Race Matters Episode 94: Dr. Lucas Wilson and the Queer Experience at Evangelical Colleges

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:01][music] [music] [music] Welcome to Race Matters. I am your co-host Jeff Baker joining my co-host Eddie Carson. And like we do every episode, we're leaning into the nomenclature and exploration of race, class, gender, culture, all those issues that seem to divide us, but also allow us space to listen, learn, and to bridge our divides. As always, we're coming to you first on WJOP Japa Radio 96.3 FM in Newbury Port, Massachusetts, and then later on Soundcloud and YouTube. And before we get started, let me share a point of personal privilege. Listeners will know that I live in Alabama, which is pretty far removed from Newbury Port.

[00:01:05]But last week, I was driving my daughter home from college in Maine, and for a few miles, I got to tune in to Japa Radio for just a few minutes, and it was a joy to hear the station on real terrestrial radio for the first time.

[00:01:20]So, I feel like very much at home uh now in Newbury Port. Um, Carson, always good to see you. Uh, please tell us who's joining us today, >> brother. Absolutely. Folks, um, you know me, I'm excited every week because we bring you amazing guests. And here with us, um, we're we're we're we're humbly here to have Professor Dr. Lucas Wilson.

[00:01:44]Professor Wilson's a social sciences is is a professor of social sciences in the humanities. He does does research from a council post-doal fellow at the University of Toronto.

[00:01:56]He's formerly the justice equity and transformation postdoc fellow at the University of Calgary.

[00:02:04]A current humanist thought fellow through the American Humanist Association. Professor Wilson is the editor of shame, excuse me, of shame sex attraction survival stories of conversion therapy. Hopefully, we'll get into that a little bit more through this episode. He's also the author of At Home with the Holocaust, Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second Generation Holocaust Literature, published through Rucker University Press, which received the George Schnister first book publication award. His public-f facing writing has appeared in the advocate which I read daily uh LGBTQ nation and religion dispatches among other venues. He is currently working on two new anthologies.

[00:02:57]One, don't ask tell all stories of Christian colleges anti- queer regimes.

[00:03:04]And this one is under contract with the University of Georgia Press and I believe it is going to be coming out quite soon. Uh and his other one is Quee and Trembling, stories of LGBTQ plus religious trauma. And this one's under contract with Jessica Kingsley Publishers. My friend, we are we're we're delighted to have you here and you have quite the resume, the scholarship, and the the live narrative and experiences that I think a lot of people want to hear and they want to know. And so I I just I'm going to jump in here and everything too.

[00:03:42]I'm going to go ahead and say the typical sis straight thing cuz that's what folks do. I congregate in communities with queer folks, right? Because you got to do that just to make sure that folks kind of appreciate and think that you're in and everything. But yet the reality though is that everyone's narrative is different. Their story is different. Their trajectory is different. And while you're highly accomplished, tell us a little bit about your own personal narrative and how you've gotten to the point to where you are right now.

[00:04:14]>> Yeah. Uh first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

[00:04:19]Second of all, I'm wildly underdressed.

[00:04:21]Uh I see both I see two collars and I see uh uh not no collar on my around my neck. So uh please forgive me. And third of all, >> uniform, my friend, just uniform. Don't worry about anything else. Look, this is what I look like when I'm wearing the grass.

[00:04:35]>> My gosh. Uh a dapper man. I Well, you know what? To answer your question, uh and enough of this. Yeah. Uh prefacing um I am Lucer Lucas Wilson like you said Ed um Redbird um and I am from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I'm the youngest of five kids uh born and raised in this uh well Canada's biggest city but um I eventually made the move down to the States and we'll talk more about that. I went down to uh Liberty University which is Jerry Fwell school. For those who know who Jerry Fwell is, you know what kind of school this is. For those who don't know who Jerry Fwell is, count your blessings. Um, and but for me, I mean, to rewind, I was not raised in a religious family. I was raised in, you know, a pretty typical Canadian family.

[00:05:25]My dad was agnostic. Um, though my mom, I always say at this point, she was haunted by her Baptist demons with with whom she grew up, you know, and so that sort of came into the house and and permeated the space. Um, and for me, I mean, we went to church on and off when I was little, but it was never a regular thing, per se. Uh, you know, up until about grade three, you know, here and there we'd be at Forward Baptist Church, which is quite comparable to the Southern Baptist tradition, but in Canada, we had the Fellowship Evangelical Baptist tradition, blah, blah, blah. Um, but I was raised in this home and again, most of or my siblings because I was the youngest, they all had more exposure to church than I did. Um, so by the time I got into high school, um, you know, we had stopped going to church for years at that point. Again, when I was little, we had gone, but for by by grade two or three, we had stopped. But like any good Canadian family, we went to the cottage instead.

[00:06:16]So, uh, by high school, it was just before high school, my brother got really into the creation versus evolution debate. And I, he was like, Luke, I I I got a bunch of DVDs by this guy named Ken Hovind. And if you know who Ken Hovind is, he was Dr. Dino from Pensacola, Florida. He eventually went to jail because he said the money he owed the government was God's money and not the governments. The government clearly disagreed. Um, so he went to prison, but at the time he had all these like DVDs and these resources. And my brother was like, "Do you want to watch these DVDs with me?" And I was like, "No, [laughter] I don't want to watch DVDs about creation versus evolution.

[00:06:51]I'm like I'm like 13. Like, leave me alone." And so he eventually convinced me and I started watching these these debates between Ken Hovind and folks he would invite to debate him which typically included you know university uh professors or researchers or whatever. So I start watching these DVDs and Ken Hovind like a lot of these creationists and a lot of you know evangelicals in general was sort of had this like bombastic really um intense way of debating. And of course when you're a kid you know it's fun and it's exciting. And so I was kind of hooked like I was like okay like who's this Kenhovven character start watching it keep watching it you know all these DVDs and then eventually I make my way to the worldwide web and I'm on like answers genesis.com you know Ken Hovind's website um and looking at all of these you know again websites resources talks about creation versus evolution. Long story short, I got hooked. And by the time that I realized that I was, you know, I believed in, you know, an intelligent designer. I believed that there was a God. I thought to myself at my, you know, about, you know, 13 years old, you know, it must be the God that I, you know, worshiped when I went to for Baptist Church down the street. So, you know, I didn't do that much research clearly and I just kind of went to the church that I had gone to when I was young. And all through high school, I went to this church. I mean, I don't even think I missed a service or a, you know, youth Wednesday night youth group meeting until like a few years into going back to this church. So, I got heavily plugged in. I was, you know, the the youth pastor took a liking to me.

[00:08:27]Um, I was on student leadership quite quickly and it was just, you know, and I converted within that time. Um, uh, probably around, you know, November, December, January after starting at this, um, youth group in September. So, I was at this uh church and in about grade 11, I think it was grade 11, I my uncle or my my mom's cousin, he was the national recruiter for Liberty University in Canada. And so, he says to me, he's like, and he knew I had become a Christian because none of my other siblings had, none of my other cousins had. I, you know, other than his family, um, and a few other, you know, relatives. Uh, so he was super excited that I was a Christian. And so he says to me, he's like, "Do you want to come down to Liberty?" And he's like, "A free trip to Virginia?" And I was like, "Free trip to Virginia? What? No. Like [laughter] I don't want to go to Virginia. Uh, like Lynchberg, Virginia? No. I that doesn't sound at all appealing." Anyway, he's like, "No, NO, NO. YOU'LL LIKE IT. I promise you'll enjoy." And so he convinced me and off I go on a charter bus down to Virginia and I make my way to Liberty's campus. Well, >> wait. They they spring for a bus? I just want to be >> say the same thing.

[00:09:38]No flight. [laughter] >> No, because what happened was this is what they would do. They they had it called they had a thing called college for a weekend. Seaffa and Sefaw would would uh they would I guess get a bunch of chartered buses from across uh the country and into Canada and they would convince you know students to sign up for it. So most students I think paid like 60 or 70 or $100 whatever it was and then because he ran the trip I didn't have to pay. And so then all of these buses would come in and it would be like hundreds of students showing up to to Liberty's campus for this weekend and it was this big promotional event where they were trying to get students to sign up to go to Liberty. They'd offer scholarships and prizes and all this kind of stuff, right? So I get down on this bus and I get to campus. And here's the thing, gentlemen.

[00:10:28]Everything's bigger in the US. like Canada, God bless her, but like she's just not exciting in comparison to what y'all do in the US. So, I get down onto this campus and of course like including campus experiences like the the US campus experience. My gosh. Like we have frost week, which is, you know, the first week where you, you know, you slide around on like mattresses and like, you know, whatever, like get drunk or whatever, but like in the US it's like amped up times 10, 20, 30. I mean, I don't do math very well, but you know, you get the point. And so I get down there on campus and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, look at this place. It's huge."

[00:11:05]Like the campus itself was giant.

[00:11:07]Everything was squeaky clean. I mean, the students were squeaky clean. They, you know, wore collared shirts to class largely because they had to wear collared shirts to class. Um, they had a dress code. Like everything just looked so exciting. And Jerry Fwell, again, the founder of Liberty, used to always say, "If it's Christian, it ought to be better." So, I hear this and I'm hooked.

[00:11:25]Like, the propaganda is strong. And I'm like, "Okay, uh, this is Christian, it's better." And so, you know, there was like a concert. I don't know if it was like Switchfoot or like, you know, Michael W. Smith or like Jeremy Camp. I don't know.

[00:11:35]>> Oh, we know them all.

[00:11:37]>> Yeah. all all the classics show up. But, you know, I so I I get there and and again, I'm just like enamored with this campus. I went to, you know, one of the the uh what do they call it? The history of life courses, which was the creationist, you know, science, quote unquote, if we can use the word science for creationism, uh you know, for this course and I show up and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, like this professor is so cool." Anyh who, I was just again like I fell in love immediately. So, I was like, "This is the place for me." Well, when I'm there, one of the things I see on the announce where they project the announcements on campus for like in the chapel service, they call it convocation. It's in the basketball stadium. And on the uh where they where they project the worship lyrics, they also would project these announcements for on-ampus happenings and things you could do or whatever. Well, one of the announcements, I'm looking at it and it says something along the lines of like, "Do you struggle with samesex attraction?" And I was like, "Guilty."

[00:12:30]And so I it says if you do like contact this this person on campus Dane Emer. So I clock that and I'm like okay like Dane Emerick who's this? So I go to my buddy John and I was like yo John who's this uh who's this Dane Emerick guy on campus like what's that you know Tom Foolery about uh sh you know samesex attraction blah blah blah. And he says well there's a guy on campus and he works with two groups of students. Those who are addicted to porn you can't be addicted to porn. and those who are addicted to homosexuality. You can't be addicted to homosexuality, right? All research backs up both of those claims, but I digress.

[00:13:04]And so I of course, you know, am like, okay, then there's a guy on campus, a pastor I can meet with and I can clear up this, you know, pesky issue of homosexuality that I've been dealing with my entire life. So I go home to Canada. I'm watching all these videos and whatever any information I could find about him or other, you know, uh, exgay speakers that Liberty Invites, all this kind of stuff. And I when I eventually made my decision where I was going to go, it was between in the end University of Toronto, which is, you know, one of Canada's best, and then Liberty University, one of well, the world's worst. And so I made the really wise decision to go to Liberty. But the main motivating factor for why I actually chose to go to Liberty was because of their conversion therapy program. Now, I didn't conceptualize it as conversion therapy at the time. might conceptualized it as pastoral counseling for those who were again struggling with quote unquote samesex attraction. Um, which is Christian for gay. Um, but I instead uh, you know, eventually I said that's where I need to be because if I'm going to remain an evangelical, I can't uh be gay or queer and I don't want the other option which is a life of celibacy. It doesn't sound like, you know, too much fun. Um, I need to change and become straight. So, I made the decision to go to Liberty. And so, off to Liberty I go. And for four years, I went through their conversion therapy program. Uh, and then, and we can talk more about that, uh, most certainly. But I want to answer your question, which I'm still about. I I'll speed it up, I promise. Um, and so I'm there, I graduate from Liberty, and then I went on and I did, you know, uh, mostly studied religion and literature. um and eventually uh I was really uh focusing my academic work on Holocaust studies. I looked at um the anticedants of the Holocaust and then I looked at uh the aftermath of the Holocaust. So I looked at how Christian theology laid the seedbed for the Holocaust and then I looked at how uh I looked at the intergenerational transmission of trauma between Holocaust survivors, their kids and their grandkids. And when I was doing this work, I mean, I of course was noticing the the cultural and religious and political shift that was happening in the US. And I mean, growing up, it wasn't, you know, a good it wasn't like a a good situation for uh LGBTQ communities, but it was getting worse and worse. And so I started to shift my focus to more so concentrate on white Christian nationalist understandings of gender and sexuality, uh, particularly looking at conversion therapy within the movement and within these contexts. And so um I applied for my first postoc to work on a project uh related to conversion therapy and white Christian nationalism and uh gender and sexuality in particular uh the cont particular particularly in the context of higher education. Uh and then I did my other postoc with the same focus in mind and my current posttock will be ending in August of 2026 and so I'm you know in hot pursuit of another opportunity that'll pay me. So, I'm not uh living uh well uh outside of my apartment. I want to stay, you know, and and continue to pay rent. So, uh that's really uh the goal at this point. But yeah, that's the work I do. Uh and again, all of that I'm excited to to chat about any anything that stands out >> there. There's an there's an [clears throat] interesting uh uh place in your story there that I'd like to ask you to connect. uh you you said you you jumped sort of from four years at Liberty uh going through it's uh what what you're describing which is conversion therapy uh ministries, pastoral counseling, that sort of thing which you sought out which is really interesting and then there's a there's a piece of your story that then leads you to studying Christian nationalist theological grounding uh of anti-LGBT um uh connections that even that even connect in your work to the anticedance of the Holocaust. So, can you bridge that divide a little bit from having experienced those four years uh and and what those four years taught you perhaps about yourself and then how that connects to your work right now, which is which is critical of it. Let's be clear, I think.

[00:17:14]>> Yeah. So I I always say that Liberty was not so much an academic education because it wasn't. um it was more so a crash course in US conservatism in the sense of both religious and political conservatism which increasingly I'm not sure what the difference is but um you know I think that Liberty gave me a few tools to begin to get myself out of that evangelical world um in the sense that for me as a Canadian I was ever um I never bought into the white Christian nationalist narrative in the US.

[00:17:58]>> Um there is there are white Christian nationalists in Canada, don't get me wrong. Um I just was never one of them.

[00:18:04]Um and I think that seeing Liberty's flagrant display of patriotism, which is not just patriotism, it is of course white Christian nationalism. Um emphasis on the white, I think. um less on the Christian, but neither here nor there.

[00:18:22]Um and I think that this showed me what I didn't want to be. Um this showed this really ticked me off to be honest. I remember they would they had this thing called Constitution Week at Liberty and Constitution Week was a celebration of the Constitution. Well, at Liberty at the time there were about 10,000 12,000 students and about a thousand of those students were international. So it's like essentially a tenth of your population is not from this country. And yet they would go on and on and on about how the US was the best country in the world. And they use these terms um like over and over and over. Um and we would the Canadians and the international students like we kind of would be like looking at each other like what the hell is going or we would have said what the heck right? Um what the heck is going on here? And you know, one time I remember they had the speaker, I think he was a former elected official from Ohio, if I'm not mistaken, and he used to come in and and pump, you know, American tires, like really really uh, you know, was this American exceptionalist narrative that he would promote. And he would say things like, "We invented this and this and this." And he included the telephone and aviation. And you're never going to convince a Canadian that anyone in the US invented the telephone. like Alexander Graanbell who was in Canada like the Maritimes invented the telephone like this is not like up for debate like we know that this is the case and so we were like what and then aviation I mean Brazil has a different narrative Australia has a different narrative so you know let's talk more about that so we one time I went up to the guy I was like yo I was like I think Bob something I was like whatever his name was governor blah blah blah whatever um and I was like yo I hope I hope you know and there were a number of us we all kind went together. We're like, "We just want to really fact check you real quick. Like you you referenced this and this and there might have been something else." We said, "These are these are not this is not accurate. Like you realize like and we gave we sort of laid out what I just said and he says well you know you know uh history is a funny thing isn't it?" And we were like wait what you are a politician aren't you? Like you just you screwed that question or statement whatever. Um anywh who it was so that seeing that up close and then being in classes where they would say things and you know where students would say I remember one time a kid legitimately said to me cuz I said to him I was like yo you honestly think that you're better than me because you're from the US. It was a big dorm debate around the Vancouver Olympics and we were watching Shawn White snowboard and it sort of turned into this debate.

[00:20:54]So I said to him I was like you honestly think that you're better than me R.J because you're from the States. And he looked around the room at everyone. Of course I was the only Canadian. And then he looks back at me, he goes, "I am better than you because I'm American."

[00:21:05]And it wasn't as there was no laugh, no smile, and it was just like period. And it was like, "All right, mic drop. I'm out." Uh, so this was again very much the the ethos of Liberty. And so for me, that offered me uh enough critical distance to say I don't agree with all of this. Another of course big part of being different on that campus was being queer. Um, and and I will say that at the time I definitely believed it was wrong to be queer. I definitely thought that I needed to change, hence why I was in conversion therapy. And I actually did believe that I, you know, obviously uh I obviously believed I could change because I was going to conversion therapy. Um, but nonetheless, I of course even though I thought it was wrong, even though I wanted I quote unquote wanted to change, I can we can talk more about that idea of wanting to change. What does that even mean? But um when I eventually left and I and I got to um to McMaster where I did my MA, I was starting to realize that nothing was changing. I was starting to realize that I, you know, had gone through this pastor this program with this pastor. I had prayed. I had fasted. I had read my Bible. You know, if if you count up the number of weeks that I just didn't eat because I was trying to as a spiritual exercise essentially convince God to change me, it would have been months, like literally literal months that I just didn't eat over the span of four years um trying to change. And so that was, you know, and when I got to McMaster, I was like, well, again, nothing nothing's happened. Like there's no qualitative difference between Luke before and Luke now. And so I I really I think that was a very dark time in a lot of ways because I started to turn on myself and think like I'm the problem that it's not God. If you know within the evangelical imagination, emphasis on imagination, uh you know, God's perfect and God wants me to change and I'm not changing. Well, the problem's of course not God. The problem of course is me.

[00:22:52]And again, when you see yourself as a problem, that's a problem. And so I was, you know, really trying to to figure out how do I uh, you know, reconcile my faith and my sexuality. And that's when I eventually applied to div school. And all the while I was reading Jewish literature. Um, even when I was at Liberty, I was in a Jewish literature course, which was actually what introduced me to Hol Holocaust studies.

[00:23:14]Um, I read Ellie Vazelle's Night for the first time. I was reading, you know, folks like Anzia Yazerka, Yanti Sardatsky, these different authors, and a lot of them were actually women. I mean, Ellie Visel was a man, but a lot of these folks were women. So I was reading these authors and engaging with Jewish American texts but also you know Jewish texts from from elsewhere but mostly in the US context and I was reading these these stories about these people who were caught between in some cases two worlds but oftentimes multiple worlds right the old world and the new world Jewish and Christian for all intents and purposes you know not that the US is necessarily Christian um but a lot of the you know uh a lot of the folks in the in the country and where these folks were were were living were and so you know being in a world of conservatism and then you know trying to get out of that and then also being a woman and trying to you know make make their way and so all of see reading these these texts I never understood why I resonated so deeply with these Jewish texts and I think it was really this this onlogical suspension right being caught between here and here and wanting to be here but wanting to be there but also still missing that a little bit and then you know but also not wanting to to deal with the consequences of you ex, you know, world A and world B. And so, as a queer evangelical, you know, this was a difficult sort of space to occupy.

[00:24:34]And so, I think that the the texts I was reading really gave me, unbeknownst to me at the time, a lifeline. They they allowed me to see myself in and through these characters. And so, I think that was really transformative. Um, and when I was reading Holocaust literature, um, because I focused mostly on Holocaust literature. Um, I I then switched my focus once I was at in Dib school, I did my thesis on Nazi propaganda to understand the other side of it. Um, and I don't think I really found many answers like how in the world at the end of the day could folks have done what they did. Like there are a lot of academic explanations. I don't think any of them are really that satisfactory.

[00:25:09]Um, because at the end of the day, like how again, how how was this possible?

[00:25:13]But that question then turned theological for me. How did God allow this? Right? It wasn't just how did people do this? Um, it was more so the question of theodysy, right? How do I reconcile this quote unquote perfect God that I believe in with a world full of craziness to such an extent that we see things like the Holocaust happen? Um, right? And that's just one instance of genocide. Of course, there are multiple, you know, uh, genocides that are that have happened and continue to happen.

[00:25:38]And so, for me, that's really the question of these was the straw that broke the camel's back. wasn't so much my my my sexuality that broke me out of evangelicalism. Um to a certain extent I had reconciled my my relationship between my faith and my sexuality. It was more so thinking about the Holocaust that really took me out of it. Um and so I think you know today seeing the parallels between my former research on the Holocaust and what's happening today. I mean if we think about Jews in 1930s Germany there they constituted about 1% of the German population. today uh about 1% of the population is trans.

[00:26:13]We can see how these groups have been scapegoed. We can see how they you know uh they're whipping boys for you know uh society's anxieties about well a lot of things. Um and they're used again to to again scapegoat or they are scapegoed uh in multiple senses. And so there's that.

[00:26:31]I mean, there's so many things, even Nazi understandings of sexuality, um, and how today conversion therapists understanding of sexuality, they're almost identical. And I think anytime you share a worldview with Nazis, you should perhaps reconsider what you think. Um, I don't know, it's just a hot take I have. And so, uh, I think, you know, there are so many parallels between the work that I did before and the work that I do now, trauma studies, and how that impacts, you know, uh, the trauma that a lot of queer folks undergo through or, you know, uh, in and through conversion therapy. Um, and so, uh, memory studies, how oftentimes memory is affected by trauma and all of this. And so, all of these things, you know, whether it be the content of my research, uh, or the methodology of my research, the theories underpinning my research, there's so much transference, though perhaps at first blush it would look like they're quite different, but I think there are a lot of commonalities between my former area of research and and where I've landed today.

[00:27:24]>> My friend, that's fascinating. You pointed out a couple things that just really caught my attention. uh particularly in terms of the justosition between your Holocaust work thinking about the oppression of Jews and we think about the oppression of LGBTQ plus folks uh within that narrative. You know, one of the things that I can say is in my relationship particularly with some Hardin alums uh and I had one um earlier who was on this podcast who spoke about her experience being at Hardin University and and being gay and really the things she went through and how she had to wrestle and navigate and come to terms and peace with various different elements that's there.

[00:28:07]In your research, did you find that there were, and I'm asking this because I I really I don't know, Jews who said, "Oh my God, how could you have turned your back on me and have engaged me in such suffering and oppression in a world that doesn't see me, a Jewish person created in your image?" And I asked that to ask a question about your conversations with gay folks who really kind of lean into this conversion therapy element of my God, how could you have done this to me and have le led to my oppression, which we know, you know, if you believe in God, right?

[00:28:50]These things are, you know, God doesn't build oppression. Humans engage in oppression. So help us understand that narrative a little bit more.

[00:29:01]>> Yeah. So there are a number of of cases of Jewish folks during the Holocaust and after uh essentially asking God how in the world could you have done this? Case in point being Ellie Viselle. Um Ellie Viselle if Anne Frank was is the best known um victim of the Holocaust in the sense that she uh was murdered. Ellie Viselle is the best known survivor of the Holocaust. He's no Nobel laureate, written like multiple books. He puts anyone else to shame with how much uh literary output and intellectual output that man has. It's just crazy. Um he passed away I believe in 2016.

[00:29:37]Um and he he's someone who I mean his first work night really was this protest against God. Um, and it's, you know, I remember reading this book and this was also, you know, I talked about before how a lot of Jewish American authors, and specifically Jewish American women authors showed me, again, I I saw myself in those, uh, those characters.

[00:30:03]I can't say I saw myself in Ellie Vazelle's, you know, narrative in the sense he was in, you know, multiple concentration camps. That was not my experience. But I was blown away by his protesting God and him questioning God and him talking to God in a way that I had never seen. And this really was a model for me for how I would eventually engage with God, right? That I you know, it's funny. The Protestants were were were Protestants were were known for our protest. Um, of course, the protest was against the Catholic Church. Um, not so much against God. Um yet today again there's not much protest other than against you know those pesky trans folks and those homosexuals. Um I mean there are other groups too don't get me wrong but right now that seems to be their focus. Um, and so I think that reading Viselle, reading other authors who I mean there's also the BBC uh special uh God on Trial, right, where they put God on trial for the Holocaust. And it's actually a very shocking ending how or maybe not shocking depending on on your perspective uh for how that that series ends where you know although they accuse God that and then ultimately find God guilty of uh you know uh the Holocaust and allowing this to happen that even still they still worship at the end right they all go to the gas chamber and cover their heads and and and pray until their death. Um whereas Viselle on the other hand that was not necessarily his mo he always remained a person of faith.

[00:31:30]Um, however, that faith I do think was qualitatively different. And I still remember there was this New York Times article that he wrote and it was him say, it was an open letter to God and he says in this New York Times letter, he says, "God, let's just hash this out.

[00:31:44]Let's get to the bottom of this once and for all. Like, let's just talk about what happened. Clearly, a lot happened, the Holocaust." He's like, "Let's just come to terms and and and figure this out." of course the sort of like scandal of it and it always has been and always will be a scandal. God was silent. God didn't say a word, right? Um and so I think that that really is an example of protesting God. And again, it really shaped how I eventually said, you know what, like just because you're God doesn't mean that you can get away with X, Y, and Zed. You know, like just because you're God doesn't mean that I'm going to be okay with my suffering or I'm going to be okay with that person over their suffering, you know? And I think that Viselle really really offered me a model uh for how to protest. Now, as for queers, I mean, I think that's it's quite common, right? That a lot of queers will eventually come to a breaking point because a lot of us, if not all of us, try to change at one point in our lives. Not all of us go to conversion therapy, per se, but all of us experience what are referred to as conversion practices. Conversion practices are anything and everything that relate to trying to change an individual's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression in some way, shape, or form. So, when you're a kid and your mom says, "Hey, don't sit like that. You look like a pansy." Or, "Hey, little girl, don't play with that toy. You know, you should be playing with the doll." Whatever it is, right?

[00:32:59]That there are these different practices, these messages that accumulate over time to such an extent that we as queer people try to change who we are from who we are into who we're not. We try to align ourselves with a heteronormative model. We try to uh perform an affected brand of masculinity or femininity depending on our sex assigned at birth. So these conversion practices again these are things that are talk about an ontological attack against who you are.

[00:33:24]This certainly is you know this falls under that umbrella. And so I think for a lot of people who experience queer oppression and specifically oppression at the hands of religious folks, we of course are going to come to God with, you know, either lament or protest.

[00:33:41]Oftentimes both and oftentimes in that order, lament then protest and then a good old, you know, see you later. Um I think that it's quite common for anyone, right? Think of, you know, people of color. Think of women. Think of um, you know, folks who come from a low socioeconomic status. Think of trans folks, you know, queer folks. Take your pick on any sort of part of one's identity that is minoritized or, you know, not the quote unquote norm. Um, all of us have reason to protest God.

[00:34:10]All of us have, you know, cause for saying, God, what what the hell? Like, riddle me this. Like, why is this happening? Um, and so I think that's what oftenimes unites a lot of us and that's what also what gets a lot of us out of white Christian nationalism or high control Christianity at large, right? When we our identity doesn't fit that binary understanding of the world.

[00:34:32]And of course, high control religion, high control Christianity operates on a binary, right, wrong, good, evil, black, white, you know, male, female, man, woman, whatever. All of us when your lived experience does not align within, you know, does not match or sort of map onto that that model, it creates a wedge in that binary that disallows you to operate fundamentally foundationally, right?

[00:34:55]Like for me, I was never going to fit in as a queer person because definitionally within the evangelical imagination, queerness doesn't even exist, right?

[00:35:04]that no one's queer according to uh white Christian fundamentalists or white Christian nationalists, evangelicals, whatever. We're not queer. We're just struggling with samesex attraction, right? It's divorcing a part of who I am, a part of who all of us are, our sexuality, from who, you know, from who they want me to be. Um, and so if I if I can't even operate in a foundational level where I can just be myself, well, of course I'm going to leave, right? And of course, I'm going to protest on my way out.

[00:35:33]In your forthcoming book, I I'd like to focus on that idea that you just talked about high control Christianity. I think it's really really important turn of phrase. Um the your forthcoming book, Don't Ask Tell All. The subtitle is stories of Christian colleges, anti-LGBT regimes. Um I I don't want to center the regime too much. I'd rather center the people, but but I would love your thoughts and your the lessons and the threads that you've observed and having studied this.

[00:36:05]What are the common threads of those regimes?

[00:36:11]Um I I I think we understand what the objectives are, but rather than fixating on the objectives, can you talk about the methods like what are the attempts to to change this ontological reality of people uh within those highcrolled environments? How are they doing what they're doing in these anti-LGBT regimes on college campuses?

[00:36:34]>> Yeah. So the book centers on on like you said specifically Christian colleges, universities also seminaries and also divinity schools. Um and in these on these campuses there are multiple mechanisms by which these institutions try to align queer students with you know the cishat model. Um of course there are conversion therapy programs.

[00:37:00]So we can maybe start there. Um, you know, we can think of a number of schools, uh, Liberty, uh, Bob Jones, Brigham Young, um, I believe Harding, uh, there are a number of these institutions that have designated conversion therapy programs. Sometimes it's going to be with a campus pastor, sometimes it's going to be with a campus counseling office. Uh, sometimes they're even exported off-campus for uh, conversion therapy like online nowadays.

[00:37:25]Um, and so there that's certainly a mechanism by which they try to change folks. Another really prominent mechanism is uh the the folks that they invite to campus, right? So oftentimes there's a range of speakers. Um typically straight white men who come to campus, but sometimes they have a woman, sometimes they have a black person, right? Uh and oftent times these schools will invite quote unquote exgay speakers. And so they will come to campus and they will stand there on stage as essentially ego ideals, right?

[00:37:58]to borrow a Freudian phrase that these are people that these students will em want to emulate and want to be, right?

[00:38:05]They want to become that person. Uh because if that person on stage was able to change his or her or their gender or sexuality, then so can I, right? So, it's this way of of of uh presenting to students the possibility of change as well. There's also the dorms themselves, right? These are very much gendered spaces and oftentimes on these campus campuses, students who are are not men cannot be in men's dorms. Students who are not women cannot be in women's dorms. Um, of course, there are trans folks and gender diverse folks in these spaces. In some cases, unbeknownst to the institutions, in some case they do know, and yet they still force them to be in these spaces. these gendered spaces become uh you know uh places to tutor folks in the ways of quote unquote masculinity and femininity right very much stereotypical hegemonic uh expressions of gender uh you know in depending on the dorm and the sex the sign of birth of the folks living in the dorms and so you know oftentimes within conversion therapy and then I'll zoom back out to go to talk about the dorms and conversion therapy the way to change an individual is through gendered performance So, it's to say that over, you know, you should be acting like a man, doing the things that men do, talking like men talk, talking about the things that men talk about. Um, and by acting like a man over time, you're not just going to act, but you're actually going to become a man. And of course, it's an essentialist understanding of gender and sexuality that a real man uh is straight. So, if you change your gender performance, over time you're going to change your gender identity, and then over time you're going to change your sexuality. That's that's the the belief. So when you're in these gendered spaces um where you know guys are uh wrestling or doing at liberty you know naked slip-in slides really strange things for a lot of straight men to be doing but it was something that I saw um uh multiple times um and you know seeing and doing these things and being around men and talking like men and again it's it's like you you export the ideology the conversion ideology and and map it onto a a dorm and again these faces function as places where folks are tutored in the ways of, you know, hegemonic masculinity or hegemonic femininity and or yeah, I guess you could say hgemonic feminine.

[00:40:18]Yeah. So, with that being said, you know, so we see the chapel services, the convocation services, we see the dorms, we see uh conversion therapy programs, we also see the curricula, right? In multiple classes, you in across disciplines, you are going to oftentimes see anti-quer and anti-trans uh messaging, right? For to give an example at Liberty there was a required course that all students had to take. It was called contemporary issues uh two part two. The first part of the course was defining the word worldview.

[00:40:48]That was the entire course was defining the word worldview. I kid you not. Um again you can guess the quality of education I received at Liberty. The second part of the course was taking that defined or that definition of worldview and applying it to different social issues quote unquote including homosexuality. Um, and at the time we didn't talk as much about uh gender diversity. We did talk about women and we talked about women's roles uh but we didn't so much talk about gender uh minorities. We mostly focused on on sexuality. And so there were multiple lectures devoted to uh talking about queer theology and the evils of it. Um how to compassionately quote unquote uh you know treat queers etc. Um and that was just the then that's a required course. every single student had to take that. And oftentimes, you'll find this at different schools, you'll find there are required courses that students have to take. Not always, but oftentimes. Um, and then when you get into your specialized courses, so if you're a psych major, uh, if you're a literature major, if you're a history major, whatever, typically you're going to hear messaging as well. Now, I will say at Liberty, when I took my literary theory class, we very conveniently stepped or skipped over the queer theory portion of that textbook. Um, and I I did ask I said, "Why? Why, Dr. Dr. Beagot, why are we was she a doctor at the time? I don't know. Uh whatever. Professor Beagot, uh why why are we not reading that part of the book? She says, "Ah, we just don't have time." So, she you know, clearly uh didn't want to necessarily engage with that topic. But there are courses where, for instance, in the psych programs at a lot of schools, there's a lot of talk and in the counseling graduate programs, there's a lot of talk about gender and sexual minorities, especially today. So, we see in the curriculum itself, right?

[00:42:26]Or curricula.

[00:42:28]uh so this is uh these are some of the mechanisms by which these schools attempt to to reform students. So I always think that you know it's not just that they have these conversion therapy programs on campus. I always think about these entire campuses as conversion campuses, right? that these are campuses designed to produce cishat alumni to go out into the world and to export this ideology to export this way of thinking and and to really create other contexts whether they be you know church congregations or other schools perhaps that you know these folks will eventually teach at whether they be K to2 or up you know post-secary whatever that they try to export these ideas off campus to create other little bubbles that will eventually you know contribute to the white Christian nationalist movement at large, which again is very much a heterosexist heterosexist uh heteronormative uh homophobic and transphobic movement.

[00:43:21]>> So a quick quick followup um especially for listeners for whom this is sort of a different world. I assume and tell me if I'm wrong that most of the students the the gay or queer students who are coming into these environments are not out uh they they are probably almost all closeted. they are probably almost all coming out of uh the same kind of environment that that that created a pipeline to the schools because I mean out and proud uh well identified cohesive students are probably not going to go to school there. I mean unless they're forced to.

[00:43:58]So, is that is that a fair assumption that that the students who are coming in are are still closeted and and and trying to navigate all those spaces?

[00:44:10]>> Yeah, there are two parts that I'm hearing in that question. The first part, are most students on these campuses closeted? Yes, the the research does back up that the vast majority um are closeted and the vast majority do not feel safe to be out uh to their classmates, to their professors uh and beyond. Um the other part is that you know oftentimes people think that queer students who are at these schools uh were forced to go there and certainly there are a number of queer students who are forced to go there. Perhaps their parents were alumni and they say to their kid, you know, I'm only going to pay for your education if you go here to this specific school or to maybe one of these specific schools. Um, there are some students who get scholarships and actually make it possible to attend college in the first place, even if their degree is coming from one of these schools. Um, there are some students who are geographically bound and the only school near them is this school and therefore that's where they have to go because they have to live at home and they can't afford it otherwise. So there are certainly some students who are forced or have to go to these schools.

[00:45:11]There are also a number of students who you know uh choose to go to these schools in spite of or despite their sexuality. Sometimes they think well this is the place for me. I need to go there in order to change or some students are like I'm never going to change but at least this school will equip me with what it takes to live a life of celibacy and still remain within the fold. um you know some students are there and this is you know argue or I will say admittedly a very small population that there's a good academic program at some of these schools uh you know I can think of like Belmont right which actually has changed its you know a lot of how it's approached uh gender and sexual minority students on campus but you know a few years ago some students were going there because of the the music program right and that was a really really strong program uh you know being in Nashville and Nashville being the city that it is for recording artists uh that it was a strong program and so some quer students would end up on this campus without really realizing how much of it you know how much it would impact uh their livelihood while while studying there. So there are a range of reasons why students are there. Um but I think to your point a lot of them are there against their will or they don't really not necessarily just against their will but they just don't want to be there per se. Um, but there are students who who do show up and don't even necessarily re recognize their sexuality or their gender identity until they're there, right? That this is something that only sort of they become aware of this once they're on campus. So, there's a range of reasons. Um, but to your to your first question to your you know, absolutely. Uh, I think that most students on these campuses are closeted because the consequences are many should they be out. H folks, for those of you who are chiming in, you're listening to race matters. I'm the co-host Edward Carson. I am here with my co-host, Professor Jeff Baker. And our guest who's fabulous is Dr. Lucas Wilson, a a posttock at the University of Toronto who's written some fantastic books, particularly one that's um um about to be released, don't ask, uh tell all stories of Christian colleges, uh anti-quer regimes, and of course um queer and trembling stories of LGBTQ plus religious trauma that's there. You know, Dr. Wilson, do you I want to let me contextualize this this question here before I ask it and that is this um you know for me as an activist someone who does stuff right um that is something that that is who I am and that's how I'm ingrained but I'm also someone who is a a prolific writer I I I'm I'm fortunate enough that people want to invite me to give lectures and talks and I'm going to pontificate and you I'm going to change I'm going to do all that kind of stuff do you see yourself, not just an academic, but as an activist, someone really looking to thinking about the narratives of your work, your publications, looking to change regimes. I'm going to use your language here. Um, be a voice for folks at the Harden Universities, the David Lipcoms, um, the Abalene Christians, the Liberties, the Bob Jones, um, that are out there. Folks who need a person like you to step onto their campuses, even if you're not stepping in in what I would call in an invited capacity, as we know, those places, you know, they don't bring folks like you nor me.

[00:48:42]nor brother Baker the campus. Tell me >> not lately.

[00:48:47]>> Not lately. That's fair. How do how do how do you see yourself?

[00:48:52]>> You know what? I'll give you the honest and perhaps extended answer. [laughter] So, initially when I first started writing about liberty, I was doing it because of an experience that I shared with you all before the show that I um was interviewed for one of my graduate programs because they were just confused why I was applying there after I went to Liberty. And so, this was a signal for me I need to separate myself even just on paper from Liberty.

[00:49:24]So, I wrote this one public-f facing article in a queer uh news outlet. And again, this was really to say I'm not the typical Liberty alum. I don't want anyone to think of me uh in relationship to Liberty or the evangelical world.

[00:49:40]Again, I was in Jewish studies. And to put it mildly, you know, anything with coming from an evangelical space or context is is, you know, highly distrusted, right? So, I was not wanting anyone to see my CV, my resume, and to discredit me immediately. And so, I wrote this article. Well, I also took a little bit of pleasure in it, right? Because I at this point, I was very much an outgay man. I was, you know, sick and tired of the evangelical world. And so, I was super excited for this article to come out. I didn't realize that there was going to be the response that I got. And I'm not saying it was, you know, like I was a New York Times bestseller. I mean I was also an online article so it couldn't have been a New York Times bestseller but you get the point you know I was but I I was I was really you know sort of taken aback by how many people reached out um it was you know a number of folks who had gone through I wrote about my experience of conversion therapy liberty a number of people who had gone through conversion therapy in general wrote to me people who were at Liberty specifically wrote to me um and I was just like oh my gosh like you know I always wondered what was going on at Liberty you know nowadays and sure enough, you know, some students who were there, current students reached out and I got this window into it and I was like, "Oh my word, like nothing's changed." Like, it's the exact same as when I was there. Um, one even sent me a a an onampus advertisement for conversion therapy, which looked marketkedly similar to the one that I saw that eventually brought me into to the school. Um, and so I decided, okay, well, clearly there's an audience here and clearly people are interested in the topic. And on top of that, I want to be able to offer um you know, I want to write stories that people are going to resonate with, especially people at Liberty. That was my main when I first started writing again about Liberty. I was like, "Okay, I want the kids at Liberty who are still there." Cuz I still to this day have dreams about going to Liberty. I still have dreams where I'm like, "Okay, one more semester. I'm going to go and I'm going to finish this semester and then I'm going to, you know, leave and whatever." So I still like I'm clearly obsessed, right? So I I was like I want I want these these students who were still there to feel seen. So I started writing more and then I started, you know, going on podcasts and I started going on news shows and then like TV stations and it was just sort of snowballed and the entire time Liberty students again were reaching out. I mean just last week or I guess two weeks ago at this point I had students who were there there right now reach out to me.

[00:52:07]One of whom's in uh their conversion therapy program. Um, and so it's like I started to to see that, you know, if I can be what I wish I had at the, you know, I wish today I had at the time.

[00:52:19]Um, you know, I want to be that. And so I have not stopped writing. I've not stopped speaking about liberty. Um, and you know, the idea of being an activist, I just I I sincerely, and this this is going to sound like, you know, like a what's that sort of like, oh, he's so he's so pious. I honestly I just I want to expose that school for what it is which it doesn't sound pious but the other part is I want people who are still in these spaces I want them to feel seen in some way shape or form. If someone reads my work and they're like, "Yo, that's me." I've done my job.

[00:52:54]Because, you know, you asked, part of the question you asked was, "Do I think do I think that I'm going to make a difference like a regime change, right?

[00:53:01]Like, will there ever be that?" No, I don't actually think that that will happen, which is of course a very pessimistic response, but I think it's a realistic response. We're not going to get rid of racism in our lifetime or probably ever. We're not going to get rid of sexism in our lifetime or ever.

[00:53:16]We're not going to get rid of homophobia, transphob like this is always going to be the world we live in.

[00:53:22]However, if we can, you know, if if one person one person's mind can change through the work that we do, phenomenal, right? We've changed that one person's life and hopefully other people who are around that person. And I think to me like that truly is the the desire at this point is to um help folks who are still within high control religious contexts, specifically high control Christian contexts, um find a way of getting the hell out. Um because I do think that these are deathdealing spaces. These are spaces that do not allow people to live um you know fully.

[00:54:02]I don't think that they're able to live authentically. I think that evangelicalism breeds inauthenticity, breeds artifice, um breeds oppression.

[00:54:10]And so if I can through my writing, my speaking, whatever, um help people see that there's a way to live otherwise that we don't have to live like that.

[00:54:20]And in fact, that way of living is again deeply inauthentic and you know, uh in a lot of ways deeply harmful, then I've done my job, right? And so the idea of activist I I guess so I mean I I I like what you said it's about doing something and I do I do actually get really annoyed with a lot of people for not doing something where people say like oh you're doing great work. It's like thanks so much. I appreciate that but also like let's all do it. Maybe we can all do this right? This is an invitation for all of us. And I think that so often people get very comfortable including minoritized populations with their level of privilege even if it's not necessarily you know expansive but nonetheless they have enough privilege to just kind of coast and that to be honest really ticks me off and I want everyone to do the the heavy lifting so we can all just live better.

[00:55:09]>> We could talk for days about that my friend. I tell you what, you just you you you you hit a sore spot with me in terms of the silence of of various populations. Uh that being said, we are really we're about out of time on this show, Dr. Wilson, but here's what I want to do just for a second. Um show us a copy of your book, Shame, Sex, Attraction.

[00:55:31]>> Don't have to tell me twice, Edward.

[00:55:33][laughter] >> Just want to get a good Right. For the folks who are seeing the um the visual aspect, you can see Shame, Sex, Attraction, and everything, too. and you know I haven't looked at it but you know like I do with a lot of guests I always reach out find their books try to promote u those things uh particularly for my students who are whether it's um institutions within households or whatever populations want to point them to the right resources and everything too Dr. Wilson, we are excited to have you on Race Matters. I've learned a tremendous amount from you, my friend.

[00:56:04]There's a lot of buzz about you going on and and you made your way into our purview and and Professor Baker and I, we're like, we've got to get him on this show just to hear his story and everything. So, we we really appreciate you.

[00:56:18]>> I appreciate you all. You guys are great. And uh let's do it again. Uh this has been super super fun.

[00:56:24]>> Absolutely, my friend. Thank you for joining Race Matters, folks. Thank you for chiming in and again till next episode. Take care.

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