On "Pray Away" -the New Documentary on "Conversion Therapy"
Luke Wilson is a survivor of "conversion therapy." He has written about his experiences at Liberty University for Religion Dispatches, Queerty, and other outlets. In this conversation, Luke provides his response to the Netflix doc "Pray Away." They discuss the complexities of those who are both survivor and perpetrator sharing their stories and taking the spotlight. They also discuss the (unsurprisingly) blithe reactions to the film by Evangelical sources, namely the Gospel Coalition.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB, and today we are here to talk about Pray Away, the new Netflix documentary, and some of the evangelical reactions to it.
And in order to do that, I am joined for the second time on our show by Luke Wilson, or Lucas Wilson, who I'll introduce in a minute.
You have a lot of accolades, Luke, so I want to make sure to get to those.
But first, let me say thanks for being here.
Thank you so much for having me.
I appreciate being on So you're a PhD candidate at Florida Atlantic University.
You're a writer, somebody who's written for Religion Dispatches, The Advocate, Queerty, and other outlets.
You teach at the University of Toronto and at Seneca University, and you're also a survivor.
Last time you were here, we talked about your experiences at Liberty University.
and at the sort of conversion therapy program and the conversion therapy professor person that they had at Liberty.
Today we're going to talk about Prey Away.
And let me just introduce this.
I think a lot of folks listening will have sort of gotten wind of Prey Away and what it is.
But let me just give a little summary from an article by Lynn Gerber at Religion and Politics.
The film, directed by Christine Stolakis, revisits the history of Exodus International, a now defunct organization made up of so-called ex-gay ministries.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Exodus was the nation's largest voice advocating for changing sexual orientation.
From gay to straight, they weren't interested in change in any other direction.
Ex-gay ministries first emerged in evangelical churches in the 1970s.
Because of the successes of gay rights activism, gay and lesbian people were more visible, homosexuality was no longer considered a mental illness, and conservative Christians were mobilizing against what they saw as a threat to the family.
LGBTQ evangelicals were caught in the middle.
So I guess my, you know, when I reached out to you, Luke, I was so grateful that you wanted to talk.
I'm sure that you had a lot of mixed and perhaps even just very difficult and harrowing emotions watching Pray Away.
I'm just curious.
This is a film about the largest organization that employed conversion therapy throughout the 90s and 2000s.
What were your initial reactions as you watched the film?
Yeah, so first of all, I certainly appreciated the film.
I think there's a lot going for it.
I think that not only is it raising awareness about conversion therapy, something that a lot of people don't realize still happens, still occurs, and is legal in a number of states.
But it also is exposing, you know, not just Exodus International and these large organizations, but other small grassroots organizations like we see with Jeffrey McCall and his the Freedom March, which of course is An incredibly unsuccessful movement in a lot of ways in the sense that, you know, even the freedom marches that he's organized have been major flops.
Very few people actually show up to these things.
But I think that it's, again, it's exposing a history that has been in some ways forgotten because a lot of people have some sort of maybe historical amnesia and think that this is no longer happening.
But of course it is.
And I'm very thankful for the coverage that the film has received.
And the fact that it's on something like Netflix and, you know, endorsed by or produced by Ryan Murphy.
I think, though, there were a number of parts in the documentary or, you know, aspects of the documentary that fell short.
I mean, it's important, again, to offer this history, but I think what the film is missing, and it's a glaring omission, is the lack of survivors.
Right?
There were, of course, leaders who survived, right?
These are people who were not only implicated in Exodus International, but they were the ones who spearheaded it.
But you don't hear from folks who were victims of it, right?
You see people who were organizing and also victims of it.
Of course, the people who were leading it were victims in their own right.
But it's a different sort of position that they occupied because, of course, they were perpetrating This pseudoscience and this abuse for decades.
And so I think the fact that there weren't survivors highlighted, and I think that survivors should be highlighted in a film like this, was certainly a shortcoming.
I think another short, or not shortcoming, but I guess maybe just a comment, something that I heard a lot was And Survivor's responses to the film was that the conclusion is bleak.
That it offers this sort of... it doesn't end on a high note.
And I think that that is, again, and maybe this is to the film's credit, that the conclusion is necessarily bleak.
I think that conversion therapy, even if there aren't organizations like Exodus International or Love in Action or whatever, that the problem is, is that regardless of whether or not these large organizations are still operating, conversion therapy is still going to exist.
Conversion therapy will, if in fact it is, you know, made illegal throughout the entire U.S.
as well as Canada and other countries, If it is illegal, it's going to go underground, and it might not be as popular, might not be as easily accessible, but conversion therapy will still operate regardless.
And so I think that that is something that is Again, it's a necessary bleakness.
It ends on this note that I think is important to note, that in fact, conversion therapy still exists.
And again, we start the film with some statistics.
We end the film with some, you know, statistics as well, or some quotes.
And I think that all of this is pointing to the reality that conversion therapy is going to be an ongoing practice, regardless of the legality of it.
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