The One Who Went From Liberty To Liberation

00:06 - Sam (Host)

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work, the Gundagurra land and people. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I also want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which you, our listeners, are joining us from today. I recognise the deep connection that First Nations people have to this land, their enduring culture and their commitment to the preservation and care for their country. This land was never ceded and it always was, and always will be, aboriginal land.

00:46

Hey there and welcome to Beyond the Surface, the podcast where we explore the stories of people who have survived religious trauma, left high-control or cult communities and are deconstructing their faith. I'm your host, sam, and each week I'll talk with individuals who have taken the brave step to start shifting their beliefs that might have once controlled and defined their lives. Join us as we dig into their experiences, the challenges they've faced and the insights they've gained. Whether you're on a similar journey or you're just curious about these powerful stories, you're in the right place. This is Beyond the Surface. Welcome, luke. Thanks for joining me.

01:30 - Lucas (Guest)

Sam, thanks for having me. It's so good to be here.

01:32 - Sam (Host)

I am excited about this episode because your book was so freaking good. It was so freaking good and so I was so excited when you said yes to jumping on the podcast with me Before we get into it, for some context.

01:51 - Lucas (Guest)

where in the world are you at the moment? Well, I am a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at University of Toronto, Mississauga, so Toronto area. But I was formerly a postdoc at University of Calgary, though I lived in Toronto when I was doing that postdoc.

02:11 - Sam (Host)

And you're in Australia. Right, I am. Yeah, we are worlds apart. How many times do?

02:16 - Lucas (Guest)

you get mistaken for being someone from the US. You know what I hate it and I understand why, like, it totally makes sense. I mean, I think once I have like two beers in me, my accent comes out pretty. You know it's pretty thick, and so I think people won't be all that confused at that point. But before that, you know, uh, yeah, it's an unfortunate uh confusion, yeah, confusion, very personally. But no, uh, yeah, it happens more often than I want.

02:39 - Sam (Host)

But yeah, it's so funny because I'm sure from our perspective, it's like yeah, I mean, there are similarities, but in the same way that, um, people seem to think that Australians and New Zealanders sound the same and we're like, oh, we are worlds apart. It's so funny, um, but I think to anybody who is not drenched in it, they sound the same, so it's fine well you know what?

03:04 - Lucas (Guest)

I think it also doesn't help that I lived in the states for nine and a half years, and so when, when people know that, or people hear that about me or they again I'm, it's funny what you get like known for and at this point I'm known for, like conversion therapy and liberty university, two things that like dear lord, like what a resume. Um, but when I both those things happened in the States, right, or or you know. So I think that people oftentimes, when they learn about my work before they know me, immediately assume I'm, I'm from the U? S and a big no way, jose, I'm not.

03:36 - Sam (Host)

I'm born and raised in Toronto and yeah, there's probably more, no more time in our lives that you would really want to hammer that home, hey.

03:48 - Lucas (Guest)

Exactly Right now. It is not a cute look, right? Yeah, I'm from the US, dear Lord. Like no, I'm kicking stones. I'm going the opposite way. No way.

03:56 - Sam (Host)

Absolutely Okay. Before we derail the whole conversation completely, I like to start these episodes with a super broad vague question.

04:14 - Lucas (Guest)

it's the Wilson family, circa: 1933

04:19 - Sam (Host)

So I guess kind of there.

04:23 - Lucas (Guest)

I'm the youngest of five and I think that I still fit that role quite well, um, and I fit every stereotype you sort of think, you know, think about when you think about a youngest child, um, that I'm gay. First of all, that you know everyone, uh, to this day still does things for me like taxes and stuff, my sister thing thank you, kaylee, um, you know that kind of stuff. So, uh, I would say that being the youngest of five kids certainly has shaped who I am and how I navigate this world. But I also think that my story in part starts well connected it's connected to that of course is, you know, with my parents, and I was very, very close to my dad. I was very, very close to my mom growing up as well. I'm not close to her now, but growing up, my mom, I was very much a mama's boy again, living into that gay stereotype, but nonetheless very close to my dad and arguably closer to my dad. It was just that I don't know however it works, family dynamics, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But with my mom she was very much haunted by her religious upbringing and she was raised in a Baptist home, so an evangelical home also in Toronto, and I think, because of that, that sort of you know what she carried with her forward. You know what she carried forward with her. You know, after being raised in the home, that she was raised.

05:46

I think that really impacted me in a lot of ways, because we weren't really a Christian family. It wasn't, like you know, we were dedicated to going to church. We went to church for me up until about grade two or three, on and off. After that, we just stopped going, like any good Canadian family. We went to the cottage instead, and so before that, though, again, we were on and off at this, this, this Baptist church, but my dad was agnostic when we came home from church.

06:10

It's like you went to church, went to Sunday school and came home and shut the hell up about it, right, like you just did not talk about Jesus. That was not, thank God, a topic of conversation. We learned our prayers, we learned how to say grace, and that was sort of it. So I think it's almost like by its very absence, religion's absence, in my life as a young kid it became all the more sort of magnified, and my desire to sort of pursue that became all the more intensified as I grew up, and so I'd say that's really where I started. My my story starts with my family, both of my siblings and my parents.

06:43 - Sam (Host)

It's the equivalent of like when you tell kids not to touch something or not to do something. That's all they want to do. Right it? Just, it just entices them so much more.

06:55 - Lucas (Guest)

That's it. Yeah, I think. I think that my siblings all had much more of an exposure to religion than I did, and so I think by the time I became invested in, you know, questions of God and you know theology and all this kind of stuff.

07:10

I think that at that point they had all sort of like, had that exposure, we're like, nope, we're good. And for me, because I didn't have it, I was like, oh, I need to figure that out, I need to go explore that, and so you're right, I think sort of this like not forbidden thing, because it wasn't forbidden, in fact it was encouraged by my mom, but it was something that was just not a really a thing for me in a lot of ways. And so I think again, by its very sort of absence, because of its very absence, I became again all the more allured.

07:38 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, in those sort of like early childhood, teenage years. What was it like for you to realize you were gay? Was it during that period of time, or was it much later? How was sexuality talked about? I do like four barreled questions in one, um, but like how is? Because I think we mostly know in most religious families how sexuality is posed. But when you have a parent who has a complex relationship with religion and an agnostic dad, how is sexuality framed in that household?

08:16 - Lucas (Guest)

Yeah.

08:16

So to answer the first question, um, when did I know, I mean, I knew I was a big old homo from like you know, like I was like four or five.

08:23

You know like I was, I was a big old homo from like you know, like I was like four or five.

08:25

You know like I was.

08:25

I was pretty young, um, and and I think that for me, that that realization didn't really impact me in the sense that, because I was from a family where this was not something that that would be okay to talk about or identify with, um, for me it was just like I was a young kid and, and you know, before puberty, like it doesn't really matter, but but like you do recognize, like I'm more drawn to like the boys over here than I am to the girls, and there was, like when I was super young, some attraction to girls, but like that faded real quick and then it was just exclusively, you know, my attraction to guys and I think, for me, my dad, or sorry, for in my family, my attraction to to guys and I think for me, um, my dad, or sorry, for in my family, my dad would have been a okay with it, like my dad was the super hippity, dippity, you know, free loving pot, smoking, uh, record store, owning social work for, like differently abled folks who wrote a book on Bob Dylan and had a music studio in our basement, you know. So like it was, like he was a, okay, like Keith was a cool guy, vegetarian, you know that kind of thing. Um stop. But he never gave away his leather coats. He's like I'm, you know I already have them, so I'm not going to give them away so once we can stop wearing them.

09:29

You know it's decision. So I, though, because of my mom. Again, the message was very clear and so to answer your, the second part of your question is, my mom made it very um apparent early on that it would not be okay for me to come out, it would not be okay for me to identify as gay, because she would say, you know, things like oh gosh, I'm so glad none of my kids are gay. Or when we were leaving Toronto to go to the cottage, which we you know again did quite often. I still remember there was this one time we were leaving Toronto when it was Pride, and on our way to Toronto there's a highway that sort of goes through, not downtown, downtown, but close to downtown, and you have this like beautiful view of the city and you're sort of like weaving out of the city as you go. And we were on this highway and my mom said, oh gosh, it's Pride right now and she goes, all those guys you know dancing and prancing around naked with their wieners out. She always said wieners, my family said wieners, I don't know why, and so for me these explicit messages made very clear at a very early age that this was not going to be part of my lived reality in the sense that I thought I didn't have to identify as queer. Why? Because I could never really fit into my family if I, you know, were to be gay.

10:49

I also think that the little bit of exposure that I did have to religion made very clear and you know, my mom's sort of reinforcement of this idea was that you know you can't be gay and you know a Christian, and nominally we were Christians, we were just sort of we're all you know evangelicals, we're all Christians.

11:10

Meanwhile I didn't even know what that really meant in a lot of ways, other than sort of like broad, overarching, sort of strokes of like what is a Christian? And again, according to this sort of estimation of Christianity, that was in part defined by homophobia, and so I knew that it was not going to be okay to identify like that. So I was in the closet for up until I was actually 25. I didn't come out until much later, but, um, it really became a problem for me once I hit high school and I really started realizing that I was a big old homosexual, that, yeah, that was going to be a future yeah, I mean, I want to ask one by like side question, because I'm sure I'm not the only person thinking this what on earth is the cottage?

11:50

Here I am speaking as if you know they call this the curse of knowledge and it's not even like knowledge that's worth having. But the cottage, the cottage in Canada, it's essentially like your second home. It's like where you go. For us, the summer, we would spend six weeks at the cottage, um, and then, uh, there would be on weekends. We would go to the cottage in like the fall, even in the winter, um, and the spring, and it's just like your second home. It's like a country home. Ours was in like the Niagara region of Ontario and of course people know Niagara falls. It was, like you know, 50, 60 minutes from Niagara Falls, kind of thing like an hour and a half away from Toronto. So we would drive out there and live that rural life. And of course I fit very well as a young gay boy in Wayne Fleet, ontario. In either case, I digress.

12:38 - Sam (Host)

I mean I was about to say rural and queer don't usually go well together a whole lot of the time. It certainly doesn't in Australia, that's for sure, and I can't imagine it does anywhere else in the world. I am curious once you hit high school, because obviously you know, we know, that it is like the most identity forming years of our life. It's when hormones hit, it's when we make our most social connections, all of that sort of stuff. And so what was that? I can't be what I am. How did that sit in you during that period of time?

13:13 - Lucas (Guest)

well, I think the biggest irony of of being gay was that I went to like the gayest high school in Toronto, like I went to Rosedale Heights School of the Arts, you know what I mean. Like the writing was on the wall everyone um that Luke Wilson was a big old flamer. However, luke Wilson wasn't able to identify, you know, as a gay boy, and so it was actually kind of weird in the sense that my high school, like it was almost street cred to be gay, you know what I mean. Like it was like hey, okay, you almost sort of like were cooler if you were. Like it was like hey, okay, you almost sort of like were cooler if you were.

13:45

But for me, because I became a Christian, like a few maybe, like weeks or months I don't really know the timeline at this point it was like early into high school I became a Christian. Early in grade nine I became a Christian. So maybe, let's say, within the first few months, I thought that I couldn't be both a Christian and gay, and so that you know, that sort of question was made up. The answer was given to me that I had to be Christian, not gay, and again it was just sort of this like funny, the context in which I was, you know, I found myself in this like arts high school, downtown Toronto. I was the Christian kid but of course, again, I think everyone knew that I was gay. It was just a matter of me finding out that truth for myself many years later.

14:29 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I mean my brain almost sort of goes. That sounds almost harder than being in a school that would not normalize it, because it's like you are surrounded by it. You know it's in you. You can't admit that it's in you because you don't think that you are allowed to be this dual combo of of identity markers. It's like that's um amplified version of cognitive dissonance that's within you but your outside world is telling well, your school outside world is telling you that it's completely fine.

15:04 - Lucas (Guest)

I think it was almost like and not to say I was the emperor, because I was like a lowly servant, but like the emperor had no clothes, it's like everyone around me was like like she's a little fruity, you know what I mean. And then I was the one who was like, no, I'm Christian. No, I'm Christian, I can't be gay and Christian. Um, and again, I knew that I was attracted to men. And again, talk about cognitive dissonance, where I'm like I'm not gay, I just am attracted to me. I struggle with same-sex attraction. It's not who I am, it's just like. It's like an addiction, it's, it's something I struggle with. Um, and so I think that that you know, again, everyone around me, certainly other than my mom and my sister, they were somehow surprised when I came out, which still makes no sense to me because I watched a lot of HGTV at home, home and Garden television, of course. And so I think that for my, for my, everyone else, again people knew like I was.

15:57

I was not like this, like ultra mask. You know, young guy, I was in a dance company. I did visual art like I was. You know, I did well in school. I was in a dance company, I did visual art like I was. You know, I did well in school. I was just a big old homo and again it was quite clear.

16:11 - Sam (Host)

But for for everyone but myself yeah, so what was that like for you at, like you know, midnight, when you're in your room on your own and you are not dealing with anybody else in the world? What was that like internally for you?

16:25 - Lucas (Guest)

you know what? It's funny, I think, that, like, you can take the boy out of the church but you can't take the church out of the boy. When I was in, I was in youth group and you know, because, like by grade nine onwards I was in the church and I was, you know, grade nine to age 25, 20, yeah, 25, I would say I was dedicated to going to church and I was a part of a bunch of sort of evangelical communities. But now that I'm out of it again, I think it's funny what you hold on to and the first thing that comes to mind when you say, like Luke, late at night, you know, just you in your bedroom, I immediately think of porn. Yeah, that's what all you know to be like. That's all evangelicals talk about. All they talk about is porn. All they talk about is masturbation and having to fight it and like it's the most cruel and twisted system and I laugh, but it actually did cause a lot of emotional and, arguably, spiritual harm.

17:16

Uh, when I was a kid, this, this prohibition against acting on your very natural desires of being a sexual, you know, individual, being a sexual person, this was considered verboten right. Like this was not allowed and you had to fight with everything that was within you against these natural urges. And I remember, like being just torn constantly in. If we're talking about my bedroom, thinking, and I didn't even have a door around my bedroom, which, looking back, was like about my bedroom thinking and I didn't even have a door around my bedroom, which, looking back, was like no, I don't know why I didn't have a door, but like never did I have a bedroom and so there was not, there was no real privacy and again, you know, if we are to think about being an evangelical, there's also no privacy within the evangelical world, like evangelicals have no personal boundaries. Um, so it kind of worked for me. I was like whatever I'm, I'm already evangelical who needs a door on on my room?

18:06

But, um, I think that for me it was just like constantly warring against myself, like not to master, not to look at porn, and invariably I would find that I would just find myself on this like French website that I always went on, which was very convenient. By the time I got to Liberty, when there was an anti-porn blocker on the university's campus, it was great because it only blocked English porn sites, and here I was. Yeah, it's, it's good. That's the, you know, the upside of being from Canada. You learn both French and English, and so you learn from a young age how to navigate the, the internet, by way of two languages. And I was able to to find what I apparently wanted, but was actively sort of, you know, discouraging myself from pursuing.

18:46 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, yeah. Whilst you were sort of like in that middle of high school, going to church more more in it than you probably have previously been, who was God to you during this period of time?

19:00 - Lucas (Guest)

You know what? God was super cool and of course, god's always really a product of your not only imagination, but your desires, your anxieties, your ego. And so God loved me a lot. God also didn't love that I was, you know, attracted to men and that was something I needed to fight against. So that was always something that never or sorry, that was never something that made sense to me, because it didn't make sense that God was so perfect, god was so cool, god was so loving, and that this part of me that really didn't have any negative consequences, that I could see, um, that God hated this part of me, and so that was one thing. That, again, it never jived with the rest of my understanding of God.

19:44

But when I did think about God in general, you know strokes, I think that I was in love with this being that, I was told, loved me, that that, you know, would never, you know, leave me or forsake me for it.

20:00

To, you know, cite scripture and one who loved me despite my, my sexuality, because, again, I was so in the closet, so scared, so ashamed of who I was, that no one else knew, in the sense that I had not told anyone, but God, of course knew, and I, god, and I talked about it all the time, and so it was. It was a neat reprieve because I was told I was. It was made clear that I should not tell anyone. So I was, you know, in this sort of like space of silence. I was, like you know, unable to um, to to share this with people. So the fact that I was able to share it with God and that God didn't say, like F, you, like I'm out, that that for me at the time really was powerful again. If I could just go back and and realize like that, god doesn't care. I mean I don't believe in God the way that I believe. I don't really know what I believe anymore. I don't care what.

20:53 - Sam (Host)

I do any of us you know what I mean.

20:56 - Lucas (Guest)

Like who cares? God doesn't care about me. So clearly I don't care about God. So like we're fine, but like I think that for me I wish I could go back and just be and explain to that you know at the time, like 14 year old Luke, that hey, like God doesn't give two hoots, that you're a big old, big old homosexual, like you're fine, and that would save me a lot of trouble. But of course that that wasn't the case and my life took a very different turn and we're here to talk about that in part, I suppose yes, yeah, absolutely.

21:26 - Sam (Host)

I do want to, because I obviously want to get everybody wants to get to the part where we talk about Liberty University. But I do want to ask one more question before that, which was were you, did you feel like you were actively suppressing your sexuality, or was it that you just were yourself, but there was just no internal admission that what you, how you were acting and who you were, was gay? Or were you trying to suppress parts of yourself and your sexuality at the same time?

21:56 - Lucas (Guest)

I was absolutely trying to suppress my sexuality. I tried not to look at porn, I tried not to masturbate. I tried even what evangelicals refer to as bouncing your eyes. I tried to always bounce my eyes. So if I ever saw a guy who I thought was attractive and the problem was, I found, like everyone, attractive. I have very wide ranging tastes and so I I, every time I'd see someone I found attractive, I did bounce my eyes. And of course I was doing all of these, you know, efforts were to suppress, you know, my sexuality and also even suppress, like my, the parts of my gender expression that weren't normative. Right, that I again I like doing things that weren't considered stereotypically masculine, still do and those were things that I thought I had to really sort of again suppress. And those were things that I thought I had to really sort of again suppress. I had to, you know, push down the what's the word?

22:55 - Sam (Host)

I had to try to make it so that my hands weren't as communicative, because gays hands are, you know?

22:57 - Lucas (Guest)

yeah, exactly. And so I was trying my best to fight these things, and it's funny at this, and with that, I think that I was also convinced that, again, I wasn't gay. It was this. Again, going back to the term, you use cognitive dissonance. That's exactly it. You, you are, you do, you perform these mental gymnastics that you are not gay. You just struggle with these things over and over and over, day in and day out, and yet you're not queer, according to this, this, you know mindset, and I was very successful in believing that I wasn't gay. I just had this struggle that cropped up constantly and I, you know I and so I think that you're constantly fighting it, even though you don't think it's. You think it's real, but you don't think it's internal. You think it's something that's external or some sort of like condition that has come into your like.

23:49

I still, to this day, don't know how to explain how I and how evangelicals today conceptualize homosexuality. Is it something that's external? Is it like a demonic sort of influence? Is it a sickness that comes into your body and then, sort of like, takes over, like? There's not really a clear conceptualization that I've found, that that maps on to my experience and the experience of how others have described it. So, in either case, this was again I was. I was able to say I wasn't gay. I was able to believe that I wasn't gay because I wasn't acting on it, and of course I was acting on it but would ask for forgiveness. And then the whole cycle would start again.

24:26 - Sam (Host)

I'd be like, oh no, I'm fighting it and then give in, and then fight it, give it, and it was just this vicious over and over sort of repetition that defined my, my days, my weeks and my years as a young you know, gay evangelical yeah, I think I use the term mental gymnastics so much with people to explain the experience of making something make sense that entirely makes no sense, and it is such a good term for what it looks like, but also just what it feels like in terms of like you are just like leaping and jumping and moving from one thing to another Because landing in one space is just so unsafe, particularly if you land in the space that you are not supposed to land in so you just jump and leap and cartwheel from one place to another in an effort to keep yourself, um, safe, both physically and emotionally. Sometimes I think so. Um, okay, so we're in canada. How on earth did we get to liberty university, luke? How did we make that decision?

25:31 - Lucas (Guest)

your lord, it was not god's plan. I, looking, looking back, you know, drake, he would be disappointed, and so was god. Um, no, I. So I again went to this really conservative evangelical church that we had gone to when I was little. I went back to that church in grade nine and that's where I started going to church every Sunday, every Wednesday. Any sort of youth event or even other events that I could possibly go to, I would go. And so that was my entire high school.

26:00

And throughout high school, you know, I thought anything that was Christian was better. I thought anything that was evangelical was like super, you know, neat and hip, and I wanted to be a part of it. And so my mom's cousin, gary, gary, he was the national recruiter for Liberty in Canada. It just so happened and my cousin, my cousin, well, his, my, my mom's cousin's kid went to Liberty and then, I guess, eventually got my, my, what we call them is my uncle, uncle Gary, uh, my mom's cousins, my mom's cousin, he became the natural recruiter. So we would uh. So he eventually approached me and he said hey, would you want to come down to uh, to visit Liberty? And I was like, no, I don't, I don't want to come down to, uh, to visit liberty. And I was like, no, I don't, I don't want to come down to visit like he's like, but it's a free trip to like lynchburg, virginia. And I was like, exactly like, I don't want to go to lynchburg, virginia. There's so much to say about the name, but we will uh put a pin in that for now.

26:57

Um so, you know, and as I was, I was like you know, even though I was wildly conflicted about my sexuality, I was also this like wildly confident and like overconfident teenager. In many ways I mean, perhaps in other ways that you know, not so much when it came to my sexuality, but every other way, I was quite confident. And so I remember thinking to myself well, I'm going to be smarter than all of them. Like they're dumb Southerners, you know what I mean. Like they got those accents, they're like from Virginia, like I'm not going down there and cause I? You know, I did well in high school and I just thought I was like smarter than them. So I was like I'm not going there, I'm not going to even go on this trip. But he's like, no, no, just come, it's fun way down to Lynchburg and drove you right to campus.

27:45

And so I got to the school and I remember being, you know, just blown away because, you know, everything's bigger in the States than in Canada. Canada is very, in a lot of things, very milquetoast right, very like, not exciting, and I love Canada. There are certain parts of Canada that are quite exciting, but there are a lot of parts that aren't, and everything's just bigger in the US. And so I get to this campus where it's this squeaky, clean, new, renovated, like beautiful. Well, what I thought was beautiful at the time, I think it's horrendous now it's a gaudy architecture. They clearly had no gaze involved in, you know, planning that campus or designing it, like geez Louise. But I got there and thought like, oh my gosh, like this, this place is amazing, you know, there's all these Christian young people my age and they're all so hot, you know, and I was like this is where I have to be. And so it was after the very first trip that I went down that I decided I was going to go there. And I went down five more times on this charter bus, like, looking back, what was she thinking? I don't know, but I definitely was excited, and it was. You know, it was thrilling to go down and because, again, it was just so different. And it was a place where because in Canada, especially at my high school and in Toronto, you know in particular, like these are Canada in general, toronto specifically and then my high school, even more specifically three godless places you know what I mean like these are not places that are known for or defined by religious commitments, particularly of the conservative evangelical brand. So all of a sudden, when you get to this place where you're like, oh my gosh, everyone's christian seemingly, it gets so exciting and you're like, gosh, like again, this is where I need to be. So all of this was was amplified for me because I also found out on one of these trips that liberty had a conversion therapy program. They didn't define it as a or present it as a conversion therapy program. Obviously that's not like good PR, but they had this, this.

29:31

You know, ad at chapel that said do you struggle with same sex attraction? And I was like, oh, guilty, like yeah, I absolutely do. And I it said like, if so, like you should contact this guy, dane Emmerichich. So I went to a friend who had made there, who went, who was going to there, he was going to the school at the time. Um, I said to him I was like yo, john, what's this business about? This Dane Emmerich guy is you know, working with, like those who struggle with same-sex attraction, trying to get a little info right. And he's like, oh yeah, he works with, with gay kids on campus. And I was like, oh my, or, like you know, those who struggle with same sex, same sex attraction, however he framed it. Um, but I clocked that and was like, okay, like this is for me, like this is where I need to be, cause not only is it a Christian education, but I'm also going to become straight, like, but a boom, but a bing, like this is everything's good. So that was why I eventually went to Liberty, and it was funny too.

30:21

When I was thinking about going to Liberty, my big idea was that I wasn't just going to go and become straight, but I was first going to have a lot of fun with Christian guys, gay Christian guys. Because my thing was I was like yo, I don't want to be, you know, a bad witness or give Jesus a bad witness by being gay at my high school and people being like wait a second, aren't you a Christian? Like you can't be gay and a christian, you know. And then I'd be like bad pr for jesus. So I thought, well, if I'm at liberty, they're all gay anyway, or sorry, they're all christian anyways and they are all gay anyways. That's another thing, one of the gayest places I've ever been in my life liberty university. But but I was like they're all christian, so it's not like they're gonna judge me, it's not like they're going to think less of jesus, so I'll go have fun with christian guys.

31:04

At the very end, find a woman, after going and meeting with this pastor, and, you know, marry her, whoever this woman like I love an evangelicalism, like a woman, like it's just like interchangeable, like the devaluation of women within this religious tradition is flipping wild. Um, but that was my big idea. And then I go to, you know, meet pastor dane, go with pastor dane, go with Pastor Dane, you know whatever, work with him. Find a woman, get married, go back to Canada and God will be on her throne and the rest will be her story. And um, clearly that didn't happen the way that I thought. It would still pretty gay, but that was a big, uh, motivating factor for why I went to Liberty as well.

31:38 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, okay, there's so much in there. I love that you used the term Christian and not judging in the same sentence. The irony in that is palpable, but okay, so how did it actually like how soon, once you were in Liberty, were you engaging in this program?

32:04 - Lucas (Guest)

his is at the time, you know,: 2008

33:17

So I'm standing on this dresser and I am making my bed and all of a sudden I hear from behind me. I hear like hey, luke, and I turn around. It's my spiritual life director. His name is Um and he's like hey, uh, you know, like like nice underwear, or whatever he says, blah, blah, blah, um. And I was like, uh, like, what am I thinking in my mind? I'm thinking like is he flirting with me? Like, again, imagine like someone who's like never flirted with anyone he's wanted to flirt with. I've like flirted with girls at that point, but like not really. You know what I'm saying. Like it was like very unsuccessful attempt, but, uh, I I never really flirted with a guy. And so this I'm like is this what I think it is? And he's like nice, nice underwear, like undies, whatever he says. Um, and he's talking about you know, uh, like, what are you doing this weekend? And I'm like, uh, like, hanging out with you, I think. And he's like, yeah, and I'm like, did I just flirt? Like just, is this real? And so off he goes. And sure enough, that Friday we we meet up.

34:15

I, you know, went to the cafeteria at eight, come back to the dorm, walking back to the walking through the dorm, and I passed by his room and there he is sitting there. He's like it was like he was like waiting for, like me to pass by Because, again, like I think he knew what this was going to be. I didn't necessarily, but I was hoping, you know, it would be what I thought it was and uh, he's like, hey, like what do you want to do? I was like I don't know, what do you want to do? He's like watch a movie. I was like sure, and I was like which one? Um, and he's like, uh, batman. And I'm like, oh god, like what am I? What are we straight? Um, but again we're playing the charade, right? Uh, and I was like sure, my first choice. But so you know, I throw my stuff down. We start watching this movie.

34:54

I fall asleep and I'm not one who falls asleep typically, up until like the past few years, when I'm becoming an old man. But before that I was like always wired and like sort of like I never needed like caffeine or, you know, ritalin. I was just always off the walls, no matter what. But I fall asleep and again which is so surprising, even looking back, because I was so excited in this moment to be in the room with this guy, with the lights sort of you know, dim, whatever, well, we're watching this movie I fall asleep.

35:18

I wake up, he's like sort of like rubbing my foot and he's like hey, movie's over. And he's like do you want to spend the night in here or do you want to go back to your room? Sorrow question for like two guys who were, like you know, trying to act the you know the part, just crazy, um, but again an evangelical sort of the evangelical world, like it's a nothing makes sense, don't look for anything to make. And so I was like, oh, yeah, uh, yeah, I'll sleep in here, like think, as if. Very casual, yeah, I was playing it, cool, you know.

35:50

And so I'm like, but I said to him, I said, well, I need to go get my my blanket first, as if, like, I needed like a cover for myself, like what the anyway? So I go get my blanket it was like a RL Stine Goosebumps comforter and we go into bed, like I get inside the bed and we're like laying as far away from each other as possible in a single bed, like it's just like three and a half foot bed, however big, big it is um four foot bed, and we're both in there and my, my heart. It's like a flipping cartoon. You can, when I get nervous, you can see it bounce like, beat through my chest, like it's, it's embarrassing, um, and you can also feel it if you're laying in the same bed and I'm laying there and I'm like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. He can like, feel it, he probably can see it, cause the, the moon, the, you know, the light coming out, coming in from the window outside the, the, the light from the moon was like showing, even when I had the comforter over my, my, my chest, it was like bouncing, and so I was like like, so I tossed it down, you know, uh, and I'm laying there, but like clearly he can feel my heartbeat, um, and it was, it's almost like you could hear it. And I think I could hear it because it was in my ears, right. But, um, so we're laying there and there's a little back and forth. I'm like rolling around trying to like again cover the fact that my heart's beating out of my chest and he's sort of moving, and then finally we like are laying on the pillow and he's looking at me, I'm looking at him and he moved forward, and then I moved forward and then he, and it was just this back and forth and there were moments of pausing and then a little bit longer and then quicker, and then eventually we sort of like go in and we kiss, right, and so that's. It turns into this like weird bizarro, upside down sort of romantic encounter, if we can call it romantic I don't know if that word actually applies, but uh, that happens.

37:29

And so afterwards the next morning we wake up and his roommate had left, like that was another thing. His roommate was likely in the room at that point. I don't actually know at that point, but like from from us getting into bed to us kissing and doing stuff there was. It was took some time, but again, his roommate was there at least by the end of the night, but he left in the morning, and so then that gave us the chance to sort of like, you know, finish what we started. And he got really immediately like he was ridden with guilt, like that good old fashioned evangelical guilt. Feels horrible at what he does and he immediately gives me the cold shoulder and so I left the room. There was a little bit of conversation, but I left the room and eventually later like texted him. I said yo, we should probably talk about what happened. And he's like nothing happened and I'm like wait, what I'm like this was like the biggest moment of my life and I'm like distraught and he wouldn't talk to me. And so I at this point it was a few weeks of going back and forth, like me like crying all the time, like super upset, like wanting to talk to him. I even barged into his room one day and tried to talk to him in his room. It was there and then I got really embarrassed and ran out and whole thing anyway.

38:41

I had one friend who I eventually told and it was only because I I told I wouldn't tell him directly, but then when I told him I had a poem that I had written about what had happened. I read the poem and then he said I think I know what it's about. And then he was right, because he was also gay. Anyway, I had no one really to talk about this with, and so I fast tracked the plan that I had, you know, in my mind that I wasn't just going to have my fun with Christian guys throughout the entire time there, or throughout the majority of the time. I was going to stop having Christian fun you know, gay Christian fun and instead go and meet this, this pastor on campus who was tasked with trying to fix gay students. And so my plan was, you know, expedited and I began conversion therapy with him a few weeks later.

39:24 - Sam (Host)

Okay, oh, I mean, I'm sitting here and I'm going, my heart is like breaking for like that part of you that just was like so sweet and so innocent in loving what you were doing and then it just got like ripped out from underneath you Like that good old fashioned, like Christian guilt that goes, if I don't talk about it, it doesn't exist. Like, if we don't acknowledge it, we can ignore it. Um, it's just acknowledge it, we can ignore it. It's just, oh, it's so painful, it's so painful. I'm not surprised because, like what you saw as what was going to be fun, it became not so fun anymore. Right, like it was. There was so much pain attached to it.

40:10

So what was okay? What was the program like with this guy? Like how was that for you? Because obviously you know there is a big conversation around. This is well not like being pitched, but it is conversion therapy and we know well I talk quite a bit about the differences between conversion therapy and conversion practices and the nuance that we need in that space as well. So what was that experience like for you? Was this a very formal, structured program?

40:43 - Lucas (Guest)

Yeah, and just to circle back to what you just said about the pain, it's funny, not funny, but you know what I'm saying. It's funny, not funny, but you know what I'm saying. It's funny because at the time I I thought I deserved it, yeah.

40:55

I thought I deserved that I was. I was feeling because I had done something wrong, I had done something sinful, I had, you know, punishment, yeah, and that I deserved every bit of it. And so it's it's wild because that in part, again, I just wanted like alleviation of that. I didn't want to feel like that anymore. You don't want to feel like I was disgusting and you know, horrible, and also just feeling like I deserved every minute of it. So that was also a motivating factor for why I went into conversion therapy. I wanted to be free of not only homosexuality but also the feelings that were attached to it, the emotions that were attached to it.

41:37

And so I met with this guy, pastor Dane Emmerich. He retired a few years ago, but he had been doing the work before I got there and he was doing the work after. He ran two groups one for those who were addicted to homosexuality me, and then, you know one for those who were addicted to homosexuality me and then you know, uh, one for those who were addicted to porn. And research obviously makes it make that you can't be addicted to porn. You can have a dependency on porn, but it's not an addiction, um and so, but this is the framework that he operated, you know, within. And so he also did the one-on-one uh, uh meetings with students, and so there were the groups, but there was also the one-on-one stuff. There was also the one-on-one stuff.

42:16

So I, I, I met with him and in the beginning it was almost as if he was not only trying to establish a relationship with me and establish sort of the groundwork, but in doing that he was trying to find the source of where my, my same sex attractions came from. Um, so it was a very pseudo freudian approach to human sexuality, right. So it was like what's your relationship with your mom, with your dad, with your siblings? And you know, um, and also asked about you know guys, uh, who I knew and like, who are my friends? Were they mostly girls? Were they mostly guys? Um, you know, and just trying to find the, the, the, the roots of, of my, of my, uh, queerness. And again, it wasn't that I he taught that I was queer, it was that I was just same-sex attracted. Um, I was. Instead, I was a child of God who just had same-sex attractions and I was like bitch, I'm both, um, but I, you know, retro, retrospectively, I can say that, but at the time again, I bought into everything he said.

43:17

I was absolutely following the program, I was following his teachings, and so what we did in the beginning again sort of taking that inventory, also like really detailed questions about, like my porn habits and like what I was attracted to, did I like daddies, did I, like you know, other twinks, like what had I done, you know, with other twinks? Like what had I done with so-and-so, what had I done over here? And, like you know, really specific questions, looking back like wildly creepy. But again, these were the what's the word, the questions that were being asked. And so I, after the first few meetings, and we sort of established where this had come from and we identified that it was my mom, not my dad, that made me gay or made me same-sex attracted, because my mom's overbearing and so within this, you know, sort of ideology, conversion, ideology, it's, it's, it's claimed that either or either, or slash both, and that you have an overbearing mother who you know, over-invests herself into you when you're a young boy and you start living too comfortably in the world of femininity and then by the time you hit puberty, you go for what's opposite of you masculinity. So I was going for what was opposite of me. I was attracted to masculinity, men. So the other idea is that you have an absentee or emotionally distant or abusive father, which none of which was true. My dad was like, again, phenomenal, um, and so that was sort of in the same way that you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet and take what you want and leave what you don't. This was like oh well, that doesn't really fit the narrative. Let's just, you know, push that aside and it's on the on your mom.

44:45

So we did. We focused on my mom, um, and from there the program was again, we met very consistently and we would talk about my victories and my slip-ups, victories being moments I avoided temptation, slip-ups being moments I gave into it or into them. We read a conversion therapy manual. Mine was Alan Mettinger's Growth into Manhood, resuming the Journey, and that book I actually had it up until recently and I lost it. I must have been lost in a move. That I did I'm still teed out about it, but whatever and that we read that. And then we also, of course, read scripture together. He always prayed for me. I never prayed for myself.

45:28

I think, which is quite indicative, that he was the one on my behalf and talking to god for me, um, which of course, within, like protestant traditions, is not necessarily like the way to do things, but whatever, um, he took charge. Um, he was a dom daddy, so I, there was also. Um, there was also a weird tactile aspect, and not that this was necessary. Well, I don't know if this was premeditated, but he would always do two things when we would meet. In regards to him touching me, One at the beginning and end of every meeting, he'd give me a big bear hug, almost to be like Rizwa Mandu and, like you know, squeeze me really hard. The other part was that whenever we prayed, he either put his hand on my shoulder or on my leg, and I talked to someone else about this. When he put his hand on our legs and my friend described it, he said it wasn't enough to make you say like no, don't do that. But it wasn't like low down enough that it wasn't something you didn't clock you know what I mean.

46:26

Like you definitely missed it every time and so it was always just, and I always just figured that he was trying to like model, good touch, bad touch. In the same way. He was doing that with the hug, he was doing that with the, the leg. We can touch other men, but it doesn't need to be sexual. Meanwhile, you know, like this man at night was thinking things, um, and feeling things, and so this was, this was the, the program, um, and you know, for me, I think that in part, like one of Emmerich's explicitly stated goals, was that he wanted to get rid of the shame that we felt and instead really emphasize the guilt, which is both like, oh, that's a good objective. The other part's like, wait a second, what? And the way that he understood it was that we have been made as queers to feel ashamed for who we are, but we should A never identify as queer, because why? We're not? We're just children of God, sons of God who struggled with this. So he wanted to get rid of that shame and that really sort of deep seated like self hatred for who we are, and instead he wanted us to feel bad when we did something bad, so in a way that guilt in a court of law, like you're guilty in a court of law. If you've done something, you know you've stolen a candy, no-transcript bad thing. So you're not bad as a person, you're just bad for doing that one individual action, whereas shame is that you as a person are are bad. You as a person are dirty or defective or, you know, degenerate. And so he was trying to really accomplish the former and push against the latter. So he said, which, in some ways, in some ways it was like you know what, like you're making me feel, like I would think to him, or you know I'd say to him, like you're making me feel better, because, you know, I don't, I'm not like hating myself necessarily the way that I used to. Instead, I just feel bad when I do something bad.

48:16

The thing is is that when you leave a place where you're constantly being told over and over and that that message is being reinforced, that you know you're doing well, you're on the right path, you're, you're, you're, you're not bad as a person, even though Christians like fundamentally believe that, let's put like original sin, yeah, I was like like it's founded on that belief, but it's so funny, right again, mental gymnastics, cognitive dissonance, and so I, when I left that system that's where I always say that the violence of conversion therapy.

48:43

For me, um, really said it. It wasn't because in the moment I was being told nope, you're doing the right thing, you're on the right track, you're fighting against, you know, you're fighting the good fight. But when I left and and I didn't have that message on a weekly basis and I was left to my own devices, that's when I realized nothing's changing. And if I believe that God is a good God and at the time I did and that God wants me to be straight and I'm not changing, it's not God's fault, why? Because God's perfect. Therefore, whose fault is it? It's my fault. And that's when that guilt turned into shame and that shame turned again, again sort of snowballed into that self-hatred and that self-abnegation that just became that really wonderful sort of emotional storm that defined again so many of my months and years.

49:21 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I want to talk more about the shame, but I also want to ask how all of this because you know, we often we know that they try to pin it on a particular parent in most cases, like you said how did that then impact your relationship with your mom? Because you are in it believing that this is the case, right, so how did that then impact your relationship with her?

49:46 - Lucas (Guest)

Well, I mean, a lot of this was being well, this was all of this was being taught when I was away from home. Granted, I called my mom pretty regularly, like I would talk to her at least once a week, um, and so I think that for me I think I really don't, I actually don't think it impacted too too much in the sense that it changed anything in how I approached her. I think it made me definitely resentful internally. I never, I never expressed this to her, because if I did, it would be like why are you thinking about this? Oh, because I'm gay. Oh, I can't say that, you know. So that never came out.

50:25

So, even if I had of like and I did, I was resentful for that right. What I thought was the you know why I was gay. It didn't really impact anything because, again, I, I wouldn't have been able to explain that to her um, and again, I was just always sort of like, deferent to my mom and, no matter what, you, within that religious, you know tradition, you have to obey your parents and you have to just submit to them in the way that you submit to God, in the way that a woman submits to a man when they're married, which is just BS and bonkers, but, um, you know all these things, and so I think that for me, maybe it did affect it. I don't know, but I've never, I've actually never thought about that. Um, and I'm just thinking off the cuff, I don't think that there's anything that comes to mind.

51:16 - Sam (Host)

That's all that. Uh, apparent at least not, you know. Yeah, I mean, I guess I was just curious because obviously, if you are being repeatedly told that one parent of the two is the reason why you are now cursed with this affliction of having to go through all of this, you know, I feel like it would be then a natural result to, like you sort of said, have some resentment or at least to shift the way that you would perceive that parent and their role in your world. But I mean, perhaps the distance boded well for you.

51:52 - Lucas (Guest)

I also think that I was just again. I think within evangelicalism you're often just told that again, which is this is ironic, again in light of how Emmerich was trying to make it so that I wasn't ashamed of myself but you're just told over and over and over that you're sinful, that you're disgusting, your righteousness is filthy rags, which the modern you know equivalent, is like a used tampon to God. Filthy rags, which the modern you know equivalent is like a used tampon to God. So I think, at the end of the day, even if my mom was the quote unquote source it wasn't I still had to take responsibility for, for what I, you know, my part in this, as if I had a part like, as if there was like some sort of choice. But again, this is this is I always say to people like evangelicalism has a logic to it, but it doesn't make sense.

52:34 - Sam (Host)

Yeah.

52:35 - Lucas (Guest)

So I think that for me it just didn't. It didn't affect my relation to my mom that I can think of. Maybe it did, but again, not that I am conscious of.

52:44 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, so I mean, from my perspective, it sounds a little bit like he, this guy was trying to help you get out of a shame space by using a shame-based system. Thereby we're still living in a state of shame. It's like trying to shame someone out of feeling shame. It's so like the irony is insane.

53:11 - Lucas (Guest)

It's super effective.

53:13 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, yeah, oh. It's like one of those things that it just goes oh, that's so stupid, it makes my brain hurt. But, like, how does that live in you? Because, like obvious, like I'm sitting here going, like, like my therapist brain is like pinging, going like, how is that living in you? How is that impacting the way you move through the world, the way that, how you feel about yourself, and the physical impact of that on your body and your health and your mental health?

53:49 - Lucas (Guest)

so I again, I think that at the time, in a weird twisted way, the desire to focus on guilt and to remove the shame at least, you know, maybe there, maybe the shame was never really removed in a lot of ways, maybe it was just pushed down, it was just the focus was on the guilt. And so I think that, even though his goal was to get rid of the shame, I was just pushed down, it was just the focus was on the guilt. And so I think that, even though his goal was to get rid of the shame, I don't think the shame was got.

54:16 - Sam (Host)

You know, was was it sounds just like diversion, like just to this instead this is diversion therapy now anyway, no, so I.

54:27 - Lucas (Guest)

So I, I focused, I focused on the guilt, and so I that, for me, that afforded me some sense of relief, at least temporary relief in the moment, but again afterwards, the shame is what comes to the fore. It came to the fore. That's what defined how I understood myself. I thought I was disgusting, I thought that I had to hide, I was living in the space of silence and secrecy, um, and obviously, and the reason was because the glue that held it all together was the shame, um, and I think that for me, you know, looking back at liberty, it was just, it was a very confusing time.

55:05

In a lot of ways, though, what's also so wild about evangelicalism and holding these two things in tension is the belief that you have the answers to everything, um, that you have a clear, defined telos that you're going to go from, you know, here on earth up to, you know, heaven and eternity, with jesus and the eschaton, and you know all of this tomfoolery, and so you both have this really strong sense of assuredness and like comfort and safety and security, while also having this like repeated and constant ontological attack against your, like part of who you are for me, my sexuality and, in part my gender expression, and so I think that looking back, it's again, it's always this, this tension and this holding of multiple realities I wouldn't say truths, but at least realities together in tandem, and it creates a really again confusing sort of like lived experience, because you're told one thing, you're living something else, you're taught one thing and you're believing on a visceral, bodily level something else, and so it's this constant tug of war, like push and pull, that over time really fucks you up, to put it academically.

56:23

Um, and I think for me I paid the price for years, and you know it was years of deconstruction, years of therapy and years of thinking and feeling through a lot of this when I went to grad school that really saved my life and I and I I do attribute grad school and higher education to like what got me out of this Um and also what helped me heal through um after this. But at the time this is how I felt and this is how I uh, you know again registered all of these affects or all these emotions in the moment, while trying to push them away, while also embracing them, while also you know, it's this again just juggling a bunch of balls at once, and normally we like balls, but not in this case.

57:04 - Sam (Host)

No, I mean the tug of war reference is by far the most common used imagery, I think, for a lot of people in this space. I know you know listeners will have heard me use this imagery before because the way that I described my own experience was it felt like I had one foot on either side of the Grand Canyon and being my queerness and my faith just ripping me apart at the seams, like it is that pulling apart motion that I feel like so many queer people who exist in faith spaces and have to deal with that tension experience. And so how was that tension whilst you were healing, in terms of what did that integration process like? Because there is like healing from the emotional pain and trauma and that but how did that then integrate with what did affirming your queerness look like?

58:07 - Lucas (Guest)

so I left liberty and I went straight into my master's at McMaster, this university back in Ontario, and it was there that I started to see the holes in the cosmology that I had, you know, adopted for myself for years within the church and at Liberty. And so I was for the first time encountering theories that really diverged from my own theology. And, of course, at the end of the day, theology is just theory. It's just theory about God, and that was really challenging.

58:39

I was meeting people who really diverged from my theology, but obviously, because I went to high school, at a public school, and middle school and elementary school all public because I went there, I was obviously had a number of friends who weren't Christians. However, I had never had conversations like I had before that point in an academic sense, and so these were academic, structured, scholarly, you know, conversations that theretofore had not been part of my experience, and so I was beginning to be exposed to not just difference but reasoned explanations and theorizations for difference. And I was like huh, like diversity is cool and like, because I was again raised by my dad and also raised in public school, like I always thought diversity was great, except for when it came to gender and sexual diversity yeah, um, and your own.

59:35 - Sam (Host)

I imagine like diversity for other people is great, but diversity for you, different story that's it that's it, yeah so I think that that was a big, a big um moment for me.

59:49 - Lucas (Guest)

And then when I went, went down to, uh, to Vanderbilt, after that school in Nashville, and when I went there, that's when I said I'm going to go down to a city where no one knows me except for literally one person. It was one gal I knew and it turns out that I eventually went to the same church that she did. But whatever, um, I thought like no one knows me and I'm just going to be myself and I'm going to put my, my lived experience first and my theology second, because up until that point I had theorized first. So I said this is how the world works according to like a very conservative understanding of scripture and you know Christian theology, and I was like I'm not going to let that determine my lived experience, I'm going to let my lived experience determine my theory for the first time. And I was like I'm just going to try, I'm just going to see what happens.

:: 00:35

I mean, that's like fucking terrifying, though right.

:: 00:37

Like, what was that like? But this is it, sam, this is it. I think for people outside of the church they don't hear how big of a deal that is, but for those of us who are in the church or were in the church, this is a paradigm shift. This is a whole different way of approaching the world, and so it was scary and I felt like a lot of the time I was doing something wrong. Still, again, I was meeting.

:: 01:03

I went to Div school, at Vanderbilt Divinity school, and when I was there, I was meeting people who were affirming. But I always thought, even though I want to be you, I think that you're just choosing your like flesh over. Yeah, you're, you're justifying your lifestyle. Um, and again, that's what I was doing in a in a way, except except I guess I wouldn't say I was justifying it because I was just letting my life be and just living the way that I wanted to live, and then I would think about it later and again I really was sort of like putting it off.

:: 01:33

I was thinking about a lot of other things in div school and that were really complicating my understanding of God, but it wasn't in this specific context, even like.

:: 01:41

I remember the day that I realized that I didn't believe that the Bible was God's word, but that these were words about God, which, again, doesn't sound like a big deal to anyone outside the church but in the church, like that's heresy, you know what I mean?

:: 01:54

Yeah, and so I think that that, for me, these these little which of course were not little these big theological sort of jumps and leaps that I was making, um, were enabling me to begin to come to terms with my sexuality, and even that, like coming to terms finding language that was appropriate, um, finding terms or language right, and I think that that, for me, was really necessary and nonetheless scary.

:: 02:18

It was terrifying because my entire worldview was shifting and it was very comfortable, it was very safe in so many ways up until that point and like I said before, where I felt like I had all the answers in life that I needed, but all of a sudden, those answers were slowly not, as you know, I wasn't, I wasn't as assured anymore of that these were the right answers and things were shifting for me, and that that started to really scare me. But it also allowed me to live more authentically and and to say, at least, at least I'm not living into and accepting a fiction. I'm at least living in the unknown, and that's at least more honest than pretending to uphold or to uphold something that I know is just not true.

:: 03:04

Yeah, what was that unknown like, though? Because that in-between phase where you are so used to stability and certainty and always having the right answer and always knowing the answer You're the one that has the right answer, we've got the truth, all of that sort of like very moral superiority that comes with that space the unknown again feels great, because there's so many options and there's like freedom in the unknown, but also you can drown in the unknown, but also you can drown in the unknown. And so what was that like for you?

:: 03:38

that the unknown really came like. There were moments before that when I was in nashville, um, and I was in nashville for three years two years in school, one year teaching at this little liberal arts christian college, which I don't know how the hell. Anyway, putting putting that aside, I eventually went to Florida to do my PhD. Big mistake going to Florida, but just an awful place. It's exactly what you think it is, and I love my program, I love my supervisor, I loved everything about everything academically. I just hated Florida and whatever I digress.

:: 04:08

So when I was there, it was most of my past research. Research was actually on intergenerational trauma. I focused mostly on the transmission of trauma between holocaust survivors, their kids and their grandkids, and so when you're researching a topic like that, you have to know everything in many ways. So it wasn't that I was just focusing on intergenerational trauma and the relationship between parents and children and grandchildren. I I had to know about the Holocaust and so a lot of my research really was at that point in Holocaust literature, nazi propaganda, you know Christian theology and it's the way that it laid the seedbed for the Holocaust, this kind of stuff. And so I was taking a class on Elie Wiesel. So Elie Wiesel is probably the best known Holocaust survivor. Anne Frank, perhaps the best known victim of the Holocaust. But Wiesel Holocaust survivor, anne Frank, perhaps the best known victim of the Holocaust, but Wiesel Nobel Prize winner, you know wrote a night amongst like 40 other books, 40 plus other books, and he's just prolific. And so I was taking a class on him and it was his response to God after the Holocaust that really shaped how I came to not believe in the God that I believed in for years.

:: 05:14

And it's ironic that Protestants are called Protestants because we don't protest too much, right, like we're really, we just sort of like willfully acquiesce and sort of defer to God when in fact, of course, like Martin Luther, being who Martin Luther was, was protesting. The Catholic Church, right, but Protestants and evangelicals, we just sort of like oh God, you're right, period, you don't ask questions, you don't challenge God, of course. And Wiesel, after the Holocaust, was bold enough to challenge God, and rightfully so, because what happened? Oh right, millions of Jews were murdered, and so he was like well, essentially like what the hell God were murdered, and so he was like well, essentially like what the hell god like. Let's come to terms, let's figure this out. Let's like settle this. Where were you, what were you doing and why didn't you stop this? And of course it's a one-way conversation, it's a monologue. God never responds, just like god never responds to anyone.

:: 06:04

Apparently her phone is busy anyway pointless spoilers yes, oh gosh, I should have said it, you're right. And so I rememberel like talk to God the way that he was talking, and I was like like who does he think he is? And. But then it was like no, but like absolutely Like this is how he should be talking to God, this is how I should be talking to God. And I remember I was. I was sitting on my couch in Florida, in Boca Raton, florida uh, one of the most godless places of of in this, on this world or on this planet um, and I was sitting there reading Vazel, and I remember I was also on Instagram, like the really studious person that I am. I was on Instagram while also reading, and I saw that someone had said something along the lines of like this gal had said that you know, god had given her a free Starbucks coffee, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back. I sort of pulled on this string and my entire theology fell apart in that moment.

:: 06:56

I thought to myself who the hell does this gal I don't remember who it was, but who does she think she is Saying that God gave her a free Starbucks coffee, which, of course, presupposes that God did not give that free Starbucks coffee to anyone else, including the person probably who's like asking for money?

:: 07:14

And these are questions of theodicy, like how do we reconcile a good God with a upside down evil world? And these are questions I probably should have thought about like much earlier. But this was just the moment that it happened and I thought to myself okay, wait a second. So if God didn't give that person outside the Starbucks coffee, but gave you that coffee, that's messed up, because that's an active decision on God's part, that's a gift and that's a willful decision that God made to give that her, but not him or them or anyone else, whatever they really not just want but need. And I was like, well, that's f-ed up. And then, on top of that, well, wait a second. Do I even believe that God, you know, is acting in the world? Is there such thing as? Are there such things as miracles anymore? Cause, if there are, that's messed up because God's actually over here, but not actually over here. So I was like okay, so I don't believe that God acts in the world.

:: 07:57

So God is like clearly self-limited God self to not act, but like sort of started the, the, the, what's the word? The domino, uh, that's the one. Apparently, words are not my thing, um. So I thought like, okay, so God started everything, but it clearly doesn't do anything now. But then I was like, is that moral, or is that okay? Is that like good? And then I was like, wait a second, do I believe? And everything just fell apart. Yeah, and again, these are things that people I should have been thinking about years ago, um, or years years prior, but I hadn't. And so that's when, for me, I said I can't believe this anymore, I can't be a part of this anymore, and if anyone does promote these ideas, that's messed up and they, they serve a bad God and I don't want that and I want nothing to do with that. I'm out. And that's how it ended for me.

:: 08:46

And so I mean two things. Here's my double barreled question. Again Two things. One, were you out at this time or had that still not happened yet? And two, what was it like for you, both emotionally and spiritually, once that completely unraveled? Because you know, it is a little bit like you. You know, once you start pulling on that thread and not just cutting, cutting it off, once you start pulling of it on it, it just dismantles the whole garment and then you are just really vulnerable and exposed without it covering you. So what did that? What was that like for you?

:: 09:28

yeah, so I was about 27, 28. I don't remember. Was it 27? It doesn't matter. Whenever that Elie Wiesel class was, I can go back and look at my syllabi or my syllabus. So I was out at that point. I had been in a relationship that, thank God, ended around that time, and the reason why that matters is because when I got into that relationship, that's when I came out. So I think I was 25 when I made it official on Facebook and that was what those were, the days when things were only made official when they were announced on Facebook, and so so I was definitely out.

:: 10:12

As for, like, the emotional and spiritual impact of that, I guess conclusion was gonna say decision, and I guess it is a decision not to believe God, but it's also, I think it's just where the evidence lies and I respond to it. Um, but I think that for me it was again. I felt so unmoored, I felt so just like the rug had been taken out from under me, um, in multiple senses, not just where it was a surprise, because it was a surprise, it wasn't like. It wasn't like I was like, leading up to this moment in a lot of ways, where I thought I was, I mean, I was clearly like all the conceptual framework and groundwork was really sort of being laid before, um, but on top of that, it also felt like I didn't know where I stood in the world, like I thought, when I die, I'm going to heaven and I'm going to, you know, have a relationship with God and everything will be, you know, great in eternity. I'm like I don't even think I believe in eternity anymore, since that there's like a life after this where all of us are going to go. I think that really more at this point.

:: 11:15

I'm sort of convinced that like life after this, where all of us are going to go, I think that really more at this point. I'm sort of convinced that like life just kind of happens and you know, first, what is it? The first law of thermodynamics that like energy and matter, and the second law of thermodynamics, like that it's created or destroyed, it's just always there and sort of just keep changing and whatever. So I think more like along those lines now, like just sort of like a naturalistic sort of um agnosticism, if anything, that maybe there's a God, but I don't really know what it is and it doesn't care about me. So, whatever, we're both here and that's that.

:: 11:42

But I think that for me that was so spooky, it was so scary to to acknowledge that I did not have the answers anymore and it's. It was very, very scary, very scary. But again, I always took comfort in the fact that at least I'm not following a fiction, at least I'm not following this like made-up, bizarro, upside down, moral, immoral fairy tale. Um, I at least say that, and if I die and I go to hell after this, I can at least say, well, no, like I still don't think I'm wrong. I think you are like. I think that this system is pretty effed up morally and that's that.

:: 12:20

Yeah.

:: 12:21

And I don't suppose that I'm going to go to hell, but you know, just saying.

:: 12:25

I think it's that nuance of something can be filled, terrifying, and yet the alternative is worse, almost like it doesn't necessarily negate the, the fear that lives in the space that you are in now, but it also the alternative just seems so, so much worse than that. So I think, um, the nuance that you need to embrace once you are post-church is just like immense um, because, because you are still living with duality, but it's just a different kind. So, but I do want to ask a quick question before I get to the next one that's in my brain. Adhd brain is so fun, but we glossed over your coming out, so I want to just quickly ask what that was like for you and also how that impacted your family relationships of coming out.

:: 13:26

So I, if you've ever read Tina Fey's bossy pants, she has that story about like the guy that comes who comes out, and it's like so, he's like super dramatic about it and then like it's so anticlimactic and he's so upset. Um, mine was, mine was pretty anticlimactic in a lot of ways, um, and which I think is is good. Um, it's also, uh, because I what happened was my mom was gonna come down to nashville and spend christmas with, because at that point none of my siblings were talking to her, because she's not a very nice woman, and I was the last kid talking to her. And so I said well, why don't you come down to Nashville and have Christmas here? And she was all excited. But then I thought to myself huh, how am I going to explain my shotgun apartment with the king, like the double California king size bed with me and my roommate, king-size bed with me and my roommate? Um, it's just not gonna work. And so I got a little wine drunk one night and I called her and I said hey, mom, um, just before you come down, you need to know something about me, and that is that I don't have a roommate, I have a boyfriend. Blah, blah, blah, um, and my mom responded the exact way that I thought she would bat shit crazy.

:: 14:37

And that turned into literally and I mean literally months of receiving text messages and voicemails from her describing what she imagined to be my sex life, which is so weird that that's where the mind went. It was not only you're going to hell, you're Sodom and Gomorrah. She couldn't even spell Sodom and Gomorrah correctly. I was like no, your audience. But you know she, she was saying all these things like you know you're, you're disgusting, you're depraved and you know, I wish you were never born, I wish you weren't my kid. But then again there was this really intense fixation on what she thought my sex life was comprised of, and describing like really gross sex acts and like I'm a naughty boy, but I am not doing what she thought I was doing, you know what I mean like yeah, dear god, disgusting. And so she and, and eventually I I was, I remember I thought to myself. Finally I was like you know what? I don't care who you are. If you're, you know, the prime minister of Canada or my effing mom, no one will ever talk to me the way that she's talking to me. Ever again that will not happen. And so I texted her and I said we're done. You and I are like we're over period. And I didn't talk to her for two years and then I did eventually talk to her again and then, when I did, within a few months it turned into us not talking again. And then there was a time where she like we never know with my mom, she's like pretending to almost die or if she actually is almost dying At this point I think we know that she's not actually dying, but she like almost died. And so we started talking to her again. But then now we don't talk again. It's been almost two years, um, and so I think that, uh, that was definitely like not good.

:: 16:26

But I think that a lot of people are always like, oh, that sounds so hard, that sounds like it would be so difficult. And I I, if I'm being as honest as I possibly can be, cause people always question me you always see like the sort of like suspicion in people's eyes. I'm like like you know better than I don't, you yeah, okay, but it's always that like you couldn't be possibly fine that your mom responded that way. And I'm like when you grow up with a mother like Cheryl Wilson and you know from a very young age that she is not like other mothers and not in the way that, like what's her face. Amy Poehler is a cool mom. No, the mother that you wish that you, you wish you had the cool mom.

:: 17:01

Mom you wish that you had a mom who wasn't constantly crying all the time, wasn't constantly requiring you to be her emotionally like, emotional support animal. You know that she, like her crutch, who who like didn't run like an unbelievably like messy, dirty house, like who again, the list goes on she was a hoarder like literally like the episode of hoarders, like it was my house, my cottage specifically, but also my house to a certain extent. So I knew from a young age my mom was not normal. I knew that my mom had a lot and I mean a lot of problems and my dad, being who he was, which, who was like this, like absolute king, like Keith, was just like the coolest guy. So you had that critical distance and that emotional foundation laid by dad, while also having the knowledge that your mom is is bad shit.

:: 17:49

And so that when my, when I did come out and I kept saying to my partner at the time my mom's not going to take this. Well, she's going to respond unbelievably poorly and like to a T. Everything I said was accurate, not to pat myself on the back just because. But again, when your mom shows her, shows you who she is, you've got to believe who she is like, whatever she should right. So for me, like when I did come out and she, like she went nuts, it it just didn't affect me. I literally and I mean a literal one tear. I remember I like was looking in the mirror and I saw one tear come out and that was it. And after that I was like but I don't really like my mom, like she's not a nice woman, she's really, really mean and she's been saying a lot of really horrible things.

:: 18:30

I said this is kind of a good thing that I'm not talking to her, and then life just got so much easier every single day I didn't have her in my life, because it was no longer me having to support her and constantly like encourage her not to like kill herself or you know to, to say like, oh, you're a good mom. Well, she wasn't in a lot of ways some ways, sure, when I was younger, but like in a lot of ways not at all. So I was like, oh my gosh, this is like freaking. And so people always say like, are you sure you weren't like wounded over your mom, like rejecting? I was like my mom rejected me long ago. Why? Because she made it very clear I could never be who I wanted to be or who I am. Right, not who I wanted to be, who I am. And now I want to be who I am, but at the time I didn't.

:: 19:09

So I think that for me that that's that, whereas that was the only negative response, other than one cousin who she's homophobic. She's now since come around, since her kids like non-binary, but before that she was like I don't really know what I think it's like. Well, you, I don't know, they didn't really ask if you can f off, but the rest of my family has been phenomenal and again, my family's just great like I have such a good family, my brothers. I remember what happened was I told my sister, because she was coming down to Nashville, and she said at the time she goes, huh, so you're gay. I said yeah, she goes. I always thought it would be Quinn, my brother Quinn, and then when I told Quinn he's like, the first question he asked was did I have any role in making you feel bad about yourself? The first question, like to give you a very you know, I mean to signal this is the kind of like a really beautiful question, yeah and like.

:: 19:56

And then my brother, josh, being the dumbass that he is, when my mom had outed me to josh and also to zach, my other brother. But josh called me and I knew, I knew that my mom had just told him because it was like the day, whatever. And I pick up the phone and josh goes hey, buddy. And I was like, and that's like very canadian, like buddy, everything's buddy, and ken, it's not man, it buddy. I was like, hey, josh. Again, I knew that he knew and he goes. So I heard you're gay. And I was like, yeah, I am, he goes, knew it. And I was like shut up. So that was that.

:: 20:26

So, again, my family's just amazing and all of my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, everyone was just so good. My extended family, like gary and all them. They went radio silent, they never talked to me again, but, um, you know, the rest of them was phenomenal, like my actual, like immediate family, and my cousins and aunts and uncles, they were all amazing, my beyond that, like my cousin, my mom's cousins and all them, whatever, who cares?

:: 20:48

but I have like an amazing family and so I'm very, very lucky to to be surrounded by such supportive folks yeah, and and I'm wondering if that had a role to play in um the reason that I'm going to ask this next question. And if people have seen your instagram, it's going to be no surprise why I'm asking this question. Because we have um suppression to conversion therapy at liberty university, to unpacking like theology and all of this sort of thing into we have half naked shots on Instagram and so, like what, how on earth did we get to that? Like there's queer joy and then there's that Luke. Like how do we get to that level of like beautiful public queer sexual expression on a public platform?

:: 21:39

yeah, you know what. So it's funny, I I used to be nervous about my um, my propensity to, to, to show multiple sides of of who I am, including my physical form, um, but at this point, because I used to think like, oh, the academy will never accept me if I do this and they won't take me seriously. But then my current supervisor at University of Toronto, mississauga, she said one time there was a question we were like talking about, like should I really be posting? I was talking to her assistant and we were doing an interview and she was like um, and she was like we should talk about your thirst traps. And I was like, uh, I don't know, like maybe we shouldn't do that through like the University of Toronto's like like formal publication. And she was like, well, let's. And I said, well, maybe we should ask Elspeth, my supervisor, and so we asked her and her response was very short, very succinct. She just said thirst trap away.

:: 22:38

And so I was like done, okay permission yeah, exactly, and and so I'm very grateful for that and that really gave me the green light. Um, what I will say is that, again, I think evangelicals are made to feel great amounts of shame, again about themselves in general, um, but also about their bodies, in the sense that the body is considered the flesh and the flesh is considered sinful, right, and so I think for a long time I I was antibody in that sense. Obviously I wasn't, because I was, like, very attracted to a number of bodies, um, and people with you know, whole hearts and minds and whatnot.

:: 23:19

Come on, sam, they're real people, not just bodies, um I mean, I don't know if people have not paused this episode to go and look at your instagram.

:: 23:26

They're doing something wrong, but okay you know what, I'm okay to be objectified, I really am are always like you shouldn't be, and I'm like, well, why, anyway? So I think that for me it was in some ways a way of working through the shame that we discussed before. Another thing, too, is there's a beach in Toronto and this is something that I'm so grateful for and it wasn't just this beach, there were other beaches too. It's a queer beach, but it's also a clothing optional beach and a lot of people I think are again in general this is not just within the church, but in general are terrified of their bodies also, like there's also sort of a greater, like societal um apprehension and not apprehension, but like uh, awkward or strained relationship one has with one's body. And so for me, that beach became a way and amongst other beaches and other, you know, other similar beaches a way of of just radically accepting who I am right, because, like, when you're on that beach, like there's, you're not hiding much right, like it's like in the physical sense, and I think that that those lack the lack of sort of like sartorial or like clothing boundaries. If those, if those are kind of stripped away, you don't really have anything external to use to signify who you are. So you really have to show who you are by way of like, how you communicate, and that is, I think, really radical.

:: 24:52

I think what's also radical is just accepting who you are and what you like, your body, and presenting it to the world in the way that it is and there's no questions. There's no there's other than there. No, there's no questions. There's just simply like this is who I am and I'm putting it out there and take it or leave it, and on these beaches and on the, on the, in these spaces, it's always an embrace, it's always like, yeah, all bodies are beautiful, you know, regardless of you know, like what you look like. There's just this radical acceptance of self and for me that was liberating and it was a way because, again, for so long my body had been the locus of my shame and now it was a locus of. It was a way of recentering, in part, who I am Cause I think within Christianity there's much more of a focus on the eternal and the spiritual than there is on the physical and the carnal, and for me I was like, well, that why, why, why is that separated for me at this point.

:: 25:48

Why do I have this weird sort of like? Why am I retaining this, this shame, and this, this sort of like strained relationship I have with my body? I shouldn't, and so I think that these things really pushed me to accept myself for who I am, first and foremost, um, to love myself and and and I've never been sort of the person who's like self-love, Like I think for me, like I've always just been. Again, my parents, in a weird way, always sort of taught me to have like self-love and all this kind of stuff, and I was, I still feel weird talking about it, like I'm like still awkward about talking about self-love because I'm like it's just like sort of like just just love yourself the way that I've always sort of loved myself. But again, clearly there are like blind spots and I think those blind spots for me were necessary to fill in and to and to look at and to examine and again to to sort of accept, and so I think that those things really um allowed me to have fewer boundaries between myself and other people and to accept myself and in through the eyes of others, um, sort of like a Charles, charles Cooley, you know, looking glass theory approach, um, and for me, this was really transformative, this was liberating, and I think that that translates onto my, my Instagram, uh, where you know I I always said after I finished my PhD, I will, um, uh, get my, uh, I would, I would work out.

:: 27:03

I always thought that I didn't have enough time to work out when I was um, doing my, my uh studies, which I absolutely did, like I, I did a lot of other things that I could have just absolutely been at the gym, but I decided that I would, uh, I would, work out, and so I did, and that added another level of confidence, because before I just I don't know, I just had like a pretty average you know form, Um.

:: 27:25

But then all of a sudden I was like oh, wow, I can grow muscles in a way that I never thought I could, and that was kind of exciting, right, like that was. It was just something that had never really been part of my reality and I and, and pursuing that and doing that and finding pleasure in that and and also in the actual act of of working out, I do enjoy the working out process. Um, you can tell how gay I am. I'm like the working out process like a gay academic approaching the gym. The working out process, my lord anyway.

:: 27:50

Um, but this was, uh, it's something that I enjoy and it's something that I I find also helps my mental health, not in the sense of like how I look different, but in the sense that working out absolutely relieves stress and redirects my focus away from my head and my sort of internal world and to my external world. And I think that these are things that should not be seen as in opposition to each other, but things that work together to make a holistic, healthy person. And for me, I found that, accepting those parts of myself, all the parts of myself and embracing those has allowed me to come to a again, a much healthier place and a much healthier way of being. That I'm super grateful for and that is clearly represented on Instagram, but I hope that I hope it translates to other parts of my life. You know what I mean.

:: 28:36

You know absolutely, and I mean I want to, um, I want to. Before I get to the last question that I usually ask in these episodes, I want to quickly talk about the book because, like I said at the very beginning, it's so freaking good, Um, it's heartbreaking as fuck, but it's so good, Um. And so I have two questions what drove you to write this book and what was the impact on yourself reading these stories and compiling this book together?

:: 29:12

So it was at the STI clinic. Sam got sexual health is important and I I went. I I was on. I got a message on Twitter or the artist formerly known as Twitter, uh, and it was from this publisher, this UK publisher, this, this editor at this press, um, who was reaching out saying hey, you know, we've been following your work on conversion therapy. Um, would you be interested in putting this collection together? We think you're the guy to do it.

:: 29:40

And at first I thought it was a scam. I was like this is predatory publishing. This is someone who's coming for me and it's gonna make me like pay thousands of dollars that this book published. No chance in hell. Well, I did a quick google search and it turned out that not only was the editor real, but the press was real. And I was like oh, oh, wow, okay, this is nuts, because for those who are in the academic world, it is almost never that a press will come to you unless you're like a big wig, you know, rockstar academic. No one's coming to a postdoc to say, hey, come, do that, like I did this book or write this book or put this book together. It just doesn't happen.

:: 30:14

So when this happened, to me was like what the hell? This is wild cool, did that? You know? I checked and then I I negotiated with the, the press. They said you know, this is what we're envisioning. I said this is what I would, uh, how I would respond, and really I said, really the main thing I said when, when I responded to them, was I, I want only survivors, voices in this collection. I don't want anyone else who has, like an imaginative account or, you know, has a friend or a brother or sister who went through this, like I wanted survivors only in part, because a lot of recent media attention on conversion therapy has really focused on the practitioners and I think that the conversation should be on both, but really the focus should be on survivors. And so I said that that's, that's the sort of what I. I think, um, this is the direction I want to take it. They said we agree.

:: 31:03

And so I put the collection together and it was, you know, about a year and a half, if I'm not mistaken, of uh first putting out the call, then, um, receiving submissions, accepting certain submissions unfortunately having to say no to some submissions and then working with authors through multiple drafts, you know, and revising and just making sure that what they've written is publishable. So not changing the content, but changing the form, just making sure that it's, you know, something that will be publicly consumable and understandable to read. So that's how the book came about. And then, of course, there's like the months of like campaign not what's the word marketing the book afterwards, which, my god, no one never taught you that or told you that that was part of it. But we've learned our lesson and so, uh, I, uh, since the book has come out or maybe, to answer your question, pardon me while working on the book, and also since it's come out and reading it, you know, during and also after, I think that it has been it taught me not.

:: 32:06

I think the biggest lesson it taught me was that conversion therapy happens in like numerous contexts, in numerous ways, across space and time.

:: 32:15

And, you know, for me I always just sort of assumed that most like all conversion therapy, or most conversion practices, were similar to what I experienced. But there's such a variety, right, and it's not just within high control. Religious communities though it is disproportionately, but it's not exclusively. And you find it in the familial context, where your mom or your dad is your conversion therapist, where you become your conversion therapist, where you have an online conversion therapist. Right, there's groups, there's individual meetings with licensed and unlicensed professionals. Right, with religious and non-religious professionals, in medical context and psychiatric context and clinical context. Right, there's so many what's the word conversion practices that again happen in, you know, across time and space. So that was a huge lesson, I think, for me reading the book. What was super impactful, um, or the stories that are included in the book, that that were eventually chosen, was just seeing myself in various ways and seeing how, although not all experiences are the same, they certainly rhyme. Right, and so that you know one story in particular that I always talk about his story there's one of the contributors who's Australian, as it turns out and reading his experience, it was like you were taking a page from my diary that I never actually kept, but it was just like reading his experience and like the anxiety for him of being in the shower and being terrified of touching his, his penis because he was scared that he was going to masturbate. I remember being like it's like these, like little daily quotidian things that we do, um, or what that we did, that within that world, within the evangelical or you know, uh, white christian fundamentalist or white christian nationalist, whatever, um, space, when you're in that mindset, things like showering become sites of like extreme anxiety that you think you're going to be tempted and you're terrified to go into that shower because what's going to happen then when you leave, you're going to feel bad about it. Then it's, you know it's going to be a cycle where you go back to bed. Right, it just it was, it was.

:: 34:09

Reading these stories reminded me of things like that, um, and so I think that the collection though I wouldn't say it was like what's the word, I wouldn't say that it like, really like, helped me like work through my past. I think that a lot of that work had really emotional and sort of like cognitive and spiritual work had been done before, but I think it was. It was comforting, at least right to to see yourself in other stories, um, and know that you're not the only person who went through that, and even if it really sort of like revivifies those memories, it was sort of weird because you could, you block some of these things out, right, you, your brain's trying to protect itself, it's trying to say like hey, we don't need to think about that, we don't need to like focus on that, blocks it out. But all of a sudden, these stories kind of bring it back and you're like, oh my gosh, I forgot about this. Like yeah, it's just crazy.

:: 34:57

And so I think that that the collection was um surprising in that way yeah, I think it is a really beautiful book for so many different reasons, because I think it is going to be um something different for everybody, and I think people who have never experienced conversion practices irrespective of their sexuality, whether they are cis, straight or queer if they've not experienced, it will be enlightening. It'll be a learning opportunity. It will break down some of the misconceptions that they might have about what this looks like. But I think for queer people who have experienced conversion practices, there were moments reading that book that I was like raging and crying and then like five minutes later, I'm laughing because it's so freaking relatable and I'm like this is insane, and yet it's so relatable at the same time. And so I just think having a collection of survivor stories is just going to meet. It's like the equivalent of like meeting people where they are at and, um, it is just, oh, it's just so freaking good. It's so good, um, yeah, um.

:: 36:14

So, if people don't know that, the all of the links and stuff will be in the show notes, but um, it's also all over luke's instagram, so also just like, go back over there. Um, but um, I just yeah, okay, there's, I'm going to give you. I usually only give people one question at the end, which is what I finish it in. But I want to give you sort of like two facets of that question, which is usually it is what would you say to someone who is deep in their deconstruction or deep in like the um pulling of the thread, whether it be like cognitive deconstruction or religious trauma, or they've just been kicked out of their church or whatever it is? But I also want to go on the spin of like what would you say to someone who is deep in that queer shame space and they're like really in that?

:: 37:12

I think two things and this is what I always yeah, I say this when this question's asked is find. I think there's three parts to it. Read, reading's good. Find a queer community or a supportive community, bare minimum, and separate yourself from the religious community. Reading With reading, it's never going to return to you, void right. You're at least going to be able to say, huh, I don't agree with that. And you also, ideally, will be able to say why you disagree with that, which, of course, is, you know, helpful. But, I'd say, expose yourself to ideas that you are uncomfortable approaching or, up until that point, have been uncomfortable approaching. Even for me, thinking about the difference between understanding it as God's word and words about God. If I had found more texts that were able to speak to that, I think that I would have been able to accept that truth much earlier. I didn't accept it right away, I mean, I still remember there was the moment where I realized it, but it took a lot of struggle to get there. But I think that that's something that, like reading, allows you to encounter ideas that that person has thought about for extended periods of time. That will be, in some ways, earth shattering for you or profound for you, um, or at least bare minimum thought provoking for you, um, that you get to again accept, reject, whatever, but you get to like interact with those ideas and that's going to help you in some way shape or form, ideally, or you know, I would only expect um. The other part is like separate or connecting yourself to your religious or to a queer community or to a supportive community, right? So if you're talking about, like just the deconstruction space, connect with other folks who are deconstructing, you know, I used to poo-poo people who had, like friends online.

:: 39:10

I was always like what the hell? Like I just have friends in person, like it was always how I did things. But then I eventually realized over the years, I'm like, wait a second, I've never met this. Like, there are certain people online there's maybe like four or five people I know online who I've never met in person. Or I met, finally, for the first time in person and I was like we've never met in person and we, we had established such a strong bond, which was so surprising. Because, again, I I still am a little bit like online friends, but, like, at this point, at this point, I have a number of online friends, particularly doing podcasts like like these or like this one where I'm like no, that person is my friend and I and I stand by that um.

:: 39:47

And so I think that that has been so helpful, because not only can you commiserate, can you complain to each other, um, but you can also relate to each other, right, like in a really deep way, where, like there was a point you were making before and I forget exactly what it was, but I knew what you were going to say the moment. You said like three words and I was like I don't even know you, right, like we just, you know, we just met, and I knew what you were going to say, because we have that lived experience that's shared, because we have that lived experience that's shared. And so I think that for there's that sort of like wild connection that you can have with people who share similar interests, in this case the deconstruction, or just being queer. And I think for being queer, like for so long, I used to hang out with queers every so often and it was like titillating.

:: 40:33

It was always exciting to hang out with queers when I would, but I never identified. It was always sort of like dangerous and, you know, off limits as well. But then, when I finally came out and I was hanging out with queers, I was like, first of all, like desperate to hang out with other queer people, because everyone I was hanging out with was straight um. But I was like, finally, like hanging out with queers and it was like, oh wow, like you're not what I was told you are for years, you're not? These like depraved? Well, they are all the queers I know are, but no, but you know not in the way that they were. I was told they were um, you know but it was it was.

:: 41:02

It was because, all of a sudden, these preconceived notions that I had sort of accumulated over over the years, um, I realized were not true. So I think that's a huge part of like, of finding a new life in a lot of ways, and it is a new life for me. I feel like it was a different life that I lived when I was at Liberty University, for example. Um, and it's important. The last part is cutting cutting yourself off from the communities that harm you. If you are a person who still wants to remain a person of faith and you are religiously committed, that's fine. Like, who cares, um, like, anyone who does care should check themselves. But for me, I'm not, and I have no desire to go back into any religious community, whether it be Christian or otherwise. I'm like done, like, thank you, yeah, he's closed or, you know, locked. But for those who are like, sure, if you want to stay in a community, that that is, you know, affirming amazing. But if they're not, if they actively cause you harm, no, you, you should, right. And I'm not the kind of person who's like like, let's like set this place on fire once we leave and like fuck everyone. No, if it needs that, sure, like if the, if that church or that institution, that organization needs that, sure Do it. But it's it's more so that this.

:: 42:13

These are communities who have really good intentions. I really do think that I think about my conversion therapist. I think he had good intentions and I mean that, like the man desired what he believed to be well-being for my life, clearly it's. It was not well-being. Clearly it was like a lot of messed up, like tomfoolery that caused a lot of years of damage and a lot of you know, uh, undoing of a lot of really dangerous sort of thinking. However, I do think that he was well-intentioned it means nothing, but he was and so I think a lot of these communities are not all of them, some of them are as insidious as we think they are, but some of them are well-intentioned. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't cut ourselves off from them.

:: 42:50

Think about my mom like she's.

:: 42:58

She causes me harm, she causes me like du duress, like I don't want to be around someone who, who, who is like that and who operates like that in my life. Um, and so, although I really do want, like religion to be a thing of the past, I, I do think that, um, if you are a part of a community that's affirming phenomenal, um, but if you're a part of a community that is actively causing you harm, get the hell out.

:: 43:17

Yeah, absolutely I concur. I also one of the things I've said on other podcasts is you also like it's not your job as a queer person to stay in that system and try and change it from the inside, like get out right, like safety comes first always. So, oh, thank you so much for joining me. This has been so fun. I've loved this conversation me too.

:: 43:46

This has been been great. And again, it's always funny the connection you have with other ex-vangelicals. Right, dear lord, you get it, you just get it amazing thanks, luke.

:: 44:00

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of beyond the surface. I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did. If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who might benefit from these stories. Stay connected with us on social media for updates and more content. I love connecting with all of you. Remember, no matter where you are in your journey, you're not alone. Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning and keep moving forward. Take care.