The flamboyant gay activist Milo Yiannopoulos made headlines this week. The conservative British polemicist and writer says that he is now an "ex-gay".
The news was overshadowed by the hullabaloo over a couple of other Brits who were interviewed by Oprah Winfrey.
Yiannopoulos is not as well known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but he has a message which is more important than their woes. He is speaking out about his lived experience as a gay man at a time when Australia and most Western nations are outlawing not only therapeutic assistance but even the slightest suggestion that a person's sexual attraction could change.
And the most unlikely witness to this is Yiannopoulos.
The Victorian Change and Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021 "denounce[s] and give[s] statutory recognition to the serious harm caused by change or suppressionpractices".
Parliament believes that "conversion therapy" is "deceptive and harmful both to the person subject to the change or suppression practices and to the community as a whole".
However, plenty of critics , including LGB Alliance Australia , the Victorian Women's Guild , and the Institute for Civil Society have shown that it is Parliament which is being deceptive. It is clearly causing harm to the bodies, rights and protections of homosexuals, women, and children. The only beneficiaries of this law are the pharmaceutical, medical and surgical industries.
"Of course, I was never wholly at home in the gay lifestyle - Who is? Who could be?" Yiannopoulos declared in an interview.
On a personal note, I feel the same way and so do others who have walked away from the cult of LGBTQ+ indoctrination, liturgies and identity politics.
To dare to leave the cult is damning. "Serious harm will befall you… your government supports you and believes in you… you are not broken and in need of fixing!" Australian leaders Steve Miles , Chief Minister Andrew Barr and Premier Daniel Andrews ingratiate themselves with LGBTQ+-identifying youth, pouring millions of dollars into mental health programs that seldom help their pain.
For Yiannopoulos to leave the cult - and his boyfriend, who has now been demoted to housemate - to pursue another man named Christ, rejecting decades-old doctrines of the LGBTQ+ sect for the millennia-old doctrines of the Catholic Church, will be a serious blow to LGBTQ+ proselytizing.
Yiannopoulos is confirming what a multitude of ex-gays , ex-lesbians and ex-transgenders have been saying for years. (Check out the state of current research in this excellent Australian report, " Free To Change: Survey of 78 ex-LGBT people ".) Sexual attraction and deep-rooted insecurities around a person's male or female identity can and do indeed change with the right help.
Yiannopoulos' openness in his LifesiteNews interview is uplifting:
My own life has changed dramatically, though it crept up on me while I wasn't paying attention.
It feels as though a veil has been lifted in my house - like there's something more real and honest going on than before. It's been a gradual uncovering, rather than a dramatic reveal. Maybe that lack of theater or spectacle is a sign the gay impulses truly are receding?
What, we should ask, is so harmful in this story to Yiannopoulos or to the community?
A recent story in Newsweek backs up what Yiannopoulos says. Scott Newgent, a 48-year-old, told her story of medical transition from female to trans-male. It reveals the brutal reality of attempts to assuage what in part is often a mental disorder.
This biological female underwent seven surgeries, experiencing a pulmonary embolism, an induced stress heart attack sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily intravenous antibiotics, arm reconstructive surgery, lung, heart and bladder damage, insomnia and hallucinations, and PTSD. This cost a mere US$1 million. She also lost her home, car, career and marriage.
Anyone with a scrap of decency needs to reflect on what this woman has undergone at the hands of medical professionals. Each of these doctors was playing a role in a parodic operetta, singing a lie - that a genetic female can truly become male, and a genetic male a female. Our politicians are voting in laws to permit the same traumas and tragedies and threatening resistance with up to A$200,000 fines and 10 years imprisonment.
What do Australian state governments gain by pointing people down the pathway of trans-perdition? My guess is that they desperately need some respite from incessant tirades of LGBTQ+ activists who will not stop until everyone experiences the same level of pain - and until everyone believes the lie that this pain must be reframed as "freedom".
Now Western Australia is set to follow Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory and Victoria. Premier Mark McGowan has promised - with fewer than five days before a state election - that he is "opposed to gay conversion therapy as a cruel and misinformed practice".
A 28-year-old man in Western Australia, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse as well as a victim of and rape, wrote to McGowan on December 15 last year. He asked:
Will Western Australia be a safe place for me to continue to safely walk along what to date has been a pretty treacherous journey concerning my sexuality? I will be considering whether to stay and invest in Western Australian society or to return over to the Eastern states in the New Year and so would be grateful for a response prior to Christmas if possible.
McGowan responded this week, stating that, if re-elected, he "remains committed to LGBTIQ+ law reform", including considering "legislation in relation to the recognition of a person's sex, change of sex, or intersex status".
The abuse survivor and rape victim wrote back within hours informing McGowan as follows:
I left Victoria and came to WA [Western Australia] to address and start the recovery process from these horrendous traumas in my life, knowing that Victoria would no longer remain a safe place for me to recover. At times I have been left experiencing depression, suffering from anxiety and panic attacks, as well as feeling suicidal.
Since starting therapy, counselling, and prayer here in WA around my same-sex attraction, past gender dysphoria, childhood sexual abuse, and rape, these health issues mentioned above have decreased dramatically and I am experiencing the most mental stability I have in my entire life.
I am now deeply fearful for my own wellbeing as a resident in WA and for the wellbeing of many others like me. With the potential banning of successful and life-giving therapy, counselling and prayer around sexuality and gender confusion, what will happen to my mental health? Will I be forced back into the mental hell that I used to experience?
Australian politicians would benefit from heeding Yiannopoulos' parting words :
The best advice I can give others in my situation is: Check your pride, not your privilege. So often it's vanity or conceit or self-satisfaction that gets in the way of accepting Christ. Learn to catch it before it takes root, and difficult things suddenly don't seem so difficult.
Those exiting the LGBTQ+ community all know that gay pride negatively affected their mental health and that embracing humility opened up an unimagined world of benefits.
Yes, bigotry is still very much alive and well. And it spews forth from the ranks of those who claim to suffer the most intolerance. As Alexandra Marshall states in her article in The Spectator , "the needs of the collective outrank the personal rights of the individual to decide their sexual orientation".
What is a healthy way forward?
Yiannopoulos said in his interview: "Over the next decade, I would like to help rehabilitate what the media calls 'conversion therapy'. It does work, albeit not for everybody." I suggest that more people, young and old alike, join him in backing sound methods of conversion therapy. A change of heart (and policy) might help the young fellow snubbed by Premier McGowan.