“Ultimately, We Believe In A More Loving Church”

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JW: I understand there are two very general perspectives among that community—what’s known as Side A and Side B. Can you explain those for us?

Lee: Absolutely. As I was wrestling with this myself, I concluded that “Okay, I’m a Christian; that’s not going to change. My faith is in Christ—I believe in the Bible. But I’m also gay.” And I was very clear early on that when I said I’m gay, I meant, “I have an attraction to the same sex.” There are some people who assumed my being gay meant that I had certain political views, or participated in certain sexual activities. In fact, I was a young conservative Christian, who had never had sexual contact of any kind—with anyone. But I understood my attraction.

That left three different paths for me. One path was to try not to be gay, to somehow become straight. That seemed the most obvious solution. But, as I said, exploring that made it very obvious that even many of those who claimed to be straight weren’t, in fact, straight. They were equally attracted to the same sex. Another path was to commit myself to celibacy, to see it as a temptation, and consider it wrong to act on those feelings—Side B. I told God, “If that’s what You want me to do, I want to follow You.” The last option would, of course, be to ultimately pursue a relationship with someone of the same sex. To have all those things that I envisioned for my life, only with a same sex partner—Side A. That really depended on whether or not God was okay with that kind of a relationship, and I had believed that it was a sin, that He wasn’t okay with it. But I had also believed that being gay was a matter of choice, which clearly wasn’t the case. So I didn’t really know what to believe.

As I wrestled with those two options, I realized that most important was staying strong in my faith, and being honest about my sexuality. So when I started GCN, I wanted to make sure that we didn’t just take one position. I felt that whether you believe God calls gay persons to celibacy, or whether you believe that he blesses same sex relationships—either way, if this is an issue you’re struggling with, and you’re willing to be respectful to people who might disagree with you, you have a place here. You’re welcome. Because I had been kicked out of churches and Christian groups just for admitting I was gay, I didn’t want to kick other people out.

The terms “Side A and B” came from an organization called Bridges Across the Divide, which was an internet group committed to talking about the culture war over homosexuality, and who were divided into sets based on whether or not they believed gay relationships were/are morally equivalent to straight ones. We borrowed those terms, and held discussions in the Network between both sides: those who are committed to celibacy, and those who pursue a same sex relationship.

JW: You mentioned the ex-gay programs more than once. In light of the APA’s recent study to debunk those sorts of ministries, do you think the gay community has moved forward in terms of its relationship with the church?

Lee: Personally, I don’t see [the study] as a huge deal, because even though the media likes to sensationalize things, it’s honestly not very different from what the APA has said in the past. All major psychological, psychiatric, or medical organizations in this country have, for quite some time, taken the position that homosexuality is not a sickness and not something that can be cured. So it’s not really a major change for them to state, “We don’t recommend these programs.” They never really did.

I don’t know whether or not it will have an impact on the church, because… well, frankly, the Christians who tend to support ex-gay programs are often skeptical of the mainstream psychological community anyway. I’ve heard a lot of the Christians who promote ex-gay programs discount major studies that have been done to suggest a biological link between orientations. So I don’t imagine what is said will have a large impact on them.

What I do think will have a tremendous impact on those Christians is the fact that more and more believers are coming out, admitting their own struggles with sexual orientation. And if more people know somebody they love who confesses those things, it will make a difference.

These ex-gay programs came about a couple decades ago through well-meaning Christians who were struggling with their own sexuality. They were trying to figure out what to do. And what’s happened is that we’ve seen the result of those attempts to become straight. The ultimate result is that it doesn’t work. Looking through the history of the most prominent ex-gay leaders and their testimonies, it seems filled with stories of folks claiming to be straight, attracting attention for their change, and then saying some time later, “You know what? I’m still attracted to the same sex.” Or they get caught in a compromising position; they have a fall. And it’s showing that you can alter your behaviors—you can, anybody can. But you can’t change who you’re attracted to.

The results of these programs are ultimately having an impact on people who realize it doesn’t work, causing them to look for other solutions.

Krogh: I think any changing trend in the church—well, most of it—has to do with the fact that both “sides”  are stopping to talk to one another, to be with each other. Regardless of theological ideas, people in the gay community have often wanted to stay out of the church because of past experiences that instilled perceptions and scars…which of course isn’t representative of what the entire church is like. And, of course, Christians have seen media portrayals or heard stories, which lead them to typecast the entire LGBT community, and not want to talk to them.

We see the trend is changing, and people aren’t as afraid to talk about it now. Part of that has to do with the younger generations. A recent study on giving broke down why certain people donate money to various organizations, divided into age groups. Younger groups seemed more willing to talk about (and donate into) the issues that are a big deal in society at large. I think we’re seeing that trend within the discussion of the church as well.

JW: What solutions? How are you building bridges—not only between the Evangelical and gay communities, but also between families and their gay members?

Lee: GCN’s goal is not to be some kind of gay Christian ghetto, where we all go and support one another. Obviously, support is important. But what’s more important is helping families and churches do the work that they’re supposed to do, in being there for their loved ones. One of the ways to do that is by sharing stories. Our documentary, Through My Eyes, released in January. It’s something we’re really proud of because it’s an interweaving of young committed Christians in their teens and twenties who struggle with their own sexuality. They tell their stories on camera—from trying not to be gay, to how they’re treated by others, all of that. These stories are so powerful. And what we’ve found is that when straight persons see the film, it opens their eyes to what it’s like for those of us who’ve dealt with this our whole lives. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to accomplish.

We’re not trying to say, “This is what you have to believe about what the Bible says.” We just want others to know what’s going on and how we feel, which needs to happen before we can figure out how to deal with this issue.

JW: Has the backlash been particularly harsh, or is there a rash of readers who don’t know how to respond? What’s more likely, criticism or confusion?

Lee: We get a fair amount of hate mail. What makes me sad about the hate mail is that it’s very rare for anybody to take the time and really listen to what we’re saying in order to criticize intelligently. Almost all of the criticism we receive comes from those who obviously haven’t read or listened to what we say, or taken the time to understand our mission. They see the words “gay”  and “Christian,” form an immediate conclusion, and fire off an email with a bunch of Bible verses and some profanity. Which always amazes me—that people will take the time to send us Bible verses, then lace their message with profanity, as if that’s supposed to represent the church or Christ well.

I am always happy to have discussions, if the person(s) in question are willing to engage us, to listen, and then respond. But the large majority of the time, we receive criticisms that are addressed in our videos, in our written text, and it’s clear they’re not watching before responding.

Honestly, I think that those people represent the lowest common denominator. I don’t view that as representative of the many intelligent Evangelical Christians out there. I am still an Evangelical Christian. I don’t use that label a lot, but I will embrace it when it gets brought up, even though I don’t identify with some of the things said.

JW: With the success of the DVD, and various other projects, what’s next? What can we expect?

Lee: There are a lot of things that we want to do. One of those things is to interact even more with the wider Christian community. And that means believers from all across the spectrum—those who agree with what we’re trying to do, and those who don’t! We started with a mission to directly support gays, but I want to see us focusing more on straight believers, to really make this a broad movement that loves people, both in and out of the faith. I believe the church ought to be the kind of place that anyone knows that they can be loved and accepted as people. Unfortunately, it’s often the last place that people expect and get that treatment. We who are Christians owe it to ourselves, and the world, and God, to change that.

Ultimately, we believe in a more loving church.

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