An Intimate Afternoon with Anthony

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ABC’s Noel Debien sits down with Anthony Venn-Brown OAM—Ex-Pentecostal megachurch preacher, bestselling author, LGBTQ trailblazer, and longtime anti-conversion “therapy” campaigner—for an unscripted, soul-baring Q&A Anthony Venn-Brown OAM, discusses his journey from a conservative Pentecostal leader to becoming an LGBTQ advocate. He highlights the challenges faced by LGBTQ people of faith, noting the initial rejection by both religious and LGBTQ+ communities. Venn-Brown emphasises the importance of forgiveness and building trust within religious organisations to promote inclusivity. He shares his personal struggles, including his marriage, conversion therapy, and the impact of his bestselling book, A Life of Unlearning, on others. Venn-Brown also discusses the strategic approach to changing church policies, the importance of language in advocacy, and the need for ongoing vigilance to prevent regressive policies.

TRANSCRIPT

An Intimate Afternoon with Anthony

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

LGBTQI rights, Anthony Venn-Brown, faith and sexuality, church acceptance, conversion therapy, mental health, community support, religious organisations, affirming churches, societal change, personal transformation, advocacy work, legal reforms, cultural shifts.

SPEAKERS

Noel Debien, Anthony Venn-Brown

Noel Debien  00:06

So I should probably say that I’m in the process of making an ABC Compass program on this man. It won’t go to air till next year, but it’s underway, so I’ve been doing a lot of research about him and spoken to his family and friends and finding out those sorts of things. And one of the things I would like to begin with now having heard that song, which, you know, it touches a lot in the heart that song, I want to start with a sort of a bit of an awkward question. I want to begin by asking you, why would or should an LGBTQI person give religion a nanosecond of their time?

Anthony Venn-Brown  00:47

That’s a good question, isn’t it? I hear some in the audience “mmmm”. Well, we live in a society. We want to live in a society where people are free to make their own choices. We know that there are some within conservative Christianity and within Islam and with within Judaism as well, that are very anti-gay and very conservative and very ignorant about sexual orientation and gender identity, but they’re not the majority. And so, one thing I’ve championed over the years is that there are LGBTQ people of faith, and faith is very, very important to them. If you if you go digging, I mean, you’re a person of faith Noel, and you’re lovely. That’s what you find. So, you know, that’s why, for some people, it’s important. For other people, they prefer to be atheist.

Noel Debien  01:56

But I have a follow up, in a sense that often when I’m at an LGBTQI thing, usually in a social context, and people discover that I am actually a practicing Catholic. It’s a little bit like coming out all over again. How has that been for you, knowing that you come out of a deeply religious background and practice, and then you’re interacting with the LGBTQI community, of course, and actually in terms of advancing human rights. But how do you fit that together? Do you get that negativity?

Anthony Venn-Brown  02:32

From the very beginning? I remember when we had over 300 people upstairs at the Midnight Shift, we had 350 people for the launch of the first edition of A Life of Unlearning in 2004. The only people who weren’t there were LGBTQ community leaders or the gay press. And in those days, there were three newspapers in Sydney, and I thought it would be fairly significant that a fairly high-profile Pentecostal preacher would come and tell the story. And then I discovered that there is a very, very anti religion feeling within the community. And rightfully justified. This is the problem because in the middle are these people, LGBTQ, people of faith. That’s very important to them. So that has been a constant battle, and it’s not over. It’s still there to some point, although we have made progress. It should be noted as well, that at the very first Pride March in New York after the Stonewall Riots next year, and also at the very first Mardi Gras, when LGBTQ people of faith came along to march with their community, that they were rejected. Imagine that. After all that you’ve been through, and finally you’ve found your tribe, and you come and people say, “No, you’re part of that establishment which has persecuted us”. So they got rid of them or try to get rid of them.

Noel Debien  04:22

Anecdotally, it was St James King Street was probably the place where I became most comfortable about being gay. I was 18 or 19, at the time, and it was in an Anglican Church, high Anglican Church, where I met people who did not find a problem with it. They just didn’t. And they were they were careful, they were gentle, they were affirming. How has the church done that for you in any way? Did you ever find those positive church people when you were in turmoil?

Anthony Venn-Brown  04:53

Never while I was in turmoil. Now, there are people here from my past in the Church, and they know that that environment and that culture is completely non-affirming in every way. And so there was never anyone, and you’d be afraid to actually acknowledge the struggle, because it was a secret struggle, something that shame was attached to. So you never talked to anyone about it until it became a crisis, or there was trauma, and then you might share that very secretly with somebody.

Noel Debien  05:33

I want to ask something about history, because I noticed people who walked in here who would not have been born, they would not have been born, but when it was illegal in New South Wales, homosexual acts were illegal. So we’re talking about 1986, so we’re talking anybody under 34/35 at least . But in that sense, the Anglicans, there’s a connection here for me, because the Anglicans at St James King Street and the high church have been talking about this stuff for years. For years they’ve been arguing over it. And it goes back to something called the Wolfenden report. I don’t know if everybody here knows the Wolfenden report, but Anthony, I want you to tell us something about what that report was and why it became significant, and how it percolated into churches here as well out of England.

Anthony Venn-Brown  06:32

So the Wolfenden Report was an attempt by the UK Government to decriminalise homosexuality. And the gentleman, it’s called the Wolfenden report, because the chairperson, the person who headed it up, was Lord Wolfenden.

Noel Debien  06:53

This is 1957?

Anthony Venn-Brown  06:56

Yes and so they had a whole lot of people come and speak at that to the committee. There were people that had been imprisoned because of their homosexuality. Peter Wildeblood was one of those.

Noel Debien  07:16

4% of the men in prison in 1957 in England were there because of a same sex offense. That’s one in 25 prisoners that was gay.

Anthony Venn-Brown  07:30

If you read Peter Wildeblood’s story, it is incredible. I remember one person saying that they were giving him vomit inducing drugs. He said to the nurse, I’m going to vomit. And she said, that’s okay. Just, just do it there in the bed. And he said, I’m going to defecate. Okay, so just do it in the bed. And left him there for days. This was part of the treatment of homosexuals at that time. (Recommended viewing, the docu/drama, Against the Law, based on Wildeblood’s life). The report was accepted, but it wasn’t till 1967 that the law was actually changed.

Noel Debien  08:32

So that being said. So we talked about 1965. How old are you in 1965, 14, right? So you’re just beginning a journey at school, and in the context of all that’s happening I think you came to your first crisis between religion and faith. Did you not?

Anthony Venn-Brown  08:56

I did because there were feelings that I had, and there were ways to experience interaction with other males, which, in the 60s, being a teenager, there were no gay bars to go to. There were no support groups. There was nothing, but I discovered that men hung around the local park, and so that’s where I started making my connection, having the experiences that should never have happened. All my straight friends were having sex with the girls at school, but there was nowhere for me to experiment, to explore these feelings. I remember hiding behind bushes as the police used to patrol up and down the park because they knew what it was. And you know, in that, in that situation. As a vulnerable teenager,  I got raped, I was robbed, and I was bashed. There was no you could go to police about this, and I knew that if you got caught, it meant being put in a juvenile prison facility.

Noel Debien  10:18

If not Cooma, which was, of course, the dedicated LGBTQI prison the only one in the world that was purely for LGBTQI offenses. And if you were adult enough, you would have gone to Cooma. When you come to conversion, tell us about that story, because you’re in the middle of trying to work out, you’ve worked out what the technical thing of a beat is, you’re there and you’re trying to find out stuff. But you also find the Lord in the sense.. So you’re from an Anglican background, but you find the Lord in a Pentecostal church. Tell us about this.

Anthony Venn-Brown  11:04

So the my final year in high school was very tumultuous because of these experiences I was having. I knew that there were two things I should never do, and that is, tell everybody about what I was feeling. And the second thing was, I must do everything to try and change it. And so that’s what was happening, unsuccessfully, which led me to depression, then led me to into a suicide attempt. At the end of the year, I went to a Christian camp to help out. It was there that I found all these people that talked about God as though he was actually real, and Jesus as though he was real, and they actually talked to him. And I was used to people praying out of a book. So these people, it was like they had a living faith. And I remember, I walked along the beach one night and Angela said, God, well, I don’t know if you want my life as a bit of a mess, but yeah, I’ll give it to you, if you’ll help me. And I came back from that camp feeling very, very transformed.

Noel Debien   Age now, 17, right? School?

Anthony Venn-Brown  I went back and repeated sixth form, as we call it because it was bad the year before.

Noel Debien  12:47

But there’s a thing that happens to you. This may sound a bit of an obscure question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. You decided you needed to be baptised again. Can you explain how that worked out with the family not used to it?

Anthony Venn-Brown  13:08

Some context here. So here’s my family, steeped in Anglican tradition, archdeacons, priests, everything, and here’s me, becomes a Born Again evangelical, who can’t stop talking about Jesus. This is not what you do. It’s a private matter in our family and in those circles. I had a friend at the high school who was a Baptist, and I started fellowshipping at the Baptist Church. And of course, they said, Well, if you really want to follow Jesus, you have to follow him through the waters of baptism? So I did that.

Noel Debien  

Again.

Anthony Venn-Brown  13:59

What do you mean? Again? The first one didn’t count in my book at that stage. So yep, my family was so horrified. They said, if you get baptised in a Baptist church, you’re no son of ours and you’ll have to leave the house.

Noel Debien  14:18

Wouldn’t that have been a moment to say, I’m not really going to get baptised again. I’m just gay, yeah,

Noel Debien  14:39

So you do? You do get really involved in Pentecostalism, and you take it all seriously, you study, you become a pastor, and you get married. You have two daughters, when the marriage finally collapses. Tell us a little bit about what was going on inside your head, how you met your wife, for example, where did you meet her? How did that happen?

Anthony Venn-Brown  15:16

At Orange Assembly of God church. I think on a big day, there may have been 80 people there. So we were the only two young people in the church, essentially single young people. So it was inevitable that, as some of you will know that in those churches, they’re fearless matchmakers. And so, we were set. I got along really well with Helen, and I thought, maybe this is what God wants for me. After going out for three weeks, I proposed. She came from Narrandera. There were no gays in the Narrandera. I proposed in a very romantic spot. We’re in the car outside our own railway station. And when I said, Would you marry me? She said, Oh, it’s too soon. I said, Well, what we’ll do is, let’s both pray about it, and if we both feel good that this is what God wants, then we’ll go to the pastor and we’ll tell him, and if he says it’s a good thing as well, well then obviously God’s in it. That’s the way it works in the Pentecostal world.

Noel Debien  16:57

But it seems to me that if you did feel or hope that you could function in heterosexual marriage. What do you believe that that you could actually get married, that you could do it?

Anthony Venn-Brown 

That I could do it? I thought you were talking about sex.

Noel Debien 

Well, when you’ve got two kids, I know it happened at least twice.

Anthony Venn-Brown  17:20

When you had been fighting, as you mentioned, I went through the conversion therapy program in 1972 I got married in 1974 so I, you know, felt that I was at a point where I had enough control over temptation. And so therefore, by getting married, I had a normal sexual outlet, and I that would be the next step. Some people got married in that situation, believing it would be the answer. And for me, I just thought it was like, it was like a step.

Noel Debien  18:00

That’s sort of where I’m trying to get to that. I wonder. There’s some people who married to hide it. There were people who just thought, I’ll just do what I need to do. And in fact, certainly in the aristocratic classes of the United Kingdom, they would just do whatever they wanted as well, just have a child or two, and that was done. But I’m just getting the point where you were sincere about getting into this marriage, that the marriage was what God wanted you to do. That’s what I’m asking.

Anthony Venn-Brown  18:25

Yes, yes, yes. God wanted it. We prayed, and we both felt this is right, because we both were in this Pentecostal church. I wanted to serve God. Helen was a very committed Christian. She wanted to serve God. It all just seemed perfect.

Noel Debien  18:44

Life was sorted, yeah,

Anthony Venn-Brown  18:47

I want to tell you what this is. This is important. People ask, Was I ever in love with Helen? And sadly, I have to say no, but I loved her as much as a gay man could love a woman, but the thing that I knew I loved more than anything was to be a father and to be a husband. To be normal. That’s what I was loving and wanted more than anything else.

Noel Debien  19:24

In the book and in the interviews I’ve done with you about this, you speak of Helen very well, like it seems to me that as much of a friendship has been preserved as possible. And the one thing that strikes me is that she always said to your daughters later on, when all things starts to fall about. Remember, he’s always your father. She did do that, didn’t she? So tell us about now, the crisis where the marriage does break down. This is, this is sort of an axial point of view, isn’t it? When the marriage breaks down?

Anthony Venn-Brown  19:59

Yes. I’d fallen in love with Jason, as I called him in the book. And after 22 years of doing everything, praying every day, you know, exorcisms and conversion therapy, the list was endless, to finally come to the reality where I’ve actually fallen in love with a man, and that this is never going to change. But in accepting that, I knew that I was going to lose everything that I had worked for, that I would hurt the people I love most in the world, but I just could not pretend anymore. Now that I found love, I couldn’t preach. I couldn’t. I wanted it. For the first time in my life, I wanted it. People might say, Well, what about all that other stuff? Well, yeah, that was very physical, but every time it happened, I hated myself for it, and self-loathing and shame would just engulf me. But now I wanted it, and that was a huge choice. So this is where it gets very complex around that time.

Noel Debien  21:27

And you did try, because it was a process, wasn’t there. But you were pulled up in front of the church, weren’t you? Yes, tell us about that experience, because I know this really went right into the heart of you, right?

Anthony Venn-Brown  21:38

Every time I go to that experience. It still impacts me today. I had to stand in front of 800 people and confess to them that I committed adultery and that I was resigning from the ministry and to ask for their forgiveness. It’s really difficult to talk about how traumatic that was leading up to that and afterwards, I know I cried every day for six weeks, I’d I cry myself to sleep. I’d wake up in the morning and I begin crying, but I pluck up the courage of my feet on the floor and begin to face the day. I’ve lost everything. I’ve lost the ministry. I’ve lost my vocation. I’ve lost everything. I have to start a whole new life.

Noel Debien  22:41

and income as part of that?,

Anthony Venn-Brown  22:45

Everything, everything was gone. There was no support from the denomination. Nobody really came to help or support us. We were really on our own, like it was, it was cruel.

Noel Debien  22:57

When you say we, you mean Helen and the girls? You were trying to save it still.

Anthony Venn-Brown  23:01

I was trying to save it. I had confessed to the national executive of the Assemblies of God. I confessed to my friends about falling in love with Jason. And I was really ready to do a runner.  I came to Sydney and just got away from everything. And I had a few drinks. In those days I didn’t drink, so I got drunk very quickly. And then these days, it takes a bottle. So but what happened was, there was a phone booth outside the Oxford Hotel, and I rang Jason. We didn’t have access. We didn’t have mobile phones. I rang him, and he actually answered. And I said, Darling, like I’m going to see you sooner than we planned. And he said, You can’t come up to Brisbane. And I said, But I burnt all the bridges behind me. There’s nothing left. I need to be with you now. I’ve never asked anything of you, but I need you now. He said, you can’t come up. I didn’t have any bargaining power. But I said, Well, you know, if it’s goodbye, it’s goodbye for good. And he said, Well, you can’t come up. And I remember, I put the phone down in the phone booth. I walked outside. That was one of the hardest experiences to put down on paper to describe that moment. And I think in the end, I said it’s like white noise in space, like somebody punched me in the face, and I was falling to the ground in slow motion. Then I went to another drink. I hadn’t been to any gay bars or anything, but went and had another drink, and then I realised, like, well, I thought, Oh, my God, the devil has won. That’s what I thought. The devil has won. I’ve lost my ministry. I’ve lost him. I’ve lost, I’ve lost. I’ve lost all because I gave into sin, and it’s all my fault.

Noel Debien  25:52

That being said, because there’s much more of that story, of course, too. When you work with ambassadors and bridge builders. There’s something, and I will notice this in the community. I don’t sense in you. You know what came in, what sometimes called bitter old queen? I don’t, I don’t find it in you. So, and I really, how has that happened? Because you’ve just really described trauma a person who is like the devil’s bottom now, and there’s a whole lot of stuff that goes on there when you’re talking about good and good and evil and all that sort of stuff. How do you come out the other side? Not an angry, disturbed, vindictive person. How has that happened?

Anthony Venn-Brown  26:44

I do get asked that question a lot because I’m not an angry, aggressive, militant gay activist. I’m a person who reaches out and says, Can we talk? And if you’ve got bitterness and resentment there, so then that’s not going to work. So there is a moment that it’s the only thing I can really trace it back to. So after six months of trying to get the marriage back together again, and just get on with life. I received a letter from the National Executive of the Assemblies of God, which I still have, and I read it and crumbled it up and threw it away that I opened it up, and I read again and crumbled it again. Helen could see what the impact this was having on me, and I disappeared for the night, and when I came back, I realised I really had been abandoned. 

Noel Debien 

What did it say?

Anthony Venn-Brown 

You’ll never preach again. You’ll never preach again. A person with your problem, you’ll never preach again. And I remember standing in the kitchen realising that all my friends had never called me, all my preacher friends, and the National Executive, the people that I knew there, that all had abandoned me, and I realised in that moment that if I wasn’t careful, I could be destroyed by the emotion, and that I needed to forgive these people. It’s about survival. It’s not about being a very, noble person or anything like that. If I don’t forgive them, what will happen is I will become bitter, resentful, and that negativity will destroy the person that I am. So I forgave them with an act of my will. I remember saying that Corrie ten Boom said, she was a survivor of the Holocaust, and she said, forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, only to realise that you were the prisoner.

Noel Debien  29:41

So you get a letter from a leadership team, which is essentially what we would call homophobic. So the people who’ve lectured you have basically said You’re evil. You can’t work with us ever again because of your nature. That’s what the problem is, your nature. But somehow, now we’re in 2025 and the work you’ve undertaken and decided to undertake is to approach those people, and in fact, to approach other religious leaders and to see what conversation can be had. How did that happen? What made you determine to try to create change within religious people too?

Anthony Venn-Brown  30:57

A Life of Unlearning  changed everything. It was the book. I didn’t plan to be a writer or an author anything like that, but the internet had just been, you know, pretty well, 2004 we had internet. So I began receiving emails as soon as the book hit the shelves, from people who knew me as a famous preacher. Their emails would always begin with, thank you for your honesty. Or as one interviewer, said brutal honesty. I talked about my failings, my hypocrisy, my stupidity, all those things, but because I laid it all bare, then these people who wrote to me said, Thank you for honesty. Then they poured out their hearts to me like they had never done to a single soul before. And sometimes their emails were five pages long. So it was like I had a microscope into a hidden world of all these people in Pentecostal/evangelical and traditional churches as well, which had experienced trauma, conversion therapy, exorcisms, rejection of their family, rejection of their friends, rejection by their church, all these things. And I thought, how can you sit back and do nothing when you’ve been given all this privileged information from people? You have to do something. And I knew, having been a preacher, a Pentecostal preacher, and knowing the way that that these people feel that they would never, ever accept me if I was an angry, militant gay activist, but if I was coming more as an ambassador, reaching out, can we talk? Can we have a dialogue…… that could work.

Noel Debien  33:17

and you’re talking, particularly here among religious organisations. Is that what you mean?

Anthony Venn-Brown  33:22

Yes, yes, yes. Religious organisations and leaders.

Noel Debien  33:25

The reason I ask that is because certainly during the AIDS crisis, there was a time when there was nothing better than a militant gay activist with a bag of blood thrown. There are times when it’s needed. So you’re trying to talk to religious people and to persuade them to be more inclusive. You’re going to do it in a measured way, in a sort of a communicative, non threatening way, is that what you’re saying

Anthony Venn-Brown  33:50

It’s time consuming, because you have to build a relationship, and you have to build trust and create a safe space, because they have lots of fears and concerns. For example, a Pentecostal pastor who has built his church like from starting a school hall to 1000s of people now very, very successful if they introduce the whole topic of homosexuality, 90% of the congregation can walk out the next day.

Noel Debien  34:30

They have actually, because you’ve told me. This is an interesting story, because this is something else not everyone knows about. He has a friend who is, I wouldn’t name the church, but he has a friend who’s become an affirming pastor and tell us what happened. Well, I’ll mention well he should do it. A lot of people withdrew their money, didn’t they? Oh yeah, they did. And so it put the church into financial crisis, because a significant number of people said, if you become affirming of LGBTQI people, we will not stay. So that’s another risk the leaders have if they can’t bring their congregation with them, which you would deal with.

Anthony Venn-Brown  35:06

Yes, so every one of them will have those things to deal with, like that particular person talking about, it’s only years later that the church has gotten back in the black because of the people they lost. So wherever anyone stands out for that, they will always pay a price. So this is something that I always say, one step ahead, you’re a leader, two steps ahead, you’re an innovator. Three steps ahead you’re a martyr. You’ve got to be very measured. So when I work with churches, I work very strategically. So I begin with the leadership, get them on board, then the people, the next level of leadership, will be volunteers and home group leaders etc. And then finally, come to the congregation. Of course, everybody else is on board, but they’ve already introduced things. Like they’ve t used the term LGBTQ in their sermons, or they talked about the gay community. So they begin to drop some seeds without going into the full story or saying, oh, by the way, we got it wrong about homosexuality. That change will take not one year. It will take two years to transform that congregation, and there will still be backlash. There are, I should just say, there are churches in the US that I know of which are really incredible, that they have people who are affirming of LGBTQ people. They have people who don’t embrace that, and you’ve got some that are in same-sex relationships and some that are celibate, but they’ve learned to live with the nuances and with the tension and to get on with their job and their life, which is really it’s a unique model.

Noel Debien  37:01

Just quickly affirming, that’s a technical term. What do you mean by affirming? What does that mean?

Anthony Venn-Brown  37:06

Affirming means that you are treated like everybody else within that congregation or within that church. So you can preach. You can sing the choir. You can lead a home group. You’ve got full membership. So churches who are not affirming, there’s welcoming, accepting and affirming. I created a meme about this which went viral.

Noel Debien  37:41

Great, it has been taken up. It’s now used as normal language about this.

Anthony Venn-Brown  37:45

Yes, I created meme, which has the anti-gay church, a church which says, we welcome you but, or we accept you but, an affirming Church, there’s no but. We love you. Full stop.

Noel Debien  38:09

So can we just name some of the affirming churches in Australia?

Anthony Venn-Brown  38:13

So there is Bayside in Melbourne. There, there are Uniting churches, very much so which are welcoming and which are affirming. You may even find in some Catholic circles that there are some affirming places.

Noel Debien  38:30

I might know that, but I could never say, look, to be honest, I have been weddings conducted by Catholic clergy, all three of them actually were Woman to Woman, but I’ve certainly been to those but they’re hidden, and nobody would ever say that the priest had done that.

Anthony Venn-Brown  38:49

MCC Metropolitan Community Church, which are of course affirming. So that’s interesting, because that was started by a Pentecostal minister in 1968 Troy Perry. In 1968, in his lounge room in Los Angeles, he had 12 people, and he had his first service. And so now that’s become a global denomination, but there are whole denominations now which have become completely affirming. The Quakers are completely affirming.

Noel Debien  39:28

For example, when Pope Francis on a jet plane used the word the Italian word gay, G, A, I, first time ever, ever been heard to say that word, and he’s that was when he said, you know, who am I to judge? That little word triggered the most enormous debate in the Catholic like hateful debate too, let me tell you, and that. That strikes me that when you’re talking about affirming or welcoming or what it what it is, even the introduction of language becomes potentially a flash point, does it?

Anthony Venn-Brown  40:11

It does yes, and volatile. I mean, it has been within many denominations, the defining issue, who would have thought we were that important? What side are you on? What do you believe? Where are you in your theology around this? We will reach a tipping point. I might not see it in my lifetime. But we will reach a tipping point where there is acceptance and where there is affirmation of LGBTQ people. I remember when I first started going to the gay bookstore here to find books for gay Christians. They were very, very hard to find, and then they started to appear. Now it’s a whole genre, like there are 1000s of books published every day. And then what happened was, there was a book about a queer Muslim. Who would have thought? But then we used to think that about you can’t be gay and a Christian. And now that’s all changed. And Islam, now we have queer Muslims. They’ve got a hard life, but they’re back about 40 years from where the Gay Christian movement started. There’s a lot of work to do.

Noel Debien  41:49

Temple Emmanuel is affirming. For example, that’s, that’s synagogue, or Emmanuel synagogue is called. And remember at fair day when we were doing filming with you, the first openly gay Imam had just been murdered. There are gay Imams and there are queers coming out in the Muslim cultures, but there’s a very high risk still. And certainly I’m aware in your life, when you were coming out, and particularly before 1985 you could have ended up in  jail at any point.

What I want to ask though, is also this is, why would we bother with religious organisations, though, sort of going back to the first question I asked you, what does that produce? What result? What effect does it have if you can get churches to be affirming? And I’m thinking, you know, practical things, let me name one the submissions that come before parliament over various issues, whether that might be, I don’t know, conversion therapy, for example, or lots of other things. Where do you see your work flowing onto out of the churches?

Anthony Venn-Brown  43:09

I have plans.

Noel Debien  43:11

I know. I’ll be, more exact, you and Alex Greenwich are good friends. You worked closely on New South Wales anti conversion therapy laws. That’s a really practical outcome to change the law. And part of that, in that process, there were submissions that came from all over the place. So people saying, well, they think the law should be or not be. And I see that in your work, am I wrong? I don’t think I am.

Anthony Venn-Brown  43:42

Yeah,  that’s what we do. We work behind the scenes and make submissions and having conversations. And I should note that there’s been backlash since the legislation came out in New South Wales, and there are people trying to draw that back, but we’re not going to let that happen. And so we just, I’ve been doing some work with Anti-Discrimination New South Wales. I’ve got seminars around conversion therapy. Got to train LGBTQ workers, about that, social workers, telephone counsellors, etc. There’s so much work to do. There’s so much and what we need to remember is, what is this about? It isn’t making Happy, clappy churches, Happy, clappy and gay. It’s about saving lives. It’s about reducing trauma, because right now, there are young kids in these churches, in these Christian families, that are never hearing anything positive about being gay or being queer or being gender diverse. They’re hearing nasty things. And they are going down a path where they will have mental health issues, where they will experience trauma, where they may be thinking of taking their own lives. So the work is far from over.

Noel Debien  45:16

Well, it’s still the case that conversion therapy is going on in the United States, and that, I’m very aware that Australian churches have connections to those organisations, and they can send their people there. They still can do it, if you can prove it, it will be illegal. But part of this is also embedding the law, isn’t it? Because you can change a law, but that doesn’t change the culture necessarily. What has to follow on is what you’re talking about now, to go to social workers, you have to go to schools, you have to go to all these sorts of places to talk out the issues that are connected to the identity of young people, I would think. And that’s part of what you do, isn’t it?

Anthony Venn-Brown  45:53

The enemy is ignorance.

Noel Debien  45:57

When you say that. Because you have said this before, and I know I’ve read it quite often, that the enemy is ignorance. What do you mean by that? What other enemy would there be?

Anthony Venn-Brown  46:07

Well, a lot of people are very quick to attack people, individuals, organisations or churches. Well, you know that you could do that, and we’re in a culture now with social media where there’s lots of attacking that goes on, but that does nothing but really entrench what already exists. So it is more about attacking the root of the problem, which is ignorance and misinformation and changing that, as opposed to attacking individuals and organisations.

Noel Debien  46:51

That being said, we’re looking at the United States, at the moment, trans United States, and the rollback of the and what is happening? How confident are you that all that you’ve been doing for years and many other  organisations have been doing for years will stick, will not go backwards? How confident are you?

Anthony Venn-Brown  47:13

There will be tensions but I have faith in our Australian society. We have a voting system which will most likely, well, let’s say it will ensure that we don’t have a Trump as a prime minister for policy voting. There are lots of checks and balances that we had with our country, but having said that, there will always be conservatives. And I love that, saying that “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”, and so we just always need to be on our guard. Sometimes we get lulled into a false sense of security, as we did after we received marriage equality, and we have to be very careful. Now we have the legislation banning conversion therapy, it’s the same thing. That we don’t go, well, oh, it’s all okay. Now it’s not okay. It’s going on in Sydney, in New South Wales and other states right now in churches, but they have been given a huge wake up call. If you treat people like this and you harm them, there are laws that will either mean you get fined or you go to jail if you have harmed these people substantially, and that’s a big wake up call,

Noel Debien  48:47

I have two final questions before we go to audience questions. You’ve lived a life which has been complex and varied and interesting, if you had to point to a moment where you thought, That’s it, I can’t go on anymore. That’s it. I cannot go forward. What would you know? I’m going to ask you about the best thing too later, but I want to ask first, was there a moment where you went, No, I can’t go forward anymore,

Anthony Venn-Brown  49:18

since I’ve written the book?

Noel Debien  49:21

or we’ll take the whole life. You could not end something.

Anthony Venn-Brown  49:28

So I am human, and I have failings, and I’m impacted by the negativity of people at times, and I think the hardest thing to deal with is when someone in your tribe attacks you when you’re trying to make a difference for the lives of the community and individuals. So there’s been times when, you know, I’ve experienced times when I’ve been attacked, and I’ve thought, why the fuck am I doing this? Still, like you know, why put up with this? But I worked through I’ve had to work through that, as we all do, don’t we? Where we have opposition in our lives, and obstacles come up, and we have to go, Okay, what am I going to do? Am I going to buckle or am I going to push through in this situation?

Noel Debien  50:31

In a sense, there’s a high cost for leading a public life. I think any leader will turn and it sounds to me, you’re talking about part of that pushback that comes with being very public and for advocating. But now on the other side, you know, last question to you, if there was a moment when you were filled with joy and you thought, I can’t believe we’ve managed to do this or achieve this, I can’t believe it. Where would you describe your high point? Or a high point.

Anthony Venn-Brown  51:05

That’s hard.

Noel Debien 

OBE, maybe? (it was actually an OAM not an OBE)

Anthony Venn-Brown 

The OAM.  That was surreal, because you never, ever expected to get such a thing. And then when I got the email from Canberra saying you’ve been nominated, I thought, Oh, that’s nice. I got a nomination because I thought, oh, it’s like a competition. So, there’ll be other people who get nominated as well. And then, I was talking my friend in the UK, Ian Green, who used to be the president of ABBI and he’s very big on all this stuff with getting an OBE etc. And I said, I’ve got a nomination. He says, You’ve got it? No, I haven’t. No, it’s a nomination. It’s like, the winner will be announced. It was like the academy awards or something or other. So I rang Canberra and said, I’m just, checking. And the woman on the phone says, Congratulations, Mr. Venn-Brown. It was so surreal, because never to be expected. Of course, there was joy. I had my daughters there at Government House at the investiture and all that sort of stuff. There’s so many. Seeing the book become a bestseller, like, oh my god. Seeing a church become affirming. Seeing an individual get to a point where they get their inner strength back, and they get transformed. We used to see that all the time in Freedom2b. And then this last couple of weeks, I open up my phone and there was an email from this person in New York, and he says, I’ve written a song, and I played the song, and I sit on the end of the bed and cry. It’s so beautiful that you wrote this after reading A Life of Unlearning, and you wrote this for me.

That’s a good way to wind up, isn’t it?

Noel Debien  53:28

I am a supporter of Ambassadors & Bridge Builders International (ABBI), and if you are not, I recommend very strongly. the work he does is quiet. It’s behind the scenes, but it’s incredibly important in changing attitudes and changing those religious organisations in particular, and I commend it to and it’s tax deductible. Join the #ABBIfamily HERE.

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