Former New Yorker Peterson Toscano, who endured 17 years of ex-gay reparative therapy in Manhattan and elsewhere, returns to the city to present his one-man comedy, “Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House,” for one night only at 6:30 p.m. Monday, June 14, 2004, at Marble Collegiate Church, 29th and Fifth Ave. Admission is $6.00 or $15.00 with dinner and is sponsored by GIFTS, the GLBT group at Marble Collegiate.
XGW has previously reviewed Toscano’s show:
Ex-Ex-Gay Takes Comedy on the Road, Jan. 25, 2004
A Visit to the Homo No Mo Halfway House, Oct. 16, 2003
A press release for the June 14, 2004, show continues:
As a gay theatrical performance artist, Peterson Toscano has successfully played straight roles most of his life. He was so good at it that for about five years, he actually convinced himself that he was no longer gay.
Toscano lived in New York City from 1985 to 1995 where he received all sorts of reparative therapy to straighten himself out. As a born-again Christian with homosexual desires, he easily found ministers and counselors in the city who helped him pursue change. In the late 1980’s he attended Life Ministries, the Manhattan-based ex-gay support group founded and run by former actors.
Dismayed at seeing many of his fellow ex-gays marry then fail in their new lives, Toscano pursed further help at area churches and ministries where he submitted himself to counseling, “healing- prayer”
and a even deliverance session with a Jamaican exorcist.
After receiving years of reparative therapy, he costarred on a Broadway stage as the husband of the bride for his own wedding on October 6, 1990, which was performed at the Mark Hellenger theater. The theater has served as the home of Times Square Church since the late 1980s and was also where Toscano attended religious services for much of his time in the city.
Five years later he and his wife left New York to serve as missionaries in Zambia. The rigors of the mission field served to heighten Toscano’s same-sex attractions leading him to relocate to Memphis, Tenn., where he enrolled in Love in Action, a Christian-based, 12-step, residential program for gay men who want to be straight.
Nearly 20 years since his arrival in New York, a failed marriage, 18 months in the Love in Action ex-gay program and his eventual coming out in January 1999, Toscano returns to New York City with his one-man, multi-character comedy that explores his experiences in the ex-gay movement. Toscano currently tours the country with the piece which showcases intelligent and zany humor. Praised for his compelling on-stage character transformations, Toscano tells true stories of life in the Homo No Mo Halfway House that are filled with pathos and farce.
For video samples of the show and more, visit www.homonomo.com.
This is just a nit, but is it really kosher to call someone who endured 17 years of ex-gay reparative therapy “ex-gay.” It is not clear that he achieved “ex-gay” status. “Ex-gay wannabe” (want-to-be) maybe. But “ex-gay”? Not to me.
I don’t know, considering the way most ex-gay ministries count their successes, it seems quite fair to me to use the same criteria for determining whether to call someone ex-gay or not.
Besides that, for Mr. Toscano, the lable is self-applied and thus is his own assessment of who and what he is and was.
I saw Mr. Tosacano’s show when he brought it here to DC—excellent stuff!
Ex gay want to be. LOL nice one.
The real question is what does Ex-Gay really mean?
Nobody ever says are you ex-straight? They just call you gay.
Perhaps we shouldn’t even be using the term ‘ex-gay’ with its implicit assumption that sexuality is alterable. As has been discussed at length here, just because you are celibate or restrict yourself to exclusively heterosexual behaviour, does not mean that you do not feel homosexual or bisexual attraction and does not mean you’ve stopped being ‘gay’. By attempting to use and popularise more sober, netural terms we can balance the argument a bit moer.
However, I can’t think of any suitable alternatives off the top of my head. Refering to ‘ex-gays’ as bisexual or straight doesn’t express the fact that they have under-gone ‘reparative’ therapy or that they are attempting to reject homosexual attraction.
Similarly, the term ‘reparative therapy’ is also controversial, with its implicit assumption that be attempting to alter someone’s sexual behaviour they are ‘repairing’ that person.
Ex-straight (for gays) doesn’t make any sense, as it implies gays were once straight. Most would never have considered themselves straight, ever, by any stretch of the imagination. When I was “ex-gay” I used to call myself exish-gay (or exish-gayish) sometimes, just to acknowledge that while I was labeling myself as ex-gay, it wasn’t totally reality.