New film tells 'real' story behind gay activist's journey to anti-gay pastor

A Halifax architect wants to set the record straight about his former partner's so-called "conversion" from a gay rights activist to an anti-gay pastor.

In the new Netflix documentary Michael Lost and Found, Benjie Nycum visits Michael Glatze at his Wyoming home. The two had a decade-long relationship and together founded the magazine Young Gay America before Glatze publicly denounced his homosexuality and became an evangelical pastor.

Glatze's transformation made headlines, and in 2015 became the subject of a Hollywood film I Am Michael starring James Franco.

Nycum, who's also depicted in the film, couldn't stomach the script when he read it. So he set out to make a film of his own. The 19-minute documentary is now on Netflix.

Nycum spoke with Information Morning's Don Connolly. The following has been edited for clarity and length:

Q: Why did you decide that you had to reach out to Michael literally, that you had to go and see him?

When Hollywood calls and they want you to review a script about your life and about the life of someone you love and have loved, it's a traumatic experience to be sure.

So they sent me scripts, and I read the scripts and I disagreed with the scripts.

So it was at that point I reached out to Michael and I said — after not having spoken with him in several years, although keeping in touch as best as I could — did he really want this to be the last version of history?

Did he really want this to be the last version of history?
- Benjie Nycum
The way this story was being written, I didn't think it portrayed the real story. I don't think it portrayed him very well either, and he agreed.

Q: At what point does Michael say a) I'm not gay anymore, I'm heterosexual and b) I'm going to be part of a very radical, right-wing Christian group, which is anti-gay?

It really started several years before this story as it's being told now started. Michael thought he was dying of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is when your heart explodes suddenly. His father died of that when he was 12 and he came convinced that he had this.

Over the years, it started to sort of infect his mind, this sense that, 'At any moment, I might die.'

So this started to shape how we lived from day-to-day and how we related.

He eventually left and after he left, he spent time on his own in Halifax, ultimately moved to Colorado for a little while and worked at a Buddhist retreat there. During that time he started to write these articles and get interviews, for example, in fundamentalist, right-wing evangelical media.

U.S. 'gay conversion' group shuts doors, apologizes
He expresses in Michael Lost and Found that this had a quality to it that generated more — that feeling that you're desired and wanted and your opinion is wanted.

I think it's irresistible for someone like Michael who is very convicted in his ideas and is very thoughtful and his brain is always full.

The power that we had as a couple creating LGBT media and trying to reach out and portray a story of belonging for queer youth — that was an intellectual, political pursuit, always full of ideas and I think it translated very well to attention and interest from the other side.