“Saturday Night Live” star Bowen Yang is out and proud now, but it was a heartbreaking journey. In a new interview for “The New York Times,” the comedian opens up about his experience with gay conversion therapy.
Yang says his parents first found out about his sexuality after finding a “lewd” AOL Instant Messenger conversation he was having with a friend… and unfortunately, it didn’t go over well with them. One day, Yang came home to his father revealing he’d set up some sessions with a “specialist” that turned out to be gay conversion therapy.
Feeling bad about making his parents “suffer,” Yang went through with the conversion therapy. At first, it was “talk therapy,” which he liked… but then it turned “crazy,” Yang describing it as “explaining the gay away with pseudoscience.”
- “I had this second coming out with them while I was in college, and they couldn’t accept it,” Yang adds. “Eventually, I got to this place of standing firm… [my parents] are doing a lot of work to just try to understand, I can’t rush them.”
Source: The New York Times
