In a week of good lesbian TV, I was surprised that a show that I viewed as positive was not well received by some visible members of the LGBT media, including GLAAD and our brother site, AfterElton.com. To me, Tuesday’s Our America With Lisa Ling: Pray the Gay Away? was balanced and moving.
But before I talk about the show, let me share a little about my connection with the topic.
When I was 18, I had an experience that Christians call being born again. It was a definite, life-changing moment in which my relationship with God went from theoretical to personal. Being the jump-in-with-both-feet kind of person I am, I immersed myself in Christianity. I’m not talking church on Sunday; I was one of those folks who spent hours in prayer and Bible study, the kind who can quote long passages of scripture, the kind you run into outside gay bars who will tell you that you can and must be saved to avoid eternity separated from God. A Jesus Person.
I was not pleasant to be around.
For the next 15 — 20 years, my number one goal in life was to be a godly woman (aka a “Proverbs 31 Woman”). However, one thing was preventing me from being that woman: other women. I kept falling for them. I believed my attraction to women was sin and hated myself for it. I went to all sorts of extremes to avoid, deny or change it. At one point in grad school, after I had “fallen into sin” with another woman, I visited a Christian minister who cast the demon of homosexuality out of me while a friend prayed so hard in the other room that he ripped his shirt to shreds. (Just go with me here — it’s a quite Biblical thing to do.) The minister told me to fall on my face before God and pray every day for three hours to keep the demon at bay. And I did. Pray, that is — the demon apparently didn’t read the instructions.
Cut to a few years later when I was in seminary. I lived in a big house with some other Christians, both male and female. The housemother sorted our mail by putting it in piles on the stairs, so privacy was not a part of the experience. One day, one of the guys took me aside and said, “I saw that you got a mailer from Exodus.” I blanched and mumbled something about a paper I was writing, not registering that he was on the ex-gay organization’s mailing list, too. I often think that had I responded openly and talked to him about it, I might have been able to avoid another 10 years of struggle.
I was in my 30s before I gave up. Even then, it was via a prayer: “God, I’ve done everything I can to change. I don’t know what else to do. If you want me not to be gay, change me. Otherwise, show me what this is about.”
You can guess how that prayer was answered. In short: still gay.
The point of this lengthy background is that for someone who believes that you have to choose between God and gay, the struggle never stops. What the American Psychological Association or MCC or Oprah says is irrelevant. What God says is all that matters — and a lot of LGBT folks don’t have the resources to figure out that many Christian leaders have not done their homework when it comes to what God says (in the Bible) about homosexuality.
For people like me – and for Christians who want to know more about the topic – a show like Our America is, well, a godsend. Hundreds of thousands of people believe you can pray away the gay. And they believe if you can’t, you’re just not praying hard enough.
Lisa Ling approached the topic from the perspective of a self-proclaimed non-Christian that wants to understand what the ex-gay movement is all about. She made her stance clear from the first — she is pro-gay and has a number of very close friends who are gay. When she visited the Exodus International Freedom Conference, she was open about her stance – and got some surprising information in the process.
Alan Chambers, president of Exodus and married to a woman, told Ling that he believes homosexuality is wrong, but, after 20 years, he still struggles with it — and believes he always will. He is not convinced that his sexual orientation has changed. He even said that he believes gay people will be right beside him in heaven. That is huge.
When I sought help from Exodus, I wanted to change — and that’s what they said they could help me do. I didn’t go to their meetings or counselors, but the clear message in their literature was that God could heal me of my homosexuality. Now, the focus in on whether people will follow God — even if their sexual orientation never changes. That shift in thinking is important for both sides of the issue to hear.
Of course, not all in the ex-gay world are so magnanimous. Janet Boynes, who says she is no longer gay after 14 years as a lesbian, is head of Ex-Gay Ministry and teaches that God can change sexual orientation from gay to straight.
Boynes is the minister who famously started “Prayer Call” to counter anti-bullying campaigns after the string of LGBT suicides. Nothing like reinforcing shame to bring comfort to kids without hope.
I really wish I had an embeddable clip of her entire segment, because it’s familiar to lesbians who have tried to be straight. (Yes, I grew out my hair and tried to wear feminine clothes and tons of makeup. Again, still gay.)
Boynes’ beliefs reflect those of many in the ex-gay movement: that women become lesbians because of abuse. Her comments on Gayle King’s live show after Ling’s special are telling.
In other words, if you work hard enough, God will change your sexual orientation. I hate to tell you, Janet, but changing your clothes and your hair does not change your orientation.
The most wonderful segment of Our America was about a radically different ministry: The Naming Project, featured in the documentary Camp Out. The project is a Bible camp for young people who identify as both Christian and LGBT. Founded by a Lutheran minister, the camp provides a “safe and sacred space” for kids to explore their faith and discuss their sexuality.
Days at the camp are pretty much like any day at any other Bible camp: prayer and Bible study, singing around the campfire, sports, crafts, and so on. But the kids at the camp never have to hide who they are; the very presence of The Naming Project’s summer camp demonstrates that God loves them unconditionally.
Chelsea, the only lesbian featured in Our America, talks about how the camp helped her live openly as who she is.
That camp would have changed my life. Knowing about it can change others.
GLAAD’s Justin Ward, a gay Christian who spent a summer on staff at the camp, was disappointed in Our America. He wrote on GLAAD’s blog that as happy as he is to see exposure for The Naming Project, he wished that the context had been different than an episode called “Pray the Gay Away?” To Ward, framing the episode as a question was irresponsible.
“In a nutshell,” Ward writes, “the question posed by Tuesday night’s episode of Our America is no longer a question; it’s been answered repeatedly by experts and is no longer up for debate. Period.”
AfterElton.com’s columnist FakeName agrees with Ward, writing:
In the rather appallingly named “Pray the Gay Away?” Ling poses the question, “Can you be gay and Christian at the same time?”
Given the existence of the Metropolitan Community Church, Dignity, Integrity and a plethora of other gay and gay-friendly Christian denominations and organizations, the obvious answer is “yes” but that would make for a short program.
If only things were that simple. But in the Evangelical Christian world, all of those experts and organizations and gay-friendly denominations prove nothing, because they fall “outside” the will of God. And, as any good fundie will tell you, “God’s ways our not our ways.” Things that make sense outside of God’s will are irrelevant to devout Christians, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks.
I’m not sure Our America adequately answered its own question, but I doubt that Ling intended it to be a full exploration of the issue. It was, rather, the beginning of a dialogue. And until dialogue happens, the divide between gays and ex-gays will remain.
I’d love to see another episode of Our America that goes further. “Pray the Gay Away?” didn’t have time to explore the issue of whether being gay is biological or behavioral. When Boynes’ compared changing her skin color to changing her sexual orientation, she touched the heart of the matter. Is gay who we are or what we do? If we’re born this way, then we are as God created us — and trying to pray it away would be an affront to our creator.
If you haven’t watched the show yet, the full episode is available at the OWN website as well as the post-show live conversation with Gayle King. I know we won’t all agree, but I hope that the respectful dialogue will start here.
