The Terrifying True Story of 'Boy Erased' and Gay Conversion Therapy
Garrard Conley knew he was gay when he developed a crush on his third grade teacher, Mr. Smith. The son of a preacher, Conley was raised in a devout Baptist community in Arkansas where evolution is considered fake, and homosexuality is more than a sin-it's evil. Pressure to adhere to his family's expectations forced Conley to lead a double life, where he dated girls and ignored his true feelings.
Conley kept his sexuality a secret, even after going away to a liberal arts college. Although he prefers to leave out details for legal reasons, Conley was raped by a friend and fellow student his freshman year of college. His rapist then called Conley's mom and told her Conley was openly gay.
Immediately, Conley's parents sought treatment to cure his homosexuality. After undergoing several months of therapy, Conley spent two weeks at Love in Action (LIA), a Memphis-based ex-gay ministry run by Program Director John Smid. LIA's "Refuge" program claimed to help people with a variety of sex-based "addictions," including homosexuality.
Conley was admitted for a two-week evaluation, but some people attended the program-also called a camp-for months or years, living in LIA housing. Conley was shuttled between his hotel and the LIA facility in Memphis by his mother, Martha Conley. In 2008, Smid resigned from (LIA), and later admitted that gay conversion therapy is wrong.
A number of national health associations have publicly denounced the backward practice. According to nonprofit Movement Advancement Project, 14 states and Washington, D.C., have laws restricting licensed mental health practitioners from using gay conversion therapy on minors, but religious groups are not restricted from using these methods. The Williams Institute estimates that "698,000 LGBT adults in the U.S have received conversion therapy at some point in their lives, including about 350,000 who received it as adolescents."
During his time at LIA, Conley became depressed, but found the strength to leave the program early. Now 33, Conley published a memoir about his experience, called Boy Erased. The book inspired a major motion picture featuring Nicole Kidman-who plays Conley's mom-set to be released on November 2.
This is Conley's story, as told to MensHealth.com reporter Melissa Matthews. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I was placed in the worst situation I could have imagined: my dad saying, 'We’ve spoken with the church, and they think you should go to Love in Action. That’s where they’re going to cure you.'
[Editor's note: Gerrard arrived at the LIA facility in June of 2004.] I was there on a two-week trial program, and was in one-on-one therapy from January until that point. I felt there was a chance it could work, because everyone seemed to believe it was true. But there’s the other part of my brain that didn’t think anything was going to change.
There was a lot of policing. We needed to be trusted, basically. There were hundreds of rules we had to memorize. They had a rule for what you were supposed to wear for men, versus what women were supposed to wear. You had to be accompanied to the bathroom, because they were worried that you would furiously masturbate at some point if you weren’t supervised at all times.
They didn’t allow you to go to any secular spaces, which is basically anywhere other than a Christian bookstore or church. My mom and I were only allowed to go to and from the hotel. We couldn’t go out to eat. We couldn’t go to a bookstore. The idea was that if you go to a shopping mall, you’ll have a hookup in the bathroom or something like that.
I would never assume that I would go to a shopping mall and hook up with a guy in the bathroom. That’s just not something that’s in my mind. They make you feel like you’re really dirty-like everywhere you go you must be thinking about sex.
[pullquote align='center']"They make you feel like you’re really dirty-like everywhere you go you must be thinking about sex."[/pullquote]
They were worried [that] if we were placed in any setting that wasn’t Christ-like, we would immediately burst out into an orgy. It’s kind of funny when you look back on it now, because they were so dirty-minded. At the time, it just made me feel really ashamed.
I had a moment where I was leaning against the wall, and I guess I was leaning in a “gay way,” because someone came up to me and corrected my stance and said it went against the rules for me to stand like that. Then, she informed on me to one of the counselors. They corrected how I was standing-like physically corrected me. Sometimes I’ll feel the need to correct how I’m standing or walking. It’s a really unfortunate thing that tends to happen for me daily. That’s stuck with me forever.
It [the program] was run on a 12-step program model. They were borrowing heavily from Alcoholics Anonymous. We were supposed to be addicted to being gay or being a lesbian. We were placed with people who were dealing with bestiality, pedophilia, and marriage issues. We were all grouped together under the assumption we were "addicted" to something.
We did a bunch of strange activities. We had to list off, in front of a group, our sexual fantasies and things like that. We were given Bible verses to deal with those fantasies.
We had to make a family tree, but instead of listing connections between our family members, we were supposed to put these things called "sin symbols" next to each family member’s name. They could be anything from someone who had an abortion to drinking problems to a gambling addiction. Those were supposed to show us why we were gay. The idea was the sins of the fathers end up trickling down to the children.
We were asked to sit across from this empty chair and imagine our fathers in the chair, because of the stereotypes that gay men always hate their fathers or have a bad relationship with them. We had to sit across from this empty chair and yell at this father and say, "Oh I hate you. You’ve done all this to me." I remember thinking, "Why am I being asked to hate my father?"
This Christian organization that’s supposed to be about love and compassion is telling me I’m supposed to hate this man. These aren’t Christians. I can’t live a life where that’s my existence.
Luckily, in that moment I was like, "I don’t like this life. I don’t want to live anymore. Is there another solution than killing myself?" And the solution was an incredibly difficult one.
[pullquote align='center']"I don't like this life. I don't want to live anymore."[/pullquote]
I left the auditorium [where the exercise took place]. Everyone was really mad. They take away all your belongings when you come to therapy session. I got my phone back. I said it was an emergency, so that’s how I got it. I called my mom and said, "I need you to come get me." So she did. She came to the front door and the counselors rushed out and were like,"Oh, he needs to stay three months. Maybe a year. He should probably drop out of college."
My mom said to them, "I don’t know why I haven’t asked you this before, but what are your qualifications?"
Smid said, "This one guy over there is a marriage counselor."
My mom was like, "What in the world are you people doing? You don’t have any degrees in psychology. You don’t know what you’re doing." And she took me out of there.
By then, she'd heard stories of people killing themselves from those camps, and said to me, "Did you want to kill yourself?"
And I said yes.
She said, "Well, I would rather have a living gay son than a dead gay son because the gay part is not going to change." She was just fed up with everything by that point.
I do think my mom saved my life in that way. She gave me a sense that somehow-we didn’t know how-but somehow, it was all going to work out.
So we went home. My dad greets us. He’s like, "Did it work?" And we’re like, "No, of course it didn’t work, dad."
We didn’t talk about it for almost a decade until I started to write the book. We are all very very good at denial.
After a while, mom was introduced to boyfriends. Mom is very supportive. I always say when one person comes out another person that's around them that loves them has to as well. I came out about my sexuality but mom came out as this flamboyant woman who doesn't quite fit your stereotype of a preacher's wife in small town south.
Dad didn't want to know [about partners]. He had a church full-time he was preaching at. I think as long as I was able to hide it out of plain sight, then nothing was wrong. Now that it’s a major motion picture, a book and a podcast, it’s a little harder to hide that.
It’s put a new strain on us in some ways. But I don’t think you get to choose who you love, and I continue to love him no matter how irrational it is. He continues to love me even though my choices go against the very grain of many of his beliefs.
Boy Erased has become such a bigger project. One of the things I’m most proud of is that as a result of the book we have donated hundreds of documents to the Smithsonian from conversion therapy so it’s recorded forever in history.
[Editor's note: Conley helped establish a collection of news clippings, pamphlets and documents about the gay to straight conversion therapy program, Love in Action, at the National Museum of American History.] We could actually end conversion therapy and make it a mainstream topic so that it’s harder for these people to do their very dangerous and discredited jobs.
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