the us military and troops from other western nations are facing a new threat in iraq. american airbases have come under attack from iranian—made drones fitted with explosives. commanders say the drones are a game—changer. iran denies involvement. hundreds of suspected criminals have been arrested in a global sting operation organised by the fbi. gangs used what they thought was a secure messaging app developed by the authorities, who were able to monitor messages about drug dealing, and planned murders. a number of leading websites were taken offline for a short time on tuesday, and so far there's no official explanation as to why. those affected included amazon and the uk government website. issues had been reported early by the cloud computing provider fastly.

now on bbc news — hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. in some countries, attitudes towards homosexuality have moved from prejudice and persecution to acceptance and legal protections. but very few nations have specifically outlawed so—called gay conversion therapy, usually linked to religious movements which still demonise homosexuality. well, my guest today is mckrae game, who founded an organisation which told thousands of young gay americans their sexual orientation was a sin they must reject. but four years ago, he quit. now he says he's sorry for the harm he did, but is his own conversion too

little, too late? mckrae game in south carolina, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. mckrae, i'd like to start with a question about identity. if i were to describe you as a gay man who, for decades, could not accept his own sexual orientation, would that be correct? absolutely, yes. so, today, you're out, you're gay and you live as a gay man in your home state of south carolina? that is correct. why, if we look back, do you think, as a child and a young person,

you struggled so much with your own sexuality? well, i would say certainly, a number of reasons. biggest is family, a very heteronormative family. we're talking about decades ago — i'm 52 years old. so, 50 years ago, homosexuality, especially in the south, was not something that was accepted or condoned. it was condemned vigorously. illegal in many states and countries. and i remember when i put my sister's dress on for the first time, wondering what it was like to be her — she got more attention than i did from my perspective

— and i remember the response of my parents, my sister, was very shaming. and as i got older, the name—calling, basically because i wasn't a typicaljock guy, so i didn't know what those names meant. i didn't know what gay meant. there was no gay icons like there are today to show you how, this is what a gay man looks like. right, but the interesting thing, mckrae, is that despite that homophobia around you and, i guess you could call it intimidation, that you experienced as a young person, you did for a while live a gay life. from 19 to 22, i lived as a somewhat out young man.

basically as out as you could be at the time, which meant in the next county, lying in your own county to everyone. but my mum came in my apartment without knocking and saw me making out with my boyfriend and ran out screaming. she told the rest of my family, and they all tried to talk me out of that and gave me a very hard time, especially my mum for the next three and a half, four years. was it, then, the pressures from yourfamily and community that in your early 20s, prompted you to make a big decision, to no longer live as a gay man, to no longer accept your own sexual orientation, but to try and live another life as a straight christian man?

and notjust that, but a straight christian man who was going to make it his mission in life to persuade other gay people, particularly young gay men, to turn away from homosexuality. it's hard to understand quite the thought process there. right. yeah, the thought process, you know... i guess the best comparison is trying to understand someone thatjoins a cult and gets sucked into it, but your family's on board with you getting involved in this cult. so, yeah, if my family would have been accepting and loving of my being a gay young man, then i would have been able to continue my life, find a partner and have a life as a gay man. but they definitely were not.

i had one of these beams like they have at stores. i had a beam when i crossed my driveway to warn me when my mum was coming over. so, yeah, i got... ..saved and then got sucked into conversion therapy, found a local counsellor, went to a a conference he was doing and started going to the weekly groups. my mum paid for the counselling. it seemed like that's what i needed because everybody — the world, church, family, friends — were telling me, "it's not ok to be gay, you need to work this out." so, yeah. you, within a few short years of deciding you were going to try to completely change your life, you founded this movement, ministry —

i don't know quite what i'd call it — the hope for... about eight years. yeah, hope for wholeness. you became one of america's most prominent advocates for gay conversion therapy, and for those around the world who don't know the phrase, in many cases, it involves extreme measures, including physical shock therapies to try to stop usually young people whose sexual orientation they are struggling with, who feel themselves to be gay but don't want to be gay necessarily, or at least their families don't want them to be gay. they are exposed to sometimes electric shock therapy, sometimes other forms of shock therapy involving, using drugs to induce nausea when they're watching gay porn and other techniques, and, of course, messaging which told them over and over again that being gay is

unacceptable, in religious terms it is sinful, it is evil, it is depraved. you were doing all of that. i would agree that we were involved in messaging, but our organisation, all the organisations that i was a part of, was just basically talk therapy. the physical part of electric shock and drugs and stuff, that was mainly in the 70s and that did not go — definitely did not go into the 90s and the 2000s, and certainly not into the 2020s. but... so, ours was basically talk, counselling — lay counselling cos we're not professional therapists. that's why i am not a huge advocate for how the states are going about it.

i would much rather us go about it how the europeans are going about it because licensed professional therapists, by and large in the states, are not doing professional therapy with minors on conversion therapy. by and large, it's people like i was that did not have psychological training or degrees. right, so there you are. i take your point. you were not using the extreme physical measures, but the messaging tactics. you are definitely using religious messaging to dissuade people what they were doing, if they were participating in homosexual acts, was evil, sinful and was a betrayal of their christian beliefs. you knew, and i'm really asking you to reflect now on what you did, you knew that many of the people you were talking to were young, they were vulnerable,

they had mental health issues, just like yourself, they were struggling with family and community that would not accept them and, yet, you exposed them to this sort of intimidatory fear—instilling messaging. how could you do it? i will admit that i was caught up in that way of life. that was my way of thinking. that's who i was for 28 years of my life, and i actually did not, as you began, you talked about me quitting. i'd like to be able to say that i quit. i didn't quit. i was fired. i was removed. i was no longer the person that they wanted me to be. i had moderated so much over the years and became more of an advocate for the gay community and just wanted people to love

and accept themselves. so, i was one of the most moderate ex—gay leaders, because i wasn't really a therapist. but if i may say so, you are also one of the biggest hypocrites because of the very same time, as you were given these messages to young people and minors — let's not forget some of the people you were advising were well under the age of 18 — i think the youngest was 11. that's correct. you were doing and that's at the same time you were indulging in looking at gay pornography. that is correct. that's one of the reasons i was fired. and i also was very open about that. i did not tell anyone i could change their attractions. i told them i still struggled. i wrote articles and there is a chapter in my book about ongoing struggles with pornography. so, i was very open

about my ongoing struggles. it wasn't something i tried to hide. so, right... but that's not much solace to the young people whom you delivered these fear mongering messages to. as i understand it, several of the young people, and the children — let's call them children— that you counseled, have severe ongoing mental health problems, and a few individuals went on to kill themselves. i know of only one that killed himself, but he was not an actual client. and i never counselled him. one of my assistants killed himself later, a few years later, after i was fired.

both of these young men were well documented to having mental problems as you accurately described. i was very open and honest about how i did not believe people could change their attractions, but they could choose to live a life according to god's design. that was my language nanograms at the time. of course, i don't use that language nanograms today, but i was caught up in this belief system that it was not ok to be gay. i had that drilled into my head my entire life.

but saying that you are caught up in a cult and you were brainwashed, isn't that an abdication of personal responsibility? i take full responsibility for that. to be clear, today, and i began by asking you how you define yourself today, today, there is not one part of your being, not one fibre of your being that believes that being gay, being homosexual is just a lifestyle choice and a choice that you can walk away from if you choose to do so and with the right therapeutic help. you don't believe that today, do you? no, i don't believe that at all. no, i'm very much an advocate for young men and women to accept themselves, to love themselves, for us to accept and celebrate our children, ourselves as we are.

however we find ourselves to be. so, mckrae, i don't ask this flippantly, but how do you make amends to those dozens, hundreds of young people in your home state of south carolina whom you have had dealings with and whom you — let us be honest — have probably deeply damaged? you know, a number of different ways in some ways, i can't. in many ways, in most ways, ijust can't. but i can do what i can. i can live as open and honest as absolutely possible to say this is who i am, where i am, to be an advocate for the gay community, to do interviews like this, to try to be an advocate for change in the world for people to be accepted

and not to have to run and hide and be forced to go see someone like i used to be. but the scale of the problem or the scale of this particular phenomenon, it is actually shockingly large. in the united states alone, it is thought that nearly 700,000 adults living in the us today have undergone some form of gay conversion therapy, and we know that those who have undergone that are much more likely to have drug issues, homelessness issues and even suicidal thoughts. the suicide rate is higher. how do you propose to try to persuade america to completely outlaw gay conversion therapy?

you know, i knowjoe biden, president biden, in his election language pushed for, or promised to ban conversion therapy. and i really liked the language that he used. it was not very selective like we have right now, which is licensed professional therapist which is licensed professional therapist against minors. it's much more broad like they have in the european countries. but whatever, even if with these needed laws for therapist against minors, anything we can do to discredit organisations like this... i've heard numbers like that, i never saw that. it was always a very hidden organisation across the country, very small, very poor. there are some therapists that are making money off of

it, but by and large, it is a practice that is actually going out of style very much so as our culture is becoming much more accepting, much more moderate. you raise the money factor, and again, i have to ask you a blunt question. for two decades, you made a living out of this gay conversion therapy, didn't you? not much of, not much of. i sold my landscaping company to go full—time, and i could've made more money working at mcdonald's, seriously. i heard of people making a successful living in conversion therapy, but those are usually the reparative therapists that charge $300 an hour. we asked for a suggested donation rate of $50 an hour, and half the time, they gave nothing.

for me, it wasn't about the money. it was trying to help people. i thought i was helping people. what do you make of the counterargument, and you know this very well because for two decades, you are intimately involved with religious movements who did and continue to regard homosexuality as a deep sin, what do you make of their argument to that to outlaw gay conversion therapy would be wrong on two accounts? it would threaten first amendment rights to free speech and it would threaten religious freedoms of notjust americans, but people around the world who truly believe that homosexuality is fundamentally wrong and that those who practice it should be quote unquote "persuaded to stop". is there a freedom issue involved here? i'm sure there is. but our laws restrict freedom and probably religious freedom in a number of ways. the reality, though,

is conversion therapy is harmful. it is much like cigarettes and drugs. we restrict, we tax, we heavily regulate. there is no regulation, there is no inspection of ex—gay ministries and conversion therapy at all. it is basically snake oil that is being passed. in many ways, like organisation was, very professional seeming, and ours was very professional. but it was a false ruse. 0ur slogan that i came up with was

freedoms from homosexuality through jesus christ. it was the opposite of freedom. you now live as an out gay man. ijust wonder what this pronunciation of a huge chunk of your life, what this has meant now for your personal life, your relationship with your parents, whom we described as being extremely keen for you not to be homosexual, for the woman you married. when you were living a straight life and into gay conversion therapy, you were also living as a married man. so, i was always... i wrote a book called the transparent life. i was always extremely honest and open. my wife knew about my past before i asked her to marry me. i would always tell her if i was attracted to someone, if i was struggling. so, there were no secrets

between my wife and me, and as soon as my kids were old enough, i told them about my past. i was very open. my father today is in a nursing home and does not have his mentalfaculties, unfortunately, but before he had his massive stroke, i was extremely open to him because i had come out. my mother is very happy for me. this is her home i'm sitting in. you said something very interesting. you said yourfaith in god isjust as strong, if not stronger, than it has ever been. it's very different than it used to be. you still have this firm belief in god, why do you believe your god, for two decades, allowed you to harm so many people in the way you did? i don't know how to

answerthat, honestly. god allows us to do a lot of things. god's not superman, coming down and stopping us from doing things. i believed i was helping people. if you look at the god of the bible, if you look at the god of the evangelical and i believe the catholic church and most mainline churches, they would prescribe what i was doing. we were largely supported by churches. that's where i got my doctrine, was the church and the bible. to really have any kind of peace and solace as a gay person, you have to go away from all of that and you have to ask yourself, who do i believe god is? because there is a lot of condemnation in

mainline religion. mckrae game, i really thank you for talking to me. thanks forjoining us on hardtalk. thank you. hello there. for many of us, the temperatures are going to continue to build as we move through this week. both by day and it is going to feel warmer and muggier at night as well, as we start to import some very warm and humid tropical air right across the uk. but further north and west, we will continue to be played by low pressure and some weather fronts, so thicker cloud with some patchy rain at times. so for today, we've got higher pressure to the south,

low pressure out from the atlantic, pushing these weather fronts into the north and the west, which will bring thicker cloud at times for scotland, northern ireland, western parts of england and wales. anywhere here could see the odd spot of rain, and some of the rain could be quite heavy for a time across northern ireland and scotland. turning a little bit lighter into the afternoon. some brightness for the northeast of scotland, where it will be warm. but by far, central, southern and eastern england, which will see the sunniest of skies, will see the highest temperatures — 25 or 26 degrees. but even further west, with the cloud, it's going to feel warm and muggy. and as we head through wednesday night, tropical moist, humid air spreads right across the uk. so it's going to be a pretty muggy night for all areas. lows not falling below 14 to 16 degrees for many of us. now, as we head on into thursday, we've still got low pressure to the northwest. more isobars on the chart, you'll notice. so it is going to be a windier day for scotland, northern ireland, and it's here where we'll have most of the rain. the western isles and the northern isles could be quite wet. further south, more cloud around generally, even into england and wales. but again, the best of the sunshine will be towards the eastern

side of england. a breezier day for all. windierfurther north. those are the mean wind speeds, gusts will be higher than that. and it's going to be another warm and humid day but because there's a bit more cloud around, i think highs of 22 or 2a degrees. now, on into friday, similar picture again, could see quite a bit a cloud around here and there. a little bit of drizzliness across the western hills, where it will be quite misty. best of the sunshine to the east of high ground, and another warm and humid day to come, particularly for england and wales — 25 or 26 degrees. something a little bit fresher for a time across scotland, you will notice — 15 to 18 or 19 degrees. but as this area of high pressure builds back in for the weekend, it pushes the area of low pressure and these weather fronts back out into the atlantic. so it looks like things are going to turn more settled again for the weekend, with increasing amounts of sunshine, so temperatures will respond, and it's going to turn very warm or even hot in places, as temperatures across central and southern england could be close to 30 celsius.

this is bbc news: i'm sally bundock with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. new dangers for western forces in iraq — drones carrying explosives — we've a special report on the game—changing new threat. the enemy is the islamic state group, but that is far from the greatest danger that americans face here. how the other half lives — fresh claims that some us billionaires pay little or no income tax. stubbing out the cigarettes — why the uk is considering raising the age at which people can buy tobacco. and we meet china's new social media superstars, taking it all in their stride.