I Was the Poster Boy for Mormon Gay Conversion Therapy - Appio Hunter | Ep. 2099
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2025
⏱️ 195 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this powerful episode, we sit down with Appio Hunter, whose early life as a Portuguese-speaking Mormon kid, his journey through conversion therapy, and his eventual path to love, self-acceptance, and healing make for one of the most profound LGBTQ+ Mormon Stories ever shared on this channel.
Raised between Southern California and Utah by a Brazilian mother and a father with deep pioneer-era lineage, Appio knew from age four that he was different. By adolescence, he recognized he was gay –just as he was absorbing the harsh anti-gay rhetoric embedded in Mormon culture of the era. What followed was years of masking, spiritual turmoil, self-hatred, and the crushing belief that he needed to be “fixed.”
Appio was eventually ushered into LDS-supported Reparative Therapy, including talk therapy, group sessions, “baseball therapy,” and even a type of 12-step program designed to eliminate same-sex attraction. This path led him all the way to the early 1990s offices of senior LDS General Authorities –including Russell M. Nelson and Henry B. Eyring –where he was held up as a "success story" of conversion therapy.
Beneath the surface of being the “poster boy” for Reparative Therapy, the cost was devastating: self-loathing, loneliness, suicidal ideation, and the tragic loss of peers who didn’t survive the program. Ultimately, Appio’s journey brought him toward authenticity and real love.
This is a story of survival, identity, love, and liberation –a must-watch for anyone navigating faith transitions, LGBTQ+ issues, or the legacy of Mormon conversion therapy.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. |
| 0:03.0 | I'm your host John DeLinn. |
| 0:04.1 | It is December 2nd, 2025. |
| 0:06.5 | And today we have in studio, someone who was at the center of the Church of Jesus Christ of |
| 0:14.4 | Latter-day Saints or the Mormon Church's attempts at changing people's sexuality, from homosexual, as they used to call it, to heterosexual. |
| 0:25.6 | You could also refer to this as the conversion therapy or the reparative therapy movement. |
| 0:31.5 | And of course, I did my dissertation on this topic. |
| 0:34.2 | We've had several people interviewed over the years on Mormon stories that have |
| 0:38.5 | alluded to it, but I'm not sure I've ever interviewed someone who was as sort of central and as |
| 0:45.2 | early and as involved in the Mormon Church's efforts. We're talking Nicolosi, we're talking |
| 0:52.0 | Evergreen. We're talking those early, let's say, 80s, 90s, |
| 0:55.8 | 2000s years of helping gay men go straight or pray the gay away. And I say that in quotes, |
| 1:03.5 | because we all know now, not only was it not effective, but it was extremely damaging to those |
| 1:08.9 | who participated. So today we're going to be walking through the history or a history of the Mormon Church's |
| 1:15.2 | involvement in conversion or reparative therapy with gay men. |
| 1:19.5 | And our guest in studio is Opio Hunter. |
| 1:23.3 | Hey, Apio. |
| 1:23.9 | Hey, John. |
| 1:24.6 | Thanks so much for coming. |
| 1:25.8 | Thank you for having me. |
| 1:27.0 | Happy to be here. Yeah, this is. Hey, John. Thanks so much for coming. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here. |
| 1:27.8 | Yeah, this is so brave and so generous of you to be willing to come on and tell your story. |
... |
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