My Ex-Gay Life With Tea Party Queen Christine O’Donnell
Still, it took Richards several more months before he was ready to become ex-ex-gay. First, he went to work for a group called Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, whose founder, Peter LaBarbara, he’d met through O’Donnell. LaBarbara is among the most virulent anti-gay activists in the nation, famous for his prurient obsession with the outré corners of the gay sexual demimonde. After going undercover at an “International Mr. Leather” convention, for example, he appeared on Concerned Women for America’s radio show to regale his interviewer with tales of “grotesque hard-core homosexual pornography,” including urine fetishes and something called “pig sex.”
Richards was unnerved when he went into Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s “media room” and found copious hard-core porn—for research, naturally—as well as leather bondage gear for undercover work. “The sad thing was, there’s that 80-year-old grandma in Wichita, Kansas, thinking she’s donating this money to a good cause, and it’s going to who knows what kind of ‘research,’” says Richards. “As someone struggling with same-sex attraction, I thought, this is really not a place I need to be hanging out in.”
Eventually, Richards reached out to Wayne Besen, the founder of Truth Wins Out, a group that battles anti-gay religious extremism. The two had met when they debated on Alan Colmes’ radio show. Richards finally came out in an article in The Advocate in 2000. After that, he says, O’Donnell “totally turned her back on me. I never heard from her ever again. That’s been my experience with the Christian community in general. The minute I was struggling and saying, ‘Hey, listen, I don’t know really where I am with this,’ that’s when everyone really turned their back on me.”
