Do you ever find yourself debating someone who is not there? (Please say you do, so I don’t feel too weird.) I will read or see something, and I will hold a conversion with whoever is involved, strictly in my head. I am a verbal processor, and I find that I can grow in my understanding of whatever issue it is by allowing myself to do this. I found myself doing that as I watched the end of the Netflix documentary Pray Away. It was the part when they showed all the Exodus leaders being confronted by those who feel they have been harmed by their attempting to change their SSA. They call themselves “Survivors.” Another part of Pray Away that got me going was the response given to the question, “Now that you no longer believe what you used to, what would you say to those who still do?” The response was, in part, “All it does is crush souls and all it does is crush peoples’ lives.”
I am going to spend the rest of this newsletter sharing a few of my thoughts on the issues that were raised by this documentary. Let me start with the claim that argues that change efforts do not work and, in fact, harm those who attempt to change or lessen their SSA. Imagine, if you will, that I was part of the Exodus leadership that was meeting with those who feel they have been hurt by their efforts to change, and I am responding to them:
You call yourselves “survivors” and are angry with us for the message that we shared with you. You say that you have been hurt, that we somehow lied to you when we told you that change is possible. You accuse us of making you feel that you are “less than” in the eyes of God if you remain sexually attracted to your own gender. You say that God loves you just the way you are, and that He is okay with you being gay.
I will confess that Exodus and other likeminded ministries have not always been completely correct in what we have said in the past. As we grew in knowledge and experience, we have become more nuanced in what we say to those who are seeking help with unwanted SSA. We did, at one time, make getting married to the opposite sex the gold standard for whether change had occurred or not. In doing that, a lot of men and women felt that they had failed because they had not attained that standard. We have learned from that and now recognize that, for many of us, marriage is not going to happen, and that a life of celibacy is what most of us will be facing.
Let me remind you that most of you came to us seeking help. Or you responded to the message that we were giving. To those who did, no one forced you to. You were the ones who were dissatisfied with being SSA, and you were dissatisfied mainly because it was in conflict with your faith. You sought help because you wanted it, and you left because you no longer wanted it. No one has ever forced you, or anyone, to attempt to change, nor would we ever support anyone who would attempt to do that. No one ever promised you that you would never be tempted by SSA ever again. I personally tell those whom I counsel, “It will never be like it never was, but I can promise you that it does not have to be something that you are controlled by.”
Now that you have decided that God is okay with people being in a same sex union, you look back at your time in ministry with a different viewpoint. I cannot help but believe that, to some extent, you are now trying to justify your decision to give in to your attractions.
You point out that there are studies that show that reparative therapy harms people, that the APA and other groups do not support efforts to change attractions or gender identity. The studies that claim harm purposely exclude anyone who does not identify as LGBT+, which means that the experiences of people like me are never included. It guarantees that the results will be skewed toward a negative outcome. Much of the opposition toward change efforts are driven by the fact that the majority of the membership of the different guilds overwhelmingly support gay rights.
There are two things that bother me about the stance that you have taken on this issue. The first being the fact that you have substituted your feelings for what the word of God says. Over and over again I hear the words, “I feel” or “I felt,” yet very rarely do I hear anyone attempting to use scripture to support the choices they have made. You often speak about how unhappy you were when you were involved in ex-gay ministry, and now that you have decided to accept your SSA as something good and acceptable to God, you have found peace and self-acceptance.
I do not believe that God’s primary goal is to make you happy. His goal is to make you holy. Every person faces the choice whether to put Jesus first or themselves. You have chosen yourself, and that really saddens me.
The other thing that really bothers me about your stance is that you want to shut down ministries like Exodus, simply because you say you did not have a good experience. For you to demand that no one else be given the opportunity to deal with their sexuality in the manner that they believe is the best way for them, is, in my opinion, incredibly arrogant. I am sorry that you were hurt, or that you did not get what you wanted from the ministry.
But you know what? I did! I can honestly say that doing what I have done has been the best thing that ever happened to me. I can introduce you to men and women who feel the same as I do. Some of them are married and have children; the rest are celibate and are content with their lives. You tell me that studies show that people who went through ex-gay ministries are more apt to abuse drugs, have lower self-esteem, have higher rates of suicide, etc. That was what I was like before I came into New Hope Ministries. I have had to take a long hard look at myself as a result of being here, and there have been a lot of things that I have seen that I did not like. As I brought those things in surrender to God, He has been faithful to bring about the change that I asked Him for. It has not been easy, but the life that I am now living is so much better than the one I had when I first decided to surrender my sexuality to God.
Let me finish with these words: God does not force anyone to do anything, and you are free to live the life you want to; please extend to me the same courtesy and allow me and others to do the same.