Peterson Toscano collection

Peterson Toscano was born on February 17, 1965 in Stamford, Connecticut. In 1982 he became a born-again Christian and began attending conversion therapy at Gospel Tabernacle Church. He graduated from Narrowsburg High School in New York in 1983 and began at Nyack College. He took time off from college in spring 1984 due to “struggling with homosexuality,” but then returned in the fall. He worked as a medical missionary for HCJB, a Christian missionary radio station, in Quito, Ecuador during the spring and fall of 1985. Following this, Toscano moved to NYC and started attending Life Ministries, a support group for “men struggling with homosexuality.” Toscano married Paula Kreuthmeier in 1990. The two moved to Zambia together in 1995 to do missionary work for the radio Christian Voice. They returned to the US in 1996 and Toscano began residential ex-gay therapy at Love in Action in Memphis, Tennessee. Toscano and Kreuthmeier divorced in 1997, and after two years at Love in Action. Toscano officially came out as gay in 1998.

Toscano began his work as a writer and performer in 1999/2000 in Memphis with the play Footprints, an Inspirational Comedy. He also wrote and performed a poem for Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard, when she came to Memphis for an event honoring her in 2000. He moved to Hartford, Connecticut, to work at the Watkinson School in August 2001 and began attending the Hartford Friends Meeting following the September 11 attacks. He debuted his first major play, Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House, about his experiences in residential ex-gay therapy in 2003, which he went on to perform across the US and internationally. During his years touring the play he met another ex-gay survivor, Christine Bakke, and the two launched the website beyondexgay.com, an online community for ex-gay survivors.

In 2007 Toscano debuted Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender in the Bible and in 2008 he also began performing The Re-Education of George W. Bush--No President Left Behind. Around the same time Toscano met his partner Glen Retief at the Friends General Conference in Johnstown, PA. Toscano and Retief moved to Sunbury, PA together in 2010 and were married in July 2012 at the Pennsdale Friends Meeting. Fom 2009-2012, Toscano traveled around the US performing Transfigurations.

Toscano began researching climate change in 2013, and created a new play on the subject in 2014, titled Does this Apocalypse Make Me Look Fat? A Comedy about Broken Bodies Large and Small. He continued his climate work through his podcast Climate Stew and as a part of Citizens Climate Lobby from 2015-2020. He also created the show Everything is Connected--An Evening of Stories, Most Weird Many True which combined excerpts from Doin’ Time and Transfigurations with new material. In 2017 Toscano published two works: a performance recording of Transfigurations made into a movie by director Samuel Neff and a short graphic story illustrated by Joey Hartman Dow titled The Amazing Adventures of the Afterbirth of Jesus. He and his partner Retief moved to South Africa for a year in 2021, where he debuted his TikTok about the differences between the United States and South Africa, particularly around language. As of 2023, he hosts Quakers Today, the podcast companion to the Friends Journal.

Sourced from “Peterson Toscano Timeline” in the Peterson Toscano collection.