My Coming Out

Early 2019

On the morning of January 20, 2019, I received a text message from a friend who told me that Rich Wyler, executive director of Brother’s Road (previously People Can Change) had announced in a closed Facebook group that I had left my wife and was now pursuing a relationship with a man.

About an hour later, Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out (a one-man ex-gay watchdog organization) called me on the phone. Someone in the Facebook group had tipped him off. Wayne notified me that he was about to publish a press release about me and asked if I would like to make a statement. I was caught very much off guard and asked for some time to put a statement together. He told me I had ten minutes. I quickly pulled together 3 ill-conceived paragraphs and sent them to Wayne, who included them in his release.

Wayne’s story about me was picked up by news outlets world-wide. Within a week, my picture and story appeared in print and online publications in open societies everywhere. I was hardly prepared for, and did not want, this attention at such a vulnerable time in my life.

On the spectrum of good to bad coming out stories, mine surely ranks in the latter category. The forcible violation of my sovereign personhood—or put another way, this rape of my private life—was carried out by two men so different it is hard to imagine they would ever collude on a single project. Wayne is a radical gay activist; Rich is a conservative Mormon. But both are heavily invested in their opposing moral causes, polarized around the right to choose how one expresses (or represses) his homosexuality. And both are so possessed by the righteous indignation of their cause that laying down someone else’s life in service to that cause is quite a natural reflex.

To them both, I was a traitor and a danger, which provided double justification to use all means necessary against me. Rich’s actions were ostensibly defensive; Wayne’s were clearly punitive. Both saw my move from ex-gay to gay as necessitating action. And thus, their unconscious collusion on the project to throw Matheson under the bus.

Wayne is a confirmed viper so scrutiny of his part in this drama yields little of interest. Rich, on the other hand, leads a supposedly humanitarian organization. Also, Rich has an extensive background in public relations so he certainly should have understood the ramifications of his choice to make my private life public knowledge, especially since he and I had been discussing the possibility of my situation being discovered by the “gay press” and being exploited against his organization.

So how did Rich Wyler assume the right to out me? He probably decided I was an existential threat, which likely justified his preemptive strike. Here’s the backstory.

I had been heavily involved in Brother’s Road since its inception in about 2000. Rich and I had co-created a weekend retreat for men with “unwanted same-sex attraction” called Journey into Manhood in 2001 and I had staffed that weekend many dozens of times. Rich and I were close colleagues and had been close friends.

In April of 2018, after I had determined it was necessary for me to conform my life to my natural sexual orientation, I had communicated my plans to Rich. I wanted him to hear it from me first and to be prepared with a statement to the Brother’s Road community once I made my plans public.

By early December 2018, Rich had begun hearing rumors about me from within the community, which must have been initiated by my wife telling a number of our friends in the community and disclosing it in her online women’s group, all of which was done without consulting me. Rich was becoming concerned about the impact of these rumors on the organization and drafted a statement, which he shared with me on December 11, 2018. I was also working on my own statement.

On January 15, 2019, I emailed Rich that we should coordinate the timing of our statements. I said, “Yours should definitely not come out before mine, but I want to wait until you’re prepared to release yours before I release mine so you aren’t caught off guard and have to scramble.” Later that same day, I also wrote to him: “I need more time. It's extremely important that I do this well because I can only do it once and I can never take it back. It’s unwise for me to push it too fast just to try to get out ahead of rumors.”

On January 16, 2019, Rich emailed me with some advice about how to write my statement. I replied that I was working on it with a friend.

Then on January 20, 2019, he posted his statement to the closed Facebook group without my knowledge or permission. When I later confronted him about his choice to violate my privacy he explained that he was concerned the rumors about me would harm the organization. I replied, “the good of the organization comes before the good of an individual.” He replied, “yes.”

His protectiveness of Brother’s Road is understandable—it’s his livelihood and his mission. But it is still hard to understand the level of justification necessary to violate my privacy in such a significant way. I later learned that he had some negative beliefs about me that I think added to his justification. I found this out from a friend of mine who was part of the Facebook group where Rich had outed me.

Sometime before January 30, 2019, this friend sent me a screenshot of a small interchange between Rich Wyler and two others in the group (who I didn't know) where they diagnosed my “downfall”:

Eric: … yep you are exactly right. He stopped doing his work many years ago.

Rich Wyler: ... I agree. He lost the humility to do his own work. He always had to be the one with all the answers. He also refused marriage counseling, which Peggy [my ex-wife] asked for multiple times.

Jim: I suspect, this statement perfectly sums up his downfall. When you’re the one that everyone else turns to, who do you turn to when you’re struggling? It takes a great deal of humility to do so when you’re in a position like his, and it can be extremely intimidating.

This interchange is an example of one of conversion therapy’s most harmful features—blaming the individual when the process fails, which it typically does. Making me guilty for my own “downfall” also provides additional justification for mistreatment. If it’s my own fault, then I have it coming. When I confronted Rich about this text string he called me a “bully.” This entire interaction involves both gaslighting (causing me to doubt my own choices and sanity) and scapegoating (Rich displacing his aggression and guilt onto me).

I suspect that, at the bottom of it, is an assumption that I sense is common in conservative circles, including in the world of conversion therapy. The assumption is that a person who chooses to leave "the fold" and affirm their natural sexuality by “going gay” is always the one who is wrong. In religious circles, they are the “sinner.” In therapy circles, they are the “identified patient.” This has certainly been my experience.