ANDRE AFAMASAGA
Conversion ‘therapy’ survivor
Andre Afamasaga was 43 when he first put down on paper the words that he was a gay Samoan man. When, at an interview at the Human Rights Commission, he was asked to talk a bit about himself, it was the first thing that came out – but with a struggle. It was still unnatural, shadowed with embarrassment, fear and shame.
The interview came after 15 years of conversion practices and a decade working as a pastor.
Afamasaga grew up knowing he was gay, but it either wasn’t a primary concern or, when it was, it was something he devoted himself to ‘‘fixing’’.
Over the years, since that interview, he has uttered the words – gay Samoan man – many times. It took over four decades, but now ‘‘it’s a source of strength and pride’’. His work is now dedicated to supporting survivors like him and stopping the practice that harmed him for so long.
Afamasaga was born to Uaina and John Afamasaga in 1975 as the youngest of four siblings, growing up in Lower Hutt.
It was a Seventh-Day Adventist household and church was a big part of his life. His days started and ended with prayers, and services on Friday and Saturday.
His Samoan culture and faith were ‘‘inextricably linked’’. His mum was one of the first Samoan social workers in Wellington and his dad was a taxi driver. The first-generation migrants worked hard and taught him about being caring, loving and supportive of others.
Although he didn’t notice it at the time, Afamasaga now recognises the racism his family endured. His dad would often come home after customers had ripped him off, stolen money, assaulted him, or not paid their fares. He wouldn’t go to hospital because the assumption would be that he started it.
One time he also woke up to the n-word and swastika sprayed on their garage. ‘‘We left it there for ages because we thought, well, whatever. The New Zealand that I grew up in was that.’’
Afamasaga never questioned his faith, but it would be something that continued to affect his life, for better or worse, in the ensuing years.
He recognises the role the church played in helping people like his parents to provide a place of belonging and empowerment. But from the age of about 5, Afamasaga knew he was gay and growing up in a Samoan church and home for him meant he did not feel safe to express himself.
His siblings knew and were supportive, but confusion around his identity, as well as being bullied in school, made him fearful, angry and led him down a path of alcoholism. He still went to work and church, but would then go out drinking, ‘‘causing havoc’’.
Afamasaga ended up in jail cells multiple times when he became violent, but the last time he sat in one was the last time he drank. His double lives had collided and it was the catalyst for sobriety.
However, it pushed his ‘‘out but not out’’ state further back into the closet. The time he had filled with going out and drinking was instead devoted to the church.
Afamasaga was grateful to his faith for firstly drawing him away from alcohol. Then he thought it provided the answers to ‘‘curing’’ his sexuality. In the following years, he was introduced to conversion practices.
At the time it was a relief to find the ‘‘answers’’ he was seeking. It was exactly what he thought he needed to address, ‘‘the thorn in my side’’.
Looking back, he sees how that was just the start of 15 years of dedicating much of his time to becoming straight – something which became integral to measuring and judging his own success. ‘‘My whole life dramatically changed and at the time in my 20s and 30s, when I could’ve been seeking really healthy relationships, I was hating who I was . . . It really did harm me.’’
In 2004, Afamasaga left his postgraduate diploma in Pacific studies to move to Australia and work for a Christian Youth Ministry as a volunteer. What was meant to be nine months turned into a decade; he eventually worked as a community pastor in Sydney.
He was open about his sexuality, but it was framed as the sin he struggled with. Being a pastor further encouraged him to want to ‘‘strike’’ in terms of ‘‘achieving heterosexuality’’.
He loved the community he worked in and was driven by a desire for the people he preached to not to grow up in a church like he did, ‘‘where people felt safer putting on a mask’’.
Afamasaga is grateful he never practised conversion ‘‘therapy’’ on anyone else. ‘‘The grace I was able to extend to others, I wasn’t able to extend to myself,’’ he says.
He left Australia in 2014 for Wellington, continuing his pastoring work for his denomination while also doing a part-time job in the public service.
In his third year back, his denomination suggested he work fulltime as a pastor. But that year, coinciding with his 40th birthday, tt dawned on him that his life choices, inability to ‘‘crack the straight code’’, and ‘‘unwillingness’’ to simply marry a woman and have kids ‘‘just because’’, meant that he would be single for the rest of his life.
‘‘It was the first time I actually acknowledged and recognised and thought that maybe conversion practices don’t work.
‘‘I think it had really buoyed me and given me hope and the promise of it working is what sustained me. When I finally realised that maybe they’re not what they report to be.’’
That year became what he described as the hardest year of his life, riddled with anxiety, depression and a wish to ‘‘end it’’.
Afamasaga began to dip his toes into affirming theology and realised a whole new world that existed beyond the confines of his understanding of his faith.
Full-time work for the public service became his ‘‘lifeline’’. He began to come out to the people around him and the expectation of rejection ‘‘from everywhere’’ instead brought the opposite.
‘‘Before I came out, I was so scared for the longest time. Something that stopped me from coming out was a sense of responsibility to the people that I had preached to, the people that looked up to me as a pastor, I was so worried about what will it do for their faith, what will it do for them.’’
In 2018, he saw a job advertised by the Human Rights Commission, which asked for lived experience of a human rights issue. He got the job and in the following year Australian rugby player Israel Folau’s controversial social media post kicked off a divisive debate around religion, ethnicity and the rainbow community. ‘‘I really worried for young people, particularly those who might be questioning their sexuality, who were Pacific and religious,’’ he says.
The eight-month saga led to Folau being sacked by Rugby Australia, followed by a settlement that was espoused as victory by his supporters. ‘‘That didn’t sit right with me,’’ Afamasaga says.
Having been a pastor, working in human rights, and as a Pacific, gay and religious man, he felt a responsibility to offer his perspective. But it was also an opportunity to ‘‘really come out’’.
He wrote a column that was widely published, offering a perspective that there were more ways to interpret the Bible than was being said by Folau’s supporters. ‘‘I think churches cannot get away from the fact that, societally, things have shifted.’’ He still attends a Seventh-Day Adventist church, but one that flies a rainbow flag.
In February, legislation was passed to make it a criminal offence to perform conversion practices in Aotearoa.
His current work, as a manager of the conversion practices response team at the Human Rights Commission, allows him for the first time to integrate his entire self, and that is also reflected in his life outside work.
‘‘I realise now, I must’ve carried around this heaviness ... So, rather than feeling less integrated, I feel more coherent and more integrated than ever . . . I just see lots of wonderful reason and motivation for embracing my whole self.’’
‘‘I think churches cannot get away from the fact that, societally, things have shifted.’’