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Jasmyn Morris (JM): Welcome to another episode of the StoryCorps podcast from NPR… I’m Jasmyn Morris.
This season we’re honoring LGBTQ voices across the country, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.
And if you’ve been listening to StoryCorps for a while, you’ll know that sharing these stories is central to our mission… ever since our founder Dave Isay was making radio documentaries.
He actually made the first nationally broadcast documentary about Stonewall, which you’ll hear on next week’s episode. And Dave recorded his first interview for that project not long after his father came out to him as gay at the age of 52… Here’s Dave…
Dave Isay: The gay community has been through unbelievable struggles, just unimaginable kind of struggles. And it was met with both courage and tremendous humor, no matter how bad things got. So one of the things I have come to think in StoryCorps is that it’s people who have been through the hardest things that are kind of the collectors of wisdom in our culture and to me that means that the gay lesbian, bi, trans community has a hell of a lot of wisdom and a hell of a lot of things to teach us.
JM: So this week we’ll hear from people who’ve been through some of those unimaginable struggles…
Since the late 19th century, being gay was viewed by many in the medical field as a “disorder”… which led some doctors and religious leaders to try and cure it. From procedures… like shock therapy, chemical castration and even lobotomy… to behavior modification and talk therapy… what each approach has in common is the intended outcome: to try and change a person from gay to straight.
First, we’ll hear from a man who signed up for an experiment with that goal in mind…
Elwood Richardson (ER): I’m Elwood Richardson.
Rich Macgill (RM): My name is Rich Magill. My relationship to my partner – I haven’t thought of you as my partner but…
ER: Partners in crime…
RM: Yeah, my partner in crime…
JM: Elwood was 67 at the time of their recording, and here he tells his friend Rich about a time when his psychiatrist told him “he needed help for being gay.”
ER: I was 23 years old and in therapy.
RM: Alright, so you’re going to therapy because they think you’re gay and they don’t want you to be gay. Is that it?
ER: Oh yeah… So my psychiatrist told me about Dr. Robert Heath and the other psychiatrists over at Tulane. The project was to experiment and try to change my sexual lifestyle.
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JM: Dr. Robert Heath was the founder of Tulane University’s Department of Psychiatry and Neurology. In the 50s and all the way through the 70s, he ran experiments for the next few decades… where he’d surgically insert steel electrodes into patients brains to treat schizophrenia, depression, and other medical conditions. Eventually, he began using this technique on gay men.
And as a young man, Elwood voluntarily joined one of Dr. Heath’s studies…
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ER: Electrodes were implanted in my brain and they were to stay there for up to three years. And I was going to be part of that research but they just got the electrodes in and
the infection caused them to have to take them out immediately. And, because of the infection that set in, it was near death.
RM: Oh my god.
ER: So they couldn’t do any treatments to me.
RM: I don’t understand how it happened that these people proposed this and you were all for it.
ER: I was unhappy and it felt like a direction to me.
RM: You really wanted to do this?
ER: I felt like it was something that I had to do because, of course, I grew up Catholic so it was Catholic guilt.
RM: Yeah, but you know now that that is wrong?
ER: Well, I wouldn’t do it now. My homosexuality has blossomed.
RM: And I’ve only known you in the last few years that you’re just like a flower in the community. You’re like a lily in the field.
ER: Yeah…
RM: You know, when we first became friends, a few years ago, this was one of the stories you told me right away. It was something really important to you.
ER: Well, it’s intimate as I can get with anybody about my personal life. And, when I know people and love them like I love you, I want them to know all about what the psychiatric world did. I feel it’s a release to do that now. And I don’t have any malice for anyone but I need to get it out.
RM: I love you, Elwood.
ER: Thank you, sweetheart.
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JM: That was Elwood Richardson, talking with his friend Rich Magill in New Orleans, Louisiana back in 2006. They’ve both died since their recording…
Dr. Robert Heath went on to lead the Tulane Department of Psychiatry and Neurology for another two decades.
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Next, we’ll hear from a couple who found love after one of them spent years trying to repress his sexuality based on his religious beliefs…
David Seymour (DS): My name is David Seymour.
Joel Barrett (JB): And I’m Joel Barrett and I’m here with my husband, David.
Do you remember the first time you ever saw me?
DS: Of course… you made your interest very well known.
JB: I remember your very colorful striped-scarf and I used that as my entry point to have a conversation with you. And it’s been almost 13 years now…
DS: Uh-huh… When we first met, what I loved was your positivity, and, as we got to know each other more, I realized how much of a challenge that was coming from your background.
JB: I grew up very, very conservative, independent, fundamental Baptist. The churches I was in were very hateful, but–if it’s all you know–you just believe it and you think, this is my only option. And I always say I was a willing subject. I mean, I did all the right things. I married a woman; had three kids, went into ministry, pastored churches. I really believed that it would somehow zero out the wrong, and the wrong being that I was gay; you know, the sin of all sins, so to speak.
DS: Uh-huh…
JB: But, despite all of the right things I was doing, I knew that inside I was completely wrong, which is why I enrolled in ex-gay therapy through Exodus International to once and for all fix that. And it took a long time for me to realize that nothing was really changing.
So I remember I had that conversation with God where I said, Okay. I’ve tried it your way for 30-some years and it’s not working, and you know that, so from here on out, I’m going to live as a gay man. I refuse to live in fear and shame.
DS: That day, when you came out to yourself, what did you feel?
JB: (Laughs) I was going to say fear, which is ironic, but I was; I was scared. It was like I was at a pool and I had stuck my foot in the water, and then my next choice was either get in or get out.
JB & DS: (Laughter)
JB: So I literally just felt like I was taking a plunge into the pool, not even knowing how to swim.
I think that’s why when I met you, just a couple years after that I guess, what really attracted me to you was not your scarf…
DS: Don’t be hating on the scarf now. (laughs)
JB: …but was the energy that you bring of love and acceptance, because you met me at the end of a long dark tunnel and you helped me see the light.
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JM: That was Joel Barrett and his husband, David Seymour… in Kansas City, Missouri.
Conversion therapy has been widely discredited, but in Missouri, as in most of the country… there’s no law banning the practice. Only 18 states along with DC and Puerto Rico have limited this type of “therapy” for minors…
…and so after this short break… stories about parents who thought they were doing what was best for their kids.
Stay with us…
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JM: Welcome back…
Many people come to StoryCorps to sit down with a loved one and reflect on a meaningful time from their past. The StoryCorps archive at the Library of Congress is full of conversations like this… but some of these memories aren’t easy to talk about.
Nathan Hoskins sat down with his friend Sally Evans, where he told her about his childhood in rural Kentucky, and how he knew from early on… that he was gay.
And just a heads up, the next couple stories contain strong language.
Nathan Hoskins (NH): When I was in sixth grade, I had met a good friend, and he wasn’t interested in girls. One day, he said, ”I have a Valentine’s Day card for you.”
I asked him for it, and he said it was so special that he mailed it. And he didn’t know he’d done a very terrible thing because at my house, only one person got the mail–and that was my mother.
On the way home, I was trying to plan how I would get that letter but, when I got off the bus, Mom had already checked the mail. My mom came out and met me on the front steps. She had that envelope, and I could tell what it was because it had little hearts on it, and you know, it was all cute and everything–and she’d asked me if I had read it. And I said, ”No.” And she made me read it, and I did everything I could to lie and convince my mother I did not solicit that.
And she took me into the house and pulled her shotgun out of the closet. She loaded it in front of me and put it in my hands and told me to hold on to that. She led me outside and she put me in the back of the car. And she drove out into the country–now, when I say ”country,” it’s no man’s land. She stopped on the side of the road–and I’d been holding the shotgun in my hands the entire time. And she led me out into the woods. She stood me up against a tree. She took the shotgun out of my hands and she put it to my head. And she said, ”This is the tree that I’d take my son to and blow his head off if he ever decided to be a faggot.”
And at that moment, I knew I had to do whatever it took to not be gay. And I tried very hard and I was a great liar for many years. Probably two years ago, I asked her about that. I said, ”Mom, remember this?” And she would laugh. I said, ”Mom, I just want to hear one time that what you did was wrong.” And she couldn’t say it.
Sally Evans (SE): So did she acknowledge that it happened?
NH: Oh yes, oh yes… You know, I guess she really did think that she was doing the right thing then. I was always trying very hard to please others as a child, but as an adult, I look back and I say, I am who I’m supposed to be. There was never another alternative.
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JM: That’s Nathan Hoskins with his friend Sally Evans at StoryCorps in 2011. He eventually came out to his mother… and they stopped talking completely. Nathan is now raising a family of his own with his partner.
Next, we’ll hear from Samuel Taylor who also had a difficult relationship with his mother, Connie Casey. But they’ve remained in touch and they sat down together at StoryCorps… back in 2013, to talk about when he came out to her as a teenager…
Samuel Taylor (ST): There was a very long pause, what seemed like hours, and you said, “Why do you think you’re gay?” And that will always stick with me. It represents the fact that we really didn’t know anything about each other.
Connie Casey (CC): For me it was a real genuine moment of trying to understand. I remember saying, “Well it doesn’t matter to me. You’re my son. I love you no matter what.” But I blamed myself; you know, it’s because I’m a single mom and I don’t know how to raise a son, and there needs to be a man around here. Somehow I did this to you and now you were going to be relegated to a life of horror. And that is why I had to fight so hard to fix that. So I began to do lots of research.
ST: I remember there were several pieces of literature that you either had me read on my own or I remember the one that we read before bed each night.
CC: We would read them together and have discussion about the material…
ST: Yeah…
CC: And then I took you to someone who would be very loving and open but, at the same time, obviously they had a similar belief system to me.
ST: At this point, I had boughten into the ideas. I had really thought that I could change who I was and change this part of me. You feel like being gay is like a virus. It’s like, you have to get rid of this because this is what you’re doomed for. And I thought, well I can, of course, behave like a straight man. I think I told you that I didn’t want to be gay. I started using that language–That’s not the lifestyle I want. I only said those things because those were things that I had heard other people say.
JM: Samuel continued this so-called conversion therapy until he went away to college… and his relationship with his mom was rocky at best.
ST: When I got to a point where I was starting to feel more comfortable with who I was, I looked back at that and said, well what the fuck? I could have come to this conclusion five years ago. But to be completely honest, I didn’t care whether you accepted me or not.
CC: That was the first time that I really felt in my heart that it was time to take a look at everything that I’d ever been taught to believe. And I felt sadness that, at the end of the day, perhaps I wasn’t as good of a parent as I thought I was.
ST: Those couple of years were very hard for both of us. But when I had come home sophomore year, I saw on the fridge a magnet. And on the magnet was a rainbow heart that says, love is spoken here. So I knew that you had changed.
CC: You know, I’m not part of my church anymore. I don’t have some of those same friends and connections. I would not be accepted in that circle. I wouldn’t be comfortable in that circle any longer.
ST: I can tell you right now, that I would never have come to understand what parents go through had I not seen you evolve. And so, what kind of advice could you give to a parent who has not come to that same conclusion?
CC: I guess the overriding feeling is that no matter how strongly you think you believe something, at the end of the day, you just always have to love and accept your kid. It’s non-negotiable as far as I’m concerned.
ST: I don’t think I’ve ever told you that I completely and 100% forgive you. It’s part of what we had to go through to get to where we are today. And for that I’m not only forgiving, I am grateful.
CC: If this were to be the last five minutes of conversation that I ever got to have with you–and I think you already know these things but it doesn’t hurt to say it again–I’m so sorry, and I could not be more proud of the human being that you are. You’re just an amazing, awesome human being.
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JM: That’s Connie Casey… with her son, Samuel Taylor, who she sent to a series of ex-gay conversion therapy ministries affiliated with Exodus International…
They recorded their StoryCorps interview back in 2013. And one month later… Exodus International folded… admitting this type of therapy didn’t work and was harmful to those who experienced it.
ST: My name is Samuel Taylor and it’s been 6 years since I sat down to interview and talk with my mom.
JM: We recently decided to check in with Samuel for an update.
ST: My family has really settled into what it’s like to be a family with queer kids.
Jasmyn Morris (JM): Okay, so you said queer kids plural?
ST: I did. [Laughs] So my brother decided to steal the spotlight from me by coming out as well. We joke that I walked so that he could run. That’s probably my favorite thing that’s developed over the last several years. [Laughs] And my mom has had to become more comfortable realizing both of my kids might end up marrying a man. And she actually said, “I want to plan the wedding.”
And, uh, now she actually marches when she volunteers for Pride. We had never gone to a Pride together, so she flew out to St Louis, where I was living at the time, and she went all out, rainbow colored eyelashes and rainbow gear from head to toe. I believe she had a wig too. She loved it.
It’s a bit ironic to me, looking back. My mom’s marching in LGBT Pride parades? If you would have told me at 15, I would have been like there’s no way.
JM: Does she still have that magnet on her fridge?
ST: She does. I actually went home in November and I just like… I’m such a mess when I see it. But it’s sad because it fell and broke within the last few years and we had to glue it back together…but…
JM: Well, that’s kind of a metaphor?
ST: Isn’t it? In a weird way, it’s like she broke my heart but then we glued it back together.
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JM: That’s all for this week’s episode…
It was produced by Jud Esty-Kendall, Aisha Turner, and me. Our production assistant is Afi Yellow-Duke. Our engineer is Jarrett Floyd. Natsumi Ajisaka is our fact-checker. Special thanks to StoryCorps facilitators Veronica Ordaz, Whitney Henry-Lester, Soo Na Pak, and Jacqueline Van Meter.
To see original artwork created for this season… and for more information on the music you just heard… Go to StoryCorps – dot – org.
And while you’re there, find instructions on how to participate in Stonewall OutLoud. We’ll continue sharing excerpts from your interviews! Here’s Frank Conway at StoryCorps talking with a friend about not being out to his father when he was a young man…
Frank Conway (FC): My dad had given me this Catholic pamphlet and he said, “I really want you to read that.” It was about conversion therapy and I thought, oh my god.
I’d always gotten along okay with my father but I was kind of scared of him. So I remember thinking, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
But I said, “I’ve read it dad.” He goes, “Can you believe that bullshit? Can you believe that they think they can change the way you were born?
And I was so shocked and I hugged my dad and started crying and I said, “You’ll never know how much this means to me.” It was his way of saying, I know who you are and I love you for the way you were born.
JM: We’re asking you, listeners, to participate in Stonewall OutLoud and help us preserve these stories – especially those of LGBTQ elders… before they are lost to history.
All you need is a mobile device and the StoryCorps app. For more information… go to storycorps.org – slash- outloud.
For the StoryCorps podcast, I’m Jasmyn Morris. Thanks for listening.
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