Hello, everyone, Welcome back to the nonprofits.
You know many of us have regrets, but do any of your regrets include sending your child to gay conversion therapy? Steven has that story. Steven, please take it the gay away.
Thank you, Helen. There have never been, and there never will be, perfect parents, not even you, Mary. Connie Hoying is no exception. The difference is most parents don't bring their sons to conversion therapy, to a conversion therapy session and then write a book about it. Connie's son, Scott Hoying, is a singer in the a cappella group The Pentatonics, and her new memoir recounts Scott's coming out, the day that she brought her to an XAA counselor, and the
regret that they both experienced afterwards. The story is from LGBTQ Nation by Connie Hoying on May fifth, twenty twenty five.
So being me, I'm going to shake things up. So Cindy.
As reading your notes, and you spoke very powerfully about like outdated and context, the dependence of gender issues and roles. So given that, why do you think in religious like communities cling like so freaking tight to like gender norms and sexual behaviors that have to fit a sort of like cis straight mold even though like the evidence shows otherwise, Like what's your Also that also causes.
Harm, like what is your kind of like feelings about that?
Yeah, my feelings are.
I don't know that they're very strong. But the depth of the religious people's hypocrisy, it's always extremely staring to me. I just can't get over it. How they shift homosexuality as being a lifestyle as they say it, allowing them to criticize it as much as possible. That just drives me crazy because it shows how outdated their warview is, and that on two fronts. First, there's the idea that your sexual orientation is defined while your fitus, and that
doesn't change. You're either capable of feigning in love with men, women, or anything in between, or you're not. Then there's sexual behavior, which is usually aligned to your orientation, but can be different depending on your environment, like living in a country where asexuality is panished by death, for example, like it's the case in sixty four countries today. That's one of the case that would make you differ from your orientation.
And then the second view is that there's an almost worship of general roles in Christianity and also in Islam so strong, I would say, uh. And Christians believe it to be timeless and universal, which is nonsense because two hundred years ago men used to work to wear weeks and high heels. For centuries long, hair was a sign of strength and power in men. Its general rules have been evolving for for as long as we've been humans.
And the fact that the the the region, the region, and the communities around Christianity just don't want to to understand this or even admit it. It's like I said, it draws me crazy.
Yeah, And that's kind of you know, goes back to the article that we were talking about earlier this week about like how self regulating structures kind of you know, end up being perpetrators of abuse. And this kind of feeds into that, where this idea that if your child is queer, that they we just send them to this camp or the social stubic therapy and it's like, yeah, the behavior made stuff, but you didn't stop your child from like being queer. You just made their life much
much harder. So good for you parents. Yay so eja uh person of.
Many many different lights and colors.
So you described conversion therapy accurately as torture.
So if we accept that, why.
Isn't it being uh treated us as such like Australia has completely for example, has completely banded, is considered abuse.
They will not allow it.
You can't even do it like as part of like your church, like you cannot do this form of therapy. So that being said, recognizing that, you know, calling a spade a spade, why do you think that it is still being perpetuated and perpetrated and why are we kind of a lot of people just like kind of letting you continue to happen.
So I feel one of the big reasons that it is not prosecuted as torture, which I usually go with the definition that's an article one of the Unions conventioning as torture and other cool inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The reason that a lot of people I feel don't prosecute it is the people who did it are still alive. Like this is not a thing that is vehemently in the past. There are people who I grew up with who went through it. There are people who I know
who have went through it. The people are very much still alive.
So the fact that.
If you were to prosecute this as torture, there would be a big push to retroactively, to retroactively prosecute. And given that this would be a crime that wouldn't have a very short statute of limitations, it would be it would mean a lot of people who would, you know, perhaps say that they they're against it, but they really weren't back in the day. It would mean they're going
away for considerable time, which is i'd say justified. But there would have to be a lot of reform so that to go in place.
Well, I mean kind of pick you off with that.
The leader of the Exodus movement, which was a gay conversion program that was done in the eighties and nineties up into the two thousands in the United States, he later came out as gay and he was a perpetrator conversion of therapy.
And he's now and like.
She was credited, he is now you know, walking his walk, and he is he is he's actively fighting his conversion therapy. He knows the harm that he did because of religious indoctrination, you know, and the self hatred that he kind of projected outwards.
So you know, good on him for that.
But that being said, like Stephen, you pointed out that you know a lot of these kids and families are being cohersed and to doing these you know, conversion therapies.
So how how do you make like.
A lawmaker and go, hey, maybe maybe don't do this thing. How do you get them to kind of understand that you can have a spiritual faith but also that has to stop when we're looking at abuse.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Like coersion is the right word. Like I remember, like the when I was m seeing our local pride event and I called out our local federal member of Parliament because he was one of the few a handful of MPs who would not back a bill that would ban conversion therapy. And I called him out for that and that harmful stance that he was taken. And he wasn't there obviously, of course, but he responded in our local newspapers saying, well, no one is being
forced to take coercion therapy. Nobody has a gun to their head, which is just the just such an absurd stance to take, because yeah, it's all about the coercion and the fact that and especially like let me tell you, this material is like right in my wheelhouse, Like there isn't Like almost every week I'm talking about the intersect
of queer and faith over on my channel. So I'm constantly constantly dealing with these people who think that X gay ministries are something that are beneficial because it's like especially it is especially insidious for and like I can only speak to this experience as a gay man right
who had put himself through his own conversion. Growing up queer in the in a heteronormative world is so difficult because you see everyone around you and you want to be the same as everyone around you, and you can't be the same as everyone around you, so it is really challenging to That's why validation is so incredibly important. You're seeking validation in spite of being different from this
hetero normative world. So when a young Christian is seeking out that validation and the straight men in his church say, yes, of course, of course you can have validation. So long as you do this, so long as you're straight enough, yes, then we will validate you. And you're abusing the trust of that child, of that miner, of that teenager. And when you abuse the trust of a child, you abuse
the child. And so that's how they get coerced into these situations because this carot is being dangled in front of them, and they'll if there are anything like me, like so many people who have survived this xcay conversion therapy, then they'll do whatever it takes to try to line up with what the heteronormative patriarchal church wants it to be. How do we get lawmakers to appreciate that? Well, I
don't know if we can make them. Either you have the decency to see that for yourselves, or you have the or you prefer to you see things through your your patriarchal view and ignore the fact that not that this is harmful, Like, how do we do it other than through our votes? Right?
Well, seeing that I live in the bad I live in the bad place. That's not happening anytime soon because they keep you know, rolling back queer rights so great for us.
I love living under LA fascists and it's fantastic anyway.
That being said, Uh, that's my opinion. You don't you have to take it. Just my opinion. But that being said, as one of three queer people on this panel, I can definitely tell that not only as someone that had to untangle their own internal bigotry and their own internal sexism against the messaging you get from religion, you're still experiencing in the culture.
So, Sidney, you're.
A queer person, how do you personally navigate like conversations with people when they kind of weaponize that bakertry when you're you have like facts on your side over here and historical information, and then over here you got a person that is, like, you know, like everybody should be sitting straight just deal with it because God said so. So how do you how do you think people should be navigating those conversations?
Well, you can't deal with the conversion therapy discussion before you deal with the uh the false ideas behind almost sexuality, because the first one is derived from the latter. You can't have conversion therapy unless you have a religious belief that homosexuality is wrong. So you need to fight this first. You need to show evidence that that homossexuality is innate
and not learned. And so there are also many so many ways to show it, like uh, I don't know, ask ask a person or ask a uh heterosexual person if they would be able to feel in love, to fall in love with someone of their gender and see them squirm, and and and how do you think it's it's working for me? If if you can't and I can, then there's fundamentally something different between you and me. And and that's that's the first that comes to my mind.
But again, until we we remove all the the advantages and benefits that religion has in society, we will not get rid of this. Luckily, some countries have started to to ban and forbid conventional therapy like uh, Stevens said.
Uh.
Several countries in in Europe, like including Portugal, Cyprus, UH, Iceland, Friends, Uh, Greece.
Uh.
All those countries have legislated on this. So it can happen by peer pressure, I mean in terms of countries, but it will take time.
Yeah.
And and unfortunately, for some reason, we keep trying to take things back over and over again.
I do want to apologize, e J.
I did not realize you were also queer your I know, Stephen and sending a little bit better.
So I am sorry. So everybody is queer.
I don't blame you.
I look I look very straight.
Yeah, I'm sorry. That was I shouldn't have assumed like I said, I did. I did a stereotype, so Joze.
So now that I'm talking to you, it's right.
So so in your notes you kind of made like the really great point of putting queer people together. We won't putting queer periods. You'll fix them. It often makes them stronger, which is true. Like you get about your queer people together, You're not going to make it straight.
It's not going to happen.
So, so that being said, I've never been through conversion therapy.
I have no freaking clue what it's like.
I'm I have to imagine from the stories I've heard of people then through conversion therapy, it is very very Steve, it's.
Not and Wieland's ryebrows at me.
So I'll go to you minute, Stephen, So I wanted to get your why do you think it's so aggressive? And then we can talk to Stephen about his experience going through conversion therapy.
I bet it was so much fun, so it stuck.
So I've not been to any conversion therapy because it's illegal here, but I have been to a lovely little work around, which is you know, the Bible says be straight. This isn't conversion therapy, but go on and it's horrible. Although what tends to happen, at least from my experience, isn't that you get a bunch of people who want
to be straight. It's that you get a bunch of people who are you know, everyone is queer, and after a couple of days you kind of go, huh, if we're all ourselves, this feels actually quite nice.
You know what this is?
Maybe we should just always do this And it tends to backfire horribly, which I don't know how the camps don't see coming because most of the people who run them are either very repressive or so far in the closet they're having tea with Aslan, so you think they would see it coming, but they don't.
Yeah you would, and like kind of if you guys have ever seen the movie but I'm a cheerleader, where you put a bunch of queer kids together, relationships are going to start to form. If you put a bunch of queer kids in a camp and they're left to their own devices. Teenagers be teenagers exactly. So Steven, you were raising your eyebrows, please sure.
Yeah, like it is it is, like, yeah, again, like I was reading the books and I was certainly seeing the counselors who are trying to help me be straight, just like God says that he wants. And it's just it's it's so yeah, okay, yeah, I guess it's kind of traumatizing, isn't it to yeah, to to be told that you are not right and to believe them that you are not right, and to pour everything you can
into being right. It's it is. It is why I am doing what I'm doing online now so that if there is any a younger version of me out there who needs to hear that he she They don't need to change. They are fine just the way they are. And it's interesting that in this book that Connie here has written about her son, it's not that he went to conversion therapy and then they realized that it was wrong.
It was that The story is they were on a long drive and he came out to her, and then she was like, oh, well, I love you just as you are, but maybe don't come out while you're still like a senior in Texas. Maybe wait till you go
to university in California and then come out. It might be better for you, and he's like, okay, And then he found out about a counselor who was gay but wasn't gay anymore, and so his mom booked him an appointment for that, and then like as they drew closer, he got cold feet, and she's like, oh, well, let's at least hear him out. Maybe he has something useful. Because this was the early two thousand, so ex gay ministry didn't have the reputation that it does now in
many circles. So then she kind of coerced him into attending the session and that's where she learned what conversion therapy was all about. And Scott, he wasn't having any of it. He stood up for himself and he said, hey, if God made me this way, then I don't need to reject it. And then that was that was it for their time. They left and they were sad and they were shaken, but he wasn't. He wasn't impacted by it the same way that so many of us are
when we are so desperate for that validation. And I just I'm so curious, like who was this book written for? Like this is a memoir of Scott's entire life. I guess he's in his twenties thirties now, I guess so, and is written by his mom, but the foreword by him. But like it is it written for? Is it a cautionary tale for moms who don't have the wherewithal to know what conversion therapy is? Or is it written for other you know, cis gay white boys who were more
traumatized by conversion therapy? Or is it written for gay men who didn't know that Scott has recently launched his solo career and maybe they would like to know a little bit more about him and maybe by his album. I don't know who this book is for, but if you, if you want to, if you, if anybody, if anybody, if anybody, needs to have a better understanding of what exactly is involved in conversion therapy and hear that first
hand account an amazing book slash movie called Boy Erased. Well, it's besides the documentary Prey Away Boy Race was written by someone who went through it firsthand and struggled with trying to live up to his minister father's footsteps and his struggle and the torture that he endured at the hands of these of these straight men who are just trying to reconcile their faith with these gay boys in front of them the best way they know how, and they still get a failing grade on it.
So Sinny found words.
But then just to forbid them and making those two forbid them. It's it's it's a barbaric uh to practice. It's like, what's the name the trepanation, the thing that was made to uh two people like five hundred years ago. It's it's yeah, it's it's barbaric, it's stupid, it doesn't work, and it hurts people. Just get rid of it. Yeah, it's simple.
Ideas, just that I'm in complete agreement. The sooner that we finally get this practice off the planet for not only just gay, bisexual, but also trans individuals, especially youth, it will be so much better for the world because then we can finally start tackling issues that we should really be focusing on, because we shouldn't have to tell people the torturing kids is.
Wrong theme on this show that were constantly talking about, don't torture children. If you want to learn more about non torturing children and why it's bad, please click on a video. I also like subscribe and real people we'll see you next time.