SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (The Adobo Chronicles, San Francisco Bureau) – Members of the World Council of Gay Conversion Therapy (WCGCT) meeting here this weekend unanimously named Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte their Supreme Leader.

The designation — made in absentia — came after the gay conversion therapists learned of Duterte’s latest public pronouncement. He has claimed he was once gay but “cured” himself of homosexuality in controversial remarks made during a trip to Japan.

The popular President mocked his political opponent Senator Antonio Trillanes IV by saying the latter’s movements show he is homosexual. Duterte also reportedly “confessed” that he was gay before he met his ex-wife Elizabeth Zimmerman.

“Good thing Trillanes and I are similar. But I cured myself,” Duterte said during his speech. “When I began a relationship with Zimmerman, I said, this is it. I became a man again.”

Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of trying to change an individual’s sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual using psychological or spiritual interventions.

Duterte’s designation is expected to boost the conversion therapy movement which is fast declining in the U.S. with more and more states making the practice illegal.