He Thought He Was Gay: A Comment and Response

(This post appeared on June 13, and Jason B. commented on July 17. I've included his comments and my response below. --Cec)

Blog post from June 13: 

Brian told me about his abuse as a child and said, "For years I thought I was a homosexual." Because he seemed to be a rather well-adjusted heterosexual, I asked, "Any idea what made you feel that way?"

Without hesitation he said, "Because I enjoyed it. From the first time I had an erection and it felt good." When he was a little older, he ejaculated. "If it was that awful, why did I enjoy it? I thought I was gay."

Until he was in his early twenties and after Brian "tried sex with a man once," he spoke of enjoying it and hating it at the same time. He didn't try it again and found it revolting to think about.

"Am I gay or not?" he asked himself.

Shortly after that, Brian visited a group that focused on male survivors of sexual abuse. "The penis responds to stimulation," the leader says. "That feels good, and that's absolutely natural to get aroused. But it doesn't mean you're gay. It means you have responded in a normal, natural way."

That was the day Brian started to say, "I'm a healthy, heterosexual male." It was also the beginning of a new life for him.

Jason's comments: 

Let me first say I love your book Not Quite Healed. It is a wonderful, overall helpful book to survivors of abuse like myself and for that I am very thankful. However in your book you recommended Exodus International for their reparative therapy. Around the same time your book was released they made a statement that they were stopping operations because they realized they were wrong and were causing great harm. Are you willing to make a similar statement recanting your recommendation of reparative therapy?

While I believe some people who were abused can have confusion about their orientation, I don't believe that environmental factors are the "cause" for a person to identify as LGBTQ. I know this story is only one person's experience but are you suggesting that all people who identify as LGBTQ are just confused?

I'm not saying you are not entitled to your beliefs, whatever they may be. But I do think it would be incredibly helpful to be sensitive to the possibility that this issue is more complex than what just one group of Christians wants to define as being biblical. Suggesting that sexual identity is just a learned behavior is incredibly naïve and damaging to survivors who have SSA or identify as LGBTQ. 

Cec's response:

Jason, thank you for your good attitude.

I'll do my best to explain. My understanding of Exodus--at the time I wrote--was they they were a resource for people who had been in the gay lifestyle and wanted help to get out. For me, it's that simple. If they want help to change, that was the best resource I knew. (They disbanded after the publication of my book.)

Not Quite Healed was certainly not written to tell anyone they had to change or were rushing to hell if they didn't. I don't think that way.

I confess I don't understand why some people are gay and others not, whether it's nurture or nature (or a combination) that makes them who they are. I've tried to show respect and compassion for everyone, regardless of their sexual status. I'm sorry if that didn't come through in my book.

One of my good minister friends is transgender. I still love Erin as much as I loved Eric before his sexual surgery.

I agree with you that it's a highly complex issue. I'm not smart enough to know the answers; I am smart enough to know that the great command in the New Testament is to love. And Paul says that if we love, we fulfill the laws of God.

Dann Youle's Story

(By Dann Youle)

My story begins in 1965. I was born into a Christian family, the second child of four. I have an older sister and two younger brothers. I was born and raised in rural Illinois, about 2 hours northwest of Chicago. We were pretty typical for a "Christian" Midwestern family. We went to church Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday evening, and, if we were able, to every special service/meeting the church had. My mother had been raised Southern Baptist in North Carolina, and my dad Methodist in Wisconsin.

Most people would say we were a normal American family and I was a normal American kid. But I had a secret. I struggled with same sex attraction. These were desires that I didn't understand and didn't ask for, and no matter how much I prayed, they wouldn't go away. I was too afraid to tell anyone. I knew what my peers said about people who were gay. So I struggled silently. The shame at times was unbearable.

When I was 22 years old, I took the risk of telling my best friend. I then went to the counselor on staff at the Christian college I was attending and was offered helpful and encouraging advice, prayer, and materials through Exodus International. It was at this time that I began to make progress in my healing. Jesus was so good to me to be faithful and let me know that I wasn't alone! It didn't mean I was instantly healed, but I began to believe that for the first time that I had a true friend in Jesus. Several Christian brothers who knew everything stood by me.

Along the way, I came into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ at 19, I graduated from Bible college at 22, and I received a clear call to ministry around the time I was finishing college to minister to others who have sexual brokenness in their lives, specifically those who struggle with issues of same-sex attraction and homosexuality.

I met my wife when I was 19, and our relationship was founded and built on friendship first. We married 5 years after we met.

The interesting thing is that even with all this "Christian/religious" grounding, my family had secrets that no one dares talk about. I know now that everyone's journey is different, and that there are many things that may contribute to same-sex attraction, and that those combinations of factors are not the same for everyone. But I realized several years ago when I reentered counseling that the sexual abuse that I had endured between the ages of five and seven was at the root of my homosexual desires. It was at the hands of a male relative who was seen as healthy, who was anything but!

Here, I was someone who had helped others: comforting, being with and praying for those so abused as I do ministry that I never even imagined it was an issue I was dealing with. Here I was in my thirties, a husband, father, one who had been/was being healed of sexual brokenness, and I desperately found myself not knowing if this pain could be healed.

I asked my counselor, "Can God really heal this?" I felt so broken and damaged that there was no hope for me. I felt like the sun would never shine again, and that God didn't have a place for me in His Kingdom. I simply felt overwhelmed and like I was going to die. I kept thinking, how could I live when I can't even breathe?

One day as I was driving, it was so clear to me. God said, "I am your breath! You can't breathe, Dann. Let me do it for you. I am here; I haven't gone away."

In 2000, the year of healing ended with my visiting the relative's grave that had abused me. There I genuinely released forgiveness, I felt pity for my abuser, and I realized he never knew the joy of Christ's forgiveness in his own life.

Now, to unfold the past several years since then, I would say that over and over again God has revealed to me in amazing ways that He is still God, and He still cares. None of this, while not necessarily God's perfect will, (as far as being abused, sinning out of my own brokenness, etc.), has been wasted. God has been and continues to use all of it!

By God's grace I never acted on my homosexual desires. By God's grace I have also experienced much change and much healing. By God's grace, I have been blessed with my wife, Chris, and three wonderful children.

Chris, who was broken by abuse as well, is an amazing companion and partner! Our relationship was founded upon friendship first, and even when we temporarily lose focus of that, it's what God always allows us to come back to and to keep building upon. We just celebrated twenty years of marriage on December 9, 2009.

I am thankful to God that he doesn't waste any of our pain. Little did I know when I struggled with my secret during my adolescent years that God would use the pain and brokenness of my past to head up a ministry for those who struggle with homosexuality and for those who struggle with sexual addiction.

Chris heads up a group for those who struggle with lesbianism. Together we head up Land Office Ministries, a ministry of Mars Hill Bible Church. This ministry is what God has built through the brokenness of my own life and experiences, and as I am a servant leader, God blesses and increases His Kingdom through me.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6 that "such were some of you (homosexually broken)- but you are washed, you are purified, you are made whole." I am living testimony today that God does wash, He does purify. He does bring wholeness.

That growth is a process. I have seen growth and change in my life and in the lives of the people to whom I minister. Thanks be to God, He never gave up on me.