Ex-gay activist fired from anti-LGBTQ+ org for sending shirtless selfies to younger men

Michael Voris, the ex-gay founder and former head of Church Militant, allegedly sent shirtless selfies to male members of his staff at the conservative Catholic website, leading to his forced resignation late last year.

Voris, who in 2016 admitted to having “live-in relationships with homosexual men” and committing “sexual sins” in his thirties before devoting himself to ultra-conservative Catholicism in the early 2000s, used Church Militant and parent company St. Michael’s Media to attack moderate Catholics, secular liberals, and the LGBTQ+ community. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists both Church Militant and St. Michael’s Media as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups.

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Last November, Church Militant and St. Michael’s Media released a statement saying that Voris had been asked to resign from his position for breaching the site’s morality clause. The site’s board of directors did not disclose any further details about why it had asked its founder, CEO, and public face to step down.

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Over the weekend, however, The Washington Post published a report based on interviews with former Church Militant staff and internal documents revealing new details about the circumstances that led to Voris’s departure. According to the Post, dozens of shirtless selfies of Voris were uploaded to the site’s Dropbox account last April, along with a screenshot of text messages in which someone described the photos as sexually arousing.

Former Church Militant employees said that the images were likely uploaded by mistake. But that same month, the far-right Catholic X account Restoring the Faith (RTC) posted a shirtless gym selfie of Voris, suggesting that he had “continually [texted] half-nude selfies to his young, single male employees.”

According to the Post, in early November, Church Militant webcast host Christine Niles wrote in a letter announcing her resignation from the site that she had “learned Michael has been in the habit of sending shirtless selfies to multiple men inside and outside the apostolate.” She warned the site’s board that copies of the photos still existed on employee hard drives and that “They reveal an unhealthy obsession with his physique, not to mention the terrible optics — particularly considering his former lifestyle.”

In another unsigned November letter, a group of Church Militant employees told the board that Voris had also sent a selfie to a prominent potential donor. A former employee sent another letter to the board describing a “cult” of fear around Voris at Church Militant.

Joe Gallagher, a former Church Militant employee who left the site in November 2022, told the Post that “a whole bunch of young guys” received similar shirtless photos of Voris.

“I don’t know if it was a gym bro thing or what,” Gallagher said.

The Post describes Church Militant as being in “financial jeopardy” since Voris’s departure in November, with the board blaming “the Devil” and “the Evil One” for the site’s troubles in a December fundraising email and warning that the site will fold without donor support.