John J. Smid is the former director of the

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. Situated along the Mississippi River, it had a population of 633,104 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of municipalities in Tenne ...

ex-gay The ex-gay movement consists of people and organizations that encourage people to refrain from entering or pursuing same-sex relationships, to eliminate homosexual desires and to develop heterosexual desires, or to enter into a heterosexual re ...

ministry Love in Action, a group that claims to convert

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

s and

gay men Gay men are male homosexuals. Some bisexual men, bisexual and homoromantic men may dually identify as ''gay'' and a number of gay men also identify as ''queer''. Historic terminology for gay men has included ''Sexual inversion (sexology), in ...

heterosexuality Heterosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or Human sexual activity, sexual behavior between people of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or ...

Career

During his time directing Love in Action, Smid faced controversy over the organization's treatment of gay teens in their youth program "Refuge". Smid subsequently resigned his position in 2008, and in 2010 apologized for any harm he had caused, noting that his teen program "further wounded teens that were already in a very delicate place in life". In 2011, three years after leaving Love In Action and stepping down from its leadership, Smid announced he was still homosexual and stated he had "never met a man who experienced a change from homosexual to heterosexual." In 2012, Smid wrote and self-published the memoir ''Ex'd Out: How I Fired the Shame Committee''. In the 2018 film '' Boy Erased'', based on the book of the same name, the character Victor Sykes, portrayed by

Joel Edgerton Joel Edgerton (born 23 June 1974) is an Australian actor and filmmaker. He is known for his portrayal of Will McGill on the first two seasons of the Australian drama series'' The Secret Life of Us'' (2001–02), and for playing Owen Lars in t ...

, is based on Smid. A November 2018 '' Radiolab'' podcast titled ''UnErased: Smid'' features Smid's life story.

Personal life

Before claiming he had changed from homosexuality to heterosexuality, Smid lived for years married to a woman and fathering children. It was during this marriage that he said he was gay, divorcing his first wife in 1980. Four years following his divorce, Smid became a Christian and sought conversion from homosexuality to heterosexuality. He married a second time, but by 2011 said, “I would consider myself homosexual and yet in a marriage with a woman.” By November 2014, Smid had divorced his second wife and married Larry McQueen. The couple live in

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

References

External links

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LGBTQ+ Voices: Interview with John Smid
LGBTQ+ Oral History Collection (UNO-0240), Archives and Special Collections, University of Nebraska at Omaha Libraries. {{DEFAULTSORT:Smid, John American evangelicals People self-identified as ex-ex-gay American gay writers Living people Conversion therapy practitioners LGBTQ Evangelicals 21st-century American male writers American Protestant ministers and clergy Year of birth missing (living people) Gay Christians