The Ex-Gay Myth
An awful con game?

Ex-Gay Ministries? Is what they offer myth or genuine reality? If you're gay and Christian, you've probably been through the struggle or are now going through the struggle to become heterosexual. You know their scam.

They tell you the Bible condemns homosexuality and you can't be saved and gay and happy in Jesus. You trust them because they're older and wiser and they're supposed to know what they're talking about.

You try to pray away the gay. You strengthen your resolve and positively affirm, "I'm not gay!" You struggle to change. You read anti-gay propaganda. You visit anti-gay websites. And if you or your family has enough money, you join an Ex-Gay program and struggle in community.

And soon you're $10,000 poorer
and still gay instead of ex-gay!

So you struggle with disappointment and disillusionment and decide you have to back off from your Christianity. After all, God wanted you to change - that's what all the smart Christians told you - and you couldn't change - even after spending $10,000 on an Ex-Gay program specifically designed to help you change.

And inside you a conflict grows. Some of the people who ran the YouGottaChange program were sincere Christians. Yet what they taught didn't work for you. And it didn't work for the others who endured an Ex-Homo or Ex-Lezzie ministry.

Never bought into the myth?

If some of you who never bought into their myth and never spent the $10,000 trying to change are feeling a little superior at this point, I don't blame you.

Years ago, some of us bought into the lie that you can't be gay and Christian. Some of us bought into the additional lie that if you're gay, you have to reject the Bible as infallible truth and be a liberal Bible rejecting Christian.

For some of us, the hard work of trying to become heterosexual seemed worthwhile because it was pitched as God's will for us. Preachers told us that gay is always wrong and God doesn't bless "the sin of being gay."

Discouraged, alone, confused, I began to read and study the Bible and the clobber passages. I determined to find the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

It was not an easy road. But God had a secret weapon to show me His way. God's secret weapon was the Holy Spirit. As I studied the Bible, the Holy Spirit began to make things clear to me in and through the infallible written word of God. He pointed out the context of the clobber passages and taught me to interpret scripture in context, beginning with the situation it originally addressed.

A moment of wisdom came when
I started recognizing the red flags.

1. I started avoiding ministries which parroted anti-gay rhetoric while refusing to read the clobber passages in context.
2. I started avoiding the false claimers - the Ex-Gay ministries which promised change from homosexual to heterosexual.
3. I became wary of ministries which subtly stopped promising orientation change but continued to charge thousands of dollars for their programs. Although I never enrolled in their programs, I did read their literature and books and earnestly tried to put into practice what they taught.
4. I started noticing that the people leading the ex-gay ministries, even the ex-gays now heterosexually married - publicly claimed to still have homosexual longings and attractions.

It was like a light bulb went on in my head!

If these people had really changed
from homosexual to heterosexual,
wouldn't their sexual temptations
now be heterosexual?

If their sexual temptations were still homosexual, wasn't that proof positive that they were still homosexually oriented?

Think about it.

Heterosexuals don't go through life struggling with homosexual temptation.

Homosexuals don't go through life struggling with heterosexual temptation.

I changed my views about the ex-gays industry. I realized that if I bought into their lies, I would become like them. I would have to participate in their Ponzi scheme.

I would have to pretend to be changed, knowing all the while that I was not changed. Having come out of the closet once, if I followed the ex-gay rhetoric, I would have to go back into the metaphysical closet and spend the rest of my life there.

As an ex-gay I would have to follow ex-gay methodology. I would have to promote change while knowing deep in my heart, that I had not changed. I would have to live a lie with a smile on my face and despair in my heart. I would have to join the scam, promoting the same wicked lies to other gays and lesbians. And frankly,

the thought of doing that sickened me.

It dawned on me that the Holy Spirit did not bear witness in my heart to the truth of the ex-gay lies. I wanted an honest life, lived in the power of the Holy Spirit, without subterfuge and deception.

I didn't want to embrace the false hope of change so that Christians who refused to read the Bible in context would like me again.

I didn't want to soothe their feelings
to gain their acceptance.

God's truth never goes along to get along. If God's truth makes you uncomfortable, the problem isn't with God's truth. The problem is with you and you need to change because God's truth will not change.

Things didn't improve right away. Spiritual life continued to be difficult while I studied and learned and grew in knowledge of God, the Bible and myself. Friends I had known for years began to drift away, quietly breaking fellowship. Most of them never had the courage to say why they broke off our friendship but I know it was over the gay issue.

I began to make new friends. And I noticed that God still blessed me and still answered my prayers. The attitude of some of my Baptist friends toward me had changed but God's loving attitude toward me never changed. God was always there, faithful and consistent.

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