I’ve had this blog post rolling around in my head for the past month or so, but haven’t been able to get it out. Today marks the first time in ages I’ve actually got nothing going on, and can sit down to think “out loud” on my computer.
It seems that “gay/straight” for most people has become something of a light switch – you’re either “on” or “off.” We know it more commonly as “I was born this way.” I remember clearly when those words passed my lips. It was June 1995 – my parents asked why strange young men were calling the house asking for me, and in a moment of defiance I broke down and confessed my not-so-secret secret. “I’m gay. I was born this way, and nothing will ever change that.”
I’ll never forget that moment, in part because I remember so clearly that I didn’t really believe what I was saying. I knew the origins of my feelings went far beyond DNA – I was just tired of fighting a battle I thought could never be won. Over the past several years I’ve talked with a number of men who find themselves in the same place. As Christians who struggle with same-sex attraction, they look at the church and quickly realize they don’t fit. Maybe they hear people talk about “change,” but it sounds more like “please go away and become normal so that I don’t have to feel uncomfortable.” Where was the room to say, “I’m struggling. I know what God desires, but I can’t do this alone. Please, would someone walk with me through this?”
Most of the time that never happens. Instead, Christian men and women with same-sex desires face two choices: live in agonizing silence while they get shipped off to some “healing ministry”, or do what they know is wrong. What would you choose? I know the stories – a man, deliberately choosing sin, yet willing to accept the consequences of that decision if it means that if even for a fleeting moment the pain will go away. I can relate. Pain sometimes drove me to very dark places. The church should be a light – people are drawn to light, aren’t they? Yet, I chose to run to the darkness. It seemed like the only place that would take me.
I’ve already strayed from my original thought. Why did I not believe I was born gay? At the age of 22 I had just enough ability for self-reflection to look back on my youth and see the pivotal people and events, married with my own choices, which shaped who I had become (or thought I was). For a long time I’ve wanted to write about this, but it means dragging out a lot of old skeletons and talking about some unpleasant topics. What you’re about to read is blunt, somewhat graphic, and honest. I hope it will shed some light on why I think “born gay” was always just an excuse I clung to in an attempt to justify my behavior, and never represented truth. I also sincerely hope my story will “demystify” the experiences of many boys during their youth and take away any shame men may carry about things they did.
What I would consider my first real sexual experience happened sometime in the fifth grade. A boy in my peer group had been at a friend’s house, and they had come across some pornography. In the video or magazine (I can’t remember which), they saw a woman performing oral sex on a man. For some reason, this fascinated the boy, to the point that he wanted to try it on his friends. Don’t ask me why – sometimes kids just get bad ideas and lack the wisdom to make good decisions.
At that point in our lives, no one had spoken a word to us about sex or healthy sexuality. I didn’t have a clue about homosexual behavior, or even what a “gay” person was. My only ideas came from listening to other boys talk about Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious” monologue, which included a number of crude jokes about homosexuality. I knew Eddie Murphy was black, and the celebrity who was the brunt of one of his jokes was black. Therefore, at the tender age of 10 I came to the conclusion that EVERY black man was gay and wanted to have anal sex with me. I’m being totally serious. In 1985 I remember walking down the streets of Chicago, terrified every black man I passed wanted to rape me. All that from what I heard second-hand about an Eddie Murphy skit. (Is it any wonder that kids in school could easily get confused? Think of the young boy who hears a well-meaning teacher say, “Gay is when a boy likes a boy or a girl likes a girl.” A kid just can’t process that in the same way as an adult.)
Now, interestingly enough by this point I had also started to engage in homosexual behavior. The young boy who was interested in performing oral sex? Well, eventually I gave in and let him do it to me. At first, the idea was absolutely disgusting. I still remember my thoughts – “Ewww! That’s where pee comes out of! Why would anyone want to put their mouth on that?!?” My feelings about anal sex were even more severe for obvious reasons. Then, I heard him doing it to someone else, the moaning of pleasure, and somewhere in my head a switch turned on.
Morally, even at the age of ten, instinctively I knew I shouldn’t do it, but the curiosity was just too much. Besides, other boys I knew were doing it. How bad could it be? Well, for a ten-year-old with no knowledge or experience with sexual pleasure, not bad at all and overwhelmingly good. Too good. I think today I would confess addictively good. Years ago a scientist by the name of Pavlov conducted a series of experiments with dogs. He would ring a bell, then follow by feeding the animal. In time, the dog would salivate just by hearing the bell, without any food at all. I’m convinced something similar happened to me when it comes to homosexual behavior and pleasure, and wouldn’t be surprised at all if that behavior had some impact on the way my brain developed from that point forward.
Men and women experience sexual stimulation and pleasure in different ways. From what I’ve read, this is a reason why homosexual rape can be so confusing for young boys and men – while the act occurs against their will, for many it can also involve intense, raw sexual pleasure. I recently had a discussion with a friend about a 50-year-old man who confessed his same-sex feelings emerged after being gang-raped in a bathroom at the age of 13. I have another good friend who can tie the origins of his homosexual feelings to molestation by a Boy Scout counselor at the age of 12. He knows it was a bad thing that shouldn’t have happened, but has also confessed on a certain level enjoying the experience. (It seems utterly bizarre to me that some members of the gay community, along with some mental health professionals, believe sexual abuse can have no effect on sexual identity)
Around the same time I had my first experience with oral sex, a neighborhood boy taught me all about masturbation. Between the two, I became an insatiable fiend for sexual pleasure. From what I can recall, I had sexual experiences with at least 15 other boys by the time I was 13, coupled with masturbation on an almost daily basis once I hit puberty. Some of these were regular encounters that spanned several years, and in one case crossed the line over into what I would consider sexual abuse on my part. All before I had even reached high school!
The amazing part is during this time I had absolutely no concept of myself as being “gay.” Boys were just objects useful for sexual pleasure, and feelings of same-sex attraction fell into two categories – pure gratification, or a twisted impulse on my part to use sex as a means to make someone happy and thus be my friend. In fifth and sixth grades I was still struggling to overcome a major lack of self-esteem, and found friendship with peers to be a painful challenge. Kids who would be nice to me one-on-one would turn at school and join other boys in poking fun of me. This was, and remains to this day, the most painful memory I have from childhood. I knew nothing of gay – just that I was “different.” If gay men are being honest, they’ll admit that’s where it all began. Not “gay,” but “different.” Why did kids have to be so cruel? What was so wrong with me anyway? (Interesting how sin would enter my own life in much the same way – I would pick on kids who were even “lower” than me.)
Truth be told, I spent my youth and early teen years crazy about girls. To this day I can remember my crushes with amazing clarity. The first (and maybe longest) was to a neighborhood girl named Kim. I was convinced that someday we would marry. In third grade, my attention focused on a girl named Michelle. She was always at the roller rink, and my heart skipped a beat every time I saw her – short, curly blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, fair skin, big smile. I always wanted to ask her to skate during the “moonlight,” but never had the courage. Fifth grade rolled around, and Julie was the object of my affection. In seventh grade, it was Amy and Michelle. The summer of 1986 and most of 8th grade, it was my best-friend’s girlfriend Lisa. We jumped on her trampoline all the time, and with every bounce I swear I fell deeper in love.
Eighth grade brought my first “real” girlfriend. Her name was Amy. I think we started “going out” with the usual passing of notes between friends. On the way back from Des Moines on our eighth-grade class trip, we sat on the bus together. I reached over, grabbed her hand in mine, and thought I had just launched on the space shuttle. Later, we would be alone together in my parent’s basement, holding each other in the dark. I remember slowly moving closer, wanting so badly to give her a kiss, sensing our lips nearing – and then our friends came down and spoiled it all!
In the fifth grade, one of the boys I was messing around with told me that his friend said what we were doing was “gay.” I was shocked, puzzled, even a bit angry. Gay? Didn’t gay people love each other like a man and woman who were married? The sexual pleasure I experienced with this kid was fun, but love – was he kidding? Love was kissing and hugging, and I thought that was completely gross. Kissing another boy – YUCK! That was so… so gay, and I knew I wasn’t gay.
Still, without knowing it I was living a life of unbelievable contradiction. In seventh and eighth grades I experienced a two-year reprieve from my social awkwardness (in large part due to my budding athletic prowess) and for the first time felt “normal.” I was powerfully attracted to girls, and desired what I would term relationships with the opposite sex exclusively. However, I was also powerfully attracted to boys as objects of sexual pleasure. I think mixed in there was a broken impulse to use sexual pleasure as a means of keeping friends happy, and thus getting them to like me.
In 1982, my mom gave me a diary as a present. For reasons I don’t fully understand, I wrote one entry on January 19, 1986. It said:
I feel dumb after Friday night. I guess it was kind of my fault. I should have at least said HI, although she (Amy, my first big seventh grade crush) didn’t have to look like I was poisonous or something. I still like her. Homecoming and … Valentines are still coming up. Oh well. She is STUCK UP if she won’t go with me (“go with me” meaning a relationship in junior high). Everyone told me she would.
(Perhaps the Lord led me to write that, knowing years later it would provide concrete proof of my feelings during that time)
Then, high school came, and socially the wheels fell off the cart while I was heading down a steep hill full-speed. I crashed hard and fast. At the beginning of my freshman year I sensed a crushing pressure to conform – dress a certain way, listen to certain music, participate in “cool” activities, and so on. I was no conformist, and I let everyone know it. This would become very painful. In junior high, I listened to cool music; now it was “fag music.” My friends started pushing me away, and soon I was back to being a nobody. I lost all confidence, and after a promising start in seventh and eighth grades never played basketball again. The previous year I had broken the school record in the 400M dash; in the spring of 1988 I purposely did poorly and eventually quit track for good.
Drifting from one group to the next in an attempt to find myself, I bumped into a group of older girls who seemed to have no fear of being themselves. Two in particular – a sophomore and senior who were sisters – became my idols. I wanted to be just like them. Guys were jerks, girls were cool, and by the end of 1987 my peer group had shifted from heavily boys to almost exclusively girls. I went so far as to take home economics class second semester – something no freshman boy had ever done. I told people someone had dared me to do it, but in reality being around girls was the only safe place I knew. Of course, the same-sex activity continued in secret, but now new, uncomfortable feelings were beginning to surface. An longing to be with other guys began to ache inside, a sensation I could attach to only one word – love.
Now, over the past 15 years I’ve heard stories that cover an entire spectrum from confidently heterosexual with childhood homosexual experiences to never had attractions to girls in my life and totally “gay” to everything in between. I discuss this often with a good friend of mine. In his youth he was slightly overweight, which made him terribly self-conscious around girls. He genuinely wanted to “go out” with them, but always chickened out due to lack of confidence.
Around that time, he started having sex with one of the boys in his class. For a season, this created an undeniable paradox – he longed for a relationship with a girl, but truly lusted after sexual pleasure with this boy. Today he is happily married and has several children, but confesses from time to time facing moments when his mind recalls the sexual pleasure of youth and feelings of same-sex desire emerge. In response, he holds on to Scripture and obeys the Word that tells us to “hold every thought captive.” They’re just feelings that have no power in his life. He understands why they are there, and knows how to deal with them. While he knows what he did was wrong, he holds no secret shame for his past, sharing with not only me but his wife as well.
If the mantra coming from the gay community is true, my friend is gay, right? It seems absurd, doesn’t it? “Denying his true feelings” they would say. Right. I’d say he’s embracing his TRUE identity. That’s the same decision I’ve made – not denying my feelings, but rather embracing my identity. It’s set me on an amazing journey, and given me freedom to do things I thought were never possible. Suffice to say, I think the whole “light on, light off” model is a bunch of crap. When the truth finally comes out in the wash (IF it ever comes out), I think development of sexuality will turn out to be a far more complex, multi-faceted, nuanced process than any of us could ever imagine. There certainly appear to be characteristics common to gay men (broken father/son relationships, alienation from male peers, extreme emotional sensitivity, and/or sexual abuse), but I think it’s a presumptuous and at times a bit insulting to generalize from individual circumstances to a group of people at large.
As Christians, it really shouldn’t be necessary anyway. God’s intended design for sexuality is clear, both in Scripture and in creation. We live in a broken world, where everything, including sexuality, has been distorted by sin. Yet, we know God calls us to live as things were intended, not give in and accept things the way they are. We should bend over backwards to help people in this process, wherever their brokenness lies.
I sometimes wonder how different my life might be if I’d just had someone to talk to about these issues when I was a teenager. That the church is usually a place young people run FROM instead of TO is in my opinion tragic, un-Christ-like, and a reality that must change. Hopefully there are people out there reading this who maybe for the first time realize they’re not alone. They weren’t the only ones who went through stuff like this as kids. It doesn’t make them weird, it doesn’t make them freaks, and it doesn’t make them gay.
Where does that leave me today? Two mutually exclusive categories come to mind, one that for the most part vanished when I became a Christian, the other that I deal with to a greater or lesser degree on pretty much a daily basis. My emotional ties to homosexuality largely centered on emotional wounds from childhood, fear, and a misunderstanding of healthy intimacy with men. For those reasons I don’t think I had a single straight male friend during my years in the gay community. Reaching out to “normal” guys in 2004 was absolutely terrifying, but turned out to be the most rewarding experience in my life to date. Once I figured out how to relate to guys in the way God intended, and came to understand that I was no more or no less a man than they, the emotional draw to a romantic/sexual relationship with men went away. I’m happy to say it hasn't come back.
That leaves a very simple impulse – sex. For 20+ years I experienced and reinforced the concept of using men as a means to raw sexual pleasure. I trained my eyes to constantly be on the look for men who carried physical traits I found sexually appealing – usually things I found deficient in myself and wished I had (smooth skin – I’m a hairy beast – was probably the biggest one), but eventually moving beyond even those criteria. To use scientific terms, I’d guess there is a “biological” basis for my sexual attractions in that it is entirely possible my brain has been molded by these experiences. Perhaps those changes are permanent. Who knows? It still doesn’t change the fact that ultimately I make the choice about who I believe I am, along with my behavior. I’ve yet to hear a convincing argument as to why having same-sex feelings means I must be gay, or why embracing a gay identity and acting on those feelings necessarily leads to a better life. In any case, the struggles today center around simple sexual attraction - seeing a man that either awakens a brief desire for sexual pleasure, or brings back memories of past sexual experiences. That's the whole enchilada.
At the age of 34, I can finally say with confidence I know who I am. That in itself feels like a miracle. I’ve shared the way things were; hopefully now you can see things the way they are.
Ryan, I am so grateful that you wrote that. Once again, you have skillfully and honestly dissected something that so many people are confused about (in their own life) and reassembled it into something that anyone can relate to.
Are you a certifed genius or something? Wow.
Anyway, this is one post that truly makes a difference. In a sense, it's your clear testimony. Your story of your struggle, but with the clear perception of God's perspective, paired with your own honest and real point of view. I read this yesterday and have already recommended it to my brother-in-law for reading. A story like this really ought to be on the Exodus.to website (personal stories). Just incredible. Thank you so very much for writing this, and for sharing it with your blogosphere.
Posted by: Mike T. | May 14, 2007 at 11:49 AM