February 10, 2026 • 48 mins
When John Paulk slips into a D.C. gay bar, everything he’s built looks set to collapse.
Caught, exposed, and suffocated by shame, he clings to a lie that fools no one - not even himself.
—
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 of Atonement includes references to suicide.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I began this millennium the same way I ended the last,
as an ex gay man, married to an ex lesbian,
raising a growing family, with a career in promoting conversion therapy.
On the opposite side of the fight was Wayne Bessen
leading the charge as a spokesperson at the Human Rights Campaign.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
You can never undo all of the damage that has
been done. If somebody killed themselves, for example, because they
couldn't change, you cannot reverse that. What you can do
is make sure other people aren't harmed and save other lives.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Wayne was watching me, and every day in his office
he'd look at a front cover photo of me and Anne.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I have a.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Picture of Newsweek on my wall because I wanted to
be reminded every day of why I was going to
work in what I was fighting and fighting against, and
that was a motivating factor for me.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Wayne was my nemesis and I his I was his
white whale. He wanted to bring me and the X
gay movement down. He wanted to prove that conversion therapy
doesn't work, that I wasn't X gay.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
I had the.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Belief that it was a con However, we did have rumors.
There were several that circulated to me because I was
nationally known for fighting these at this time, because I
was with the largest LGBTQ organization in the country, the
Human Rights Campaign, So people would contact us periodically and
they said, oh, we saw John here or there. We
couldn't prove it, but it got me thinking, Hmm, I
(01:43):
wonder if these rumors are true, or maybe it's wishful thinking.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
In September two thousand, I gave Wayne exactly what he
was waiting for.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Welcome to Atonement, the John Polk Story.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
A House of CODs.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Part of this job is activism is realizing you can't
save everybody. You just have to go to bed at
night knowing you did the best you could to help
as many people as possible.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I'd been at Focus on the Family for two years
when the night in question happened. We were living in
Colorado Springs, but I had flown to Washington, d C.
For a DC group meeting, and it was a Thursday
night in September, and I went and I hung out
(02:40):
in a restaurant slash bar. On this particular night, I
started drinking Cosmopolitans and I happened to be near a
notorious gay mecca called DuPont sal and I got highly
(03:04):
intoxicated sitting in this restaurant and bar, and I started
walking around DuPont Circle. I remember asking somebody on the
street that looked gay to me, are there any gay
bars around here? There was a bar and it was
(03:28):
called Mister Pease.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Mister Peas was a little dive bar in Washington, d C.
It was dingy and grimy and saturated with a smoky
smell like it had never been aired out.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I had not been in a gay bar, gosh, since
I left homosexuality behind in nineteen eighty eight. And of
course when I walked in, I walked right up and
sat down at the bar, and I ordered a cocktail,
(04:03):
and I began casually chatting with people sitting at the bar.
I remember the feeling of comfort of sitting at that bar.
The thought that crossed my mind was I'm with my
(04:24):
people now. As drunk as I was, that's the way
I felt, I'm safe. I'm safe. Wayne was at home,
but his colleague was in Mister Peas and recognized me
from the newsweek cover that hung in their office. And
(04:45):
Wayne couldn't believe his luck.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
I have never ran so fast in my life. I
almost got hit by a taxi on the way.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
It was brought to my attention that someone was outside
asking for me. I was panic stricken, panic washed over me,
and the fight or flight response kicked in. Oh, and
I remember the door man saying you're protected, and here
(05:18):
we will protect you. And I think that it was convened.
You have no idea who you're protecting. Don't protect him.
You know you have no idea who this is if
you knew. I said, do you have a back door?
And I think they'd wised up at this point, the
people that worked in the bar saying no, we only
have a front door, and I thought, well, that's bullshit.
(05:43):
I know you've got a back door. So I picked
myself up by the bootstraps. I pushed open the front
door and all I could see was flashbulbs.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
So I had one of those really slow cameras like
Codex the disposables, and I snuck up on.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I said, John Paul is at you, and by reflex,
I took my hands and I chris crossed them over
my face. And then I was pissed and I started
berating him and calling him a fraud and a horrible
person who's killed kids. I was not very nice, and
he tried to take my camera and I pushed him
into a cigarette machine, and then he fled, and I
(06:26):
followed him down the street.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yelling at him for about a full block.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I started running as fast as humanly possible, getting my
overweight body waddling down the street in a run, terrified.
I didn't even know who was holding that camera.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
That might not have been one of my best moments
either at that point, but I was mad because I
know the how many people were harmed by his charade,
and I let him know about it. I told him
exactly what I thought about what he did. I told
him why he killed people. He was killing kids with
his message.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
The fear and the panic is indescribable. I mean, I
felt my heart beating out of my chest, my limbs
were numb, my mouth was dry. It's like the blood
had rushed from my face. And I felt like a
(07:30):
caged wild animal looking for a way to escape.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I did not feel bad at all about it. He
deserved what he got. He was hurting people and destroying
lives and making money from it, and he got exactly
what was coming to him. Over that, I felt vindicated.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
As I woke up the next morning and I had
sobered up, the cold splash of reality was staring at
me in the mirror as I got ready and put
on my suit to go to the Pro Family DC group.
I had to get to work, but I knew it
(08:20):
was only a matter of time until the story was
out there. I remember being dropped off and encountering a
dear friend of mine who was an ex lesbian and
she worked in public policy issues in Washington. I told
her I had gone into a gay bar by accident.
(08:48):
I told a lie, and that lie just spiraled into
a multitude of lies. And I remember saying to her,
I'm worried that I might have hurt the movement because
(09:13):
I loved the movement that I was a part of
in leading in some ways, and I loved the movement
and I didn't want to hurt it.
Speaker 6 (09:22):
But this.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Can I just stop for a minute.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
It's really weird to hear John saying he loved it.
To my mind, it was destroying him. But there was
so much at stake for him too, community, family security,
his marriage, and psychologically his entire life was the movement,
and it was all wrapped up in a story that
(09:55):
if you even pulled gently on the tiniest thread, unravels.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Wayne Besson called me that morning. He told me he
had the picture and it was going to be released.
So a meeting was called and I was a wreck.
News stories, even as quickly as that morning, started to
pour out and be picked up across the country. Some
(10:20):
people knew what had happened before I even had talked
about it. But when I did talk about it in
the meeting, I didn't mention there was drinking involved per se.
But I told them I was walking around DuPont Circle
and I was looking for a place to go to
the bathroom, and I walked in there, not knowing it
(10:42):
was a gay bar. Lies were tumbling out of my mouth.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
We went public and he said he was only in
mister Peace to use the bathroom, which was the joke
in washing It was he went to mister Peas because
he was going to pee, and that's how it unraveled
from there.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I couldn't spend the day in that meeting. I left.
I went to the airport and I wanted to get
back home. I was just in devastation. At this point,
I remember calling Anne in hysterics, first layover, calling her
again in hysterics, and she went into probably repair mode
(11:20):
or just to get me home, to reassure that she
loved me. What have you before? She had the whole story.
But oh my god, this was the most horrible thing
I had ever been in in my life. It was
(11:43):
so overwhelming the devastating consequences of this that I was
entirely suicidal. I could I just I had no idea
what my fate was. And the shame, the crushing shame
(12:09):
that I felt based on what I had done and
what it would do to the thousands of people that
looked up to me, read my books, wanted to be
like me. The Exodus board members, the ministries focus on
the family, the radio audience. What would this do to
(12:32):
the movement? It would discredit it and the biggest possible way.
There was no sense of relief. I felt literally trapped
in a prison of my own making.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
He kept changing his story over and over again. First
he was there to use a bathroom. Then he said, oh,
I didn't know if it was a straight bar. There
were women in there. Well, I mean John used to
be a drag queen. There was nothing but drag queens,
and there was drag night, so he knew that it
wasn't women, it was drag. So it didn't really fly.
Even the religious rite didn't believe him. I don't believe anything.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
It was a bold face lie. I was telling there's
no way to cloak it. That's what it was. Born
out of fear, born out of humiliation, shame, degradation. What
would my life become? What was happening? It was just
too overwhelming to pick apart the pieces, and I remember
(13:37):
saying to Anne, we have to get out of Colorado Springs.
For a while, my sister and her family harbored us
from the storm. The details of this time are fuzzy
in my memory. I was just trying to get through
the day, minute by minute, hour by hour. But eventually
I had to face the music. James stops and my
(14:00):
boss kept asking me for the details, for the full story,
and eventually I told him everything. But it eked out
little by little by little by little.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Focus on the family tried to protect John at first,
but then when his story kept mutating, they put him
into exile, so to speak. He kind of disappeared for
a while. Then he came out later on a radio
show and said he was seduced into going into Satan's Trap,
which which I thought would be a great name for
(14:37):
a gay leather bar.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
During a radio broadcast, James Dobson asked me if I
was cruising for sex. I said no. I think perhaps
in retrospect, it was always hard for people to believe
that I wasn't looking for sex. But I wasn't. Sex
to me in gay life was not the pre eminent
(15:04):
driving force of my homosexuality. It was emotional connection to
a man. That was my truth. I did not commit
any sexual infraction.
Speaker 5 (15:18):
Here's John's friend Josh again.
Speaker 7 (15:20):
I remember it being a major blow to the evangelical
community to see one of their brightest, hottest stars go down.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
When the photograph from mister Peas was published, it was
picked up everywhere. Josh had been following John from Afar,
and he also had a habit of checking the blogs
that focused on ex gay drama. For want of a
better phrase, when.
Speaker 7 (15:43):
I saw the news, I definitely mourned the news. So
I thought, man, if he's susceptible, what about me? And
I think that was scary. Maybe one of the first times,
I felt scared because I'd never seen someone that elevated
publicly compromise if you will in that way, That's how
I viewed it.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Josh also heard my lies as I tried to cover
my tracks, and it was.
Speaker 7 (16:09):
Such a disservice to someone like me who was thinking,
I still want help, I still need encouragement. The disservice
was that no one was honest about the behavior. You
denied it. All these greats kept denying it, and they
would never give you a reprieve of like, oh, failure
is also possible, Like I needed to hear that, like,
(16:31):
but they kept like, I'm like, well, is he gay
or is he not?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Is he gayer? Is he not?
Speaker 7 (16:35):
And if it, is it working for him or is
it not? Because if it's not, then that's going to
kind of help me feel a little bit more normal,
like I'm not as crazy.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
My friend and former house leader John Smid remembers exactly
where he was when he heard about the incident at
mister PA's too.
Speaker 8 (16:52):
My first reaction was to love John. My first reaction
was not to condemn him, not to lay anything on him.
My first reaction was to contact him and just tell him,
I'm there for you. I think I just felt grieved
for him because I knew what that was going to
be like for him, you know, the very public thing
(17:12):
that had happened.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
It would be easy for me to look back and
blame alcohol. My alcoholism was definitely back in full force
at this time. But I made the choice to go
to mister Peas He.
Speaker 8 (17:26):
Was also burnt out at that time. He was worn
out and so his resolves were worn out. He was tired, overworked.
Saw this opportunity, and I honestly think probably he wanted
a moment just to be with his people. I would say,
(17:47):
if I were to know John, he was just looking
for a place where he could just be himself. But sadly,
his public presence would not have allowed him to be himself,
and that's outed him because people knew who he was.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yet. I wasn't fired from focus on the family, but
I was put on probation. I was removed from speaking
at any Love One Out conference. Exodus kept me on
the board, but I was no longer chairman of the board,
and I served out the rest of my term. My
(18:26):
dad remembers this time well, but his reading of the
radio broadcast and me staying at the organization was a
little different to mine. He thinks they were showing supposed
compassion for their own gains.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
There was something on their radio show where it was addressed,
and doctor Dobson decided to keep John on, and there
was a woman who donated fifty thousand dollars to focus
on the family because of that, and my remembrance of
the time was doctor Dobson said, how can we do
this again?
Speaker 5 (19:00):
Next to you?
Speaker 4 (19:03):
John does not remember that, but I remember being told that,
and that's the reality of life.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Wayne saw it as damage limitations.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
They couldn't fire him because then they would admit that
it wasn't working. So what they did was they phased
him out slowly.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Looking back on it now, a lot of people were
concerned about me, but not enough thought was given to
what Anne was going through, what this did to her,
the humiliation and shame that resulted due to what I did.
I don't think Anne ever really forgave me for what
(19:42):
I did. I don't think she ever forgave me. Maybe
she couldn't, and I don't think her needs were tended to,
and my heart breaks because of that.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
We contacted Anne to ask if she'd like to take
part in this podcast.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
She didn't respond.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Not only did I hurt a movement, I had a
wife at home who loved me, who was devoted to me.
So what did this mean for our marriage?
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Did you have a sense at the time.
Speaker 5 (20:17):
That this was the kind of beginning of the end?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
No? No, not at all. Nope. They put braces around
me metaphorically speaking. So I was broken. I needed to
be fixed and repaired and glued back together. And actually
it became a more powerful message. And the powerful message
(20:45):
was that the homosexual struggle is real and may never
completely go away. It gave me a different platform to
speak about this topic, to be more real and to
be more open about it. I ended up staying focus
(21:08):
on the family for three more years, but the damage
was done despite everything that went down when I was
photographed in the gay bar. The real turning point for
me came three years after mister Piece, when I was
(21:28):
traveling once again for work. This one particular evening, I
was in my hotel room. I had watched pornography on
the in hotel television, and I started weeping uncontrollably. I
ended up on all fours down on the floor, telling God,
(21:54):
I can't do this anymore. I remember that night asking God,
would you please release me of this burden to be
this person anymore? I just couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 8 (22:18):
What do you mean by it?
Speaker 2 (22:21):
The whole thing? I couldn't talk about homosexuality anymore. I
didn't want to speak to audiences anymore. I wanted the
attention to lift off of me. I didn't want to
be this wind up monkey that I had been and
become for five years. And I remember going back home
(22:47):
and talking about this with Anne, and I said, how
do you feel like going back home? And she agreed.
(23:07):
I remember sitting into doctor Dobson's office and resigning, and
it was so hard to do after five years and
all that had gone on, all the attention and then
the notoriety and the infamy, and him looking at me saying,
(23:29):
we don't want you to go. I said, I feel
like a sponge that has been wrung out, that I
have nothing left to give. I needed to go home
to Portland, and we left five years to the very
(23:50):
day that we landed in Colorado Springs. As soon as
we crossed the border into Oregon, I did the most
cliche thing. I pulled over by the side of the road.
I got down on the gravel and I kissed the ground.
(24:10):
I was thankful that I was in the state of Oregon,
away from Colorado and all its conservatism. I didn't speak
about these issues for the next ten to fifteen years.
(24:34):
I never gave an interview again. I never did a
speaking engagement. I never spoke to an audience or a church.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
When I was talking to John and his friend Josh
about how Focus on the Family didn't fire John after
mister Peas, John said he thought they were compassionate, I
asked them if they thought there was a chance Focus
on the Family was also protecting themselves, protecting the message.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I've never been that diabolic or deviant to think in
that way.
Speaker 7 (25:10):
And I have to say the same. There is a
level of protection of the past, and it's really weird.
I feel like I'm just learning to allow myself to
be angry and that's okay, But I find myself defending
those people. You know, maybe it was the grace and
compassion we were taught. Maybe we feel like God, we
were so hungry for it we want to offer to
(25:31):
others now. You know, I don't know this movement did
not allow space for critical thinking or question asking. It
was this is the right way, this is the only way.
And I think that should be a red flying for
any group or organization where you're not given permission to
(25:52):
ask questions or to think differently. That is a sign
of a cult, and.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
That sentiments well. Any of the people we've spoken to
have shared it, like John Smith.
Speaker 8 (26:04):
From the evangelicalism to the ex gay culture. It is
a cult. We minimize that a lot of times they're
saying it's cult ish, but it really is a cult
because there are strong, dominant leaders that people follow blindly
and they just accept whatever they teach or whatever they say.
(26:25):
And the leaders could be an organization or it could
be a denomination, but we follow blindly until we know better.
And for most of us, and I think Johns would
relate to this as I do. For most of us,
it takes a catastrophe to shake us up to realize
(26:46):
that whatever we believed isn't working anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
It's also about the particular vulnerabilities and desperation of its followers.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
The activist Wayne Besson used the word cult in his
interview the Reverend rand and Robertson says it's bigger than
that because it spreads out into the mainstream.
Speaker 9 (27:05):
I think I've struggled to define conversion therapy itself as
a cult because it's been so successful in integrating into
so called mainstream Christianity, and so most people who are
conservative Christians would steer away from using the language of
conversion therapy. Almost all of them believe theologically that you
(27:28):
can be and should be delivered from your unwanted same
sex attractions. I do think that in the smaller communities
that have formed outside of mainstream churches, these groups do
become very insular, they do become very combative towards the
outside world, and they do bond over the sense of
(27:50):
persecution and needing to double down and protect themselves from
Satan's gay agenda in the world around them. And that
is some of the stereotypical behavior of cults, that you
turn inwards. Everyone else is the enemy, and you've got
to protect and preserve yourself while also evangelizing.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
I've said it too, I've referred to the movement I
was in as a cult.
Speaker 6 (28:13):
I think that if an individual thinks that way, that's
how they experience it, then it is a cult for them.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Patrick Ryan helps people leave groups what some of us
might call cults. He draws on decades of experience, both
personal and professional, to help people and their families, and
Patrick says the term cult is useful for some people
some of the time, but.
Speaker 6 (28:35):
Not useful for everyone all of the time. And so
I think that if someone feels that's what happened to them,
and this is what helps them make sense of this experience,
it's certainly a great place to start.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Patrick knows what it means to lose your freedom of
thought because he lived it.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
He was in a cult and he escaped. Now he
helps others get out.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
When I was inside, I didn't use the word cult
to me. It was a ministry, a movement, and let's
be honest, cult comes with connotations. It's pejorative.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
Patrick says, it's a slippery word.
Speaker 6 (29:09):
There are sociological definitions, there are psychological definitions. There's what
the general public, what we mean when you say someone's
at a call. It's like we know, like we know
what the color blue is. But when someone's writing about
a cult, an academic or a researcher, they have to
be very specific as what they mean.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Patrick often looks to the work of the psychiatrist Robert
Lifton for a framework when defining groups.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
His research was primarily on the prisoners of war who
came home from Korea. That when there were prisoners of war,
their allegiance had changed, so Lifton was interested in how
does that happen? You know what's going on.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
In his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,
published in nineteen sixty one, Lfton identified eight criteria of
thought reform. It's a classic foundational text and still often
use today to identify cults. Critiques of his work often
claim it's too simplistic or that they're too broad, But.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
I recognize a lot of his eight criteria in my experience.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
So the first one is you control the environment.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
He calls it mily.
Speaker 6 (30:21):
You control they isolate the individuals from the outside perspectives,
creating an US and them kind of mentality.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Like not having access to secular entertainment or TV.
Speaker 6 (30:33):
The next one is the demand for purity, and it's
encouraging the members to conform to the group's ideology and
strive to an almost unattainable level of purity. You never
really can get there. And then Lifton talks about what
he calls a sacred science, and the sacred science is
how the group's ideas or doctrines are presented their ultimate truth,
(30:55):
which is beyond questioning or dispute. It's a new way
of the world works, and it's so perfect that it's
beyond scientific.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
It's sacred.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Lyfton also wrote about mystical manipulation or planned spontaneity, where
you're primed to experience something one way, and so you do.
He highlighted the importance of confession having a totalist vision
of truth, where all impediments must be pushed away.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
And there's the doctrine over person, which I experienced in
the sense that if the program didn't work, that was
my fault for not working hard enough.
Speaker 6 (31:41):
And then Lyfton talks about loading the language, which is
the development of a language of short trait easily memorized
cliches that have the effect of non thought in a group.
You load the language with all kinds of buzzwords and terminologies.
So I was looking up some of the things like
(32:02):
same streck, attraction coming out of homosexuality, disorientation, reorientation.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Repairative therapy, ex Gay soul ties, phrases I still use
I know I've used them in this series.
Speaker 6 (32:17):
So you have a term that is the be all
and end all of discussion because you just put that
label on it. And so when someone internalizes this loaded language,
you do it to yourself.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
It's a hard thing to shed.
Speaker 6 (32:31):
I think that when people leave groups, it's not like
you're all of it is wrong, you know, but there
are parts of it are on for you, and so
you might hold on to some part. I mean, we
don't have to disconnect everything.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
When I first heard John using phrases or ideas that,
to my ears had connotations of conversion therapy.
Speaker 5 (32:57):
I really struggled with it. Maybe you've noticed them too.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
It felt like it was too present, still a part
of him. But Patrick Ryan shed an idea that's helped
me understand why something stick.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
In Eastern philosophy, there's a concept of when someone is
spiritually evolving toward enlightenment, that they reach the state where
they're supposed to be perfect, and when they're not, it's
said that they have lesia ed vigia, the remains of
their ignorance, remains of humanness, and it's described as walking
through a spider web. You still have a little bit
(33:32):
left on you.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
But although a spider web sounds light and insubstantial, the
remnants of conversion therapy are not. John chose to go
to the residential program in the first place, but others,
particularly young people, are forced, and Patrick says that groups
often work on parents and families too.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
You know, it's not one thing, but if we try
to simplify it, there's the that the families are in
who send their kids to the conversion therapy. The conversion
therapy people convince the family that this is going to work.
They get in their own loop, their control, the go
through workshops. Depending on the approach, that's been used, very
(34:16):
similar to the troubled teen industry, where kids were sent
away and then the real work was done on the
parents because the kids might be calling home and saying,
get me out of here. But those parents are not
doing it because they're in their own little cult. So
it's the parents cult and the kids cult. So there's that,
and then you know the group itself. When you believe
(34:37):
that your salvation, how you're going to get off the planet,
how you're going to make you know, some kind of
existential issues are resolved, and the obstacle to that is
how you feel inside and who you're attracted to, there's motivation.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Patrick says that young people are often at risk of
being sucked into groups. They're often going through periods of
great transition, vulnerable, but he says we are all susceptible.
He told me a story about being in the barbershop
in his neighborhood. When he went in, the deputy Mayor
of Philadelphia was in their tea. The barber asked Patrick
(35:14):
to tell the deputy mayor about his work.
Speaker 6 (35:17):
Then, you know, I help people who've been brought into
more extreme belief systems, cults, and he said to me that,
you know that could never happen to me. I said, okay, yeah,
probably not. But actually we're having a seminar tonight. It's
usually fifty dollars. We're having it, so the first story
of our office. There's probably thirty people going to be coming.
(35:38):
You know, I'm glad to wave the fee for you
and you can come. He said, absolutely, you know I'll
be there. And as I walked out the door, I said,
there is no seminar, and that's how it's done. I'm
a stranger. You don't know who I am. Someone gave
me credibility. The barber who's cutting your hair, and you
accepted my invitation, and that's how it's I think that
(36:02):
a lot of people that are entering these worlds don't
do it. They do it because they think they're helping people,
And so I have a little bit more empathy with them,
because if I had to carry the weight of what
I did to people in the you know, all good efforts,
(36:24):
it's pretty it's a big load.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Of course, there are stories of conversion therapists and leaders
who do have other motivations, an abusive sexual motive, for example,
or a homosocial motive basically to spend time with other
gay people.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
Without saying that's what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
And for some there's also a need to keep repeating
the party line to others as a way to keep
themselves on track.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Arriving back in Oregon in two thousand and three, now
the family in tow I had to start life all
over again. I hadn't just left a job. I'd left
the only career I'd ever had. I still had contact
with people and was still working with them, but I'd
stepped away. I was still calling myself x gay, just
(37:14):
no longer the professional ex gay. I'd always been a
cook and loved to entertain, so I went to culinary
school and trained as a chef. I had laser focus
when I did this. I never missed a day. I
was never late five minutes to a class. I did
every extra credit that was put in front of me.
(37:38):
I worked my ass off to do the best job
I could to become a chef, and it was the
best two years really that I had experienced in a
long long time. And joined the Exodus board. I didn't
(38:03):
want any part of this, just absolutely that was in
my past and I had this new thing facing me.
And once I graduated and had the idea that we
start a small business and I became a private chef.
All the skills I learned to focus on the family
and in my ex gay career were exactly what I
(38:25):
needed to start my own successful catering business. I changed
physically once again too. I began working out, I began
lifting weights, I grew my hair out, I highlighted it blonde,
I got both ears pierced and wore hoop earrings. I
looked nothing like the chubby, evangelical Jerry Folwell that I
(38:53):
did before and when I caught a man checking me out.
It's like a butterfly had flown out of a cocoon,
and all of a sudden, I think that began my
(39:14):
desire to be gay again.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
John's oldest son to him was in high school at
the time, and he witnessed his dad's transformation.
Speaker 10 (39:23):
He went from the Jeffrey Dahmer glasses and like short
brown hair with a light goatee to like Vince Neil.
My friends, you know, I've growing up with a sense
with like a terrible sense of humor. My friends were
the same way too in high school. So they come
up and they were just amazed. They were enabored. They
(39:44):
thought it was the funniest and best thing ever that
my dad shows up and he looks like an out
of work rock star. For some reason, they were very confused.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I was still married to Anne, but I started doing
some work in the LGBT community for the first time,
donating my time and catering to HIV charities in Portland.
I know this sounds bizarre. I'm working with the people
I've spent years saying could and should change, and I'm
still married to a woman who's in that movement. There
(40:15):
was a real separation of the two worlds internally as
well as physically, and nobody in the new world knew
who the old me was. I became a creature of
the night in a different way this time because events
were at night, and catering events would sometimes go till,
(40:36):
you know, twelve midnight to one to two o'clock in
the morning. We go out after two, and I remember
we went to this place and I started talking to
the manager. It was a bar restaurant, and we were
talking and he had the same background that I did.
He was married to his wife, he had children, but
(41:00):
he had been gay. And I got to know this
man and one night he followed me out to my cars.
I was going to drive home, and he leaned in
the window and he kissed me and he said, boy,
you taste good. And it just awakened all of these
(41:23):
feelings in me. And I was intoxicated by this guy.
And I remember that night going home. I started to
cry and I told Anne what happened. I was confused.
(41:44):
I thought, am I falling in love? I did? I
just told her, and you know, and in character consoled me.
But you wasn't thinking of Anne and how this would
hurt her. Well, I was. I was thinking of that.
(42:06):
It was I was so filled with shame, you know.
The hiding factor was present again, hiding these things from her.
And even though I wasn't necessary, I don't want to
say wasn't doing anything overtly gay. I got kissed by
a man, so that's not true. I was on a
(42:27):
journey and making en roads into the gay community, and
I think Anne had had enough and she separated for
me and said, you have to leave. You're not welcome home.
Eventually I sought support from a therapist who worked with Christians,
(42:50):
hoping it would help this time. There was no conversion therapy,
but this therapist had never worked with anyone who was
gay before. I said to him, I have lived as
two people probably the majority of my life. I have
been since I was twenty four years old, I have
(43:12):
been two people. And we spent the year going back
into my childhood, covering everything my life, experiences, my desires,
and at the end of the year our time together
was drawing near. I had become integrated into one person.
(43:38):
One of the last sessions I had with him, I said,
who am I? He goes, You're a gay man who
happens to be a Christian who loves the Lord. And
I felt like, for the first time, I was a
whole person. I was one person as ever it was
(44:03):
God I turned to for support. And I was walking
around the front yard and I started to have this
conversation with God and I said something to the effect
of you have known me and been with me all
of my life. All of my life, you have never
(44:27):
left my side, through the lies, through the turmoil, through
the celebration, through this, my sons, through my sins, You've
always been there for me. I was saying to God,
(44:48):
I am making the decision to live my life as
a gay man, and You're just going to have to
accept this. And I'm talking to someone who was my
best friend. I could talk to God. He knew me
better than I knew myself. So I had conversation with
(45:11):
him just like this, and I said, I love you
with all of my heart, but you're just going to
have to accept this, and I will live as honorably
as I know how to live. And I felt the
Lord say, to my soul, have I ever left your side?
(45:33):
What makes you think I would leave it now when
you need me the most. Anne and I divorced in
twenty thirteen. That was very.
Speaker 5 (45:48):
Tough John, tim again.
Speaker 10 (45:51):
I mean, there was some tension and we were scared.
He's like, we don't want our parents to get divorced.
We don't know that's going to happen. But his time
went on, it was like a little bit of a
release because our parents aren't constantly arguing and upset and
there's this level of tension. Isn't being held up there? Yeah,
I think it's probably a similar story with a lot
of kids in divorce, to be honest, like whether the
(46:14):
circumstances are any different likely to release, Like you're breathing out.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
And Timmy picked up on something I've tried to put
into words too.
Speaker 5 (46:21):
You know, he loved my mom.
Speaker 10 (46:23):
He loved my mom in his own way, and I
think not in the way, not pot fully in the
way that my mom would want him to love her,
but he did. He does still, I would say, he
still loves my mom, And I think there's a really
hard part of having to when they separated and divorce,
letting that go and like one way or the other,
(46:47):
it's still like breaking a family up in a way.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
When I think about why I stayed for all those
years after, mister Pease, I think it primarily boils down
to one thing. I never ever wanted to do anything
that would harm my three sons.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
When you look back on it today, do you ever
regret getting married?
Speaker 2 (47:09):
You know, I'm asked that question a lot. Do I
ever regret being married? That's like, would you do it
again with someone with three sons? It's a very difficult
question to answer because if I had not done it,
those beautiful boys would never have entered my life. And
(47:31):
you know, when you have children, you set eternity in motion.
Would I do it all over again? Yeah, it's an
unanswerable question. Slowly I started to tiptoe out of the
closet and start saying I was gay. It wasn't loud
or public. It was just me finding my own way
(47:52):
in my own time. But gradually people in the gay
community in Portland started putting two and two together and
realizing who I was. I was being kind of outed
publicly about both my homosexuality and my ex gay past.
I didn't really want to do that because my children
(48:16):
were still in school and I didn't want them to hurt.
I had to tell my own story and set the
record straight and I had to atone.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
That's next time in the final chapter 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,
(48:52):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This episode of Atonement includes references to suicide.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I began this millennium the same way I ended the last,
as an ex gay man, married to an ex lesbian,
raising a growing family, with a career in promoting conversion therapy.
On the opposite side of the fight was Wayne Bessen
leading the charge as a spokesperson at the Human Rights Campaign.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
You can never undo all of the damage that has
been done. If somebody killed themselves, for example, because they
couldn't change, you cannot reverse that. What you can do
is make sure other people aren't harmed and save other lives.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Wayne was watching me, and every day in his office
he'd look at a front cover photo of me and Anne.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I have a.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Picture of Newsweek on my wall because I wanted to
be reminded every day of why I was going to
work in what I was fighting and fighting against, and
that was a motivating factor for me.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Wayne was my nemesis and I his I was his
white whale. He wanted to bring me and the X
gay movement down. He wanted to prove that conversion therapy
doesn't work, that I wasn't X gay.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
I had the.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Belief that it was a con However, we did have rumors.
There were several that circulated to me because I was
nationally known for fighting these at this time, because I
was with the largest LGBTQ organization in the country, the
Human Rights Campaign, So people would contact us periodically and
they said, oh, we saw John here or there. We
couldn't prove it, but it got me thinking, Hmm, I
(01:43):
wonder if these rumors are true, or maybe it's wishful thinking.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
In September two thousand, I gave Wayne exactly what he
was waiting for.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Welcome to Atonement, the John Polk Story.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
A House of CODs.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Part of this job is activism is realizing you can't
save everybody. You just have to go to bed at
night knowing you did the best you could to help
as many people as possible.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I'd been at Focus on the Family for two years
when the night in question happened. We were living in
Colorado Springs, but I had flown to Washington, d C.
For a DC group meeting, and it was a Thursday
night in September, and I went and I hung out
(02:40):
in a restaurant slash bar. On this particular night, I
started drinking Cosmopolitans and I happened to be near a
notorious gay mecca called DuPont sal and I got highly
(03:04):
intoxicated sitting in this restaurant and bar, and I started
walking around DuPont Circle. I remember asking somebody on the
street that looked gay to me, are there any gay
bars around here? There was a bar and it was
(03:28):
called Mister Pease.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Mister Peas was a little dive bar in Washington, d C.
It was dingy and grimy and saturated with a smoky
smell like it had never been aired out.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I had not been in a gay bar, gosh, since
I left homosexuality behind in nineteen eighty eight. And of
course when I walked in, I walked right up and
sat down at the bar, and I ordered a cocktail,
(04:03):
and I began casually chatting with people sitting at the bar.
I remember the feeling of comfort of sitting at that bar.
The thought that crossed my mind was I'm with my
(04:24):
people now. As drunk as I was, that's the way
I felt, I'm safe. I'm safe. Wayne was at home,
but his colleague was in Mister Peas and recognized me
from the newsweek cover that hung in their office. And
(04:45):
Wayne couldn't believe his luck.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
I have never ran so fast in my life. I
almost got hit by a taxi on the way.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
It was brought to my attention that someone was outside
asking for me. I was panic stricken, panic washed over me,
and the fight or flight response kicked in. Oh, and
I remember the door man saying you're protected, and here
(05:18):
we will protect you. And I think that it was convened.
You have no idea who you're protecting. Don't protect him.
You know you have no idea who this is if
you knew. I said, do you have a back door?
And I think they'd wised up at this point, the
people that worked in the bar saying no, we only
have a front door, and I thought, well, that's bullshit.
(05:43):
I know you've got a back door. So I picked
myself up by the bootstraps. I pushed open the front
door and all I could see was flashbulbs.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
So I had one of those really slow cameras like
Codex the disposables, and I snuck up on.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I said, John Paul is at you, and by reflex,
I took my hands and I chris crossed them over
my face. And then I was pissed and I started
berating him and calling him a fraud and a horrible
person who's killed kids. I was not very nice, and
he tried to take my camera and I pushed him
into a cigarette machine, and then he fled, and I
(06:26):
followed him down the street.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yelling at him for about a full block.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I started running as fast as humanly possible, getting my
overweight body waddling down the street in a run, terrified.
I didn't even know who was holding that camera.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
That might not have been one of my best moments
either at that point, but I was mad because I
know the how many people were harmed by his charade,
and I let him know about it. I told him
exactly what I thought about what he did. I told
him why he killed people. He was killing kids with
his message.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
The fear and the panic is indescribable. I mean, I
felt my heart beating out of my chest, my limbs
were numb, my mouth was dry. It's like the blood
had rushed from my face. And I felt like a
(07:30):
caged wild animal looking for a way to escape.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I did not feel bad at all about it. He
deserved what he got. He was hurting people and destroying
lives and making money from it, and he got exactly
what was coming to him. Over that, I felt vindicated.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
As I woke up the next morning and I had
sobered up, the cold splash of reality was staring at
me in the mirror as I got ready and put
on my suit to go to the Pro Family DC group.
I had to get to work, but I knew it
(08:20):
was only a matter of time until the story was
out there. I remember being dropped off and encountering a
dear friend of mine who was an ex lesbian and
she worked in public policy issues in Washington. I told
her I had gone into a gay bar by accident.
(08:48):
I told a lie, and that lie just spiraled into
a multitude of lies. And I remember saying to her,
I'm worried that I might have hurt the movement because
(09:13):
I loved the movement that I was a part of
in leading in some ways, and I loved the movement
and I didn't want to hurt it.
Speaker 6 (09:22):
But this.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Can I just stop for a minute.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
It's really weird to hear John saying he loved it.
To my mind, it was destroying him. But there was
so much at stake for him too, community, family security,
his marriage, and psychologically his entire life was the movement,
and it was all wrapped up in a story that
(09:55):
if you even pulled gently on the tiniest thread, unravels.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Wayne Besson called me that morning. He told me he
had the picture and it was going to be released.
So a meeting was called and I was a wreck.
News stories, even as quickly as that morning, started to
pour out and be picked up across the country. Some
(10:20):
people knew what had happened before I even had talked
about it. But when I did talk about it in
the meeting, I didn't mention there was drinking involved per se.
But I told them I was walking around DuPont Circle
and I was looking for a place to go to
the bathroom, and I walked in there, not knowing it
(10:42):
was a gay bar. Lies were tumbling out of my mouth.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
We went public and he said he was only in
mister Peace to use the bathroom, which was the joke
in washing It was he went to mister Peas because
he was going to pee, and that's how it unraveled
from there.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I couldn't spend the day in that meeting. I left.
I went to the airport and I wanted to get
back home. I was just in devastation. At this point,
I remember calling Anne in hysterics, first layover, calling her
again in hysterics, and she went into probably repair mode
(11:20):
or just to get me home, to reassure that she
loved me. What have you before? She had the whole story.
But oh my god, this was the most horrible thing
I had ever been in in my life. It was
(11:43):
so overwhelming the devastating consequences of this that I was
entirely suicidal. I could I just I had no idea
what my fate was. And the shame, the crushing shame
(12:09):
that I felt based on what I had done and
what it would do to the thousands of people that
looked up to me, read my books, wanted to be
like me. The Exodus board members, the ministries focus on
the family, the radio audience. What would this do to
(12:32):
the movement? It would discredit it and the biggest possible way.
There was no sense of relief. I felt literally trapped
in a prison of my own making.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
He kept changing his story over and over again. First
he was there to use a bathroom. Then he said, oh,
I didn't know if it was a straight bar. There
were women in there. Well, I mean John used to
be a drag queen. There was nothing but drag queens,
and there was drag night, so he knew that it
wasn't women, it was drag. So it didn't really fly.
Even the religious rite didn't believe him. I don't believe anything.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
It was a bold face lie. I was telling there's
no way to cloak it. That's what it was. Born
out of fear, born out of humiliation, shame, degradation. What
would my life become? What was happening? It was just
too overwhelming to pick apart the pieces, and I remember
(13:37):
saying to Anne, we have to get out of Colorado Springs.
For a while, my sister and her family harbored us
from the storm. The details of this time are fuzzy
in my memory. I was just trying to get through
the day, minute by minute, hour by hour. But eventually
I had to face the music. James stops and my
(14:00):
boss kept asking me for the details, for the full story,
and eventually I told him everything. But it eked out
little by little by little by little.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Focus on the family tried to protect John at first,
but then when his story kept mutating, they put him
into exile, so to speak. He kind of disappeared for
a while. Then he came out later on a radio
show and said he was seduced into going into Satan's Trap,
which which I thought would be a great name for
(14:37):
a gay leather bar.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
During a radio broadcast, James Dobson asked me if I
was cruising for sex. I said no. I think perhaps
in retrospect, it was always hard for people to believe
that I wasn't looking for sex. But I wasn't. Sex
to me in gay life was not the pre eminent
(15:04):
driving force of my homosexuality. It was emotional connection to
a man. That was my truth. I did not commit
any sexual infraction.
Speaker 5 (15:18):
Here's John's friend Josh again.
Speaker 7 (15:20):
I remember it being a major blow to the evangelical
community to see one of their brightest, hottest stars go down.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
When the photograph from mister Peas was published, it was
picked up everywhere. Josh had been following John from Afar,
and he also had a habit of checking the blogs
that focused on ex gay drama. For want of a
better phrase, when.
Speaker 7 (15:43):
I saw the news, I definitely mourned the news. So
I thought, man, if he's susceptible, what about me? And
I think that was scary. Maybe one of the first times,
I felt scared because I'd never seen someone that elevated
publicly compromise if you will in that way, That's how
I viewed it.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Josh also heard my lies as I tried to cover
my tracks, and it was.
Speaker 7 (16:09):
Such a disservice to someone like me who was thinking,
I still want help, I still need encouragement. The disservice
was that no one was honest about the behavior. You
denied it. All these greats kept denying it, and they
would never give you a reprieve of like, oh, failure
is also possible, Like I needed to hear that, like,
(16:31):
but they kept like, I'm like, well, is he gay
or is he not?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Is he gayer? Is he not?
Speaker 7 (16:35):
And if it, is it working for him or is
it not? Because if it's not, then that's going to
kind of help me feel a little bit more normal,
like I'm not as crazy.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
My friend and former house leader John Smid remembers exactly
where he was when he heard about the incident at
mister PA's too.
Speaker 8 (16:52):
My first reaction was to love John. My first reaction
was not to condemn him, not to lay anything on him.
My first reaction was to contact him and just tell him,
I'm there for you. I think I just felt grieved
for him because I knew what that was going to
be like for him, you know, the very public thing
(17:12):
that had happened.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
It would be easy for me to look back and
blame alcohol. My alcoholism was definitely back in full force
at this time. But I made the choice to go
to mister Peas He.
Speaker 8 (17:26):
Was also burnt out at that time. He was worn
out and so his resolves were worn out. He was tired, overworked.
Saw this opportunity, and I honestly think probably he wanted
a moment just to be with his people. I would say,
(17:47):
if I were to know John, he was just looking
for a place where he could just be himself. But sadly,
his public presence would not have allowed him to be himself,
and that's outed him because people knew who he was.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yet. I wasn't fired from focus on the family, but
I was put on probation. I was removed from speaking
at any Love One Out conference. Exodus kept me on
the board, but I was no longer chairman of the board,
and I served out the rest of my term. My
(18:26):
dad remembers this time well, but his reading of the
radio broadcast and me staying at the organization was a
little different to mine. He thinks they were showing supposed
compassion for their own gains.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
There was something on their radio show where it was addressed,
and doctor Dobson decided to keep John on, and there
was a woman who donated fifty thousand dollars to focus
on the family because of that, and my remembrance of
the time was doctor Dobson said, how can we do
this again?
Speaker 5 (19:00):
Next to you?
Speaker 4 (19:03):
John does not remember that, but I remember being told that,
and that's the reality of life.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Wayne saw it as damage limitations.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
They couldn't fire him because then they would admit that
it wasn't working. So what they did was they phased
him out slowly.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Looking back on it now, a lot of people were
concerned about me, but not enough thought was given to
what Anne was going through, what this did to her,
the humiliation and shame that resulted due to what I did.
I don't think Anne ever really forgave me for what
(19:42):
I did. I don't think she ever forgave me. Maybe
she couldn't, and I don't think her needs were tended to,
and my heart breaks because of that.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
We contacted Anne to ask if she'd like to take
part in this podcast.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
She didn't respond.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Not only did I hurt a movement, I had a
wife at home who loved me, who was devoted to me.
So what did this mean for our marriage?
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Did you have a sense at the time.
Speaker 5 (20:17):
That this was the kind of beginning of the end?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
No? No, not at all. Nope. They put braces around
me metaphorically speaking. So I was broken. I needed to
be fixed and repaired and glued back together. And actually
it became a more powerful message. And the powerful message
(20:45):
was that the homosexual struggle is real and may never
completely go away. It gave me a different platform to
speak about this topic, to be more real and to
be more open about it. I ended up staying focus
(21:08):
on the family for three more years, but the damage
was done despite everything that went down when I was
photographed in the gay bar. The real turning point for
me came three years after mister Piece, when I was
(21:28):
traveling once again for work. This one particular evening, I
was in my hotel room. I had watched pornography on
the in hotel television, and I started weeping uncontrollably. I
ended up on all fours down on the floor, telling God,
(21:54):
I can't do this anymore. I remember that night asking God,
would you please release me of this burden to be
this person anymore? I just couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 8 (22:18):
What do you mean by it?
Speaker 2 (22:21):
The whole thing? I couldn't talk about homosexuality anymore. I
didn't want to speak to audiences anymore. I wanted the
attention to lift off of me. I didn't want to
be this wind up monkey that I had been and
become for five years. And I remember going back home
(22:47):
and talking about this with Anne, and I said, how
do you feel like going back home? And she agreed.
(23:07):
I remember sitting into doctor Dobson's office and resigning, and
it was so hard to do after five years and
all that had gone on, all the attention and then
the notoriety and the infamy, and him looking at me saying,
(23:29):
we don't want you to go. I said, I feel
like a sponge that has been wrung out, that I
have nothing left to give. I needed to go home
to Portland, and we left five years to the very
(23:50):
day that we landed in Colorado Springs. As soon as
we crossed the border into Oregon, I did the most
cliche thing. I pulled over by the side of the road.
I got down on the gravel and I kissed the ground.
(24:10):
I was thankful that I was in the state of Oregon,
away from Colorado and all its conservatism. I didn't speak
about these issues for the next ten to fifteen years.
(24:34):
I never gave an interview again. I never did a
speaking engagement. I never spoke to an audience or a church.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
When I was talking to John and his friend Josh
about how Focus on the Family didn't fire John after
mister Peas, John said he thought they were compassionate, I
asked them if they thought there was a chance Focus
on the Family was also protecting themselves, protecting the message.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I've never been that diabolic or deviant to think in
that way.
Speaker 7 (25:10):
And I have to say the same. There is a
level of protection of the past, and it's really weird.
I feel like I'm just learning to allow myself to
be angry and that's okay, But I find myself defending
those people. You know, maybe it was the grace and
compassion we were taught. Maybe we feel like God, we
were so hungry for it we want to offer to
(25:31):
others now. You know, I don't know this movement did
not allow space for critical thinking or question asking. It
was this is the right way, this is the only way.
And I think that should be a red flying for
any group or organization where you're not given permission to
(25:52):
ask questions or to think differently. That is a sign
of a cult, and.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
That sentiments well. Any of the people we've spoken to
have shared it, like John Smith.
Speaker 8 (26:04):
From the evangelicalism to the ex gay culture. It is
a cult. We minimize that a lot of times they're
saying it's cult ish, but it really is a cult
because there are strong, dominant leaders that people follow blindly
and they just accept whatever they teach or whatever they say.
(26:25):
And the leaders could be an organization or it could
be a denomination, but we follow blindly until we know better.
And for most of us, and I think Johns would
relate to this as I do. For most of us,
it takes a catastrophe to shake us up to realize
(26:46):
that whatever we believed isn't working anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
It's also about the particular vulnerabilities and desperation of its followers.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
The activist Wayne Besson used the word cult in his
interview the Reverend rand and Robertson says it's bigger than
that because it spreads out into the mainstream.
Speaker 9 (27:05):
I think I've struggled to define conversion therapy itself as
a cult because it's been so successful in integrating into
so called mainstream Christianity, and so most people who are
conservative Christians would steer away from using the language of
conversion therapy. Almost all of them believe theologically that you
(27:28):
can be and should be delivered from your unwanted same
sex attractions. I do think that in the smaller communities
that have formed outside of mainstream churches, these groups do
become very insular, they do become very combative towards the
outside world, and they do bond over the sense of
(27:50):
persecution and needing to double down and protect themselves from
Satan's gay agenda in the world around them. And that
is some of the stereotypical behavior of cults, that you
turn inwards. Everyone else is the enemy, and you've got
to protect and preserve yourself while also evangelizing.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
I've said it too, I've referred to the movement I
was in as a cult.
Speaker 6 (28:13):
I think that if an individual thinks that way, that's
how they experience it, then it is a cult for them.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Patrick Ryan helps people leave groups what some of us
might call cults. He draws on decades of experience, both
personal and professional, to help people and their families, and
Patrick says the term cult is useful for some people
some of the time, but.
Speaker 6 (28:35):
Not useful for everyone all of the time. And so
I think that if someone feels that's what happened to them,
and this is what helps them make sense of this experience,
it's certainly a great place to start.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Patrick knows what it means to lose your freedom of
thought because he lived it.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
He was in a cult and he escaped. Now he
helps others get out.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
When I was inside, I didn't use the word cult
to me. It was a ministry, a movement, and let's
be honest, cult comes with connotations. It's pejorative.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
Patrick says, it's a slippery word.
Speaker 6 (29:09):
There are sociological definitions, there are psychological definitions. There's what
the general public, what we mean when you say someone's
at a call. It's like we know, like we know
what the color blue is. But when someone's writing about
a cult, an academic or a researcher, they have to
be very specific as what they mean.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Patrick often looks to the work of the psychiatrist Robert
Lifton for a framework when defining groups.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
His research was primarily on the prisoners of war who
came home from Korea. That when there were prisoners of war,
their allegiance had changed, so Lifton was interested in how
does that happen? You know what's going on.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
In his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,
published in nineteen sixty one, Lfton identified eight criteria of
thought reform. It's a classic foundational text and still often
use today to identify cults. Critiques of his work often
claim it's too simplistic or that they're too broad, But.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
I recognize a lot of his eight criteria in my experience.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
So the first one is you control the environment.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
He calls it mily.
Speaker 6 (30:21):
You control they isolate the individuals from the outside perspectives,
creating an US and them kind of mentality.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Like not having access to secular entertainment or TV.
Speaker 6 (30:33):
The next one is the demand for purity, and it's
encouraging the members to conform to the group's ideology and
strive to an almost unattainable level of purity. You never
really can get there. And then Lifton talks about what
he calls a sacred science, and the sacred science is
how the group's ideas or doctrines are presented their ultimate truth,
(30:55):
which is beyond questioning or dispute. It's a new way
of the world works, and it's so perfect that it's
beyond scientific.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
It's sacred.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Lyfton also wrote about mystical manipulation or planned spontaneity, where
you're primed to experience something one way, and so you do.
He highlighted the importance of confession having a totalist vision
of truth, where all impediments must be pushed away.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
And there's the doctrine over person, which I experienced in
the sense that if the program didn't work, that was
my fault for not working hard enough.
Speaker 6 (31:41):
And then Lyfton talks about loading the language, which is
the development of a language of short trait easily memorized
cliches that have the effect of non thought in a group.
You load the language with all kinds of buzzwords and terminologies.
So I was looking up some of the things like
(32:02):
same streck, attraction coming out of homosexuality, disorientation, reorientation.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Repairative therapy, ex Gay soul ties, phrases I still use
I know I've used them in this series.
Speaker 6 (32:17):
So you have a term that is the be all
and end all of discussion because you just put that
label on it. And so when someone internalizes this loaded language,
you do it to yourself.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
It's a hard thing to shed.
Speaker 6 (32:31):
I think that when people leave groups, it's not like
you're all of it is wrong, you know, but there
are parts of it are on for you, and so
you might hold on to some part. I mean, we
don't have to disconnect everything.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
When I first heard John using phrases or ideas that,
to my ears had connotations of conversion therapy.
Speaker 5 (32:57):
I really struggled with it. Maybe you've noticed them too.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
It felt like it was too present, still a part
of him. But Patrick Ryan shed an idea that's helped
me understand why something stick.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
In Eastern philosophy, there's a concept of when someone is
spiritually evolving toward enlightenment, that they reach the state where
they're supposed to be perfect, and when they're not, it's
said that they have lesia ed vigia, the remains of
their ignorance, remains of humanness, and it's described as walking
through a spider web. You still have a little bit
(33:32):
left on you.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
But although a spider web sounds light and insubstantial, the
remnants of conversion therapy are not. John chose to go
to the residential program in the first place, but others,
particularly young people, are forced, and Patrick says that groups
often work on parents and families too.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
You know, it's not one thing, but if we try
to simplify it, there's the that the families are in
who send their kids to the conversion therapy. The conversion
therapy people convince the family that this is going to work.
They get in their own loop, their control, the go
through workshops. Depending on the approach, that's been used, very
(34:16):
similar to the troubled teen industry, where kids were sent
away and then the real work was done on the
parents because the kids might be calling home and saying,
get me out of here. But those parents are not
doing it because they're in their own little cult. So
it's the parents cult and the kids cult. So there's that,
and then you know the group itself. When you believe
(34:37):
that your salvation, how you're going to get off the planet,
how you're going to make you know, some kind of
existential issues are resolved, and the obstacle to that is
how you feel inside and who you're attracted to, there's motivation.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Patrick says that young people are often at risk of
being sucked into groups. They're often going through periods of
great transition, vulnerable, but he says we are all susceptible.
He told me a story about being in the barbershop
in his neighborhood. When he went in, the deputy Mayor
of Philadelphia was in their tea. The barber asked Patrick
(35:14):
to tell the deputy mayor about his work.
Speaker 6 (35:17):
Then, you know, I help people who've been brought into
more extreme belief systems, cults, and he said to me that,
you know that could never happen to me. I said, okay, yeah,
probably not. But actually we're having a seminar tonight. It's
usually fifty dollars. We're having it, so the first story
of our office. There's probably thirty people going to be coming.
(35:38):
You know, I'm glad to wave the fee for you
and you can come. He said, absolutely, you know I'll
be there. And as I walked out the door, I said,
there is no seminar, and that's how it's done. I'm
a stranger. You don't know who I am. Someone gave
me credibility. The barber who's cutting your hair, and you
accepted my invitation, and that's how it's I think that
(36:02):
a lot of people that are entering these worlds don't
do it. They do it because they think they're helping people,
And so I have a little bit more empathy with them,
because if I had to carry the weight of what
I did to people in the you know, all good efforts,
(36:24):
it's pretty it's a big load.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Of course, there are stories of conversion therapists and leaders
who do have other motivations, an abusive sexual motive, for example,
or a homosocial motive basically to spend time with other
gay people.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
Without saying that's what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
And for some there's also a need to keep repeating
the party line to others as a way to keep
themselves on track.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Arriving back in Oregon in two thousand and three, now
the family in tow I had to start life all
over again. I hadn't just left a job. I'd left
the only career I'd ever had. I still had contact
with people and was still working with them, but I'd
stepped away. I was still calling myself x gay, just
(37:14):
no longer the professional ex gay. I'd always been a
cook and loved to entertain, so I went to culinary
school and trained as a chef. I had laser focus
when I did this. I never missed a day. I
was never late five minutes to a class. I did
every extra credit that was put in front of me.
(37:38):
I worked my ass off to do the best job
I could to become a chef, and it was the
best two years really that I had experienced in a
long long time. And joined the Exodus board. I didn't
(38:03):
want any part of this, just absolutely that was in
my past and I had this new thing facing me.
And once I graduated and had the idea that we
start a small business and I became a private chef.
All the skills I learned to focus on the family
and in my ex gay career were exactly what I
(38:25):
needed to start my own successful catering business. I changed
physically once again too. I began working out, I began
lifting weights, I grew my hair out, I highlighted it blonde,
I got both ears pierced and wore hoop earrings. I
looked nothing like the chubby, evangelical Jerry Folwell that I
(38:53):
did before and when I caught a man checking me out.
It's like a butterfly had flown out of a cocoon,
and all of a sudden, I think that began my
(39:14):
desire to be gay again.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
John's oldest son to him was in high school at
the time, and he witnessed his dad's transformation.
Speaker 10 (39:23):
He went from the Jeffrey Dahmer glasses and like short
brown hair with a light goatee to like Vince Neil.
My friends, you know, I've growing up with a sense
with like a terrible sense of humor. My friends were
the same way too in high school. So they come
up and they were just amazed. They were enabored. They
(39:44):
thought it was the funniest and best thing ever that
my dad shows up and he looks like an out
of work rock star. For some reason, they were very confused.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I was still married to Anne, but I started doing
some work in the LGBT community for the first time,
donating my time and catering to HIV charities in Portland.
I know this sounds bizarre. I'm working with the people
I've spent years saying could and should change, and I'm
still married to a woman who's in that movement. There
(40:15):
was a real separation of the two worlds internally as
well as physically, and nobody in the new world knew
who the old me was. I became a creature of
the night in a different way this time because events
were at night, and catering events would sometimes go till,
(40:36):
you know, twelve midnight to one to two o'clock in
the morning. We go out after two, and I remember
we went to this place and I started talking to
the manager. It was a bar restaurant, and we were
talking and he had the same background that I did.
He was married to his wife, he had children, but
(41:00):
he had been gay. And I got to know this
man and one night he followed me out to my cars.
I was going to drive home, and he leaned in
the window and he kissed me and he said, boy,
you taste good. And it just awakened all of these
(41:23):
feelings in me. And I was intoxicated by this guy.
And I remember that night going home. I started to
cry and I told Anne what happened. I was confused.
(41:44):
I thought, am I falling in love? I did? I
just told her, and you know, and in character consoled me.
But you wasn't thinking of Anne and how this would
hurt her. Well, I was. I was thinking of that.
(42:06):
It was I was so filled with shame, you know.
The hiding factor was present again, hiding these things from her.
And even though I wasn't necessary, I don't want to
say wasn't doing anything overtly gay. I got kissed by
a man, so that's not true. I was on a
(42:27):
journey and making en roads into the gay community, and
I think Anne had had enough and she separated for
me and said, you have to leave. You're not welcome home.
Eventually I sought support from a therapist who worked with Christians,
(42:50):
hoping it would help this time. There was no conversion therapy,
but this therapist had never worked with anyone who was
gay before. I said to him, I have lived as
two people probably the majority of my life. I have
been since I was twenty four years old, I have
(43:12):
been two people. And we spent the year going back
into my childhood, covering everything my life, experiences, my desires,
and at the end of the year our time together
was drawing near. I had become integrated into one person.
(43:38):
One of the last sessions I had with him, I said,
who am I? He goes, You're a gay man who
happens to be a Christian who loves the Lord. And
I felt like, for the first time, I was a
whole person. I was one person as ever it was
(44:03):
God I turned to for support. And I was walking
around the front yard and I started to have this
conversation with God and I said something to the effect
of you have known me and been with me all
of my life. All of my life, you have never
(44:27):
left my side, through the lies, through the turmoil, through
the celebration, through this, my sons, through my sins, You've
always been there for me. I was saying to God,
(44:48):
I am making the decision to live my life as
a gay man, and You're just going to have to
accept this. And I'm talking to someone who was my
best friend. I could talk to God. He knew me
better than I knew myself. So I had conversation with
(45:11):
him just like this, and I said, I love you
with all of my heart, but you're just going to
have to accept this, and I will live as honorably
as I know how to live. And I felt the
Lord say, to my soul, have I ever left your side?
(45:33):
What makes you think I would leave it now when
you need me the most. Anne and I divorced in
twenty thirteen. That was very.
Speaker 5 (45:48):
Tough John, tim again.
Speaker 10 (45:51):
I mean, there was some tension and we were scared.
He's like, we don't want our parents to get divorced.
We don't know that's going to happen. But his time
went on, it was like a little bit of a
release because our parents aren't constantly arguing and upset and
there's this level of tension. Isn't being held up there? Yeah,
I think it's probably a similar story with a lot
of kids in divorce, to be honest, like whether the
(46:14):
circumstances are any different likely to release, Like you're breathing out.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
And Timmy picked up on something I've tried to put
into words too.
Speaker 5 (46:21):
You know, he loved my mom.
Speaker 10 (46:23):
He loved my mom in his own way, and I
think not in the way, not pot fully in the
way that my mom would want him to love her,
but he did. He does still, I would say, he
still loves my mom, And I think there's a really
hard part of having to when they separated and divorce,
letting that go and like one way or the other,
(46:47):
it's still like breaking a family up in a way.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
When I think about why I stayed for all those
years after, mister Pease, I think it primarily boils down
to one thing. I never ever wanted to do anything
that would harm my three sons.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
When you look back on it today, do you ever
regret getting married?
Speaker 2 (47:09):
You know, I'm asked that question a lot. Do I
ever regret being married? That's like, would you do it
again with someone with three sons? It's a very difficult
question to answer because if I had not done it,
those beautiful boys would never have entered my life. And
(47:31):
you know, when you have children, you set eternity in motion.
Would I do it all over again? Yeah, it's an
unanswerable question. Slowly I started to tiptoe out of the
closet and start saying I was gay. It wasn't loud
or public. It was just me finding my own way
(47:52):
in my own time. But gradually people in the gay
community in Portland started putting two and two together and
realizing who I was. I was being kind of outed
publicly about both my homosexuality and my ex gay past.
I didn't really want to do that because my children
(48:16):
were still in school and I didn't want them to hurt.
I had to tell my own story and set the
record straight and I had to atone.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
That's next time in the final chapter 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,
(48:52):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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