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Jo and I watched this film last night and I strongly recommend it. I am not familiar with writing reviews of movies but do want to make a couple of points. Boy Erased is based on the true life experience of Jared Eamons played by Lucas Hedges who is struggling to develop a sexual identity. He eventually tells his parents he has thoughts about men. His father is a Baptist preacher in a small town in the US. Religion, and particularly religious or evangelical conservatism is a very powerful and influential force here in the US and guides much of US politics including toward Israel and the Zionists for example. Politicians have to be seen coming from or leaving church if they want to get elected. In the US you can be a pedophile and sexual deviant and get elected for office as Trump's election shows but an atheist is out of the question.
On telling his parents, his father calls over some other
religious figures and threaten him with eviction unless he admits he wants to "change"
and if he is committed to rid himself of these satanic
thoughts. He says he is and they send him away to receive conversion
therapy. Conversion therapy is a process that attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender
identity that any orientation other than a hetero-sexual one is a form of
mental illness. In the UK for example homosexuality was illegal and a criminal
offense until the 1960's. How it was dealt with back then is shown in the movie
The Imitation Game based on a biography
of Alan Turing's life by Andrew Hodges. Turing was a brilliant scientist who
committed suicide after he was forced by circumstances to admit he was gay.
In Boy Erased, the conversion therapy is led by Christian
fanatics where the youth receives threats and intimidation from the adults
running the place. They are told God will not love them and that they cannot be
born homosexual and so forth. They are forced to admit to something they are
not.
Jared comes in to conflict with the authorities in this
torture chamber and his mother defends him while his father as a local preacher
has a much harder time of it. While I liked that the parents were treated as
basically decent human beings, especially the mother who, like most women in
these patriarchal religious environments are prisoners in their own right, I
think the religious views the father has are not given the attention they
deserve as a horrible, oppressive and dangerous value system. He is actually
the person most in need of a conversion of thoughts away from the narrow
confines of religious orthodoxy and basically a belief in magic.
When we think that millions of young children are
brainwashed in this way through religious teachings from the moment they leave
the womb. It's basically a form of child abuse in my opinion. When my son was
young I told him that I was an atheist but that many people believe in gods of
one sort or another, some in more than one god and that when he grows up he'll
decide what he wants to do. I had no intention of indoctrinating him in beliefs
that have absolutely no basis in reality. The film is based on a book by Jared
Eamons himself.
Richard Mellor
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