New Netflix Film Explores Complexity of Harmful Conversion Therapy Movement

When director Kristine Stolakis first began researching the modern history of conversion therapy and its impact on LGBTQ communities across the globe, she was immediately startled by what she learned about the leaders of the movement.

Medical associations and LGBTQ advocates around the world have denounced the practice of “conversion therapy,” which is the discredited practice of trying to change an LGBTQ person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. After years of advocacy by LGBTQ groups, the American Psychiatric Association in 1998 strongly condemned the treatment as pseudoscience and harmful. Given that, Stolakis admits that the conception of conversion therapy advocates she had in her head was very different from the reality.

“The first thing I discovered is that the vast majority of people who run conversion therapy organizations are actually LGBTQ Christians themselves — and this was a surprise to me,” said Stolakis. “I definitely envisioned homophobic and transphobic people teaching LGBTQ people to hate themselves in some ways, but that’s not quite what I found.”

Instead, she realizing that the heart of the so-called ex-gay movement was led by a group of people who struggled with their sexuality and truly believed that they could train themselves and others to be straight and cisgender. This discovery deeply affected the way Stolakis approached directing her new documentary, Pray Away, which will make its debut on Netflix on August 3 and counts Glee creator Ryan Murphy and Get Out producer Jason Blum among its executive producers. The film chronicles the rise and fall of Exodus International, a faith-based group that began in the 1970s and would go on to become one of the largest and most controversial conversion therapy organizations in the world. As she and her production team met with several former Exodus International founders and members, the depth of the organization’s philosophical reach became clear, as did Exodus’ push to expand to other countries and to communities of color across the United States in the hopes of both raising money and pushing anti-LGBT legislation.

“Conversion therapy is not just a practice, it’s a movement,” said Stolakis. Like any successful movement, conversion therapy managed to appeal to many people who were struggling through its promise of community, success, and a path to happiness. Stolakis notes that while the mainstream idea of “conversion therapy” is one of treatments that take place in clinical settings, the reality is far wider reaching and includes conferences, social groups, and talks by celebrities. Conversion therapy is more than a pseudo-treatment method, “it’s a culture,” noted Stolakis. “When you participate in that culture, it sticks with you all the time, even in your most intimate of moments.”

While Exodus International made international headlines in 2013 when it was disbanded after 37 years of practice, Pray Away makes clear that the group’s reach and political strategies continue to shape anti-LGBTQ policies in the United States today. “If this were a movement of a few bad apples, when the people that you meet in our film defected, the movement would have ended,” noted Stolakis. “But that’s not the case.” Instead, other anti-LGBTQ groups have used similar recruitment and demonization tactics to fight against things like pro-LGBTQ health care measures, and to fight for bans on allowing trans and gender-nonconforming children and teens to participate in sports or use bathroom facilities that match their gender identity.

The cultural component to the movement is also why conversion therapy continues to endure in certain highly religious communities. While 24 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have instituted bans on conversion therapy when practiced by licensed therapists, Stolakis notes that even in those jurisdictions it is likely that such conversion attempts are still going on, particularly efforts targeting LGBTQ teens and college-aged young adults.

While learning about conversion therapy efforts, Stolakis found that most conversion therapy treatments occurred “within religious organizations ​​— for example, a religious college, a church, or maybe a one-on-one relationship that you have with a pastor that’s acting as a pseudo counselor,” she explained. But because religious settings are protected by freedom of religion laws, those treatments and conversion efforts can continue without any regulation even in cities, counties, and states where these therapies have been prohibited. “So, in order to meaningfully end conversion therapy, we have to have a real international dialogue and we have to have a real heart and mind shift,” said Stolakis.

In fact, Exodus International can trace its roots to a group of young evangelicals at a crossroads in the 1970s. Throughout Pray Away, Stolakis introduces viewers to several former leaders of Exodus International who first met in the 1970s when they formed a Bible study group intended to pray away their desire to participate in what they called the “homosexual lifestyle.”

“We believed that something must have happened to ‘make’ you gay,” one Exodus official says in the film. That was a sentiment that was not particularly unusual throughout most of the 20th century, Stolakis noted.

“One of the things that many of us see in the story is an example of how internalized homophobia and transphobia is wielded outward. Those former leaders and the current leaders [of the movement] deeply believe these messages of homophobia and transphobia and obviously are teaching that to others,” said Anya Rous, producer and vice president of production at Multitude Films, which produced Pray Away. “So it’s not a neat victim or perpetrator role.”

Stolakis saw the harm of those beliefs and the pull of conversion therapy firsthand when she was a child. “My uncle went through conversion therapy when he came out as transgender when he was a child,” she said. “He went through conversion therapy during a time when all therapists were essentially conversion therapists in the ’60s and early ’70s.”

While her uncle was a big part of her childhood in upstate New York as her “beloved babysitter,” Stolakis later saw him struggle as he continued to try to come to terms with his sexuality and gender identity. “I saw him experience a tremendous number of mental health challenges ​​— from depression, anxiety, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, suicidal ideation ​​— just an entire list of really terrible things that I have learned are quite common for people who go through conversion therapy,” said Stolakis. Her uncle unexpectedly passed away just before the director began film school, and she became determined to learn more about conversion therapy and its long-ranging impacts in an attempt to understand him. Discovering that groups like Exodus International were started by LGBTQ people themselves who truly believed they could train themselves to become straight “helped me really understand my uncle’s desperation, because he believed that change was possible his entire life,” said Stolakis. “It also helped me understand the depth of the trauma that he went through when, of course, that change never came.”

Given her personal connection to conversion therapy, Stolakis initially wondered how she would feel when she met and interviewed the former Exodus International leaders and the one current proponent of the ex-gay movement for the film. “I often expected to feel very angry as someone who had witnessed the pain of a survivor,” she said. “But what I often felt was a deep, deep sadness for what these people represented and that there’s that larger culture of homophobia and transphobia that underlies all of it.”

To illustrate the personal toll of conversion therapy on the patients who experienced it, Stolakis and the team at Multitude Films knew that they wanted to center the story of a survivor alongside the documentary’s detailing of the rise of the conversion therapy movement. The film introduces viewers to Julie Rogers, a 30-something from Texas who was first taken to conversion therapy sessions as a young teen after she began coming out to friends, teachers, and family members as a lesbian. While the traditional mainstream narrative of conversion therapy has focused on efforts to make men straight, Stolakis notes that thousands of women and nonbinary people have also been forced to endure the pseudoscientific treatments, often because the adults around them felt threatened by their sexuality. This is a large part of why she wanted to center the female experience in her film.

“Gender policing or centralizing gender norms has always been a part of the treatment of conversion therapy,” said Stolakis. “The idea is that if you act more stereotypically feminine, this will have the reverse domino effect inside of you and change your sexual identity, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”

Because conversion therapy is still legal in 26 states and children and teens are particularly vulnerable to being forced to endure it, Stolakis says she is particularly glad her film will be available on Netflix, where it can open up a conversation in the privacy of a home. Studies cited in the film note that LGBTQ teens who experience conversion therapy are at higher risk of self-harm, suicide, and depression.

“We really want to reach families across the country and around the world who can make different decisions around what to do when their LGBTQ family members come out to them and how they can support them and ultimately accept them,” said Stolakis. “Also, how they can compel and push their religious communities to accept them and support them.”