Bowen Yang's 'painful and detrimental' conversion therapy
Bowen Yang has spoken about the “painful and detrimental” experience of being sent to conversion therapy by his parents when he was a teenager.
Bowen Yang has spoken about the “painful and detrimental” experience of going to conversion therapy.
The 'Saturday Night Live' star shared how his parents enrolled him in the controversial therapy when he was a teenager after they found out he was gay.
In a preview of 'NBC’s Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist', Bowen shared: “I ‘came out’ in a sense that my parents just sort of stumbled upon something, and they were like ‘Oh, we didn’t know this is what we were dealing with,’.
"I give them a lot of grace for that because they just had no context for it."
Bowen, 34, went on to explain that his parents told him if he went to conversion therapy, he could then go to New York University and live with his older sister.
He quipped: "Those poor people did not know that that’s one of the gayest schools in the country.
“I kind of played along, and I kind of just humored them and myself into seeing what it was."
Meanwhile, Bowen previously told popstar Lady Gaga that her single 'Born This Way' helped him come out of the closet after conversion therapy.
When the star appeared on an episode of his and Matt Rogers’ podcast 'Las Culturistas;, Bowen told her: "I think I had come out of the closet again when ‘Born This Way’ came out, because I went to conversion therapy, (which) obviously did not work out."
He added: "We were just blasting that song for 48 straight hours,” before Rogers said that Yang “felt emboldened to come out that weekend".
He went on to tell Gaga: "You’re so important to a huge swath of people who only want the best things for you and for each other. But also, those people need leadership and you’ve always been that leader culturally, artistically, in so many ways.”
And, Gaga replied: "I believe that we will continue to show people that are filled with hatred and ignorance that they should be looking up to the queer community and following and learning about love, and learning about grace, learning about kindness. I really believe that and I’m not giving up.”
