Surviving Mormonism's David Matheson - former LDS Conversion Therapist

Ask Dr. Julie Hanks

Dr. Julie Hanks

Relationships, Education, Mental Health, Society & Culture, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness

4.6 • 734 Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, I sit down with David Matheson, a former LDS conversion therapist who is now openly gay. You may recognize David from episode 1 of Bravo’s Surviving Mormonism with Heather Gay. In our conversation, David opens up about his own experience as a client in conversion therapy, the harmful assumptions that shaped that world, and the moment he realized that no amount of effort would change his sexual orientation. We also talk about the tender complexity of mixed-orientation marriage...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, friends. Welcome to Ask Dr. Julie Hanks podcast. I'm so glad you're here.
0:13.2	In each episode, I coach a listener through a tough question about mental health, personal
0:18.3	growth, family relationships, or faith journeys.
0:21.6	My goal is to help you think, feel, or do something differently to improve your life because
0:27.2	you listen to this podcast.
0:29.5	I want you to step into your power and create a life you love.
0:33.9	Let's get started.
0:36.4	Hello, friends.
0:38.1	I'm going to be joined in a couple of minutes by David Matheson, who is a former gay conversion
0:45.3	therapist and works a lot with the LDS community.
0:49.3	And I'm going to be talking with him about his transition from a conversion therapist to an openly gay man. He was just
0:57.9	featured on surviving Mormonism with Heather Gay on Bravo. And I highly suggest his episode. Please
1:06.1	watch it. Let me see if I can get him here. Yay! Okay, so this is David Matheson. He is a clinical mental
1:13.5	health counselor, and you guys have already said this in the chat, but he just appeared this week
1:19.2	on surviving Mormonism with Heather Gay. The first episode is David's episode. So if you haven't
1:25.3	watched it, please go and watch it. David and I watched it
1:29.3	together last night and had dinner, which was so fun. Thank you for that honor, David.
1:34.2	It was very fun. Thank you for coming over. Yeah, it was really cool to watch it with kind of the
1:40.2	featured star of the episode. So let's get to it.
1:45.1	You were once a leading figure in Utah in the LGBTQ conversion therapy movement, right?
1:52.8	What originally drew you to that work?
1:56.4	Well, I was born in 19, no.
	...

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