Oh, and** Beelzebuba**… If it doesn’t bother you, I’d be curious to know more about why you choose, apparently willingly, to be involved in “reparative therapy”, how you felt about the woman you eventually married and what you expected from this marriage, and what made you eventually “throw the towel”.
I was raised in the ‘Church of God’ which is a Penecostal denomination based in Cleveland, TN. My parents quit going to church before I was born (they went to the Baptist church that my dad’s parents started in their basement in 1954). But my mom’s mother was a hardcore, Bible-quoting, God-fearing (literally) Pentecostal. She felt it was her duty to see that my sister (3yrs older than me) and I were raised in church. So we grew up hearing people speak in jibberish (“tongues” or “glossolalia”) and jumping over pews, shouting and fainting, seeing a pastor lay his hand on someone’s forehead and demand that they “Be Healed!!” It was also common to hear the pastor praying over someone at the altar and commanding “demons” to leave their body…the Demon of Alcoholism, of Lust, of Perversion, of Homosexuality, of Violence, etc. All ‘sins’ were caused by the influence of demonic spirits and making those alleged demons leave the person also took care of the propensity or desire to commit the same type of sin again…or so they were delusional enough to believe!
I always had a problem with that concept because it let the ‘sinner’ off the hook and didn’t hold them accountable for their actions, just as long as they were able to cast out those demons, it would fix everything! I also believe that Speaking in Tongues is complete bullshit. Only certain people were given that gift, but over time I recognized the same syllables and patterns over and over. And after someone spoke in tongues, the pastor would always ask, “Will there be an interpreter?” In the seven years or so that I went there, the same person rose from her piano stool to translate to the congregation- my frigid old Aunt Ardell, who had a constant scowl on her face and a stick up her ass! Apparently she had the world’s only copy of Rosettta Stone- Glossolalia Edition!
Women didn’t wear jewelry, makeup or pants (only skirts, usually ankle length). No one seemed ever looked or seemed happy, but they were all sticklers for their rules! Around the age of 14, I decided if there was a God, I wasn’t going to find him or get to know him in that environment…
So my sister and I started attended a local Southern Baptist Church that was having explosive growth and a very active youth program. We knew at least half of the 300+ person congregation, so we were much happier there.
After several months, I decided to ‘join’ the church and asked to meet with the pastor first. I had just turned 15 and had never uttered my “secret shame” to anyone before. Even though I remember watching pro wrestling with my dad when I was six years old and being mesmerized by the massive, muscular bodies of the men…and I also knew it was something VERY BAD and DIFFERENT from other boys and I could never tell anyone about it! But at the age of 15, I opened up to this pastor and shared my “struggle” with same-sex attraction. The stakes seemed very high because I worried that he might not allow me to join the congregation AND his son, who was one year younger than me, had become one of my best friends in recent months.
Much to my surprise and to his credit, he responded far better than expected and with a level of compassion and kindness that Baptist ministers aren’t taught to have…so they had to come from his heart! He prayed with me and for me and told me he would continue to do so. He also told me to call him day or night if I needed to talk about my ‘struggle’ or anything else. The most surprising part of all was that he never treated me or my friendship with his son any differently. His son still spent the night at my house once in a while and vice versa. But I never felt like he was judging me…and I will always appreciate and love him for that!
I got my first car a few months after turning 15. My mom wanted to teach me to drive stick shift on the car I would drive regularly when I turned 16 and got my license. A few months after that, about six months prior to turning 16, I read about support group for men trying to ‘overcome’ homosexual thoughts and feelings. It met in Atlanta every Tuesday night and I decided to drive 70 miles one-way without a driver’s license to check it out. They didn’t allow anyone under 18 to attend, for obvious legal reasons, but I was a 6’3” 275# high school football player who could pass for 21+ easily, so no one ever questioned it.
I continued attending weekly group therapy sessions for more than four years. After many of those meetings, as I drove the long 70-mile stretch on I-75, I very seriously considered ramming my car into the concrete retaining wall! It was a 1985 Honda CRX, so there was no doubt that it would kill me and I felt like I wanted to die much of the time! The primary reason for my self-hatred was because no matter how many meeting I attended, books I read, prayers I prayed BEGGING for God to ‘fix’ me…I never felt the slightest change! If anything, as I got older, my attraction to men only grew stronger.
I met the girl that I would eventually marry on the first day of High School in 1989. We grew up in the same tiny town, but a silly zoning border that split her neighborhood in half meant she went to different elementary and middle schools than me. But we ended up at the same high school. She and I were instant friends the first day we met, if a platonic soul-mate can exist, she was and is mine!
We started ‘dating’ a few weeks into 9th grade and were inseparable for the next four years! We fooled about sexually, a little, but I used my religous convictions as an excuse to avoid going all the way! When we were in 11th grade (age 17), she finally asked me if I was sexually attracted to guys. I lied at first, but a few days later I told her that I was ‘curious’ and ‘uncertain’ about my attractions. She told me that she didn’t care, as long as I didn’t act on the feelings and never lied to her or cheated on her.
Right after high school, a friend of mine was moving out of his very nice 1-bedroom apartment near the college I was attending. It was only $450/month and, despite a long waiting list ahead of me, my friend vouched for me to the landlord and convinced him to let me have the place. Amanada, my ex-wife, stayed over most weeknights because she was also going to the same college and it saved her 40-miles per day of gas and driving if she stayed with me. But the dick landlord sent me a very nasty letter and copy of my lease highlighting that only one adult was allowed to reside in the 1-bedroom apartment, with married couples being the only exception!
At first, we were only joking, but after a long day of serious thought, we discovered several ways that getting married would benefit us! I had NO health insurance, but she could add me to her policy as her husband for less than $80/mo back then. I was also paying $2900/year for insurance on the ’91 Honda CRX that I had bought myself for high school graduation! If we were married and added the car to her policy, it save almost $1500 per year! And she could also live with me in that apartment…so we just did it one day! About four months after turning 18, were newlyweds.
I continued to attend group therapy and only discussed it vague terms, just that I had a support group at a church every Tuesday was sufficient info for her. She and I had sex once or twice per week on average. Each time we had sex, I was overwhelmed with guilt, shame and despair afterward. I felt guilty because, even though she knew about my same-sex atractions, I was still deceiving her because I could never love her in the same way that he loved me. I also realized that I had ZERO sexual or physical attraction to her or any other woman…all of my efforts and struggles hadn’t done a thing, I wasn’t any closer to being str8 after two years or marriage at age 20 than I was when I began my journey almost five years earlier.
By this point, I was also co-director of the local ministry that ran the support group I attended each week. The director was my best friend and he knew how close I was to calling it quits and walking away. He was planning to attend the 1995 Exodus conference in San Diego a few weeks after we had ‘the talk’ and I told him I was 99% decided to give it all up. I wasn’t planning to go to San Diego because I couldn’t afford it. He asked me if I would hang in there and go to San Diego if he paid for it and I agreed.
Despite the conference being as dreadful as I expected, there was one incredibly neat thing that I wouldn’t realize until about 12 years later! Since I was signed up at the last moment, I was assigned a room with another attendee. When I walked into my room, it was a guy around my age but in great shape, great tan and, in general, goregous! I’m not attracted to the “pretty boy” type and I instantly gave him that label! I couldn’t wait to spent the next week with him ignoring me because I’m not thin and perfect…and I was a complete fucking asshole for stereotyping him before I even shook his hand and said hi!!!
It turned out that Mr. Pretty Boy-Man was one of the sweetest, kindest and most amazing people I’ve ever met!!! We talked for hours most evenings after seminars were over and his insights and feedback helped me far more than the seminar itself! We kept in touch somewhat over the years, but life gets in the way and we would go as long as two years without talking sometimes.
Imagine my SURPRISE…make that AMAZEMENT, while flipping thru channels one night trying to find something decent to watch and, right there on HGTV Design Star is my old roomie from the conference!!! He has his very own HGTV show now…and I won’t say the name of it, but I’ll just say that it’s quite colorful…LOTS of COLOR, not just a SPLASH! They couldn’t have found a more deserving, genuinely decent human being to host a show! And I must admit, 18 years later, that ‘pretty boy’ has become one Beautiful MAN!
When I returned home from the conference, I told Amanda (my wife) that I couldn’t continue living a lie and how I felt like I had ruined her life by marrying her. She took it very well and told me that whe wanted me to be happy and, if another man would do that, it was what she wanted. We spent the next 12 or so hours laying in bed together crying and holding each other…but it helped both of us let go of whatever hope or plans either of us had for our relationship as a married couple. We woke up the next day ready to start a new, uncertain journey but I knew in my heart that she would always be a part of my life. And she still is, as is her son (my godson) Jackson!
I also mentioned in an earlier post that she remarried a few years later, then they had a son two years after that. But when Jack was barely five, his dad (Dave) was killed by a drunk driver!!! Amanda swears that no one else, other than me, would have walked thru every step of that hell with her and stuck by her side for month after month until she finally could stand on her own again and move forward. But I’ve also been her ‘surrogate’ or ‘fill-in’ hubby since Dave died, which is fine by me. I also go by her mom and dad’s house every few months and spent an afternoon or evening with them. They never stopped loving me either.
I never dreamed it would all work out so well, but I’m happy that it did.
Beelzebubba, thank you so much for your great posts. I’m pleased to see you on this board(*)
(*)I never noticed you before, sorry, but then again, I don’t remember posters’ nicknames, and hardly remember any poster, including long standing ones.
** Beelzebubba**. I’ve sent you a PM, but now I’m hoping for public support:
Please start an “Ask the ex-ex-gay” thread.
I was going to suggest that until I read his long post. Great story!
I don’t think he was every actually malicious and in most of his interviews he seemed to express compassion for gays, but I think for a long time he honestly thought, in spite of all evidence to the contrary and in spite of his own “backsliding”, that it was possible to change orientation. He’s far from the first “ex-gay” to later denounce the movement as a mixture of pseudoscience, self-delusion, and fanaticism, and most others have not taken flak for it- they’ve been welcomed into (or back into) the gay world and if anything seen as victims of rather than perpetrators of dangerous quackery- but the flak for him is because he literally personified the ex-gay movement for a decade, appearing on magazine covers and TV shows and assuring people it could work, and even after he was famously caught in a gay bar (lying and changing his story several times over the next few days) and was disgraced inside of the movement and forced from a leadership position he still maintained that change was possible for years and years, and then when he renounced it he did it at first very privately rather than publicly.
Of course he can’t win for losing: when he did go public Wayne Besen, the Primo Critic of the Ex-Gay movement, basically branded him a narcissist who first and foremost wants attention, and frankly I can see Besen’s point as well, but, I have no idea if he is or isn’t so I’ll give him the benefit of a doubt that he’s just pathetic and fucked up by religious baggage and that having kids probably bound him to the movement.
Now his wife sounds less like a lesbian who wanted to be not-gay-by-virtue-of-Jesus than just a first order nutter.
Thirded (if it’s not too personal to talk about).