Peterson Toscano - Activism

Activism

In June 2005 the Queer Action Coalition invited Toscano to join them for a series of protests outside the Love in Action facility in Memphis, Tennessee. Zach Stark, a 16 year-old boy, was placed against his will into Refuge, Love in Action's program for youth. Before he entered, he sent out a MySpace bulletin alerting his friends that he will be forced to receive conversion therapy. The state of Tennessee launched a series of investigations, and the protests received international news coverage. In June 2007, Love in Action discontinued Refuge.

In April 2007, together with Christine Bakke, Toscano launched Beyond Ex-Gay, an on-line support group for people who are now ex-ex-gay. Toscano also helped organize the Ex-Gay Survivor Conference held June 28 to July 1, 2007 in Irvine, California. As part of the conference three former Exodus ex-gay leaders came forward to issue a public apology for their roles in promoting and providing conversion therapy.

In response to a Memphis-area ex-gay conference organized by Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, in February 2008, Toscano along with Christine Bakke and other ex-ex-gays in the Mid-South and throughout the country organized a response called Deconstructing the Ex-Gay Myth—A Weekend of Art and Action. Toscano shared some of his story in the local media and presented two of his plays. He also led workshops at an ex-gay survivor gathering.

Toscano helped organize an international conference held in Catalonia on May 30, 2008 at the University of Barcelona. The conference, Teràpies reparatives per l’homosexualitat—Perquè existeixen i quins perills impliquen (Gay to Straight Therapies—The reasons they exist and their potential harm) highlighted the potential dangers of conversion therapy and gave mental health professionals, scholars, clergy and concerned citizens the opportunity to hear from people directly affected by these therapies as well as experts in the field of psychology.

As a grand marshal of the Mid-South Pride parade, Toscano returned to Memphis in June 2008, where he had been a resident of the Love in Action program 10 years earlier. In July 2008 Toscano presented his plays The Re-Education of George W. Bush and Transfigurations-Transgressing Gender in the Bible in Malta where he also spoke out about conversion therapy.

He has served as an outspoken critic of the ex-gay movement in the UK. In August 2006 at the Greenbelt Festival he presented a talk about his own ex-gay experiences and personal journey. In July 2008 he offered two talks at the Lambeth Conference in Kent where he discussed being "gay and Christian" and about the dangers of conversion therapy. In an article for the British newspaper The Times Toscano spoke of the ex-gay movement in Great Britain: "'It is a far more subtle seduction over here,' he says. Toscano claims that therapists in Britain – who he says tried to exorcise his gay demons in Kidderminster, in the West Midlands – nearly drove him to suicide."

In December 2008 Toscano traveled to South Africa and highlighted the potential dangers in receiving conversion therapy. He made his South African premiere on January 7, 2009 in Cape Town.

An active member of the Religious Society of Friends with an endorsed leading to travel in ministry, Toscano states that his non-violent approach in his work seeks to expose injustice without attacking anti-gay activists. He believes that gay community needs to do more to accept LGBT people of faith, and by doing so will help to lesson the popularity of conversion therapy groups. He told news website Salon.com, "If we took better care of our own, we would put these programs out of business."