much of a
difference between saying you'd be better off dead and you
should take your own. Life BUT i find that level
of conviction and fear well terrifying in. Itself and did
you believe that for yourself then it was better To?
Speaker 4 (44:47):
Oh, yes, ABSOLUTELY i absolutely believe that for. MYSELF i
believe that IF i were to in any way compromise my,
sexuality it would be the worst possible THING i could ever,
do which was the fuel and EVERYTHING i did for thirty.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Years but there's more to it than. Scripture Here's Pastor brandon.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
AGAIN i think people look to conversion therapy for, themselves
usually because they're terrified of losing. BELONGING i think the
fear of hell and all of that is part of.
It but actually what is more destructive and dangerous for
people is the fact that if a Queer christian comes
out as, queer they lose their church, community which to
(45:28):
an outsider might not sound like, much but for those
who live in evangelical, communities that is your entire friend,
group that is your entire social. Life these are the
people that are with you in the hospital and that
show up at your birthday and so there's a real
social pressure to conform and do everything you can to
make sure you continue to belong in that. Group and
(45:50):
the number one THING i hear from not just queer
people who have left, evangelicalism but all people who leave
evangelicalism for any kind of reason is that they're. Lonely
is that they don't know how to, socialize is that
they don't even know how to make it in the
world because everything's been packaged for them in the church
throughout their entire, journey and isolation is one of the
(46:11):
most dangerous things, psychologically and so no wonder people repress
their sexuality or gender identity and seek everything they can
do to stay a part of their.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Community there's also an idea that people have spoken about
that attending allows them to spend time with other queer
people in a way that is psychologically acceptable to, them
and of course not everyone goes as their own.
Speaker 6 (46:35):
VOLITION i think most parents who force their kids into
conversion therapy are not innately bad. People they're really, afraid
so in one strange warped, sense you can see deep love.
THERE i don't think that gets anybody off the, hook
AND i don't think it justifies, it BUT i do
understand and can empathize with somebody who's scared to their
(46:59):
core that eternal hell as waiting for their child and
trying to do everything they can to stop that from.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Happening the nineties was a tense time FOR lgbtq plus
rights in THE usa and for those fighting against. Them,
Politically President clinton brought In Don't, Ask Don't tell in ninety.
Six two years, later he signed into law The defense
Of Marriage, act OR doma as is, known banning the
(47:27):
federal government from recognizing same sex. Unions at the same,
Time Tammy baldwin became the first openly gay person to
be elected to The house Of representatives and the first
out lesbian In. Congress, culturally more and more people were
speaking out and coming out influential figures of the time
(47:49):
Like ellen De. Generes films Like philadelphia And Boys Don't
cry were winning at The. Oscars yet brutal murders of lgbt,
people like that Of Matthew shepherd were making national headlines
and fueling calls for queer people to be included and
protected by hate crime. Laws the voices on both sides
(48:13):
were turned up to eleven And John polk saw it first.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Hand WHEREVER i, went there were angry, protesters understandably with my.
Struggles AS i put, IT i was pulled to both.
SIDES i THINK i was In New orleans and there
was a conference AND i was speaking keynote, speaker AND
i actually wanted to be with those. Protesters AND i
(48:41):
think that shows the conflict THAT i often carried inside of,
me especially WHEN i was confronted by gay. People BUT
i didn't. GO i was on my side of the
fence and it seemed impossible to cross over to. Theirs
(49:03):
and in nineteen ninety, NINE i was shaken to my.
CORE i got called in by security one day and
they had told me a letter had been received in
the mail making death threats to my, Son, timmy who
was at that, POINT i believe, Three and what the
(49:25):
letter said was that we know where you, park and
we've seen your family coming and going inside the. Building
if we see your three year old, son we will
take a baseball back to his.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Head that's on, imagine.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Just because someone is gay and is an activist does
not mean they're an angel sent From. God they're people
and they're, angry and they's. Crazy whether you're gay or,
straight you're still a. Person you still can be, ugly
you still can be. Evil but to threaten a, child
(50:17):
it always felt like that's where the threat, was outside
of the organization and out there in the real. World
BUT i was about to discover that the conflict within
me was the biggest threat to my life AS i knew.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
It that's in the next episode Of, 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,
(50:52):
podcasts or wherever you get your. Podcasts
This episode includes references to suicide from the start and
uses historical language about it too. There's strong language and
discussions of disordered eating.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I did not realize during the years that I was
in this movement I was causing harm to anyone. I
literally and honestly had no idea that that was the result.
(00:36):
By nineteen ninety eight, I'd spend a decade in the
X gay movement. I was living as an ex gay man,
making my living off my story, my family's story, and
preaching about how conversion therapy works. And while I can
say I did not realize I was harming anyone, the
(00:57):
evidence of the devastation was right in front of me.
If only I'd looked. Here is a picture of the
year I came to love and action. There I am
looking very cute, very George Michael.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Right there, you're PALTI.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, patting. And these were guys that I was in
their program with. And this man next to me committed
suicide because he came from a very very strict evangelical
family and he felt he could never live up to
their expectations of him, and he put a gun in
(01:40):
his mouth because he couldn't change. This is atonement. The
John Paulk Story. I'm John Paulk and I'm Kate Holland.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
This is episode four The Gospel according to John.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
When I took the job at Focus on the Family,
Anne and I, along with baby Timmy, moved to Colorado Springs.
The red carpet was rolled out for us and we
were living in a community of like minded people. Our
social lives revolved around my new role too, and I
was working at the heart of it all in the
public policy division of Focus. I didn't even know what
(02:30):
public policy was. I was head of the Homosexuality and
Gender division. I launched my conference Love One Out, I
wrote books, I did interviews, all for one aim to
educate a primarily conservative Christian audience about the origins of
(02:54):
homosexuality from our perspective, where it comes from, what the
Bible says, and ultimately to influence public policy. That was
the crux of it. It went way beyond individuals or
single families. It was about combating the so called pro
(03:14):
game movement.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
The religious right does a lot of lobbying across the
United States, much of it is in public. At one stage,
James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, had
a radio show that was reportedly heard daily by more
than two hundred and twenty million people in one hundred
and sixty four countries. But other policy influencing happens behind
(03:40):
closed doors.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
There was a private, hidden group called the DC Group,
as in Washington, d C. This was a group of
representatives from the major conservative ministries of the day that
met once a month in Washington, D C. And the
(04:03):
whole goal of this group was to plot and strategize
how to topple homosexuality. This was mostly a public policy
group dealing with political issues and legislatures, etc. Etc. And
they thought they had found the solution, and that was
(04:25):
used the story of former gay men and former gay
women to illustrate the story that change was possible. So
I wasn't only to speak to the media and to
conference guests. Is a matter of fact. One of the
first things that Anne and I did is they had
us travel to the state of Hawaii. Timmy was still
(04:47):
in a bascinet, so we would carry him around and
we would walk through the halls of the Hawaii state
capital and Honolulu PLoP our baby on the desk of
some states telling them why homosexuals did not deserve equal
protection under the law. I was upon in that chess game.
(05:10):
My story was used to further a bigger agenda against
gay rights. My whole livelihood, our reputation, our public persona,
our message was solely based on the fact that Anne
(05:34):
and I were the embodiment of change. I was John,
the professional ex gay.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
The way I see this, it's you change hearts, you
change minds, then you change laws.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
When it comes to the public policy side of my position,
I was never ever comfortable with that role. Frankly, it
held no interest to me. I did everything I could
to steer myself away from that, and it was as
(06:16):
though I had my agenda and they had their agenda
for me.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
In November nineteen ninety eight, Hawaiian voters passed a constitutional amendment.
It gave the state to the power to define marriage
as between a man and a woman, effectively banning same
sex marriage until twenty thirteen. This advocacy from pro conversion
therapy groups is very powerful and they had success whilst
(06:42):
John was a part of it. Casey Pick from the
Trevor Project says these groups are continuing to influence legislation today.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
This is a practice existing on the fringes that is
targeting particular communities and that does its best getting by
in the shadows. But the forces behind it have been
very focused for a very long time. So the legal groups,
(07:13):
the advocacy groups that are encouraging conversion therapy, that are
promoting the idea, especially today, that gender identity can be
controlled and changed, they are all part of a coherent
movement that is interconnected and that is very overt about
(07:34):
its agenda. So you are seeing powerful group of funders
and advocacy organizations and communications teams and lawyers that are
deeply invested in the idea that sexual orientation and gender
identity can be changed. If it's something that can be changed,
(07:57):
then why protect you from discrimination at your job, why
allow you to marry the person of your choice. So,
in some ways, conversion therapy, while it's an issue that
hasn't been at the forefront of everybody's mind, especially now
when we're talking about things like participating in sports, access
(08:19):
to bathrooms, healthcare, marriage, military service, all these big things.
The idea that you can just change somebody's sexual orientation
or gender identity and that this is something that should
be changed underlies.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
All of that.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I think This also maps onto broader goals of conservatism
that affect us all. LGBTQ plus or not. These ideas
impact the role of women in society. There's a fundamental
underpinning to much of it that a woman's role is
in the home, rearing children, and it's about money and power.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Too, and so really there there are powerful groups that
are pushing those because it's the foundation of everything else
they do to silence and suppress LGBTQ people.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
When I was telling my story of how I became
an ex gay, I didn't think that I was living
a double life, but there was definitely a split in
my emotions. Externally, I was on top of the world.
I was respected a celebrity in the Christian sphere. But internally, well,
that was a slightly different story. I remember Anne saying
(09:36):
to me once, just be honest with me, Just be
honest with me about your struggle or struggles. And by
this point my struggles were creeping up. We'd been married
for about six years. They weren't on the outside, but
(09:57):
the way they started manifesting was in and secretive pornography use,
and well, you know, I had starting watching pornography at
the age of fourteen in junior high at my stepdad's
sixteen millimeter videos. So it was a very difficult struggle
(10:18):
for me to try and shake, and as a Christian
and now a national Christian leader, Oh my lord, can
you imagine if people found out I watched pornography from
time to time. At the same time, my drinking started
to increase. The sobriety I'd found in AA when I
(10:43):
was previously out was gone. When I was representing Focus
on the Family, of course, there was no alcohol use permitted,
but as I began traveling more, speaking at churches hosting
Love One Out, I'll never forget that day that I
was told sixty minutes wanted to interview me. I'm like, good, Lord,
(11:09):
were there, And I remember traveling to Manhattan and getting
off out of the car limousine, of course, and sitting
across from Leslie's stall being interviewed by sixty minutes. This
had become my life. So the idea of being utterly
(11:30):
honest and forthright was not something I felt safe doing
because there was no thought to me I would ever
revert back to being homosexual. That was not my desire
in any way, but it increasingly became something that I
(11:55):
was having to push down. That is the best way
to describe. It's like I put my hands one on
top of each other in front of my sternum and push, push,
push it down into my abdomen, into my soul area.
(12:15):
I had to push it down.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
As John's public image rose, his appearance changed too, something
that didn't go unnoticed by Joseph Nicolosi from nath the
psychologist and one of the leaders of the movement, whom
John often shared the stage with.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
I began to gain weight, and one day doctor Nicolosi
pulled me aside we were traveling. He said, I'm concerned
about your weight gain, and I thought, why is this
any of your concern? He said, if you gain weight
(12:54):
and become overweight, people will think you're compensating. I knew
exactly what he meant. In other words, I'm eating my feelings.
I'm burying my homosexual struggle in food and eating and
overeating is a very tangible signal that something's wrong. For
(13:18):
the movement, it was about protecting the image, but I
felt that there was a reason to gain weight. If
I got morbidly obese, he would keep men away from
me because I would no longer be attractive, and that worked.
It was false. It wasn't solving anything, but it took
(13:42):
care of the temporal issue of keeping men away from me.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
John's friend Josh struggled too, but in the opposite direction.
He showed us a picture of him at a conference.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
That's me and the red I gotten skinny. I'd lost
one hundred and fifty pounds. Because if I couldn't control
my sexuality, I was to control my weight. So I
began to focus on and I called my nine hundred
calorie a day diet a fast to remind myself that
what I had struggled with in a way to do
something about it. Looking back, my nutrition says that sounds
(14:17):
like an eating disorder.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
And this was.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Literally last year. She said this. I thought, oh, I
think you might be right. Yeah. In those conferences, man,
we were clinging to each other for hope, like we
were just each other's life rafts. Man. I had a
friend in every state and some in Canada even that
I would network with to support. When we'd fly to
each other, we'd call each other, how are you doing?
(14:38):
It was just I needed that system to stay afloat.
Living in rural Ohio. You know what I mean, there's
nobody to look to for support.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
But it wasn't just food that Josh was controlling.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
I'd never let my family ask if I was happy.
I didn't think that was a fair question as a
person who struggled with same sex attraction. My mom asked
me that one day, are you happy? I said, Mom,
please don't ever ask me that questioned again. I'd be
doing fifty six other things right now if I wanted
to be happy. So I never thought that was a
fair question for somebody to ask me. But outside of
the church, and this is why I can hear the
(15:11):
critics saying, now, well, he's given himself over. Of course
he's happy. Of course he's feeling quote unquote free. I
would say the least shame I've ever felt, and the
most free I've ever felt, is being an openly gay
man who's accepting his gay identity. I felt sometimes more shame,
I know I did in the context of the church
than I do outside of the church.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And of course they could explain that. Of course, say
you could explain that you know your feelings are never legitimate,
because they'll say, well, your feelings are as fallen as
the rest of you. Your feelings are sinful. Yeah, your
desires are sinful, but your feelings are too. There is
no legitimacy in anything we say.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
It was almost like you were being gas lit by
the church. Oh you're feeling this way, you shouldn't be,
or you should feel this way or think this way.
There was always a response or an explanation for the
way that you should go, you know, or who you
should be. There was always an interruption, there was always
a response. I don't know. It was just frustrating, felt circular.
(16:14):
The arguments, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
It's a catch twenty two. You're happy now you're out
as gay. Well, that's because you've fallen too sin You
were unhappy trying to be x gay. You weren't trying
hard enough.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Well, there is safety in giving pet answers, and I
found in my own journey as an ex gay leader,
pet answers formulaic answers were part of my repertoire. Oh
you think you might be gay, Come into my office,
(16:49):
sit down, and in an hour I can figure out
if you are or if you are not, and if
you are, exactly why you are.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Josh's path to living as an openly gay ma'am was
not one he thought he would ever journey down.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
I was going to be a professional Christian, you know,
just progressing till the day I died. That's what was
my trajectory. I really did.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
While Josh and I have talked about our shared experiences
many times throughout our friendship, sitting with him in my
apartment recording, this was surprising. He shared stories we'd never discussed.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Early on in my experience with campus crusade, I remember
when I first felt different as a staff member and
being gay at the same time. The director at the
campus at that particular chapter said, you're going to have
a short leash as a person who deals with homosexuality
under my leadership. You have a one strike policy and
(17:43):
if you are to mess up, quote unquote, you're gone
and you will be required to resign. And living in
an unresilient, unsustainable way. Not having true alternatives to not
being gay, my sexuality was looking for an escape, and
I found my self compromising sexual activity by calling a
(18:04):
phone sex line. And I remember being the transparent confessor
of my sins that I was telling my roommate at
the time, and my roommate reminded me aren't you supposed
to tell the director that this happened? And I said,
you're right, And I ended up confessing that I was
required to read a statement aloud to about fifty students
(18:27):
and other staff exactly what happened, telling them Number one,
I'm gay or struggle with the same sex attraction. Number two,
I decided to have phone sex. And three, I'm submitting
my resignation. And I'm just a crying mess in front
of this whole group of students and staff. Yeah, and
(18:48):
that happened. That was really embarrassing, And I've never seen
anyone have to do that with any other sin. And
I don't know if that wasn't about face or a
way for them to control their image or their risk
as an organization for me to do that, but then
that's what I left. I left. It was kind of
a forced outing number one, and then almost like a
(19:08):
shame shaming session or something to make an example of
myself to these people. I don't know, because I had
a very front facing role with this organization at the time.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I know, and you're right, homosexual issues are dealt differently
than everybody.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
I think still to this jests. Yeah, And I thought
to myself. I haven't touched another man. I mean I
was on the celibate road. I was, you know, six
or seven years in. At that point, I was even
a person that looked at pornography. I took pride in that,
you know, not having looked at porn you know, I
think there was an incapacity to manage someone like me.
But at the same time, I'll never forget the same
(19:46):
person because we would get in trouble for masturbating, by
the way, as Christian boys or men, even to this day,
and I remember this particular. I think the leader is
actually a closeted gay man, to be honest. He would
always hammer me about masturbation. Did you masturbate today? Did
you masturbate today? It was persistent, and if you masturbated,
it was you had sinned.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And I remember, because you had fantasy that would go
with it or none?
Speaker 5 (20:11):
What if I was just biologically it needed a release
if you will, you know. And I remember one day
he's married with kids, and I remember one day going,
when's the last time you masturbated? I decided to ask back,
and yeah, he puts his head down. He goes last
night in the shower while my wife was in the
(20:33):
bedroom and I thought, you've been I let him hammer
me with that shit for years.
Speaker 6 (20:43):
I think very few people have understood just how much
toxic religious teaching embeds itself in people's minds and experiences.
It manifests it in myself.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
This is Reverend Brandon Robertson. He's a progressive Christian and
the pastor of Sunnyside Reformed Church in New York City.
He also happens to be gay.
Speaker 6 (21:05):
Five years ago, I would have said I didn't really
have religious trauma. But as I started working in therapy
and kind of looking at the subconscious voices in my
own head that make me feel guilty if I engage
in a gay sexual relationship, or if I'm teaching theology
or ethics that are contrary to what I learned in
(21:25):
my conservative church. It's so easy for those subconscious voices
to bubble up, and so I've done a lot of
work to really identify what those are in my own
life and reframe and see both my theology and my
ethics and the way I live in the world in
a different light. But then I also, as a pastor,
have had the honor but also horrifying experience of sitting
(21:47):
with people who are sixty years old who have just
come out of the closet in the past couple of
years and come to me and say, I still fear
hell every single day of my life.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Brandon's candidate It's a New Testament at Drew University. An author,
he's also known as the TikTok pastor, creating videos about
theology and progressive Christianity.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
I think the way that I explain religious trauma and
fear to non religious people is to think about the
idea of being told from childhood that your salvation is
contingent upon believing the right things and living the right way.
It's ingrained in people throughout their whole lives. It's not
just that you'll be rejected from a church. But the
(22:35):
conservative Christian movement uses Versus Revelation Chapter twenty one, which
is the final book of the Bible in the New Testament,
which talks about a lake of fire that burns with
fire and brimstone for all eternity. And it's got this
horrifying line in it that says the smoke of their
torment rises to the throne of the Lamb day and
night for all eternity. It's this idea that if you're
(22:57):
not with us and walking in our path, that for
all eternity, you're going to be tortured, suffering, and separated
from God and from everyone you know and love. That
sounds crazy, I know, to people who are not raised
within it. But if that is the worldview that you
walk through the world with for even five years, but
(23:19):
most people for thirty forty years, then of course that
fear is going to have an outsized influence in the
way that you interact with the world. And I even
think in the United States context, the modern Christian nationalist
movement is born out of people who earnestly are afraid.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Brandon didn't grow up in a religious family, but age
twelve he started to attend a fundamentalist Baptist charge in Baltimore.
Speaker 6 (23:44):
And it was during that time that I was just
starting to hit puberty and start thinking about sexuality and attractions.
But I also immediately was drawn to this idea that
there was a God who created me and had a
plan for my life. And so I dove headfirst into Christianity,
and within a year or so, I was hearing sermons
(24:05):
from the pulpit about the sin of homosexuality and the
danger of the gay agenda. And so it became very
clear early on in my puberty journey that even though
I experienced same sex attractions, so to speak, that this
was not acceptable in my tradition or in my church.
And I ended up going off to Moody Bible Institute
in Chicago for college, which is an evangelical school that
(24:28):
trains pastors. Moody is traditionally evangelical, very fear based theology,
but it's in the heart of downtown Chicago, and so
as soon as we would walk off campus, the theology
we were learning would contradict the reality we saw on
this beautiful, diverse city. And that happened many times.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
For me.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
It was when I hung out with Muslims and recognized
that these were not evil, demonic people who worshiped a
false God, but had the same values that I had.
Or when we went down to Boystown, the gay neighborhood
in Chicago at the time, and saw queer people who
were not just all about sex, drugs, and rock and roll,
but we're living full lives that looked a lot like
(25:08):
our lives as evangelicals. And so my theology really started
to shift in that period, and I was studying the
Bible in an academic setting, which started to help me
ask some questions about what the Bible actually taught. And
when I started asking those questions, one of my moody
professors called me into her office and basically said, we
(25:28):
think that you are going down a dangerous path, and
if you would like to graduate, we want you to
do a year of conversion therapy in order to prove
that you are aligned with us on sexual ethics. And
the dean of students literally said that our only hope
is that you don't graduate and start waving rainbow flags.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
For the entirety of his final year, Brandon started meeting
with a professor for a mode of conversion therapy called
healing prayer.
Speaker 6 (25:57):
The version of healing prayer I went through was based
on a modality by a woman named Leanne Payne, who
has written a number of books on healing homosexuality. And
it's at once deeply mystical and spiritual, and so it's
very enticing to a lot of people, but it's rooted
in the same pseudo psychology that clinical conversion therapy is
(26:19):
rooted in, which is again that trauma in your past,
distant father and over attached mother equals a gay child,
and that if you just heal that trauma, you can
heal your sexuality. So a healing prayer session for me
in college would look like walking into this professor's office.
It was quite strange because we're Evangelical Christians, so we
(26:42):
don't use things like holy water or crucifixes, but in
healing prayer we did. And so there would be a
vial of holy water sitting on her desk, a crucifix,
and essentially we'd start praying and we would ask God
to bring up a traumatic memory for my past. And
I'll give an example of one that stood out for me.
My mom had long told me a story of being
(27:05):
an infant. My dad was an alcoholic, and one day
my dad passed out drunk while I was left in
a crib crying apparently for a number of hours, and
my mom came home to find me with swollen eyes
and a hoarse voice, and it was just this traumatic
moment for her. And that memory emerged for me in
(27:25):
one of these prayer sessions, and so we would then
invite Jesus to step into that memory. What would it
look like if Jesus had come into the crib and
picked you up and soothed you, instead of you laying
there feeling abandoned without your dad. And once that new
memory had time to process and you felt the comfort
of being comforted by Jesus in your crib, she would
(27:48):
then take out the bottle of holy water and typically
anoint my chest, my head and ask God to cut
off any of the bindings that had on me and
had put into my soul. And I would do that
once a week my conversion therapy. When it really hit
a breaking point was when the end of that year,
(28:10):
my professor realized that I wasn't being healed very much,
and so she sent me to a church in Wheaton,
Illinois called the Church of the Resurrection, and that particular
session of healing prayer this kind of intense one. I
was brought into a room with one of my Bible
college friends who I had kissed. He was a boy,
and we had this kind of sexual sin moment, and
(28:30):
so they sent us off here. We had to confess
our lusts for one another in detail in front of
this group of people, and then they separated us into rooms,
and that day I was taken into a room with
two pastors, and they used holy water to anoint my head,
my chest, and they even dripped it over my nether regions,
we'll say, and started speaking in tongues over me and
(28:55):
really trying to pray out whatever this deep seated sins.
And it was in that moment after I walked out
of that healing prayer session that I remember looking at
my friend who was there with me, and literally saying,
this is bullshit, Like this is insane, This has nothing
to do with the Bible. This is not our faith,
(29:17):
and it's not working.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
There's something quite as you say the crucifix and the
Hodie water, it sounds like an sort of almost exorcism
type imagery.
Speaker 6 (29:31):
No, totally. And again what's so strange is that Protestants
don't generally use these things. We don't believe in those things,
at least not to the same degree that like a
Roman Catholic might. And yet when it comes to the
issue of LGBT people, there is this willingness to go
to extremes. There is a willingness to see things as
demonic rather than even just a sin struggle or something
(29:55):
like they might address any other type of sin, and
for the record, I obviously I don't believe being gazes in,
but there's this heightened awareness that if you don't deal
with this, it's a danger to your soul but also
to the community around you. And that's what results, I think,
in this really intense intervention in people's sexual orientation and
(30:17):
gender identity. At the end of that year of healing prayer,
I knew two things. One that I had not been
healed of my sexuality, and that too, the religion I
was a part of did not look like the religion
I saw in the mouth of Jesus in the Gospels,
who didn't say much about sexual ethics and who taught
(30:37):
a lot more about love than fear. And so that
brought me to a place where I began really exploring
what my identity as a gay Christian future pastor might
look like.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
When I was first in the X gay movement, it
was John Smid who guided me through it, and his
arguments for conversion therapy were based on the interpretation of
a few selective verses.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
The only thing we had to go by were six
or seven Bible passages that appeared in our interpretations appeared
to say that being in a same sex sexual relationship
was sinful. I took it at face value. I never
really studied it myself because other people had studied it,
(31:28):
and I just took what they had to say, which
I admit was was my own fault for not looking
into it more closely. But the only thing I would
have looked at was something that was already stating those
as facts. I would not have allowed myself to look
at any progae theology or progae reading or materials, because
(31:49):
we always taught that that was wrong, that you shouldn't
do that, that that was tempting, or that was something
you shouldn't look into. I mean, like, for example, the
passage about sodom goemor that was the one that stood
out to me the most, because culture has labeled male
gay behavior as sodomy based on a scripture that does
(32:11):
not in any way teach that they were dealing with homosexuality.
It wasn't even there, That's not what they were doing
with at all, and the culture has used that word
to label male sexuality with men as sodomy.
Speaker 6 (32:28):
The Bible is used to defend conversion therapy pretty much
based on the six so called clobber passages that seemingly
condemn homosexuality or same sexual relationships, and also conversion therapy
people and X gay people would appeal to stories of
miraculous conversions and healings in scripture. But what I've discovered
(32:49):
in my ten years now as a biblical scholar is
that most conservative Christians are actually biblically illiterate. And I
don't mean that in an offensive way. I mean the
These are the people that claim to build their lives
on the Bible. But if you do a modicum of
biblical scholarly research, you will find that there's not a
(33:10):
verse from Genesis to Revelation that condemns anything like loving
consensual same sex relationships. Unfortunately, the people in the X
gay movement in particular are the ones that are hyper
fixating on identities and making it what makes or breaks
someone's true faith. You can't be gay and Christian. You
can't be trends and Christian, and that goes against the
(33:33):
entire grain of the entire New Testament. And so when
you bring those two things together, you really don't have
a biblical leg to stand upon. But most Christians are
not willing to do even a little bit of research
into the culture context language of the Scripture to understand
how the ancient world saw sexuality and gender and how
different that is from the world that we live in today.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
That John it was based on one one verse in
the Bible, just one. It's in firse Corinthians six, passage
nine through eleven. Or do you not know the unrighteous
will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Neither fornicators, idolators, gossips,
(34:18):
et cetera, nor homosexual offenders will inherit the Kingdom of God.
That's part one of the verse. The second part is,
but such were some of you? You were washed, you
were justified, you were sanctified in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and in the spirit of our God.
(34:40):
I remember it as it were yesterday. And that passage
was the hope when it said and such were some
of you? In other words, you could change first.
Speaker 6 (34:58):
Corinthian six' nine is one of the other very common
verses from The New, testament and depending on what translation
you're reading in Your English, bible it seems really. Clear
in Many english translations it says no homosexual offender will
enter The kingdom Of god something along those. Lines but
as a great deal of research recently has revealed the
(35:21):
word homosexual did not appear in The English bible until
nineteen forty, six when the translators of The Revised Standard
version of The bible were wrestling with this Mysterious greek word.
Arsenoquoitai the word arsenoquoitai did not exist in The greek
language until it appears In First corinthians by the Apostle,
(35:41):
paul Meaning paul invents this. Word the reason we know
this word does not mean homosexuality or homosexual offenders is
because there are at least thirteen other words In Quoina
greek from the first century that refer to various same sex,
acts same sex, attraction same sexual. Relationships paul would have
(36:02):
used one of the words that the common person would
have understood if he was trying to condemn same sex,
sex same sex. Relationships, instead he invents the.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Word so What brandon's saying is that there were words
that meant gay that were in common use When paul was,
writing words that would have been understood by the. Reader
so he must have meant something, else because otherwise he
would have just used one of the ones to mean
gay already out. There that new word ars na koitai
(36:31):
is the one that was later translated in the twentieth
century to mean, homosexual And brandon, says the Word paul
invented was based on a phrase used earlier in The,
bible in The Old, testament and what that word meant
there is What paul was actually.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Condemning all of this is.
Speaker 6 (36:49):
To, say What paul did was look out at his
world In corinth and realized that there was a practice
going on that he did not have a word to,
describe but he thought it was the same thing that
was happening in the book Of. Leviticus what was happening In, Leviticus,
Well Leviticus chapter eighteen is an entire, chapter devote it
to condemning the practices of the pagan nations Of egypt And.
(37:10):
Canaan there was no widespread homosexuality or gay, marriage but
what was common was men of higher social statuses, abusing
raping people of lower social, statuses slaves or people of different.
Cultures and we have ample evidence in first Century roman
law that if you were A roman citizen and a,
(37:32):
man you were permitted legally to have sex with anybody
of a lower social status than. You and there was
no legal recourse for. Them they were not treated as
the same level as humans.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
As you, were according to this, reading because there was
no word to condemn the rape of lower class, People
paul invented a new.
Speaker 6 (37:52):
One and the last reason we know that that's probably
What paul was talking about is that in One corinthian sixt'
nine and the other Places paul uses. Arsenocoitsie in The New,
testament it's always in a list called a vice, list
and it's always tied to economic, exploitation, idolatry and. Abuse
so some of the other sins listed in that same
(38:13):
list that Arsenocoits i appears in is, prostitution is idol.
Worship slavery is sometimes in the, list so that contextualizes
whatever Behavior paul is referring, to which again is nothing
like loving consensual same sex.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Relationships For, brandon his biblical understanding and his entire faith
comes from The First book Of. John in The New,
testament it Says.
Speaker 6 (38:39):
God is, love and Perfect love casts out all fear
because fear has to do with. Punishment that verse teaches
me that anytime someone is speaking on behalf Of god
and stoking, fear especially fear of. Punishment we can be
certain that they are not speaking For, god Because god's
love expels, sphere especially fear of.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Punishment, yet when fueled by, fear the consequences of conversion
therapy can be devastating and have real world. Impact many
people have told their accounts of conversion therapy and its
link with suicide and suicidal.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Ideation during the TIME i was, there there was one
suicide attempt by someone and it was really really it
was really devastating because a person went missing and we
couldn't find.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Him former house leader and director Of love And Action
John smid again.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
And eventually a person drove down the road that he
worked with and recognized him walking out of a. Field
it just. Happened this person that knew him happened to
drive down the road and, say, hey that's so and,
so and they called the authorities and they came and found,
him and he had suicidal ideation societally. Attempted very devastating
(39:59):
for the people for, him he did not. Complete, thankfully
he's moved on and over his life he's reconciled his
sexuality and thankfully he's still. Here we did not have
a lot of that during the YEARS i was, there but,
honestly since two thousand and, eight there have been several
(40:20):
people who have suicided that went through our program years
after the, Program and ALL i can say to that,
is you, know suicide is a very very complex, thing
and it is a combination of, emotional, spiritual, physical chemical.
(40:40):
Realities and in all, honesty WHAT i can say is
that the premise that being gay is sinful and wrong
and it breaks a relationship With god and it's a
shameful thing to experience absolutely plays into people who are suicidally.
Attempted in all, HONESTY i can't say that we caused
(41:04):
people to commit, suicide BUT i can say that we
were absolutely a part of that scenario for many people's,
lives and for that we are.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Accountable one former participant Of love And action told the
media that In october two thousand and, four during a
one on one, Session John smid said to, him, quote
it would be better if you were to commit suicide
then go back into the world and become a homosexual.
Again the man explained that quite a physical death with
(41:38):
my soul, intact was much preferable to a spiritual. DEATH
i put this To John, Smid.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
NO i didn't say. That i'll tell you WHAT i.
Said this was a guy that was a young man
that was in our program In, california and he had
been going against the program secretly to attend pro gay
meetings with a pro gay organization that was In Marin
(42:06):
county at the. Time when we found out that he'd
been doing, THAT i sat down with them and met with,
them and my words were Which i'm accountable for these. Words,
However i'm not accountable for the words That i've been
quoted as. Saying there is some difference IS i said
it would almost be better if you were dead then
to go back and be involved in. Homosexuality and SO
(42:27):
i did not say commit suicide at. All but in
my conviction at the, time and in our culture and
an evangelical world that we were, in especially the little
tiny cultist church we were a part, of we believed
that being gay was one of the most serious sinful
issues anybody could have in their, life and that it
(42:49):
would seriously damage their relationship With god and seriously affect
any future that they might have socially or. Relationally some
theological perspectives within Evangelical christianity and Non Evangelical christianity is
that being gay could cost you. Eternity there are some
(43:09):
that believe that if you're actively gay and you die,
unrepentant you will absolutely go to the fire burning. Hill
SO i took that so seriously in that conversation THAT
i really wanted him to take it seriously as, Well
(43:30):
and that ended up becoming a part of an interview
in a local newspaper in Northern, california which then went,
viral and that is one of the most quoted things
THAT i supposedly have. Said i'm super thankful that he
AND i have spoken and have gone back through that
(43:50):
conversation and have cleared the air and reconciled both of.
Us i've listened to, him and he listened to, me
and so on a personal, LEVEL i haven't spoken with
him in quite a number of years, now BUT i
believe that he's reconciled in being gay and as a,
person and that things are well for. Him BUT i,
(44:11):
MEAN i take that very seriously THAT i was so
strongly convicted AND i conveyed that to him in such
a way that absolutely can be conveyed in a majorly
wrong and shameful.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Way i'm not sure that there's really much of a
difference between saying you'd be better off dead and you
should take your own. Life BUT i find that level
of conviction and fear well terrifying in. Itself and did
you believe that for yourself then it was better To?
Speaker 4 (44:47):
Oh, yes, ABSOLUTELY i absolutely believe that for. MYSELF i
believe that IF i were to in any way compromise my,
sexuality it would be the worst possible THING i could ever,
do which was the fuel and EVERYTHING i did for thirty.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Years but there's more to it than. Scripture Here's Pastor brandon.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
AGAIN i think people look to conversion therapy for, themselves
usually because they're terrified of losing. BELONGING i think the
fear of hell and all of that is part of.
It but actually what is more destructive and dangerous for
people is the fact that if a Queer christian comes
out as, queer they lose their church, community which to
(45:28):
an outsider might not sound like, much but for those
who live in evangelical, communities that is your entire friend,
group that is your entire social. Life these are the
people that are with you in the hospital and that
show up at your birthday and so there's a real
social pressure to conform and do everything you can to
make sure you continue to belong in that. Group and
(45:50):
the number one THING i hear from not just queer
people who have left, evangelicalism but all people who leave
evangelicalism for any kind of reason is that they're. Lonely
is that they don't know how to, socialize is that
they don't even know how to make it in the
world because everything's been packaged for them in the church
throughout their entire, journey and isolation is one of the
(46:11):
most dangerous things, psychologically and so no wonder people repress
their sexuality or gender identity and seek everything they can
do to stay a part of their.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Community there's also an idea that people have spoken about
that attending allows them to spend time with other queer
people in a way that is psychologically acceptable to, them
and of course not everyone goes as their own.
Speaker 6 (46:35):
VOLITION i think most parents who force their kids into
conversion therapy are not innately bad. People they're really, afraid
so in one strange warped, sense you can see deep love.
THERE i don't think that gets anybody off the, hook
AND i don't think it justifies, it BUT i do
understand and can empathize with somebody who's scared to their
(46:59):
core that eternal hell as waiting for their child and
trying to do everything they can to stop that from.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Happening the nineties was a tense time FOR lgbtq plus
rights in THE usa and for those fighting against. Them,
Politically President clinton brought In Don't, Ask Don't tell in ninety.
Six two years, later he signed into law The defense
Of Marriage, act OR doma as is, known banning the
(47:27):
federal government from recognizing same sex. Unions at the same,
Time Tammy baldwin became the first openly gay person to
be elected to The house Of representatives and the first
out lesbian In. Congress, culturally more and more people were
speaking out and coming out influential figures of the time
(47:49):
Like ellen De. Generes films Like philadelphia And Boys Don't
cry were winning at The. Oscars yet brutal murders of lgbt,
people like that Of Matthew shepherd were making national headlines
and fueling calls for queer people to be included and
protected by hate crime. Laws the voices on both sides
(48:13):
were turned up to eleven And John polk saw it first.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Hand WHEREVER i, went there were angry, protesters understandably with my.
Struggles AS i put, IT i was pulled to both.
SIDES i THINK i was In New orleans and there
was a conference AND i was speaking keynote, speaker AND
i actually wanted to be with those. Protesters AND i
(48:41):
think that shows the conflict THAT i often carried inside of,
me especially WHEN i was confronted by gay. People BUT
i didn't. GO i was on my side of the
fence and it seemed impossible to cross over to. Theirs
(49:03):
and in nineteen ninety, NINE i was shaken to my.
CORE i got called in by security one day and
they had told me a letter had been received in
the mail making death threats to my, Son, timmy who
was at that, POINT i believe, Three and what the
(49:25):
letter said was that we know where you, park and
we've seen your family coming and going inside the. Building
if we see your three year old, son we will
take a baseball back to his.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Head that's on, imagine.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Just because someone is gay and is an activist does
not mean they're an angel sent From. God they're people
and they're, angry and they's. Crazy whether you're gay or,
straight you're still a. Person you still can be, ugly
you still can be. Evil but to threaten a, child
(50:17):
it always felt like that's where the threat, was outside
of the organization and out there in the real. World
BUT i was about to discover that the conflict within
me was the biggest threat to my life AS i knew.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
It that's in the next episode Of, 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,
(50:52):
podcasts or wherever you get your. Podcasts
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