The ex-gay movement consists of people and organizations that encourage people to refrain from entering or pursuing same-sex relationships, to eliminate homosexual desires and to develop heterosexual desires, or to enter into a heterosexual relationship. Beginning with the founding of Love In Action and Exodus International in the mid-1970s, the movement saw rapid growth in the 1980s and 1990s before declining in the 2000s.
Restoration Path, known as Love in Action (LIA) until March 2012, was an ex-gay Christian ministry founded in 1973.
Jim in Bold is a documentary about Jim Wheeler, a gay high school student in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, who died by suicide in 1997 because of constant harassment at school. The film was created by the Equality Forum and directed by Glenn Holsten. The original music was composed by Michael Aharon.
Craig Brewer is an American filmmaker. His 2005 movie Hustle & Flow won the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and achieved commercial success, along with an Academy Award for Best Original Song, "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp". He is also known for directing the 2011 remake of Footloose, the 2019 film Dolemite Is My Name and the 2021 film Coming 2 America; the latter two starring Academy Award-nominee Eddie Murphy.
Peterson Toscano is a playwright, actor, Bible scholar, blogger, podcaster, advocate against global warming, and gay rights activist. Toscano spent nearly two decades undergoing ex-gay treatment and conversion therapy before accepting his sexual orientation and coming out as a gay man. He has since shared his experiences internationally through various media outlets, especially plays. His talks and performances use comedy and storytelling to explore LGBTQ issues, religion, and climate change.
Ira Sachs is an American filmmaker. Sachs started his career directing short films such as Vaudeville (1991) and Lady (1993) before making his feature film debut with The Delta (1997). Sachs later won acclaim for his dramatic independent films Forty Shades of Blue (2005), Keep the Lights On (2012), Love Is Strange (2014), Little Men (2016), and Passages (2023).
Nicolas Winding Refn, also known as Jang, is a Danish film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for his collaborations with Mads Mikkelsen.
The Bridge is a 2006 drama film directed by filmmaker Brett Hanover.
John Cameron Mitchell is an American actor, playwright, screenwriter, singer, songwriter, producer and director. He is known as the writer, director and star of the 2001 film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which is based on the stage musical of the same name. He also portrayed the role of Joe Exotic in the Peacock limited series Joe vs. Carole in 2022.
Judas Kiss is a 2011 U.S. drama film directed by J.T. Tepnapa and written by Tepnapa and Carlos Pedraza. It stars Charlie David, Richard Harmon, Sean Paul Lockhart, and Timo Descamps. The film is the story of a disillusioned filmmaker's visit to his peculiar alma mater, where he is trapped in a tug of war between his tortured past and a troubling future.
Jack Shamama is an American author, producer, screenwriter, blogger, and social critic who is best known for his work in the LGBT community and in gay pornography. Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Miami, Florida, Shamama graduated from Wesleyan University and later moved to San Francisco, where he lives today. Since 2008, he has been the product manager for gay adult video-on-demand membership site Naked Sword, where he is concurrently producing the independent art-porn feature film, I Want Your Love.
Morgan Jon Fox is an American film director and screenwriter from Memphis, Tennessee.
Mike C. Manning is an American actor, producer, reality television personality and activist. Manning gained fame as a cast member on the MTV series The Real World: D.C. in 2009 at 22 years old. before subsequently embarking on an acting career, appearing in a number of films and television programs, such as the 2014 Disney Channel original movie Cloud 9, in which he played Nick Swift, Hawaii Five-0, Love Is All You Need? (2016), Teen Wolf, The Call, Son of the South and Days of Our Lives. As a producer, his work includes the documentary Kidnapped for Christ, and The Bay, which won the 2020 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Digital Daytime Drama Series. He won the 2021 Daytime Emmy Award Outstanding Performance By a Supporting Actor in a Daytime Fiction Program for his performance as Caleb McKinnon.
John J. Smid is the former director of the Memphis, Tennessee ex-gay ministry Love in Action, a group that claims to convert lesbians and gay men to heterosexuality.
Indie Memphis, located in Memphis, TN, is an arts organization that runs year-round programs that "inspire, encourage and promote independent films and filmmaking in Memphis."
Fawzia Mirza is a Canadian film and TV actress, writer, producer, and director. Her work includes web series Kam Kardashian and Brown Girl Problems, and the 2017 film Signature Move.
Cassie Jaye is an American film director, best known for directing the 2016 documentary film The Red Pill about the men's rights movement.
Boy Erased is a 2018 American biographical drama film based on Garrard Conley's 2016 memoir of the same name. It was written and directed by Joel Edgerton, who also produced with Kerry Kohansky Roberts and Steve Golin. The film stars Lucas Hedges as Jared Eamons, a fictionalized version of Conley, the closeted gay son of Baptist parents, who is forced to take part in a conversion therapy program. Edgerton, Joe Alwyn, Xavier Dolan, Troye Sivan, Cherry Jones, and Flea also appear in supporting roles.
Šmíd is a Czech surname, Czechized form of German surname Schmidt. Notable people include:
Garrard Conley is an American author and LGBTQ activist known for his autobiography Boy Erased: A Memoir, recounting his childhood as part of a fundamentalist family in Arkansas that enrolled him in conversion therapy. The book was adapted for the 2018 film, Boy Erased.
