CHASING THE DEVIL: INSIDE THE EX-GAY MOVEMENT, is a documentary film presenting an unflinching look at the personal journeys of four people who claim to have changed their sexual orientation from gay to straight. Their stories mark the first time documentary filmmakers have been allowed inside the ex-gay movement, and provide an empathetic and at times devastating portrait of those who claim homosexuality is an illness that can be healed.
John Sterback is a member of the most politically incorrect subculture in America. He's a self-described 'Ex'gay', someone who claims to have changed his sexual orientation from gay to straight. Richard Cohen is John's inspiration. He represents the face of the ex-gay movement, while working hard to hide his own controversial past. CHASING THE DEVIL uncovers the truth behind the claims of reparative therapists who attack gay identity as nothing more than a developmental disorder that can be fixed witha healthy dose of therapy and prayer. Joanne Highley and Peterson Toscano take viewers even deeper, inside the world of ex-gay ministries -- specifically journeying inside New York City's Life Ministry, where Demons are believed to cause homosexuality and exorcisms are the preferred form of treatment.
An official selection at several prestigious film festivals, CHASING THE DEVIL will shock, amaze and sadden you, while revealing the lengths that people will go to deny painful truths, or to fit in with a culture that shuns them.
More than four years ago we set out to document the journeys of people belonging to the most politically incorrect subculture in America. The result is CHASING THE DEVIL: INSIDE THE EX-GAY MOVEMENT. Spending time with those who claim to have changed their sexual orientation from gay to straight can be a bit of a paradigm rattling experience. We accept that identity is largely self-defined and acknowledge that sexuality can be fluid. Mick Jagger switches back and forth between men and women for much of the 1970s and defines jet setting chic. Self-defined identity and fluid sexuality are both left of center beliefs long associated with urban elites and secular progressives. Folks like most of those in the documentary film business.
But there's a disconnect when this paradigm butts up agains the ex-gay movement. If we really believe identity is self-defined and sexuality fluid, then there's nothing surprising, or offensive, about the x-gay ministries and reparative therapists claiming to 'heal' homosexuals of their unwanted desires. But we are surprised. And often offended. The central underpinning of gay identity is the belief that people are born gay and can't change. The ex-gays challenge this belief. Their claims of having changed from gay to straight challenge our understanding of identity and tolerance. But are they living a lie?
