My story, for those just tuning in.
A year ago, I came out to my parents as ex-ex gay. In other words, I was gay again. Actuallyy, I never was straight, but only pretending so I would no longer be the one who was singlehandedly tearing apart my family. I saw terrible things happen to my family in high school, and it was all my fault. Strike that, it was the devil’s fault for grabbing onto my soul and my ignorance of God’s saving power that was at fault here. Regardless, what was happening to me was tearing apart my family and the relationship I had with them. That is, until I developed what I now understand to be a bold faced lie. I was desperate. I was confused. I was hurting and tried so desperately to search for an answer. I tried so hard not to be gay. I prayed. I prayed. I prayed.
Mom and dad told me it could happen. Dad left notes about sexual immorality in my bureau. He quoted bible passages. He told me that I could change. He promised me. And from what I inferred from the bible, God could change me as well, and gayness was one of these things from which to be saved. I, seventeen year old Aaron, was told that once I accepted Christ and repented of my gayness (“denying myself” as it were), I would no longer be gay. I would no longer be tearing apart my family. I would no longer be in a spiritual battle.
At first, I fought them. I told them they were being bigots. I told them they needed to get over it. That I am gay and there is nothing that can be done to change it. My mom lost weight. She lost a lot of hair. My dad threw tables. My phone calls were monitored. My whole life was on notice. It was hell on earth.
Seventeen year olds are young. Their minds are still developing. They are still impressionable. Many of them, myself included at the time, were inherently angry. They are trying to figure out the world around them. They convince themselves they are right about things that they know nothing about. They think they are good at lying. They don’t have it together. At all.
I was seventeen when my life went to shambles. I was seventeen when I was told that God could make me different. That my orientation was the result of the fall of man and that I was born a sinner like everyone else and that my gayness was just one of the many possible manifestations of original sin. I was told that I was a slave to this original sin and that Jesus was the way to break my chains and set me free. I was told that my orientation was able to be changed, just like Donnie McKurklin’s was.
I began to believe them.
I read the bible, and for the first time, it made sense to me. I was sinful. My gayness was sin. The whole world was screwed up. All the gossip and terrible things that went on at school were the result of a fallen world. They did not know God and his love. They didn’t understand how much better he could make life. They needed to hear this! I wanted to share this message! But before I did, I needed to stop being gay. Mom and dad said that I cannot be a Christian if I don’t believe that the bible is God-breathed and if God says that gay is wrong, then I’m not a Christian and I cannot possibly share God with my friends.
I couldn’t stop being gay. It’s not that I couldn’t stop following through on being gay and act upon my gayness; I wasn’t really gay-active at the time.
I just needed to switch that orientation compass to Jesus. Instead of looking at guys, I needed to look at Jesus. Instead of looking at guys, I needed to look at Jesus. Instead of looking at guys, I needed to look at Jesus. Instead of looking at guys, I needed to look at Jesus.
I came out as ex-gay to my family in December of 2004. We rejoiced. My mom slept again. My dad stopped throwing tables and yelling. I stopped being exorcized. I stopped wanting to kill myself. There was peace: the peace that God promised. I was grateful. I went ahead and renounced my gayness to my friends and then boyfriend and started convincing myself that girls were attractive. I began being able to identify what about females that other boys my age said were “hot” and I began “appreciating the beauty” of these specimens who were designed by my creator. I understood that union with one of these beauts one day would be communion with my creator. I got this figured out.
College came. I dated girls. I appreciated them all. I was very appreciative. I appreciated them so hard. I eventually dated a girl named Becca for a very long time. She was beautiful. She had big blue eyes and straight brown hair. She came from a big, bible believing family. My family, who was now “on fire for The Lord,” were very happy for the two of us. Pictures of us lined the cabinets and credenzas at home. We dated off and on for a very long time. At one point I started convincing myself I was going to marry her. It was just perfect. A beautiful, Christian woman. This was definitely God’s design for my life. My parents and family were happy. Becca was happy, her family was happy.
Something was missing. She knew it. I knew it. People we talked to about the other knew it. I tried so hard to figure out what it was. I mean, sure, I still thought guys were attractive, but I wasn’t supposed to, so I didn’t let myself think anything else but “handsome guy.” When I say that, I truly mean it. I was not struggling with my gayness in college. I was busy being enveloped in the warm embrace of God’s intended design for my life. I had great friends. I kept busy leading worship. I had a bunch of spectacular mentors and adults in my life. My orientation wasn’t a struggle.
Something was wrong, though. Becca and I couldn’t connect. We couldn’t connect at all. Here I had this perfect woman, and I couldn’t connect with her. A lot of us tend to put a lot of stress on the sexual side of relationships. While I do think sex is important, I can guarantee you that a spouse who has had their other half passing away won’t be talking about how much he/she misses the sex. There is a connection that is there; an x-factor, if you will, that psychologically, physiologically, and ecumenically attracts one to another. This is the chemistry that makes up the relationship.
It wasn’t there. I appreciated her. I loved what she meant for her in my life. But… Something was off.
During the last few months of my relationship with Becca, I met someone with whom I did experience that chemistry. He worked as a lifeguard at Camp Swatara back when I served on summer staff as a counselor. His name was Ben and he and I quickly became close friends. I remember going on walks with him late into the night. I remember he way the made me laugh always. I remember his eyes; his love for kids; his work ethic; his “Brethrenness.” I remember feeling safe around him – like I could tell him anything. I remember more about him in those three months of plutonic friendship than I do about Becca, having known/dated her for years.
I did a lot of thinking that summer. I came to one conclusion:
I am gay. I am a gay male who will find completion in a partner who is another gay male. It is my orientation.
In a leap of faith, I came on to Ben one night. The feelings were reciprocated and we began a relationship of ups and downs and ins and outs.
I fought it for a while. I tortured myself with Christian rhetoric. I even prayed to God that Ben would die so I wouldn’t even any longer have the opportunity to feel the way I felt about him. It didn’t work and I soon found myself head over heels in love. And let me tell you, for the first time in my life, it felt right. It felt RIGHT. I wasn’t repressed. I was no longer ignoring a side of myself that would ultimately lead to a spiritual calm. I was happy, and calm, and fulfilled. And I was a Christian. I ended up running the program at Camp Swatara, and while even though Ben moved away to Ohio and then Portland, we dated for almost two years before I decided the distance and our life situations were too much to handle and called it off. I don’t recall a time of greater personal and spiritual growth than what I experienced in that chapter in my life, and Ben was a significant part of that.
Why am I telling this story? I am telling it because I came across a blog recently of an individual who up has decided to chronicle his journey of trying overcoming homosexuality. He is extremely transparent about all of his struggles in his blog which is much appreciated.
I have come a long way since my second coming out. I can now, with grace and authority, defend my orientation from a biblical standpoint probably better than most gay Christians out there. As leader of a ministry owned and operated by a church denomination that is struggling with the issue of gayness, I had to really do my homework. I had to know what I was talking about beyond “Jesus says to love. Love love love. God is one big huge teddy bear. Let’s just love. Yay gays!”
The guy who is writing his blog is having the same conversations with himself that I had while going through this process. I can feel his agony. I can sense his worry. I can hear his frustration. His fear in “screwing up.” I can also relate to his justification. I can tell him that I too reasoned this way and that way about my being gay. At one point in my life I too resigned to being celibate all my life. Or being single. Or not. I hoped for the right female person to come along. I too understood God’s design. I too, appreciated my definition of God’s design based on what I inferred from scripture.
I know now that these things are based on misunderstandings. They are based on improper hermeneutical inferences made from scripture that have little to no foundational integrity.
My dad is very heavy on the “spiritual battle” aspect of everything. He has told me time and time again that the reason I am gay and have a boyfriend is because there is a spiritual battle going on around me that has separated me from God. I need to turn from my evil desires that satan is whispering in my ear and repent and walk with Christ. What my dad fails to realize is that the result of a spiritual battle of any kind is that brokenness. It is inward tension. It is feeling distant from your faith and your creator. On the other side, the result of spiritual battle is not a sense of completeness. It is not a feeling of right chemistry. It is not the cause of love for your fellow man and the desire to lay down your life for someone so that they may be made higher than you are in your mind. Spiritual battles do not result in increased dignity and integrity of yourself or of those around you. All of these things are things I have experienced in a relationship. If anything, the spiritual battle that I experienced was when I was with Becca and we were both miserable.
I want to encourage struggling gay Christians to do their homework. I want to tell them that this coin is two sided and that gay Christians who believe in absolute truth actually do have a leg to stand on in a biblical sense, contrary to what the religious right tells them. I want to tell them that singleness is a CALLING outlined by Paul. It is singleness and celibacy are a specific calling; it is not a resignation and that the very first thing God ever said was “not good” was for man to be alone.
I am writing more openly on this blog because I am realizing that more people read it that I realize. In particular, people who are searching wordpress for keywords. I invite conversation, as always, but please remember to be respectful.
Aaron
Weird Straight Phrases
I did not edit this post. At all.
I will never forget the conversation. There I was eating tacos with Brandon, my best friend of seven years. Alongside me was Colton, my then boyfriend of seven months. It was a real treat to have Colton there with us since he lived in Harrisburg and had quite an after-work trek to get to this little dive bar in Jonestown, PA.
It had been rough between Brandon and me. At the time we were in the midst of a long process (and in some ways still are) of recalibrating our friendship ever since I came out to him some months prior. Brandon, to this day, will say that my “lifestyle” is against his “values” (we will get to at later), but from what I understand he has chosen to tolerate it for the sake of keeping a friendship. While I am sure it has been a difficult journey for him coming to terms with the fact that his best friend falls into this controversial topic he had previously never had to face directly and could therefore oppose freely, I am going to out on a limb and say that my journey has been even more difficult for myself as I watched him not only sit in silence while I lost my job and livelihood because of my orientation, but also tell me to my face that he would not be coming back to work at the ministry I coordinated if I were working there as an honest individual.
There the three of us sat at the table, drinking beer, eating tacos, and having an overall good time laughing together and sharing stories about our lives since the last time we hung out – the previous Tuesday. “Taco Tuesday” was and still is a tradition of ours that we’ve had since college. I have come to appreciate them more and more as time has taken us on different journeys and stages in life. It is good to keep intersecting with my best friend on a weekly basis, even at the risk of it feeling regimented. We rarely miss Taco Tuesdays.
I am not sure how we ended up on the topic, but at one point, with the three of us at the table, Colton and I on one side and Brandon on the other, Brandon utters the following statement regarding Colton’s and my relationship:
“I mean, I disagree with it, but I can still tolerate it.”
At this point, I was already tired of dealing with the phraseology that is often used by the religious rite. Words and phrases like “I disagree with it” (often used in conjunction with the word “lifestyle”) or “practicing homosexual” or “love the sinner, hate the sin” or any of the other dozens of newly fashionable quips mean nothing more to me than, “My values and understanding of my indoctrinated Christian theology are more important to me than the credibility of my neighbor’s words and happiness.”
These types of words and phrases are relatively new to modern society’s lexicon, as is the realization that more LGBT people are choosing to be honest about their orientations. The latter birthed the former, and here we are: caught in a whirlwind of passive phrases that allows for conservatives to be blanket their bigoted misunderstanding of the human condition in LOVE. In using this phraseology, they don’t have to do their homework. They don’t have to challenge themselves. They don’t even have to completely love their neighbor. They just have to “disapprove” without hating and boom, they’re like Jesus. So…. next issue…. Next issue….
Next issue….
Next issue….
Not so fast, Brandon.
“Wait, what?”
“We’ll, I mean, I disapprove of it, being gay.”
“You disapprove of this? Colton and I?”
“Right. Well, that lifestyle.”
“You know what? How would I love to sit here with you and Tessa (his then fiancée), look down the ridge of my nose and say ‘you know what, all of this… this relationship…. the good times, bad times, what you work for, the care you have for each other, all of what makes this this…. i disapprove. i disagree.’ How much sense would that make? How would that make you feel?”
“I don’t understand why you’re upset. Just because I disagree with it doesn’t mean anything for you.”
“Stop saying that. That you disagree. That is so unbelievably rude. And it doesn’t make sense. It makes no sense. I wouldn’t ever think along those lines when it comes to you and Tessa so what has given you the right to do that to me?”
Needless to say, the conversation escalated into a full fledged argument and we, embarrassingly in front of Colton, stormed out of the bar yelling and crying.
A weekly letter to straight conservative friends:
To: SCF
RE: passive phraseology #1
It has come to my attention that the passive phraseology that has been developed by the religious rite in response to society’s normalizing of the realization that gays exist not only makes little sense, but it is also harmful and ignorant. As a guide, I have listed a few key terms to help you all out. So as not to overwhelm you with new ways of thinking, I will give you but one word each week and allow for you to digest each word and concept. I will also propose a substitute or solution for each of these words or phrases to help you break from your verbally passive tendencies.
“Lifestyle” – stop using the term “lifestyle” altogether. There are seven billion people on this planet and there are therefore seven billion lifestyles. For example, my “lifestyle” currently consists of going to class, farming, looking for a job, trying to figure out my love-life, eating too much red meat, enjoying fine dining, paying lots of bills, driving a lot, going to church, liking dogs, hanging out with friends, flying airplanes, watching TLC in the evenings, and blogging. That’s my lifestyle. The image that comes with your word “lifestyle” for gay MEN (gay women are often excluded from this stigma) is… I don’t know… Lots of gay sex, leather, glory holes, more promiscuity, being…. Fashionable… Um… Hairdressing? Seriously, what the hell do you mean when you mean “lifestyle?” Promiscuity? Hyper-sexuality? Do me a favor: turn on the TV; heterosexuals had that covered long ago. Everywhere I turn the damn straights are shoving their straightness into my face. But is it an accurate response of me to assume that all straights live this lifestyle? No. Not only do I use my brain, but I think I would be quite disturbed with myself if I walked around assumptively wondering about the sex lives of everyone around me.
Solution: Say what you mean. You mean “gay sex.” You do. Say it. Given the many hardships and frustrations that we “homosexuals” have had to go through by this point in life, it is going to be pretty difficult come across the bashful type. It is my firm belief that if you substitute the real term, “gay sex,” for the word “lifestyle” you will be surprised to realize just how preoccupied you are with the sex lives of your gay neighbors. Therefore, you will see that having an opinion on anyone’s sex life, as you have so proudly declared time and time again with your weird, terribly inaccurate “lifestyle” euphemism, is just creepy.
With love,
Aaron
Note: This post has not yet been edited, but I wanted to post it before I went to Harrisburg to see my special some one, who I may or may not be screwing. While making my way to his house I plan to pass straight couples on park benches and disagree with the sex that they have. Or not. Maybe they don’t have sex. But they could! They probably are. Maybe. I just don’t agree with that lifestyle. Just… Their sex. But I dunno. Maybe they don’t have sex. Well, if they don’t have sex, why wouldn’t they just be friends? Like, celibate straight friends? Isn’t that what friends are? Just two people who are close but don’t have sex? Like, buddies? Why can’t all straight people just be buddies? Wait… if I don’t have sex with my boyfriend or at least remind myself and others that I COULD have sex with my boyfriend, does that mean I’m straight? No no. Of course not. But if people are worrying about my sex life as much as I wonder about theirs… Wait… Boy, I worry about sex a lot, don’t I? Yeah I do. I still disagree with straight sex. They shouldn’t get federal protections.
I, the ever understanding Christian
To whom it may concern:
I, Christian, understand that this world is made up of a diverse population of billions of people, each with his or her own background, ethnicity, religious affiliation, and the like. I understand that one commonality of all of these people is the desire to be loved, accepted, validated, and dignified as human beings; this is my own heart as well. It is my mission as a Christian to bring joy and validation to others’ lives through the love of Jesus Christ regardless of their background or personal calling in life. I, Christian, understand that feeling neglected, undignified, or dehumanized by my fellow humans is a painful experience that is breaking and damaging to the human spirit.
While I, Christian, certainly do understand that my surrounding community is made up of countless and diverse sub-groups of people, there is one subgroup that is particularly disconcerting for me. I understand that while this subgroup has no bearing or influence on my own faith and value system, I must see to it that this particular subgroup experience the will of my God and value system in their lives, even though many do not share my values or beliefs. I, Christian, also understand that while I spend much time trying to make sense of the complicated order God has placed on my own life, often to no avail, I am able to hold certain that I understand exactly the order God has placed on the lives of gays. I am unable to explain this logic, though my concern for gays is sincere.
I, Christian, understand that based on my beliefs (which, again, I understand are not shared by everybody) the gay preference is wrong and that protecting gay people under the law is an abomination to all of humanity and existence, with the “sanctity and holiness of marriage” at the forefront of this my concern of the state humanity’s moral fabric. While steadfastly believing that sanctity and holiness is at the heart of concern for myself and my faith, my track record will show that I, the ever understanding Christian, have been entirely unbothered and perhaps congratulatory whenever any pairing of two non-Christian friends or neighbors become married (and therefore receive their federal protections). I have thought nothing of these pairings, even though by my own definitions their marriage should be considered “unholy” and therefore invalid and perhaps upsetting. I will defend my inconsistent frustration that a gay matrimony is not sacred in my God’s eyes and should therefore be banned and prevented. I am unable to explain this logic.
I, the ever understanding Christian, will remain steadfast in the lawful marginalization of an entire population of fellow human beings even though historically speaking my bible has been used to support attitudes, legislation, and events that have now been deemed discriminatory to entire populations of fellow human beings, and therefore unchristian. Such examples, which have supportive corresponding verses in the bible to this day, include but are not limited to, slavery, anti-miscegenation laws, segregation, the oppression and silence of women, and historical crusades and genocides of epic proportions. I understand that while the bible verses that have been used to support these attitudes, legislation, and events are still in the bible, our understandings of such verses and biblical concepts have changed with time. I, Christian, believe that the Christian ideology and interpretation of scripture surrounding the systematic marginalization of gay people never should change, however, and I am unable to explain this logic.
I, the ever understanding Christian, will hold steadfast to the conclusion that I am continually being persecuted for my beliefs, whereas I am unable to express my disapproval for the gay preference without being told that I am hateful. This is persecution in that it is an inconvenient misunderstanding. I, Christian, do not deem gay human beings who experience things like continually living in fear of losing their jobs, actually losing their jobs, getting beaten up, resigning to hold their loved one’s hand in public with extreme caution, becoming victimized in hate crimes, becoming driven to kill themselves, getting kicked out of their families’ homes, or becoming excommunicated from their churches, as being victims of persecution. Even though gay people clearly have it worse than I ever would in this free country for simply living their lives, it is I who is the persecuted simply because my views are challenged. I am unable to explain my logic, as my safety and well-being has never been compromised for disapproving gayness.
I, Christian, will continue voting for values and imposing them on my neighbors in a systematic way even though my neighbors, whom I love, may not share my belief system. I will become upset not only if my efforts to oppress gay people are for naught, but I will also become upset if I am challenged in my own values, as it is unfair for me, Christian, to be forced into acting on something based on a value system in which do not necessarily believe. I will continue striving to make my gay neighbor less of a protected individual in the eyes of my government based on my ever consistent carrying out of my Christian values.
I will continue to love the sinner and hate the sin, and I, the ever understanding Christian, promise to keep showing love to the gay sinner by keeping hospital visitation rights, inheritance rights, tax breaks, and the thousands of other laws that come with federal recognition of committed love, away from said sinner. I believe that actively doing so will attract people to my faith because of very loving nature of my actions and efforts. I am unable to explain this logic.
Sincerely,
Christian
mywayout819 