Christopher Yuan is important to the history of the ex-gay movement partly because his ministry illustrates how that movement has changed.
Yuan participated in the community and mindset of Exodus International, and built a prominent evangelical ministry around his story of leaving gay life after becoming a Christian. But he has also rejected a central promise historically associated with conversion therapy: that gay people should become heterosexual. Instead, Yuan increasingly has argued that sexual orientation is the wrong measure of change. His preferred goal is “holy sexuality”: celibacy for people who are unmarried and sexual relationships only within heterosexual marriage.
That distinction is particularly relevant in 2026. Exodus International closed in 2013 after its president apologized for promoting sexual-orientation change efforts. Many contemporary conservative Christian ministries no longer promise that sexual orientation can or should change. Yet ministries such as Yuan’s continue to teach that gay identity and same-sex relationships must be rejected.
Yuan’s work has also moved well beyond adults experiencing same-sex attraction. His Holy Sexuality Project now offers sexuality and gender curricula for teenagers and preteens, and is developing material for children ages 4–8.
Yuan’s history provides a useful case study of how one leader of the ex-gay movement evolved from promises of “freedom from homosexuality” toward changing identity, behavior and beliefs without necessarily changing sexual attraction.
EXODUS / EX-GAY · FIRST DOCUMENTED INVOLVEMENT
1997
Yuan attends an Exodus conference as an openly gay man
Yuan’s connection with Exodus International predates his conversion to evangelical Christianity.
In his 2011 book Out of a Far Country, Yuan remembers his mother taking him to a conference at Asbury College in Kentucky while he was still living openly as a gay man. On arriving, he saw the Exodus name and realized that his mother had brought him to a conference for people he understood to be gay people who had become straight.
The book does not give the date in that passage, but the location and chronology match Exodus International’s July 1997 North American Conference at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. Contemporary Baptist Press coverage of the conference reported that Exodus promoted the message that people could “come out of homosexuality.”
1998–2001
Religious conversion in prison
After his 1998 arrest and imprisonment on drug charges, Yuan converts to evangelical Christianity. He concludes from his reading of the Bible that he cannot reconcile same-sex relationships with his new faith.
But the distinction that later becomes central to his ministry is already visible in accounts of his conversion: eliminating same-sex attraction is not required for him to reject gay identity and gay relationships.
In a detailed 2007 profile, the Daily Herald reported that Yuan was not “instantly cured” of attraction to men. Instead, he committed himself to celibacy and stopped defining himself by his sexual attractions.
EXODUS / EX-GAY · NATIONAL CONFERENCE SPEAKER
June 2007
Yuan returns to Exodus, this time as a speaker
A decade after attending an Exodus conference as an openly gay skeptic, Yuan appears at the Exodus 2007 Freedom Conference in Irvine, California, as a presenter.
Yuan’s surviving speaking itinerary lists a “HOPE Positive: Living with HIV/AIDS” workshop, a screening and Q&A for HOPE Positive, and conference morning devotions.
This provides firm evidence of Yuan’s direct participation in Exodus International’s national activities—not merely ideological similarity or a loose association with the ex-gay movement.
EX-GAY · “I’M NO LONGER GAY”
September 2007
Yuan publicly presents himself as evidence of change
A contemporary Daily Herald profile, “Leaving the gay lifestyle behind,” provides an unusually clear snapshot of Yuan’s message during this period.
Yuan acknowledges that attraction itself is not a choice and that he continues experiencing temptation. But he rejects homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual identities and argues that a person can stop being gay by refusing to define himself by same-sex attraction.
He tells the newspaper: “Gay people can wake up and say, ‘I’m no longer gay.’ I’m living proof of that.”
The article also reports that Yuan believes God has opened him to the possibility of relationships with women and marriage.
This is one of the clearest early examples of Yuan using rhetoric characteristic of the contemporary ex-gay movement, even though he does not claim that his same-sex attractions have disappeared.
2007–2010
Ex-gay testimony becomes a speaking ministry
Yuan develops an extensive speaking schedule at churches, Christian colleges and conferences. His surviving itinerary includes topics such as “Homosexuality and the Gospel: Winning Gay Friends to Christ,” “A Biblical Response to Homosexuality,” and presentations about the LGBT community and HIV/AIDS.
His ministry increasingly presents his departure from gay identity and relationships as evidence of Christian transformation.
COUNTERPOINT: Continuing to experience same-sex attraction while declaring oneself “no longer gay” raises a question that will follow Yuan’s ministry for years: Has sexual orientation changed, or has the language used to describe it changed?
November 2009
Yuan joins Exodus leaders in opposing Uganda’s anti-gay bill
Yuan joins Exodus International president Alan Chambers, executive vice president Randy Thomas and Christian psychologist Warren Throckmorton in a letter by ex-gay leaders and associates who oppose Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
The signatories oppose criminalizing homosexual behavior while continuing to defend Christian ministries for people with “unwanted homosexual attractions.”
The episode further documents Yuan’s place within the institutional ex-gay movement while also showing that he and Exodus leaders opposed Uganda’s proposed criminal penalties.
PIVOT · “HOLY SEXUALITY” EMERGES
2010–2012
Yuan develops an alternative measure of change
Yuan’s own archive documents the term “Holy Sexuality” by October 2010, when he presented a chapel series under that name at Bethel College in Mishawaka, Indiana. His archive of Holy Sexuality events records further appearances in 2011 and 2012.
This is important because it places the development of Yuan’s signature concept well before Exodus International closed.
Rather than simply abandoning ex-gay theology, Yuan was developing a different definition of successful change: Christian identity and sexual abstinence outside heterosexual marriage rather than necessarily becoming heterosexual.
2011
Out of a Far Country expands Yuan’s national profile
Yuan and his mother, Angela Yuan, publish Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God, A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope.
The memoir greatly expands Yuan’s prominence in evangelical discussions of homosexuality and change. Its connection to the ex-gay movement is visible in its promotion: Exodus International president Alan Chambers provided an endorsement, reproduced on the publisher’s page for the book.
The memoir also recounts Yuan’s earlier encounter with Exodus as an openly gay man, making his later return as an Exodus conference speaker a striking reversal.
PIVOTAL · EXODUS CLOSES
June 2013
Yuan welcomes Exodus’s retreat from orientation change
Exodus International closes in June 2013 after president Alan Chambers apologizes for harms including the organization’s promotion of sexual-orientation change efforts.
Yuan says he has “mixed feelings.” In a contemporary Christian Post interview, he makes an important distinction: “I have never experienced reparative therapy, re-orientation counseling or Exodus support groups.” He therefore says he cannot speak personally about the effectiveness or harm of those methods.
At the same time, Yuan welcomes Exodus’s retreat from orientation change and argues that heterosexuality should not be the goal.
His response is therefore better understood as a rejection of orientation change as the objective—not a rejection of the underlying belief that gay sexual relationships are sinful.
2013–2017
“Holy Sexuality” replaces older ex-gay vocabulary
After Exodus closes, Yuan increasingly frames his message around “holy sexuality” rather than becoming heterosexual or “ex-gay.”
The behavioral requirement remains: sex belongs only within marriage between a man and a woman, while unmarried people—including people experiencing same-sex attraction—are expected to remain celibate.
What changes is the definition of transformation. Persistent same-sex attraction does not mean that Christian transformation has failed.
DISTANCING · ORIENTATION CHANGE REJECTED
2018
Yuan formalizes “Holy Sexuality”
Yuan publishes Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God’s Grand Story, formalizing a framework he had been developing for years.
He defines holy sexuality as chastity in singleness or faithfulness in marriage, with marriage understood exclusively as heterosexual. Yuan’s description of the book calls it a continuation of the concept introduced in Out of a Far Country.
More significantly for the history of conversion therapy, Yuan explicitly criticizes Christians who continue using “sexual orientation change” therapy as their main methodology.
This marks an important boundary. It would be misleading by this point to characterize Yuan as advocating conversion therapy if conversion therapy is defined specifically as an effort to make a gay person heterosexual.
His ministry nevertheless continues to seek substantial change: rejection of gay identity, abstention from same-sex relationships and adherence to conservative Christian sexual ethics.
COUNTERPOINT: Abandoning the promise of heterosexuality reframes the ex-gay proposition—but it does not necessarily abandon its objective. The expectation shifts from changing whom an LGBTQ person is attracted to, toward changing how that person publicly identifies, forms relationships, and describes those attractions—while misframing friends and neighbors who feel differently as “unholy.”
2021–2022
Yuan rejects gay, ex-gay and Side B identity
Alongside Rosaria Butterworth, Yuan becomes increasingly explicit that none of these labels describes his desired outcome.
A Christian can continue experiencing same-sex attraction, in his framework, without that attraction determining identity. Transformation concerns Christian identity and obedience rather than elimination of attraction.
This distinguishes Yuan from older claims that successful ex-gay ministry should produce heterosexual attraction. But it also rejects gay Christian identity. The desired identity is exclusively Christian—and implicitly asexual.
EXPANSION · FOCUS SHIFTS TO YOUTH
2023
The Holy Sexuality Project launches
Yuan launches the Holy Sexuality Project, a video curriculum intended to help parents and grandparents teach teenagers about sexuality, gender, marriage, singleness and Christian identity.
This represents a significant strategic development. Yuan’s ministry is no longer principally the testimony of an adult who left gay life. It becomes an educational project intended to shape how young people understand sexual orientation, gender and identity.
COUNTERPOINT: The distinction becomes more consequential when it is taught to adolescents. A teenager need not be promised that same-sex attraction will disappear to receive the message that acknowledging those attractions through a gay or LGBTQ identity is an unacceptable outcome.
2025
Yuan more directly targets “Side B” gay Christianity
Yuan increasingly distinguishes his position not only from LGBT-affirming Christianity but also from “Side B” Christians—Christians who accept traditional prohibitions on same-sex sexual relationships but continue to use gay identity terminology.
This development clarifies how important identity change, rather than orientation change, has become to Yuan’s model.
CURRENT · EXPANSION TO PRETEENS AND CHILDREN
2026
Holy Sexuality moves to younger audiences
Yuan remains active nationally in 2026, speaking at churches and Holy Sexuality conferences.
His educational project is also moving to substantially younger audiences. In August 2026, Moody Radio featured Yuan’s new Holy Sexuality Project preteen series, an animated curriculum addressing identity, sexuality, gender and Christian discipleship.
The Holy Sexuality Project’s current website offers separate programs for teenagers ages 13 and older and preteens ages 9–12. It also advertises a forthcoming animated series for children ages 4–8.
The progression is significant: a ministry that began with Yuan recounting his own departure from gay life now seeks to shape children’s understanding of sexuality before adolescence.
What changed — and what did not
Yuan’s history does not support a simple narrative in which he once practiced or promoted reparative therapy and later repudiated it. He says he never personally underwent reparative therapy, and the available evidence does not establish that changing homosexual attraction into heterosexual attraction was the goal of his ministry.
But neither is Yuan disconnected from the historical ex-gay movement. He attended an Exodus conference before his conversion, returned as an Exodus conference speaker, participated publicly alongside Exodus leadership, and presented his departure from gay identity and relationships as evidence of Christian transformation.
The most important change is therefore what counts as change.
The older ex-gay movement often advertised “freedom from homosexuality” and sometimes promised orientation change. Yuan’s mature “holy sexuality” model does not require heterosexual attraction. Instead, it seeks changes in identity, relationships, sexual behavior and religious belief.
That distinction helps explain Yuan’s continuing relevance in 2026. The language and methods have changed considerably since Exodus International’s heyday, but the expectation that LGBT people abandon gay identity and same-sex relationships remains central to his ministry.
Exiting the spin cycle
There is another way to describe that evolution of the conversion therapy movement and its affiliates from orientation change to identity change:
If same-sex attraction persists but acknowledging it as part of a gay or LGBTQ identity is itself treated as spiritually unacceptable, the demanded change may no longer be in sexual orientation so much as a change away from sexual honesty.
The question raised by Yuan’s model is whether rejecting an accurate description of one’s sexuality represents transformation—or whether it asks LGBTQ people to trade sexual honesty and transparency for a misleading identity that their religious community will accept.