Drag Race legend Monique Heart opens up about her experiences with conversion therapy and ‘praying the gay away’
Monique Heart. (Getty)
RuPaul’s Drag Race legend Monique Heart talked candidly about her experiences with conversion therapy.
In 2008, Monique and her mother moved to Kansas City from Long Island, New York. This is where they joined a church ministry that asked the star to share her testimony.
“I was like ‘I struggle with homosexuality,’ and they call it ‘SSA,’ Same Sex Attraction,” Monique told Hey Qween! With Johnny McGovern.
She was asked by the church when was the last time she had “acted out” – which she took to mean her last sexual experience.
Monique said: “[I] had just sucked this man’s d***… I met him at TGI Friday’s when I was working there!”
In response the church enrolled her in its “Pure Heart” program, which was meant to “restore” her through the Bible and its teachings, but actually tried to pin her sexuality on bogus external factors.
“The reason that I am gay is not because my father was not there and I had an overbearing mother,” Monique said.
Monique Heart ‘would pray with the homos then hit the gay clubs’.
She was later put into a “six week intensive program”. During this she was elected as leader, because she did “so well at praying the gay away”.
Monique Heart joked that for six months “we would pray with the homos, and then me and my friend would go to the gay clubs afterword”.
The Drag Race legend said it was “freeing” to be surrounded by other members of the community.
“I mean it was horrible, I mean coming out is not easy, but it was amazing to be in a room with other people who identified like you, and I had never had that experience, so it was just transformative in a way.”
Monique said that after these experiences she refrained from “any carnal activities” with other men for “four or five years”, and didn’t accept her sexuality until she enrolled in hair school.
There, she met a friend who she confided in, who told her: “I’ve been a gay man my whole life, and I know that God loves me. If He is who He says He is, then he has to love you no matter what.”
The conversation took Monique “back to Bible school”, but ultimately allowed her to “accept and love all of this”.
