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"I w as a 'n ervo u s first time b u y e r’ w h en I
met T in a . But once I started w o rk in g w ith
her, she an sw ered all o f m y qu estio n s and
then some. T in a w as patient, kn o w ledgeable,
trustw orthy, and had a great sense o f hum or.
I co u fd n ’t be h ap p ier w ith m y new
hom e...and I ow e it to T in a ! ”
— K ariuui Hick.'
Tina Schafer, g r i , a b r
Surviving the
ex-gay movement
Continued from Page 1
In the eyes of his Baptist church there only
could be one answer. “They made it clear I didn’t
have a choice,” Strouse recalls 16 years later. “1
was unable to be a good father or husband. 1 was
starving to be acceptable to the church. I would
have given my teeth to he straight,”
The church officials held the promise of
acceptance through change, and Strouse agreed
to their conditions. “It was wonderful. I felt
relieved. I would get ‘cured.’ ”
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Strouse at home in Vancouver, Wash.
Strouse looks down into his closed fist.
W hen he speaks again, his voice shrinks to a
whisper, as if in prayer. “But I was wrong, of
course.”
It’s a dilemma gay men and lesbians often
face: The challenge to conform or even trans
form themselves in the face of a closed society
that does not accept who they are and does not
believe sexual orientation is as much a part of
their identity as, say, the color of their skin. The
rite of passage Pastor Strouse endured might
cause all of us to value our lives more.
T
he
C o n f e s s io n
T
o begin the “healing process,” Strouse
delivered a detailed confession o f his
"heinous homosexual sins” to his congregation
of deeply religious Baptists.
The sanctuary was silent, he recalls. No
coughs. No movement in the pews. Only 300
transfixed faces staring up at Strouse. “I’d never
seen the church so packed and so quiet.”
His children and wife refused to attend the
confession. They couldn’t abide the humiliation.
But in the crowd were other youth the pastor
knew well— he even had taught many of them
Looking
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to water-ski at summer camp. Their parents
were also there, as was the teen-ager who had
revealed Strouse’s homosexuality to church
leaders.
Also in attendance were his closest friends
and his staff members. Everyone who mattered
to him.
Strouse began to speak in his deep, preacher’s
voice. “W hen I was 12 years old, I met this man
who worked at a gas station. Later I returned,
and we went into the bathroom together. Then
I went over to his house.”
Strouse never told the congregation that he
and the man spent time talking and that they
never had intercourse. Although they did touch
each other, he did not consider the experience
horrible at all. “I enjoyed it,” he
recalls.
But the story he told the church
was different. “Any moderately sexu
al relationship I had with a man was
considered rape,” Strouse explains.
"So I told them I was raped. T h at’s
what they wanted me to say.”
Strouse explained hom osex
uality, using the Baptist definition.
“Homosexuality is a man’s desire to
love himself,” he said. “It occurs
when a man’s own maleness has
not been accepted...only when a
man fully accepts his maleness in
its own right will he begin to expe
rience desires emerging for the
opposite o f himself.”
He told them how he had tried to accept his
maleness, how for 10 years he attended Exodus,
a group in Vancouver, British Columbia, that
promised to cure him. But he failed. He wasn’t
strong enough. However, he would continue to
do everything he could to change.
Finally, Strouse finished. T he room remained
silent. A brave few got up, gave him hugs and
wished him luck.
A t school, his son was harassed: “I bet your
daddy fucks you.” Just 48 hours after the confes
sion, Strouse moved his family to another town.
“We couldn’t stand it,” he remembers. “We
left as fast as we could.”
It would take eight months for him to break
free from the devils in disguise.
T
he
E
“C u re ”
very week, Strouse came to the Southeast
Portland office of a conservative criminal
psychologist who worked with sex offenders.
The church agreed to pay for half of the coun
seling costs.
“He said the more honest I was, the more it
would help, hut by being homosexual I was