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Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez spent eight years in conversion therapy with Exodus International while doing social media and marketing for some of the biggest churches in the world, including Willow Creek, the Global Leadership Summit and Hillsong.We talk Hillsong's chair trick (and Bobbie's comment), the job offer that came with a celibacy condition, the Mark Driscoll arena that broke him, his first gay Christian conference, taking communion after ten years, worship music as reclamation, sobriety, the Lost Boys, and his message to pastors still sending young people to conversion practices.Timothy's book Conversion Therapy Dropout is out now: www.conversiontherapydropoutbook.comMentioned: our episode with Professor Timothy Jones on Australia's research into conversion practices.Queerfully Made is the podcast exploring the intersection of faith, sexuality and gender, hosted by Aaron Kelly and Ben Nicholson in Naarm/Melbourne.Follow Timothy: @timothy.s.rodriguez)If this episode brings things up, QLife (1800 184 527) offers free LGBTIQ+ peer support across Australia.Chapters00:00 Cold open00:32 Acknowledgement of Country01:15 Welcome Timothy02:53 Hillsong's chairs and Bobbie's comment08:42 Working at Hillsong while out11:31 The job offer with a celibacy condition15:13 Eight years in conversion therapy19:57 The last Exodus conference and burnout22:11 Mark Driscoll and a breakdown23:39 His first gay Christian conference27:39 Communion after ten years29:41 Religious trauma and worship music35:28 Finding a church that fits37:36 Shame, sobriety and God on the dance floor40:23 Too gay for the church, too Christian for the gays43:59 Why he wrote the book48:02 Back at Hillsong49:38 Ministry looks different now53:38 To the kid still in church54:57 To the pastor57:46 Where to find the book

From altar boy to Drag Race, Karen From Finance has been questioning structure his whole life. Richard Chadwick grew up Catholic, served as an altar boy alongside Cardinal George Pell, and lost his mum to breast cancer at 14. When his school wouldn't let him ask why, he started questioning everything, and that road led him straight into drag. Melbourne's premier corporate queen joins Aaron and Ben for a conversation that's equal parts tender and unhinged. What we get into: → How being queer taught him to question structure (and why that led to drag) → Serving mass with Cardinal Pell, and how it felt when the news came out → Grief, God's plan and a Catholic school that stopped taking his questions → How Karen From Finance was born from an op shop prom dress → Why drag doesn't hide who you are, it reveals it → Calling out a transphobic auntie on Facebook → Nana, a pack of cigarettes and a certificate from Pride class → Internalised homophobia 20 years after coming out → His faith now: respect, admiration and why it's not for him → Mortein flamethrowers, Body Electric and Microsoft 365 You can't be what you can't see. Follow Queerfully Made on Spotify so you don't miss what's coming, and send this one to the friend who needs it. Instagram + TikTok: @queerfully.made YouTube: youtube.com/@queerfullymade Website: queerfullymade.com Need support? QLife 1800 184 527 | Lifeline 13 11 14 #queerfullymade #karenfromfinance #dragqueen #dragrace #dragracedownunder #lgbtq #lgbtqchristian #gay #queer #trans #christian #catholic #excatholic #lgbtqinclusion #church #faithandsexuality #exvangelical #affirmingfaith #queerfaith #religioustrauma #podcastlove

Pastor David Landis Morse has been a Brethren kid in Tasmania, worked at Koorong, and become a Uniting Church pastor. He came out as a bisexual man later in life, and this conversation is warm, funny and honest. Aaron and Ben talk with David about growing up in a high-certainty church, coming out to his family, what bi privilege looks like, and who fought for the ground he stands on. We also get into inclusion training for church leaders, what it might look like if the church led with fullness of life instead of being dragged along, a smaller church with a freer voice, and why David thinks conversion never stops. David is a pastor in the Uniting Church in Melbourne with a masters in theology focused on queer theology and hospitality. "What sort of energy is released into our world when people stop having to lie?" David Landis Morse Find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube at @queerfullymade, and watch the full video episode on YouTube. Follow queerfully made on Spotify so the next episode lands in your queue.

A folder full of videos sent to us by you, our audience. What could go wrong? This episode will be best consumed by being watched if possible. Aaron Kelly and Ben Nicholson press play on the Reels, TikTok's & Shorts you sent in. It starts with our studio warm-up ritual, and a sermon that says to marinate in his majesty. It's a childhood encounter with a truly terrifying picture of Jesus, a theory about Judas wearing a bold lip, and a confession about a sermon illustration that involved breaking a man's nose. Along the way, it turns into something else: a reminder that church trauma brings a lot of us together, and that laughing about it can be part of getting better. Aaron is an ex-pastor and Ben is an ex-church leader, both out and proud in Melbourne. This one is just the two of them, laughing and crying in equal measure. "Love is the medicine, but laughter is great, too." Heads up: this episode includes sexual humour and a few clips touching on hell and religious homophobia. Instagram: @queerfully.made · TikTok: @queerfully.made · YouTube: youtube.com/queerfullymade Follow Queerfully Made on Spotify so the next episode lands in your queue.

Follow Queerfully Made on Spotify so the next episode lands in your queue. Most conversion therapy doesn't look like therapy. Professor Tim Jones spent ten years proving it. Tim worked out he was gay in a university library, went looking for help, and spent a couple of years trying to be straight. Then he spent a decade researching what had happened to him and to thousands of other LGBTQIA+ Australians. His team's work found that the ordinary, everyday practices, the prayer meeting and the pastoral care chat and the pressure to marry someone of the opposite sex, did more damage than the extreme cases everyone pictures. All three of us at the table had been through a version of it. None of us had a name for it at the time. Professor Timothy Jones is a historian at La Trobe University and President of the Australian Queer Archives. He led the research behind Improving Spiritual Health Care for LGBTQA+ Australians: Beyond Conversion Practices. "You'll know a good church by its queer fruity people." Heads up: this episode talks about conversion practices, religious trauma and suicidality. Look after yourself. Find us on Instagram and TikTok @queerfully.made

Follow Queerfully Made on Spotify so the next episode lands in your queue. Aaron studied this man's textbook at Bible college. Twenty years later, Rev Dr David P. Gushee is on the podcast telling us about the dinner that changed everything. A man he had never met took him out, quoted Gushee's own book back at him, and told him he was being a bystander when it came to LGBTQ people. Gushee did not argue. He said the man was right. What came next was Changing Our Mind, the book that cost one of America's most widely read evangelical ethicists his place in the evangelical world. We talk about the harm he watched up close, why sexuality became the hill the church chose to die on, and where he is actually seeing things change. It ends with three answers we did not expect: what he would say to a young queer person sitting scared in an evangelical church, what he would say to that church's pastor, and what he would say to the pastor who already agrees but is too frightened to say so. "You don't have to do anything to be a bystander. You just keep standing by." Rev Dr David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University. His new book, Job in Exile: A Guide for Spiritual Refugees, is out this week with Orbis. Find him at davidpgushee.com. Content warning: this episode discusses suicide and religious trauma. Instagram and TikTok: @queerfully.made

He got death threats for a joke. He left the synagogue two days after his bar mitzvah. And he might be the warmest person to ever tell you religion is a control system. Aaron and Ben sit down with Reuben Kaye, cabaret superstar, comedian and drag artist, for the most provocation-forward conversation of the season. Reuben is unapologetically anti-institution, but underneath the edge is something that sounds a lot like this show: systems, not people. The ones caught inside are victims too. We get into the joke that broke the internet, the night he talked a man out of setting him on fire, and the difference between personal faith and the institutions built on top of it. As Reuben puts it: "be a good human. everything else is dressing on the salad." Follow Queerfully Made on Spotify so the next episode lands straight in your queue. Find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube @queerfully.made

You can leave church and still lose the community that came with it. This episode is about what comes after. In the final part of the ReMade series, Aaron and Ben talk about the very real grief of losing church community, and the equally real work of building something better in its place. They get into the difference between community and control, why you only really need about five good friends, and the four words (borrowed from Simon Sinek) that might change one of your friendships: do you have eight minutes? This is a hosts-only episode, no guest, just Aaron and Ben closing out the ReMade series (Rediscover, ReWilded, RePlanted). “it was never community we were scared of. it was control.” Instagram: @queerfully.made  ·  TikTok: @queerfully.made  ·  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@queerfullymade follow queerfully made on spotify so the next episode lands in your queue

He trained for ten years to be a minister and thought he'd do it for life. Then Matt Glover backed marriage equality, and it cost him his church. Aaron and Ben sit down with Matt, a former Baptist minister who supported same-sex marriage years before the plebiscite and lost his role, his career, and a community for it. He'll correct you on one thing though: he wasn't fired, he resigned and walked away. And he says he'd go back to that room today and say thank you. It's a conversation about allyship that never felt like a stand, the difference between a job and a calling, and the friend named Finn who gently detonated everything Matt thought he knew. Matt is now a counsellor, and he shares what he sees most in his room today: spiritual abuse and deconstruction. As Matt puts it: "It's okay to not know things and just be kind." Follow Queerfully Made on Spotify so the next episode lands straight in your queue. Find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube @queerfully.made

what happens to your faith when you stop believing in a god of fear? reverend brandan robertson, the tiktok pastor and author of queer and christian, joins aaron and ben for one of the most hopeful conversations we've had. brandan grew up in maryland fundamentalism, got saved at 12, went through conversion therapy at moody bible institute, and was named in time magazine in 2015 before the evangelical world turned on him. he came out of it not bitter but freer. we talk about queering christianity, the stories nobody preached us growing up, and why the queer community is far more spiritual than the world assumes. as brandan puts it: "you walk into a queer club, reach your arm out, and you'll touch somebody with religious trauma." brandan is a pastor, author and phd candidate in new testament who now leads a small church in queens and helps thousands reclaim a faith built on love instead of punishment. follow queerfully made on spotify and help us get this message out. find us on instagram and tiktok @queerfully.made

Gaz and Jesse Dutlow used to lead worship together on a megachurch stage. Now they're leading standing ovations in musical theatre, with credits including the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne's professional theatre scene. This week, the sibling duo joins Aaron and Ben for a conversation about the overlap between worship performance and theatre, the institutional exclusion that pushed them both out of church leadership, and the quiet, separate ways they each found language for their non-binary identities, without telling each other until they compared notes. Gaz and Jesse Dutlow are siblings, former worship leaders, and professional musical theatre performers who've worked on stages from community theatre to the Sydney Opera House. “If you're going to resist anything, resist shame.” - Jesse Dutlow Follow Queerfully Made on Spotify so the next episode lands in your queue. Find us on Instagram and TikTok @queerfully.made, and on YouTube for full episodes.

Follow Queerfully Made on Spotify so Part 3, RePlanted, lands in your queue the second it drops. What happens to your faith when you leave the fence behind? In Part 2 of the ReMade Series, Aaron and Ben get into the messy, non-linear journey of spiritual life after the church. Not the tidy version. The real one. They talk through the fear of losing certainty, Dr. Lynn Moresi's poem on what to keep and what to let go, breath work, tarot cards, Lady Gaga as a Hillsong conference, and the one question Aaron uses as a compass through all of it: 'does this expand love in my life?' "The biggest fence is the one that we put around God." Aaron Kelly This is Part 2 of the ReMade Series. If you haven't listened to Part 1 (Rediscover Your Identity, Episode 5), go back and start there. Instagram: @queerfully.made | queerfullymade.com If anything in this episode brought something up, please reach out to qualified support. Switchboard (queer helpline): 1800 184 527. Lifeline: 13 11 14.

Follow Queerfully Made on Spotify so the next episode lands in your queue. The AFL and the church. Two completely different worlds. The same closet. Mitch Brown became the first openly bisexual player in AFL history in August 2025. In this conversation we talk about what the AFL and the church have in common. The same unwritten rules, the same rewards for performing straightness, the same “get back in your box” the moment you start speaking up. He also talks about the anger he's still managing, letting go of his partner Lou's hand in queer spaces to prove he belongs, and what he'd say to the 10-year-old version of himself who was hiding everything. “There are people that will accept you even if this community will drop you. It's not always this little world that you're in. There's others out there.” — Mitch Brown Mitch Brown is a former AFL player and advocate for queer inclusion in sport. Find Queerfully Made on YouTube, Instagram @queerfully.made, TikTok @queerfully.made, and queerfullymade.com

Becky Bauer planted Melbourne Inclusive Church 15 years ago. They've been affirming from day one. Before anyone was offering them buildings. Before the mainstream church was having this conversation. In this episode, Aaron and Ben sit down with Becky to hear the full story: from being adopted into a family that ministered to hippies in Michigan in the 70s, to finding an affirming church at a Pride event, to planting MIC in Melbourne, surviving early hostility from both the church and the queer community, and now helping other congregations navigate their journeys toward affirmation. She also reflects on why Rocky Roggio's 1946 work is such a pivotal tool for those conversations. "The road to change is paved with love.", Becky Bauer Becky Bauer is the founding pastor of Melbourne Inclusive Church. Find MIC at michurch.org.au. Follow Queerfully Made on Spotify so the next episode lands in your queue. Instagram / TikTok: @queerfully.made

In 1946, 22 men sat on a Bible translation committee and made a decision. A 21-year-old seminary student challenged them in writing. They admitted he had a point. But the word was already in print. And then it spread. Sharon "Rocky" Roggio is the director and producer of 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted a Culture, the documentary that spent a decade investigating how the word "homosexual" ended up in the Bible, what it's done to LGBTQ+ people of faith, and what the archival record actually shows. Rocky grew up in the church as the daughter of a pastor. She's a lesbian woman. She made a film to find common ground with her non-affirming parents through the Bible. She ended up changing how people around the world read it.This is a conversation about history, faith, family, and what happens when you ask the question nobody thought to ask. PLEASE NOTE: We apologise in advance for the audio quality dropping about two-thirds of the way through. We had a system glitch and thankfully Sharon has recorded audio on her end so nothing was lost! https://www.1946themovie.com/ Queerfully Made is the podcast where we explore the intersection of faith, sexuality, and gender. Hosted by Aaron Kelly and Ben Nicholson. Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@queerfullymade/podcasts Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you get your podcastsInstagram: @queerfully.made TikTok: @queerfully.made #queerfullymade #lgbtqchristian #queerfaith #affirmingchurch #1946movie