‘THEY TRIED TO MAKE ME STRAIGHT’ The story behind Boy Erased
Now the subject of a powerful new film, writer Garrard Conley opens up about his harrowing experience with conversion therapy
It was a family confrontation that Garrard Conley, then 19, had long feared. After years of struggling with his sexuality, he had just been outed as gay to his conservative Southern Baptist parents. Now Conley was sitting in their bedroom in Mountain Home, Arkansas, terrified of answering the question his father, Hershel Conley, a Baptist minister, had just asked him: “Do you swear to God you’re not gay?” Conley hesitated. “No, I can’t do that,” he stammered. “Because I do have those feelings.”
At his parents’ insistence Conley agreed to enrol in conversion therapy at the Memphisbased ministry, Love in Action to “cure” him of his homosexuality. His ordeal there is chronicled in the powerful new film Boy Erased, based on his 2016 memoir and starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and Lucas Hedges. “I’d known I was attracted to men since third grade,” says Conley, 33, “and I had so much guilt over those feelings.”
An estimated 700,000 Americans have undergone conversion therapy – a controversial practice that’s still promoted within certain religious groups. Based on the belief homosexuality is a mental disorder, conversion-therapy programs employ techniques ranging from pseudoscientific therapies to physical punishment. (The American Psychiatric Association opposes conversion therapies and brands them unethical.) “The idea
that homosexuality needs to be cured or fixed in the first place is misrepresentation,” says Scott Mccoy of the Southern Poverty Law Centre. “Every major medical and mental-health organisation says that conversion therapy is nonsense and psychologically harmful.”
Attracted to boys at an early age, Conley grew up believing something was wrong with him – and tried to control his sexual urges. “I’d been raised in church to believe that life is full of temptation and this was just another thought or feeling that you had to ignore,” says Conley, who had a girlfriend in high school. “No-one suspected I was gay.” But the facade cracked in 2004 at college, where he says he was raped by a male student. To deflect attention from the alleged assault, his attacker called Conley’s parents.
Two months later, Conley found himself in gruelling, day-long therapy sessions at Love in Action’s headquarters, being force-fed warnings that homosexuality leads to loneliness, unhappiness and death. “It was psychological torture,” he says. “It felt like complete hopelessness.”
Nine days into the $1500-a-week program, Conley bolted out of the session and called his mother, Martha. “My mom saved my life,” says Conley. “We went back home, and Dad was like, ‘Did it work?’ It was very
uncomfortable.”
Martha Conley credits prayer with helping her rebuild her relationship with her son. “I was like, ‘God, if I’m wrong, then I need you to help me, and help me understand how I can help Garrard,’“she says. His relationship with his father remains complicated. “He still believes what he believes,” says Conley, “but we’ve found ways around it.”
Now living in New York with his husband, Shahab, Conley hopes to help others avoid the torment he endured. The now-defunct Love in Action “was just an intense version of something I’d always seen,” he says. “When you’re in an environment where people don’t accept who you are, it feels like conversion therapy.”
“I’d describe conversion therapy as psychological torture. It was complete snake oil”