Why do some Christians believe that quoting bible verses or praying can turn gay people straight?
Being gay I know that this is not possible. Afterall, I’ve been gay my whole life and I went through a period where i tried to ‘pray to become straight for years. I tried to date girls and ‘act straight’. However, this lead to a psychological breakdown. Afterwhich, I decided to fully accept myself the way I’d always been since I was a small child and just be myself and I felt much more at ease about myself. Why do some christians put people through this?
Thousands of other gay people have had identical experiences, myself included. Then there are those who claim to be “cured” or “delivered.” I have known a few. One was never gay to begin with. (Once, when he was in college, he got drunk, and almost had sex with another man. Notice the almost. The fact is, he was a virgin until he married his wife years later. He was never gay.) Another man went through the “ex-gay” thing three times. Each time, he came out saying he was now straight. He even went on TV with the group to say that. He got married. Then he got divorced. Because absolutely nothing had changed.
The founds of Exodus, the most well-known of the ex-gay groups, publicly admitted it does not work, and apologized for their part in the fraud.
My church put me through two exorcisms, I fasted for weeks at a time, prayed all night, did everything I was told. And when it didn’t work, my pastor tried to talk me into suicide! Of course, I had a breakdown. They had convinced me that God wouldn’t accept me as I am. And I knew I couldn’t change who I was. So I backslid, left the church and gave up on God.
Thankfully, God never gave up on me. He came after me, found me where I was, convinced me of His love for me… JUST AS I WAS. Under His guidance, I began to study scripture in the original languages. I learned that the church has been perpetuating a lie for the last few hundred years. God never called homosexuality a sin. The church made that declaration in the middle ages, borrowed an idea about Sodom from the Quran, and beginning about 400 years ago, wrote those ideas into their Bible translations.
Details at the site below.
Edit: to educate some of the unenlightened above: Being gay is NOT a choice. If you can’t figure that out from what the asker wrote, then there is no hope for you. None of us chose to be gay. And to the bright one who thinks we are gay because we tried to leave God so He gave us up to a reprobate mind: What arrogance! For your information, I knew I was gay when I was four. I was raised to love God, and always have. Even as a small child, my desire was to get closer to Him, and at age seven, I recognized a call to ministry. So don’t you dare stand there and judge us with that nonsense. You clearly have no understanding of the context of Romans 1 (what Paul was actually writing about), and thus twist his words to suit your own bigotries.
