Straight to Jesus. Tanya Erzen

you had to do things, and I was willing to do that no matter what the cost. Now I'm not so sure.” Unlike Evan and Lars, most men arrive at New Hope believing that when the Bible references homosexuality, it does so in condemnation, and that these isolated verses are part of a larger tapestry of the word of God serving as irrefutable proof that homosexuality is wrong.

      Scholars like John Boswell contend that some conservative Christians have reinterpreted biblical scriptures to reflect the political agenda of Christian organizations and that these scriptures are not irrefutable truths. According to Boswell, the word “homosexual” does not occur in the Bible, and no extant text or manuscript contains such a word.²³ He presents evidence that the preoccupation with homosexuality is a result of contemporary politics rather than long-standing biblical injunctions. One of the most powerful arguments for this viewpoint is the fact that Jesus never mentions homosexuality in any form in the New Testament. As Evan put it, “I think it's significant that it wasn't a big issue for Jesus. Jesus never mentions it.” Other scholars of sexuality have rigorously demonstrated that modern homosexual identity emerged in the West during the past two centuries, and the category “homosexuality” used by conservative Christians is a modern term placed on a different historical and cultural context.²⁴ Many of these debates are simply irrelevant to the men at New Hope because the idea that homosexuality is “not what God has planned and not what God wants,” as Hank puts it, is the bottom line. The scholarly réévaluation of the scriptures means nothing when a person believes that the scriptures are absolute and immutable truth. As Drew bluntly said, “In Genesis God created man and then he made woman. I believe that Christ walked this earth and that he's real [and] that it's not right. I believe it's a choice.”

      Frank and other ex-gay leaders also interpret biblical passages to mean that in addition to condemnation, the Bible also offers the promise of liberation. The ex-gay movement's founding statement includes compassion for those struggling with homosexuality, but the ability to feel compassion does not translate into endorsement. The idea of homosexuality as sin is central to New Hope's view of scripture, and the distinction between sin and sinner translates to the difference between sexual behavior and identity for ex-gays. Nowhere do they read the Bible as a way to understand homosexuality as a positive way to live. Dwight, a man from Scotland in his early forties who worked in the New Hope offices, claimed, “So, how I see it is that basically God doesn't want anybody to use their bodies for sex unless it's within marriage. I guess I tend to focus on that rather than on looking just at homosexuality.” Marvin Ellison, a Christian ethicist, argues that the Christian tradition has never had a constructive ethic of sexuality that truly affirms and honors the rich diversity of human sexualities.²⁵ He asks, “What would a progressive Christian ethic look like that regarded homosexuality as a morally good way to be and ‘do' sexuality? What difference would it make to focus moral concern not on gender and sexual identity, but on the quality of relational intimacy and whether our connections with each other are just and compassionate?”²⁶ The idea of homosexuality as a social and moral good was beyond the conception of Frank or any of the men at New Hope. They had fully assimilated the idea that positive sexuality could exist only for married heterosexuals.

      Many men at New Hope were quite comfortable with accepting and assimilating a view of scriptures predicated on a starkly polarized moral view of the world. The creation of a moral universe devoid of ambiguity was also a defense against and reaction to reproof and censure for joining an ex-gay ministry. Their experience of being ostracized from their primary community, the church, was critical in their decision to join an ex-gay ministry. Many men endured early rejection as members of their congregations, and others heard messages that homosexuality was a sin akin to murder. Growing up as an active member of an Assemblies of God church in Southern California, Brian internalized these messages from an early age, and they were still the linchpin of his identity. He told me, “It was like, this is sin. You've got to stay away from it, and it's a spiritual battle. It's a war. Spirit forces are raging in the heavenly realm—that kind of thing.” Doug, a new arrival at the program, was a heavyset man who had lived in a gay neighborhood in San Francisco for over twenty years before joining New Hope. He remembers sitting next to his high school boyfriend when Jerry Falwell visited as the guest pastor in the Pentecostal church in Oregon where he was raised. “What is significant was he got up on the pulpit and had this list in descending order of who was going to go to hell, and at the top of the list was the homosexuals,” he recalled. “So, for the first time in my life, being there in church with my secret boyfriend, we both looked at each other like, oh my God, he's talking about us. Here I am a sixteen-yearold boy and this guy is telling me I'm going to go to hell. And so from that point on, there was no way I could live with the guilt of trying to be a churchgoing Christian and trying to be gay.”

      Brian remembers, “[In] any kind of example you wanted to give about how bad the world had gotten you included homosexuality.” During one sermon while he was a teenager, Brian, in his typically outspoken way, went forward and was bold enough to say that he needed prayer for his struggle with homosexuality. The pastors of his church escorted him into a back office where they attempted to exorcise the demon of homosexuality. “It was very weird, with them pounding on me with their fists. Of course, more than anything, I wanted to be rid of it, so I tried my hardest to participate and to eject this thing out of me. And, of course, they didn't succeed.” After pastors urged them to pray more, to fast, to gain more experience in the spiritual disciplines, and to conceal their feelings, many ex-gays simply left their churches. Without exception, this separation produced turmoil, and many ended up rejecting Christianity in all forms until they found New Hope.

      New Hope was one of the few places where these men and women, after years of silence and denial, interacted with others who had shared similar experiences, and where their sexual struggle was the central part of their religious identity. Yet their resentment toward their churches lingered and erupted at times. Lars was one person willing to expose the hypocrisy of many Christians who preached love and compassion but practiced something quite different.

      Most of them can't handle the truth. If you're in the church and you're a drug addict, murderer, whatever, guys will come up to you and slap you on the ass. You're one of the guys. But if you state you struggle with homosexuality, you get the whole pew to yourself.

      The church has a hell of a long ways to go in accepting people where they are because they hate people who are gay. When I was at church the very last time they were talking about Matthew Shepard and his sin and what a tragedy it was, and I wanted to stand up and say, You are the problem. You're the reason Matthew Shepard got murdered.

      I heard Frank and other ex-gay leaders condemn Matthew Shepard's murderers and disassociate themselves from people like Fred Phelps and members of his Topeka, Kansas, church, who protested Shepard's funeral with signs reading, “God Hates Fags.”²⁷ However, neither Frank nor most of the men in the program were willing to go as far as Lars, calling the church to account for preaching words that kill.

      THE LORD'S LAND