Dear Sir,
The film, Boy Erased, based on Garrard Conley’s 2016 memoir and recently released in the UK, has brought a new, tragic dimension to the sometimes theoretical discussion of homosexuality. Last month en published an edited version of the Gospel Coalition’s review, on which I concentrate.
The film cuts out more honest aspects in the book, such as Conley’s seriously dysfunctional family background. However, the book, film and GC review are correct to flag up major challenges for those struggling with their sexuality and the deficits in programmes like the now-defunct Love In Action [LIA]. For psychologist Christopher Rosik, Conley’s story should serve as a beneficial warning against overzealous, scientifically uninformed, and abusive religious practices. This appropriate but limited application of Boy Erased, however, is not likely to satisfy activists whose strategy appears to be the further linking of LIA style abuses with ‘conversion therapy’ [CT] in the public’s mind while drafting legislation that bans any and all conversation-based approaches to professional therapy not deemed sufficiently gay-affirmative.1
Does the film fairly and accurately depict CT? The review appears to suggest it does, and offers graphic descriptions of cruelty and abuse which are rightly to be condemned. But the film version of CT is a grotesque misrepresentation of professional change-allowing therapy in 2019. 2
Sadly, the review fails to engage properly here; it also ignores the potential of good change-allowing therapy, as well as the stories of and research on the lives of the many who have benefited from it. https://iftcc.org/ and www.voicesofthesilenced.com/ has more. 3
Celibate SSA folk are erased – fair enough – but are given massively more in terms of platforms, funding, sponsorship, status and support by mainstream evangelicals than the truly erased, the beyond the pales – the Once Gay. Therapy bans are only the start
Rosik is right to raise the alarm about bans. In California, the most draconian LGBT bill to date involving bans was stopped last summer by ordinary Christians who employed a twofold strategy: platforming Once Gays and enabling religious professionals to understand the next bullet had their name on it.
In the review there is little apparent understanding of the nature of ’therapy bans’ (an agenda furthered by films like this). However, these bans are not only about mental health professionals, but about shutting down non-supportive LGBT discourse for all. The bans are no small matter and constitute very real threats to freedom of speech and freedom to shape one’s own life.
The voices of the Once Gay are the most effective responses to the strugglers and to the bans: so how about equal airtime?
Yours sincerely,
