On a Tuesday evening nearly 14 years ago, John
Paulk walked into a gay bar in Washington, D.C. At another time in his
life, Paulk would have fit right in. But in 2000, Paulk’s life as an
openly gay man was far behind him. He was then one of the most prominent
so-called ex-gays in the country, only two years removed from appearing
on the cover of Newsweek, posing with his smiling wife for an article about gay conversion therapy.
At 37, Paulk had spent the prior 13 years involved with
Exodus International, one of the largest and most influential ex-gay
organizations in the world. He married another ex-gay, Anne, and
together they rose through the ranks, becoming leaders and eventually
the faces of a movement that attracted thousands with its message that,
if they tried hard enough, gay and lesbian people could become happy
heterosexuals. “Change is possible” was their rallying cry. You just
needed to surrender yourself to God. Look at us, they said to rooms of
thousands. Look how happy we are.
Today, Paulk is openly gay again, divorced and running a catering
business in Portland, Oregon. But in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he
was trying hard to keep the closet door closed, while preaching a
message of ex-gay deliverance from within it.
Far-right groups including the Family Research
Council and the American Family Association pooled $600,000 to place ads
promising the effectiveness of reparative therapy in The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. Anne and John Paulk smiled from full-page newspaper spreads.
In front of the crowds and cameras, Paulk was the image of
certainty. But backstage, he was faltering. More than that, he knew he
was lying.
“It’s funny, for those of us that worked in it, behind closed doors, we
knew we hadn't really changed,” he says. “Our situations had changed—we
had gotten married, and some of us had children, so our roles had
changed. I was a husband and father; that was my identity. And the
homosexuality had been tamped down. But you can only push it down for so
long, and it would eke its way out every so often.”
[B]y 2003, he was burned out. “I would be in hotel rooms, and I would be on my face
sobbing and crying on the bed,” he says. “I felt like a liar and a
hypocrite. Having to go out and give hope to these people. I was in
despair knowing that what I was telling them was not entirely honest. I
couldn’t do it anymore.”
Even in its earliest days, Exodus’s philosophy—that same-sex attraction
meant a person was “broken” and could be “fixed”—was undermined by the
reality of its members’ actions. Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper, two of
the co-founders, left the movement in 1979 to be in a committed
relationship with one another. (Bussee has spent the decades since
actively fighting Exodus’s message.) John Evans, one of the founders of
Love in Action (LIA), an early ex-gay ministry that helped establish
Exodus in 1974, left LIA after a friend committed suicide over his
distress at being unable to change his sexual orientation. "They're
destroying people's lives,” Evans told The Wall Street Journal in 1993. “They're living in a fantasy world.” (LIA has since changed its name to Restoration Path.)
But all the far-right funding and rapid expansion
did little more than prop up a withering institution. A series of
scandals chipped away at the ex-gay movement’s veneer of success.
First came the photo of Paulk in the gay bar. Then in 2003,
Michael Johnson, founder of “National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day,”
was revealed to have infected men he’d met on the Internet with HIV
through unprotected sex. John Smid, who joined LIA in 1986 and
eventually became its executive director, left the organization in 2008.
Three years later, Smid
wrote on his blog that he
"never met a man who experienced a change from homosexual to
heterosexual," and that reorientation is impossible, because being gay
is intrinsic.
Then it crumbled further. In 2012, psychologist Robert Spitzer . . . . retracted
a controversial study, published in 2003, often cited by the ex-gay
community that had concluded some “highly motivated” individuals could
change their sexual orientation. Spitzer wrote an apology to LGBT people
who “wasted time and energy” on reparative therapy.
By that time, policy within Exodus began to genuinely
shift. “We renounced and forbid reparative therapy,” in 2012, Chambers
tells Newsweek. “And there was an enormous split inside Exodus.
Many who were more fundamentalist in approach had already broken off
and formed Restored Hope Network.” Anne Paulk, John’s ex-wife, was one
of those who left.
Lastly, there’s the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), . . . In 2007, NARTH therapist Chris Austin was convicted of sexually
assaulting a client, and sentenced to 10 years in prison;
in 2010, NARTH
board member George Rekers was found to have employed a male prostitute
as a companion for a two-week European vacation; and in 2012 the
Internal Revenue Service
revoked NARTH’s nonprofit status for not properly filing its paperwork.
Today, Paulk strongly believes that no child or
teen should be put through any type of “treatment” for their sexual
orientation. On the other hand, he says adults should have the right to
pursue any therapy they choose. “If I go see a therapist because I am
uncomfortable with homosexual feelings or attractions and I do not feel
that those are compatible with who I see myself to be, [I] should have
the right to determine the course of [my] therapy,” Paulk says.
“However, I completely draw the line when it comes to minors.”
The tragedy that Paulk lives with to this day is that
organizations like JONAH often specifically target minors, with summer
camps and teen programs. “For 25 years I felt guilty and filled with
self-loathing, trying to reject this part about myself. I’m culpable—I
spread the message that my sexuality had changed, and I used my marriage
as proof of that,” Paulk says.
Paulk’s story echoes those of many others whose lives were damaged by
the shame, guilt, and self-loathing that marked their involvement with
ex-gay therapy, and who overcame their past to eventually live life as
their LGBT selves.
Paulk, meanwhile, hopes his story encourages others to overcome their
own fears and uncertainties. “It’s difficult, but worth it at the end of
the day because of the peace that comes with it. It’s happy on the
other side.”
