Straight to Jesus. Tanya Erzen

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СКАЧАТЬ secret boyfriend, we both looked at each other like, oh my God, he's talking about us. Here I am a sixteen-yearold boy and this guy is telling me I'm going to go to hell. And so from that point on, there was no way I could live with the guilt of trying to be a churchgoing Christian and trying to be gay.”

      Brian remembers, “[In] any kind of example you wanted to give about how bad the world had gotten you included homosexuality.” During one sermon while he was a teenager, Brian, in his typically outspoken way, went forward and was bold enough to say that he needed prayer for his struggle with homosexuality. The pastors of his church escorted him into a back office where they attempted to exorcise the demon of homosexuality. “It was very weird, with them pounding on me with their fists. Of course, more than anything, I wanted to be rid of it, so I tried my hardest to participate and to eject this thing out of me. And, of course, they didn't succeed.” After pastors urged them to pray more, to fast, to gain more experience in the spiritual disciplines, and to conceal their feelings, many ex-gays simply left their churches. Without exception, this separation produced turmoil, and many ended up rejecting Christianity in all forms until they found New Hope.

      New Hope was one of the few places where these men and women, after years of silence and denial, interacted with others who had shared similar experiences, and where their sexual struggle was the central part of their religious identity. Yet their resentment toward their churches lingered and erupted at times. Lars was one person willing to expose the hypocrisy of many Christians who preached love and compassion but practiced something quite different.

      Most of them can't handle the truth. If you're in the church and you're a drug addict, murderer, whatever, guys will come up to you and slap you on the ass. You're one of the guys. But if you state you struggle with homosexuality, you get the whole pew to yourself.

      The church has a hell of a long ways to go in accepting people where they are because they hate people who are gay. When I was at church the very last time they were talking about Matthew Shepard and his sin and what a tragedy it was, and I wanted to stand up and say, You are the problem. You're the reason Matthew Shepard got murdered.

      I heard Frank and other ex-gay leaders condemn Matthew Shepard's murderers and disassociate themselves from people like Fred Phelps and members of his Topeka, Kansas, church, who protested Shepard's funeral with signs reading, “God Hates Fags.”²⁷ However, neither Frank nor most of the men in the program were willing to go as far as Lars, calling the church to account for preaching words that kill.

      THE LORD'S LAND

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