Gay activism was my passion. I felt suicidal throughout my teens. It was only when overcome with a crippling depression in 1985 that I broke down and came out to my parents when aged 17. Dad and Mum were amazing - merciful, kind, understanding.
I came out in high school at a time when no one admitted publicly to being gay. Then at 18 I was the first person to be openly gay in my London university. I wasn’t just gay - I was 110 per cent gay. Everybody saw this and affirmed it to be true about me. Privately, I also struggled with believing I was a woman trapped in a man’s body.
I preached homosexuality. I saw it as my vocation to sermonise that people were born gay.
I fought for lesbians and gays to be wholly accepted, for churches to change their teaching about homosexuality, and for laws to be made to reflect equal rights across the board for same-sex attracted persons.
I had hundreds of sexual partners before settling down with my perfect man, Steve. He and I entered into a monogamous, long-term committed relationship, fighting together for gay rights.
During our relationship, a fellow student at university - a man of prayer - asked me if I wanted more love in my life. I responded yes - who wouldn’t? He invited me to a young adults’ gathering where each person noticeably had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Within three weeks, I had made a simple prayer of repentance and had asked God’s Spirit to control my life.
I felt nothing but, believing in faith that God now lived in my heart, I began to silently pray a few minutes every day and was discipled by the man of prayer.
Steve began to notice changes in me that he liked. He too committed his life to Jesus. We then preached that it is okay to be gay and Christian, becoming a model gay Christian couple across London.
As I grew in intimacy with Jesus through prayer, so too did I feel discomfort in my relationship with Steve. I felt a particularly gnawing need to cover up my body and not to make it available as had been the custom. I now see that the Holy Spirit was drawing a ‘line in the sand’.
I ended the relationship sensing that somehow manhood and masculinity were still a mystery to me. I left the gay community and made the church my new home with fellow believers.
Some Christian leaders tried to get me to go back to Steve; others castigated me. Jesus just kept loving me.
Once I had rejected labelling myself according to my same-sex attractions - which were still vibrant and very real - I focussed entirely on Jesus. Here began my incredible journey of recovery through prayer and great therapy.
The idea of changing sexual attraction had never crossed my mind. Why should it have? I had wholeheartedly believed the mantra that I was born gay.
For me, therapy was merely about facing the usual emotional hurdles. Only once I stepped away from the gay community did I begin to recognise that a victim mentality had become embedded into my mind through LGBTQ+ ideology and activism.
Over time, various therapies uncovered a mountain of crippling pain. My ‘being gay’ was never therapy’s focus but neither could my lived reality be left outside of the therapists’ doors. Interestingly, the same therapeutic dialogues I had then are likely to soon be deemed illegal across the UK.
Therapy helped me beyond words. I faced repressed memories of infantile trauma, extensive childhood sex abuse, and my being raped on three separate occasions by three different gay men as a teenager, which had also led me on occasions to deeply question my gender as any sense of my maleness had slowly been shattered.
Repentance, forgiveness, and listening for God’s leading along my therapeutic and spiritual journeys became my new norm.
Within a few years of this therapeutic and spiritual rhythm, my insatiable eroticisation of men diminished. This had never been the plan. Unexpectedly, as men stopped being a mystery to me, woman became the mystery I desired to pursue.
I dated, eventually married a woman, and today love being a father. Yes, therapy and prayer did convert me. I became my truest self in line with my biology and fertility. Life has honestly never been better.
Interestingly, if I had never embarked upon insightful therapy, I would never have uncovered the painfully repressed memories of extensive sexual abuse and assault. My faith in Christ gave me the courage to face my abusers.
Years later, I found myself bringing the most prevalent of my childhood abusers before the judiciary. His actions had ruined the lives of tens if not hundreds of children. My witness secured the guilty verdict, and more children were protected from his recidivistic diabolical actions.
For three decades, I have been walking alongside many vulnerable individuals who struggle with unwanted sexual attractions and questions about gender. Their voices are rarely if ever heard. Over half of their stories contain some detail of childhood sexual abuse. All of their stories contain some failure to develop emotional maturity. There is no wonder that LGBTQ+ community struggles with a use-and-abuse culture and with serious issues around mental health. Underlying issues are ignored.
I wonder where my own life would be today if I hadn’t embraced proven therapy. Would I be dead like Steve who died in his forties? Or dead like my gay cousin who took his life months after his same-sex civil ceremony? Or dead like another friend who suicided weeks after his same-sex ‘marriage’ as the inner peace which the ceremony promised him and his long-term partner never materialised?
I wonder how many children were spared being victim to the literal hands of my own childhood sexual abuser.
I wonder how many perpetrators are still abusing because their victims have never been able to truly uncover and face their own pasts.
The British Government has developed proposals to end conversion therapy, which include a new criminal offence, as well as civil measures. They claim to have analysed available evidence and listened to stakeholders, to have learnt from international counterparts and identified gaps in Britain’ legislation. But they have only listened to one side of the story.
Thousands of men and women who privately struggle with same-sex attraction, gender dysphoria, horrendous memories and flashbacks from sexual abuse and assault visit therapists every day. Many lean on pastoral care teams in churches. These carers keep people sane. They keep marriages and families together. They bring recovery and healing into places few can dare to face alone.
One group that wins by demonising therapy and prayer for those struggling with sexual and identity issues is the perpetrators, who lobby as the victims and oppress anyone that dares to challenge their perverted agenda.
It is time for anyone, and especially the Christian community, who truly cares about those grappling with pained sexuality and identity to stand up and to vehemently challenge every politician. Only an outright rejection of the insidious draft Conversion Practices Bill before Parliament will create a safer and more inclusive future.
