6. To Hell and Back

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I've come out three times in my life. The first in my late teens when I embraced the gay world in my gay identity. The second as an X gay as part of a community who were all a part of that movement. I was surrounded by people who all agreed that sexuality was something that could be changed and that I had. And then finally I had to come out as an x X gay. That well, that was probably the hardest. It took me a while to be ready. When you've spent twenty five years living as an ex gay man and spreading the message of conversion therapy, Understandably people are angry, people like Wayne Besson, the man who photographed me in a gay bar more than a decade earlier.

00:00:53
Speaker 2: There was a period where John was thinking of coming out, but he wasn't out yet, going to all the gay bars in Portland, and I flew to Portland to talk to people about this situation, and it angered me because while he was going to these gay bars and had one foot in the closet and went out, his books were still being sold. His materials were out there, so people are still being harmed. Parents were reading these books, young people were reading them, so as far as I was concerned, he was selling this lie that he can change, and yet he was going out to gay bars, give me a break not happening. I was not having that. You know you're going to be going to our community and taking advantage of it. He damned well better be out of the class and not selling your change bs And so I confronted him about that very strongly, and he was in denial at first about that and told me to piss off.

00:01:55
Speaker 3: Welcome to the final chapter of Atonement, the John Polk Story. I'm Kate holland.

00:02:02
Speaker 1: I'm John Paulk, and this is episode six. To helen back. Oh gosh, to go back and do things all over again with what I know now and what I've learned, and what I've gone through and seen others go through and helped others go through, it would be such a different story. When Anne and I divorced in twenty thirteen, I didn't jump out of the closet. I was trying to do it in private, figuring it out for myself and working out who I was. I felt like the gay community was out for blood. Focusing purely on what I'd done while in the conversion therapy movement. The first time I publicly said I was no longer ex gay was in a local magazine. It was April eighteenth, twenty thirteen, and it wasn't entirely by cho.

00:03:02
Speaker 3: Is John Polk ready to renounce his ex gay gospel and is the LGBTQ community prepared to welcome him back into the fold? That was the headline in PQ Monthly, an LGBTQ plus magazine in Oregon. It reported that John had been spotted at a well known gay bar in Portland, that he'd been confronted by people in there who were angry at the message he'd spread for decades. The journalist gave John the opportunity to respond and for his words to be included in the story. He replied via email and.

00:03:38
Speaker 1: Said, until recently, I have struggled all my life with feeling unloved and unaccepted. I have been on a journey during the last few years in trying to understand God, myself, and how I can best relate to others. During this journey, I've made many mistakes, and I have hurt many people, including people who are close to me. I have also found a large number of people who accept me for who I am, regardless of my past, any labels, or what I do. I no longer support the X game movement or any efforts to attempt to change individuals, especially teens who already feel insecure and alienated. I feel great sorrow over the pain that has been caused when my words were misconstrued. I have worked at giving generously to the gay community in Portland, where I work and live. I am working hard to be authentic and genuine in all of my relationships.

00:04:41
Speaker 3: But John didn't say that it doesn't work, and the quote in PT did not include some other crucial words that Wayne Besson was waiting for.

00:04:51
Speaker 2: John had a lot of apologizing to do. When you're that outspoken about something and that convincing, you have to set the record straight. You have to reverse the damage that has done. It's not just okay to disappear. It's not just okay to give a tepid apology. You probably cost people their lives. We don't know how many people committed suicide over the Truth and Love campaign. We'll never be able to get a tally on the damage and the harm and the family is destroyed. So if you do that kind of harm, you have an obligation and moral obligation to speak out and reverse it at a bare minimum, and I did not think he was doing enough.

00:05:33
Speaker 3: The article also named John's catering company, and there were calls to boycott it, including by a past customer, the gay activist, businessman and political fundraiser, Terry Bean. Mister Bean said he needs to go on a nationwide tour to tell people what a sham at the X Game Ministry is and tell people nationwide he understands the damage he's done. Every hour he waits to do this, there are kids being badly hurt by the stuff that's out there. I don't think there's any group that's done as much damage to gay kids as Love One Out. John is in a unique position to make a very real difference. John says Wayne agreed with the boycott too.

00:06:18
Speaker 1: And it became very very serious because I had a lot of gay clients, and I had contracts signed for nonprofit gay organizations that I was going to cater for, and under threat, my contracts were canceled and my livelihood was vanishing. And you know, Wayne worked in cahoots with this gentleman of giving me a list of things they were demanding of me to do write a book completely renouncing all my work and xgay therapy, traveling the country speaking to kids in public classrooms, denouncing all of this, and I just wasn't in the place to do that. I had young children still in school that I had to protect, and I wasn't at the place yet to go out there. I was still figuring out who I was again, and it got to the place where I had to contact an attorney to reach out to them and wrote them a letter about extortion is a crime.

00:07:24
Speaker 3: I asked Wayne how he responds to John's allegation that this was extortion.

00:07:29
Speaker 2: Screw them, This's my response. He deserved to be boycotted. I couldn't care less about his business. He damn well had an obligation to speak out and to set the record straight, and if he didn't, he didn't deserve to have customers from the LGBTQ community. My job as an activist is to make that happen. Sometimes I can do it with a smile, and sometimes it requires something a little more. Let's just say convincing. He needed a swift kick in the because he wasn't doing it so quickly on his own. I don't apologize for that at all.

00:08:07
Speaker 1: Following the article in PQ, people reached out to me, including those I'd known for a very long time who were also x X gays, and so finally, with their help, we sent out a press release where I renounced my past.

00:08:26
Speaker 3: The statement now included an apology. John said, I.

00:08:30
Speaker 1: Know that countless people were harmed by the things I said and did in the past. Parents, families, and their loved ones were negatively impacted by the notion of repairative therapy and the message of change. I am truly, truly sorry for the pain I have cast. From the bottom of my heart. I wish I could take back my words and actions that caused anger, depression, and guilt and hopelessness. In their place, I want to extend love, hope, tenderness, joy, and the truth that gay people are loved by God. It ends finally. I know. There are still accounts of my ex gay testimony out there, being publicized by various groups, including two books that I wrote about my journey. I don't get any royalties from these publications and haven't since I left the ministry nearly ten years ago. I discourage anyone from purchasing and selling these books because they do not reflect who I am now or what I believe today. I remember writing on Amazon where my books were, and I remember writing a statement, please do not buy my book. I no longer stand behind anything in this and I do not support it. Like read it at your own risks, so to speak.

00:10:05
Speaker 3: The response to John coming out publicly was mixed. Of course, there were people who said well done, who shared their pride and sent their love for others, there was a feeling of gotcha, that this was inevitable, a mockery of sorts.

00:10:23
Speaker 2: I was happy he finally told the truth. It's good for our community. I'm sure it was good for him personally to get that off his chest and not be living a double life. That must have been very difficult for him and his family, and a lot of people who bought that lie could now breathe a sigh of relief.

00:10:43
Speaker 3: And for John, all the.

00:10:46
Speaker 1: Lies were gone, all the skeletons were out of the closet. The relief of finally being honest was overwhelming. It took me three whole years before I could say out loud I am gay, And during those years I was focused on my own life. What had happened to me how this was going to impact my son's who I was to be in this new chapter. But one night I met a man who showed me that I truly needed to look beyond myself. I was in a gay bar and a few guys walked into this bar and sat down ordering drinks at the front. There was one young man in particular who kept looking at me and looking at me and looking at me. He walked over to me and he pointed his finger right in my face. He said, I just want you to know we are after you, and we're going to get you. You better watch out. You can imagine the fear that was struck. And he backed me up against the wall. And he proceeded to tell me that he was a Jewish man and he was exposed to the reparative therapy garbage when he was young and growing up. He was shaking with anger as he told me about it. His rage and pain was visceral. And all of a sudden, it's like scales fell from my eyes, and it's like they were opened for the first time. Because you see, as hard as it is to imagine, I was not cognitively aware that I had hurt people, whether it's naivete or ignorance. I had never met at someone who said it to me directly, or at least I hadn't heard it. I never had an encounter with someone like this. The only encounters I had with people was at protest marches with focus on the family, with my security guard standing behind me, and I was so moved by what this man was saying. I took my hand and I rested it on his shoulder. I looked him and I said, I am so so sorry. I am so sorry for anything I have done or said to hurt you. And he looked back at me, and all of a sudden, his countenance changed and his eyes were welled up with tears, and he said to me, I didn't expect to hear that from you. And that was the first time I met another person who had been hurt by that movement, and I felt the way that that hurt.

00:14:26
Speaker 4: How do you feel about that today, John? It changed me hearing that from Stephen. Steven ended up becoming a dear friend. He was my advocate to the gay community, and he helped me navigate through what I needed to go through. But it profoundly changed me.

00:15:05
Speaker 1: It's the reason I'm doing this, the reason I've spent hours recording my story, why I want you to hear my tale, warts and awe, Because I did hurt people. Yes, I was hurt too, but I still hurt people, and I'm sorry.

00:15:29
Speaker 3: John is a performer, and I don't say that as criticism. I say it as a fact. For all his life, he's played roles, he's worn masks, and he's been on stage literally and metaphorically. One thing he and I have discussed a lot through the making of this series is the idea of truth, how two things can be true at once, or how something can feel true at the time and untrue now without necessarily being a lie. I've not always been convinced, but during one conversation we landed on the idea of authenticity instead. And I think that distinction is important when it comes to John's experience and that of conversion therapy more generally, because by its very nature, conversion therapy quashes authenticity. It goes deeper than guilt, shame or pretending. It disables living in truth, and that leaves a deep, deep wound.

00:16:46
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, I was forced into another reckoning. While I had been sober in my early twenties. Throughout my time in the ex gay world, my alcoholism had completely taken over. When I was drunk driving, I was mandated to attend sessions with a mental health and addiction therapist, and I did it. I've now been sober for more than a decade. Since those first dark days of living as my authentic self, I've tried to make a difference, to use what I'd learned about the X Game movement and the evangelical sphere to bring positive change to the world around me, to perhaps balance the scales of the harm I caused. In February of twenty fifteen, I provided testimony in support of House Built twenty three oh seven in the state of Oregon.

00:17:41
Speaker 3: The bill was to ban conversion therapy by licensed professionals for people under eighteen. In his testimony, John set out his background within the X Game movement and refutes it, highlighting the harm it ended.

00:17:56
Speaker 1: It took me twenty five years to accept who I was inside, and I truly loved myself. No one should have to experience this ever again, especially confused developing teens in youth. I strongly urged this committee to vote and support of HB twenty three zero seven, so we protect future generations.

00:18:16
Speaker 3: The bill passed well.

00:18:19
Speaker 1: Actually, it felt so wonderful that I was invited to the state House to stand behind the Governor of Oregon and watch her sign the bill into law, and I got a copy of the bill, I got a pen that she signed and a photograph, and it was one of the happiest days of my life.

00:18:39
Speaker 3: That must feel like you have come full circle in that.

00:18:43
Speaker 1: Moment, Oh, most definitely. It was just so gratifying. And I think that was early on in my journey, and I thought, you know what, I can use the platform I once had for real change and use who I was, pivot it, turn it around, and use it to help people. I've also tried to unite x X gay voices as I realize our message is stronger when we're speaking as one, and I continue to cater for and donate to LGBTQ plus organizations. You know what my goal is. My goal is to see that the conversion therapy movement is destroyed, that the truth becomes so evident and the evidence of tens of thousands of former X gay men and women becomes more of a reality. And I think we are going in that direction. It's been proven that people can't change. I'm here to tell you the overwhelming number of people, and not just in my world, but across the board, revert back to who they they truly are, because by and large, it's just not possible. Nowhere in science or psychology, in the literature, pediatrics, anything. Are you going to find any medical or psychological organization defending that this is real and possible. It's not.

00:20:23
Speaker 3: Having spent so much time talking to John about his past, I wanted to guess a sense of his present. So when I went out to meet him in Portland, we found an opportunity. Okay, John, tell me, tell me where we are and where we're off to.

00:20:37
Speaker 1: So we're in the car. We're headache to Vancouver, Washington, not Vancouver, British Columbia, which is just the city. It's like a suburb of Portland to the north of US. And we're going to have brunch with my posse. It's a group of men that we meet for lunch on the last Friday of every month. Gay men. Were all in the similar age range with a ten years span. I think I'm the youngest person there.

00:21:08
Speaker 3: John's sixty two, and we.

00:21:12
Speaker 1: Just share our lives and make fun of each other and just have a great time. And I'm the organizer of the group, and it's just a hell of a lot of fun.

00:21:26
Speaker 3: Lunch with John's posse, as he calls them, was great. They're a fun bunch, each with an interesting story and life. But sitting there enjoying the conversation, it also really hammered home to me the years John missed out on and what he didn't get to build for himself as a younger man. Chatting with a bunch of gay men all in their sixties and seventies, I thought a lot about how so many of us build our relationships, be them romantic or platonic, in our younger years. Our careers too, and finances. So much of that is done in our thirties, exactly when John was focused on spreading the conversion therapy message. So when John stepped away from the conversion therapy movement, he left that future security behind too. After brunch, I spoke to Brian Bergman, John's friend, outside the restaurant, and I asked him how he would describe John.

00:22:25
Speaker 5: That's an interesting thing. He's not something you have you can put into a label on. He's so talented and gifted and has all these abilities that he doesn't even recognize himself. And then yet he's also a very naive and taking advantage of and very gullible.

00:22:43
Speaker 4: And probably the tenderest person you ever met in your life.

00:22:46
Speaker 5: Cries about everything.

00:22:47
Speaker 4: You should say that. It's true.

00:22:51
Speaker 5: John's the youngest one of the group in He's the one that keeps it all together. He's the one to make sure that invites to go out and follows up with everybody. But yeah, I think he cherishes this a lot because I don't see John as having a lot of close friends, and so this is his way of kind of dealing having more people that are intimate about knowing what's going on with him. So that's good.

00:23:14
Speaker 3: When did you first learn about John's previous life.

00:23:18
Speaker 5: Probably I had known John for a while and it's just in passing. It's just kind of enough to say he lo But then probably about two years ago it came up and we talked about it. I was really interested. I just asked him questions. He's not as easy about getting the answers out of He gives you segments of it, but not the whole picture. It took a long time for me to figure out the whole thing, but it's almost unbelievable. And that's one of the hardest things about John was that he's not good about telling a story in a straight line. It gets convoluted and after a while you get kind of confused. Then he'll throw something else in there, and it makes it a little easier to figure out. But God bless you if you can do it. That's all I've been saying, God bless you can do it.

00:23:58
Speaker 3: So Brian told me that there are people in their circle that are still angry with John, that they don't get to see the deep, remorseful side of him. And Brian has a level of understanding for John that many don't. He was married to a woman too for twenty one.

00:24:17
Speaker 5: Years, and I've been ready to a man for twenty five So I knew I was gay and I was still married, but I did know that.

00:24:25
Speaker 3: But does that give you a better understanding?

00:24:29
Speaker 4: Do you think?

00:24:30
Speaker 1: Absolutely?

00:24:30
Speaker 5: Because see, you can beat both people, you can be both people. I wasn't lying my whole life. I was that person who was attracted to men. My wife never knew. But I could be that the father I have a son. I can be a father and a husband to a woman. And then and then he totally honest when I became out and became gay. I mean, yeah, I can see how you can be many people and not be a liar. You can be many people telling why about things. He said, maybe I'll omitted things. But I never lied. I never and I never cheated on my wife. So I think John lived the same life. He didn't cheat on his wife, even though he knew in his heart he wasn't stray. He just wanted to be so bad. And I don't really understand because his family. I did it meanly because I didn't want to lose my whole family. His family was okay, I'm being a dry queen. He changed and went and did this on his own. That was the most as riding thing to me.

00:25:30
Speaker 3: Brian also knows the feeling of relief when you do start to live in trees.

00:25:35
Speaker 5: Wife, it's so much better. I'm a whole person now. My mom, she said, the only thing I'm said about is we won't go get heaven together. And I go, well, that's okay, your heaven is fine. Mine is okay. Where I'm at, I said, I've spent a million years in hell. I'm in heaven right now.

00:25:51
Speaker 1: So for a really long time, guilt and shame had been my closest companions. For years, I would find myself curled in a ball under the piano, just weeping about it all and unsure of how I could go on. At times I contemplated taking my own life, but in coming out and living authentically in my true sexuality, the objects of the guilt and shame changed. Over the last fifteen years, I have been keenly aware of how the movement I was in hurt people. In leaving it, my eyes were open to all the harm that LGBT people had to face in society and churches, in school, in every aspect of life, and that I played a role in it. My quest now is to make amends to my brothers and sisters that I have hurt. In this podcast, I've wanted to pull back that curtain and show you how ministries like the one I was in operate about their goals and ambitions and how far they stretch, and to use my story and those of others to show how people get involved in the first place, because they still exist. This is alive and well and going on all across the United States. That is not propaganda. I'm saying that is fact. The name has changed, some of the players may be different, maybe the message has softened, maybe the emphasis on change has been hidden a little more. But it's still the same thing and the same bottle of snake oil being sold to impressionable youth, to young people, and to people who have been condemned by families, pastors, parents and friends to leave and abandon homosexuality, which is germane to who they are.

00:27:53
Speaker 3: Focus on the Family continues and its message remains the same. The LGBTQ plus lives are and they still talk about healing and restoration. According to Focus on the Family's own websites, It's Christian Councilor's network is comprised of thirteen hundred licensed therapists across the US who have been vetted by our team to provide ongoing, focus aligned care.

00:28:21
Speaker 1: It feels like as soon as one conversion therapy organization closes, another opens, often with the same people involved. I should know my ex wife, Ann Edward, is the executive director of Restored Hope Network. Her bio on the website says, and I quote, I know it's possible to be set free from sexual confusion, because that is my story. It is the testimony of thousands just like me. We at Restored Hope want to make sure all who seek the same healing we've experienced through surrendering ourselves to Jesus can have it. Be there.

00:29:00
Speaker 3: Story two Sexual confusion, as On puts, it is a well known smokescreen. The language has changed, but it's meaning hasn't.

00:29:11
Speaker 1: And Anne's bio still references the book we wrote together.

00:29:15
Speaker 3: We asked Anne if she'd speak to us for this series. She never responded. Wayne Besson isn't giving up the fight.

00:29:23
Speaker 2: Evangelical churches have three options. They can either accept us. They can have fire and brimstone, which doesn't pull well, it doesn't work. Are they can embrace X gay conversion programs, which is kind of a middle ground where they could pretend they love us and they're just trying to care about us in their surpy way. And given those three options, and those are the only three, they choose the X game. So until they're ready to accept us, we're going to have more of this and we're going to continue to fight. And the good news is it fails one hundred percent of the time. Everyone who speaks out in that industry is another John paulk in waiting. And I think our record proves that of having exposed these leaders over and over again, and we're going to expose more if we have to.

00:30:14
Speaker 3: These organizations see LGBTQ plus affirming churches as a theological or moral departure, and people like the Reverend Brandon Robertson as revisionists. So I asked Brandon what he would like to see happen in the future.

00:30:29
Speaker 6: One of the things I would like to see in the church today is a spotlight put on all of the churches that are clearly teaching conversion therapy or overtly anti LGBT theology. I also want us progressive Christians to do better at marketing, to be louder to make ourselves known.

00:30:50
Speaker 3: Brandon says there are things to look out for if you're trying to avoid conversion therapy in a church setting.

00:30:56
Speaker 6: Look for words like healing prayer, which by the way, is a very confusing one because progressive Episcopal churches use healing prayer as well. But usually you'll see something about unwanted same sex sexual attraction, healing prayer has also been called Immanuel prayer, and so if you're on a more conservative church website and you see the words Immanuel prayer, likely that's related to conversion therapy. The easiest way to determine where a church will stand on this issue is if you go to their doctrinal statement and if you see a church that says even something like the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, that tells you that the way that they're engaging with the Bible is as a perfect book in its English translation, meaning that they're using a version that says homosexuality, so they condemn homosexuality. You can also look for churches that say that they believe in a literal hell. That's another indicator that this is likely a church that has a fear based theology, which likely means that they're at least anti gay, but also likely involved with deliverance, reintegrate of therapy, conversion therapy, or healing prayer or something of the sort.

00:32:06
Speaker 3: There's also language around sex addiction and use of phrases like sexual brokenness.

00:32:12
Speaker 6: But I would also say the way you can tell the difference between a church that might do conversion therapy and one that want is that most progressive and inclusive churches these days go out of our way to let you know that we are not like the other churches. Most megachurches will use words like welcome. They might even use words like inclusion, but look for explicit mention of LGBT people or racial justice or women's rights.

00:32:38
Speaker 3: Brandon is a well known personality on social media. Often people refer to him as the TikTok Pastor, and he says that he's starting to see more and more videos on the platform of young people claiming to have been delivered from their sexuality, and in conversations around trans writes, he said, as there are some familiar echoes of the ex gay movement.

00:33:04
Speaker 6: The trans community and their relationship with conversion therapy is very similar to the LGBQ communities, and you're seeing a lot of narrative not just in religious spaces, but in conservative political spaces about the de transitioning movement, those people who transitioned at one point in their life and then made a decision to return to the gender identity of their birth. That happens, of course, just like there are people who are gay that choose not to be gay or live a gay lifestyle anymore. But that is a minority of a minority of a minority community. Do those people deserve protections and rights?

00:33:40
Speaker 7: Sure?

00:33:40
Speaker 6: Do they have the right to d transition, of course. But the narrative that a trans person should not be able to align their expression in the world with their internal gender reality, which I would argue is their God created gender identity, is the same argument when you look at a gay person and say you are attracted to the same sex, but you have to undo that in order to be loved by God.

00:34:07
Speaker 3: Casey Pick from the Trevor Project says acceptance benefits everyone as it allows for all people to put their whole cells out into the world.

00:34:16
Speaker 7: One of the things that is truly sad about people who put themselves through conversion therapy or who are subjected to these practices is the sheerer amount of exhausting energy it takes to police every thought, every action. Is this too gay? Am I acting correctly like a man or a woman? There's just so much energy that goes into that, and it causes so much pain.

00:34:47
Speaker 3: Advocates of conversion therapy often claim that it's about religious freedom.

00:34:55
Speaker 4: How do you respond to that?

00:34:58
Speaker 7: Well, speaking to the law at issue. The twenty seven states that have banned conversion therapy, those laws have nothing to do with what happens in a church or any other house of worship. They only apply to licensed professionals who are acting as professionals who are using that government issued license as a psychologist, as a marriage and family therapist. So in most cases, the discussion of religious freedom here is a non sequitur and a distraction.

00:35:32
Speaker 3: There's also an argument that you should be able to seek treatment or help if you want it, But on the other hand, we also ban medical interventions that are harmful, and things like pro anorexia websites have been banned in various places, and conversion therapy does happen in religious spaces.

00:35:53
Speaker 7: We have put together a resource that we called a Good Fruit Project that we did together with an organization called q Christian Fellowship that describes what these change efforts can look like in a faith context and identifies the mental health harms that we've seen associated with these change efforts in a religious context, which is so important to do that education on because again, the laws don't reach that kind of change effort, but we know that hearts and minds can, and we especially know that faith communities care about the health and well being of everybody in their flock, and so when they know that these practices cause harm, sometimes they change.

00:36:49
Speaker 3: And that goes a long and Wayne Besson, the man that photographed John in that gay bars so many years ago, now says it's about both him and John looking forward.

00:37:00
Speaker 2: Why you can't undo the past, you can impact and influence the future. And for him to take responsibility to do that is commendable. That's atonement, and that's more than most people would do. All ex gay leaders are also victims. They are preyed upon before they do the praying, and John was one of them. He was at one time looking for answers in life. He was going through a difficult period and he encountered people who pretended to have these answers. And he could have a community if all he did was give up who he was, and he did. And in that sense, you have to feel bad for John because before he was victimizing people, he in fact was a victim. And I think he recognizes that.

00:37:53
Speaker 1: Now Wayne and I have done a one point eighty where he used to be my chief nemesis to now I look at him as a comrade. And we're fighting for the same thing. We're on the same team. Even though I would have done things differently had I been him, I admire what he's set out to do, and that was what I'm trying to do. That shatter the notion of the X game movement altogether. And he was pivotal. And now I would turn to him and say thank you for doing what you did. Sometimes exposing somebody is the best thing. It was the best thing that happened to me.

00:38:34
Speaker 2: Actually, I think you have to take a victory when you could find it. Victory is that the guy on the cover of Newsweek, John Paulk, who was on Oprah, is now helping people come out of the closet. That's a victory. I'm happy about that, and I wish him well in life. I don't wish in the lifetime and misery. I hope if he's happy and productive. And that's all I asked, you know, That's all I ask.

00:39:06
Speaker 1: God, Party, I get him run you can run super fast, Jasper Well, Potty.

00:39:15
Speaker 3: Tell me about Portland.

00:39:16
Speaker 4: What's Portland like as a city?

00:39:18
Speaker 1: So you know Portland is the slogan of Portland is keep Portland Weird. So when we moved here gosh, thirty years ago now, Anne and I.

00:39:33
Speaker 6: It was the.

00:39:34
Speaker 1: Weirdest place, and it took us a long time to get used to it. Living here, with all the different kinds of people and the broad acceptance of things that wouldn't be accepted anywhere, has stretched me like a rubber band. My gay friends have helped stretch me a lot to accept things or to have tom pynce for things, and I've really grown in not just my tolerance, but my love and acceptance of people here.

00:40:08
Speaker 3: When I started working on this series, I thought I knew about conversion therapy. I'd spoken to friends about their experiences, I'd watched documentaries, I'd seen the movies. I thought it was all about evil parents forcing their children to endure great pain on a mission that is ultimately futile. I still think that's a part of it, but I've also learned about the desperation that drives people into conversion therapy for themselves and for their loved ones. It reflects how for some it's better to live a lie, or at the very least, to want to believe a lie, than it is to be open and out in our current world, and I think we should all be ashamed of that, because the pain it causes can last forever.

00:41:05
Speaker 1: I wonder as people listen to this how they will see me. I'm interested to know when it's all said and done and this project is complete, what people will think about my journey and my experience in my life as a whole. Would they see me as a victim or a perpetrator, or a confused kid or a loving man who just had to find himself. Maybe parts of all of that, Maybe parts of all of that, And that's something I can live with, I know. Just Oh, thank you. He's a sweetheart, enjoyed this beautiful day. Thank you. What would I say to young LGBTQ people today? They are perfect the way they are to embrace their authentic self, to be honest and open and free, and that there's a community of people who will embrace them. There's older brothers and sisters in this journey, and it will get better, and it does get better.

00:42:42
Speaker 4: Who is John Paulk.

00:42:47
Speaker 1: I'm a proud gay man, That's who John Paulk is. I am a fairly well adjusted, many quirks, many flawers, little broken pieces here and there. I am a contented, proud proud to be gay man, and I wear that label outlaud.

00:43:28
Speaker 3: Atonement. The John Polk Story was a production of iHeart Podcasts and gold Hawk Productions in association with Marx Media co. It was presented by John Polk and produced by me Kate Holland. The program consultant was Patrick Strudwick. Sound design and audio mix was by Femmi Oriogan Williams. The executive producer for gold Hawk was Alex Hollands. For Marx Media, the executive producer was lind Or Marx. If you've been affected by any of the topics covered in this series, you can find information and support at the links in the program descriptions. For more podcasts from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'd like to say a special thank you to Taylor Chaqoigne, Anna Stump and Kate Mansburger at iHeart, and thank you to Kerrie Luter and Hannah Marshall, and of course to you.

00:44:34
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening and for allowing me to share my story with you. I'm John Paulk and this was Atonement