One of the things I've learned during the last two years of writing this blog is how difficult it is for so many GLBT people to find a path to God that does not require them to forsake their sexual identity for the guise of a heterosexual or a life of celibacy.
This post on Ex-Gay Watch by Eugene Wagner does as good a job of explaining it as any essay I have run across:
Every time I recount the story of how I transitioned from a place of unquestioning acceptance of ex-gay ideology into the journey that I find myself on today, it comes out a bit differently as I focus on different aspects of what was, at the time, a far more complex process than a few pages of text could ever fully capture. If there’s one pivotal event that I hope I adequately account for in every retelling, it’s how I came to truly understand, for the first time, that God loves me exactly the way I am, and that I don’t have to change who or what I am to earn his acceptance
Words cannot fully convey just how revolutionary it was to come to the realization that not only did I not have to become somebody else in order to appease God, but he didn’t want me to be somebody else. Yet somebody else was precisely what I was trying to become through my efforts to “reclaim my natural heterosexuality.”
In practice, the lessons drummed into me in church every Sunday led me to a life of fear - fear of what God would do to my worthless self if I didn’t say and do all the right things, fear of what God will do to those I love if I can’t persuade them to adopt my beliefs and standards, and fear of the terrible judgment God will pour out on our nation if his followers can’t bring enough of our neighbors to repentance.
But if “perfect love drives out fear,” as we’re told in 1 John 4:18, then something must be amiss in our churches. If fear is ever our motivation for doing anything, then perhaps it’s time for us to stop and reexamine what we really believe, underneath what we claim to believe.
Fortunately, Eugene came out of this struggle at peace with himself and with God's love for him as a homosexual child of God.
That path, although difficult and often painful, is available to any and all GLBT people who seek it. It is worth the effort.
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