Rick Warren And The Ex-Gay Movement

I was in full time ministry at a neighboring evangelical megachurch, where I was fighting a desperate battle against depression and despair in attempting to “cure” myself of my homosexuality. This was, without a doubt, the worst time in my life. I spent the majority of my Fridays as a young, 23 year old gay man sitting in a room with a group of men whose self loathing and struggle was overwhelming. These were largely married men, men with children, some of them former ministers, whose entire lives became consumed with undertaking the impossible act of modifying, or at least seeking to neuter, their own sexual orientation.

Looking at the deadlock these otherwise gifted men were in was extremely painful and one of the major spurs to my rethinking issues of sexual orientation and faith, and I am proud to say I came out the other side a reasonably well adjusted gay man. So when I send emails to my otherwise liberal friends telling them to send an email expressing their disapproval of the choice of Warren, and they send me emails back acknowledging the political symbolism of why Obama did what he did, please understand my frustration.

It’s obvious what Obama is trying to do by having Warren give the convocation at his inauguration, and it is understandable – but for me as a human being who was personally damaged by Warren’s theology and his church specifically, it is unforgivable. And to cover it over with vague rhetoric about a politics of inclusion and unity is similarly unforgivable.

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