Ex-Gay Therapy: A Personal Experience with Oppression
Benjamin A. Berry
2/25/2025
The electrode the therapist connected to my arm would shock me whenever he showed gay pornography on the small television screen.
When showing heterosexual images and videos, there would be no shock.
This process was repeated for about an hour during weekly sessions that occurred over a few months.
I’d been referred to this therapist who, I was told, specialized in curing “unwanted same sex attractions,” by my “sponsor” in another ex-gay therapy group I was part of.
The electroshock therapy to cure me of being gay began four years after I began ex-gay therapy treatment.
I was just sixteen years-old at the time.
Despite my father’s side being devoutly Roman Catholic and my mother’s side being nominally Lutheran, religion had never held much appeal to me as a child. I’d been baptized in the Lutheran church that my maternal grandparents helped fund and build and I’d taken R.C.I.A. classes at my father’s Catholic parish to receive my First Communion and Confirmation when I was seven years-old. Being preoccupied with my childhood interests of Star Wars, Red Sox baseball, and reading, though, I never enjoyed attending church or learning about religion.
That all changed shortly before Christmas in 2003. I was 12 years-old and had discovered a series of evangelical young adult novels about the end of times. These books sufficiently terrified me about my eternal salvation, so I got “saved” by accepting Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. As my first act of devotion, I decided to read the entirety of the King James Bible during my winter break.
Just a couple of days in and I reached this passage in Leviticus:
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” (Leviticus 20:13)
At 12 years-old, undergoing the beginnings of puberty, and having known of some sort of difference in how I viewed other boys my age, reading this passage made everything click into place: I was the type of person that Bible verse was talking about. The realization was shattering, and my crying woke my mother.
Though I did not know it at the time, my mother’s only experience with gay people prior to that night was the brother of one of her close friends: he had died of AIDS over a decade before.
So, when I showed my mother the Bible verse, her immediate response was to ask, with a sickened tone in her voice: “You think you’re gay?!”
I nodded my head in the affirmative.
She proceeded to explain, in details inappropriate for a 12 year-old to hear, the “disgusting” ways in which gay men fornicate with one another. After her crash course in the sin of sodomy, she instructed me to go to bed and told me the conversation would continue the next day with my paternal grandmother: the zealous Roman Catholic grandmother who was the Director of Religious Education (D.R.E.) at the family’s parish.
The conversation with my grandmother went exactly as I expected it to: she explained “basic biology” and how two men being together is like trying to connect a plug with another plug instead of an outlet. She outlined “God’s plan for human sexuality” and how homosexuality is an offense against God’s will for humanity. She encouraged me to seek the help of the Church for this “problem.”
Had this conversation occurred just a few months prior, the experience would have still been traumatic, but I might not have sought out ecclesiastical intervention. At this juncture in my life, however, I was a newly minted Christian, someone convinced of the Bible’s infallibility. I was convinced of the truth of my family’s revulsion at my disclosure and knew I needed to change, not just to make myself right with my family, but also—and more importantly—to make myself right with God. I immediately threw myself into religious devotion, orientating myself towards my paternal legacy of strict Roman Catholicism. In an effort to prove my sincerity, I quickly became an even more zealous Catholic than my grandmother: attending Latin Mass each and every day, praying the Rosary daily (sometimes multiple times a day), going to Confession weekly, praying the Stations of the Cross and abstaining from meat every Friday (not just during Lent, but the whole year round), seeking the counsel of a priest as my Spiritual Director, reading the lives of the Saints, and assisting at parish functions whenever an opportunity arose.
To this day, I still run into old classmates and friends from my teenage years who are surprised to find that, instead of a holy and zealous priest, I’ve now become a radical, openly gay socialist. Anyone who knew me when I was between the ages of 12 and 18 knew me as someone who was extremely religious. In high school, I could always be found with my copy of the Roman Missal (the Tridentine “Latin” rite, of course) and the Bible (a Douay-Rheims translation used only by the most conservative, traditional Roman Catholics). Between classes, I would be thumbing through my Rosary beads in the hallways. At lunch, I would sometimes skip eating to wander around the lunchroom, giving out religious pamphlets and other sacramentals (my favorite was a pamphlet written by St. Alphonsus Ligouri about how few people ever make it to Heaven).
Here's what those old classmates and friends didn’t see: they didn’t see that, at age 12, I had become sexually active and that each time I “committed the mortal sin of sodomy,” I would feel an overwhelming sense of shame and disgust, necessitating an emergency meeting with a priest to hear my Confession. They didn’t see that, at the age of 13, after a year of intensive prayer and devotion, my homosexuality wasn’t cured, so I was referred, by my Spiritual Director, to my first ex-gay therapy group. All my old classmates and friends saw was a deeply religious young person who was, no doubt, bound for the seminary upon graduating high school.
I was the only minor in my local ex-gay therapy group. We met two to three times a week within church basements in gatherings structured like Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. We even used A.A.’s 12 Steps, modified, of course, for our “addiction” to sexual immorality. Each of us newcomers had a sponsor who guided us, and we were expected to maintain strict “sexual sobriety” which was defined as no sexual activity whatsoever outside of a marriage between one man and one woman. At least ninety percent of us struggled with what we termed “unwanted same sex attractions” and everyone involved in our local group, save one person, was cis-male.
Nearly all of the people I met in my years of ex-gay therapy were adult men, in their thirties and forties (primarily), most of whom were married to women, but who regularly “slipped” and engaged in sexual immorality with other men. In our local group, we had at least two registered sex offenders, including one priest who was found to be abusing altar boys at the various parishes he had been assigned to over the decades; when I met him, he’d already been caught, though not prosecuted; instead, the Church had laicized him (removed him from priestly duties) and sent him to live a “life of contemplation and penance” in a monastery.
Because sexual abusers of children were sent to the same group as those of us with “unwanted same sex attractions,” most of us came to view homosexuality as a pathway to criminality. We viewed engaging in “sexual immorality” as a slippery slope that degrades and demoralizes a person. As a young person, growing up under the Bush regime, my conception of being gay came from these ex-gay therapy meetings, the rantings of far-right politicians and religious figures, and the shady meetups I’d arrange on Craigslist with adult men when I “slipped” into sin. In other words, I quickly resigned myself to the idea that I needed to overcome my abomination or would be consigned to a life of secrecy and misery (and an eternity of hellfire to follow).
Being a minor, I was legally not supposed to attend meetings with registered sex offenders. This problem was ignored by members of my ex-gay therapy group, for they felt it was important that I, as a young person, get help early as opposed to waiting for adulthood as they did. I was barred from attending and participating in certain activities, though. For instance, I was not allowed to attend national conferences of ex-gay therapy groups which required official registration and would, undoubtedly, host a number of registered sex offenders.
Despite claims to the contrary, no one I ever met had actually “overcome” and “mastered” their “unwanted same sex attractions.” The breaking of someone’s “sexual sobriety” was an almost weekly occurrence at our meetings. At least two people committed suicide during my six years in ex-gay therapy, one of them within a meeting.
My public life as a devout Roman Catholic and my private life as being a member of numerous ex-gay therapy groups continued for another four years until I was 17 years-old and a senior in high school. During those years, my hyper-Roman Catholicism only increased, as did my efforts in my reparative therapy groups. Throughout this time, my “occasions of sin” also increased, especially once I secured my drivers license and gained further independence. I continually suffered from depression, feeling like such a hypocrite as I proclaimed my faith so boldly, yet fell into mortal sin so regularly. It was during this time that I began electroshock treatments as an escalation in my desperation to find a solution to my “problem.” It was explained to me then that the treatments, given to a minor, were classified as “illegal, secularly,” but “necessary, spiritually.” My family, knowing little to nothing of my ex-gay therapy efforts, saw only my hyper-religiousness and thought the “phase” I went through and disclosed to them at 12 years-old had successfully passed.
At 17 years-old, after nearly five full years of devout Catholicism, I came to believe my salvation needed to be found in a different denomination. I began listening to preachers of other churches on YouTube and was captured by the zeal and message of Calvinism. This Gospel of predestination—including mankind’s total depravity, God’s deep love for His elect (those predestined for Heaven), and God’s wrath and hatred for the reprobate (those predestined for hell)—seemed to me, at the time, to be the truth I’d been searching for. I left the Roman Catholic Church and joined a congregation within the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, an ultra-conservative denomination of modern-day puritans. I threw myself into Calvinism as I did with my former Roman Catholicism: switching my Douay-Rheims Bible for an English Standard Version (nicknamed, at the time, “the angry Calvinist Bible”), studying the Protestant Reformation and the Five Sola’s of Martin Luther (my senior yearbook quote was my favorite of the Sola’s: Soli Deo Gloria—To God Alone Be the Glory!). As enthusiastically as I once sought to convert my classmates and friends to traditional Roman Catholicism, I now sought to show the world the light of the true Gospel: the reformed faith as revealed in the Holy Bible.
I continued my efforts within my ex-gay therapy circles… and, as usual, was met with bitter disappointment and demoralization as I found, time and time again, that I could not change.
During my teenage years, it was hyper-traditional, far-right religion that kept me within the misery of reparative therapy. Ironically, it was that same hyper-traditional, far-right religion that kept me from committing suicide when times were darkest, for I always felt that to commit suicide was a sure way to secure my spot in hell. There were times I had to end years-long friendships, at the instruction of my ex-gay therapists, because they suspected I had immoral feelings of lust towards said friend. There were nights, after I’d “slipped up” and fell into sin again, that I’d drive around the city, screaming at God and hoping that my car would lose traction and that I’d smash myself into a guard rail.
My experiences with organized religion were, undoubtedly, traumatic and horribly negative. I did go through a fierce “anti-theist” phase in my early twenties where I wrongly labeled religion as the source of all evil in the world. Today, however, I’ve been fortunate to see the tremendous good religion can do for people and communities. Though not religious myself any longer, I now recognize and appreciate the progressive Catholics (who I formerly labeled as “heretics”) who seek to use their religion as an instrument of social justice for oppressed and marginalized communities. In 2020, when I participated in the Black Lives Matter Uprisings, it was a local church—the First Unitarian Church of Louisville—who gave us protestors sanctuary and food when the cops were patrolling the streets with their guns, tanks, and teargas. I’ve now read and studied the lives and works of great trade unionists like Cesar Chavez and Dorothy Day who were motivated by their faith to unwaveringly support labor. These lessons and experiences have imparted to me an understanding about religion that I did not have, either as a religious person or in my early years as an unbeliever. Today, I hold deep admiration for my Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim friends who are motivated by their faith to organize for the liberation of all working and oppressed people. I wish I had been introduced to such a progressive form of religion in my youth.
After renouncing religion shortly after graduating high school, I officially came out of the closet as a gay man on February 24, 2010. Today, on the day this article is to be published in The Class Struggle Chronicle, marks the 15 year anniversary of my coming out.
Coming out did not immediately and completely solve years of trauma incurred from six years of ex-gay therapy. That trauma led directly to a period of heavy problem drinking which was addressed through my voluntary admittance into a rehabilitation clinic in July 2010 and years of involvement in our local recovery community. Prior to this, in the short months between my coming out and checking myself into rehab, I attempted to take my own life on three occasions. My experiences with ex-gay therapy will remain with me forever, though the misery of those years has certainly dulled with time; this I attribute to my willingness to share my story for the benefit of others through my activism and organizing.
I wish I could tell you that coming out also purged me entirely of all of my teenage conservatism and reaction. This, unfortunately, is not the case. Even after coming out of the closet, I still held onto some horrible views, including some racial bigotries and even chauvinistic positions against trans and gender non-conforming folks. Today, it is astounding to me that I ever held these beliefs after going through what I went through and after coming out of the closet; but the fact remains that I did. These views were only eradicated once I developed class consciousness, cultivated an advanced understanding of economic and political theory and history, and, most importantly, began to participate in the liberation struggles of workers, trans and gender non-conforming folks, Black and brown communities, and immigrants.
Today, I see the interconnectedness of all of these struggles. I understand how our present economic ordering supports, perpetuates, and inflames these forms of oppression. Most importantly, I recognize the vital importance of working and oppressed people coming together, building bridges of solidarity, to overcome the power of the exploiting and oppressing class.
Though my primary focus today is around organized labor and fighting various forms of oppression based on current conditions and needs—presently, this work has centered around Palestine, undocumented workers, incarcerated human beings, trans people, etc.—I try never to forget the experiences of my teenage years and seek to incorporate those experiences into my organizing work wherever I can.
The oppression of Queer people has certainly not ended in the 15 years since I came out of the closet, and we certainly can see which segments of our Queer community are most heavily targeted in today’s political climate. I am disappointed to see so many cis gay men becoming content with our newfound social “acceptance” while trans, Black, women, immigrant, and indigenous communities are still brutalized and oppressed in ways not so unfamiliar to cis gay men if we only look back a couple of decades. The struggle for liberation must always include every component of our diverse working class. I, for one, am not content with a vapid reformism that welcomes gay people to murder in the military for the benefit of the U.S. empire or has allowed some of our numbers to ascend into the class of exploiters and oppressors. No, our work is not over until the days of exploitation and oppression (of any and all communities) are abolished.
Workers of the World and Oppressed People, Unite!
Me, senior year of high school, shortly before converting from Roman Catholicism to Calvinism (2009)
Me, preparing to attend a rally counterprotesting right wing religious extremists (2023)