Shame-Sex Attraction & Conversion Therapy with Dr Lucas Wilson

In this episode of Let’s Be Perfectly Queer, we welcome Dr. Lucas Wilson—a passionate postdoctoral researcher, queer advocate, and survivor of conversion therapy. Join us as we uncover the raw, honest truth about his life, work, and the profound impact of evangelical homophobia.

Dr. Wilson shares his powerful journey of resilience, starting with his experiences at Liberty University—one of the most controversial evangelical institutions linked to conversion therapy. We dive deep into the roots of evangelical homophobia, the manipulative practices used to enforce shame, and the emotional conditioning that binds individuals to harmful beliefs.

Together, we explore:

• How conversion therapy affects mental health and self-worth.
• The complexities of evangelicalism and its connection to systemic homophobia.
• The role of education, community, and empowerment in healing.

As we wrap up, Dr. Wilson introduces his groundbreaking book, Shame-Sex Attraction Survivors' Stories of Conversion Therapy. This compelling collection of personal stories offers invaluable insights into the queer experience while exposing the harm caused by conversion therapy and evangelical culture.

This candid conversation isn’t just educational—it’s a rallying call for awareness, support, and change. Tune in to this episode of Let’s Be Perfectly Queer Podcast to hear Dr. Lucas Wilson’s story and gain a deeper understanding of the LGBTQIA+ struggle against oppressive systems.

✨ Support Resources: If this episode brings up anything for you, reach out for help:

• Lifeline Australia: 13 11 14
• Qlife: 1800 184 527 or www.qlife.org.au
• Trevor Project (US): 866-488-7386 or www.thetrevorproject.org

🎧 Don’t miss it—stream Let’s Be Perfectly Queer wherever you listen to podcasts!

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https://www.buzzsprout.com/2076304/support

Transcript

Podcast: let's Be Perfectly Queer Podcast

Episode Title: Shame-Sex Attraction And Conversion Therapy With Dr Lucas Wilson

Host(s): Katie, Archie

Guest(s): Dr Lucas Wilson

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Archie (Host) | 00:00:04 to 00:00:15
Welcome to let's Be Perfectly Queer, a. Queer podcast creating space to talk about all things queer. My name is Archie. And I'm Katie. And we are your hosts.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:00:15 to 00:00:29
Questions of how you identify, seeking answers to clarify whether a queen or somewhere in between. Let's be perfectly queer. And we're back for three. Season three. We are back for season three.

Katie (Host) | 00:00:29 to 00:00:37
Ah, it's a milestone, guys. I love it. It is. Joining us is the truly remarkable Dr. Lucas Wilson.

Katie (Host) | 00:00:37 to 00:01:15
Luke is a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Toronto, a former evangelical, and a survivor of conversion therapy. During his time at Liberty University, the largest evangelical college, Luke underwent four years of conversion therapy, an experience that now forms a critical part of his groundbreaking research. Luke is the editor of the recently released book Shame, Sex, Attraction, Survivors Stories of Conversion therapy, which features 17 raw and powerful stories, including his own. The book is about surviving conversion therapy within Christian fundamentalist and evangelical contexts across the U.S. canada and Australia.

Archie (Host) | 00:01:15 to 00:01:37
This episode, we delve into Luke's story, the toxic roots of evangelical homophobia, and the journey to healing and advocacy. All right, let's get into today's episode. So welcome to the show. Thank you so much for wanting to come on and getting in touch. So we have here with us today doctor.

Archie (Host) | 00:01:37 to 00:01:45
That's correct. You're now a doctor. I am a doctor, believe it or not. Congratulations on getting your doctorate. What do you call it in Canada is the same thing.

Archie (Host) | 00:01:45 to 00:01:51
Would you call it a doctorate? A Ph.D. both. And I actually got it in the States, but I am Canadian. Mistake it.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:01:51 to 00:02:10
Don't mistake it, Archie. I knew you were a Canadian, and so I was like, let's not forget you're Canadian. Because I know some Canadians hate when they get told that they're American. Yeah, I think it's kind of like, what is it, the Australian, New Zealand sort of comparison where, you know, folks from New Zealand are like, how dare you and those of us from Canada say the same thing? You know, totally get it.

Archie (Host) | 00:02:10 to 00:02:22
But thanks for coming on. Before we start, do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Yeah. So my name's Luke or Lucas Wilson, although I can never compete with, like, the Luke Wilson. Right.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:02:22 to 00:02:41
Like, that's always going to be a losing battle. The actor. Yeah. So I'm a postdoctoral fellow at University of Toronto, Mississauga, formerly a postdoctoral fellow at University of Calgary. Before that, I was doing the PhD and I'm a researcher in the areas of history, religious studies, gender, sexuality studies, literature, trauma.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:02:42 to 00:03:18
Most of my past research was actually in Holocaust studies. I looked at the intergenerational transmission of trauma between survivors, their children and their grandchildren. But over the past few years, I've begun splitting my focus and focusing more so on a daily basis on white Christian fundamentalism and evangelicalism, specifically in the us, so white Christian nationalism. And, yeah, most of my research now has been focusing on conversion practises, which we're going to be talking about today. And I've been doing a little bit of work in creative writing, which is a new field for me, but very fun.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:03:18 to 00:03:29
And that's for the book that we're talking about comes from. Very cool. I do like a bit of creative writing. I'm really bad of it with my creative writing. It's more like songwriting and stuff, because I was never good at short stories or anything like that.

Archie (Host) | 00:03:29 to 00:03:38
It was just something that my brain did not like. Right, right. No, I. You know, I think if we all took a class, we'd be better. And so maybe we should just take a class together and learn together.

Archie (Host) | 00:03:38 to 00:03:46
I think maybe we can do that. We'll just. We'll zoom in and learn together and, you know, we'll see what your next book could be. That's it. We're lifelong learners.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:03:46 to 00:04:00
Look at us. Exactly. So your personal journey, your background. Can you share what initially led you to Liberty University and how your time there kind of shaped who you are in your journey? Yeah, I think Satan had something to do with it.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:04:00 to 00:04:13
We'll get into that. No. So I wasn't even raised in a Christian home. I became a Christian going into high school in about grade nine. I was really into the creation versus Evolution debate.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:04:13 to 00:04:28
My brother got into that. And so I started watching these DVDs of this. Well, this guy named Kent Hovind who did these debates about creation versus evolution. And he actually went to jail eventually for tax evasion. He said it was God's money, but the government seemed to disagree with him.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:04:28 to 00:04:55
So, anywho, I got into, you know, I met Jesus that way and started going to church and really didn't stop for all of high school. And I was, you know, sort of on fire for Jesus kind of thing and super, like a zealot at the time. And somewhere along the way I found out about Liberty. I was actually. I got a free trip to go down there for a visit.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:04:55 to 00:05:12
And so I went and, you know, everything's bigger in the us, Everything's more exciting. And, you know, the college experience is, like, so cool. And so I went down and sort of was blown away by, you know, this big, big university. It's massive. And at the time, you know, everything that was Christian, in my opinion, was better.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:05:12 to 00:05:25
And it had to be better because it was Christian. And so I decided that I was going to go. And so I kept going down and visiting over the next few years. That was in 11, and by the time I was in grade 12, I had accepted my offer and I only applied there. And I went there.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:05:25 to 00:06:00
But a big reason why I even went, though there was the Christian aspect that I wanted to get my foundation and a Christian education. But the other big part of it was that I really wanted to become straight. And I knew that they had, or I was led to believe I wanted to become straight. I should say more accurately, nowadays, I don't want to be bored, so we don't want to be straight. But yeah, so I went down and when I was there on one of the trips, they had these rotating announcements on the screens that they projected the lyrics for the worship music.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:06:00 to 00:06:25
And before and after chapel, what they called convocation, they had these ads for different on campus events or things that were offered. And one of the things that were offered was this pastor's services. He said it was something along the lines of, do you struggle with same sex attraction? I was like, that's me. So I decided that, or I sort of clocked it and I said like, okay, so this guy, he's offering this.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:06:25 to 00:06:44
And so I went to one of my friends and was like, yo, who's this Dane Emmerich guy? That guy's name was Dane Emmerich, the pastor. I was like, what's this Tom foolery about same sex attraction? Meanwhile, I'm like this big old homo and he says, oh, he's the guy on campus who helps gay guys. So I was like, okay, well that's perfect.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:06:44 to 00:07:09
And so I knew that they had this programme. And so for me, in my teenage brain, I was sort of under the impression that if I go here, this will be my ticket to heteronormativity and then a life of godly normalcy, which of course never happened. Things happened instead, different things. And so, yeah, that's what eventually brought me down to liberty. That was a big motivating factor, was actually the conversion therapy programme.

Archie (Host) | 00:07:09 to 00:07:21
Oh, wow. So you'd never heard about it before. You saw it on this big kind of screen with worship lyrics. And that's the first time you've heard of it? Yeah, it was because, you know, like, you go down, there's like the chapel, you know, sort of announcements, everyone's.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:07:21 to 00:07:33
And everyone's chit chatting and there's like the buzz of energy of the, you know, what's to come. And, you know, we're about to sing. And so then you get into the music, and then there's the sermon. And then afterwards again, there's these ads. And I remember looking up and seeing them there.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:07:33 to 00:07:42
That was, I guess it is sort of. What's the word? Metaphorical. I thought it was on the same screen. And, you know, I was, you know, having.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:07:42 to 00:07:49
There was spiritual sustenance, and then there was this. Or maybe, you know, both are. Fall under the same camp. Maybe I didn't really get it. Anyway, whatever.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:07:49 to 00:08:04
Yeah. To answer your question, yes, Archie, yes. Yeah. Liberty University, for those who don't know what Liberty University is, is it like a university that's for conversion therapy or is it, like, underground or. Because I've never heard of this university before.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:08:04 to 00:08:40
Yeah. So Liberty is the world's largest evangelical university. And so for those who aren't familiar with it, and even those in the States aren't necessarily familiar with it, and thank God, count it a blessing. Liberty is this juggernaut of a political religious institution. And so for anyone who knows who Jerry Falwell is, and I think if we were, I'm just assuming your age right now, but let's say we were 20 years older, I think we would both really know who Jerry was, because Jerry Falwell was this really significant political religious influence in the States.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:08:40 to 00:09:16
He was kind of like the US Pastor, like America's pastor. He sort of overtook Billy Graham. But it took it in a really dark turn because Jerry Falwell was really bombastic. He was just incredibly outspoken and said what he believed or said he believed and really stuck it to the man kind of thing. And so he's really, I think, in a lot of ways, like a precursor or someone who led to the political situation that we see in the US Today, where it's so divided, and Jerry Falwell had no room for compromise, and he was very much committed to his convictions kind of thing.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:09:16 to 00:09:35
And I think that if we were to draw a line between Jerry Falwell to Trump, it's a pretty clear line. Speaking of Trump, to give an idea of what this university is like, Trump has two honorary doctorates from Liberty University. He spoke there on Martin Luther King Day. Mike Pence has an honorary doctorate. Like Mel Gibson has been to the campus, even though he's Catholic.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:09:35 to 00:09:58
There are a lot of, like Michelle Bachmann, Candace Owens, Tommy Lauren, like all these, you know, nitwits, conservative folks. They've all been there and Been invited to speak on their chapel stage or just at the university. And so it's not a university that's like, hey, we're a conversion therapy university. That's part of it, right? Like that's one of the aspects of it.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:09:58 to 00:10:29
Or was for a long time, up until their in house conversion therapist, my conversion therapist, Dane Emmerich, retired. I don't know the situation now and so I can't speak to that. My inclination or sort of what I assume is that there is someone who's replaced him, but I don't know for sure. But all this to say it's an incredibly conservative, upside down, sort of like moral system. You know, if we're talking about Australia, you know, like Hillsong United, they're obviously charismatic and they're a little bit more, you know, Pentecostal and Liberty Southern Baptist.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:10:29 to 00:10:39
But there are a lot of parallels. And, you know, Hillsong has been to Liberty. I used to love Hillsong when I was there. Like, I thought that, you know, Hillsong was everything. I still sometimes listen to Hillsong.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:10:39 to 00:10:45
It's a guilty pleasure. Don't tell anyone. That's fine. But yeah, it's terrible, but, you know, it's fine. That's it.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:10:45 to 00:11:16
No. So Liberty's this, you know, and more recently, to give, you know, a fuller picture into the hypocrisy that is, you know, evangelicalism, the president who or the former president of the school who was Jerry Falwell's son, His name was Jerry Junior. Jerry junior Had a three way cuckolding relationship with his wife, a Miami pool boy and himself. He was then ousted because of it. There's so much about this school that's just like bonkers and upside down land, but it's kind of like a Disneyland for evangelicals.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:11:16 to 00:11:34
And like, if you're anyone in a conservative or religious space in the US like political or religious conservatism, then this is the place to be. And you're oftentimes connected to it in some way, shape or form. Yeah, no, that makes sense. And don't worry about Hillsong being your guilty pleasure. I grew up Catholic.

Archie (Host) | 00:11:34 to 00:11:46
There's some songs that get stuck in your head. You're like, I haven't heard that song in ages. There's that just that like unbelievably. I mean, this is all music really at the end of the day, but like the unbelievably manipulative emotional aspect, right? Yeah.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:11:47 to 00:12:01
That you think like, oh, gosh, this is the Holy Spirit that's working through me. The Holy Spirit, you know, it's like, no, my friend. It's just like someone who's like a really good, like, you know, musician and, like, composer and figured out how to pull on your heartstrings, but, you know. They'Re a great creative writer. That's what it is.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:12:01 to 00:12:17
That's it. That's exactly it. So, as a former evangelical, what was the turning point that led you to step away from evangelicalism and begin the journey of writing and research? Actually learning? Yeah.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:12:17 to 00:12:26
Not. Not just sort of blindly accepting a lot of tomfoolery. No, I. I do. I mean that in actually a lot of ways, higher education, I would say, saved my life.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:12:26 to 00:12:49
I mean, I went to Liberty and the undergraduate education there. My undergraduate education there was wildly disappointing. I got into grad school so under prepared to give you an idea. Normally, for a master's thesis, if you're submitting a proposal, you either get it on the first try or you get rejected on the first try and you have to do some edits and then you get accepted. The worst I've ever heard was that two rejections and on the third try, the person got it.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:12:49 to 00:13:06
I got rejected seven times and it wasn't until my eighth try that I finally got it. And so I was so, like, woefully underprepared. And when I started going into these classes, I, of course, was learning a lot of stuff. Well, a lot of stuff in general. It was, you know, it felt like I was finally learning in a lot of senses.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:13:07 to 00:13:38
And I was exposed to a lot of new authors, a lot of new theorists, a lot of new thinkers, a lot of new ways of thinking that I just hadn't, you know, been exposed to before because I went to Liberty University. And so when I was in grad school, you know, I started thinking about, well, kind of everything. And I was reconsidering a lot of things. And, you know, I started to even just like, reflect on my experience in conversion therapy, which I didn't at the time I was in conversion therapy, conceptualise it as conversion therapy. I always thought of it as just like pastoral counselling.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:13:38 to 00:13:53
And I was meeting with the pastor, but over time, you know, I wasn't able to really. What's the word? You know, the problem of me being gay wasn't going away. The quote, unquote problem. I don't mean to say it's a problem, but at the time, I saw it as a problem.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:13:53 to 00:14:10
I saw myself as a problem. And at the time it was, you know, it was becoming unbearable trying to reconcile, you know, the Fact that I was gay. And I was realising it was a fact. I before, I didn't think I was gay. I thought I was just struggling with same sex attraction, which is a way of divorcing, you know, the individual from the sexuality.

Archie (Host) | 00:14:10 to 00:14:16
Yeah. But I realised, like, no, I'm. I'm a big old homo and this isn't going away. Like, this isn't changing. What do I do?

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:14:16 to 00:14:28
And so at that point I decided I wanted to go to divinity school. And so I started looking up different divinity schools. And you can't really get into a divinity school in Canada and get a scholarship. You have to pay for it. So I was like, okay, let me go back to the States.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:14:28 to 00:14:52
So I went back to the States, went to div school, and it was there that I really started reconceptualizing my faith and reconsidering a lot of things, even something which sounds as simple as this. I believed that it was no longer that it was God's word, but words about God. For those within the evangelical space, that's a huge paradigm shift. And that for me was revolutionary. But I think a big thing too.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:14:52 to 00:15:30
In addition to actually reading gender theorists and theorists of sexuality and religious theorists, all this kind of stuff, all these different texts, I was also deciding that, okay, when I go to div school, I'm no longer just going to theorise first. Which, of course theology at the end of the day is just theory. You know, I'm not just going to theorise or theologize first and then live my life and say, okay, I have to fit my life through this narrow paradigm. Instead I'm going to live first and then let that shape how I think about the world. And so it was this reversal that I think was for me quite a big deal.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:15:30 to 00:16:03
And so it was these two things, actually going to real schools that had quality educations and then also just saying I'm going to no longer live in a world of theory, but I'm going to live in my practical day to day life and then see how my theory is shaped by that. My lived experience, my embodied experience. And these two things really, I think in a lot of ways saved my life because, I mean, I probably would be married with children and a wife and goodness gracious, yeah. Is that like a nightmare now, thinking about that? How your life could have ended up.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:16:03 to 00:16:11
Oh, God, a prison sentence? I think. You know, I don't. Oh, goodness. I don't want children, that's for sure.

Archie (Host) | 00:16:11 to 00:16:20
Yeah. And I certainly don't want a wife and I don't think a wife wants me. So I just think that it would be an absolute recipe for disaster. Absolutely. Yeah.

Archie (Host) | 00:16:20 to 00:16:37
Yeah. It's crazy when you think about it. And had you been so called, I'm going to put a quotation marks one of the. The converted, what your life could be had you noticed, gone elsewhere and allowed yourself to learn and allowed yourself to give in to who you are. Well, you know what?

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:16:37 to 00:16:51
And I think we have a number of examples of folks who did exactly that. The opposite, you know, that I have. First of all, there's like the numerous leaders from the ex gay movement, as it was called. Still is somewhat called that by. Mostly by us outside of the.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:16:51 to 00:17:07
Outside the camp. But you know, there were so many of these guys, right, and women that who were leading these lives where they're saying, no, I'm changed. I'm changed, like, God's changed me. And of course they haven't. And we all know that conversion therapy obviously doesn't work at this point.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:17:07 to 00:17:46
I certainly didn't know at the time, but you know that these folks are out there and they're living lives that are lies and then eventually they just can't take it. And you know, they're at a gay bar and they get caught or they're on Grindr and they get caught. Like, I have multiple friends from Liberty University who either went through conversion therapy with me or went through conversion therapy elsewhere and went to Liberty and then they ended up marrying straight women. And they. All of them I can think of, out of the three that I am thinking of, all of them had children and two of them are now divorced from their wives or in the process of divorcing.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:17:46 to 00:17:56
And then one is still in it to win it. Oh, wow. And I can think of the one. One of them was actually the first guy I ever came out to at Liberty. And he.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:17:56 to 00:18:09
He's public with this now. So I don't think he would care at all. And in fact, I know he wouldn't care me sharing this. But he and I, you know, we sort of came out to each other and then he asked me that and he said, have you ever been attracted to a woman? And I said no.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:18:09 to 00:18:15
I said, no. I said, yes, I'm bisexual. With no evidence to support that. Right. Like there's no.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:18:15 to 00:18:34
No woman had I been thereto for or now have I been attracted to. So, but he said, no, I've never been too attracted. Well, he got married, he had children, and then eventually he broke free. But he was saying that the other guy who I Had a big crush on this other guy. And I actually write about it in the book in Shame, Sex, Attraction.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:18:34 to 00:18:54
This is the guy. I talk about this guy. He and my friend were talking and my friend was saying, yeah, I'm probably going to be like, my wife and I are going to break up and we're not going to be together anymore. And this guy who, again, who I write about, my big crush, he got super angry, apparently. And of course, the reason why he's angry is because he's angry at himself.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:18:54 to 00:19:33
He's like, no, you can't leave because I'm not leaving. And if you leave, then there's like, one less of us, and then it's harder to sort of bear this burden of an inauthentic lie of a life. And so I think that I see these examples of folks who went through conversion therapy. I see these folks who gave it the good old college try, like, they really did go beyond what I did, which I did go to conversion therapy for four years, and I did experience a lot of bullshit. But for them, they really took it to the next level by marrying, you know, straight women and having children and really trying to have that, you know, life that they were told is the only way that you can be happy and the only way you can be a Christian.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:19:33 to 00:19:52
And then they realised, you know, they said quite quickly that it just wasn't working and they were stuck in these, you know, jails of marriages. Yeah. And that's the thing. Your crush probably just so angry that someone else had the guts to go ahead and do what he really wanted to do. And so then you act out in anger.

Archie (Host) | 00:19:52 to 00:20:03
And that's the most thing. When you. When you're jealous of something or you don't understand something, for some reason, as humans, we automatically go to anger. So is he still in a relationship. Still in relationship with a woman?

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:20:04 to 00:20:13
Yeah. You feel for him because obviously there's so much background and trauma that has not allowed him to actually be himself. Yeah. And you know what? And it's.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:20:13 to 00:20:25
It's one of those things where it's, like, also on the opposite end. For a long time, I felt really angry at them, you know, and I was like, you make my life harder. I mean, they do, right? Like, they. They do ultimately, by staying in the closet, there are.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:20:25 to 00:20:36
There's less queer visibility. And I was super angry at them. And I think that now I think I have a little bit more compassion and I. And I think back that, you know, that could have been me. Right.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:20:36 to 00:20:48
Like, it really could have been and for a number of reasons it wasn't, but it could have been. And so I can understand their anger. Right. Like, it's all projection. It's just like anger at themselves that they're projecting onto others.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:20:48 to 00:21:01
And for me, I don't know where my anger came from, but I was angry with that for a long time too. I was like, well, if I could do it, you can too. But I also know that I had a different situation. I wasn't raised in the church. I didn't have only that world that I was coming.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:21:01 to 00:21:23
I didn't come from only that world. I knew life outside the church not too, too well, but certainly enough that. Because by the time I was 14 again, I was sort of drinking the Kool Aid. And by the time I, it was, you know, 25, 26, so it had been a 10 year, sort of like, you know, majority of my teenage years. Well, almost all my teenage years and into my adulthood that I was part of this.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:21:23 to 00:21:56
And so anyway, no, I feel terrible for these folks and I'm so glad that a number of these guys have gotten out, but, you know, there still are a lot of people who are in it and are stuck and don't really know how to extradite or sort of emancipate themselves from this system. Yeah, no, that makes sense. And so with conversion therapy, it's deeply personal to the person who's going through it. It's painful for a lot of survivors or those who come out of it. And in that, what was it like for you and what was your motivation for sharing your story and.

Archie (Host) | 00:21:56 to 00:22:19
And wanting to share it in a book? Yeah. So to give a quick definition for anyone who might be, you know, a little unsure about what exactly we're talking about, conversion therapy is the attempt to change someone's sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. And this is obviously within a queer context. People are trying to make queers straight or at least straighten them out a wee bit, you know, to such an extent that they're.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:22:19 to 00:22:34
They find at least one woman or one man or, you know, one person that they're attracted to, that unicorn of a person who never shows up. But the. So conversion therapy for me at Liberty was. Was by largely by way of talk therapy. And so I talk about.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:22:34 to 00:22:51
In the book, I give the story of when I went to the group conversion therapy programme, but I only went to that once. And that's the one time that I. The story there. The other experience that I had was the one on one therapy, which was over the span of Four years. And the reason why I told the group therapy is because I'll be writing the individual therapy for another book.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:22:51 to 00:23:24
So saving that one for later, we'll get to it. But for me, it was with this man by the name of Pastor Dane Emmerich. And Dane Emmerich was one of those ex gays, married and had children and grandchildren, all this kind of stuff. And so with my experience, I mean, it began very much in this, like, pseudo Freudian approach to human sexuality where we would talk in the very first few sessions about, you know, like, what was my childhood like, what was it like growing up with mom and dad? What was my relationship to both?

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:23:24 to 00:23:45
What was my relationship like with my siblings, to my sister and my brothers? And then, you know, thinking about, you know, how did any of that map onto or fit their theory about where I went wrong? And the way I went wrong, according to this thinking, is that I was too attached to my mom, which I was like, I was a mama's boy. She was overbearing. Cheryl's wild.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:23:45 to 00:23:55
So that certainly fit the. Fit the narrative. The other problem or the problem was that my dad was phenomenal. Like, I had. My dad was arguably, like, much more involved in my life than my mom.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:23:55 to 00:24:18
And, like, you know, came to all, like, my soccer games, my chess matches, my dance recitals, all this kind of stuff. And, you know, I think that for them, they're not looking for consistency, and never should we look for consistency with evangelicals, right? There is, like, some sort of internal logic according to how they think and what they think and, you know, what they're going to think. It just doesn't mean it's consistent, you know, how there's, like, a way of thinking. It's just, again, wildly, you know, all over the place.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:24:18 to 00:24:35
And so for me, that was okay that my dad was, you know, fine. They were like, okay, let's just, like, put brush that under the rug and focus on your mom and your relationship. And, you know, my siblings, my brothers, like, growing up, they were. They were a bunch of jerks. And so that also fit the narrative.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:24:35 to 00:25:07
And then also like, oh, you were playing with your sister's dolls and, like, eating her makeup when she was at school and, you know, playing with, like, her dresses and in the closet, you know, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I was like, yeah, all of that. Like, of course I was. And so that also fit the narrative. And so what they say is that, you know, and what I was told was that, you know, by the time I hit puberty, wherever I was on the gender spectrum because really at the end of the day, conversion therapists, in specifically religious context, it's all about gender and how you identify gender wise, that'll determine your sexuality.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:25:07 to 00:25:31
So if you are as a young gay boy doing the things that girls do and playing with girls toys and hanging out with girls and socialising with girls, you're in the world of girls. And so by the time you hit puberty, you apparently go to what's opposite of you. Like you're attracted to the opposite. Because again, evangelicals operate in a binary system. It's everything's like opposite this, this male, female, like boy, girl, you know, right, wrong, good, evil of the enemy of God, whatever.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:25:31 to 00:26:05
So for me, I was apparently living in the world of girls and so I had to, and like, and like, you know, completely sort of invested in femininity. So I, when I got, you know, hit puberty, I was going to go for what was opposite, which was boys. And so then over time, as I went for what was opposite of being habituated that, you know, those desires and those, and acting on those desires, that's when it really sort of concretizes or like solidifies the sexuality. And then over time, I eventually struggle with same sex attraction. According to this thinking, everyone's actually a latent heterosexual, everyone is by nature in default straight.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:26:05 to 00:26:43
It's just that some deviate and you know, are attracted to men or attracted to women depending on, you know, their struggle. And so for me, and so what they say is that, okay, so if you have this struggle, the way to fix it or the way to correct it is for you to, to rehabituate a different gender performance. So if you are again, habituating that feminine gender performance and you're acting according to the scripts of femininity, what you just need to do is flip the script. You need to start acting like a man. And over time, as you act like a man, you're not just going to act like a man, you're going to actually be a man as you perform a certain brand of heteronormativity, of hegemonics or masculinity.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:26:43 to 00:27:09
And over time that performance will not be a performance, it'll be instead just a natural function of who you are. And that's what affords the delusion that you can change, right? It's not just that you try to be straight, it's that you try to be masculine and then in turn your sexuality will change. So that's what I was taught. And so in these first few sessions of what was Your relationship, like with your parents and your siblings.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:27:09 to 00:27:24
That then turned into. Over time, we started going into a different sort of routine. The routine was reading the Bible, reading this text, this conversion therapy manual. Mine was Alan Mettinger's growth into manhood, resuming the journey. Wow.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:27:24 to 00:27:45
So again, this idea that you stopped the journey of masculinity or manhood, and now you're going to go back on to the path and on the straight and narrow, pun intended. So there was reading this manual, there was reading scripture, there was prayer. I never prayed for myself in these sessions. It was always Dain praying for me, which I think is quite symbolic that he was interceding on my behalf. And I wasn't able to.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:27:45 to 00:27:58
Not that I wasn't able to, just that I didn't in these sessions. And then there was also this weekly inventory. So my slip ups and my victories. Slip ups were times that I gave into temptation. Victories were times that I avoided temptation.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:27:58 to 00:28:14
So we would talk about these things. And he always asked really probing questions, detailed questions about what I was into and what kind of porn do you like and what are you attracted to? Yeah, Wildly inappropriate. Very weird. Obviously, I know why now.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:28:14 to 00:28:40
He was asking these questions, but was very greedy for details about what was going on behind closed doors. And so then we would have these sort of like, almost like confessional confession moments. And those were big parts of it. The other part that I look back on and just cringe is the tactile aspect, which was that, you know, every time I'd see him, he'd give me this big bear hug. And every time I would say goodbye, he'd give me a big bear hug.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:28:40 to 00:28:53
But he'd also, whenever we were praying, he put his hand on my shoulder, on my leg, and like, not on, like, my, like, inner thigh or anything, but, like, certainly, like, further than he shouldn't be, probably ever. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like, what the hell? And at the time, you know, evangelicals have no boundaries.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:28:53 to 00:29:08
There's no such thing as, like, personal boundaries within that religion. And so you're primed to be like, okay, I guess this is fine. And, you know, again, it wasn't like, too weird, but it was weird. Like, you never really liked it. And he was this older man that just like.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:29:08 to 00:29:18
Anyway, he was once described in a student newspaper as, like, baby or. No, as Yoda. Like, he looked like Yoda, so just, like, wasn't a cute moment. And so he. He was just this.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:29:18 to 00:29:35
Anyway, so there was that. And I always think about it now, and I think about it as him almost like modelling, like, good touch, bad touch, as if I was like a four year old, you know, and him sort of saying like, this is how men can relate physically to each other. Meanwhile, of course, like, what is he thinking in his head? Probably, yeah. Other things, completely different.

Archie (Host) | 00:29:35 to 00:29:40
Just creepy. Yeah, just like wild. Oh, God. Like so, so bizarre now. So.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:29:40 to 00:30:13
So that was a big part of it. But, you know, and I tell this experience and people will oftentimes say, well, like, that doesn't sound too bad, that doesn't sound terrible like that you read scripture, you read a book and whatever and you like confessed your quote unquote sins. But the thing is, is that for conversion therapy for me and for a lot of survivors is that, you know, the violence isn't so much what happens in the moment, because oftentimes when I would confess, when I would tell him these things, you felt better in the moment. It was almost like you were alleviated of your guilt, you had done something wrong, you felt guilty for it. And then he's like, no, yes, that was wrong.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:30:14 to 00:30:30
But let's move forward, let's focus our eyes on Christ and we'll get through this kind of thing. So you always felt kind of better in the moment. The problem was that once I left Liberty, I still remember I was standing in my split level apartment. I was standing over at the sink. It was like only the light above me on.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:30:30 to 00:30:56
And Canada gets dark very early in the winter, so it was like 5:00 and it's like pitch black out. And I'm standing there and I was praying and I was like, God, what the hell? I've tried so hard to become straight. I said, and I didn't again conceptualise it as conversion therapy, but I said, I met with Pastor Dane, I've read my Bible, I've been consistent with doing what you want me to do. I fasted.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:30:56 to 00:31:17
And if you count the number of weeks that I fasted, I just didn't eat because I thought that God, I was focusing my attention and energy on God and not on food. It would have been weeks and weeks and weeks of not eating. So all of this together, I was like, God, what the fuck? I've done so much and I've tried and I've tried and I've tried. Why aren't I changing?

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:31:17 to 00:31:49
And I think that for me it was again, I used to have that mechanism to alleviate the guilt, which was Dane, but then without him, because he kept promising, there's this cruel optimism that he Kept instilling in me over the four years, it'll be fine. You'll work through this. There's victory in Christ, these sorts of messages. And so you have this twisted hope that you will change. And then when you don't change, you think to yourself, okay, and again, within this system, it's that God is perfect and God wants you to be, to go for a woman and be straighter, to find attraction to women.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:31:49 to 00:32:02
And if in fact God's perfect and God's not the problem, what's the problem? Well, it's you. You're the problem, right? Like you're the issue. That's, that's not allowing, you know, God to work.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:32:02 to 00:32:15
Something that you're doing or somehow who you are just won't allow this. And so that guilt turns into shame, right? Where shame is not just like, I've done something bad. Shame is that I am bad, right? And I am gross, I am defective, I am dirty.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:32:15 to 00:33:05
And so it was these messages that Dane had given to me, the really explicit messages, like you will find victory in Christ, just keep your eyes on the price kind of thing. And when that didn't happen, that guilt turned to shame and that shame turned to self hatred, where it's like, no, you're disgusting, you're not worthy of love, you're not worthy of God, and ultimately you're going to go to hell. And so I think for me, the violence conversion therapy came after where it was these promises that were given to me, it was these scripts I was told to follow that just weren't obviously working. And eventually it just, it forced me or pushed me to really hate myself for a long, for a long time. And eventually again, you know, going to school and studying and having conversations with people who didn't believe what I believe, thank God, allowed me that sort of exodus out.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:33:05 to 00:33:33
But it certainly was this like long sort of drawn out process that really, you know, did a number on my, on my, I guess, mental health and emotional health and spiritual health, all these things, right? So as you're talking, there's a few things that come to mind with this pastor. It's almost like he's preying on your weakness. Like what people do to gamblers, you know, you prey on the weakness, you give them hope. It's going to be the next one, it's going to be the next one, it's not going to be the next one.

Archie (Host) | 00:33:33 to 00:33:53
And then they feel shame, they feel self hate and all that kind of stuff. So it's almost like this past is kind of knows what your weakness is. And he's preying on that to kind of be, I don't know what the word is, but to kind of be like that person that you go to and that kind of power and hold that power over you. Am I kind of on the right track there? 100%.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:33:53 to 00:34:09
He was like this mentor, right? He was this coach. He was. And within conversion therapy it's actually explicitly talked about. Like Joseph Nicolosi is this like not the father of conversion therapy, but he's certainly a big wig and influential person within these, within that world.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:34:09 to 00:34:58
He would write about how the conversion therapist for young gay men, if the conversion therapist was a man, he was functioning as a proxy father, this stand in father. And so they established themselves as these father like or grandfatherly like figures. And again, that's this affect over emotional bond where you don't want to disappoint your dad, you don't want to disappoint your grandpa, your mentor, your coach, your ego ideal, the person that you want to be. And for us, we were, we wanted to be him because we were like, look at him, he got married, he had children, he had grandchildren, he's telling us that life is great, everything seems to be good with him. And so you have this emotional bond with this person who's again promising you change if only you are to follow the programme of action and doing what you're supposed to do according to what he says you're supposed to do.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:34:58 to 00:35:42
And it's this way of conditioning you and emotionally like using these emotions that again, at the time, guilt, there's this almost like need to rely upon him, right, to keep going back for more. And in some ways it's this dependency that is established where you need to keep going back to him to make you feel better. And then every time you go back to him, you feel better, but then you go away and then things aren't good, so you go back to him and then you feel better. And again, this is the dynamic that we're talking about, at least in this specific context at Liberty and a number of other contexts that we see in the collection, in the book. But this is really, in a lot of ways, this is what happens within conversion therapy contexts.

Archie (Host) | 00:35:42 to 00:35:59
And so for you, it sounds like your experience with conversion therapy is mainly the one on one talk therapy as part of your conversion therapy. Yeah, so that was my experience. I mean, the book gives voice to a number of other experiences too. Right. And there's not every experience obviously represented in the book.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:35:59 to 00:36:28
There are people, you know for instance, the very first story, it's aversion therapy. So using something to make you, you know, to associate something gross, something negative with homosexuality and then trying to use that as a way to be grossed out by. By queerness. And the very first story, again, if, you know, for when folks read the collection, it's literally this guy smelling like dog shit, like that's what he's told to do. And so that's an example of aversion therapy.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:36:28 to 00:36:55
You know, there's electroshock therapy. I was recently put in touch with someone who underwent electroshock therapy, which is another form of conversion thera therapy that people experience. But, you know, there are a whole host of examples of conversion therapy and conversion practises writ large that people undergo. And whether it be talk therapy or, you know, other perhaps less direct messaging, that's that people, you know, receive. There are a number of ways that conversion therapy operates, and this is certainly a prominent one.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:36:55 to 00:37:19
And again, especially the fact that it's in an evangelical or a Christian space. Most conversion therapy these days happens in religious contexts, specifically Christian contexts. And so my experience in a lot of ways has a lot of similarities to other people's and obviously has some differences. Mine was in a university setting, which is not always that common, though it certainly does happen at a number of Christian universities and colleges and seminaries. But a few other stories give voice to that too.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:37:19 to 00:37:47
But sometimes it happens obviously in a pastor's office at a church, at a church ministry, or even within the family at home. There are a whole bunch of ways that conversion therapy operates and the collection gives voice to a number of these experiences. Yeah, and you spoke about shame, and so your book is called Shame Sex Attraction. Is that where the title came from? And what do you hope readers will take out of being able to read your series?

Archie (Host) | 00:37:47 to 00:38:01
Is it like an anthology kind of, of different stories? Yeah, anthology, edited collection, edited volume, whatever. Yeah, all of. All of these descriptors work. So, yeah, I mean, being queer, we love a good pun.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:38:01 to 00:38:22
Come on, you know, play with words. Dad joke or a daddy joke, I don't know. So same sex attraction, it's a play on, obviously, same sex attraction. So within conversion therapy context, within Christian context, queers are said not to be queer. They're said to be those who struggle with same sex attraction, which again is a way of divorcing the sexuality from the individual and saying, oh, you're straight.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:38:22 to 00:38:43
You just have this like, sin that you're dealing with. And so obviously it's not true. Obviously, like people are Attracted to men not because they're struggling with same sex attraction. They're made to struggle with it because people make them struggle with their sexuality, it's because they're queer. So it's kind of why it happens.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:38:43 to 00:39:14
So the thing is with the title Shame Sex Attraction, so with conversion therapy, it's a play on same sex attraction. Because what brings people into conversion therapy is shame. Yes, there are people who are forced to go, and yes, there are people who are just there waiting to get the hell out, just sort of biding their time until their parents don't force them to go anymore. But a lot of people, a majority of people go in because they are ashamed of themselves. They feel bad or made to feel ashamed of themselves for their queerness or their same sex attraction.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:39:14 to 00:39:32
The other thing, though is that conversion therapy doesn't also doesn't just like, predicate itself on and necessitate shame in order for folks to be there, because, again, they wouldn't be there if they didn't feel ashamed. But it also amplifies that shame. Right? It makes it, you know, more intense, it intensifies it, it makes it stronger. So.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:39:32 to 00:40:00
And you know, in a recent Canadian study, the number one consequence of conversion therapy that was cited by survivors was shame. So it's both what brings people in, but also that, you know, the number one sort of like fruit of these practises is shame. And so the title is trying to reflect that by way of, you know, a sweet little pun. But, yeah, what I hope folks get from the collection was that the second part of the question. Yeah, I mean, you know, some people have said like, oh, this is going to change so many people's minds.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:40:00 to 00:40:11
And I'm like, no, it's not. Like, I know that this isn't. And yes, I would love for that to be the case. Yes, I would love for conversion therapists to read this. I think maybe two conversion therapists will read this.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:40:11 to 00:40:24
Actually, I know the reason why I say two is because there is one on Twitter who comments on my stuff every so often. He's like, I can't wait to read this book. Yeah. And I know he's a conversion therapist. I just love it because I'm always just playing with him because I'm like, do you want to read this?

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:40:24 to 00:40:40
Because there's a lot of discussion of penises. Is that what's going on here? Is this the Pastor Dane all over again kind of wanting something and pretending that it's something completely different? Yeah, well, he always says he's like, this, this Conversion therapist. He's like, in order to, like, you know, reach these people, like, these people.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:40:40 to 00:40:53
Like, it's like. It's like, you're me, like you're just a gay man who's, like, terrified. Well, I guess the difference is that you're. You're terrified and I'm not. But he says, in order to reach these people, we need to, like, know what they believe and, you know, whatever.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:40:53 to 00:41:09
And so that's his big idea. And I'm like, no, I'm like, it sounds to me like you just want to read stories about penises. And I just keep saying this and he doesn't like it. So there's that. But I mean, I don't expect that other than this guy, you know, any commercial therapist really is going to read this collection or support my work.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:41:09 to 00:41:18
And I love that they're supporting my work. That's my favourite thing. So they're actually putting money down. Love that. The other part, though, is that again.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:41:18 to 00:41:39
So if, in fact, I don't believe that it's going to change many minds, and I don't, and again, I would love for that to be the case. I wish, wish, wish that would be an ideal world, but we don't live in an ideal world. We. And I don't want to sort of, like, expect that. What I do expect, and pardon me, what I do hope for, is that survivors read this and they are able to see themselves in some way, shape or form through the narratives that are presented in the collection.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:41:40 to 00:42:05
Because, I mean, obviously we have some cultural representations of conversion practises. We have Garrett Conley's Boy Erased, who actually, Garrett wrote the foreword to the book. But we have other sort of similar stories, and those are phenomenal and we're so thankful for them and they've laid the foundation and laid the way for other stories to come after, so. So we're grateful. The thing is, though, is that it's not the only experience of conversion therapy that's out there.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:42:05 to 00:42:49
And so this collection gives a broader sampling of conversion experiences, conversion practises, experiences. So I think that that's helpful. The other thing that I hope for is that those who aren't, who didn't necessarily go through conversion therapy, but who are queer, I hope that they see themselves in this collection because I think the way I think about conversion therapy is really it's just concentrated transphobia and homophobia packaged into one sort of presentation or one room or one pastor's office, whatever. And I think that if we are to understand conversion practises, as those which are practises trying to change an individual, to straighten them out in some way, shape or form. I think that a lot of queers, they might not have necessarily undergone conversion therapy, but they have been subjected to conversion practises.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:42:49 to 00:43:13
Right. When you're a little boy and you're sitting like a girl and dad slaps you on the back of the head and says, don't sit like that, or a little girl's playing with tracks and her mom says, you're not playing with those in past as you adult. These are conversion practises. These are implicit or in some cases explicit ways of saying you are not aligning yourself with the proper gender performance, therefore you need to change. So I think that queers will see themselves in that sense too.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:43:13 to 00:43:39
And I think that if we understand that, not to broaden the definition to such an extent that everyone's included. No, conversion therapy obviously still is specific to certain contexts, but I think conversion practises as a term is certainly helpful when we understand homophobia and transphobia, at least for us, when we grew up. I think that every queer who reads this is going to see themselves. And so I would hope for that. I think those are the two big takeaways that I hope people have.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:43:40 to 00:44:15
But beyond that, I'm just excited for the contributors who are sharing their stories and people are taking the time to read them and I've already started to hear back from some people. I didn't even think about conversion practises. Like, you know, told, put on a shirt, do this, do that, you know, that kind of stuff. You're like, wait, a lot of queer people would have gone through conversion practises and not realised it. So then by them reading this book, they can take away something from it and say, hey, yeah, I did experience part of this and I didn't realise, hey, I have had conversion practises that have been given to me by family members, friends, school, work, whatever it may be.

Archie (Host) | 00:44:15 to 00:44:35
And they can also see, like, how easy it could be to go down that path of conversion therapy and that kind of thing as well. So it's quite an interesting thing to think about. Yeah, and I think that's the thing. I think that every queer has undergone conversion practises in some iteration or expression. I think that it's.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:44:37 to 00:44:50
The world that we live in is obviously straight. The world we live in is heteronormative, or at least it pretends to be. Right? It's pretty queer if you look behind the curtain. But I think that the problem is that we're obviously not straight and we don't fit that mould.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:44:50 to 00:45:08
And so us just being was so offensive to so many people that they tried to just make sure that we were in line. But we thank God. Well, for a lot of queers, we're not, you know, following that model. Some queers do, and it's unfortunate, but for the rest of us, you know, I don't. I don't want to live a straight life.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:45:08 to 00:45:19
I don't want to live according to the ethics of straight people. And I don't think that those ethics are actually all that ethical. I don't think that they're actually all that. That they don't make much sense to me and I don't think they make much sense to straight people either. That's the sort of irony.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:45:19 to 00:45:57
Yet they police these and enforce these standards in these scripts. But I digress. So I think that the collection gives voice to how other folks have undergone conversion practises, especially those stories that are about the family and looking at how parents were the ones who pushed their children in this direction or forced their children into this direction. I think that when we read those stories, we can see, oh, gosh, maybe, maybe my mom or maybe my dad or maybe my aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa, whomever was in line and did something similar. And so I think that seeing yourself in these stories, I think, can be powerful.

Archie (Host) | 00:45:58 to 00:46:20
Yeah. And having worked through such traumatic experiences, how do you find hope and healing in your personal and professional life? So, again, I think academia really helped me a lot. And I don't mean to say that that was the only avenue that I pursued in order to work through a lot of this silliness. And for me, I researched trauma.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:46:20 to 00:46:35
That's kind of what I've been doing for the past who knows how long. And I wouldn't identify my specific experience as traumatic in a definitional sense. I do think it was damaging. I do think it was bullshit. I think there's a lot of crap that happened as a result.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:46:35 to 00:46:47
There's no doubt. But to call it traumatic, I don't think I can do that. Other folks can. And I know a number of people who not only identify like that, but you can see how conversion practises traumatised them. Like, you can see the effects today.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:46:47 to 00:47:07
And so for me, like, my experience, yeah, I needed a lot of sort of like, you know, time and space to think through and then to feel through a lot of what happened to me. And I do think that academia and specifically div school, which is both academic and also A little bit personal or confessional or devotional in nature. That. That really helped me. Then there was.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:47:07 to 00:47:13
Of course, I went to therapy. Like, therapy is great, so that's helpful. Real therapy. Real therapy is great. Yeah.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:47:13 to 00:47:22
What do you. I always say, like, you shouldn't have to go to therapy after going to therapy. So conversion therapy, of course, is not therapy, but, you know, misnomer. Here we are. So that was certainly helpful.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:47:22 to 00:47:41
And I think those things were ways that I was able to work through a lot of this. And also just having, you know, solid friends, queer affirming friends and family. You know, the majority of my family is phenomenal. Like, not everyone, but the majority, the vast majority is just great and supportive. And so I have a really good family system.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:47:42 to 00:48:00
I have a really good friend system. I have a great group of friends or groups of friends and talking about it, actually verbalising things. I think that the phrase that always comes to mind is coming to terms. People always say, did you work through it or did you find victory over it? Or whatever they want to say.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:48:00 to 00:48:23
But for me, I think the best phrase is, did you come to terms with it in a literal sense? Did you find terms or language to describe it? Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is just name what happened to us and just say, this is what happened, this is what I experienced. And when you were actually able to name it, then you're able to externalise it and say, okay, this is what I have. I found language to wrap around my experience and I'm going to be able to say.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:48:23 to 00:48:47
To understand it a little bit better and figure out what were the consequences, what did it do to me and how is this still affecting me today? Because obviously there's messaging that I learned there and also within the wider evangelical church and also liberty in general, that I still see the effects. I still see, oh, gosh, look at that. I'm doing this right now. And I think that's a function of X, Y or Z.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:48:47 to 00:49:18
And so all this to say, I would say that study therapy and a solid network of people around me are ways that I was able to come to terms with what happened to me. And is there anything you'd like to share with our listeners who might be processing their experiences with religion, shame or conversion therapy? I would say read. Yeah. And I think that that's like a, you know, finding voices of folks whose experiences are similar to yours or different from yours.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:49:18 to 00:49:34
I think that's the beauty is, like, for me, like, I found so much healing in reading stories that were so different from mine and finding a perspective that was so. That so contrasted what I had undergone or what I had experienced. That. That was super helpful. But also finding voices where you do see yourself in the narrative.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:49:34 to 00:49:46
And also it not just, you know, not just, you know, fiction or nonfiction, obviously the collection is nonfiction. It's all. These are all accurate, true historical stories. Anyway, the word true is something I. Whatever, I'll just say it true.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:49:47 to 00:50:29
And so, you know, I think that it can be super helpful. But also, like reading, you know, like some people have, you know, like, I'm thinking if we're thinking specifically of evangelicalism, like Matthew Vines, God and the Gay Christian, where, you know, it's looking at theology, it's looking at, you know, interpretation of scripture, and it's talking about it not in sort of a creative way, but in somewhat of a quasi academic way. That these are texts that are also, you know, helpful. Justin Lee's torn these other queer Christian or post Christian, you know, narratives that people have written that I think are really helpful with offering perspective also, like, get the hell out of that community, whatever that religious community is like, sincerely, get out. Separate yourself, right?

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:50:29 to 00:50:43
Like, you're not able to heal, you're not able to move on, at least in the way that you could if you're not in that community. For me, I literally left the country. Like, I went to Nashville, which was a mistake in and of itself. I was like, nashville, okay, yeah, Dear. Lord, Nashville, what an awful place.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:50:44 to 00:50:55
Don't tell anyone I know from Nashville that I said that, but I hated Nashville. It was just awful. It's like a small town. It's like you have all, like, it's the city in the south. And the south doesn't have many big, big cities.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:50:55 to 00:51:16
And so any city becomes a big city, like Nashville, Atlanta, New Orleans. And so all the small town bumpkins go to these big cities thinking they're going to the big city. And it's not a big city. It's just an overgrown city or oversized city or rencity, I should say. And then it just turns into a bunch of, you know, small town conservatives that live in this big city.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:51:16 to 00:51:29
It's terrible, a terrible place. But also, I love my school experience, but I didn't love Nashville anyway. So I'd say that, you know, get yourselves out of those communities that you. That are, you know, restricting you and find a good community. Find a queer community.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:51:29 to 00:51:59
Find a community that, you know, or queer friend at least, right? Like, that allows you to express yourself, be yourself. I think that reading, getting yourself out of you know, one community and into another. I think these are ways that are really liberatory and allow people to move not necessarily beyond the trauma or the hurt or the pain of what happened to them, but to again, come to terms or work through or start to process these things. And I think these are really helpful and necessary steps to take.

Archie (Host) | 00:51:59 to 00:52:25
Yeah. And how can our listeners find you and support you and your book? So for those in Australia, if you're not interested in ordering off of Amazon, which I can understand, I would say the Nile has the book. In Canada it's Indigo Chapters has the book. And in the US it's bookshop.org so these are alternatives to Amazon, but if you want to use Amazon, I guess Amazon is an avenue to buy the book.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:52:26 to 00:52:44
And beyond the book, you know, social media, I'm on bluesky, I'm on Instagram, threads, all of those platforms. My handle is lukeslamdunkwilson. And no, I don't play basketball, Believe it or not. I was gonna say slam dunk. Believe it or not.

Dr Lucas Wilson (Guest) | 00:52:45 to 00:52:59
And then on Twitter, I am WilsonFW. And then I'm on LinkedIn, Lucas Wilson, and then Facebook, LukeWilson. But yeah, those are the platforms I'm on where you can find me. Yeah. Awesome.

Archie (Host) | 00:53:00 to 00:53:32
So thanks so much for jumping on. It's been really interesting because one thing we've always wanted to do is talk to someone who's gone through conversion therapy and just have a chat and see what exactly is it, what can it mean, and what was, you know, the experience. And so it's quite interesting to have a chat on. I didn't even think about the therapy, like one on one talk therapy as a version of conversion therapy, which is silly for me to think about now, but you see all these, you know, horror stories and that kind of stuff. You hear about the, you know, shock therapy, that kind of stuff, but never just the talk therapy.

Archie (Host) | 00:53:32 to 00:54:01
And that's probably what most people have experienced in some way or another. Yeah, I think it's a pretty common experience. And again, conversion therapy comes in so many different, you know, forms and expressions, but it certainly is quite common and, you know, and the collection gives voice to a number of folks who have a similar experience, whether it be in a church context or a ministry context or, you know, college context. But it is, it is quite common, unfortunately. Yeah.

Archie (Host) | 00:54:01 to 00:54:11
But thank you so much. I hope everybody's enjoyed this episode and listening to the incredible Dr. Luke Wilson. His book is out now. The Shame Sex Attraction.

Archie (Host) | 00:54:11 to 00:54:24
I hope that you guys have got something out of this. If you have, don't forget to give us a quick like a follow and do the same for Luke on his socials. But until next time, I hope that we have been perfectly queer.

Archie (Host) | 00:54:33 to 00:54:34
Let's be perfectly clear.