Chris Csabs, 37, is the co-founder of Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Change Efforts Survivors, which has pressed for a ban on so-called “LGBTQ conversion practices”. I spoke to him first on Thursday evening, then Friday morning when Premier Dominic Perrottet pledged to support such a law.
Fitz: Chris, what was your upbringing like?
CC: I grew up in the eastern suburbs, and everyone in my family was very involved in church, attending several days a week, and I also attended a Christian school – meaning I was in this kind of Christian bubble.
“I went to ‘deliverance ministry’, which is like an exorcism”: Chris Csabs, who has become a campaigner against gay conversion therapy since his ordeals as a teenager.
Fitz: So at what point did you start feeling uncomfortable with what you were being taught?
CC: When I was about 10, I started realising that I was different. I had a crush on the boys at school. I always was a little bit feminine, I guess. And I tried really, really hard to pretend that I liked basketball and all I wanted was to be like the other boys. But it was just a losing battle, particularly when they called me a “faggot”.
Fitz: That must have cut you to the absolute core.
CC: It terrified me, actually, because I knew from what I was hearing in church that gay people were deviants. I had heard that they were paedophiles and possessed by demons. Once, when I was a little older, I overheard a conversation between my dad and a guy at church who was telling him that he had prayed over a “homosexual” that had come in off the streets and that he brought “seven demons out of him”. When I heard that, I immediately thought, “Oh my God, I’ve got a demon in me!”
Fitz: You must have felt so incredibly alone.
CC: I did, because I didn’t have anyone I could confide in that I felt safe with and so I kind of just lived with those feelings. I was a kid, and I actually believed that there are these things called demons that come from hell, and they’re the opposite of God, and one’s living inside me and making me gay. And I lived with that terror for years.
Fitz: How did conversion therapy come about, to “pray the gay away”?
CC: I didn’t say anything until I was about 15, and I told my mum. She wasn’t surprised. My parents had worried about it a lot, and had even talked to teachers at the school about their concerns. They were very worried. So, I spoke to a pastor at church who prayed over me. Basically, the ideology is that being LGBTQ is a form of brokenness, a disorder. And the other part of the ideology is that it’s all about finding and assigning a negative cause of being LGBTQ in order to fix that. So, for example, it could be that maybe you’re gay because you had an abusive or an absent parent, or maybe it’s because someone in your family history was an alcoholic or maybe it’s a demon, you know, and so the counselling was kind of aimed at finding what that cause was or what it could be.
Fitz: And, in your case?
CC: I never got to an answer because, of course, there is no negative cause to me being gay. My dad was very loving, but very homophobic when I was younger because he didn’t know better. He and mum encouraged me to go down this path of “healing” because they believed all that ideology.
Fitz: At this point, had you been able to express your sexuality?
The turning point for Chris Csabs came when his mother told him: “Dad and I have been researching this, and have you ever thought that maybe the reason God hasn’t healed you is because there’s nothing wrong with you?”
CC: By the age of 17, I had a bit. I had moved to a public school at the age of 15 because I told my parents “I wanted to spread the word of Jesus”. I hadn’t properly known any non-Christians before. When I got there, on my first day, I started handing out all these invitations to my baptism. Everyone was like, “Oh my God, this kid’s weird”, and I’d turn around and see them burning the invites with their lighters or ripping them up. At the end of the first week, these two punky-looking girls came up and said, “Can we have an invitation to the baptism?” And on the Sunday, when I was getting baptised, those two and all of their friends – some were Goths that looked a bit like Marilyn Manson – were in the front row and became my best friends. And so over time they helped me to come out, and then I had my first experiences of having a boyfriend, but it didn’t last long because it was too scary. I was sure that I was destined to hell for it. So it only lasted about six months and then I ran back into the closet.
Fitz: And more conversion therapy?
CC: Night after night, I’d pray to God and ask Him to heal me, and if He couldn’t heal me, to make sure I didn’t wake up. “Lord, heal me or kill me.” I went to “deliverance ministry”, which is like an exorcism, where I had to list the names of the people that I had sexual contact with, or even had a crush on. And in the exorcism, she would say, “In the name of Jesus, we break that bond with the demon of homosexuality and I submit you to the foot of the cross for Jesus to deal with. I command you to leave Chris in the name of Jesus!”
Fitz: And did you feel any different or did you feel as gay as ever?
CC: I remember sitting there and I was kind of shaking during it. I’d been told, “Sometimes when a demon comes out, you vomit.” And so I was thinking, “What’s going to happen?” Nothing happened. When I left, the pastor said to me, “Chris, Satan’s gonna try to trick you into thinking that you’re still gay, but just remember, you’ve been saved.” So, literally on the drive home, I was like, “OK, I’m straight. This is done.” But by the time I got home, I realised I was definitely still gay because I saw a cute guy walking and …
Fitz: And still you went on with it!
CC: I moved to Canberra in order to participate in an ex-gay “support group”. One day, we had a guy come in who led us in a prayer to forgive our mothers for denying us their breasts. Because if we weren’t breastfed as children, that could be, you know, something that caused this homosexual problem.
Fitz: So, get to the good part: your liberation!
CC: It took many years, and by the end of it I really was broken! I had difficulty showering myself because I started to think that I need to starve the gay out of me. And so I became uncomfortable with talking to males, and I sabotaged a lot of my male friendships. I even became uncomfortable with my body and normal body functions just in case they had something to do with me being gay. And I became a very strange and tortured person. And finally my mum took me out for coffee and said, “Chris, you’ve became a shell of yourself. You’ve stopped laughing and singing.” And she said, “Dad and I have been researching this, and have you ever thought that maybe the reason God hasn’t healed you is because there’s nothing wrong with you?”
Fitz: Saved! Free at last, free at last, thank the Lord you’re free at last!
CC: I was gobsmacked. I said, “Are you serious? Haven’t you read the Bible?” But they made that jump, and it took me a number of years to successfully make that jump myself.
Fitz: And when did you form this survivors’ advocacy group, SOGICE, Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Change Efforts Survivors?
CC: In 2018, there was an article that came out in Victoria about conversion practices. And I thought, like, this is going to be forgotten by tomorrow with the news cycle, and so I started a change.org petition. Within days it had 24,000 signatures. We got some survivors and allies together and wrote the SOGICE survivor statement, which was basically a history of the conversion movement in Australia, and it also gave survivor recommendations for legislation to [ban it], which was used very heavily for that Victorian legislation, which is the most comprehensive conversion practices prohibition legislation in the world.
Fitz: As we go into the NSW election, independent Alex Greenwich has legislation ready to go to ban it, after the election. Opposition Leader Chris Minns has said he wants to ban it too.
CC: I think that’s fabulous. The Greenwich bill is exactly what is required. We don’t need Labor to write another bill. The Greenwich bill is the one that survivors will support, as it is modelled from the Victorian one. It is a survivor-led model. It is something that we know is going to work.
Fitz: But [as we were speaking on Thursday], Premier Dom Perrottet has declined to promise to back the ban on conversion therapy.
CC: I think that’s disgusting. Why is this a partisan issue? Literally, we’re talking about protecting LGBTQ Australians. That’s all we’re talking about. This is something that has been demonstrated to be absolutely so damaging to people. Why is this a partisan issue? Why is this even a difficult decision?
Fitz (reconnecting Friday morning): Now Premier Perrottet has said he will support a bill.
CC: Yes, but what kind of bill? We don’t want them to create a bill that emulates the Queensland legislation because it does not protect against the majority of harm. The Queensland legislation only applies in the formal “therapeutic” context. That’s not where the majority of harm is happening. We know that the majority of it goes on in religious groups. So whatever commitment is made must be for a certain type of legislation, banning it completely, including in the religious context.
Fitz: OK. Let me be, dare I say, the devil’s advocate, or maybe an advocate for the devil. A lot of seriously religious folk will say, “Keep your damn legislation out of my religion. It is none of the government’s damn business.” What’s your answer?
CC: I’m not interested in stopping or prohibiting what anyone believes. I’m interested in stopping a practice that is really harming people. Survivors are only interested in stopping the harm caused by conversion practices, which are targeting LGBTQ Australians and really causing damage – in some cases, death. Freedom of belief has to be protected, but activities and behaviour that harm other people can’t be reconciled with the right to religious freedom.
Fitz: Great. You are a survivor. Have you recovered from what you went through?
CC: I’ve been in a lovely relationship for five years. But I’m still working through a lot of that crap I went through. And I don’t want others to go through it.
Fitz: Bravo.
Quote of the week
“Going forward, Australia must continue to be prepared to smell China’s socks.” – Scott Morrison, in a speech in Tokyo on Friday. Crikey reports it was in reference to a well-known speech by a former US secretary of state, describing a meeting in 2014 between China’s President Xi Jinping and then Japanese PM Shinzo Abe.
Joke of the week
Up Blue Mountains way, just near the Three Sisters, a climber falls off a cliff and, as he tumbles down, catches hold of a small branch. “Help! Is there anybody up there?” he shouts. A majestic voice booms through the gorge: “I will help you, my son, but first you must have faith in me.” “Yes, yes, I trust you!” cries the man. “Let go of the branch,” booms the voice. There is a long pause, and the man shouts up again, “Is there anybody else up there?”
Twitter: @Peter_Fitz
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