The South Carolina-based founder of one of the nation’s largest “gay conversion” programs issued a formal apology for his role in the discredited movement this weekend ― just months after coming out publicly as gay himself. McKrae Game, who served on Hope for Wholeness’s board of directors until 2017, called “gay conversion” programs “very harmful” and an example of “false advertising” in a Saturday interview with The Post and Courier. “I was a religious zealot that hurt people,” said Game, who was raised in a Southern Baptist household in Spartanburg, South Carolina. “People said they attempted suicide over me and the things I said to them. People, I know, are in therapy because of me. Why would I want that to continue?” Now 51, Game founded Hope for Wholeness in his home state in 1999. Initially called Truth Ministry, Game’s group was conceived as an offshoot of the Florida-based Exodus International, a network of organizations that targeted “people who wished to limit their homosexual desires.” Nearly two years after being fired from Hope for Wholeness, Game came out as gay in June. He and his wife, Julie, have been married since 1996 and remain together, though Julie is aware of her husband’s sexuality.