Letting Go(d): How I Failed Gay Conversion Therapy and Learned to Love Myself

"Being gay will send you to hell!" This is what Aaron Simnowitz heard all his life growing up in the Evangelical church. From a young age, he knew he was different than the other boys, preferring The Babysitters Club over The Hardy Boys, Rainbow Brite over G.I. Joe, and Zack Morris over Kelly Kapowski. But at 18 years old, when he recognized his sexual attraction to other men, the fear of an everlasting torment in a fiery afterlife set in. From then on, Aaron embarked on a nearly fifteen-year journey with varying gay conversion therapies in an attempt to eradicate his homosexual desires, including a three-month residential stay at the now infamous "Love in Action" program in Memphis, Tennessee. Aaron loved Jesus, believing that "praying the gay away" was possible and that his orientation could be supernaturally charged-but only if he relinquished his rights to his true identity. However, his loyalty to his faith led him down a rabbit hole of immense confusion, emotional instability, perpetual guilt, and self-hatred. Letting Go(d) is a heartbreakingly honest, deeply funny, and courageously unique memoir detailing how Aaron navigated the revolving closet door of his sexuality, led a dramatic double life between his wildly conservative Christian community and his outrageously liberal television profession, and struggled to ultimately come to be at peace with God and living unashamed as a homosexual man.