Hi all at Freedom 2 b(e). This is my first posting and I am excited about the new forum for Heterosexual Friends, Family and Supporters.

I hope that lot’s of heterosexual pentecostal supporters of gay and lesbian Christians will join this forum and share about your experiences and journey that have helped you look past the hard line teaching of the church to understand a much more loving and caring attitude toward this persecuted group of people. Or maybe there are others who haven’t found a way past such hard line teaching and would like to find out more.

My personal story is that my older sister is lesbian and my younger brother is gay. We were brought up in a Christian family in the Methodist church and my parents moved over to the charismatic/pentecostal denominations after being rejected by their own church for being filled with the Holy Spirit. My sister was interested in the church when she was young but in her teens started to question all that she had been taught and eventually rejected the church and its teachings and now considers herself to be an atheist. My younger brother was never interested in the things of God so was probably always an atheist. They have both been married and had two children each (my brother’s second daughter died of SIDS) and have since left their marriage partners to live freely as homosexual.

My parents had terrible struggles with this and my mother especially could not reconcile with my sister in her new orientation, because of her understanding of the Bible. This caused my sister enormous heartache, especially because my mother had a massive stroke just as she was starting to come to some form of acceptance, and died without there being a proper reconciliation between them.

I had also believed what my parents believed, that homosexuality was an abomination before God because of what we were taught from the pulpit and from our surface reading of the particular scriptures that are used against homosexuality.

After our mother died my sister and I began to renew our relationship that had waned over the years because of careers, marriages and bringing up kids etc. As a result of this renewed friendship I began to question why I believed what I did and whether it was truth or not. I had to face the fact that I had blindly believed so much of what I had been taught, never checking it out as the Bereans did to see if it was truth. I then began a long and sometimes painful journey to discover what the truth really was.

I learnt the hard way that you don’t share too loudly or freely with your Christian friends, who suddenly look at you warily, as if you have some how been contaminated with the same disease as ‘those perverts’. I have experienced in a very small measure what so many Christian homosexuals have experienced in their struggle with their sexual orientation compared to the doctrines of their church.

Many times I have told God I don’t want to walk down this path any more because it is too hard to deal with, but I just can’t turn my back on the fact that thousands of homosexual Christians are being rejected, persecuted and traumatised beyond belief by the very people who should be loving them as Jesus loves them. It wasn’t until I read Anthony Venn-Brown’s book “A Life of Unlearning – a journey to find the truth”, that I realised the agony of years of struggle, self hatred, secrecy and brokenness that are a part of the life of a person who longs to follow and serve God, but has a different sexual orientation to the status quo. If anyone could have succeeded in overcoming this ‘disease’ through sheer determination it would have been Anthony. No matter how many times he struggled and ‘failed’, he just kept getting up and trying twice as hard the next time. He was determined to beat this thing if it killed him, and it very nearly did several times, until he finally gave up trying to fit the proper pattern determined by the church and allowed himself to be who he really is and always was. Could it be that God was in all of that, to bring Anthony to where he is today ‘for such a time as this’?

I would love to hear from others who are in the same place as I am, trying to reconcile with the hard line teaching of the church they love and with the knowledge that thousands of people are being kept out of those churches because they don’t fit the ‘correct pattern’. I would love to hear your story, how you have come to the place you are at now, and what you have or haven’t been able to do in your church to change the unloving attitude of homophobia.

Cairo

Hi – this is my first post on this site – I am a complete internet junkie so I know it won’t be my last .

I was raised in the Assemblies of God in Sydney – my parents became Pentecostal when they were teenagers so I grew up in the church and was raised in a very conservative environment . It was a loving household but there was a lot of conflict . I adored my older brother and sister and was very close to both of them . However there was an element of tragedy in both of their lives and this really affected me . We were a family that didn’t talk about our feelings . I am sure that’s one of the reasons that I suffered depression from a very early age . I don’t remember anybody mentioning gay people either in sermons or within the church when I was growing up – to be honest I knew very little about gay people .

When I was a teenager I joined Hillsong and it was a wonderful community in the early years . One night Hillsong invited a young woman to speak about AIDS prevention to the youth group – the night was a debacle as the focus shifted from AIDS prevention to her personal views on homosexuality . I remember going home feeling incredibly disturbed about the hostility and anger shown to this woman . And thinking that it must be really difficult to be gay . I had gone through a lot of rejection during my childhood and I guess I was thinking how awful it must be to be treated in that way .

I was really was reevaluating a lot of things in my life at this time . I was at university and trying to make sense of a lot of stuff that was going on in my life . The short version is one day I walked out of Hillsong one day and never went back . I never completely rejected my faith but I just couldn’t deal with the packaging . When I left the church I lost almost all of the social networks that I had grown up with . However my friends did support me . Many years later two of those friends told me that they had been having an affair for many years . But they never told anybody else about it . It was seeing what they went through that helped change my ideas . I was like a lot of people within the church . Gay people within the church were invisible – I walked past them every week and never saw them .

How will change come ? Its just a thought but I often think it would be fantastic to have swat teams who go into a church and make a commitment to attend for a set length of time . Maybe two friends one gay and one straight – they attend not as activists but as regular members of the church . Because many people within Christian churches don’t have any contact with

openly gay people and have never met a gay Christian . And they see the Mardi Gras and they think that’s what being gay is all about .

And I have a question . I attend a church community that has a wide spectrum of belief How do you deal with the misinformation that some people come out with without being really confrontational ? Only last week somebody trotted out the stuff to me about homosexuality being the result of a weak father . And they were completely sincere . I would be interested in people’s experiences .

Its great to see you Cairo and Optimist in our forum…..you are so welcome…….well actually its not our forum in a way is it……its yours.

We are creating spaces where people can share and support. this i’m sure will be an important place to connect with others. Part of the problem we have faced preciously as GLBTI people from Pentecostal backgrounds is that we were isolated. F2B is helping to solve that problem now wtih 370 users. Not everyone posts…….but there are many lurking behind the scenes reading, thinking learning etc. many of us have come to the place where we know deep within our hearts that our sexual orientation is nothing more than that. Its a sexual orientation not a brokeness, sin or perversion and God loves us just as we are.

There are a growing number of NON GLBTIQ people out there as well who are also coming to the same realisation because you’ve read and studied deeper or have GLBTIQ family or friends. its no longer an ISSUE……….we are people. I trust that this forum helps you feel less isolated as it does for us.

We can’t bring the change alone. We are such a minority. We need your support more than you probably realise. what ever we can do to work together then lets do that.

looking forward to seeing what this new development at F2B brings.

hey jenaz……great to have you hear and thanks for sharing. I think your story tells us very clearly that one of the things that is going to change peoples thinking is close contact with G&L people…….then people discover how normal we all are. Not two heads or 7 sexual partners a night…..hehe.

great work you are doing in the school as well……it will reap great fruit now and in the lnog run. i’d love to see how that assigment turns out ‘Can you be a christian and gay”.

BTW……i’ve just created a doc for people who are heterosexual and/or christian that might help them digest some uncomfortable sections. I’ll make sure its in the next edition…..i’ll send it to you for your feedback.

BTW2…….there was another young teacher here in the forum only recently wanting to connect with other teachers.

hi Cairo,

this is just a quick response, but I will respond in more detail later. Just thought I would give you 2 links to 2 good articles that I use a lot.

http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-walter-wink

and

http://jmm.aaa.net/articles/13935.htm

I am off to work now, but will chat about dad’s church next time.

Dad returned to the Uniting Church (in the Blue Mountains) about 8 years ago when the church in his area made it clear that they were inclusive to all. The church of course lost a few memebrs – the ones Cairo that endorse the ‘clober’ verses in the bible – but largely the congregation endorsed the approach. There are both gay and lesbain members of the church. They are an integral part of the functioning of the church. It is a small congragation – 100-150 I guess – an ‘older’ congregation -and are very progressive in nature. I’m not sure of the official philosophy of the church, but just know that it is not an issue. dad says the minister isn’t always worth listening to, but the congregations inclusive nature makes it a haven of safety for many. I wish I had a church like it to go to.

when my student has her assignment back to me I will share her findings. They will be interesting as most of her primary research was carried out at school – mostly christain students. much to her parents distress, she is a huge advocate for the rights of G and L, and has a big impact on the opinions held by her classmates. She has managed to totally turn around the biggest homophobic in her year group. That makes teaching very satisfying for me.

no its not the ‘open door’ one. It is in Glenbrook.

Hi Jenaz

Thanks for the information you have given me from those two websites and also the information about your father’s church. I was in shock for a minute when you said the Uniting Church in the Blue Mountains. I automatically thought Katoomba. You wouldn’t believe it but my parents were the (lay) pastors of the (then) Methodist Church in Katoomba for 12 months. Once they got the congregation growing and passionate because of the moving of the Holy Spirit, the powers that be decided they needed a ‘proper ordained’ minister there and didn’t renew my parents agreement. They were very hurt over that as were the people. So for a minute I thought you were talking about that church, but then you mentioned Glenbrook and I realised it wasn’t.

But I still think it is amazing that such an older congregation can be so inclusive. I wonder how it all started. If you ever learn more about the way it progressed I would love to hear the story.

blessings

Cairo

Last time I posted I mentioned an assignment that one of my students was doing – can you be gay and christian? Some said they were interested in her results, so…..here are some of the findings from her IRP. The research is only based on about 50 respondents from year 11 and 12 (from a rural Christian school and a western sydney christian school), so findings are not what researcher’s would class as valid, but they are interesting just the same.

are you a Christian?

59% yes, 35% no, 6% unsure

are you homosexual? (females)

6% yes, 88% no, 6% unsure

Homosexual tendencies? (females)

17% yes, 71% no, 12% unsure

are you homosexual? (males)

14% yes, 71% no, 15% unsure

Homosexual tendencies? (males)

7% yes, 71% no, 15% unsure, 7% didn’t answer this question.

Do you know a homosexual? (females)

76% yes, 18% no, 6% unsure.

Do you know a homosexual Christian? (females)

29%yes, 47% no, 24% unsure.

Do you know a homosexual? (males)

71% yes, 14%no, 15% unsure.

Do you know a homosexual Christian? (males)

21% yes, 57% no, 29% unsure

Are homosexuals accepted in your religious community? (females)

12% no, 18% yes, 35% unsure, 39% didn’t know

Are homosexuals accepted in your religious community? (males)

8% yes, 21% no, 50% unsure, 21% didn’t answer the question

Could you personally accept a homosexual Christian? (females)

35% yes, 12% no, 18% unsure, 6% didn’t answer question.

Could you personally accept a homosexual Christian? (males)

14% yes, 50% no, 36% unsure.

Do you think a homosexual can be a Christian? (females)

41% yes, 29% no, 29% unsure

Do you think a homosexual can be a Christian? (males)

7% yes, 57% no, 29% unsure, 7% no answer.

yes interesting little study. …..and demonstrates some significant shifts considering that it was taken in a christian school and in a rural area.

Boys have more of an aversion to homosexuality to girls for a variety of reasons. One being they see it more as a threat to their masculinity where as girls sexuality is more fluid. My guess is that girls will think more about the relationship whereas boys think of the actual act of sex.