Surviving Conversion Therapy

For far too many LGBTQ+ people, the idea of changing who they are has been forced upon them—through family pressure, faith communities, or the dangerous practice of conversion therapy. These programs, often cloaked in the language of care or religious devotion, have left deep wounds on survivors—shame, trauma, and fractured relationships with themselves and others. Today In the Den, Sara visits with Dr. Lucas Wilson, editor of Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy, a powerful collection of 17 survivor accounts—including his own—shedding light on the emotional and psychological fallout of conversion practices. Together they explore what conversion therapy looks like in practice, how survivors navigate the lasting impacts, and why storytelling is such a powerful tool for healing and change.

Special Guest: Lucas Wilson

Lucas Wilson is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto Mississauga and was formerly the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Calgary. He is the editor of Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy, as well as the author of At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives, which received the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. He is currently working on a new literary anthology about queer experiences in Christian higher education, tentatively entitled Don’t Ask, Tell All: Stories of Christian Colleges’ Anti-Queer Regimes.

Links from the Show:

• Find Shame-Sex Attraction here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/shame-sex-attraction-survivors-stories-of-conversion-therapy-lucas-wilson/21360797?ean=9781805011323&next=t 
• Find At Home with the Holocaust here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/at-home-with-the-holocaust-postmemory-domestic-space-and-second-generation-holocaust-narratives-lucas-f-w-wilson/21705604?ean=9781978839816&next=t 
• Find Lucas on IG/Threads/TikTok: @lukeslamdunkwilson 
• Lucas on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lukeslamdunkwilson.bsky.social 
• Lucas on FB: www.facebook.com/luke.wilson.96  
• Lucas on Twitter/X: https://x.com/wilson_fw 
• Lucas at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-wilson-2a0753b1/ 
• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.org 

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.  

Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons. A podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LaWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here. 

For far too many LGBTQ+ people, the idea of changing who they are has been forced upon them, through family pressure, maybe their faith communities, or the dangerous practice of conversion therapy. These programs, often cloaked in the language of care or religious devotion, have left deep wounds on survivors. Shame and trauma and fractured relationships with themselves and with others. Today, we're diving into the topic of conversion therapy, joined by our guest, Dr. Lucas Wilson.

Lucas is the SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. And was formerly the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary. He is also the editor of the recently published, Shame Sex Attraction: Survivors, Stories of Conversion Therapy. This is a beautiful, powerful collection of survivor accounts, including his own, that shed light on the emotional and psychological fallout from conversion therapy practices. So we'll explore together what conversion therapy looks like in practice, how survivors navigate, the lasting impacts, and why storytelling is such a powerful tool for healing and change. This conversation is heartbreaking and hopeful, and it reminds us why Mama Dragons continues to stand firmly against harmful practices, while also advocating for our LGBTQ+ youth to live authentically and thrive. Lucas, welcome to In the Den. It is so great to have you with us.

LUCAS: Sarah, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

SARA: Likewise, I want to start with your story. You have written openly about your own experience with conversion therapy while at Liberty University, a private evangelical Christian university started by Jerry Falwell. And so I wonder if you'll take us through a bit of your journey, getting to Liberty, understanding your own queer identity, and what led you down the path to start gathering other stories into this kind of book. 

LUCAS: So, I was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I'm the youngest of 5 kids, and we were raised in a family household that was not necessarily religious. I mean, I always say now that my mom was haunted by her Baptist demons. But otherwise, we didn't really have too much, you know, religious education within the house, other than, I don't know, I guess maybe learning our prayers and saying grace. But by about grade 2 or 3 for me, again, being the youngest of 5 in the family, we stopped going to church, and so we had gone to church on and off, it was not really a regular routine that we had. And we always would go to church one weekend, and then maybe go to the cottage the next weekend. But like any good Canadian family, by the time I was in about, yeah, grade 2 or 3, we started going to the cottage every weekend. And so, I didn't really have too, too much of a religious education, per se, at least within the family context. And so, I think by the time I was just about to get into high school, I became a little bit more, you know, curious about religion, about God, and about, all things related. And my brother actually got really into the creation versus evolution debate. And he was like, “Luke, you gotta watch these DVDs with me.” And I'm like, “No way, Jose, like, I don't want to watch, you know, debates about creation versus evolution.” But I eventually started watching these DVDs with him, got hooked on the topic at the time, was, you know, invested in whether or not there was a creator, and an intelligent designer. And by the end of it, came to the conclusion that there was. And I decided that if, in fact, I believed that there was a creator, then I should probably get in contact with that creator. 

And so I decided to go back to the church that I had gone to when I was young. All through high school was dedicated to God. I became a Christian pretty quickly into my time in youth group, and then church, and then camp, and all these kinds of Christian activities, and that really defined my high school in a lot of ways. What also defined my high school years was the fact that I was a big old homosexual, but I refused to acknowledge it. I very much was in the closet. I didn't tell anyone, though I think the writing was on the wall. I watched a lot of HGTV growing up and a lot of Food Network Canada. But I wasn't out to myself per-se. I always identified as someone who was struggling with same-sex attraction, which of course, is the Christianese for being queer. And that's how I defined myself. I defined myself as a heterosexual who just struggled with same-sex attraction.

SARA: Lucas, do you think that was because you had steeped yourself in the world of church, and so you'd already been receiving those messages that kind of led to repressing this identity?

LUCAS: I think it was a both-and. Like, I think, in part, why I even went into the church was – not that I was thinking about this on a conscious level – but I think a big reason why I even went to the church in the first place was that it offered me a cover, in the sense that no one would know I was gay, or that I could not be gay, because, of course, within the Evangelical imagination, one cannot be queer and a person of faith. And so I think for me, it was, I went to the church because it allowed me to remain in the closet, at least in my own estimation, for a longer time. But I think once I was there, the messaging, of course, did accumulate. And I've thought about it since looking back. I don't think that there was necessarily any explicit messaging when it came to the pulpit, or during youth group. There was not necessarily a message, or there was no message, that was preached by any of the pastors at my church that homosexuality was wrong. However, those conversations certainly did crop up when I was talking with my friends and with youth leaders one-on-one or in small group settings. That's when I really sort of started hearing these messages. Even apart from the church, my mom growing up made very clear that it was not going to be okay to be queer in our household. My dad was very hippity-dippity. It was like a pot-smoking, Bob Dylan-loving, record-store-owning social worker. Like, he was just a really cool guy. Whereas Cheryl, my mom, not as much. Again, haunted by her religious upbringing.

And that certainly affected how she talked about queers. And I can think of, for example, I remember one time we were on our way to the cottage and downtown Toronto has this essentially highway that cuts through the city. And we were driving on this highway, and it was Pride weekend in Toronto. And my mom had made this reference, she said something along the lines of, “Oh, isn't it disgusting what they do at that Pride event?” And this was certainly not the first time I'd ever heard my mom refer to homosexuality or queers or the queer community as disgusting or vile or sinful or whatever. So I think that all of this messaging accumulated and really reinforced that I could not be a person of faith and queer. And so I think it was both what drew me into the church. But also once I was in the church, of course, this messaging was underlined or underscored.

SARA: And so what led you to Liberty University?

LUCAS: Oh, man. Yeah, good old Jerry Falwell, right? Uh, so I went to Liberty in part, and in large part, because I knew that they had a conversion therapy program. So, I went down to visit Liberty, like, I think in total it was 6 times. I went on this charter bus from Toronto that they had scheduled because my mom's cousin was the national recruiter for Liberty in Canada. And so he kept saying to me, he's like, “Luke, you got to come down and check out this school.” And I'm like, “No way. I don't want to go to Virginia, as if.” And I'm from Toronto, it's a very cosmopolitan, metropolitan city. It’s very multicultural. And I thought to myself, “I'm not moving to the south in the U.S.” For those of us who are in Canada, we have a very stereotypical understanding of what Virginia is like. And I thought to myself, “No way.” Well, fast forward a few months, after my uncle sort of kept pushing me to do this, I'm like, “Okay. Let me go down to Liberty University.” And so I went down, and I mean, in comparison to Canada, college life in the U.S. Is just, everything's bigger, and everything's more exciting, like the football games. And not that I like football, I mean, I'm a big old queer. But, you know, all these sort of student activities, and everything on campus is just more exciting, quote-unquote. And so, I got down there, and I'm thinking to myself when I'm there, I'm like, “Wow, like, look at this campus. It's huge. Look at all these Christian young people. Maybe I could get my foundation in a Christian education,” Because at this point, I had decided I was going to go to University of Toronto, which is Canada's best school. And I thought, I'll go there. Before I had thought maybe I'll go to Bible College out in the prairies in Canada. I quickly changed my mind. And thankfully, I changed my mind. 

So I get down to Liberty, and I'm thinking to myself, “Well, maybe I could get my foundation in a Christian education. And then go on and go back to Canada, go to a secular school, and go from there. And so, I went down to the school. I was blown away by it. And as I was there, I still remember, I was in what they call convocation, chapel service, essentially. It happened three times a week when I was there. And we were in chapel, and I look up, and on the screens where they project the lyrics for worship songs, they also would project ads for on-campus activities or things that were happening in Lynchburg that week. And so one of the things I saw, and I clocked, was that they were advertising for this man on campus – his name was Pastor Dane Emerick – his services. His services were for those who were quote-unquote struggling with same-sex attraction. And of course, when you're a young queer person, anything that's gay and talked about in church, you latch onto. It catches your attention. So, I remember seeing this and thinking, like, “Oh my gosh, like, maybe I should go and talk to him.” So I talked to my friend. I said, “Uh, who's this Dane Emerick guy offering these counseling for guys struggling with same-sex attraction?” And he said, “Yeah. This is a guy on campus. This is what he does. He works with two different groups of students, those who are quote-unquote addicted to porn…” – and of course, research suggests you can't be addicted to porn, but not that Liberty University is all that invested in research – “But the other group that he was working with were those who were quote-unquote addicted to homosexuality.” And so, when I went home, I started scouring the website for anything related to queerness, and specifically in relation to Pastor Dane Emerick and found that he had these one-on-one counseling and group counseling for gay guys, essentially. And so, when I was eventually making my decision where I was going to go to school, University of Toronto, or Liberty University, I made the really wise decision to go to Liberty. And again, a big part of that decision really was the conversion therapy program, because I thought, again, I can't be a Christian and be queer. Therefore, if I go to Liberty, I become straight, get my foundation in a Christian education, and go back to Canada with a wife one day. And all will be well. And I can live my godly, heteronormative life. And clearly things didn't work out the way that I thought they would. But this was the big plan at the time.

SARA: Okay, so I'm curious. So when you were at this convocation, you were just visiting? You were on a preview moment. Did the advertisement on the screen clearly say that this was counseling for those struggling with homosexuality? 

LUCAS: Yeah, and the phrase they always used was struggling with same-sex attraction. I mean, obviously, that's the title of my book, is drawing upon this. But this was always how it was framed. It was never that you were gay. It was that you were just struggling with something. And we could probably get more into that later. This is really the framing that they used. And they used that phrasing for the entire time I was there and beyond. Because I even have at this point, people had taken photos who were still on campus by the time I had left, and they're still advertising in a very comparable way to the way they advertised when I was there.

SARA: So then, let's jump ahead to when you're on campus, and you start seeing this counselor on campus. What was that experience like?

 LUCAS: A lot of fun. No, I'm just kidding. It was terrible. This is always the thing, I mean, looking back, there was so much wrong. There was so much that was damaging. There was so much messaging that was reinforcing what I had, of course, learned over the years before this from my mom, from folks in church, and from, you know, just societal homophobia in general. I always think of conversion therapy as a concentrated form of societal homophobia and or transphobia. And so, for me, when I was in this guy's room, I mean, he had an office on campus, it was a paid university employee, he was formerly the Dean of Men and then he transferred over into the Campus Counselors or Campus Pastor's Office. Student Care is what it was called. Such an ironic title now. But, he was, again, this university staff member.

And so, his office was in one of these back academic halls that are now – it's actually been destroyed. They ripped down those buildings and put up new ones. But it was in this hall, or wing. And you'd go in. You’d check in with the front desk attendant – who also was gay, which is hilarious, looking back. And I know him now as a gay man, an openly gay man today. But you would go in and check in. Then he'd say, “Okay. Go wait in this one room.” It was actually called the prayer room. I still remember the very first time I was in there, I still remember what I was wearing, actually. I was wearing a bright American Eagle red hoodie. And I should be actually a lot more embarrassed about what I was wearing than being queer. But, you know, hindsight's 20-20. So, I'm in there, you'd always wait in this prayer room, and then he would finish with whoever was in front of you. And then you'd always sort of check like, “Who's this guy? Is he addicted to… like, homosexuality too, or is he just addicted to porn?” And you never knew. But I go into the room, and it was this very warm, softly lit room. And you sat across from him. And he had his chair. You had yours. And you would chat – and it was for the four years that I was in the one-on-one program, and it was all four years of my undergrad – it was talk therapy. So, we would talk about a bunch of things. And the way that the program really first started was that we would talk about, and we took inventory of, my relationship to my mom, to my dad, to my siblings, etcetera, etcetera. And, of course, this is like a very pseudo-Freudian approach to human sexuality, like, “How did your relationship with your mom and dad affect the rest of your life, including your sexuality?” And I had to, again, sort of describe, like what was my connection with them. And the way that conversion therapy oftentimes operates is that it's framed that anyone who's queer has a damaged relationship with one or both of their parents. And so, for young gay boys, it's that their mom was overbearing – which mom was, Cheryl was wildly overbearing – and\or that your dad was an absentee father, emotionally distant or abusive, and none of those were true about my dad. My dad was phenomenal. And so, conversion therapy, again, it's not, like, necessarily the most intellectually honest thing. And so they weren’t looking for both boxes to be checked, as long as something fit the narrative that they were looking for, i.e. that my mom was overbearing. That's what mattered. And so we went with that as the driving narrative for really what was the root cause of me being queer.

SARA: And part of this is because, in religious conversion therapy, queerness is not innate. So therefore there must be some external factor that is causing this in you that you can fix. 

LUCAS: Yeah, exactly.

SARA: Or fix yourself.

LUCAS: Well, that's exactly it. And so it's… and you know what? This is something I thought about just sort of conceptualizing: How do they theorize or think about the source? And it's seen as something external, or maybe what they might say also would be internal in the sense of original sin, in the sense that we all have a quote-unquote sin nature that perhaps that's where it comes from. However, what catalyzed that? What brought that about? And to your point, it's something external, and that's in this context, a damaged relationship with one's parent, which can, again, be amplified by one's negative relationship with perhaps one's siblings. And for me, when I was young, I mean, my brothers always teased me about being gay. They were right. At the time, I really emphatically rejected that. What they'll also argue is that, okay, so once you have this damaged relationship with your parents, then fast forward to when you were young. And so he asked – this guy, Dane Emerick, my conversion therapist – he asked me, “When you were young, who were you playing with? Were you playing with boys or girls?” And I mean, I played with both. But my sister was closest in age to me. And so because of that, we had a very strong relationship, stronger than my brothers and I. And so, at the cottage, or on weekends, or whatnot, I'd always be hanging out with my sister. At school, it was both, but again, they don't look for consistency with these folks. Their thinking is not necessarily rigorous. And so they were like, “Well, even though you hung out with boys too, let's focus on the fact that you played with girls. So you must have been much more comfortable in the world of girls.” And I was like, 

“Well, I guess so. I mean, I played with my sister's dollhouses, I played with her dolls, I played with her toys, that kind of stuff. So I guess so.” So, meanwhile, I also had my action figures, but again, we sort of ignored that. And that was the way that it was framed. And the way that it often is framed, is that, okay, so if you're young, you have a damaged relationship with your parents, which affects your relationship with others, and then you start living in the world of, and if you're a young gay boy, the world of femininity, so you're playing with girls, you're doing girly things, this kind of stuff. By the time you hit puberty, and again, we're talking about a very binary understanding of gender and sexuality, you go for what's opposite of you. So if I'm comfortably in the world of girls and femininity, and I'm hanging out with my sister all the time. By the time I got to puberty, I was, according to this thinking, attracted to what was opposite, and that opposite would have been masculinity, boys, and men eventually. So, this is the way that it was framed for me. And in the first few weeks of meeting with this pastor, inventory of my relationship with my parents, my siblings, and my friends when I was young, we then started talking about a lot of other things. And really, he was, my conversion therapist, was so invested in questions of, like, “So what kind of porn do you look at? What kind of men are you attracted to? Do you like daddies? Do you like twinks? Do you like…” and all these really, really highly invasive questions. Which, looking back, you think to yourself, “I think I know why Pastor Dane Emerick, the conversion therapist, was asking these questions.” Again, the writing was on the wall. But, at the time, I thought he was trying to help me. And so I answered all of these, again, really invasive questions. 

SARA: Wow, curious question as you're talking that this counselor was a pastor. Did he have any formal psychological counseling training? I didn't think so. I have a feeling that's true for a lot of religious-based therapists. And I'm just thinking about my own self, who is a minister. And pastoral care is a completely different thing from psychological counseling. And we are not trained as counselors. So, already there is that disconnect of a pastor is equipped to help you through this. And then, as you're describing it, it sounds like it's crossing a lot of ethical boundaries.

LUCAS: Mm-hmm. Well, [inaudible] right? You have so many folks within the church who have positions of authority with absolutely no qualifications. Or if they do have qualifications, right, like, it's not the right qualification. In this case, he was a pastor. And from my understanding, he never even graduated from grad school. He had a Bible college, I don't know if it's a diploma or a certificate, whatever, but that's what he had. And again, became the Dean of Men, and then eventually was working in the Pastoral Care Office. Which, again, is not psychological care, like you said. And like you also said a number of ethical boundaries were crossed. And so, he would ask me all these questions. And then as time went on, we sort of transitioned into a routine. So the first several sessions were, again, getting to know me and understanding my, again, my relationships, my habits, my interests, my desires, whatever. And then from there, thinking about trying to create a program for me to get rid of these desires. And ultimately find attraction to that one unicorn of a woman. I'm still trying to find her. But that was the plan. And so what we would do on a weekly basis, we would read scripture. We would read and talk about this book that he had assigned me. My book was Alan Medinger's Growth into Manhood: Resuming the Journey. Alan Medinger was the former president of Exodus International – of course, now, an organization that has disbanded because, again, no one changed their sexuality or gender under their watch – but this was the book that I read. And we prayed together. But I always think it's quite telling that he was always praying, never me. And of course, within Protestant traditions we can talk directly to God – not to say the Catholics can't, but there's more of a sort of an intermediary or intercession – and for him, he always prayed for me. I never prayed for myself, which again, I think is quite telling. And so these were the weeks that, or pardon me, these were the sessions we would have. And then on top of all of that, we would always have a moment to talk about my slip-ups and my victories from that week. So, slip-ups were moments that I gave into temptation. Victories were moments that I resisted temptation and ran from it. And so, again, he was always very interested in the details about what my slip-ups were, but again, at the time, I thought, ”Oh, he's just trying to help me.” And then, beyond all of this, there was also the tactile aspect of my meetings with him. And we always started and ended with a big bear hug, and it was this very all-consuming and restricting hug. And at the end of every time we would meet, he would always put his hands on either my shoulder or my leg. And I was talking with my one friend about this a few years after, and the way that he described it, he said, “It's not his hand was so far down in the leg that you didn't notice it, but it was always so far up the leg that you clocked it, right?” So it was just always a weird sort of placement of the hand. And again, you look back and you think, “I think I know why you were touching me so high up on my thigh.” But again, not so far up that I was going to say no. But of course, within the evangelical church, so many folks are conditioned to not resist authority. If authority's doing something, you just go with it. And so, again, even if he had to have gone a little bit too far up, I don't think I would have probably said anything, because I would have thought, “Well, maybe this is just him teaching me good touch, bad touch.” And that's how I always thought about it, as a very infantilizing exercise that he was teaching me how a man can't touch a man without being, you know, physically or sexually attracted. And so, this was also certainly part of the meetings that we had. 

SARA: When did you realize that this experience of counseling that you had gone through at Liberty was ineffective, wasn't what it was cracked up to be, was care? Did you ever, and did you ever come to a point where you looked back and thought about it as a form of abuse?

LUCAS: Yeah, so I went through Liberty, and all four years, I was in the one-on-one program. I eventually went to the group program, but I only went to the group program once. And really, it was because I had – what's the word? – one foot in and one foot out. And I was trying to figure out who were the other gays on campus. And then once I got to the group, I was like, “Oh, maybe these aren't the gays that I was hoping they would be.” And then I didn't go back. And I actually write about the story about me going into the group therapy in Shame Sex Attraction. And then the individual program I talk about in my next book that's coming out next year about the one-on-one sessions. And so all that to say that I didn't think about any of this as abuse, or negative, or damaging at all until I left Liberty. And that's also, and it coincides, really, with how or the violence of conversion therapy for me. And what I mean by that is that when I left Liberty, which was 2012, I matriculated to McMaster University, where I did my MA in English back in Ontario. And so I was there, and it was actually a friend, an office mate, we were talking. And it just came up that I had met with this pastor throughout my undergrad. I was starting to come out to people, not as a proud gay man, but as sort of testing the waters. Like, if I say to this person that I'm into men, how are they going to respond? And I thought it was a safer place to do it at the university with my colleagues than at the church. So I, of course, was silent at the church about my sexuality, but opening up with my friends at McMaster. So I had told my office mate, I said, Yeah, I met with his pastor and I described what it was like. And she said, “Oh, so you went through conversion therapy?” And I remember thinking, like, “I guess. I guess so?” Like, I never conceptualized it like that. I always thought about it as pastoral counseling, and that Pastor Dane was just trying to help me. And so, when she put it that way, that, again, I think once you put things into language and you have a vocabulary to describe things, your world opens up, right? And so I started thinking about it. And I was like, my gosh, I guess maybe that was conversion therapy. And I started – not to say that I was necessarily upset by that per se at the time because again, I was still very much in the church. I was leading a youth group at my church that I was at in Hamilton and I was going to church on the regular. And so, I didn't really, again, think of it in negative terms per se. And when I did eventually start realizing that it was ineffective was when I remember I was washing my dishes before I'd finished dinner in my split-level apartment. And I was downstairs, you know, washing the dishes. There was one light on in the entire room in the kitchen. And it was dark. And in Canada, you know, when it's winter, it gets dark at 4pm, and it's depressing already. And it's just terrible. And so I'm there, and a little, I guess, contemplative, and perhaps emotional, again, perhaps because of the horrible, eternal winter of Hamilton, Ontario. And I was going to go visit my buddy at the pub for a beer afterwards. But I was just standing there, and I was thinking, I was like, God, but I was talking to God. I was like, God, I have done everything that I possibly could do to become straight. I met with Pastor Dane for 4 years. I read my Bible. I prayed. I ask God over and over to free me from this affliction, quote-unquote. And I fasted, and I thought about that if I think back now, the number of weeks that I would fast – and I would fast for a week at a time – If I counted them up, it would have been literally months that I just didn't eat throughout my entire undergrad. That I would drink only – it's actually disgusting thinking back – I would only drink milk and Gatorade. I don't know why those were my options of choice. But that's what I drank only. Not together, obviously, but those were the two things I allowed myself to drink. And this would have been months of fasting, and I was, “God, I've done everything.” And I remember saying to God, I was and I think this might have been one of the first times I swore when praying, and I was like, “God, what the fuck? Like, what is going on that I'm not able to change? It's like, obviously, you want me to change. And I want to change And so if I'm doing everything I can and I'm not changing, what's the problem?” And of course, within the evangelical imagination, emphasis on imagination, God's perfect. And therefore, if the problem, if you're trying to change, and God's perfect, well, the problem's not God. Who, therefore, is the problem? It's you. You're the problem, and of course, when you see yourself as a problem, that's a problem, right? And so, for me, that was really, this moment that offered me pause, bare minimum, and that pushed me to think, well, God, again, within this world or this cosmology that I and the church have constructed, how do I navigate being a queer person? I can't be queer, and I can't be a Christian. So something's got to give. And so it was that year at McMaster was really these a lot of these growing pains. Academically, it was also wildly rigorous in comparison to Liberty. No surprise there. And so I was being challenged academically. I was being challenged, in this case, spiritually, emotionally, while sort of navigating these conversations within myself, and not really talking to anyone. I started to really start to feel the shame. Because, for me, when I was at Liberty and when I was meeting with Pastor Dane, I really felt on a weekly level, not shame per se, even though Christian theology, of course, like, really pushes a narrative of shame, right? Even our righteousness is filthy rags before God. But putting that aside, when it was coming to my sexuality and my slip-ups as Pastor Dean would have put them, I think that I felt guilty on a weekly basis. Because I didn't think that what I was doing was a product of me, it was a product of a struggle that was external to me. So I was able to separate myself from the actions. And so if anything I did that was bad, it was like, “Oh, I feel bad about that one action, or that one thing, I don't feel bad about myself, because I'm not gay.” Which, of course, like the mental gymnastics are wild. But, you know, I certainly thought this one thing that I've done, feel a slap on the wrist, sorry God, I shouldn't have done that. And Dane would be like, “Yep. You've messed up here. But we're going to keep going. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Keep focused and eventually you'll find victory.” And so, when I got to McMaster and I was by myself, and I didn't have that constant reinforcement that “all was well, and you know, God was on God's throne,” I had to, again, navigate these conversations by myself. And that's when I really started blaming myself. And it wasn't just that I had done something bad, it was that I was bad as a person. And that these bad things I was doing were a function of me as this disgusting, despicable human. And again, a lot of this messaging that, even though Pastor Dane tried to say like, “You're not bad.” Of course, the underlying message was that I was bad, right? And although I was able to compartmentalize and think, oh, I'm not bad in the moment, but I was at Liberty. When I got out of Liberty, all of these things just kind of unraveled, and I unraveled too.

SARA: Well, the title of your book is really telling in thinking about the shame associated with this experience. And I think you've illustrated the whole experience, from being deeply immersed in it and not understanding the problem, how it's problematic, to then the exact opposite of embracing your inner self, and then feeling the shame that comes with it. So I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about, in the other stories, in the other histories that you gathered in this book, talking a little bit about how that shame plays out in other people's stories. 

LUCAS: Yeah. So, I mean, I always say that shame is what brings people into conversion therapy, unless they're forced to go into conversion therapy. And it's also the number one product of conversion therapy. And the research does back that up. The number one cited consequence of conversion practices for survivors is shame. But again, what brings people into conversion therapy is that people are made to feel bad about themselves for their gender or sexuality that does not align with the heteronormative model. And so that was certainly the case, and also for the other folks, the contributors in the book, that was the case as well. And so the through-line through the book is, of course, shame. Though I worked with authors to actually excise the word shame from as many stories as possible. I think maybe one or two have the word shame in there. Because I didn't want it to be too sort of on the nose, but I also wanted people to show rather than tell. – Putting that aside, that's the editor's note. Neither here nor there -- But with the stories in the collection, I mean, there's a range of stories. Most are from high control religious context, particularly from Christian contexts. And again, the research does back this up, that the vast majority of instances of conversion therapy happen within a Christian contexts, specifically high control, conservative Christian contexts. And so, again, most stories in the collection are from evangelical, or Christian fundamentalists, or Pentecostal contexts. There's one story from an Orthodox Jewish context. And there's one story from just a secular familial context. And so, the rest of the stories, including my own and also including the story that is behind the person who wrote the foreword of the book, Garrett Conley – again, also from a high-control religious context – and so, with all these contexts, right, conversion therapy across the board is, again, what we're seeing in all these stories and what we see in the research is that shame is what is amplified within these contexts. And the vast majority of people in the collection also self-elected to go to conversion therapy. And we can talk, perhaps, about what it means to choose conversion therapy and what is exactly that choice. But I'll put a pin in that for now. But we see, again, shame across the board. We see a number of other consequences, a number of other themes brought up, right? And again, guilt certainly comes in. Depression, suicidal ideation. There's a host of negative psychological and emotional consequences, and again, arguably spiritual consequences for all these folks within these stories. And so we see stories where there's spiritual abuse, We also see stories where there's what we would refer to as moral injury, where it's not just that we were victimized through these experiences. But also that we implicated others in conversion therapy, whether it means inviting someone to come to a group or telling someone in a position of leadership over that they should go to a conversion therapist does what we call moral injury, where we implicate ourselves in the victimization of others. Which then later on causes a wound. And so, these are, again, certain themes that are brought up throughout these stories, and I think that what we see is just a really big mess of spiritual and religious abuse. And also, again, not, there is a story that's not written in a religious context. But these are stories that shed light on the multiple ways that people try to change others' genders and/or sexualities if they, again, don't align with the heteronormative model. 

SARA: In your story and in the stories of others that you heard in putting this book together, did you ever run up against the thought that this isn't working. Like, in some internal frustration of, like, I'm doing this thing – I think you reflected about it getting out later – and it doesn't appear to be working.

LUCAS: I think you are made to be so desperate, not just that you are desperate, you're made to be desperate, that this is working. And so I think that there's such cognitive dissonance between reality, the fact that you're still queer, and what you wish would be reality, that you'd be straight. And so, I remember when I was at Liberty, it was after the first year, I went and visited my friend at the time who was living in Long Island. And he was one of the very few guys who knew that I was struggling with same-sex attraction, quote-unquote. And so I told him that my struggles, quote-unquote, and my fight against it, and meeting with Dan, and all this kind of stuff. And so I remember there was one day that we had gone to this amusement park. And at the end of the day, I was like, “Yo, David. I didn't think about guys once today.” Like, it was completely free of any sexual thoughts which, whether or not that's true, I don't know at this point. But that was the story I was sticking to at the time. And again, it was this idea that, oh, wow, here's an example of a day where I didn't have any sort of sexual thoughts. Maybe this can be my entire life. And so you are so desperate, you have what one theorist refers to as cruel optimism, twisted hope, for something to be true that simply isn't, and by definition never will be.

And so, for me, I think that at the time that I was within the Liberty bubble, right, this sacred canopy on campus, I was tutored to believe – and this message was constantly reinforced – that you can't be gay and be a Christian, and that this is simply a struggle, and that perhaps if you do set your heart and mind to it, you can change. And so I think within that framework, it was precluded that I would ever have a different outcome other than being straight eventually. And of course, once I got out of that context, once I was separate from these people who were constantly reinforcing the boundaries of this world that we were living in, the holes in that cosmology started to reveal themselves. And I started to realize, oh, wait a second, this really isn't working. And once you start pulling on the thread, and then you start pulling back the curtain, things fall apart, and the curtain falls down. And all of a sudden, you realize, well, all of this was a big old sham. And none of it worked. And it never will work. And I might as well get myself out of this community, right? Get myself out of this made-up, constructed world that simply does not apply to reality. And not to say that you can't be religious and be a person of reason. I think that a lot of people are. It's that, if we're talking specifically in the evangelical context, No, I don't think you can. These are mutually exclusive categories.

SARA: So, what helped you in your path to undoing some of this, to undoing some of the shame, to moving toward healing and finding some self-acceptance?

LUCAS: For me, higher education was both the context and the vehicle in which I extricated myself from this way of thinking. Again, right after undergrad, I went straight into grad school. And grad school, again, I always say at this point, grad school saved my life at this point. If I had not gone to grad school, I think I would be married to a woman with kids, and thank goodness for both me and the woman, and the kids, that that did not happen. I don't think any of us would have won in that context. But I think grad school and academia in general, it’s to find truth and to advance knowledge, and to explore ideas, and to interrogate ideas, and to question things, and to constantly find better ways of being, I think, ultimately. And perhaps that's a really idealistic way of thinking about academia, but that's the way I think about it. And so in grad school, I was introduced to a number of theories, authors, writers whose worldviews really differed from mine. 

And again, when I was living in this really constructed world at Liberty, and also the constructed world of the evangelical church, and it's held up against other people's lived realities and other people's experiences, you start to, again, realize, wait a second, that doesn't align, and that's different, or that's bizarre, or wait, that actually makes a lot more sense. Oh, wait, actually, I would prefer that. And you start to see the world differently. You see the world otherwise, because for so long, the world, I was told, was a certain thing. And my relationship to Jesus and my theology came first before anything else, including me. Like, what did I prioritize, Jesus or my sexuality? Of course, Jesus, because at the end of the day, Jesus has control of where I'm going to go eternally. And if I don't want to go to hell, well, I better choose Jesus. And that was really the world that I was living in, and had this, held, focused way of being. And so, I think that grad school, in that sense, really allowed me to begin thinking differently. Also, again, just having conversations with people who either were in the church and were no longer, or perhaps were still Christian, but were very different Christians from me, or never had any connection to the church at all. This was a neat, really sort of concentrated space for me to have these discussions, because, of course, I had friends who weren't Christians. I grew up, you know, going to public school. But it was never in an academic context. This was really dedicated time to think through a lot of these things in a way that I hadn't really had when I was in, say, high school. And so that was a really neat sort of thing for me. The other part that I always attribute to my ability to get out, or my journey and how I got out, was when I moved to Nashville. So first I went to McMaster, did my MA there. And then I went to Vanderbilt. and I did my MTS there And so when I was there, I was now back in the States, back in the South. And I was – though at this point, living in a city where only one person knew me, and I was never going to see her unless I was going to church. And so I knew that she wasn't going to be around, especially if I was going to gay bars – I got to this city, I was out and about, having a time, excited that I could finally be me. And so, I, at this point, decided that I was going to live first and theorize later, which is another way of saying I was going to just let my lived experience determine me, my sort of journey, my life experience… sort of how I see the world, as opposed to allowing my theory – which what I mean by theory in this context is Christian theology, and Christian theology, at the end of the day, really is just theory about God and situations in the world and how they relate to God – And I was going to let my lived experience take the driver's seat, and my theory take back seat. As opposed to what I've been doing up until that point, which was letting my theory and my theology really determine every single aspect of my life, including whether or not I could be gay. And so, I got there, and I was like, okay, I'm going to live first as a gay man, and think about Jesus later. And so, that's really what I did, and I was at Vanderbilt’s Divinity School, which is sort of, I guess, a fun, ironic in some senses, but for those, you know, who know Vanderbilt, it's a very left-wing, very progressive divinity school. And so, I had a number of, I think three of the four Deans in the Divinity School were queer, a number of professors who were queer, and I had a number of classmates who were queer. And so being in this environment was so different for me because at McMaster, which again had a number of queer people too, the conversation was not so much about marrying your queerness with your faith, it was just that it was almost sort of assumed that you wouldn't be a person of faith for most people. I only knew one person at McMaster who was still a person of faith and in grad school. But the rest, that wasn't a conversation they were willing to have or wanted to have. So when I got to Vandy, all of a sudden, I met all these people who were like, yeah, I'm a queer Christian. I'm like, what the heck is this? So allowing myself to live first and theorize later, while also still being in the world of theory, right? I was still in grad school and having these conversations. All of this worked together in a really weird and upside-down and wonderful way where, by the end of my time in that master's program, I had assumed the identity of a queer Christian. I'm no longer a person of faith. These aren't really questions for me on a personal level that I care about. They're more so questions I care about for others, and looking at the queer community in general. But at the time, I was still a person of faith. And this was something that I was invested in these conversations for both personal reasons and also for academic reasons. But I think these two things, both allowing my theory to play second fiddle to my lived experience, and also encountering difference, difference of ideas, different people, different ways of being. I think these two things were huge in allowing me to work through a lot of the tomfoolery that I had learned at Liberty and in conversion therapy.

SARA: I love that. I love the slogan, “Live first, theorize later.” But as you were talking, I was thinking, but yet you're at this place where you are getting all of this queer theory and theological theory that is just really completely the opposite of where you started, which is a really unique and beautiful experience. Many states have now passed bans around conversion therapy. Like, there is a growing scholarship like your own that is just really showing the harm that this is causing young people, psychological harm. And you shared some of the really distressing impacts. And yet, your work and scholarship also shows that conversion therapy persists even in states that have passed bans. Can you talk a little bit about that, and how and the why of that?

LUCAS: So, I always say at this point, just because something's illegal, and if we're talking in the context of the states where conversion therapy is banned, just because something's illegal doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, right? Crime will continue to happen, it just goes underground, right? So just because drugs are illegal doesn't mean that people don't do drugs. And so, with conversion therapy, it's the same thing, right? That, although there are bans in a number of states, and in Canada it's a nationwide ban, conversion therapy, we know, persists. And so, really this in some ways tracks also with how conversion therapy has been advertised or not advertised over the years, right? So, in the 70s, it was not really advertised, because it was just sort of something that certain ministries or churches were doing in their congregations. By the 80s and into the 90s, and even into the 2000s, there were, like, whole PR campaigns to not only bring in Christians to conversion therapy spaces, but also to bring in those in the secular world. There were especially around, like, late 90s and into the early 2000s. And so what happened, though, of course, once there was a growing body of research on conversion therapy, and survivors started speaking out, and leaders started leaving the movement, conversion therapy was not considered something to advertise. It was bad PR and it was bad optics to say, “Yeah, I'm a leader of a conversion therapy organization.” That's not cute. And so, instead, what started happening was that these organizations would only really advertise to Christian circles. And now, especially after Exodus disbanded, especially after there have been, again, a number of studies that have come out discrediting conversion practices and saying they're not only ineffective, but like you said, they're harmful, that these organizations, again, they started falling apart. But then on top of that, they started really turning inwards. And not just advertising to other churches. But really doing this advertisement behind closed doors. So that a church wouldn't say, necessarily – although Liberty University continued advertising its offerings on campus – but a number of organizations would more so say, they would make sort of offhand comments, or preach a sermon about homosexuality and then say,” Oh, hey congregation, we have someone on staff who's willing to help you with gender or sexuality questions or issues.” And so a lot of this euphemistic language really sort of crept in, not to say that it wasn't there before because it was, but this was really the conduit by which Christian organizations, churches, or whatever, would communicate that they have these different services, that they offer conversion therapy. And so, you know, if you look on church websites now, for those of us who have an ear to the ground we can see or hear these dog whistles, right? They'll say, oh, we have pastoral counseling, or biblical counseling, or biblical worldview counseling for those who have struggles with sexuality or gender, or are struggling with same-sex attraction, this kind of stuff. And so a lot of these organizations are able to get away with the dirty work that they do by not only obfuscating the work that they do by way of using this euphemistic language. But also, just, there's even where they'll say, “Well, I mean, at the end of the day, this is our sincerely held religious belief that one can change. And so we're not offering conversion therapy, we're just helping people live in wholeness. We're helping people fight against their temptations,” which is a different way, a synonymous way of saying we offer conversion therapy, right? But for a lot of policymakers, a lot of lawmakers, and a lot of law enforcers, it's hard for them, especially if they don't have a religious literacy, particularly a high-controlled Christian literacy to really say, “Okay, well, actually, this is conversion therapy, and let's prosecute you accordingly.” Oftentimes what these bylaw officers, at least in the context of Canada, will do like, “Well, they didn't say it's conversion therapy.” And, yeah, but it is conversion therapy. They're like, “But they didn't say it.” You're like, “Are you that stupid?” and I know a number of people, and in fact, an organization out in Alberta who when this person was coming to Canada to promote conversion practices through a church that she called the police and said – well, the police to connect her to by-law officers – the by-law officers she was talking to them, saying, “Hey, this is conversion therapy.” And that was the conversation, but they didn't say it was. But it is. But they didn't say it was. And that's where the conversation ended, right? And so I think that a lot of governments and a lot of law enforcement agencies don't have the training to put these laws into effect and to really, again, prosecute those who are committing crimes, because these practices are crimes in a number of contexts, and they need to be treated as such. But unfortunately, a lot of people don't know what exactly is conversion therapy and then how to talk about it, and then ultimately how to prosecute it. But that's what we see, even though we have a number of places where this is banned, whether it be municipalities or provinces or states or countries. A lot of people don't know what to do with these laws, and that's really the next step and the big problem that we're facing right now. Though, of course, there is a Supreme Court case in the US that's going to be heard later this year or early next. This might change everything. But that's the state of affairs, you know, as we see it right now.

SARA: Well, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the kind of current political climate, if you will. Because even with those states that have bans enacted and conversion therapy continues. We're now living in the US, and it sounds like to some degree in Canada, you have bans. But you also have some really far-right progressive leaders that are really trying to undo a lot of that stuff. But in the US, we're living under this federal government that is just constantly trying to attack and wipe out any kind of systems of support for LGBTQ people and trans folks and youth. And I imagine, myself, that I could see this future where there could be this new wave of legislation carving out pathways and protections, and maybe even offering funding for conversion therapy, given the whole context of the government and where we are. And I'm curious how you're thinking about this moment with regards to the conversion therapy and trying to put some regulation in place?

LUCAS: Of course, my research is mostly focused on the US. And so even beyond my research, just as an engaged person, it's terrifying to see what's happening in the US. And I feel awful for my queer friends, and I feel awful specifically for my trans friends because of the onslaught of anti-queer and anti-trans legislation, lobbying, and public policy and all this kind of stuff that's emerging. It's terrifying. I have some friends who are looking to move to Canada right now. And they're applying using refugee visas, and so it's just seeing what's happening and how quickly it's happening. That's another thing. It just seems or feels unprecedented. And so, with that in mind, and thinking about what's already been done, of course we can turn our attention to what's currently being done. What I will say is that Kim Davis, well, actually, it's the Liberty Council that's defending her. Matt Staver is behind that proposal.

SARA: Would you remind our listeners who Kim Davis is?

LUCAS: Pardon me, Kim Davis is the county clerk from Kentucky who refused to sign marriage licenses for queer couples who were applying for marriage licenses. And then she eventually got in trouble. And then she, again, was pushing for a reversal of the law. And she lost, And Matt Staver, again, Matt Staver's the former Dean of Liberty's Law School, so there's a Liberty connection here and he's in charge of Liberty Council, and so she’s now, with the help of Matt Staver, trying to overturn gay marriage once again. And then if we're thinking about the conversion therapy case that's being brought forth by the Alliance Defending Freedom, these two cases are laying the foundation for future steps to offer funding for conversion therapy organizations, right? And to ultimately fund the efforts to change individuals' sexual orientations, gender identities, and or expressions. And so, all this to say is that I think that what we're seeing right now is a – I was gonna say a slow chipping away, but again, it's not slow – it's a rapid chipping away at protections and rights for queer folks and trans folks in the US. And, again, really laying the groundwork for future endeavors to do not just to fight against the protections, but also to actually actively attack them. And so I watch on with honest-to-goodness dread, and anxiety, and truly horror, seeing what's happening, and just anticipating what will happen. It's just sincerely terrible. Terrible and terrifying.

SARA: When you think about this moment when conversion therapy might be having this moment where it can come out from the underground, and in its very specific religious spaces, and have some more widespread reach because of the nature of what our government is allowing, what could you tell families – particularly families who have queer beloveds or queer kids, and they're just at the beginning of this discovery – What could you tell folks to look for in terms of how to navigate the therapy space? Because many people, well-meaning, want to get their folks in therapy, and I imagine it's gonna be increasingly more difficult to try to figure out who is qualified and who isn't, and what might be conversion therapy, and what won't be as all of these new euphemisms are being used and whatnot. And particularly, I think about for people who are coming out of, like you, conservative religion who may not be instantly reactive to religious-centered counseling. 

LUCAS: I think that anytime you see anything related to gender or sexuality, if it's not framed in a positive light, that's your first sort of clue, right? And sometimes these organizations or these therapists won't outright say what they do, again, because they're in states or municipalities where it's illegal to practice conversion therapy. But if you see anything along the lines of gender confusion, right away there's a pejorative term being used. Reintegrative therapy is a term that's oftentimes used in these other contexts that are not necessarily Christian or religiously connected. Reparative therapy, obviously, with conversion therapy, obviously, but again, they don't really use these terms. But anything about gender identity or gender ideology, if it has the slightest negative connotation or valence, then, to be immediately suspicious. But I think, really, what you want are organizations that are outright proud of the offerings that they have for queer people. You know, if it's anything to do with compassion or love for LGBTQ people, that's another dog whistle, like watch out. But if it's saying that we support and we work with trans and queer youth or trans and queer adults, whoever. If they're explicitly naming it. I think, again, you have probably not much to worry about. But if they're talking about having a good love or compassion or biblical counseling, or biblical worldview counseling or working with those who have gender confusion or whatever, again, reintegrative therapy is really perhaps the best known and gender exploration therapy are the two phrases that are oftentimes used these days. Then definitely just be suspicious. And I think, in addition to all of that, to really talk to therapists up front and say, “Hey. What's your stance on queer folks?” Within the first sentence, it's going to be clear, right? So I think it's definitely just important to have those conversations. 

It's definitely important to look at the websites beforehand. And really, I think the best thing is just to be referred by a friend or by someone who's trusted to either work with a counselor or not work with a counselor, right? Recommendations and referrals are always appreciated.

SARA: Thank you for that. I think you helped clarify some language, too, that people can really start to listen for, or to watch for that might initially seem confusing, that might be trying to say something that it's not. For LGBTQ+ youth and young adults who might share some of your story, coming from conservative religious families' traditions who are in that struggle, whatever that struggle looks like, and I'm using air quotes because it's a tricky word, but in their worldview, it is a struggle. You talked a little bit about choosing this road, this therapy for yourself. And yet, there's a lot of community and dogmatic pressure to face this struggle, to do something about it. So, what would you want those young people to know, who find themselves in that situation?

LUCAS: You know what, speaking about struggles. I struggle with this with my response, because I think to when I was at Liberty, when I was an evangelical even before Liberty and after Liberty, I didn't have the ears to listen. I didn't have the ears to hear, to anyone who said it was okay to be queer and a Christian, or it was okay just to be queer. I was so within that, again, that religious cosmology that anything that differed from the script that I had been given, I would have thought, “Well, that's from the enemy. Well, that's straight from the devil. That's not of God.” And so, I think there's only so much one can say to someone. Granted, my experience is not everyone's experience, and so other people perhaps did or will have the ears to hear, whereas I didn't. I think that, of course, the message that should be loudest is that you're perfectly fine the way you are. You're created in God's image. And nothing to worry about, like, move forward. But, again, whether or not that's going to land on fertile soil, and if the person's going to actually receive those words as truth, or as something by which they can live, that's another question. That's why I just think to myself – people have said, like, “What would you say to yourself back then?” And I'm like “I wouldn't have listened to myself, that's the problem.” And so I think, I don't know, I feel like it's not a satisfactory answer, and it's not perhaps a good answer, but it is maybe the most honest answer. 

SARA: That's fair and honest, and I appreciate that, because I think that's also helpful to know that sometimes we can't intervene even if we want to. People aren't ready or willing or able to hear that intervention. For families who have a young person or a beloved who has been through conversion therapy, who has perhaps been harmed by conversion therapy, what's the most helpful thing a family member or a parent can say to someone who's had that experience?

LUCAS: Really quickly, just to go back to the question you just asked me if someone was to say to that person, “It's okay to be gay, and it's okay to be a Christian. I love queer people. I love all people. And if you ever want to come and talk to me, come talk to me.” No one ever said that to me. But I'm thinking now, had someone said that, I would have been furious that they would have assumed I was gay. And so I think maybe just saying it, like, “If you ever want to come and talk to me down the road, I'm a safe person to talk to.” Maybe that is simply it. Because I think it's gonna disrupt that world in which they live, because they think that they're living so comfortably within this highly constructed, co-created world of Christianity or evangelicalism. But it offers at least a hole out of that world, and saying, “Hey, if you ever do want to at least talk to me, I'm very much in support of you. And if you're queer, cool.” But again, that might really tick them off, but in the best way possible. 

SARA: Well, you said something really interesting there. That I think is wonderful to tell someone. You know, you can be queer and be Christian. Those two things can exist together, and there are lots of queer Christians out there. It makes me curious if you, when you were stuck in that bubble, did you even know that there were queer Christians that existed in the world?

LUCAS: I thought that they were heretics. I thought they weren't Christians. 

SARA: Uh, yes, of course.

LUCAS: I was like, “Well, they must not be a Christian because they're queer and because they're living into that identity.” And so, to answer your question that you did ask, I think that resources and how to help someone who has undergone conversion therapy, the number one cited support that queer folks is being in a community that is supportive, and it actually doesn't mean that a queer community, this just means a community. The number two answer was then referring to being part of a queer community specifically. But the first answer was just being a part of a community that supports them. And so this is where questions, or oftentimes you'll have people who say things who are allies or want to be allies, and they'll say, like “I still love you.” And it's like, still? Do we need to put the word still in there? Like, just to find a community that says, I love you. Period. Like, not that I still love you, I love you, but even if, there's no qualifiers, right? Just, I love you and you are wonderful, period. And so if we're talking about religious communities and saying, how do we as a religious community, support those who've undergone conversion practices, making part of the worship service queer inclusive and trans-inclusive. Making liturgy trans and queer inclusive. Using language that is inclusive. I think about when I was in DIV school, one of my TAs for one of my courses, whenever he referenced God, he would use pronouns such as he, or she, or they, and use them interchangeably without even blinking. And I remember just being sort of, like – it was jarring, because I was like, I'd never heard anyone refer to God as she. And yet, here's my TA, and he's just using she as he would use he, or they, and whatever, and right? And so I think, like, making these normal practices within congregations and within conversations, I think, is super, super helpful. And so I think there are different ways to do that within the religious context. I think there were different ways to do this within the personal context. Again, not offering those qualifiers when you say you love someone. Just period, I love you. And also offering people space to talk about what they experienced. What is oftentimes re-traumatizing for individuals who have had traumatic experiences is not being believed, or having their experiences questioned, right? So instead of saying, “Are you sure that happened?” Or, “that doesn't sound real.” Just offering space for that person to speak and to be heard. I think that's a huge thing, and not necessarily rushing to offer advice. I think that's something that we all want to – especially for those of us who are quote-unquote fixers, we want to fix everything and make everything better and offer our two cents and say, well, you should do this, or you should do this, you ought to do this. – Nope. A lot of people don't really care what you think or what you think they should do. What they care about is just being heard, right? And just having someone offer them, again, an ear just to be a sounding board, right? And just say, this is what happened to me. And for that person to respond only with, “That's awful. That sounds horrible. I'm so sorry you experienced that. Period. I love you.” I think these are things that are so life-giving and so helpful and are things that, for me and my own personal journey, were super helpful, and for those who are, again, the research suggests all of these ideas really do create spaces for people to come to terms with what happened to them. And I think in a literal sense, come to terms or find language to articulate what exactly happened to them, and how liberating that is, just to name what is the situation? What a beautiful and, again, profound thing it is just to name what happened to you, and to be believed. I think these are all things that really allow for survivors of conversion practices to, again, come to terms and perhaps find ways forward with their experiences and live beyond what happened to them and the trauma that defined those experiences.

SARA: Yes, beautiful. And as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, “And anyone can do that, can follow that advice.” Parents, caregivers, clergy, friends, I mean, it can come from a variety of places and spaces. So thank you for that beautiful reminder. This has been a really extraordinary conversation, and very timely, unfortunately. I think we're all holding our breath a little bit to watch what will unfold in these coming legislative sessions across the country. But I want to remind our listeners that Lucas's book is Shame, Sex, Attraction: Survivor Stories of Conversion Therapy. We'll put a link to it in the show notes, and you can go on the Mama Dragon's bookshop and purchase the book right there. But, Lucas, before we leave, we have some final questions that we like to ask all of our guests at the end of every episode. So, the first question has to do with the Mama Dragon's name which came about out of a sense of fierceness and fierce protection for our kids. So we like to ask our guests, other than the topic we've just spent an hour talking about, what is it you are fierce about? 

LUCAS: And this will also serve as a shameless plug, and please forgive me, Sara, and listeners. My next book's about queer experiences at Christian colleges, universities, and seminaries. And so, for me, most of my day is really spent working on this project, as well as other projects that are related. But for me, what I'm fierce about is, I think it is connected to shame-sex attraction, is not only writing and telling stories and telling good stories, and making sure that they are engaging and that people want to hear more. But also how these stories can be leveraged for fighting for queer protection, queer rights, and not just queers, right? It's really everyone that you want everyone to have a seat at the table. And so for women, for people of color, for immigrants, anyone who occupies a position of difference, these are the folks that I hope that the stories I tell, in some way that resonate with them, and also can be used to, again, keep them at the table, metaphorically and perhaps literally as well. But I would say storytelling and how storytelling can be used for social action are two things that I very much am fierce about.

SARA: Yes, excellent. I look forward to that new book. And the second question is, what is bringing you joy right now, as we recognize that we need to cultivate as much joy as we can, especially in these times? 

LUCAS: You know what? I think I'm both a big nerd / loser, in the sense that I love academia. But also I've kind of transitioned away from academic work – well, not to say I don't do academic work, I still do academic work – but really, it's this creative nonfiction that I'm just passionate about. And before I ever went into grad school for the academic study of English, which is initially what I was trained to do, I wanted to do creative writing. Again, I love telling a story. I'm the youngest of five very talkative people in my family. And then I had two parents who were very talkative and whatnot. But I think for me, I'm obsessed with my work, I really am. I absolutely love it. I get up every day excited to do it. And there are many days where I don't want to end but I have to go to the gym, and so I got to keep that body intact. And so I think that, for me, my work is – I'm just obsessed with it. And again, I just hope that the work that I produce meets people where they are, and that's able to, again, encourage them, and also to help them to think differently, or to imagine otherwise. These are the things that keep me up at night, and these are the things that I wake up thinking about. 

SARA: Lovely. Thank you, and thank you for your work in the world. It is very meaningful and impactful, and thank you for this conversation.

LUCAS: Thank you, Sara. I appreciate it a lot.

SARA: Thank you so much for joining us here In the Den. Did you know that Mama Dragons offers an eLearning program called Parachute? This is an interactive learning platform where you can learn more about how to affirm, support, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life. Learn more at Mamadragons.org/parachute. Or find the link in the episode show notes under links. 

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