I once had a guy try and tell me that ‘the reason I was gay was because of the relationship I had with my father.’ Now I’ve had many people tell me that, and at one time that’s what I believed, but what made this one stand out was my response to him. I started laughing (because I had a sudden realization). Then I asked him, “Do you know anyone… anyone at all… someone whose brother’s sister’s, father-in-law’s son’s college roommate’s best friend’s little brother’s step-dad’s daughter’s friend… who has had a good relationship with their father?”
I was a Christian for nearly sixteen years, and in that time I have seen just as many bad Christian fathers as I have ever seen outside the church. And quite frankly, inside the church it’s worse because the fathers can be abusive and the children have to take it because they’re Biblically obliged to submit to their parents. Absalom and Solomon had a rotten father, but they weren’t gay. Isaac’s father tried to kill him, but he wasn’t gay. Cain’s father was God’s first son, and Cain didn’t turn out so well (at least according to legend).
Parenting plays a big role in the upbringing of a child but let’s face it, most of us have had some difficult times with our parents. Even if our parents tried to be good parents, they’re only human, which means that many mistakes were made. Even Jesus had issues with his parents. That’s just the nature of growing up on planet earth. And there are certain issues that will get exaggerated and certain problems that can be created by certain styles of parenting, but that’s like saying a bad parent can make you shorter, or taller, or a different sex all together.
I like to use the metaphor of a child flying a kite. The child is small, and getting the kite into the wind is challenging. If the child’s parent is there to help that child, then the kite goes into the air easier because the parent has the height and know-how to lift the kite. Without the parent, the child may have a harder time. Either way, the kite will still go into the air and will still fly once the child figures out how to use the wind. To some that may seem rather simplistic as they believe that I’m not dealing with the core issues of parent child relationships. So let me just add one little change. We are that kite. Our parents are here to help us and guide us so that we may soar into the wind like the kite. Some of us didn’t have the parental guidance we needed, and we found that we had to struggle harder to get our kites—our soul—into the air. But we did it. Once in the air, what happened on the ground is no longer relevant (provided we break the strings that tie us down and prevent us from soaring). That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. That doesn’t detract from what happened. But even if you had the best parents in the world, you’ve still got to get off the ground. Your parents can only get you so far.
onversely, there’s only so much they can do to hold you down too. The soul was meant to fly, and every soul wants to fly. So any soul that opens up even slightly finds itself discovering ways to hoist itself into the winds of change.
That’s where forgiveness comes in. And when I use the term forgiveness, I’m not talking about forgive and forget, I’m talking about losing yourself in God, and allowing God to become those areas in your life where you feel that you have been damaged. For instance, in my case, my father took away from me my right to defend myself. He used to laugh when other kids would beat me up, but he would never allow me to fight back. I grew up thinking that I wasn’t worth defending. In the forgiveness treatments that I did for my father, several things happened.
First of all, I acknowledged everything I believed my father did to me that caused me pain and grief. I didn’t just acknowledge, I got in touch with the anger, and I wrote it all down on paper in big dark bold letters. I told him everything that he did and why I hated him.
Then for everything that I felt was taken from me by my father, I acknowledged that those very aspects were found in God. God became that parent that would support me, and would stand up for me, and would teach me how to defend myself. God became what I needed in a father, and he did it far more completely than my original father ever could. But then something really bizarre happened. I realized that those very aspects that I found in God were also in me. That meant that I was everything I needed.
Once all this happened, I then turned my need to judge my father over to God. While this wasn’t exactly easy, it wasn’t hard either. It was mostly just dealing with the ego and the ego wanted retribution for the sins that were committed against me.
Just like in Peter Pan, ‘In order to fly you have to think happy thoughts,’ and the only way to get happy thoughts is to learn to forgive. Now please understand, I’m not saying that you have to deny every bad thought that comes into your mind. That’s just denial. What I’m saying is that it’s imperative that we realize that our emotions affect our bodies. Anger and hatred are toxic, not just to the personality, but to the body as a whole. I heard an interesting quote: “You’re not punished FOR your anger, you’re punished BY your anger.” Emotions are like water. When water is bad, we boil it to purify it. When emotions are toxic, we use forgiveness to all them to run free again. Sometimes humor can help. I’ve had amazing luck with humor. Sometimes when emotions are a little too much for me, I make fun of them. I over-exaggerate their outcome as a comedian on stage would, and that helps me purify them.
That doesn’t mean that the experiences of the past are meaningless, it just means that we give them new meaning. Instead of accepting the label of victim, we turn our experience into something completely different. This also applies to those who hate us because we’re gay. We can’t make them change, but we can “outlive” them. In other words, as we live to our highest potential through forgiveness and compassion, we will see some powerful changes: both in us and in them.
But I want to talk about what I’ve been through, my fight for fifteen years to “overcome” homosexuality and why I suddenly gave that up. I now believe that we can be spiritual; find God; AND be gay. And this isn’t because we’re making some sort of concession, but because God really doesn’t care who you sleep with.