Peterson Toscano - PetersonToscano.com

A Theatrical Performance Activist

Thoughtfully and humorously exploring queer issues

Background Info on Peterson Toscano and his work

Peterson Toscano is a gay activist, educator and a comic performer. He is also a former ex-gay, someone who tried and failed to change and suppress his same-sex orientation. For the past five years he has traveled throughout North America, Europe, and elsewhere telling his story in diverse ways.

As a gay man, Peterson's journey out of the closet had been long and complicated. After years of submitting to reparative therapy through counseling, ex-gay support groups in the US, England and Ecuador, Peterson enrolled in the ex-gay residential program, Love in Action in Memphis, TN. He graduated successfully from the program nearly two years later, but in January of 1999 he finally came out and fully accepted himself as a gay man. Since that time he has worked to undo the damage of gay reparative therapy in his own life, and he also has raised public awareness about the harm that comes from seeking to suppress and change one’s sexuality.

Throughout his career as an activist, Peterson has used storytelling as his primary tool to educate and instigate acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

In 2003 he wrote and premiered a one-person comic play entitled Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House—How I Survived the Ex-Gay Movement! Through seven different characters he chronicles what it is like to live in a residential therapeutic setting that promises to help clients “find freedom from homosexuality.” Based on his real life experience, the play quickly struck a chord with audiences and within a year he began to present it throughtout the the USA.

Soon after the launch of his play, the media became interested in Peterson’s story and contacted him for interviews in local and regional publications both gay and straight. In 2005 Peterson’s story and play were featured in the documentary film, Fish Can’t Fly, a film that looks at the damage of gay reparative therapy. The Madrid Gay and Lesbian Film Festival showed this movie at the 2006 festival.

Also beginning in 2005 Peterson began to broaden his messages to include the academic community presenting for academic conferences at McGill University (Montreal, Canada), American University (Washington, DC), Sarah Lawrence College (Bronxville, New York), Acadia University (Nova Scotia, Canada), University of Puerto Rico at Mayaquez, and University of Yaounde, (Cameroon). He also began to perform regularly at universities hosted by campus LGBT groups, diversity organizations and student life centers.

In addition to his work at academic conferences and universities, he began to reach out to the scientific community and mental health professionals presenting lectures about gay reparative therapy and healthy integration of sexuality. Some venues where he presented include, University of Connecticut School of Social Work, Capital Region Mental Health Center and the Tapestry Health Center.

From the beginning of Peterson’s work, he has relied heavily on the Internet and on-line social networking. He maintains three blogs, (in English, Spanish and Swedish) and has contributed to print and on-line publications including Out Planet, The New York Blade and The New Statesman (UK).

In order to broaden his message to high school students, he created the play Queer 101--Now I Know My gAy,B,C's, which is a primer about LGBT issues. The one-person play explores identity, homophobia and activism through the words and lives of lesbian and gay poets like Walt Whitman, Audre Lorde and Federico Garcia Lorca.

Part of Peterson’s activism has been a commitment to speak to an international audience. Since 2005, he has presented in the UK (six times), Sweden (three times), Spain, Denmark, Cameroon and Canada (three times). Although the ex-gay movement operates differently outside of the US, the conflict that many people have experienced over their same-sex attractions and the pressures of society (along with internal pressures) are often similar.

By telling his story through theater, comedy, in lectures, on TV and radio and in print, Peterson has encouraged other people to also share their stories with the belief that through narrative, we can gain understanding into personal struggles as well instruct others about the dangers we faced and how to avoid them.

In spring 2005 Christine Bakke, a lesbian in the US state of Colorado saw Peterson present his play about the ex-gay movement and found it helpful in processing her own experiences of gay reparative therapy. They corresponded and he helped her to unpack her story and then encouraged her to share it, first locally at a Gay and Lesbian community center, then at area universities and eventually nationally and internationally through interviews with the media. Christine has since been featured in both the US and French Glamour Magazine and on the national US TV program Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer.

In 2006 Peterson and Christine began to consider ways they could reach out to other people who also experienced harm from ex-gay conversion therapy. Together they created Beyond Ex-Gay (or bXg), which provides both virtual (on-line) and actual support for ex-gay survivors. On the site they provide articles, narratives, links to other sites, a list of written resources, original artwork, and poetry. Peterson has begun to post articles in Spanish. In addition, Christine and Peterson educate the public about the dangers of gay reparative therapy.

Through a partnership with the US non-violent social justice organization, Soulforce and the University of California at Irvine, bXg organized and ran the Ex-Gay Survivor Conference June 29-July 1, 2007. They also organized a series of press conferences where former Exodus leaders in the US, UK and Australia publicly apologized for their roles in promoting and providing ex-gay conversion therapy. Other ex-gay survivors also came forward to tell their stories to the press and the public.

Since the Ex-Gay Survivor Conference scores of former ex-gays have begun to tell their stories through written narratives, press conferences, interviews, on-line videos, public addresses and blogs. Peterson and Christine aid these individuals as they prepare their stories.

In addition, Peterson has served as a consultant to several major LGBT national organizations in the US and UK. These group seek to counter the misinformation about gay reparative therapy and educate the professional community and the public about the harm of suppressing and changing one’s sexual orientation.

In 2008 Peterson will continue to tour North America and Europe presenting at universities and conferences. Through Beyond Ex-Gay, he will help to organize regional events in the US and Europe. At the Beyond Ex-Gay website Peterson and Christine will launch a profile feature so that members can log in information about their ex-gay experiences. Based on some of that information, they will build a database that highlights the various approaches people took to suppressing and changing their sexual orientation, the reasons they pursued such a course, the costs associated, the outcomes and the overall effect on the person.

Peterson is also the executive producer of the documentary film, This is What Love in Action Looks Like, which chronicles the events that transpired in the summer 2005 after a 16-year-old boy was forced to attend a youth program that provided reparative therapy. The film will premiere in February 2008.

Also slated for 2008, Peterson will premiere a new theater piece based on the life of Abraham through which he will explore racism in the US, father/son relationships and the Arab-Israeli conflict. he will also produce a Spanish-language version of his play Queer 101 .