“Boy Erased” and “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” – Two Films Expose Harm of “Conversion Therapy”

by SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD

     Viewing two recent films, The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Boy Erased, led to the necessity for a deeper understanding of the history and practice of conversion therapy, the central focus in each of these recently released films.  To be clear, no actor plays the central role in these high quality works.  Instead, this role belongs to the practice that is, in essence, conversion therapy – a practice existing for one purpose only — to obliterate all expressions of homosexuality and bisexuality.

     Nearly 700,000 people have undergone conversion therapy. A study released by the Williams Institute at UCLA found that 20,000 LGBT youths age 13-17 will be subjected to conversion therapy by licensed mental health professionals, as well as 57,000 by religious or spiritual advisors. A new study by the Family Acceptance Project looked at the sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) experiences of 245 LGBT white and Latino young adults. These include external efforts (“conversion interventions”) and family/caregiver efforts.

     In the 1950s and ‘60s, conversion therapy for gay males focused on “aversion treatment” -- combining electric shock treatment, hallucinogenic drugs, and drugs to induce vomiting with photos and films of naked men.  Alleviation of pain and sickness came with photos and films of naked women. The first time I witnessed this graphic, unforgettable, sickening horror was in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange.  More recently, in 2013, the trauma of aversion methodology was brilliantly portrayed by actor David Berry in the acclaimed Australian series, A Place to Call Home, which covered a span of time from 1954 to 1958.  Berry plays a married gay man in an aristocratic family who enters a hospital to change his sexual orientation.  The part took its toll on Berry and his wife to the extent that the actor was quite ambivalent when the series was renewed.

     Recent adaptations of conversion therapy portrayed in the two new films are led by fundamentalist Christian groups, who turn from “disease” to religion to attempt to disguise and justify the emotional abuse employed to change one from gay to straight.  Central in both Cameron Post and Boy Erased is viewing homosexuality as the work of the devil and reliance on social skill training, intense religious prayer, and relentless pressure to obliterate gay attraction. In Boy Erased, a character is also subjected to monstrous physical abuse, resulting in predictable catastrophe.

      The Miseducation of Cameron Post, adapted from Emily M. Danforth’s fictional accounting in a young adult novel, stars the versatile Chloë Grace Moretz as Cameron Post, a parentless high school student in the 1990s, whose kind but misguided custodian aunt sends her to a therapy center known as God’s Promise after she is humiliated when her male date (and others) find her in a car having passionate sex with a female student she cares for deeply.  For authenticity, director Desiree Akhavan and co-writer Cecilia Frugiuele studied actual sermons and materials used in such centers.   

     Consultant to the film, Matthew Shurka, who now works for the Born Perfect campaign to end conversion therapy, explained that such centers teach that all are born heterosexual, and that when childhood traumas and poor parenting are confronted, same-sex attraction will be eliminated.  The film, true to this research, had its world premier at Sundance in January 2018, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Drama, the festival’s highest honor. Despite this acclaim, Cameron, directed by a bisexual, Iranian-American -- with a diverse cast of non-celebrities -- struggled to find distribution, while Boy Erased, rich with celebrity casting, and written and directed by a white male, was released with ease by a major company, Focus Features. 

     Directed by Joel Edgerton, Boy Erased, stars the gifted Lucas Hedges as Jared Eamons, and is based on the 2016 memoir by Garrard Conley:  Conley describes entering the conversion center, Love in Action, in 2004 at age 19, after being outed to his parents by a college friend he trusted, who in uncontrolled frenzy raped him in his first sexual experience.  In the film rendition, Nicole Kidman plays Jared’s mother Nancy Eamons, a perceptive, dutiful, repressed wife and hairdresser. Russell Crowe is Jared’s father Marshall Eamons, an arch conservative Baptist clergyman, with a successful car dealership.  Edgerton plays Victor Sykes, the center’s chief therapist, a terrifying sadist who poses as a proponent of tough love.

     Historically, in 1935, Sigmund Freud wrote that homosexuality was “…nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness.” However, many younger psychoanalysts, including his daughter Anna, differed and urged attempts of “cures.”  Sadly, by the 1930s and continuing for decades, many psychiatrists and physicians viewed homosexuality as largely incurable perversions.  In this climate conversion therapy, now disavowed in the medical community, was born. To combat damaging, permeating attitudes and dangerous harassment, gay rights organizations were formed beginning in the 1950s.

     The American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a mental disorder in early editions of the Diagnositic and Statistical Manual (DSM), removing it in 1973 at the urging of gay rights activists, a move endorsed by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). It was not until 1987 that related diagnoses of Sexual Orientation Disturbance (SOD) and Ego-Dystonic Homosexuality (EDH) were removed from the DSM. 

     As of August 2018, fourteen U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and some counties and municipalities had passed laws banning the practice of conversion therapy on minors.  Numerous medical, psychological, and social work organizations stand firmly against conversion therapy. In a 2015 policy statement, NASW reaffirmed its “stance against reparative therapies and treatments designed to change sexual orientation or to refer to practitioners or programs that claim to do so.” The ethical violations of this type of “practice” are dire.  The Ohio Counselor, Social Worker, and Marriage and Family Therapist Board recently issued a guidance on Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE) and gender identity, stating that SOCE methods can be harmful to clients (especially minors) and that licensees can be disciplined when they use a practice or intervention that harms a client.  

     Neither The Miseducation of Cameron Post nor Boy Erased culminates in a predictable ending, and each offers excellent ensemble acting in its depiction of the complexity of family relationships, the relationships of those in each center, and the disastrous implications of systemic shame and humiliation.

     While Boy Erased provides a more intense family drama brought to light by acclaimed actors, in Cameron devastating loneliness is depicted by Chloë Grace Moretz, and the relationship between the head of God’s Promise, Reverend Rick (John Gallagher, Jr.) and his sister Dr. Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle), which highlights sibling subjugation and emotional imprisonment, is both devastating and unforgettable. 

     Regardless of consummate acting, however, there remains only one central role in each of these important screen presentations. That role belongs to the monster known as conversion therapy.  

SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD, whose private and pro bono clinical social work practice is in Philadelphia, is a certified group psychotherapist and family life educator. She is a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pennsylvania chapter of NASW, and the 2013 NASW Media Award for Best Article. SaraKay is the author of Whoever Said Life Is Fair, Setting YourSelf Free, and Burnout and Self-Care in Social Work. Her writing has been published in peer-reviewed journals, newspapers, and blogs. SaraKay's professional life continues to be devoted to highlighting destructive societal forces through communication, advocacy, and activism. Read more about her work at SaraKaySmullens.com.