Movie Review: Pray Away

My coming out journey has been closely tied to deconstructing my faith.

I was raised in evangelical Christianity, which means I was taught from a very young age that:

🕆 Every one of us is completely deserving of eternal torment because we contain no redeeming qualities.

AND

🕆 Gay people deserve hell more than anyone else.

I learned this in subtle ways, and not so subtle ways. But I’ll save those stories for another day. 

I did not come out as gay when I lived at home with my parents. But I have little doubt that if I had, I likely would have been put into some form of conversion therapy. 

But even without being a part of formal conversion therapy, I experienced passive conversion therapy through the messages I heard at home and in my church. Even though I didn’t even fully understand what gay meant, I knew it was bad.

I was told that gay people deserved AIDS because they were an abomination. This horrible disease was a punishment for their grievous sins. Gay people were those people. The other that we had to fight against. They represented a threat to our families and our very survival as a country.

So when Pray Away came out on Netflix, I couldn’t wait to watch it.

If you’re not familiar, Pray Away is a documentary about conversion therapy (also known as reparative therapy), and what were known as the ex-gay ministries. You can watch the trailer here.

This movie followed the lives of a few of the leaders of this movement. It recounts their stories, their pain. And in many cases, their renouncing of these “ministries” and return to what conversion therapy calls the “homosexual lifestyle.”

The movie also touched on the new generation of fundamentalist Christians who are claiming that God can “heal” you of being gay. 

I won’t lie. This movie was triggering. In fact, the first time I watched it I had to take breaks to catch my breath and process. It was very emotional. And it put me in a funk.

But then I watched it again. And again. And again. And again… Honestly, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it.

It might seem crazy, but I found Pray Away incredibly validating. 

When I finally admitted to myself that I’m a lesbian, I went through a period of intense frustration. How could I have missed this really vital detail about myself? How could I have hidden such a foundational part of my identity for so long?

But when I watched Pray Away, I better understood. In a previous article I talked about how my brain didn’t let me figure out I was gay because I didn’t feel safe. And that’s true. But watching this movie shined the spotlight on WHY I didn’t feel safe.

It brought back memories, and feelings, and fears. But each time I’ve watched it, I’ve walked away thinking, “no wonder…”

I suspect that even if you didn’t grow up being bombarded with religious bigotry against gay people, this toxic theology probably affected you in some way. And it may at least partially explain why you weren’t ready to come out until later in life.

But if you did grow up in evangelical Christianity, this movie may really hit deep for you too. I’m not saying don’t watch it. But if you do, you might want to have your therapist on speed dial.