Yes, It's Possible

After being straight for 29 years now, I look back and wonder how I was ever gay. Two kids, a wife, all the great trappings of suburban life and unlike some people claim, I don't wonder what I missed. I don't think about going to a gay bar or sex with a man. I think about other stuff, getting leaves out of the gutter without falling off the roof, getting enough money to pay for my youngest son's college and getting the car to the garage for a tune-up.

I admire all those who make the change from the left hand lane...and my heart goes out to them. I left homsexuality through psychotherapy, before it changed.

I didn't have to face a society with magazines and tv promoting the lifestyle as something wonderful. Althougth my mother thought it was perfectly okay and sent me to live with three gay men when I was 17.

I wasn't a Christian, I was a guy who asked, why am I queer? What makes me this way? Do I have to be this way if I don't want to?

But now, it's cool to be gay. There are high school clubs, college clubs and gay men and women believe in their cause. They fight for it, they seek to make everyone believe in it by legislating, by creating safe havens, by marching, rallies and parades. They create a beautiful spectacle of freedom from conventional behavior. "Loud and Proud!"

So to those who seek to leave, who seek to change, I can tell you it is not easy. Yep, I still get the occasional dream, or a thought crosses my mind and I wonder where it came from but I'm not going to act upon it. It disappears. But I can promise you that if you are not a Christian, there is still help out there. But if you are a Christian then you have a God who loves you and will bring you wholeness, you see I believe that those who love Christ can become whole again, as God intended. And I also think that that Dr. Alden was right when he said that it was easier to help a homosexual than an alcoholic.

So keep faith. This is not going to be an easy fight, it will be a nasty one. I spoke out the other day and what happened afterwards was not pretty. I was attacked because I asked a question, "What if someone doesn't want to be gay, can they change?" at a gay tea party at the local college. I was attacked in the parking lot of McDonald's across the street.

So what do we need to do? We work, we write letters, we bring hope to one another. We have to share and say, "I was once gay," and then explain yourself with clarity and reason.

We also need to support PFOX and other groups, with time, talent and money so that they can get their programs into schools across the country. In the end, it will be the courage of ex-gays, the belief that God will truly help and the support of our friends and family that will push the issue to the forefront. But as I said, it ain't easy baby and I have learned a lot.

But I want those of you who strugle with your feelings to know that I too once struggled and suffered and in time, I changed.

God bless.

Steven