Author | Garrard Conley |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Subject | Conversion therapy |
Genre | Memoir |
Publisher | Riverhead Books |
Publication date | May 10, 2016 |
Media type | Print (hardcover) |
Pages | 352 pp (hardback) |
ISBN | 978-1-59463-301-0 |
Boy Erased: A Memoir is a 2016 memoir by Garrard Conley recounting his childhood in a fundamentalist Arkansas family that enrolled him in conversion therapy. According to The Week, it aims to bridge the cultural divide—"one that makes gay conversion therapy seem a natural choice in some places and unfathomable in others".[1] It was adapted into the 2018 film Boy Erased.
The only child of a car salesman and soon-to-be Baptist pastor, Conley was "terrified and conflicted about his sexuality".[2] At 19, while in college, he was outed as gay to his parents by another student who had raped him. His parents gave him the choice of being disowned or going to gay conversion therapy that promised to "cure" his homosexuality.[2] The timing came as his father was about to be ordained as a Baptist minister.[3] Conley was enrolled in a Love in Action ex-gay program, and recounts the harm he was subjected to there in the name of curing his sexuality.[4] He recounts the months of counseling he underwent followed by a two-week intensive intervention.[5] He also includes other participants' accounts and a "Timeline of the Ex-Gay Movement".[6]
Conley's hope is that his story will expose ex-gay groups and gay conversion therapy programs as lacking in compassion and more likely to cause harm than cure anything, especially when participants are told, as he was, that they are "unfixable and disgusting over and over again".[4]
Main article: Boy Erased |
In 2018, Joel Edgerton wrote and directed Boy Erased, a film adaptation of the memoir. Lucas Hedges stars as a character based on Conley, with Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe in supporting roles as his conservative parents.[12]