‘That’s when the shame turned into self-hatred,’ One Toronto man shares his experience with conversion therapy

A Toronto scholar is highlighting the dark realities of an ongoing practice that has harmed thousands of 2SLGBTQIA+ people: Conversion therapy.

Conversion therapy refers to a range of practices, treatments or services that seek to change, suppress or repress a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression to conform with heterosexual or cisgender norms. Widely discredited by medical and mental health organizations, these practices can cause significant psychological harm to 2SLGBTQIA+ people.

In Canada, conversion therapy has been illegal under the Criminal Code since Jan. 7, 2022, when Bill C-4 came into force. The legislation criminalizes providing conversion therapy, promoting or advertising the practice, profiting from its provision and taking a child outside the country to undergo it.

But while the practice is now prohibited by law in Canada, it is permitted in other parts of the world, and its effects continue to shape the lives of many Queer people. Such as one Toronto man who underwent the therapy while studying in the U.S.

Conversion therapy at Liberty University

For Dr. Lucas Wilson, coming to terms with his sexuality as a Queer man meant confronting years of religious teachings that framed his identity as something that needed to be changed. Born and raised in Toronto, Wilson, 36, says he did not have a particularly religious childhood.

“But I chose to go to the world’s largest white Christian nationalist university when I was in my undergrad, and I didn’t understand it as a white Christian nationalist university at the time,” Wilson told Queer & Now. 

“Once I got there, I realized like this was not as much of an academic education as much as it was like an education in U.S. conservatism, both religious and political.”

It was while Wilson was enrolled in Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, that he began undergoing conversion therapy. At the time, he didn’t understand the experience as that, but instead believed he was receiving pastoral counselling that would help him remain faithful to his religion.

“I thought that this was the right thing to do,” Wilson explained. 

“It was there that I learned a lot of the rhetoric and the arguments against homosexuality and gender diversity,” he explained. “It was in my classes; it was in the water at the school. Everyone was against abortion, against Queer rights, was against literally anyone who didn’t look like them or believe what they believed.”

He explained that these conversations in conversion therapy marked one of the first times he’d ever openly discussed being a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. 

“There was one guy on MySpace, only one guy, and we talked about it,” Wilson explained, adding that this was in early high school, before he had joined the church, or had any experience with men. That first experience ironically happened not long after arriving at the college.

“It was two weeks into being at the school, and one of my spiritual life directors on my hall, we hooked up,” he laughed. 

Wilson explained that Liberty College’s leadership model involves two RAs, who oversee two spiritual life directors, who manage prayer leaders, who are then responsible for the rest of the student body.

“I hooked up with him, and then he wouldn’t talk to me. So I didn’t even have the chance to hash it out with him and talk about being Queer because he sort of stonewalled me,” Wilson shared. “So I then thought, well, I’m just going to go and meet with the pastor on campus, and that’s what I did.”

Wilson shared that throughout his undergrad he was regularly visiting the counselling office, but it made no difference to his sexual orientation. The academic shared that his ending up in conversion therapy was shaped, in part, by his upbringing. Although he didn’t grow up in a stereotypically religious household, he knew from an early age that coming out to his mother would be difficult.

“I knew growing up it was not going to be cute if I came out,” he said, explaining that this is part of the reason he remained closeted, as well as why he entered the church.

“I actually get to talk about this.”

At the time, he understood the sessions as an opportunity to discuss his attraction to men while trying to reconcile his sexuality with his faith.

“I actually get to talk about this secret that I’ve held for so long,” he recalled thinking.

But that sense of relief came with an expectation that his sexuality was something he needed to overcome. Wilson said the counselling reinforced the idea that 2SLGBTQIA+ people weren’t actually Queer but were instead struggling with same-sex attraction that could be changed.

Looking back, he said the most damaging effects emerged when he realized his sexuality wasn’t changing. He described the experience through the concept of “cruel optimism,” a term associated with cultural theorist Lauren Berlant that Wilson used to explain the hope he had placed in achieving heterosexuality.

Within the religious framework he had been taught, Wilson said, he came to believe that if God wanted him to change and he couldn’t, the problem must be with him.

“I was like, OK, so this isn’t just like I did something bad. It’s like I am bad,” he said, adding that this shift in perspective transformed feelings of guilt over having sexual relations or feelings for men, into shame directed at himself as a person.

“That’s when the shame then turned into self-hatred,” Wilson explained.

After leaving Liberty University, Wilson pursued further education, including graduate studies at McMaster University and theological studies at Vanderbilt University. He said his studies helped him recognize that 2SLGBTQIA+ identity and Christianity did not necessarily have to be incompatible.

“I started to realize that conversion therapy didn’t work, I was still very Queer, and that I didn’t agree with a lot of what I had been told, and that my education was terrible.”

“I went to Vanderbilt, and that’s when I took some coursework that was actually life-changing in the sense that I was, for the first time, realizing that you could be Queer and Christian,” he explained. 

“I’m not religious anymore, but at the time these were questions that were super important to me, and so I wanted to sort of reconcile my relationship between my sexuality and my spirituality, and so that was the place that really happened,” the scholar continued. 

As he pursued his PhD, Wilson says he left Evangelicalism behind, but is still fascinated by what brought him into the movement and into the conservative evangelical church, as well as how that plays out for others. 

Shame-Sex Attraction: Documenting Queer experiences with conversion therapy

Wilson’s experience eventually became part of Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy, a 2025 collection he edited that brings together 17 accounts from people who have experienced conversion practices. The book documents the experiences of survivors across Canada, the U.S. and Australia, with contributors describing their experiences in religious and secular settings.

For Wilson, the project offered an opportunity to amplify stories that challenge the pseudoscientific premise of conversion therapy and expose the harm these practices can cause. Wilson said editing Shame-Sex Attraction expanded his understanding of how conversion practices operate and the different forms they can take.

Before working on the collection, he had largely understood conversion therapy through his own experience. But reading the contributions revealed a broader range of experiences, including accounts from people who had encountered these practices in different religious and cultural contexts.

The editor says that working on the book was emotionally challenging at times, particularly when other survivors described experiences that reminded him of his own. One contributor, writing about travelling with his band in Australia, recalled experiencing anxiety around everyday activities such as showering because of religious teachings about temptation and masturbation. Wilson said the account brought back memories of how ordinary activities could become loaded with spiritual meaning.

“It was so exhausting to be in this mindset,” he said.

Despite those challenges, Wilson said the opportunity to help other survivors share their experiences made the work meaningful. The book’s central purpose is to document what happened to those who experienced conversion practices and ensure their stories are heard.

For Wilson, sharing survivors’ experiences is part of ensuring that future generations have access to stories and perspectives that may be missing from their own communities.

Through his research and writing, Wilson continues to examine how religious institutions shape understandings of sexuality and gender, and what happens to the people who are told that who they are must change. His next book, Don’t Ask, Tell All: Stories of Christian Colleges’ Anti-LGBTQ Regimes, will examine 2SLGBTQIA+ experiences at Christian colleges, universities, seminaries and divinity schools.

And while he recognizes that reaching young people who are still immersed in religious communities hostile to 2SLGBTQIA+ identities can be complicated, he wants young people who are struggling with their sexuality to know that their lives need not be defined by those teachings.

“There’s a really big Queer life waiting for you,” he said. “You have to go and find it.”