15 major LGBTQIA+ moments in pop culture in 2018
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Theodore Pellerin stars as “Xavier” and Lucas Hedges stars as “Jared” in Joel Edgerton’s BOY ERASED, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Focus Features
Boy Erased and The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Conversion therapy is a topic that still remains pretty taboo in mainstream media. Its prevalence in America did get some time in the spotlight after Adam Rippon brought VP Mike Pence’s conversion therapy support to the attention of people who weren’t aware, as I mentioned already in the slide about the Olympics. But there was not only one film that touched on the topic this year, but two.
The first of the two was The Miseducation of Cameron Post, starring Chloë Grace Moretz as the titular character. Set in 1993, teenage Cameron is forced into a gay conversion therapy center by her conservative aunt and uncle after her boyfriend catches her hooking up with another girl in the back of a car on prom night. She’s sent to God’s Promise, run by the severe Dr. Lydia Marsh, and her brother, Reverend Rick, who was “cured” of his homosexuality by his sister’s methods.
In Boy Erased, the son of a Baptist preacher is forcibly outed to his parents by a classmate after an incident with the boy in his dorm, and they force him to participate in a church-sanctioned gay conversion program. His parents don’t tell him how long he’s going to be in the program, and he has to defer from school and live in a hotel with his mother while he attends the program.
In both films, the protagonists witness horrible abuse while in the conversion therapy programs. Cameron sees a boy get violent after he’s denied his release for still being too “effeminate,” then learns he was admitted to the hospital after mutilating his genitals and nearly dying. Jared in Boy Erased has to watch as the group’s leader physically and emotionally abuses a boy who refuses to open up emotionally to the group… by staging his funeral, and inviting his family. Then they all beat him with the Bible. We later learn that boy committed suicide.
Conversion therapy is still legal in 41 states, according to Vice, and judging by the terrible practices in these two films, real life is probably even worse. You never know what happens behind closed doors, and that’s why it’s so terrifying.