Focus Features
Theodore Pellerin stars as “Xavier” and Lucas Hedges stars as “Jared” in Joel Edgerton’s BOY ERASED, a Focus Features release.
Back in March, Milwaukee’s LGBTQ community celebrated the city’s common council ban on conversion therapy for minors. The measure, sponsored by Alderman Cavalier Johnson, made the fee-based, so-called “therapeutic” practice of attempting to change a young person’s sexual orientation subject to fine. One of two aldermen who opposed the Milwaukee ban, Robert Donovan, refused to acknowledge that the problem even existed. Sadly, it does. A new film, Boy Erased, based on a memoir by Garrard Conley, offers not only proof of the problem’s existence but of the need for a national ban.
For many, the concept of how conversion therapy works is at best vague. Not knowing the actual sensory or emotional impact of such a traumatic experience, like news of a destructive hurricane or a mass shooting, we tend to respond to such horrors with an oblivious shrug or those useless thoughts and prayers. That alone makes Boy Erased a must-see, if only to understand the insidious nature of the beast.
The film opens as the young protagonist (Lucas Hedges) is outed to his parents (Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe). The father, a preacher, offers his son the option to change his sinful ways for Jesus’ sake and enter “Love in Action” conversion therapy facility, or be thrown out of both his church and his home. Naively and innocently, the son agrees. What follows is his dehumanization, torment and traumatizing abuse at the hands of the facility staff. The bizarre therapies devised and imposed on the son and other participants by the Love in Action’s misfit religious zealots are pure psychological terror. There is no science behind any of it, of course, just pure ignorance with a dose of sadism and greed.
Watching Boy Erased reminded me of a friend whose story parallels the film’s, albeit more painfully. Sent to a Christian psychologist by his evangelical parents for conversion counseling as a 17-year-old, he confessed to an incident of sexual contact while play wrestling (fully clothed) with a schoolmate. The psychologist had him arrested for fourth-degree (misdemeanor) sexual assault, and he subsequently spent a year in jail. He’ll also remain a registered sex offender (SO) until he turns 32, but, given Wisconsin’s system, although off the public registry, his SO status remains accessible to law enforcement in perpetuity. In other words, should my friend ever have another run-in with the law, however insignificant, he will be treated accordingly.
But, like the film’s main character, even though his life is forever affected, my friend survived. Many don’t. The conflicts LGBTQs endure in their paths to self-acceptance are weighty enough, but, exacerbated by such terrorism, depression and other health issues often develop and, in some cases, lead to suicide.
Meanwhile, although Madison and Eau Claire have passed similar restrictions, conversion therapy is still legal in Wisconsin as well as in 35 other states. Perhaps, under Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, Wisconsin will join those states officially banning the harmful practice. But, with “religious freedom” being a Republican cause, it will be a difficult battle. Unfortunately, those who should see Boy Erased, particularly anyone who profits, politically or financially, from anti-LGBTQ proselytizing in the name of conversion therapy, probably won’t.
Boy Erased runs one weekend only, Friday, Nov. 16-Nov. 18, at the Oriental Theater.
