SHAY: Welcome back to a new episode of How to Humanist. It's Shay, and this is my voice. I am hitting notes in my lower register that I didn't even know existed, mainly because last night was my first gig back. I am, for those of you who don't know — which is pretty much all of you — a wedding singer. This voice of mine has been quite dusty through the winter because not really anybody around here gets married in the winter months. But I just had my first gig back last night, which meant dusting off the old vocal cords, and this is what we got. So enjoy the version of me that is a quiet storm.

I want to get right into this conversation that I had with Luke Wilson — who, I can't remember the last time I made such instantaneous friends with someone. He is just genuinely wonderful. And he has created this avenue for people who have experienced conversion therapy, just like he did, to share their stories and to receive healing. And for many of them, you'll discover that they didn't even realize that what they endured was conversion therapy.

So I want to tell you about Luke. Lucas Wilson is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council postdoctoral fellow at University of Toronto Mississauga — did I say that right? I hope so — and was formerly the Justice, Equity, and Transformation postdoctoral fellow at University of Calgary. He's also the editor of Shame, Sex, Attraction: Survivors' Stories of Conversion Therapy. I had the great honor of reading that book, and the wide variety of stories that you get to hear from firsthand accounts of people that had to go through this is just so jarring. And I'm so grateful that Lucas is doing this work.

If you or someone you know endured religious trauma, conversion therapy, anything of the like, and identifies as queer, I'm gonna give you an email — because we're not gonna touch on it until the very end of the episode, but I want to make sure that you get this. Reach out to Lucas because he's working on a new anthology. Reach out to him at anthology.submission2026@gmail.com. I'm also gonna put that in the show notes. Please reach out to him because he is helping be a conduit for people to share these really vital stories that everybody needs to hear.

This episode is coming out April 20th. On May 2nd, we need to show out in droves, everybody. There are 100 communities around the country that have received funding to run mutual aid projects in their community from the American Humanist Association. It's all part of our first ever American Empathy Project. If you would like to find an event happening near you, please go to americanempathyproject.org. Some of them had to stay off of the site just because they are dealing with communities that are at very high risk right now, but there are still quite a few on there. Everything from making clothing drives for the queer community, to doing senior citizen joy drives, to support for families that have been impacted by ICE. There are so many different activities out there and I'm so excited this is happening. May 2nd it's gonna be happening all across the country, and we want you to be a part of it. That website is americanempathyproject.org. And here's the episode.

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SHAY: I've never heard you speak. So this is my first time hearing the Canadian —

LUCAS: Oh boy. Yeah. You know what? It's always funny too because I think sometimes folks will hear —

SHAY: Oh boy.

LUCAS: Yeah, there it is. And part of it is that certainly Canadians have — and especially more rural folks — but I'm not even rural. I'm from Toronto. But what happens is that I think sometimes people confuse the Canadian isms with evangelicalism. So I'll say "oh" or "g whiz" and I don't even realize that I'm saying it. But I think that's more so evangelicalism. But what you're identifying — and this is in no way a correction, this is just an addition — you're right, you are hearing a dirty Canadian accent and I don't know why it's —

SHAY: It's a trip because it could so easily be misconstrued for the Fargo Midwestern accent. My aunt is from Minnesota so yeah, I've heard it. But yours — you came in hard. I don't — I know this is so ignorant to say, but are you aware of how strong your accent is?

LUCAS: I came back from the States — and again, we're gonna talk more about this, where I went to school for my undergrad — but I came back and actually when I was there, I was so sick and tired. Nowadays I love talking about accents, but when I first got there, everyone was talking about my accent. So I was like, I'm done with this. I'm just gonna try to erase my accent. So I tried, and then I came back to Canada for winter break. And my sister — we were talking and she's looking at me, and then finally she goes, why the hell is your accent so strong? And I was like, I don't know —

SHAY: Stronger.

LUCAS: It must have backfired. And since then — although in high school my friends made fun of me too, and I'm from the city, so city kids don't have super strong accents — I either it backfired and intensified after I came back, but I also know that it was already there. And it is, yeah, it's stronger than it should be, but here we are.

SHAY: I'm just fascinated with it. Because I went to a performing arts school, so I had a similar issue where my speech teacher was like, ooh, let me get into that Jersey-Brooklyn-Jewish accent and try to get rid of it. And he didn't have much luck. So they just cast me in Barbra Streisand roles for the rest of my experience in college.

LUCAS: Not a bad casting. What a role.

SHAY: Definitely not. I don't have her pipes, but I can definitely throw some Miss Marmelstein lines and we're good to go. Yeah.

LUCAS: Love it. Where'd you go to school?

SHAY: American Musical and Dramatic Academy.

LUCAS: Very cool. Are you also into performance and all of that?

SHAY: I went to Rosedale Heights School of the Arts — not to brag. It was a high school. The writing was on the wall, right? I was old homo years before I came out. But I went to Rosedale. I was in the dance company there, and then I was also on the theater side. But the theater side — I never really did much. I was cast in A Midsummer Night's Dream as the king, but I didn't actually perform because my dad died that year. And so I was like a sad boy and just was not in any way able to do it.

And so I was in that world, but then my best art I think was actually my visual art. I haven't done it in years, but that was always my thing. Dance was my favorite. I think art was my best.

SHAY: What was your medium in visual art?

LUCAS: I did a lot of ink, but I also did acrylics. Ink was the vibe. And I used ink, but I would also use a lot of saliva. Yeah. So mixed media.

SHAY: That sounds like a mother's visual medium is just to lick her thumb and wipe the canvas.

LUCAS: I've been described as maternal sometimes, so you know, it's fitting.

SHAY: Okay. So you went to a performing arts high school. At what point did you end up in conversion therapy?

LUCAS: So to give you a little bit of lay of the land — I grew up in Toronto, youngest of five kids. My mom was, I think the best way to put it was haunted by her Baptist demons that she grew up with. And my dad was very much an agnostic, hippity-dippity, pot-smoking hippie who owned a record store and became a social worker with differently abled folks. He was just like a super cool guy. Wrote a book on Bob Dylan. Very neat guy.

So that was this weird sort of household to grow up in. And it was a packed household because not only were there five of us kids, but my mom ran a home daycare which at its peak had about 25 kids, which is so illegal. But at the time, it felt like I was in a day camp with a bunch of friends, which was great.

By the time I got into high school, just before I got into high school, I became interested in God and Jesus and whatnot because my brother started watching all these DVDs from this creationist out of Pensacola, Florida. He used to debate university professors, scientists, and researchers about creationism and evolution. That guy's name was Kent Hovind. He called himself Dr. Dino. He had a doctorate — quote unquote doctorate. I believe his dissertation started out as "Hi, my name's Ken Hovind." So to give you an idea of the quality of his dissertation and the rigor of his research.

And so Dr. Dino — who eventually went to jail because of tax evasion, saying it was God's money not the government's money — I started watching some of his DVDs with my brother. Again, a very credible source. He wasn't even like Ken Ham, who is also a crackpot, but at least had some semblance of respectability. Loosely defined.

Anyway, we started watching these DVDs and I got hooked. My brother was like, do you wanna watch these debates with me? And I was like, no. I'm like 13, this doesn't sound like fun at all. And he was like, okay, come on Luke, you gotta watch. He finally roped me in. We watched them, I became interested, I started going down all these rabbit holes of creationist websites online. And by the end of it I was like, okay. I came to the conclusion that I believed there was a creator, an intelligent designer. If that was the case, I needed to know who this intelligent designer was.

And of course I went back to the church that we had gone to on and off when I was little. There was this Fellowship Evangelical Baptist Church, which is pretty much comparable to Southern Baptists in Canada — very conservative. My mom had taken us on and off until about grade two. We stopped going because, like every good Canadian family, we started going to the cottage.

And so I went back to that church, I saw people I remembered from when I was young, I got super plugged in. The youth pastor took a liking to me, and I was really quickly — yeah, not like that, but that comes later with —

SHAY: You saw my face.

LUCAS: There's nothing to be said. No, he wasn't of the persuasion. Whereas my conversion therapist, believe it or not, was. And so I was super plugged into this youth group, this church. And by the time I was making the decision of where I wanted to go to university, it was grade 11. And I had decided that I was either going to go to University of Toronto, which is consistently ranked like Canada's best, or Liberty University, which is the world's largest evangelical college in Lynchburg, Virginia. There's a lot to say about the name Lynchburg, but I guess we'll put a pin in that for now.

And I made my decision in large part — there were a few factors as to why I chose to go there — but the biggest reason was that I knew they had a conversion therapy program. I didn't call it conversion therapy. I didn't conceptualize it as a conversion therapy program at the time, but I knew that there was someone who worked with queer students on campus.

And so when I was making my lists of check marks for U of T or check marks for Liberty, the only thing I put two check marks for was the fact that they had a conversion therapy program. And I thought, this is where I need to be, because I can become straight. And if I become straight, then I can stay in evangelical. Because if I don't become straight, either I have to live a celibate life — which at the time didn't sound and still doesn't sound like the most fun — or the other option was leaving the church, and I didn't want to go to hell. And so I was like, this is the place for me.

And so I packed up my stuff and off to Lynchburg, Virginia I went.

SHAY: Ugh. I wish I could go back in time. I mean, granted, it made you who you are today and brought you to this very important work that you're doing now. But I wish that I could have known you back then and been like, Lucas, don't go there. Don't do that. And it's so interesting too because I have friends that live in Lynchburg and I didn't know that was the site of the most evangelical school. Wow. What a selling point.

LUCAS: There was someone I was talking to recently and she was invited to go and speak in Lynchburg. And nothing's changed there in the sense that I'm pretty sure it's around half of the property that is owned by Liberty University or folks who are affiliated with the university in the town. There's a cool non-Liberty culture there, right? There are cool coffee shops, cool restaurants, good food — like really good food actually. And cool folks there. It's just that so much of the city is run by Liberty University and influenced by Liberty, and there's a long history there for how they made that happen.

Mostly to do with the university's founder Jerry Falwell, and then his son Jerry Jr., who was most recently found in a three-way relationship between himself, his wife, and a Miami pool boy, which is ultimately what led to his demise — not literal demise, just his career suicide. We can talk more about that as well after. The sex capers at that school are pretty crazy.

Nonetheless, he and his dad were quite influential in shaping the city into what it's become today. And Liberty has been, along with the megachurch it's affiliated with, the vehicles that they've done this through.

SHAY: So at AMDA, this was decades ago, but not to show my age — we used to have the saying Gay by May. Because by May, anybody that came in that was an evangelical, that had gotten in just by pleading with their mom and dad, I just love musicals — by May they would be out of the closet and attending pride with us the next month.

LUCAS: This is perhaps the equivalent at Liberty was Ringed by Spring. Which was, by the springtime you would've been engaged or married. And so there was that.

But I do remember I had a friend at Liberty, Jeff, and he and I were oftentimes confused on campus — we looked quite similar. Anyway, he and I were hanging out a bunch and I was always like, is he gay, is he not? Spoiler alert, he came out of the closet a few years after Liberty. But he was super into musicals. And I was like, I just didn't understand it. I was like, what is so cool or fun about musicals? And he is the reason I love musicals today. Shout out to Jeff for why I'm a good gay, because up until that point I was a bad gay, among other reasons including going to Liberty University. But this was certainly a catalyst for my burgeoning gay queer identity.

SHAY: Have you ever seen — and is it called In and Out? With Klein? Kevin Klein? Oh my gosh. It's with Kevin Kline and Joan Cusack is in it. You have to see this movie. I'm trying to fix everyone's lack of pop culture when it comes to movies, music, and TV shows as fast as I can. That is what I am evangelical about. In and Out, you've got to see it. It didn't technically age well in being politically correct in all avenues, but for the time that it came out, it's a great movie and you're gonna love it.

LUCAS: You know what, there's so much — even like Sex and the City — did not age well. Throwing the f-bomb around and super transphobic. There's so much that, again, I didn't grow up on Sex and the City. I became acquainted as an adult. But watching it now, there's so much that you're like, oh wow. But you know what, it was a different time. Not to make any excuses, but —

SHAY: I know, but —

LUCAS: Yeah.

SHAY: I think it's a good time capsule though, to recognize like, this is what was normalized back then, so that people today can understand why we are the way we are, why we're so messed up.

LUCAS: And what was considered progressive back then, right? Like the idea of owning their own sexual agency and agency in general — this was radical at the time. And of course by today's standards it's different. And then if anything, people have a lot of critiques against the embedded, imbued hatred and phobias within it. But nonetheless, yeah, I think you're right. It's absolutely a time capsule, a teachable text to use when teaching or just learning in general.

SHAY: Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so they had a conversion therapy program. Was there also an opportunity for people to learn how to be conversion therapists?

LUCAS: So this is a great question. No one's ever asked me that. I love that. So first of all, the school had multiple conversion therapy programs throughout its history. Largely the ones that were for male students were run by my conversion therapist. His name was Pastor Dane Emrich. He was formerly the Dean of Men, and then he transitioned into his role as campus pastor through — the office changed its name a bunch, it doesn't matter. And he was tasked with working with two groups of students mainly.

But again, there were other conversion therapy groups for women, or more so one-on-one programs. And then there was also later on another program. But for Dane Emrich specifically, he was a paid university employee, and he was paid to do these two things for the majority — well, not the majority, but a lot of his career.

So he was working with queer students — those who, as many at Liberty would refer to us, were addicted to homosexuality. And the addiction model is quite strong within evangelical spaces and conversion therapy spaces more broadly.

But then he was also tasked with working with male students who were quote unquote addicted to porn. And as all research suggests, there's no such thing as porn addiction. This is not really a thing. It's perhaps in the cultural consciousness what people think, but it's in no way justified or demonstrated in any scientific literature.

But all this to say, he was the one leading these programs. As for students who were wanting to become conversion therapists — or as they would refer to themselves, pastoral counselors or Christian psychologists — there were a number of classes that taught exactly that. They have different courses on human sexuality and different counseling courses, psychology courses that teach about queerness, lesbianism as they put it, transgenderism as they put it, and beyond.

In fact, I just had a book chapter come out this month that talks a lot about the curriculum at Liberty and what they've taught over the years, all in alignment with that addiction model. But on top of all of that, there was a foundational course, a gen ed requirement that all students had to take. It was called Contemporary Issues, and there were two parts to the course.

The first part, which was a semester long, was defining the word worldview — which looking back is just hilarious. You took an entire semester to define this word. This is maybe a 10 minute conversation, but okay. So that was the first part, and that laid the foundation for the second part, which was applying our Christian worldview to different social issues, including abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, and beyond. In that course there were specific sections about queer theology and queerness, and we referenced different ex-gay ministries.

So that would maybe be like a primer for the other courses should you have gone down the path of psychology or Christian counseling or whatever. For me, I went into English and we didn't talk about anything queer because we just pretended like it wasn't a thing. But when it came to that foundational class, that was certainly an aspect of what we talked about.

SHAY: I'm sorry, the level of fury I would have if I had just paid my tuition check to then be stuck in an entire course around worldview.

LUCAS: Just thank God I received scholarships to go there. I always say at this point, in order to get a scholarship you need to actually be doing scholarship. And the work that I did at Liberty University cannot be defined as such. However, I am very thankful that I never paid — oh, I paid a little bit, but it wasn't much. In fact, it was cheaper for me to go there than it would've been for me to go to the University of Toronto, weirdly enough.

But yeah, the education I received — to give you an idea of the quality, or lack thereof, I went straight to essentially a state school equivalent in Canada called McMaster University. A big theory school, super hard on theory. And it was there that I wrote my thesis proposal. Typically for a master's thesis, a lot of students get accepted on the first try, but a number have to revise and resubmit. The worst I ever heard from another student was that he was rejected twice and then got through on the third time.

For me, I wasn't rejected once or twice or three times or four times or five times or six times or seven times. It was on the eighth try that I finally got accepted. I say to you truly — and that is a scriptural reference — that should never ever happen. I got into grad school so woefully unprepared.

And again, no surprise for anyone else, but for me, after graduating from Liberty summa cum laude — which means nothing because I went to Liberty University, this is not a brag — this just points to the quality of education that I received. It was so disappointing. I slowly started to realize this was not a real school. What I learned there did not prepare me.

What I will say is that they did teach me a lot of really strong grammar. Evangelicals love to follow rules, so I was well prepared in that way. People would come to me and be like, Luke, can you look over and proofread this? But it was just an abysmal education. It was more so an education in Southern conservatism, both religious and political varieties thereof. But yeah, it was exactly what one would expect.

SHAY: Were all of the teachers and professors there gung-ho about this curriculum, or were there any that were just there for a check?

LUCAS: The only professor I remember who seemed to be — and he never said anything really, he just seemed cool — was my poetry professor. He now teaches at Randolph College, just down the road from Liberty. I actually emailed him this week.

He was this younger, very handsome guy, and every professor at Liberty started class with prayer. We would have prayer requests and then we always would pray. So he did do that, but it was just this viby difference. It just felt different. And he was someone who I think wasn't on board — and clearly wasn't, because he left shortly after I left and now teaches elsewhere.

And then there was another professor who hinted at it. She's since left as well. When I was in grad school, she reached out to me and was like, Luke, what do you think about homosexuality? And I was like, are you trying to say something? But she was just like, let me hear your thoughts.

And so I said to her — at this point I was saying I thought I was bisexual, like in The Office when Mindy Kaling says to Ryan "I'm pregnant" and then looks at the confessional and goes, "that was me." I said to her, I'm bisexual. And I said, what do you think? And she said, let me have some time to think about it. After I had detailed my explanation for why I thought it might be fine. And at this point I was still unsure what I thought. Nowadays, clearly I'm a big old live-in-that-big-old-gay-lifestyle kind of person that we were warned about.

But without being said, she came back and said, no, I think it's wrong, blah blah blah. So she's still very much conservative. There's a lot more to be said about her, but that'll perhaps be for when I write more about this in the future.

But yeah, the school — a lot of the folks who were teaching there, and the vast majority of the students, were like foot soldiers for the Falwell, for the guy who started the school and then his son who took over. And so they were very much gung-ho and still are.

They have what they refer to as an evangelical think tank — a contradiction in terms, but they have this quote unquote think tank called the Standing for Freedom Center, formerly the Falkirk Center. That was named after Jerry Falwell and Charlie Kirk. And Charlie Kirk, before he was killed, was scheduled to come speak at Liberty again.

So to paint the picture right — Donald Trump has two honorary doctorates there. Mike Pence has an honorary doctorate. Other conservative politicians. Candace Owens was a regular speaker there for a long time. Huckabee. Even Bernie Sanders did go, but this was like a big political stunt to be like, we're not only inviting conservatives, and then they invite the one liberal. So there was that. But it's very much an ultraconservative hub that is super influential in the wider white Christian nationalist movement. One of many institutions under that umbrella, but one of the most powerful of them all.

SHAY: So what was the dynamic like between you and your siblings? They know that you're going to this super Christian school. Did your brother who put you on to all of this — was he aware that you were battling this quote unquote demon that you wanted to exorcise? Who knew, or were you completely quiet about it?

LUCAS: I was mostly quiet about it in general, but completely quiet about it with my family. My brother Quinn — eventually, and I think he didn't intend for this, but he created a monster. I became this like zealot, holier than thou and righteous, nose up in the air. I think he and my other brothers all thought it was weird.

I have three brothers and a sister. My brother Zach — not Quinn, who was the one who introduced me to creation versus evolution — but Josh really, it ticked him off that I thought I was better. And then my brother Zach just hated it. Just thought I was like an absolute freak. And they all knew. Again, I was really bad at hiding my sexuality. I watched a lot of Rachel Ray's 30 Minute Meals. I watched a lot of HGTV. It was quite clear. I didn't need to say a word.

My sister on the other hand — we were closest in age, and out of any of my siblings, I was always closest with her. Nowadays we're all quite close, but she and I always were quite tight. She thought it was weird as hell too. She never said anything. But my brothers did say things here and there.

I remember one time my brother Zach was like, Luke, come down here. I was up in my bedroom. He said, come look at this. And so I go down to the family computer and he says, check this out. And it's this video of the founder of Liberty, Jerry Falwell, talking about Muslims after 9/11. He said, "blow them up in the name of the Lord." And that was actually the name of an essay I eventually wrote, quoting him and talking about how I differed from this, at least at the time.

But Zach was like, what do you think about this? And I remember just babbling and not really having an answer. And he goes, it's disgusting that you go to this guy's school. He had died at that point, but nonetheless the school had venerated this man like a saint, essentially like God. And Zach was like, I think it's disgusting.

And I remember thinking, wow, what do I say to that? How do I respond? And I think because I wasn't raised in an environment where my entire life was shaped and defined by this, because I had that little bit of critical distance — especially being raised by my dad and with my siblings — I always had a little bit of an ability to be like, I don't agree with all of it. And I do see that I'm different from at least the folks in the US. Like I was never an American exceptionalist. I never bought into a lot of the politics.

I think a lot of Canadian Christians have a little bit more ability to say, I'm not gonna vote for that guy. I think some people have the ability to say no to that and would vote liberal or progressive while still holding very traditional, i.e. homophobic and transphobic views. They can at least say politically, my faith is not necessarily tied up with politics. Again, there are absolutely a number of people where that is 100% the case, but not everyone.

So I think being raised in that context allowed me a little bit of critical distance that allowed me to at least escape the white Christian nationalism of it all. I was more so just socially conservative and even fiscally liberal or progressive, which again, looking back, also feels weird now. It feels like I'm talking about someone from another life. But I do think being raised in the household I was raised in allowed me to separate myself a bit from a lot of the craziness that defines this religious and political movement today.

SHAY: So I imagine those siblings are now relieved. Is Quinn the one that introduced you to the creationist? Is he still on that same path or has he come around too?

LUCAS: No, thank God. I think my siblings — I'm not religious or spiritual at all. Those are not categories that I find meaningful in my own life. I can understand if other people do, and I don't give two hoots if you are religious. I don't understand it in a confessional sense. I understand it academically. I understand it experientially. But confessionally, no. That's not who I am.

But I do think my siblings have sort of almost deistic views, right? Where they're like, God created the world, and maybe even somewhat theistic in the sense that Jesus is a good guy. And I'm like, yeah, Jesus had some problems, but we can talk about those later. They have some deistic or theistic views, although it's in no way something they put much stock into. It doesn't define how they live their lives by any means.

And my one brother has a daughter who's queer — my niece. And Josh is so cool. I remember when I did come out, I was living in Nashville. At this point none of my siblings were talking to my mom — my mom's a very complicated human — and I was the only one out of the five of us still speaking with her. And she was one day crying and upset, like, oh gosh, Christmas is gonna be terrible. It's only gonna be you. And I was like, like, thanks mom. What? Think about how you — anyway.

So she was upset. So I said, why don't you come down to Nashville this year and I'll just stay here and you come down instead of me coming up there? And she was like, oh wow, I'll get my cowgirl boots! So my mom's all excited. And so I was like, at that point I was living with my ex and I was like, wait a second. If she comes down, how am I gonna explain my shotgun apartment with the California king-size bed and my quote unquote roommate? That's not gonna go well.

So I was like, I have to explain to her that I'm a big old homosexual. So one night after work — I was actually teaching at a Christian university in the English department for one year — after work I came home, got a bottle of wine, had a few glasses just to prime myself, and I got on the phone with her. I was like, hey mom, I gotta tell you something. And she was like, what? And I was like, so when you come down here, my roommate isn't my roommate. He's actually my boyfriend.

And she went ballistic. She was like, oh God. She became very religious in a matter of minutes. All of a sudden Sodom and Gomorrah was on her lips and whatever else. And so I was like, oh my gosh, what do I do? What do I say? And eventually we cut ties.

And when I gave her space, she then called, of course, everyone in my family. And I was outed within a matter of minutes — which in some ways was like, that's messed up, but the other part was like, makes it easy on my part, right?

I had actually already told Quinn and my sister Kaylee before, because they had come down to Nashville and I wanted them to know. I didn't want to keep up the charade. So they both knew. They were totally cool. They didn't say anything to my other siblings or my mom. But then my mom immediately calls my aunt, my uncles, my brothers.

My brother Josh — he at this point already knew. And so one day I'm sitting there and I see a phone call from Josh and I'm like, oh God, here we go. So I pick it up and he goes, hey buddy. And I was like, hey Josh. And he goes, heard you're gay. And I said, yep. And he goes, knew it. I was like, shut on you. Behold. So everyone knew. Everyone knew except for Cheryl. She was surprised somehow. Somehow. That's a miracle. If there's ever been a miracle, Shay, that's the one.

SHAY: Your accent is peak in that reenactment. Heard you're gay. That's just so funny.

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ANNOUNCER: Sometimes it can feel like there's so much going on in this country that you don't even know where to start. Like no matter what you do, it won't be enough. That's exactly why the American Humanist Association is doing something about it. On May 2nd, the AHA is supporting a hundred community service projects across the country, and this is your invitation to be part of one.

The American Empathy Project is an effort to help everyday Americans push back against our country's crisis of cruelty. It's about meeting your neighbor where they're at and coming together with your community to build habits of connection and compassion. If you're someone who likes to live your values, this is for you.

Head to americanempathyproject.org to find if that's happening near you, or learn how you can support more initiatives like this at the AHA.

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SHAY: Okay, so you wrote this book — hold on, because I feel like I have a million hours with you right now, I could talk to you forever. You wrote this incredible book that accompanied me on my vacation. So thank you so much for this. And now I'm realizing that you were the last story.

LUCAS: Yeah.

SHAY: That was a spicy one. There's talk of engorgement and bulges. Yeah.

LUCAS: A little bit of a tone shift from the intro to the —

SHAY: I know, yeah. You go from smelling shit to then getting to admire bulges.

But the heartbreaking part of it — spoiler alert, I guess — is that this is your real story, and learning that your one friend had gone off to marry someone and have a kid. I've seen Boy Erased and Trembling Before God and your heart breaks not just for that person that is hiding who they are.

And I forgot this — when I used to waitress, there were two men that I worked with, two servers that I would've assumed were gay. I'll just put it that way. And they confirmed it. But both were saying that they were never going to act on it, that they're never going to — and I just could not fathom that they were going to live their entire life without this kind of love and this type of fulfillment.

But anyway, I digress. The thing though is also the woman — the fact that, was it Pastor Dane that said, just grab you a woman so you could put your dick into something? Thanks a lot, Pastor Dane. We're more than just a vessel for your penis.

LUCAS: Not an accident. The devaluation of women within this religious community is — I was gonna say shocking, but it's not, right? Like it's exactly what you expect. Like women are not seen as whole people, they're seen as holes. The way that it is, the awful sexist, misogynistic, dehumanizing of women.

And if we're talking specifically about ex-gays and conversion therapy and all this, women are seen as a vehicle to remain on the straight and narrow — pun, I suppose, intended. But again, they are seen as guardrails to keep you from veering off the path. It's almost like they become your keeper for these gay men. And that's seen not in terms of personhood, but in terms of utility. Like, what can they do to make sure that this guy doesn't choose the wrong quote unquote lifestyle and then go to hell.

And I think what's also shocking is how these women see themselves. I think they do see themselves in some ways as savior-like figures, where the weight of the world, the eternal destiny of their quote unquote husbands, they feel a responsibility for that. And so it's a horrible system clearly, but it really is complicated in how women are used and deployed, and then how women then see themselves, because it almost in some ways makes them feel like they have a modicum of power.

They feel like they've now carved out a space for themselves, some role that isn't just singing on Sunday mornings or like passing the offering plate. This feels a little bit bigger, and I think that in part is what attracts them to it.

Like in the story that I recount from my time at Liberty, a number of the guys who I referenced were all married to women. A lot of these men have since divorced — not all of them, but a lot of them. I know these guys now and I've talked to them since. And hearing their experiences, it's nuts, but all of them were pushed into this by different bad actors at Liberty, including Pastor Dane.

SHAY: It's really interesting to hear you say that because the entire time, watching all of those documentaries independently and then even reading this story, I always would've thought, oh, I just pitied the woman so much because I felt like she was being duped. But now hearing you say that, it's reminding me — I went through a whole chapter of my adult dating life where my self-esteem was so low that I felt that no man would've wanted me for me. And so therefore I would find something that they needed help with and I would be that person. It made it almost like a magnet. Oh, now you're not gonna go anywhere because you know that I'm able to help you with this thing. And of course I'm not doing it intentionally, because that would be highly manipulative. It was just my subconscious coping mechanism of, hey, I don't find myself worthy of finding anybody that would deem me as enough just by being myself.

So I imagine that those women are also feeling called to help in that way, and given that savior opportunity.

LUCAS: It's crazy. Even like, for instance, one of the guys in the story who I mentioned — not really a character, just like a friend who introduced me to one of the friends in the room who then introduces me to my romantic interest at the time. But I mentioned him very much in passing. And I remember when he and I were talking, that very first time I came out to him — he was the first person I ever came out to — he asked me, have you ever been attracted to women? And again, it was that Office moment where I just kind of shook my head.

And then later on he got married. When they were dating, I remember asking him — he had said something about how she knew about me. And I was like, what? I was like, so she knows? And he was like, of course she knows about me. She knows about you and all this kind of stuff. And so they very much know and they know who the others are too.

And I think with the guy in the story, my romantic interest, his girlfriend knew right away once we met. I guess he had told her. I remember she would just show up at the computer lab or in public. We never met behind closed doors, he and I, but she'd just be there watching. And again, it was her feeling this responsibility to protect her boyfriend from the gays.

And again, I think there's just this unbelievable coercion and manipulation of these women who feel a sense of, again, power that they've been divested of for so long. That finally being in these sorts of dynamics, they weirdly feel like they are empowered, that they have some more important role than they did before. And so it's tragic. I feel for these women. I feel for the guys too, but in a different way.

I couldn't imagine being in a relationship where the person isn't really into you, at least physically. Maybe emotionally sure, there's that sort of relationship. But that's what we call a friend.

SHAY: Ha.

LUCAS: And some people like to have sex with their friends, other people don't. And I don't think this is the dynamic that they're looking for or would ultimately want if they were being honest with themselves. But of course, evangelicalism doesn't breed honesty.

SHAY: Ugh. It's almost like they're having to constantly live in this self-imposed gaslighting scenario, where every day they're having to pretend like they're not seeing him glance at another man, or things like that. And I just wonder what that does to someone's brain chemistry even.

LUCAS: You are absolutely right. It is gaslighting to a T. That's what conversion therapy requires you to do — requires you to gaslight yourself, to question your reality. Because within the teachings, the conversion ideology, what it posits is that we are not gay. We're just those who are struggling with same-sex attraction. Heterosexuals struggling with something that's outside of us. It's not within us. We ourselves are not gay. Our identities are not gay. Our personhood or subjectivity is not queer. It's something — maybe sin nature. So maybe it is in some ways internal, but it's not who we are. It's a perversion of who we are.

And so therefore, if it's not definitionally who we are, if we're all heterosexuals — even though again, with zero evidence to support that — but if we're all heterosexuals, that means this is something that can be fixed. If it's just a condition or an ailment or a problem, it's not who you are. It's something not intrinsically you. That affords the illusion, or more accurately the delusion, that they can change. That we can change.

And so it's a constant gaslighting. I remember when I went to visit my friend in Long Island, New York after my freshman year at Liberty. We had gone to Six Flags, and I remember afterwards I said to him, David, I didn't — the entire day, I didn't feel attraction to any man. I didn't see any man I was attracted to. I honestly think I'm making progress. I honestly think I'm starting to see a difference.

And most likely what happened that day was that I just didn't see any attractive man, and therefore I was like, see? Evidence. It's working.

SHAY: I'm so surprised that at a Six Flags in Long Island you didn't see anyone you were attracted to. And there go all of the Long Island listeners turning off their speakers. Sorry about that.

LUCAS: Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's exactly it. So it requires — I mean, evangelicalism, again, they don't trade in honesty. They don't trade in sincerity. They trade in a lot of fictions that they require each other to uphold. That's why I often think about liturgy in churches and worship services where they're singing the same words over and over. I think there are a number of reasons why they do that, but one is to repeat these fictions. Because if you say it, especially in unison, and you're all agreeing, like, we're right guys, right? And when they do this in community and they all say, we all agree with this, we all believe this — it's this way of reinforcing. And it's a function of needing to reinforce. Because if they didn't, then eyes wander and people go this way or that way. They need to keep themselves, at least verbally or rhetorically, in alignment.

That's why there are certain rituals that happen every week or every month. And I think this repetition is a way of keeping people in line. Because if they don't repeat these narratives and these fictions and keep talking with the same book — the Bible — then there's more of a chance that they're gonna leave. There's more of a chance that the strength of the religion itself isn't sufficient.

They need to continue to repeat these things by way of liturgy, by way of rituals, over and over. Because if they don't do that, people might just leave. And that's what happens to a lot of us once we realize, oh, these are fictions. And no matter how many times you repeat it, it doesn't mean it's true.

And a lot of us, especially those of us who have some part of our identity that's different — whether we're a woman, a person of color, queer, trans, whatever — that almost makes the fiction more visible. We see the cracks in it. We see how we don't belong, definitionally and foundationally. And that's the wedge in that binary system that allows us to begin to escape. Those are the keys, those are the tools.

SHAY: Do they just conveniently ignore all of the examples of homosexuality in nature? Or even in scripture — I mean like David and Jonathan. Like those two were quite intimate.

LUCAS: Nothing about this. David and Jonathan — the way that they're described, it's pretty clear that they had more than just a friendship. There are also other women in the Bible who a lot of folks would identify as queer.

But if you're talking about nature specifically, we're talking about people and communities who are highly skeptical of science, of medicine, of public health. We can think back to COVID-19 and how masks became a political issue. We can think of vaccines. People who are just distrustful of research in general, of academics and universities and woke ideology. These are communities that together rail against this. They don't trust it. They think it's just a political agenda, not evidence-based arguments and findings.

And so if we're talking about all the examples of queerness in nature beyond just humans, that's gonna mean nothing to them. Because anything that goes against or contradicts their worldview and their set of doctrinal commitments is thrown out and dismissed as woke, as liberal, as of the devil. There's no real room for nuance. There's no real way of integrating different perspectives, i.e. faith and science. For me, I have no desire to do that. I'm at this point just wanting to hear what science has to say and what researchers have to say. And I have no investment in what pastors or theologians have to say.

But these are people who will always listen to their pastor as the source of authority over and above anything. And so therefore, arguments and solid arguments and critical thinking and evidence don't matter for these folks.

SHAY: Now I find that, unfortunately, from being introduced to the humanist community, there are still a great number — a pitiful number — of people that consider themselves to be humanist until they arrive at the transgender conversation. And that's where they suddenly start to be very overtly transphobic, but then they'll still call themselves humanists. Do you have any type of research that you could possibly share with these people while we have you on this episode?

LUCAS: I always think about how we have to start this conversation. The way we have to start is we need to understand that sex and gender are two different things. Because there's oftentimes just that claim that being a woman is biological, being a man is biological. No — women and men, those fall under the category of gender. Male and female, right? Those who have XY chromosomes, or whatever combination of chromosomes. Two distinct categories there.

But of course there are far more folks whose sex is not nearly as legible. We're talking about intersex folks. And so this idea that there are two clear distinct sexes is a fiction in and of itself. First of all, most folks are never tested to see if they are intersex. So there actually is a greater population out there who are intersex than we know of. Why? Because they have no reason to be tested for this, because there's never been a quote unquote reason to do it. So already, this distinction — and a false distinction between male and female — it's not as neat and tidy as folks make it out to be.

But again, to go back to gender and sex being two different things — gender is constructed. What it means to be masculine in Canada or the US is not the same as what it means to be masculine in other parts of the world. There are so many historical and contemporary examples of societies and cultures that don't abide by the same gendered scripts.

And so I used to always do this whenever I taught students — I no longer teach, at least not in a classroom — but I used to say, okay guys, I want you to put your stereotype thinking caps on. And they're like, what the hell is this? And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna make two columns, masculine and feminine, and I want you to tell me what the defining characteristics are. I don't necessarily think that by you offering an answer you agree with this. Just offer me what are the stereotypes for masculine and feminine.

So we'd go through and make the entire list. And then at the end I'd say, okay, are all men this? No. Are all women this? And we'd go one by one, what are examples, what are the exceptions? And then by the end of it I'd say, okay, so what is intrinsically, inherently masculine? What is intrinsically, inherently feminine? And they'd be like, I guess there are exceptions to everything. And I'd say, bingo.

And then on top of that, I'd say, okay, so if we are to say that masculinity is not inherently tied to having a penis, and femininity is not inherently tied to having a vagina, then what are these things? How are they created? How are they constructed?

There is a genealogy here that we can trace. Where does men wearing pants come from? Where does men not wearing high heels anymore come from? And they're like, anymore? What do you mean by that? And I'd say, okay, let's go back to like fashion styles from the Victorian period, just over a hundred years ago. Men were the ones typically wearing high-heeled shoes. So does that mean that high-heeled shoes are inherently feminine? No. I guess there's a history there that we need to dissect.

So again, there's not much, if anything, that is inherently masculine or inherently feminine that is tied intrinsically to sex. We can separate these two categories.

Now when we go back to sex and we go back to the intersex question — some people make it an issue, and of course it's not, it's just nature. That also can be troubled. It's not as black and white as we've made it out to be. So we realize the binaries that we operate on, male/female and masculine/feminine, are separate things, obviously tied in a lot of ways in how people think about them, but not necessarily or intrinsically.

There's so much that we can do to unravel this. And then when we think, okay, so if gender is constructed, it's not always been the same, and today when we have folks who are gender diverse who don't align with those hegemonic scripts of what it means to be a woman or a man, is it really that bad? And what's the threat?

We also think about percentages. If some of the more recent studies have estimated that 1% of folks are trans, that doesn't mean there aren't other people who are gender diverse. I think the percentage would be a little bit larger. But at the end of the day, we're talking about 1% of the population.

And for me, most of my research really began in Holocaust studies. And so I always try to think of examples and parallels between these two different things. The quote unquote problem during the Holocaust and before was Jews. And the quote unquote problem today has been trans folks. These are the two scapegoat populations. And in both contexts — 1% in Germany, 1% in the US or Canada — in both these places, these are the minorities that were, have been, and are targeted.

And we can think about that. What was the threat that Jews posed to German society? Of course there was no threat. And anyone who claims otherwise — that puts you on the side of who? Oh, whoops. Nazis. So then we think today. And I'm not saying that everyone who is transphobic is a Nazi. However, history isn't always the same, but it does rhyme.

So we think to ourselves, what are the threats today? Oh, there are threats in sports. There are threats in bathrooms. There are claims that trans folks are child predators and all of this. Again, look at the statistics, look at the evidence. Every single day we see a pastor or someone who is related to Christian churches who has been charged for sexual assault, sexual abuse, molestation, whatever. Again, show me the drag queens, show me the trans folks, show me the gender diverse folks.

I'm not saying there aren't some examples — there absolutely are. There was a shooting in Canada where the shooter was a trans person. But how does that one example compare to all the shooters in the US? And then let's go back to the original question. Show me all the gender diverse folks who are these predators. Again, I'm not saying there aren't examples. There are examples of everything. But what's the percentage? What's the ratio?

You'll see a very disproportionate number of folks who are in jail or convicted or charged with crimes related to sexual assault or whatever. The vast majority are white men. Cis white men. And so I think when we just look at evidence and look at reasoned arguments and break it down in a way that makes sense —

I've had people in the past who have said to me, it's not my job as a queer person to teach straight folks or to teach people who are transphobic. And I think to myself, if it's not my job, whose job is it? I have the emotional capacity to do this. I have the training, I suppose, as well. But really, I think all of us need to be having these conversations. And again, if it's a good faith conversation, phenomenal.

SHAY: The big difference there.

LUCAS: If it's not, yeah, I'm not gonna waste my time. But if it is someone who sincerely wants to know and is gonna ask me behind closed doors — of course I'm gonna have that conversation. I just think it's so important to have these conversations. And for me, I am obviously a lot less antagonistic than right now, just poking ridiculous holes in the arguments. But when I have these conversations with people in good faith, I mostly ask questions. I say, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? How would you respond to this?

And I think that's the most effective way of having these conversations, because it not only requires them to justify their beliefs, but it also requires them to justify their beliefs in light of evidence that you're presenting, without saying you are wrong, you are an idiot, you're crazy, you're an immoral person. It's instead saying, I'm inviting you to think about this. I'm inviting you to consider your opinions in light of not only my opinions, but also evidence, statistics, research.

And I think that's the most effective way that we can actually reach folks who have crazy opinions. And they are crazy. They absolutely are crazy. In the same way, when we look back historically at the Holocaust and say, oh my gosh, like these nutcases, these Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, can you believe that? And you're like, yeah, I actually can, because I see the parallels.

And I'm not saying that folks today who believe these things are Nazis. But they share a lot of similarities. And with that being the case, I don't want to see what happened in the past happen again. And right now we are seeing attacks on queer communities, specifically trans communities. I don't want to see that happen today. I don't want to see anything close to that. And so we have to fight against these possibilities by having conversations.

SHAY: I know we're at time. Do you have a few more minutes while I ask you one more question? Okay. So first of all, I'm gonna preface this by saying I need to have you back, because there are still so many questions that I wanted to get to that we haven't even had a chance to touch. That being said, I know that you are working on a very important project right now. Do you want to share who you're looking for to contribute to this project and what it is?

LUCAS: Do you mind if I have one shameless plug before this?

SHAY: No, go for whatever you want.

LUCAS: So I have a book coming out next year. It's called Don't Ask, Tell All. The subtitle is still up for grabs, but I'm hoping it'll be Stories of Christian College's Anti-Queer Regimes. And this is a collection of stories from a bunch of different Christian colleges, university seminaries, and divinity schools across the world — mostly in the US, but also in Germany, Brazil, Canada, and England. This collection will be coming out next year through University of Georgia Press, which I'm very excited about. So if anyone's interested in that topic, there's that. It's a collection of stories. The intro is academically informed, but the stories themselves are all very creatively written — almost like personal essay, creative nonfiction, short stories.

As for the question that you were asking, I'm currently working on a new collection of stories that'll be the third anthology I've put together. And this one is called Queer and Trembling: Stories of LGBTQ Religious Trauma. And that collection is, you guessed it, a collection of stories about LGBTQ religious trauma.

Right now I'm looking for stories, soliciting authors to submit to me. And if anyone is interested in submitting a story for consideration, I would love to consider your work for that collection. The email will be in the show notes. And yeah, I would love to hear from y'all. Everything's due by August 15th. But please email me before you write anything, just because I have very specific instructions for all my collections — I have a very particular vision for what I'm looking for. And I just want to make sure that your stories are in alignment with that so you don't feel frustrated afterwards if they don't quite align with what I'm looking for. But again, I would love to hear from anyone and everyone.

SHAY: Thank you so much for that. The stories that you shared in Shame, Sex, Attraction are just so powerful, and so many of them leave you at the end going, wait, what happened to this person next? So I just want to genuinely put it out there that I really hope that everyone is doing okay, and thank you for telling their stories. I hope you get to hear from people that this is having an impact on, because you're definitely becoming one of the people to look to around this type of healing that's so needed.

LUCAS: Thank you. Yeah, you know what? That's been the wild part — both good and heavy. It's been both good and heavy to hear from folks who went through conversion therapy after the book came out. A number of people DMed me, some people just commented on different posts on social media. But hearing from folks and hearing their stories and just being overwhelmed by what happened to them.

For me, I went through conversion therapy for four years at Liberty. And my experience in comparison to others — and I'm not trying to create a hierarchy of suffering or victim Olympics — but other folks' stories and experiences were significantly worse than mine. Mine sucked and mine hurt and wounded me in ways that I'm still unraveling and understanding. But for other folks, some of the stories are just shocking and some are deeply sad.

And then on top of that, the stories I've heard since the book came out, people just DMing me and emailing me — it was awful to read these stories. And I do hope that the collection offers these folks some semblance of comfort, or just knowing at bare minimum that they're not alone, that other folks went through similar experiences.

And it's also wild that I think a lot of folks didn't realize that they went through conversion therapy until after reading the book. For me, I didn't realize I went through conversion therapy until after I left. Which is a very common experience for a lot of survivors. A lot of survivors don't realize. I just thought I had undergone pastoral counseling for my quote unquote same-sex attraction. And then one of my office mates in grad school was like, oh, so you went through conversion therapy? And I was like — and then I did a quick Google search and I was like, oh, yep. Check, check, check. I definitely went through conversion therapy.

But a lot of people had a similar story. They read the book and they're like, oh wait, like me meeting with that pastor for however long — that was my conversion therapy experience. And so that has been, again, a wild ride to receive those comments and responses.

SHAY: I'm just very impressed with anyone like yourself who has gone through this kind of trauma and has been able to turn it into something that is healing for others who have experienced that too. So kudos to you. My goodness.

LUCAS: Thank you. Now my cat's meowing, so I apologize if —

SHAY: Oh no. What's your cat's name?

LUCAS: Little Ziggy. Come here. Come here, monkey. Come here, baby. Come here. Yeah, no, he doesn't wanna come up.

SHAY: Ugh.

LUCAS: No, he does. Here we go.

SHAY: Hi, Ziggy. Hi! Oh my gosh. The beans. Oh my goodness.

LUCAS: He's honestly the best cat in the world. I don't even love cats, to be honest. But I love this little guy. He just wants to love and be loved. And now I'm covered in his hair and I'm wildly allergic to him and I didn't take my allergy pill today. Whoops.

SHAY: God.

LUCAS: Yeah. Oops.

SHAY: Oops a daisy.

All right, Lucas — do you go by Luke or Lucas?

LUCAS: You know what, I'm never gonna win in a Google search with the name Luke Wilson. It's a lost battle, it's just uphill. And so my name is Lucas, so I suppose it makes sense that I go by that professionally. Personally, no one calls me Lucas. But professionally you'll see it signed as Lucas, or Lucas F.W. Wilson. Lucas Frederick William Wilson. Like the most WASPy name you could ask for.

SHAY: Wowzer. Okay. Lucas Frederick — what?

LUCAS: Frederick William Wilson. But —

SHAY: Frederick Douglas — that's taken. Frederick Douglas. Okay. Lucas Frederick William Wilson.

LUCAS: That's it. That's it.

SHAY: All right. I'm gonna have to practice. That was supposed to be nice and easy and it totally backfired. You have to come back on so that we can talk about the rest of what we wanted to talk about. And thank you for everything. I have to tell Jake that he's no longer my bestie. You are.

LUCAS: Oh shoot. I like to stir the pot, so this —

SHAY: Oh, gosh darn. Okay. Oh man.

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