In 2011 I interviewed Ben Gresham, featured in this story, about his experience going through these gay conversion therapies. I’ve met and spoken with a few other people who’ve gone through similar experiences, and it always amazes me how, for so many of them, it actually strengthens and deepens their faith rather than cause them to discard it.

Meanwhile, the people who promote this sort of quackery really are, I think, the lowest of the low. They’re absolute ghouls and there’s no other way to describe them.

PREVIOUSLY: Living Waters Australia co-ordinator Ron Brookman has a close association with the Australian Christian Lobby. In an August 2012 newsletter he boasted that he joined with the anti-gay group in meetings with federal MPs, using the opportunities to convince them that gay couples shouldn’t be free to marry because being gay is destructive lifestyle which has “damaging effects on children” and that people who “attempt homosexual relationships” invariably come to see that this is a “tragic choice” and a “disaster.”

COMPLETELY TRIVIAL: I was two rows behind Charlie Pickering on a flight from Chicago to New York the day after the recent US election. I said hello and he asked how I was going, and I said I was tired. (Cool story, bro).