John Paulk is the owner of Mezzaluna, a catering business in Portland, Oregon.

"I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way." – Texas Gov. Rick Perry

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There was a time in my life when I used to sound a lot like Rick Perry. In fact, for more than ten years I was one of the nation’s leading spokesmen for the “ex-gay” movement. I traveled the country telling audiences that being gay was a preventable condition, and it could be treated if only you followed a simple plan, obeyed God and sought repentance for your sins. “Ladies and gentlemen, homosexuality is not a genetic, inborn condition,” I would say. “It is the result of traceable causes that, once unraveled, can bring about understanding and transformation in the life of one who is motivated and submitted to God.”

Oh, I was a believer: Homosexuality was just WRONG. And I was Exhibit A, a self-declared convert who had managed to overcome my own shameful gay past. I even appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine in 1998, posing alongside my wife as a poster boy for “going straight.” And I was happy to do it: Those stories gave me a national platform to advocate for what is called “gay reparative therapy”—basically, convincing gay people that they were sexually “broken” and could be provided with a way to change. My wife Anne—herself an ex-lesbian—and our three sons were often put forward as evidence of how to accomplish this. Anne and I even wrote a book together preaching the gay-to-straight gospel, Love Won Out: How God's Love Helped 2 People Leave Homosexuality and Find Each Other.

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But I was in denial. It wasn’t in fact true, any of it. Worse than being wrong, it was harmful to many people—and caused me years of pain in my own life. Which is why I have this to say to the Rick Perrys of the world: You don’t understand this issue. At all.

Sure, I was gratified to hear that at an event this week, Perry appeared to regret his remarks comparing homosexuality to alcoholism. “I stepped right in it,” he admitted. But this wasn’t just some political mistake. What worries me more is the ignorance betrayed by Perry’s comments—an ignorance that I believe is still widespread among conservatives in the straight world—about what being gay means. The kind of ignorance revealed by those in Perry’s Texas Republican Party who recently inserted a plank in their party platform declaring homosexuality to be a “chosen behavior” and recognizing the “legitimacy and efficacy” of gay reparative therapy.

Paulk and his wife on the cover of Newsweek in 1998.

Luckily, it’s true that across our nation, life is dramatically and rapidly improving for gay people, and it’s encouraging that same-sex marriage has found favor in courts across the land, and is coming to be viewed as legitimate by a majority of Americans, according to polls. But we are not through yet. As long as this widespread misunderstanding in the straight world about homosexuality persists, that it is a choice or a “lifestyle,” as Perry put it, not only will we never be fully accepted by society, some of us will remain unable to accept ourselves. It’s internalized homophobia: you hate what you are. It is a form of self-inflicted torture that has haunted me my entire life, and I do not want young gay women and men today to go through what I went through. I want to tell them—and Rick Perry: We are not broken, damaged, inferior or throwaways. We are created in the image of God—just like everyone else.

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I had known I was attracted to my own sex since I was 18. I came out as a senior in high school in Ohio and embraced my homosexuality. I found wide acceptance within my family, and I lived openly as a homosexual until the age of 24. But around that point in my life I found myself becoming very despondent, even suicidal. I attributed my unhappiness to my homosexuality. In reality, I was tremendously insecure, lonely and searching for an identity. I could no longer accept myself.

At the time I first began having those doubts, in the mid-1980s, I was attending Ohio State University, where the campus pastor introduced me to Christianity. I told him, “God can’t love me because I’m gay.” The pastor replied, in essence, that this wasn’t true, that God could love me, but he added that if I continued being gay, God would not be pleased with my life. I came to believe that homosexuality was something that God was against, and if I continued to embrace it, I would not be pleasing to Him. And I very much wanted please Him. The pastor found a book in a local Christian bookstore that described a special ministry for gay people in California called Exodus, which was based on the idea that homosexuality could be changed through strong determination and a relationship with Jesus Christ.

I would have crawled to get there. I signed up for a year-long residential program called “Steps Out of Homosexuality.” There were 12 of us in a house, and we ate, worked and did bible study together. We went to church together too. On Tuesday and Thursday nights, we had long discussions about various aspects of homosexuality—including the Exodus view of how it developed from a breakdown in family relationships such as that between a boy and his father. There were plenty of lapses, but we persevered.

At the ministry I met a lovely woman named Anne, who was there for the same reason I was; we fell in love and married in 1992 and began having children. I stayed on at Exodus even after the program and eventually I became chairman of the North American division of Exodus, rising to become a sort of national spokesman for gay conversion. We moved to Colorado and I became involved with James Dobson’s group, Focus on the Family. I got used to speaking in front of large crowds, and giving interviews to the national media. I even traveled with a security detail, in case I was attacked. I also became a close associate of Joseph Nicolosi, a therapist and leading proponent of “reparative therapy”—the belief that homosexuality results from the faulty and arrested development of one’s “gender identity.”

Reparative therapy is, by definition, based on the notion that something is “broken” in one’s identity, needing repair. You are meant to feel like damaged goods, and the therapy is designed to fix that. In a nutshell, gay conversion advocates argue that boys who grow up to be gay over-identify with their mothers and remain detached from uninvolved, weak, passive, disinterested fathers. By a similar reasoning, girls who become lesbians often fail to identify with their mothers, perceiving them as weak or victims, and are often leery and fearful of men due to emotional and or sexual trauma. I remember I was told by my Christian mentor that one thing I needed to do to increase my sense of masculinity was to quit my job as a chocolatier because I was surrounded by too many women. My mentor suggested I get a job in the business world where there were more men.

I did what he said, but that only increased my struggle over being around men.

And that, secretly, was always my biggest problem. I had decided to renounce my gay identity but there was still an ache in my heart for male love and companionship. I so wanted to be and to feel “normal.” I would look at men at the checkout counter wearing wedding rings, and I’d want to be one of them. I thought, if I’m straight I’ll feel normal. In those early days after my conversion, the temptations to be among my gay friends and once again be part of the gay community were so strong that I would kneel down in my bathroom and beg God to help me not be gay.

And so even as I pursued this career as a professional ex-gay man, and raised a family and loved my wife, I was in utter torment. I struggled off and on with addiction and wanting to take my life. I knew I was living on the inside as two people. I wanted to believe it was true so badly that not only did I lie to other people, I primarily lied to myself. I wanted my homosexuality to change, but the truth is: For all my public rhetoric, I was never one bit less gay. Behind closed doors, many of us in the “ex-gay” leadership at Focus on the Family would even admit this to each other — and we had this conversation many times: “We know our orientation hasn’t really changed. What has changed is our behavior. Our way of life. How we see ourselves. Our sexuality has not changed.”

Gay-Conversion Therapy: How It Works (Or Doesn't) Though the medical community used to be divided on the issue, today it is in agreement: Conversion, or reparative, therapy not only does not work, it borders on the unethical. The American Psychiatric Association, for example, “ opposes any psychiatric treatment … based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or … that the patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation.” Still, that hasn’t stopped various true believers from trying to “cure” homosexuals anyway. Here are some techniques—from the old to the modern—that have been used to try to make gay men straight. Male Bonding Some conversion therapy encourages gay men to bolster masculinity by developing strong, non-sexual relationships with other men. One former patient remembers his counselor in a gay-conversion program subjecting him to “holding therapy,” during which, he writes, he “was instructed to lay in [the counselor’s] arms for a solid hour to ‘feel the strength of another man.’” Other therapists recommend going to the gym “as well as bath houses to be nude with father figures.” Beating Your Mother in Effigy Some believe that male homosexuality is caused by over-bonding with one’s mother at a young age. In 2012, a gay member of a counseling group in New Jersey was encouraged “to beat an effigy of his mother with a tennis racket, as though killing her”—so furiously that his hands bled as the other men in the group egged him on. “It’s my mother,” he remembers thinking. “Detach, detach, detach.” Electroconvulsive Therapy One former patient described his course of electroconvulsive therapy, in use today, as “The Month of Hell.” The treatment, he told the Huffington Post, “consisted of tiny needles being stuck into my fingers and then pictures of explicit acts between men would be shown and I’d be electrocuted.” Prostitution Some 19th century psychiatrists prescribed frequent trips to the brothel together with large amounts of alcohol—the idea being that prostitutes were experienced enough to spark even a gay man’s desire for women. Even Oscar Wilde once visited a whorehouse to develop “a more wholesome taste.” It didn’t work. The experience “was like chewing old mutton,” he said afterwards. Overdosing In the 1960s, psychologist Ian Oswald would give his gay patients nausea-inducing drugs and surround them with pitchers of urine before playing audio recordings of men having sex. The nauseating “overdose,” he hoped, would lead men “to turn to women for relief.” Exorcism In 2009, a church in Connecticut uploaded a video showing a homosexual 16-year-old boy undergoing an exorcism surrounded by members of his congregation. “Come on, you homosexual demon,” one shrieks as the boy rolls around on the floor. “Loose your grip, Lucifer!”

But it only became harder to maintain the false veneer of heterosexuality, at home and at work. I was preaching to other adult gay and lesbian people a gospel that I no longer really believed in. More and more, when I’d have to get up and speak to crowds about my gay conversion, I felt like a wind-up toy. I’d go back to my hotel room, fall on the bed and start weeping. I thought, “If I have to go out and do that one more time, I will literally throw up.” I was in agony. I wasn’t easy to live with either. I was short with my children and took my anger and anxiety out on my devoted wife. I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

Everything began to change in 2000, when I was photographed in a gay bar in Washington, DC. I had not gone into a gay bar since the late ‘80s, and I wasn’t looking for sex. I just wanted to be among my own kind, to feel at home, for a brief period. I was board chairman of Exodus at the time, and after the news broke I had to resign. It was an enormous public scandal. My reputation came crumbling down. I hurt my wife; hurt those who looked up to me; hurt the movement.

In 2003, I abruptly decided to drop out of sight. I resigned from my ex-gay career and moved my wife and family to Oregon. I wanted to be far away from anything that reminded me of being a public figure. I went to culinary school, became a professional chef and opened a thriving catering business in Portland. I lived the life of a heterosexual married man and father. On the outside, it was a happy life, but inside I was just as torn as ever. I deeply loved my wife, Anne, who still believed in the movement, and I knew it would be extremely scandalous to embrace homosexuality after the career I’d had. But it was more and more apparent to me that I was what I always had been: gay.

The older I got, the lonelier I was becoming. Three years ago, I was driving down a suburban street and I saw two men holding hands. I burst into tears. I realized that … I wanted to be one of those men. I knew my decision would hurt my wife and family, but I began to move toward authenticity. I went to see a therapist—a conservative Christian therapist. I told him, “I’m on a journey of self-discovery.” He said he didn’t believe that you had to change fundamentally who you are to be acceptable to God. I began to embrace what I had been all along.

I decided to come out in the Portland gay community too, donating to some non-profits, trying to become a part of this world, to let them know I was supportive. But my past soon came to haunt me. People said, “Oh, this is the guy who once told us we needed to change.”

One incident in particular hit me very hard. In 2013 I was confronted by a man in a coffee shop who was angry and had tears in his eyes. ‘The kind of message you preached kept me in depression for most of my life,” he told me. “My parents wanted me to change, I tried for years and I couldn’t do it. It devastated my life until I finally accepted I was gay.“ What he said moved me to tears, and I apologized to him. Since then he’s become a dear friend, but that’s not always been the case: I’ve now had similarly painful encounters with hundreds of people, mostly online. Up until then I hadn’t really seen or understood a lot of the pain I had been causing in my two decades as an ex-gay activist. That encounter was a beginning.

As a result, I came to feel a tremendous responsibility to set the record straight publicly. A year ago, I issued a statement of apology. A lot of people I had known from the Exodus program were my main support group at this time—including the former best man at my wedding, who had come out himself. We had a Facebook page called “Ex-Ex-Gay,” with more than 400 members. Many of them were gay men who were now divorced, often after breaking some woman’s heart. Together these friends helped me draft my statement, which was then sent out by the Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C., to gay magazines and websites across the country. I said, in part: “ Today, I do not consider myself ‘ex-gay’ and I no longer support or promote the movement. Please allow me to be clear: I do not believe that reparative therapy changes sexual orientation; in fact, it does great harm to many people. I know that countless people were harmed by things I said and did in the past, Parents, families, and their loved ones were negatively impacted by the notion of reparative therapy and the message of change. I am truly, truly sorry for the pain I have caused.”

Not long ago I went to a conference of Christians who are gay and lesbian. There were more than 700 people there—many of them people harmed by organizations or ministries that felt they needed to change their sexual orientation. Afterward people began emailing and Facebooking me, telling me stories that were very much like those of my friend in the Portland coffee shop, “I wanted to be like you and your wife; you were held up as poster children. And I hated myself because I couldn’t be you.” That really rocked me. I hadn’t realized all this while I was preaching the ex-gay gospel. I’d been shielded from it.

***

Today, for the first time since I was a young man, I’m not living a double life—a life that is a lie, day in and day out. I have no more secrets than the next person. Recently, my oldest son, who is 17, said this to me: “You’ve become a better dad to us, and a better person. You’re much more at peace. You don’t lose your temper. You’re calm. I accept you for who you are, Dad, and I love you.” I told him: “When you’re not fighting who you are, you’re a much better person.” It’s true. Sometimes, while I was living my double life, I was very short with them. When the gay pride parade would come around, and it was always on Father’s Day, I’d be with my sons and wife, but I would be longing to be at that parade. This past Father’s Day, I spent a glorious day with my sons but the tinge of loneliness and the longing to be watching that parade was gone… vanished. I had stopped fighting what just did not change. No doubt, my decision to move in this direction has left scars. I have hurt the people I love. But I have no regrets about embracing the path of honesty and authenticity; I believe it’s made me a kinder example of the person I couldn’t be before.

Today I have no desire to get involved again in a national debate. I am happy running a business, and being true to myself and my children. My extended family accepts me as I am. I am supported by them.

Still, I hope very much that Rick Perry and those many others who still want to change us will read this. And, perhaps, even understand a little bit what it really means to be gay.