Director Zach Meiners Survived Conversion Therapy, Then Made a Doc About It

Zach Meiners has directed features ("Pivot Point," 2011; "I Am Potential," 2015), television (an episode of "Club Swim"), and a short film (the comedy "Icarus"). Now he turns his lens to the documentary format, and on himself, for the film "Conversion." Joining Meiners in sharing their stories of surviving of so-called "conversation therapy" are "Drag Race" star Dustin Rayburn, equality advocate Elena Joy Thurston, and longtime "conversion therapy" critic Wayne Besen, among others.

So-called "conversion therapy" has been denounced by reputable mental health professionals as a quack practice. Just on its face, it's hard to see "conversion therapy" as anything other than a pseudoscientific sham – latter-day snake oil that promises queer people they can somehow "convert" to cisgender heterosexuality through faith, exorcism, talk therapy, or some combination of all those things, plus a whole lot of willpower. It's an industry that critics say exploits the desperation of people who have been marginalized, excluded, bullied, and driven to self-hatred, all without delivering the results it promises.

Magical thinking and con-job quick fixes are as old as any other form of grift, and it's not surprising that the practice is embraced by people who have been indoctrinated into a corrosive self-hatred simply because they are queer. Acceptance, success, happiness, even an eternity in Heaven – the rewards are as nebulously slippery as the very notion of sexuality or gender identity being a "choice" or a "phase," or in any other way something other than innate, unchanging, and perfectly normal.

But it's hard to sell a fake cure for an invented pathology. To make an industry like so-called "conversion therapy" profitable, social, political, and religious fictions about queerness being "evil" or "disordered" must be championed, perpetrated, and actively mined for commercial opportunity. The downside of all this, of course, is that there is no "conversion," and this is not "therapy." Worse, while an industry such as this may tout claims of success, its true legacy is one of shattered souls and broken, betrayed people.

All doubt about that should have vanished when the leaders of prominent "ex-gay ministry" Exodus International gave up the jig and came clean, admitting that nobody was being "converted" from gay to straight and publicly apologizing for having pushed the notion that such a thing was possible. And yet, Meiners' new film notes, "conversion therapy" is thriving. It's simply found new brand names to go by, new ways to package its erroneous theories, and new customers to entice.

But that doesn't mean the fight is hopeless. Education, Meiners told EDGE, is the key to combatting "conversation therapy," and it was education he has sought to provide. EDGE heard more in a recent interview about the film.

EDGE: You put yourself into the film. Was that something you intended from the start, or did you realize there was no way to tell this story without telling your story as well?

Zach Meiners Initially I just wanted to make a PSA, but it became clear that one of the things that made this conversation different from other films was the fact that I had also been through [what I was talking about with the people I was interviewing]. We weren't having to explain a whole lot; we just understood each other.

In order for the audience to get that same sense, it became clear that I needed to be involved in the film. It took some convincing for me to do that. We did my interview multiple times, because it was hard for me to sit and release the director's side of my brain and allow me myself to be present.

EDGE: In the film, you talk about wearing rubber bands on your wrists and snapping them if you had erotic thoughts or feelings involving men. Did this crude form of aversion therapy change your feelings at all?

Zach Meiners Absolutely not. The rubber band was a small thing that showed this much bigger concept of, "This thing that is part of who I am, is the thing that is wrong about me."

I knew internally that my feelings were not changing. If anything, they were intensified. That started leading me to other forms of self-harm. That really affected me for many, many years. Those feelings, that shame, that self-harm was something that was taught to me. It's not something that I had in me innately as a kid.

EDGE: You talk in the doc about how your so-called "counselor" would ask you probing sexual questions and seemingly get turned on. Did you feel you were being exploited?

Zach Meiners It's something that was very uncomfortable for me, but when I talked to other people in the church about it, it was always, "You have to trust the process." Like, "You're the one who is the troubled child, so we're going to take his word over yours." When I wasn't believed I just kept quiet about it, but I did think that there was something wrong.

It took me many, many years to undo the damage. I stopped going to conversion therapy when I was 18. It wasn't until I was 24 that I knew I wanted to come out, but it took another couple years to get myself into a situation where I felt like I was able to safely come out.

EDGE: Would you say you have PTSD, or some form of trauma, from this supposed "therapy?"

Zach Meiners I absolutely have a lot of trauma and complex PTSD. What happened to me was not some big traumatic event that happened once, it was something that was slow and sinister that happened weekly or biweekly for four years. And also, the culture that I was a part of led me to believe that this part of me was so wrong that I needed to do this in order to be whole.

Luckily, as an adult, through getting actual therapy, I'm in a much better and healthier place now. That's due to the mental health community, but also to my chosen family and friends, people that have loved me and supported me through a lot of these hard times to be able to be and continue on the path that I'm on of being a healthy adult who can love and be loved.

EDGE: There's a point in the film where you go and talk to McKrae Game. He was a leader in the ex-gay movement who stepped away from it and apologized. But what he told you didn't seem to satisfy you.

Zach Meiners It was hard to hear from someone who was apologizing, and it felt like he was saying these things that felt almost rehearsed with a PR coach, but then on the other side of his mouth he would say, "But here's how many copies of my book I sold. We had this website, we had slick graphics, we had these events that people love," almost bragging about their accomplishments.

One of the things that's unique about our film is that other films have [mostly] interviewed ex-gay leaders, and not people who went through it. Our film is directed by a conversion therapy survivor. We're interviewing other conversion therapy survivors. Blake [Allen], the composer of the film, grew up in the Mormon Church; Blake didn't go through conversion therapy, but had friends who did, and came from that culture and that background. Marc [Singer], one of the producers of the film, was married to Dustin, who has that experience [of conversion therapy]. Almost everyone on the team has been affected by conversion therapy, either personally or indirectly.

It was important for me to [present] what would I have needed to see at 14 that would have helped me get out of the system faster. It's important to hear the stories and to hear how harmful it is, but it's also important to give people hope. We went through these horrible things, but we're overcoming those things. We are survivors, and not everyone made it. But I'm lucky to be one, and I want to use my voice to give others hope that they can come to a place of wholeness and healthy community.

EDGE: Was the making of the film therapeutic in itself?

Zach Meiners Yeah, absolutely. I was made to feel like I was the only gay kid struggling with this, [but] there's an estimated 698,000 conversion therapy survivors in United States. What's crazy is meeting other people who have gone through it and realizing that there are these common impacts that they had on our lives that we have really bonded over. Finding that community is incredibly healing.

When I watched "RuPaul's Drag Race" for the first time, I was going to a bar here in rural Kentucky with my first serious boyfriend. One of the things about "Drag Race" that's interesting is that people gather together in queer spaces to watch the show together, the way that straight people get together and watch sports games. This drag queen, Dusty Ray Bottoms, was on, and they were talking about their experience with conversion therapy. Dusty was one of the first people to ever talk about conversion therapy on national TV. [I was] going, "Wait, I went through that." Hearing Dusty's story was part of what began to encourage me to be able to tell my story.

Tonight, we're doing the release party at the same bar that I first watched "Drag Race" in all those years ago. It's pretty crazy how it all comes full circle.

"Conversion" is available now on VOD.