Exorcisms seem like a thing of the past, only seen now in horror movies, but for one gay TikToker it was a reality.
Andrew Hartzler’s parents decided to hire an “exorcist” to come into their home and perform a bizarre ritual because they thought demons were making him gay.
The 25-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri documented the exorcism and put the video on TikTok where so far it has attracted close to one million views.
The TikTok shows a man Hartzler identified as evangelist John Jacobs, the founder of body-building Christian group The Power Team, walking around Hartzler’s bedroom holding a bible and yelling.
“Devil, you have no more place, you can never enter this room again,” Jacobs is seen saying in the video.
He even walks into a closet and begins preaching at the clothing, saying, “I plead the blood of Chris over this closet, over every piece of clothing in here.”
Jacobs then claims the closet is now full of “angels” before another hidden camera catches the preacher dripping oil on Hartzler’s bed so that “every person that touches this bed shall be saved.”
This is not the first extreme measure his parents have taken to try to stifle his sexuality. Hartzler’s parents, who are part of a conservative evangelical sect called the International House of Prayer, also sent him to a gay conversion camp when he came out at age 14.
"It was like some of the darkest moments of my entire life," he explained in an interview with Insider. "It basically just teaches you, like, learned self-hate, like learning to repress like half of your mind. It's exhausting."
After being forced to attend the gay conversion camp, the TikToker was sent to a conversion therapy counselor three times a week for the rest of his high school career.
Then, in an attempt to keep their son away from other gay people, they enrolled him in conservative Christian Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was during this time that his parents hired Jacobs to “exorcise” their son’s bedroom.
Hartzler had a sneaking suspicion his parents might do something extreme after he came home from college for Christmas break and once again told them he was gay.
"I had had enough of lying to my parents about being 'straight,'” he told Insider. “And I told them that I was lying to them the whole time during conversion therapy and that I was gay and there was no changing me. And I really put my foot down.”
Before going back to school Hartzler decided to place cameras around his bedroom in case his parents tried to go through his belongings, but instead of catching them rifling through his things, he managed to capture the strange exorcism.
"My father thought my identity issues were a 'demonic stronghold,'" he said. "He always used that type of language around my sexuality."
The viral TikToker caught the exorcism on camera a few years ago, but decided to share it now because he thought it was important for people to know the kind of lengths right-wing Christian fundamentalists will go to because “they believe being gay is something profoundly evil that has to be performed away by some ritual."
Hartzler no longer speaks to his parents and on top of making TikTok videos where talks about politics and shares stories from his life, he also works for Oklahomans for Equality, an LGBTQ rights group.
