My Journey

As a fifth-generation Mormon, I was steeped in the doctrine, ideology, and culture of a high-demand religion. Regardless of what one may feel about Mormonism’s other beliefs and practices, its teachings and policies regarding sexuality and gender pose grave risks for LGBTQ+ people. Through extensive experience working with members of other high demand religions, I have observed those same risks among Orthodox Jews, Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other smaller sects and cults. 

High-demand religion has been defined as: 

"[A] faith community that 

• requires obedience; 
• discourages its members from questioning its rules, principles, and practices; 
• expects subservience [obedience] and loyalty; 
• discourages trusting relationships outside the group; 
• perpetuates the notion that those within the group are right and superior to those outside of it; 
• promotes extreme or polarizing beliefs; 
• and expects its members to suppress their authentic selves in exchange for the sense of belonging and security the group offers."

The more of these characteristics a religion manifests, the greater the danger to people who are sexually or gender diverse. For me, Mormonism checked at least 6 out of 7 boxes on this list.

I grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s, a time when homosexuality was seen in a far harsher light than today. Very little was said about it and what was said was extremely condemnatory. The way Mormon church leaders described it would be considered hate speech by today’s standards. 

My young mind couldn’t handle the dissonance of my situation. I was fully aware of being attracted to the bodies of other boys and men. But I was also fully enthralled by Mormonism—it was the entirety of my worldview. So, I just accepted the leaders’ denigration of homosexuals as being the word of God. 

A prevailing idea during the first half of my life was that being gay or lesbian was a choice. High-demand religions tend to reduce homosexuality to a set of sinful behaviors. While most religions now acknowledge that gays and lesbians may have an unchangeable sexual proclivity, they stop far short of recognizing it as a core and unchanging aspect of one's personhood and continue to insist that we are free to choose whether or not to act on our proclivity. I fully believed this idea until I was completely overwhelmed by the pain of repressing such a basic element of my nature at age 56. 

Research has yet to adequately explain the nature of bisexuality. My own experience, both clinical and personal, suggests to me that many different types of people exist within the bisexual spectrum. Among them are what I would call “true bisexuals” who genuinely enjoy being sexual with both genders. This may be a temporary phase—whether long or short—or it may be their permanent orientation. But it is real and not just denial of one’s true gay orientation. To suggest otherwise to a person who tells you they are bi is disrespectful.

Then there are “flexisexuals,” who are capable of being romantic and/or sexual with either gender though they have a preference for the same sex. Their sexuality is flexible enough to go against their preference if need be. Flexisexuals are different from bisexuals in that, while they may be able to enjoy sex and romance with the opposite gender, their deep and abiding preference is for the same sex, whereas bisexual people don’t have an overarching preference.

Another subgroup within bisexuality are the behavioral bisexuals. These people are essentially homosexual but for various reasons (usually religious) they get involved in straight relationships. For some, this is a brief stage before they accept their reality and conform to it. For others, this can be a life-long ruse. This way of living requires elaborate faking to fool whoever they are pretending for: their wife, their kids, their church leaders, their community, or themselves.

I was flexisexual. I went through what I suspect was a genuine heterosexual phase in my childhood and teens, during which time my homosexuality was still sort of hiding in the shadows—indistinctly felt but not recognized as what it was. By the time I was a young adult, I clearly recognized my homosexuality. But by then I also had enough history of romantic desire for girls that I was able to dismiss the homosexual desire as a lust sideshow that I could opt out of. And that was the only choice I could perceive for me future, given the overwhelming hetero-imperative pressure created by Mormonism. So I married a woman. 

But even as I was “falling in love” and pursuing my wife-to-be, I had a sense that there was something overly rational about the transaction I was proposing. She felt it too; she told me that the date on which we first discussed marriage felt like a “business meeting.” Neither of us understood what that foretold. With years of hindsight, and the recent experience of falling in love with and proposing marriage to a man, it is clear that this heterosexual “romance” was prompted more by a need to follow the narrative that was demanded by religion than by love and desire. Yes, I wanted to be with someone. And yes, I wanted sex. But I pursued those normal human impulses with a woman only because I lacked the freedom to pursue them with a man, though I didn’t recognize that at the time. 

What I did recognize was that I definitely had a strong homosexual bent. I felt the need to discuss this problem with my ecclesiastical leader to get his wisdom and advice. Wisdom had he none. But he did give advice, which was that once I was married and having normal sex with my wife, I would lose interest in homosexuality and everything would be fine. And there was no reason to tell her about this. 

Straight marital sex was very enjoyable for me. I didn't have to fake anything—I genuinely loved making love to her. I don't remember too clearly, but I may have even lost interest in guys for a while. But by the time we'd been married for a year, I recognized that my attractions and sexual desires for men had not vanished. If anything, they were getting stronger. I couldn't keep something this important secret from her.

So I told her I was attracted to men and had been for a long time; but I was also attracted to her and enjoyed our sexual relationship. I made it clear I intended to stay faithful to her. She was kind and supportive. Her response was that we should just keep going and things would be okay. 

But by our sixth year of marriage, I was not okay. I'd remained faithful. But my attractions were unquenchable. I yearned for something I knew I could never have. As though by divine intervention, I found a psychotherapist who worked with men who had my same proclivity. He introduced me to Evergreen—a self-help support group based on LDS ideals—and my long journey of "healing" began. There were books and tapes, friends and accountability partners, group meetings, outings, and conferences. I don't remember my therapist ever suggesting that this process would make me straight. But that idea was prevalent in everything else I was ingesting. The first, and most influential book I read was titled, "You Don't Have to Be Gay." I was drinking the Kool-Aid. And thus began my long sojourn in the ex-gay world.

Friends, confidants, shame-reducing therapy, confidence building activities, a convincing narrative about sexual orientation, and huge doses of hope—together these brought me out of the funk I'd been in for years. One of Mormonisms most powerful ideas is that with every commandment from God comes a way to fulfill that commandment. I became entirely convinced that heterosexuality was God's eternal will. Thus it followed that God would make a way for homosexuality to be overcome. I was convinced I was on that path. 

My commitment to that path became a career of helping others on the same path. And it became my mission for God to use me to discover and promulgate His full path to freedom. None of us who did that work referred to ourselves as "conversion therapists." That was a derisive term made up by activists opposed to our beliefs and efforts. The term is still cringe to me and I use it only because it's so commonly understood. 

As a counselor, I was faithful to the tenets of "conversion therapy" for roughly 20 years during which time I worked directly with somewhere between 500 and 700 men. The book, workbooks, presentations, and retreat weekends that I created and co-created reached additional thousands. I became a big fish in a small pond. 

Among the greatest flaws of conversion therapy (other than the fact that it doesn't actually change sexual orientation) was that it had no system for measuring its outcomes. Obviously, I wouldn't have kept doing it for two decades if it didn't SEEM like it was working. And I got a lot of feedback from clients during my work with them, which I used to constantly improve my methods and approach. Necessity is the mother of invention and being on such a difficult errand for God necessitated innovation. So I expanded on the methods that helped and dropped the things that were ineffective or risky, believing I was perfecting my work. But given that a lot of clients simply dropped out and disappeared without telling me why, my informal feedback method didn't provide a macro-level view of what was actually happening. Thus it took many years before I realized that, although I had become very good at trauma work, God had not revealed a cure for homosexuality through me.

By about 2016, I had matured to the point where I no longer needed the kind of certainty that had set me on my quest so many years earlier. I didn't need to believe in a cure for homosexuality. I still believed in a heteronormative God with a hetero-imperative plan for His children. But it was quite evident by then that some people—myself included—experienced unchangeable homosexuality and I had faith that God would deal mercifully and fairly with me and others like me.

Necessity is the mother of invention. But anguish is the seed of revolution. 

It would be impossible to parse out the mutual influence of the two greatest stressors in my adult life: my quenchless homosexual desires and the pain in my mixed-orientation marriage. The two affected each other in ways both obvious and indiscernible. But as my marriage devolved into darkening bitterness in its final 5 years, it was the pain of living in relational conflict and antipathy that strained my inner fault lines to the point where a high magnitude quake was inevitable. 

The cataclysm began with an epiphany of perfect clarity about both stressors: My marriage is over and I have to be with a man. I was safely alone at the moment the epiphany hit—at the end of a lap in a beautiful outdoor pool where I swam for exercise. But the private lightening-bolt moment of clarity and courage was soon followed by shared thunder of tense conversations, fights, separation, disclosure to others (sometimes against my will), and lots of self-doubt. 

Over time, I separated in my mind the frightful thought of divorcing my wife from the even more unthinkable idea of dating men. The epiphany had presented these ideas as a couplet; but doubt split them into two separate options. Leaving my marriage seemed an awful but obvious  given—the word "divorce" tasted acrid in my mouth, but my marriage felt like acid on my skin and in my bones. And it helped that I knew divorce wouldn't threaten my membership in the Church. The choice was unambiguous. But living a gay life was an entirely different matter. Could I do it? Yes? No? Maybe so? My investment in resisting the gay urge had been considerable, to say the least. And what about leaving Mormonism and the heteronormative God? My mind screamed, "Never!" My heart and body screamed, "Run for your life!" I could find no resolution.

Through the time-honored Mormon method of seeking peace and guidance through prayer, I finally became able to accept the truth I'd already known. My semi-straight life had already ended; God had set me on a new path, a new adventure. I'd done well at resisting. Now I was to explore and satisfy. Apparently, God isn't so heteronormative after all.

The divorce process was unremarkable. It became final on New Years Eve, 2018. I anticipated that my twin choices of divorce and going gay might ruffle feathers and rankle minds in certain quarters. Though I'd separated myself years earlier from the small pond of my former conversion therapy world, I knew people there would be stunned. So months before the divorce, I confided my plans to Rich, a friend of mine, who was the founder and director of People Can Change (now called Brother's Road), the organization at the center of the secular ex-gay world. I called him out of respect because I didn't want him to be shocked and unprepared when I eventually come out publicly. 

On a Sunday morning in January 2019, about three weeks after my divorce was final, I received a text from another friend with whom I'd served in People Can Change. He told me Rich had announced in a closed Facebook group that David Matheson is leaving his wife and pursuing a gay life. Rich later explained to me that rumors had been swirling about me for weeks—probably due to my now-ex-wife's disclosures in an online women's group. So, unilaterally and without even notifying me, he outed me to protect his organization. 

No one should ever be outed against their will. I was not prepared for what followed. 

Within minutes of Rich's disclosure, someone in that group had notified an anti-conversion therapy watchdog, who immediately wrote a press release and called me for comment. "You have 10 minutes, then I send the statement," he told me. In a rush, I scraped together something inadequate and ill considered—something that made me come across defensive, tone-deaf and unapologetic. Something that made me easy to attack.

Literally overnight, the story exploded locally and internationally. Locally, I was featured on KSL and KUTV news and on the front page of the main local paper. But I was also on the front page of Reddit; in the online versions of NBC News, the New York Post, Newsweek, Vanity Fair (Italy), El Mundo (Spain), The Times (UK), and Bild (Germany); and on Channel 4 London and Good Morning Britain. Etc, etc, etc. By the time I went to church the following Sunday, I had no coming out to do. Everyone already knew. I walked into the chapel completely naked wearing just a suit and tie.

People who know trauma understand it can take many forms. During the terrible half-decade before the divorce, the media Hunger Games that followed Rich's Judas kiss, and the post-apocalyptic years that unfolded thereafter, I became intimately familiar with my share of those forms. 

From my marriage, I became intimately familiar with the traumas of blame and manipulation. The slow sundown of our relationship was a prolonged experience of futile anger turned inward. When one partner is highly skilled at always being right and the other partner possesses an unchangeable flaw—like being gay—gaslighting is an unavoidable result. Though I didn't believe I could actually be wrong in every situation, I still felt every volt of her self-righteous blame. I learned the feeling of a hot, stabbing blade in my chest. But I kept trying to placate and make it better.

From the internet and TV, I experienced the trauma of bullying. After the news of my apostasy broke, my Facebook account exploded with public comments and private messages. The majority of them were supportive "good for you" messages. But about ten percent were cruel in a way I'd never before seen online. And they came from people on both ends of the spectrum: religious zealots hating me for my new life and gay zealots hating me for my past life. For example:

• From Shannon S.: ..."if you don't stop leading people astray regarding this issue, you will be damned for the eternities...you simply have too much information to not be held accountable..."

• From Paul C.: "You are a horror of a human being... you destroyed lives and killed people to help hide your own truths ... at a minimum you are a sociopath... I hope your life is filled with the misery you gave to others ..." 

Then there was Piers Morgan. Because I never watched TV, I didn't know who he was, only that some British TV morning show wanted to interview me live. "Duh, sure, why not?" The cameraman and I sat in an otherwise empty studio in Salt Lake City, listening and responding to an audio-only feed. It wasn't until we were live and I heard him say, through the earpiece, "Surely, you're a sham then aren't you" that I realized I was red meat for his morning feeding. And this in front of about 2 million viewers. I felt shame and shock.

From my first boyfriend, I experienced the trauma of betrayal, loss and heartbreak. As the sunburn from the media glare began to fade, my attention turned to dating. He wasn't my "type," a concept I was just beginning to discover. But I was into him nevertheless—I couldn't help it. He was funky, funny, fucky and a little bit feral, all in the same man. We instantly became both lovers and best friends. After a year, I moved in with him. After another year, he asked me to move out. Ultimately, the ratio in our relationship of "wasn't" (i.e., not my type) to "was" (i.e., into him anyway) tipped the scales to "couldn't" (i.e., stay together). The breakup was excruciating for both of us. I hurt in ways, places and degrees my divorce had not even come close to. 

I began therapy while the coffin was still closing on that relationship. As I sat, week after week with my therapist, the many layers of trauma gradually exposed themselves. The breakup was right on the surface. So was my ex-wife. It took a while before I began to feel how traumatic being outed had been; at the time, I had just laughed it off. And it took longer still before I began to tune into the trauma of the gradual corrosive drip of hetero-imperative religious doctrine I ingested beginning in childhood. Growing up gay and Mormon, in Utah, in the 1960s and '70s was inherently traumatizing for all who went through it. 

I was essentially disabled for the better part of 5 years following my divorce and being outed. I worked on a few unsuccessful media projects, experienced bankruptcy, saw a bare minimum of clients while avoiding taking new ones, nearly drowned in relational drama, worked out, and went to therapy. Eventually, there was enough internal healing that I began to feel like my old functional self. I became able to make a relationship work with a really good man who is as kind and drama-free as he is attractive. We are currently engaged. 

Having a sense of purpose and mission is a core character trait for me. The gradual unraveling, then sudden flamout of my 30-year mission in the ex-gay community left a gaping hole I can't describe. But my compassion and commitment toward sexually diverse people stayed strong and I knew my mission was merely undergoing a slow and critical update—rather than fighting nature I would be affirming it. Otherwise, my daily work with clients would be pretty much the same going forward: heal trauma, unburden childhood parts, resolve shame, support healthy relationships, deconstruct faulty beliefs, and so forth. The difference between what I did as a conversion therapist and what I do now as a gay-affirmative therapist could be compared with putting a different driver in a car. The new driver takes the car to better places, on safer roads, and with better outcomes; but it's the same car. 

When I finally got back into my therapist chair with new clients, I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed the work, how much it energized me, and how it rekindled my sense of purpose. There is an intellectual, psychological, and emotional honesty in my work now that I vaguely sensed was missing years ago. And that makes all the difference.

Read my statement of accountability and apology.