jura 20. 2003 ?
[I’m] a Presbyterian clergy person, and we
believe that God has formed, is forming and will
continue to form and reform the church. Yes, we
believe there is the authority of Scripture in all
that we do, hut we also read it as a community.
We d on’t how down to Scripture. We don’t wor
ship Scripture. We worship G od in Christ. And
we worship a Gixl who is continuing to create,
to form, to do amazingly new and different
things.
Take women in leadership roles, for example.
It was the surrounding society that was really
more encouraging of women in roles of leader
ship than it was the church. T he church was one
of the last to come along and say women can he
one of the elders in a church or one of the pas
tors of a church. W hy do we make those
changes? It goes hack to this. If you read the
Bihle one way on these issues, then don’t you
have to read it all this way?
relationship for 12 years looking for Mr. Right,
wanting to settle down, buy a home, have kids,
adopt, do all that.
But I was never enough for another person,
and nobody else was ever enough for me. There
was always somebody on the other side that was
better than the person I was with.
I had to look myself in the mirror and realize
I’m going to he a 50-year-old troll. W hen you’re
young and attractive and 26 and built like a
brick house, you’re valuable to the community,
but let’s turn the lights on at 2 in the morning
and see who’s left sitting at JR.’s. It’s not the cute
young 26-year-olds; it’s the 40-, 50-, 60-year-old
men with guts and no hair.
I got out of the now and looked at what my
life would he when 1 was 40 if 1 continued in
homosexuality. And I looked at what my life
could possibly be at 40 if 1 left homosexuality.
T he latter was much more inviting.
BWM: His experience being a gay man is so
different than my experience as a gay man. For
me, there really was a sense that I had made my
life extraordinarily cumbersome and complex by
living “in the closet,” by hiding, living untruth
fully and unfaithfully, failing to embrace the per
son Gixl created me to be. Now that I’m more
“out,” I don’t have to fight so many of the bat
tles or use up so much of the energy I was using
just to pretend that 1 wasn’t something when I
really was.
Like so many others, I kept on praying to
God to change me. I grew up in a church in
which being gay, lesbian, bi or trans was not
appropriate. It was not allowed. But when you
stop telling G od what God should do and start
27
listening to God, you hear God say, “I love you,
and I made you who you are, and my love is
always there, trust me.”
I had bought into a lot of th e cultural co n
struction of A m erican society up until the age
of 40. I am a father of two amazing kids, I was
married, I had a house, a mortgage, two cars,
cats and on th e way for tenure at a modern
major research university. I had it all, but 1
was so unhappy and knew deep inside I was
living a lie, th a t I was not being truthful.
W h en I read Psalm 139, I kept bumping
into the passage “G od knew us as G od was
k n ittin g us in our m other’s womb.” G od was
there— there was no way to escape it. So the
realization for me was, who was I fooling? If I
Continued on Page 28
I will survive
TK : O pponents of reparative or conversion
therapy say that it hurts families and faith
com m unities by causing unnecessary mis
understanding, isolation and separation.
M H : T his is a typical politically correct
response th a t has been fed to th e masses by
th e gay com m unity. T h e very m an, Dr.
[Robert L ] Spitzer, th at was the hero o f the
orman Birthmark, like most “ex
gay com m unity in 1973 for fighting to get
gay” ministry survivors, came away
hom osexuality taken out of [standard diag
from the experience without a cure
nostic criteria for m ental disorders] has now
com e hack and done a study showing that
for his homosexuality. W hat he did
find, however, was a remedy for his
change is possible for those th a t seek it. W hy
internal struggle with faith.
are we not hearing about this? T h e gay co m
m unity has now silenced him and marginal- ‘
A t age 19 he was referred to Portland Fel
ized his view. W hy? Science or politics?
lowship by a campus ministry at Oregon State
Author's note: Jack Drescher, chairman of the
University. He was led to believe it was a pro
fessional counseling service for conservative
American Psychiatric Assoaaticm's Committee on
Christians conflicted about their sexuality.
GLB Concerns, dismisses the study. He asserts
Spitzer’s survey is flawed statistically and metfuxl-
Two years and about $700 later, he escaped
(¡logically. Only 200 respondents, referred by ex-gay
and began to rebuild his spiritual identity. Now
groups, were interviewed by teleplume without fol
27, h e’s accepted his sexual orientation and
low-up and without addressing the harm such a con attends the predominantly gay Metropolitan
Community C hurch of Portland.
version might impose.
Here is his story, in his own words:
When contacted by Just O ut about his study,
Spitzer offered the following statement: "As 1 have
• • •
indicated on several occasions, I personally support
full civil rights for gays, gays in the military, gay
was just a nervous wreck. I was so desperate to
adoptum and the recognitum of gay civil unum. All
meet anyone, especially a Christian, who I
of these are antithetical to the approach taken by
would be able to relate to. So it was a good expe
Focus <m the Family. My study dealt with a very
rience in terms of meeting other people who
select sample of individuals who were not coerced
into some kind of therapy to change their sexual ori- were in the same kind of situation.
W hen we got to the “ 101 Counseling’’ ses
entatum. Clearly the results of my study in no way
sions, th a t’s where 1 started having a lot of ques
justify pressuring gays to seek such therafry nor does
tions and doubts about, “Is this really going to
it assume that all gays would be better off if they
work?” W hat made me feel worse was that it
changed."
involved going through and identifying all of
BW M : T he greatest damage lies in trying to
place the radical and wonderful varieties of the supposed “deficiencies” I had.
T h a t’s w hen they started telling me: “You
who we were created to he into a predefined
cam e from a broken hom e; th a t’s som ething
box. O ne of the most com m on sins to commit
in your background th a t’s causing you not to
is to try to box in G od by saying, “Well, you
be healthy. You’re n o t developed fully into a
have to love so-and-so, but you can ’t love such-
and-such." W hen we make these kinds of m an.’’
T h at had never even come into my mind.
moves, asserting our limited imagination and
T h at wasn’t the identity I had for myself.
creativity on G od the creator, isn’t that to get
And yet after two years of going through all
the relationship between G od and hum ankind
that— after talking about all your “failings”—
backward?
you start taking on the identity: “Well, I’m just
a guy from a broken home. I’m insecure with my
TK : C an you describe your own experience
masculinity. I don’t have strong enough faith to
and how you’ve changed?
succeed.”
M H: I now understand that I had scxualized
I was raised by my mom primarily. I was con
my unmet homo-emotional needs that were not
flicted because 1 didn’t feel like I had a bad
met through a positive relationship with my
father or other men as I grew up. Realizing this
home. I was really proud of the way my mom
has allowed me to understand where the sexual
raised me, and I thought I was fine.
drive found its genesis, and therefore it has now
here were very strict rules—you couldn’t
lost its power.
meet anyone outside of the group. There
I’d love to say that I came out of homosexu-
were a lot of issues about boundaries. They didn’t
ality because of some religious experience, but
that wasn’t the case. I walked (Hit of homosexu want people to become dependent on each other,
ality because I was sick and tired of what the gay so they really discouraged people from forming
close friendships.
community had to offer me. Relationship after
Ex-ex-gay man keeps the faith while struggling with his spiritual identity
by Jim Radosta
PHOTO BY MARTY DAV*
I
T
There were rules about hugging. You had to
hug— they called it an A-frame hug— so your
hips wouldn’t touch.
O ne of the things they had you do was go
through your home and clean out anything
th a t was remotely gay. For me, 1 wasn’t out, so
the only thing I had was a Melissa Etheridge
CD . [Laughs] So I had to throw th at out. It was
kind of bizarre.
And, of course, you had to get rid of all the
pom. T hat was kind of a no-brainer.
My objective was to build a close relation
ship to God and challenge myself to be a better
Christian. But toward the end of the two years
what I realized was that my entire spiritual life
became entangled in trying not to be gay. My
whole identity of who I was to God was depen
dent on whether I was making progress toward
“healing" my homosexuality and becoming
more heterosexual.
I scheduled an individual counseling session
with one of the leaders there, and I told him that
I was having doubts, that this wasn’t working,
that l was becoming very disillusioned. He
turned around and told me: “I really have doubts
about your faith. You’re not very enthusiastic."
Nobody had ever told me I lacked faith. It
really him me that someone would say that.
For like a year after that I took time off from
church and stayed away. I read a lot of books
and was rethinking what Christianity was to me
and why it was important.
oday I’m more skeptical. But at the same
time, though, I think I do have an idea
what is important to me about G od and Chris
tianity and what Jesus' message really was about.
So I’m more secure in my spiritual identity in
terms of being able to say what things I do
believe and what things I have doubts ab o u t
T h a t’s a lot different from w hen I first start
ed going to “ex-gay" ministries, w hen it was
much more based in C hristian fundam ental
ism: These are th e principles of the faith, and
there’s n o discussion. Now I’m more willing to
acknowledge th a t there are things I d on’t
know and there are things I d o n ’t think the
Bible knows.
During the two years there, what I tended to
notice was the people who were really the most
outspoken in terms of how “well” it was going—
those who were the people who, in the end,
tended to have the biggest falls, who may not
have been completely ho n est In the end, I
don't know of anyone who’s been terribly suc
cessful at the program. JT1
T