Conversion therapist: I’m gay

For years McKrae Game offered guidance to young men in how to not be gay.

He developed a curriculum called Hope for Wholeness, for those who sought ‘‘freedom from homosexuality through Jesus Christ’’, which is offered by ‘‘conversion therapists’’ in 15 states.

Now, Game, 51, has apologised to his former pupils and admitted that he is gay.

The idea that he, or his pupils could change themselves was absolutely harmful, he wrote on Facebook.

‘‘I told people they were going to Hell if they didn’t stop and these were professing Christians!’’ he wrote. ‘‘This was probably my worst wrongful act.’’

In a follow-up discussion about his coming out this week, which he broadcast on Facebook, he said that his wife, Julie, with whom he has two children, had been ‘‘ridiculously understanding’’.

Game began to believe he might be gay at the age of 11. At 20 he had an affair with an older man and began visiting one of the only gay bars in his hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina. In his mid-twenties he attended a conference for Evangelical Christians and during a church service confessed to his struggles to reconcile his sexual identity with his faith.

His mother paid for a counsellor who sought to identify the real cause of his sexuality, suggesting that his father had not shown enough interest in him, he told the Post and Courier newspaper.

He met his future wife through the church and married her in 1996. He set up his ministry offering conversion therapy in Spartanburg in 1999. He said he used gay pornography to relieve the tremendous stress of leading a ministry, fundraising and ‘‘dealing with people who intensely hated themselves’’. He said: ‘‘I had three nervous breakdowns.’’

In November 2017 the board of Hope for Wholeness told him ‘‘they no longer needed my services’’ and he believes that ‘‘my ongoing use of porn was one of the reasons’’. Hope for Wholeness did not respond to a request for comment.

Game has begun apologising to former pupils, some of whom had tried to kill themselves.

He has resumed his earlier profession as a landscape gardener.

Game is the latest Christian ‘‘conversion therapist’’ to renounce the practice. In 2014 nine former ministers in the movement called for an end to such programmes.

‘‘I told people they were going to Hell if they didn’t stop and these were professing Christians. This was probably my worst wrongful act.’’

McKrae Game