I grew up actually in a very conservative Christian home.
I grew up Southern Baptist and— yeah, it was exciting. [laughter]
Growing up, I was kind of "Super Christian."
Anybody know like a "Super Christian"? My nickname in high school was "God Boy."
I was the kid with the Bible in his backpack and a bunch of tracts from church,
ready to witness to anybody who would listen— and a bunch of people who wouldn't.
I was always ready to preach at anyone about any controversial issue that I thought
Christians should take a stand on— and I knew why they [other people] were wrong.
Maybe some of you knew someone like that in high school. If so, I apologize.
Maybe some of you were that person in high school. In which case, heyyyyy!
[laughter]
I wore Christian t-shirts, I listened to Christian rock music,
I played Christian video games... Oh yes. [laughter]
Yeah, I grew up when the original Nintendo was popular, and one of the most popular games
at the time was the Legend of Zelda. So of course—yeah!
So of course we had to have a Christian version of it, so there was a Christian version
of The Legend of Zelda called "Spiritual Warfare." [laughter]
This was not authorized by Nintendo, shockingly.
But it was basically a complete ripoff of The Legend of Zelda. There were a few differences.
In the Legend of Zelda, you're trying to save a princess.
In Spiritual Warfare, you're questing against the powers of darkness.
In The Legend of Zelda, you collect weapons on your quest.
In Spiritual Warfare, you collect the Fruits of the Spirit.
[laughter]
Only they're actual fruits. Apples and pomegranates and bananas.
I'm not kidding! This is real. Some of you are like,
"I don't believe this. I'm gonna look this up on Wikipedia later." It's true!
And in The Legend of Zelda, your enemies are monsters.
In Spiritual Warfare, your enemies are "the unsaved." [audience murmurs] Right?!
So when you encounter the unsaved, you throw the Fruit of the Spirit AT them...
[laughter]
or blow them up with Vials of God's Wrath...
at which point, they repent, convert, and disappear!
So that was sort of the world I grew up in.
And that was the way I approached conflict and controversy in the world as a Christian.
I felt like it was my job to throw my faith at people so that they would convert to what is true.
On the subject of homosexuality, I knew that I knew everything there was to know on the topic.
I knew that being gay was a choice, I knew that being gay was a sin,
and I knew that it was my job to stand up and speak out against it.
Because I wanted to save people from a "destructive lifestyle" that wasn't God's plan for them.
And that probably would have been where this ended, and I wouldn't be standing here today,
were it not for one little thing, which is that God Boy had a secret.
It was what I thought was the worst secret in the world. And that was
that when I hit puberty and all my guy friends started to notice girls for the first time—
you know, really *noticed* them. They used to have cooties, and all of a sudden, they had...
boobs... and— [laughter]
I'm always afraid of making that joke on a Christian campus but it seems to be like
the favorite joke of all the Christian campuses that I speak at.
I'm always afraid I'll get a stern talking to later.
But it's true, right? So they started to notice girls for the first time,
and I was having the opposite experience. I was starting to notice guys.
And I didn't know why. At first I thought it was a phase that I would grow out of.
I thought this is just—it's a thing that's happening, I'm gonna grow out of it—
and I tried not to think about it, and stay focused on my faith
and focused on my schoolwork and focused on my family,
and I listened to "Focus on the Family"— and basically
tried to continue being a good, you know, "God Boy."
And it wasn't just external things. My faith has always been—
not just "real" but like the most intimate— like thing at my core. You know what I'm saying?
My faith has always been the most important thing in my life.
I accepted Christ at a young age. I reconfirmed my life to Christ as a teenager.
And so I didn't understand how somebody like me—who was a good Christian, who loved God—
could be attracted to the same sex. But I kept thinking I would grow out of it.
And when I didn't grow out of it, I kept praying about it,
and when God wasn't changing me, I got to the point that I was crying myself to sleep,
night after night, begging God, "Please don't let me feel this way anymore."
And finally I had to admit to my girlfriend—
Oh, yes. I had a girlfriend.
She and I went to a concert. It was a Christian concert of course.
Jars of Clay and Michael W. Smith.
And there was this moment where this guy walked by. He was going back to
join his group, wherever they were, I don't know. Maybe he'd been to the restroom or
getting popcorn or—I don't know.
And just for this moment—like, I saw him and there was this thing, there was this moment
where I was like, "Who's that guy?"
I can't explain why I felt that way. It wasn't "lust" but it was...attraction.
It was like, "Oh, wow, that guy is...attractive. And I wonder what he's like. And I would love to
just, like, meet him, and talk to him, and find out what his interests are.
And, like, I wonder if he would want to hang out sometime. I mean, I don't know him, but..."
You know? There was the urge to get up and be like, "Hey, you want to hang out sometime?"
You know? It's weird, and I'm like, "I don't know what to do with this.
Why am I feeling this?"
And so I look at my girlfriend, who's holding my hand, and she's like totally in love with me—
and I look at this guy, who's now gone,
and I'm thinking, "I don't know the first thing about this guy, but for some reason I feel this connection—
where I want to get to know him better— and it's something I've never felt for this
girl who's sitting next to me." And it clicked for me for the first time.
"Oh. This is what people talk about when they talk about seeing someone—
when they talk about having a crush on someone, being attracted to someone—
that feeling—that romantic feeling, that sexual feeling, all of it together—
that sense of being attracted to another person.
This is what my guy friend feels for my girlfriend.
This is what all the guys that I know feel for the girls that they talk about.
This is why they talk about the the way they do.
This is why they objectify them sometimes—which I always frowned upon
and said, you know, "I'm a Christian so I don't lust." But I started realizing,
"Wait, it's more than just that I'm a good Christian boy and I don't lust after women.
I don't feel what it is they feel."
And I didn't know what to do about that. Because I thought, "Something's messed up
with me and I don't know why. Am I not a good enough Christian?
I mean, I know I'm a sinner, but I'm forgiven, and I love God, and God's at the center of my life—"
And I started crying—in the middle of the Michael W. Smith concert,
holding my girlfriend's hand. But Michael W. Smith was singing "Friends," and
everyone cries during "Friends," so— [laughter]
So I thought, you know, "Something is wrong with me
and I need to figure out what it is."
And it was when I was 18 that I, for the first time, had this revelation...
"Oh my gosh, this is what people mean when they say they're gay.
When somebody uses the word 'gay.'" I always thought "gay" meant, like, you are
marching half-naked in a Pride Parade
or you're having promiscuous sex with all these people—for some reason
these guys are like—women weren't enough for them and so now they're having sex with men or something.
But all of a sudden I realized, "No no no, that's not it.
What they mean is that they're attracted to the same sex the way that I am—
that there are some people who feel like this.
And it was this weird moment where it was simultaneously this huge relief and this
horrible, terrifying thing. The relief was like—
The way I always describe it is, if you have ever had weird medical symptoms
and you don't know what's wrong, and you go to one doctor after another doctor
after another doctor, and every doctor is like, "I don't know. I don't know why you're
experiencing this. I don't know what's wrong. Let's do some more tests. Let me send you
to another specialist." And finally you find the doctor who says,
"I know what's wrong. I have a name for this. There's a diagnosis for this." They give you a name.
Even if it's a horrible diagnosis—even if it's fatal—there's some sense of relief
in being able to say, "I'm not crazy! Other people have experienced this.
This is a known thing that exists in the world, that has been named."
And that was this sense of relief that I had. Like, "Oh!"
Until that moment, I literally thought I was the only guy in the entire world who had ever experienced
these feelings. And this is why this was the secret I was going to take to my grave.
And then all of a sudden it's like, "Oh. Other guys have. And there's a word for it. And the word is 'gay.'
And that means I'm connected to all these other people who know what it feels like to be
where I am right now." And then there was this terrifying bit—
"What does that mean?"
So I realized I was gay, but then I was like,
"Well, okay, if I have a diagnosis, now I need a cure."
So I got connected with what are popularly known as "ex-gay ministries,"
where I thought that they would help me become straight. But I quickly learned that
they could help people stop having promiscuous gay sex, but those people never actually became straight.
I talked to people who were the success stories of the movement, and they said,
"No, look, your attractions don't actually change. You can stop your behavior—"
But I'm like, "Well, I don't have any behavior to stop! I'm God Boy! What are you talking about?"
I found that the church didn't really know how to take this. Because everyone I knew
assumed that gay people chose to be gay and could choose not to be.
There's an episode of South Park where Stan finds out that his dog Sparky is gay—
and so he trains him and he sits him down and he's like, "Sit, Sparky. Good boy.
Now, shake! Good boy. Now... Don't be gay! Don't be gay, Spark, don't be gay!"
And Sparky just kind of looks at him like, "Rrr?" And of course Cartman's like,
"He still looks pretty gay to me." But— [laughter]
That was the reaction of my Christian friends to me: "Just don't be gay. Just don't be gay."
And I was like, "I don't know how to just not be gay, if 'gay' means attracted to the same sex."
What I realized was that so many of my Christian friends had been living the way that I had,
treating the idea of "homosexuality" as a political issue to be debated. You know?
I was always so concerned that—
I had heard that there were churches that were gay-affirming, and I felt like,
"That's not consistent with what I understand the Bible to say on the subject."
And I saw the culture that was shifting, and, like I said, I was worried that people
would think they were gay when they weren't, and they would go down this
self-destructive lifestyle and all this stuff. And so I had always been so
concerned with that, that I had always treated this issue as something to be
debated and argued and, you know, tell people I'm right.
And I'd never seen anything wrong with that until all of a sudden I was on the other side of it
saying, "I don't really want to debate this. I am just lonely and terrified, and
I don't know what the rest of my life looks like." And all my Christian friends,
who were in that same zone I had been in, responded by wanting to debate with me.
"Well haven't you read what the Scriptures say? Don't you know that Leviticus says a man
should not lie with a man as with a woman?" and I'd say, "Well I'm not lying with anybody!
I'm trying to figure out what God wants me to do with the rest of my life.
Because I think I might be this way for the rest of my life, and—
Does that mean I need to to be celibate for the rest of my life?
If so, if that's what God calls me to, I'll do it! But that's scary and I want to
know people are gonna walk that road with me. Or have I misunderstood what the
Bible has to say on this? Because I thought I knew that the Bible said that
people chose to be gay and now I'm realizing I'm gay and I didn't choose to be.
So I mean maybe I need to rethink this? I don't know. I don't want to come
to the wrong conclusion; I don't want to defy God! I want to live my life in a
holy way. I really need the church's support!" and mostly what I felt from the
church was a complete lack of support— people who started treating me as an
issue instead of as a person. This person they'd known all their lives!
Just because I said, "I think I'm gay."
It was like this word all of a sudden meant that I had abandoned my faith and abandoned the Scriptures.
And it was devastating. I felt like I was a leper, and I didn't know what to do.
So we argue back and forth about how to understand these passages
and how to understand what the Bible is saying to us,
but ultimately the more I studied the Bible and Jesus's way of approaching
Scripture and approaching the law, the more I came to the conclusion that I
believed God would bless same-sex marriages, and that's what I stand for today.
But I have many friends, many Christian friends, including some gay Christian friends,
who don't agree with me on that. And so the question for me is...
On the one hand, what do I think the right answer is? Well that's what I think the right answer is.
Some of you probably like, "Yes, I totally agree with you!"
And some of you are like, "No."
It matters. I think it matters to all of us. I don't think it's a non-issue.
I don't think it's something we just go, "Well, you know, we'll just agree to disagree."
It matters, right? Because if we say something's not sin that is, that's bad.
If we say something is sin that isn't, and make people feel unwelcome,
and they leave the church, that's also bad.
There's not a safe answer.
So we all agree that it matters that we get this right, but we don't agree on what
the right answer is. And I would love to just say, "So now all of you have to agree with me,
and that's the end of the conversation."
And some of you would be happy with that. But I know some of you don't agree with me.
So as a church, as we wrestle with this, the question is, how do we go forward?
Where do we go from here?
you