I’m Not Gay
For I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29: 11
My Story
I’m not gay, I’m not gay, I’m not gay.
When I was twelve years old, I dreamed that I was living in an apartment complex where each of the doors was labeled with the word “fag” instead of the name of the person inside. As soon as I woke up, I analyzed the dream. I concluded that it represented my fear that if people knew I was attracted to men, I would be labeled. I was afraid that because of the label on the outside, no one would want to open the door to find out who I really was on the inside.
Although the dream was unique, the fear I experienced upon realizing I had homosexual feelings was not. I was just one of many young people who begin to wonder how they will survive as homosexuals in a heterosexual world.
I was scared to death.
I’m not gay, I’m not gay, I’m not gay.
I remember the night that I first acknowledged my homosexual attractions. It was the night before my tenth birthday. A cool wind blew through the window across from my bed, a tornado in my soul. I could hear the clatter of pots and pans in the kitchen downstairs as my mom baked cupcakes for the next day’s celebration. It was so exciting at that age, having a birthday.
I’m not gay, I’m not gay, I’m not gay.
As I lay in bed, my mind spinning in every direction as if to eliminate any potential that I might fall asleep, I had a breakthrough.
I’m not gay, I’m not gay, I’m not. . .
For some reason, at that moment the denial I had been experiencing since discovering my homosexual attractions the constant voice in my head that assured me I’m not gay just stopped.
I’m not. . .
I was.
I remember the seething horror I felt when I realized who, or what, I was. I began to think about the things I had heard people say about homosexuals during casual conversation. I was taking an opinion poll in my head. How do people feel about homosexuality? How will people feel about me?
As hard as I tried, I couldn’t think of a single time that the subject had ever been brought up outside the context of a joke. My mind took me back a few years to a moment at my grandparents’ lakeside cabin. Some of my cousins were telling jokes about homosexuals, and I was laughing with them, not even knowing what a homosexual was. But now, I knew. And making the connection between this thing I could tell that people detested and what was going on inside of me was painful, even traumatic.
I heard a symphony of cooking pans playing their tune again as my mom removed the cupcakes from the oven.
Happy birthday to me.
Growing Pains
As time went by, I sought information on homosexuality wherever I could find it. I was afraid to check out any books on the subject for fear that my parents would find them. If they did, I’d have some explaining to do. No one could know about this struggle.
When I turned thirteen, my parents gave me a book about human sexuality. I was so relieved. Finally, I thought, maybe this will explain what’s going on inside me. But all the book said about homosexuality was, “It’s very rare; it won’t happen to you; don’t worry about it.”
I was devastated.
In the radio and television messages of the 1980s, I heard the back and forth motion of the culture wars swinging like the pendulum on the grandfather clock in my living room. “Gays can change.” “No they can’t.” “Yes they can.” “Well, you’re homophobic!” I was so confused.
I remember chewing nervously on one of those white foam cups in Sunday school class the morning my teacher taught a lesson on homosexuality. He may have said something about grace or redemption or change. But all I heard him say was, “All homosexuals go to hell,” and so I thought I would.
The first time I ever heard anybody say they had changed their sexual orientation was on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The audience was skeptical, and so was I.
I would have given anything to change. Not primarily because I was worried about what my friends or my family or society would think about me (a fear commonly referred to as “internalized homophobia”) but because / wanted to change. Not that I didn’t care what people would think of me. I was scared to death of being rejected. But I’m just not the conformist type, and my fear of rejection wasn’t motivation enough for me to change myself. The desire to change came from within.
Sometime later, I decided to share this struggle with a counselor I had been seeing for clinical depression. It took me two sessions of staring at the floor in silence before I could drum up enough guts to tell him what was going on inside me. Besides the fact that he didn’t reject me, which to me was a heroic act in itself, my counselor explained that homosexuals can change. In fact, he had personally counseled many of them through that process.
Wow!
Although the brain is far too complex to explain homosexual development with a single theory, he told me that men who experience homosexual attractions are, unconsciously, trying to recover their father’s love in the arms of another man, and women with homosexual attractions are looking for their mother’s love in the arms of another woman. This phenomenon, he explained, is why so many people who experience homosexual attractions report poor relationships with their same-sex parents or peers. The unmet need for love and affirmation from someone of our own gender somehow becomes eroticised when we hit puberty.
This was me growing up. When I reached adolescence, my body started telling me I wanted sex from a man, but in my heart I knew it wasn’t about sex. Even before adolescence, when I used to fantasize about certain men that I looked up to and respected, I didn’t fantasize about sex. My fantasy was that a man would just wrap his arms around me, look me in the eye, and tell me that I meant something to him.
That’s what I was missing.
It wasn’t a desire for sex; it was a desire for genuine love and affirmation from someone of my gender, and I’ve found that as those needs get met, my homosexual desires fade. In fact, the most healing experience I’ve had since realizing that I didn’t have to be gay was meeting a man named Lenny Carluzzi, who had walked away from homosexuality twenty-eight years ago. He now lives in Seattle, Washington, with a beautiful wife, two kids, and a dog named Grumpy.
When I first met Lenny at an Italian restaurant in Chicago, he instantly wrapped his arms around me, looked me in the eye, and told me that he loved me. That moment was the beginning of my healing process, and since then God has put dozens of men in my life to provide the nonsexual love and affirmation I need in order to change. Because of this, I have experienced extraordinary victory over my homosexual desires.
Many books have been written about the process of overcoming homosexual attractions. Scholars have debated, and scientific papers have been published in major scientific journals. But for me, the start of this process was very simple. I just needed to be loved.
That doesn’t mean that my homosexual desires are completely gone. Just like anyone trying to change some unwanted trait, such as excess body weight, muscular weakness, or poor academic habits, I have my ups and downs. If I do experience homosexual attractions toward another man, it just means I’m not receiving enough of the right kind of love, so I’ll call up a male friend for some verbal affirmation or a hug. I think a misconception many people have about those who have changed from homosexual to heterosexual is that we have one cathartic moment we can point to in which every ounce of homosexual desire was drained from our bodies, never to return again. But change takes time.
An important element to the process of change, as I’ve mentioned, is close, nonsexual relationships with people of one’s own gender. I’ve found, both through my experience and by listening to the stories of others, that anything that creates a sense of disconnection between a child and his or her gender can cause homosexuality. This can manifest itself as rejection, real or perceived, from same-sex parents or peers, or as some form of sexual molestation.
Along these lines, I’ve found that anything that creates a sense of reconciliation between a person and his or her gender can eliminate homosexuality. Two of the most potent ways this can manifest itself is through camaraderie with, and nonsexual touch from, members of one’s gender.
I Wanna Hold Your Hand
The first time I experienced the power of touch to combat homosexual desires was the first time I ever met another person who had struggled with those desires. Until that point in my life, most of the hugs I had been given from other men were very short. “Ever straight” men, as my friends and I call them, don’t always give the most potent hugs because they fear that if they hold on too long, people might think they’re gay. So I had never really been given the kind of hug that I longed for: a long, warm embrace that I could fully internalize as affirmation from another man.
I had just arrived in Chicago for my first-ever meeting with an organization called God Brothers, a support group for homosexual strugglers, and the first thing I did upon exiting the aircraft was run into the arms of a friend named John. We had been talking on the phone for nearly six months about what it would be like to receive a “real hug” from another man.
Before that, I used to roll around in my bed, writhing from the emotional pain that accompanies the deficiency of such an important relational nutrient. At times, my hands would involuntarily grab for inanimate objects in desperation, and, although I don’t know exactly how to describe this, I was actually experiencing the trauma of emotional pain in my hands. My skin was hungry.
So you can imagine the effect that the arrival of my body in John’s arms had on my emotional and physical well-being. It finally put to an end the emotional and physical toll that my adversary, touch-deprivation, was having on me. It was almost ironic, but after years of praying that God would put a man into my life who wasn’t afraid to give me a real hug, I now began to pray that God would send someone who would just hold my hand.
That’s where Ben came in. He sat next to the couch I was sleeping on during my first night at John’s apartment and held my hand until I fell asleep. I remember holding my hands up in the air following that experience and praising God for sending Ben into my life to heal my hands. This healing was miraculous, and though I was too caught up in the drama of meeting so many new people to realize it, I hadn’t had a single homosexual thought all weekend.
Another crucial ingredient in my healing process has been camaraderie with male peers, especially those with whom I can identify. When I see aspects of my personality in other guys my age, it’s almost like my masculinity finds a harbor. I have found that even casual relationships with other guys with whom I can identify create an intense sense of reconciliation between me and my masculinity.
The power of this concept was brought home to me when I went on a three-day pleasure trip to Colorado with two college guys from my church, Justin and Ben. To them, we were just three guys having a good time, but to me, the intensity of the experience was almost overwhelming. Besides the fact that we had an enormous amount of fun during those three days, the constant stream of affirmation from two guys my age with whom I could identify rendered me a complete disgrace to the homosexual orientation. I couldn’t have drummed up an erotic attraction to another guy even if I had tried.
The week following the trip, I was inundated with sexual thoughts about men, none of which elicited any chemical or physical reaction in me.
Nonsexual affirmation, when properly internalized, will devour homosexual attractions. But homosexual strugglers require a constant stream, not a single dose.
Thompson, C. (2004). Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would: A Fresh Christian Perspective. Brazos Press
