Out of the Darkness: Conversion Therapist Quits 鈥楨x-Gay鈥� Movement
According to Truth Wins Out, Matheson鈥檚 fellow ex-gay leader Rich Wyler announced his exit in a post to a private Facebook group. TWO 鈥済oes undercover to expose 鈥榚x-gay鈥� conversion leaders as hypocritical frauds that have not actually changed their sexual orientation,鈥� its website states.聽
Wyler is director and founder of the ex-gay program, 鈥淛ourney into Manhood,鈥� which Matheson helped design. Truth Wins Out reported that Wyler informed the private group, 鈥淒avid 鈥� says that living a single, celibate life just isn鈥檛 feasible for him, so he鈥檚 seeking a male partner. He has gone from bisexuality to exclusively gay.鈥�
鈥淐onversion鈥� or 鈥渆x-gay鈥� therapy is the聽harmful and pseudoscientific practice聽of attempting to make homosexual or bisexual people heterosexual and to keep trans people from affirming the gender with which they identify.
In a Facebook post earlier this year Matheson wrote, 鈥淎 year ago I realized I had to make substantial changes in my life. I realized I couldn鈥檛 stay in my marriage [to a woman] any longer. And I realized that it was time for me to affirm myself as gay.鈥�
He joins a growing list of prominent people who have left the ex-gay movement. They include:
- Michael Bussee, one of the founders of the well-known ex-gay group Exodus International, whose U.S. branch shut down in 2013;
- John Paulk, the poster-child for ex-gay group Love Won Out;
- John Smid, former director of the ex-gay group Love in Action;
- Tim Rymel, former outreach director at Love In Action.
Alan Chambers, former head of Exodus International, apologized to LGBTQ people for the pain and hurt the organization鈥檚 therapies had caused.
Matheson聽began his professional training聽in ex-gay therapy in the early 1990s when he worked in Utah with ex-gay Mormon organization Evergreen International. He opened a practice in the New York City area in 2002, then returned to Utah in 2007.
He also trained with the late Joseph Nicolosi Sr., a prominent ex-gay therapist who devoted his life to the practice. Matheson may be best known, however, as a co-creator of the 鈥淛ourney into Manhood,鈥� (now Brothers Road) program in 2002, which involves taking groups of men 鈥渟truggling with same-sex attraction鈥� on retreats into the woods.
Since his announcement, Matheson admitted in a Facebook post that the mindset that 鈥渉omosexuality is evil鈥� took him a long time to escape, and he inflicted it on others. 鈥淚 was an unwitting agent of a belief system that dehumanizes and represses LGBTQ people,鈥� he said. Now he would like to help change it.
He supported a conversion therapy ban in Utah, but the bill died in March after it was stripped of protection for gender identity. The bill would have outlawed conversion therapy for licensed therapists working with minors.
Eighteen states, Puerto Rico, the district of Columbia and several municipalities bar licensed medical and mental health professionals from providing conversion therapy to minors.
Regardless, the industry continues to rebrand and operate through a network of individual practitioners, churches, ministries and pseudoscientific organizations, such as the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity.
A 2018 study estimates that nearly 700,000 LGBTQ adults in the U.S. have received conversion therapy during their lives, and nearly 80,000 LGBTQ youths will receive some form of it before they reach the age of 18.
