CHOOSING TO BE GAY
July 8, 2007
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
More than 25 years ago, while I was doing what was called a “Geological Exposition of the Second coming of Christ” on the southern coast of Mississippi, I met a Vietnam Marine vet, with whom I had lunch. He told me his son was gay, and I asked him and his Pastor if I could ask him questions how he came to be gay, and what his experiences had been during his tenure of practicing homosexuality. I knew that sooner or later I would have to deal with the issue in the church I pastor. The only gay I had ever known used to drive up
to Little Rock from Pine Bluff. He gave some boys I knew twenty-five dollars to let him perform oral sex on them.
To allow a gay to practice such an act on my person was certainly one lust I never experienced, no matter how much he would have offered.
I am not offering any n
ames. I feel sure that the Pine Bluff man died long ago, and many of the boys who took the money are also dead, because he must have been in his fifties, and the boys were in Junior High as was I.
The marine’s son h ad contr
acted HIV about a year after he stopped the practice of heterosexual sex, and began to practice homosexual acts. It was only after his HIV status changed to full blown AIDS he became repentant of his choice.
He apologized to the church, and was restored to fellowship. He was there every night of the lecture, during which I developed a better insight into the complexity of homosexuality, from discussions with him after the lectures in the Pastor’s office. I was born with a very strong heterosexual character, and acts of homosexuality are so terribly repulsive to me, I wanted to understand more of what I would have to deal with if it ever came up where I pastor. I follow the Scriptures in deal
ing with it.
I questioned the young man for about three hours, during which time we discussed the aspects of homosexual desires he felt and practiced. I did not badger or push him into any statement he made to me. He was born a full fledged heterosexual and CHOSE OF HIS OWN FREE WILL TO BECOME A HOMOSEXUAL. He died of AIDS within a year after I met him. He died as a non-practicing homosexual who was restored to membership in a MB church upon repentance of his choice.
I confess that most of what I know up front, after having read a lot
of pro and com articles on the subject is based on my two experiences with Mr. Pine Bluff and the Marine’s gay son. But based on what I have read in the Scriptures, what I have read and learned pro and con in many articles, and by my two “close encounters,” I am perfectly satisfied THAT BEING GAY MUST BE A MATTER OF PERSONAL, WILFULL CHOICE!
I will not deny that genes and environmental considerations will make the choice easier for some heterosexuals than others, but I am convinced it is not a matter of being BORN GAY, IT IS A MATTER OF CHOOSING TO BE GAY.
I thought of that young man when I read the article which follows!
Begin WorldNetDaily Article
‘Gay’-rights leader quits homosexuality
Rising star in movement says God liberated him from lifestyle
July 3, 2007
By Art Moore
He was a rising star in the “gay rights” movement, but Michael Glatze now declares not only has he given up activism – he’s no longer a homosexual.
Glatze – who had become a frequent media source as founding editor of Young Gay America magazine – tells the story of his transformation in an exclusive column published today by WND.
Although Glatze cut himself off from the homosexual community about a year and a half ago, he says the column likely will surprise some people.
“This will actually be news to anybody I used to relate to,” he told WND.
The radical change in his life, Glatze recalls, began with inner “promptings” he now attributes to God.
“I hope I can share my story,” he said. “I feel strongly God has put me here for a reason. Even in the darkest days of late-night parties, substance abuse and all kinds of things – when I felt like, ‘Why am I here, what am I doing?’ – there was always a voice there.
“I didn’t know what to call it, or if I could trust it, but it said ‘hold on.'”
Glatze said he became aware of homosexual feelings at about the age of 14 and publicly declared himself “gay” at age 20. Finally, after a decade in which his leadership role in the homosexual activist world grew – but alongside it, a mysterious inner conflict – he says he finally was “liberated.”
In fact, he writes in his WND column today, “‘coming out’ from under the influence of the homosexual mindset was the most liberating, beautiful and astonishing thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life.”
Before “coming out” in his column today, Glatze contacted WND Managing Editor David Kupelian after reading his book, “The Marketing of Evil,” Which Glatze said “has given me so much help in my process of healing from the profound influences of evil in our current society.”
“There is nothing that would give me more pleasure,” he wrote to Kupelian, “than to say the Truth about ‘homosexuality’ and atone for my sins in that regard.”
Glatze’s transformation calls to mind that of another prominent “gay” magazine publisher who also has renounced her former lifestyle. Lesbian activist Charlene Cothran, longtime publisher of Venus magazine, became a Christian and gave her magazine a new mission “to encourage, educate and assist those who desire to leave a life of homosexuality.” She adds: “Our ultimate mission is to win souls for Christ, and to do so by showing love to all God’s people.”
In his column, Glatze doesn’t mince words, calling homosexual sex purely “lust-based,” meaning it can never fully satisfy.
“It’s a neurotic process rather than a natural, normal one,” he writes. “Normal is normal – and has been called normal for a reason.”
After becoming editor of Young Gay America magazine at age 22, Glatze received numerous awards and recognition, including the National Role Model Award from the major homosexual-rights organization Equality Forum. Media gravitated toward him, leading to appearances on PBS television and MSNBC and quotes in a cover story in Time magazine called “The Battle Over Gay Teens.”
He produced, with the help of PBS affiliates and Equality Forum, the first major documentary film to address homosexual teen suicide, “Jim In Bold,” which toured the world and received numerous “best in festival” awards. Young Gay America’s photo exhibit, telling the story of young people across North America, toured Europe, Canada and parts of the U.S.
In 2004, Glatze moved from San Francisco to Halifax in eastern Canada where his partner, Young Gay America magazine’s publisher, had family.
The magazine, he said, sought to provide a “virtuous counterpart” to the o
ther newsstand media aimed at homosexual youth.
But Glatze contends “the truth was, YGA was as damaging as anything else out there, just not overtly pornographic, so more ‘respected.'”
In 2005, Glatze was featured in a panel with Judy Shepard, mother of slain homosexual Matthew Shepard, at the prestigious JFK Jr. Forum at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
“It was after viewing my words on a videotape of that ‘performance,'” he writes, “that I began to seriously doubt what I was doing with my life and influence.”
“Knowing no one who I could approach with my questions and my doubts, I turned to God,” he says. “I’d developed a growing relationship with God, thanks to a debilitating bout with intestinal cramps caused by the upset stomach-inducing behaviors I’d been engaged in.”
Toward the end of his time with Young Gay America, Glatze said, colleagues began to notice he was going through some kind of religious experience.
Just before leaving, not fully realizing what he was doing, he wrote on his office computer his thoughts, ending with the declaration: “Homosexuality is death, and I choose life.”
“I was so nervous, it was like I wasn’t even writing it myself,” he said.
Inexplicably, he told WND, he left the words on the screen for others to see.
“People who looked at it were stunned; they thought it was crazy,” he said.
But he left his co-workers wondering about where he stood, never having fully explained his decision to step down.
Looking back on his old lifestyle, Glatze told WND whenever he had a sense that he was doing something wrong, “I would I just attribute it to, ‘that’s just the way life is.'”
“If ever I were to question anything, [my colleagues] would say, ‘You’re such an idealist.'”
Glatze said he thought opponents of homosexual activism were “mean and crazy, and they wanted to hurt me.”
“I thought they were out to get me,” he said. “They made me really, really mad – and scared, I think. I wanted them to go away.”
Glatze said he couldn’t allow himself to think they were sincere in their beliefs.
But he now has deep respect for a Christian aunt who disapproved of his lifestyle.
She “was never judgmental, but always firm,” he said.
Read Michael Glatze’s WND column today, “How a ‘gay rights’ leader became straight”
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