Kent Philpott and the Origins of Conversion Therapy

In the summer of 1967 thousands of young people descended on San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district in search of sex, drugs, and transcendence. For many the ‘Summer of Love’ symbolised liberation from conformity and repression. But to Kent Philpott, a young Baptist seminarian, the Haight was not a utopia. It was a battlefield in the struggle against Satan.

Philpott, then a student at Golden Gate Baptist Seminary, felt called to minister to the hippies flooding into San Francisco. Long-haired and armed with an acoustic guitar, he blended into the counterculture. Yet his message could not have been more conservative and his experiences there laid the foundations for what would become known as the ‘ex-gay movement’.

He claimed dramatic experiences on the streets: encounters with people he believed were demon-possessed, sudden bursts of supernatural activity, and his own initiation into glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. In 1973 he published A Manual of Demonology and the Occult, which described dozens of such cases – including anonymous men and women he associated with homosexuality – and insisted that ‘the reality of Satan and demons’ explained what he had seen. Released by the evangelical press Zondervan, the Manual popularised his vision of San Francisco as saturated with the occult and formed the intellectual basis for his emerging counselling of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.

Philpott’s message was strikingly syncretic. He accepted the scientific language of psychology – diagnoses such as schizophrenia or psychopathy – but argued that these were often misreadings of demonic possession. He insisted that mental illness could make individuals vulnerable to demonic attack and that only prayer and exorcism could offer real deliverance. In his mind, homosexuality was not an inborn trait but the result of early family trauma, gender ‘confusion’, and, ultimately, the machinations of Satan – a synthesis that was not unusual among conservative Christians of the era, who began blending Freudian models of family dysfunction with spiritual warfare.

In the early 1970s homosexuality was still widely regarded as both a psychiatric disorder and a spiritual crisis in conservative Christianity, a problem to be cured rather than an identity to be affirmed. It was in this climate that Philpott’s ministry was transformed. In 1972, within a single week, three men had approached him seeking help to abandon their same-sex desires. To Philpott, this was a sign. He began organising small prayer groups, which soon expanded to include women. Out of these grew Love in Action, a Christian living community dedicated to helping people leave ‘the homosexual lifestyle’ through Bible study, prayer, and intense communal oversight.

Love in Action was one of the first organisations of its kind in the United States. It helped establish the Bay Area – not the Bible Belt – as the cradle of the ex-gay movement. People from across North America wrote, or even travelled, to Philpott after hearing of his work.

Philpott publicised his efforts in two influential books, The Third Sex? (1975) and The Gay Theology (1977), in which he published testimonies from ten men and women who claimed to have renounced homosexuality after religious conversion – one woman recalled that ‘all I saw was the emptiness’. These stories became prototypes for what would later be known as ‘ex-gay testimonies’, personal narratives of transformation deployed in churches, in political campaigns such as Anita Bryant’s 1977 ‘Save Our Children’ crusade, and, later, in the broader culture wars. By the late 1990s national newspaper advertisements featured ‘former homosexuals’ as evidence that sexual change was possible.

The books also codified Philpott’s fusion of psychology and religion. He argued that overbearing mothers or absent fathers could create same-sex desires in youth and that true healing required both spiritual salvation and adherence to traditional gender roles. Men had to embrace masculinity and headship; women had to cultivate femininity and submission. For Philpott, heterosexuality was not simply about sexual desire but also required individuals to perform their ‘God-given’ gender.

These writings gave the fledgling movement an intellectual and theological foundation, but they also drew criticism. Some of Philpott’s interviewees – most prominently John Evans, who appeared as ‘Ted’ in The Third Sex? – later disavowed their supposed transformations. Evans accused Philpott of taking liberties with his story and embellishing an exorcism that did not happen the way he said it did. Others simply drifted back into gay life, quietly undermining the credibility of Philpott’s claims. For conservative Christians in the 1970s, though, his books offered a potent counter-narrative to the growing visibility of the gay liberation movement.

Despite his pioneering role in the ex-gay movement, Philpott’s place in the history of conversion therapy has often been overlooked. Partly this is because the movement itself shifted in the 1980s, embracing a more clinical vocabulary. By the early 1990s, leaders in the ex-gay movement, such as clinical psychologist Joseph Nicolosi, promoted what they called ‘reparative therapy’, a counselling approach to aligning one’s gender identity with one’s birth sex. Couched in quasi-scientific terms, reparative therapists distanced themselves from any talk of demons and exorcism.

Philpott’s own downfall also contributed. In the early 1980s he was forced to resign from ministry after he sexually assaulted an adopted daughter. The scandal meant that later histories of the movement tended to omit his name, even as they drew on practices he had pioneered.

Philpott’s story complicates our understanding of San Francisco’s place in American sexual history. The city is usually remembered as a capital of gay liberation, from the Castro’s emergence as a gay neighbourhood to Harvey Milk’s political career. Yet it was also a seedbed for conservative reaction. The factors that drew LGBTQ people to San Francisco – its openness, its experimentation, its promise of self-actualisation and reinvention – also attracted conservative Christians who saw an opportunity for evangelism.

Today ‘conversion therapy’ is widely condemned by medical associations as both ineffective and harmful. In 2012 California was the first state to ban licensed therapists from offering the practice for minors, and more than 20 states have followed suit. (Religious counsellors, such as pastors, priests, rabbis, and pastoral counsellors, can still provide faith-based approaches.) Memoirs by survivors detail the depression, trauma, and suicidal ideation such programmes fostered. Support for conversion therapy has plummeted in the US, with fewer than one in ten Americans now believing same-sex desires can – or should – be changed. Philpott, however, has remained unrepentant during these cultural and political shifts. In a 2013 reflection he warned that while LGBTQ activists might be ‘winning political battles’, their victories would not endure ‘in the forever’.

Chris Babits is an independent researcher based in Northern Utah.