'Boy Erased', movie that questions religious censorship on sexual desires

California: 'Boy Erased' is a movie about the journey of a young gay boy who belongs to a conservative Christian family.

The movie is the adaptation of Garrard Conley's 2016 memoire of the same. The movie is starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and Lucas Hedges, and directed by Joel Edgerton.

In his memoir, Conley, a 19 years old boy writes about his experience as a part of 'gay conversion therapy program' where he underwent therapy and physical punishment with the goal of changing his sexual orientation.

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Conley, had discovered his sexual orientation at a very young age and for him undergoing this sexual conversion practise was like to reverse what was known to him since his childhood. “I had known since third grade that I had an attraction to men,” he says. “But I think because we were raised in the church (his father, Hershel, is a Baptist minister), you believe that life is full of temptation. So just having that thought or that feeling is just another temptation, and you ignore it.”

He also tells that “It was a lot of shaming. It was lots of fear. You had to really express things that you’d never expressed before. And then you were told, after you expressed them, ‘This is disgusting, this is vile.’

If we talk about sexual desires we as a society still haven't learnt to embrace people the way they are. We always have something to say about other's lifestyle and the way they behave. There is nothing wrong about the way someone behaves in a certain way or has different sexual orientation or desires different from us.

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By forcing someone to accept the social norms set by the society or to criticise them for what they are, we are only gonna break that person and his personality but couldn't change him. Due to family pressure and society in general, people born different from us are forced to conduct themselves in a certain way as that is what society has labelled 'Normal'.

In many such cases where a person is attracted towards his own gender society often sees it as a 'problem' or any kind of sickness which needs ailment. And in order to get that person rid of it they force them to seek counselling or some programs which promises to cure it.

In a study it has been noticed that around 700,000 people in the U.S. have been subjected to this pseudoscientific practice, which is still promoted and practised within a number of fundamentalist Christian churches.

According to Scott McCoy of the Southern Poverty Law Center,“The idea that homosexuality needs to be cured or fixed in the first place is misrepresentation.”

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He added that groups including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association say “conversion therapy is nonsense and psychologically harmful.”

The movie was premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 1, 2018, and at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2018.

It was released in the United States on November 2, 2018, by Focus Features and grossed $3.3 million.