Saturday Night Live Star Bowen Yang Speaks Out About His Experience of Gay Conversion Therapy

Philip Ellis

January 26, 2020 1:04 PM

Bowen Yang is having a killer season on Saturday Night Live . As an openly gay writer on the show (not to mention its first Chinese-American cast member), he has helped bring a uniquely queer sensibility to sketches like the Sara Lee Instagram bit starring Harry Styles which ended up going viral.

Bowen Yang Was Forced Into Gay Conversion Therapy

In a profile with the New York Times , Yang reveals that his sexuality was a source of conflict with his parents. He came out to them at the age of 17 when they discovered a revealing instant messenger chat, and soon after his father arranged for him to have eight sessions with a "specialist".

"They just sat me down and yelled at me and said, We don't understand this. Where we come from, this doesn't happen,'" Yang says. "I'd only seen my father cry when my grandpa died and now he's sobbing in front of me every day at dinner... And I'm thinking, How do I make this right?' This is the worst thing you can do as a child of immigrants. It's just like you don't want your parents to suffer this much over you."

Those feelings of guilt led Yang to agree to go to the sessions with the specialist. "I allowed myself the thought experiment of: What if this could work?' Even though as I read up on it, I was just like, Oh, wait, this is all completely crackers'... At the first session, he asks me, Would you like this to be Christ centered or a secular sort of experience?' And I was like, I guess nonreligious.' But even for him to ask that question means that there was this kind of religious agenda behind it anyway."

Yang goes on to describe the content of the sessions, which aimed to provoke feelings of shame and self-loathing that he didn't actually have.

"The first few sessions were talk therapy, which I liked, and then it veers off into this place of, Let's go through a sensory description of how you were feeling when you've been attracted to men,'" he says. "And then the counselor would go through the circular reasoning thing of, Well, weren't you feeling uncomfortable a little bit when saw that boy you liked?' And I was like, Not really.' He goes, How did your chest feel?' And I was like, Maybe I was slouching a little bit.' And he goes, See? That all stems from shame.' It was just crazy. Explain the gay away with pseudoscience."

Conversion therapy, the practice of trying to change an individual's sexual orientiation through psychological and religious interventions, has been widely criticized by the scientific community, and is linked to depression, drug use and even suicide in later life. Just this week, Utah became the latest state to ban licensed therapists from using such techniques on minors.

Needless to say, Yang's sessions were ineffective, and he adds that he is trying not to "rush" his parents when it comes to fully understanding who he is.

"I had this second coming out with them while I was in college and went through this whole flare-up again with them, where they couldn't accept it," he says. "And then eventually, I just got to this place of standing firm and being like, This is sort of a fixed point, you guys. I can't really do anything about this. So either you meet me here or you don't meet me.'"

Philip Ellis