It’s Not Gay: Examining Liberation from Lifestyle Bondage

on October 19, 2014

“I wish somebody had…said, ‘Change is possible,’” popular Christian songwriter Dennis Jernigan reflected upon his past while receiving the Courage Award for Former Homosexuals at the Second Annual Ex-Gay Awareness Month Conference. Jernigan and about 60 attendees at this October 3-4 event in an undisclosed Washington, D.C. location expressed profound appreciation for deliverance from deeply destructive and disturbed homosexual desires.

An evening with Jernigan and his biographical, 90-minute documentary Sing over Me opened the conference. “The core issue for every human being…is identity,” Jernigan says in the film while discussing his troubled upbringing in the country town of Boynton, Oklahoma. The “emotional kid” Jernigan enjoyed drawing and music unlike many other male peers and subsequently endured school bullying as a “fag,” thus inciting desires for undisturbed loneliness.

Other factors such as a man exposing himself to a terrified five-year old Jernigan in a public restroom caused him to question his sexuality. “If I performed well,” meanwhile, Jernigan considered the only basis for obtaining his father’s love. “I had my dad’s affection all the time, I just never realized it,” Jernigan would only later learn in an adult reconciliation with his father, who likewise had a distant father.

“I liked the attention…the affirmation” in secret homosexual explorations with other boys, Jernigan therefore recalled. “Core places of deficit” can incite homosexuality, recalled Reverend Stephen H. Black his personal experience on the subsequent Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX) panel.   Therefore the “stronger, and the more powerful, the more attractive” men were for Black.

Yet church sermons about “homosexuals going straight to hell” along with other overheard condemnations made Jernigan depressed, Sing over Me recounted. “God messed up on me, I’m a mistake,” a college-aged Jernigan ultimately felt as he entered a relationship with a man who similarly told Jernigan “you need to admit… this is just the way you are.” Feelings of “being used,” though, continued to mark his homosexual experiences and Jernigan contemplated suicide.

A tombstone marking where the “old Dennis was buried…died to sin” and “born again” on November 7, 1981, however, notes Jernigan’s conversion. Jernigan went on to wed his wife Melinda, also present at the conference, and father nine children in a happy marriage. The Jernigans now offer their Oklahoma home as a “hospital” for people like a Spanish man, who discussed in a video conference with Jernigan, trying to escape “sexual brokenness” to enter marriage and fatherhood.  Figuring out “How to rise up in masculinity” likewise challenged Black.

In this “safe place” where people “can be honest,” Jernigan can “just listen to people” and “not…cast a stone at anyone.” Angry homosexuals’ “defensive detachment” necessitates a therapy “safe space,” concurred Voice of the Voiceless (VV) President Christopher Doyle during a later presentation by fellow former homosexual and VV advisory board member Robin Goodspeed. “Come to me with all that baggage and I will help you,” a man in Sing over Me says of Jesus and turning away from unwanted same-sex attractions (SSA). “My particular sin, God hates more than others,” contrasts as a false message the man learned at his church.

Christians are called to  “have the ministry of reconciliation,” Jernigan stated during the post-screening discussion. Yet Jernigan draws the line at allowing a homosexual cousin to bring his partner to the Jernigan home in order to protect his family. A “real possibility” cited by Jernigan in Sing over Me, meanwhile, is that “hate speech” accusations will come “just for telling my story.” “The pressure is these days to be quiet.”

A “very garden variety ex-homosexual” despite claims that such people “don’t exist,” Goodspeed’s presentation shared similar elements of despair and deliverance with Jernigan’s story. “Sexually abused in a life threatening manner” at the age of 2 by a baby sitter, Goodspeed “for a lifetime…hated my father” for negligence in her view and was abusive toward her siblings due to an anger problem. Rather than combating her depression, an Episcopal youth pastor offered to smoke marijuana with her in the 1960s. A counselor with whom Goodspeed discussed her abuse, meanwhile, concluded of her homosexual attractions that “this is who you are.”

Goodspeed “completely immersed herself in the homosexual life,” becoming a “heinous heathen” and “hate-filled homosexual” with “pretty hideous” life details. Goodspeed thereby “could never get away from…a mountain of shame” in knowing that “what she was doing was wrong.” Alcohol abuse and suicide thoughts marked her life, such as when she drove drunk hoping to kill herself and not anyone else. “I should have been dead many, many times” like other homosexuals who put their lives at risk, she said.

“God never gave up on me,” Goodspeed judged in discussing her survival. “My mother’s prayers are the reason I am sitting here” alive, Goodspeed said on the PFOX panel. This devout Christian mother “never stopped confronting me,” Goodspeed’s presentation noted. The mother lived long enough battling cancer to see her daughter’s conversion away from homosexuality “back to the child of God I was born to be.”

Gender confused individuals as well suffer from suicidal thinking, substance abuse, and other disorders like impulsive spending, Help 4 Families founder Denise Shick explained in her presentation. Gender confusion likewise has roots in poor parenting. About 90% of men wanting to become women had bad relationships with their father, often coming to assume that the mother’s world was safer. Alternately, women wanting to become men often want male control after a father abuses a mother. Shick recalls that one father said “Only whores wear lipstick,” to his daughter.

Cross-dressing often arouses gender confused individuals sexually and with desires for surgery. “It’s just like an alcoholic,” Shick observed, referencing a man who found the urge to  cross-dress “controlling me.” Yet only a feminized man or masculine woman results from any “sex change,” even when a man underwent 21 surgeries by the age of 32 while seeking bodily perfection. “To mimic a female” indeed attracted a man in a film presented by Shick after his mother, already having two sons, said that he should have been a girl.

As with Shick’s own father, gender confusion wreaks havoc with families, conservative commentator Sandy Rios noted in accepting the PFOX Freedom Award. Rios’ 6’4” pilot friend Seth once came to her with a picture of himself in drag and revealed years of cross-dressing. “You’re too ugly to be a woman,” Rios protested and condemned his vain desires to become a woman in light of his family as the “most selfish thing you could do.” Rios notwithstanding, Seth “transitioned” to “Vera,” leaving behind a wife and family devastated by his perversion. By contrast, one conference participant discussed how she thankfully withdrew from an appointed surgery.

A “time of sexual confusion” accordingly appeared in Doyle’s conference opening prayer before the Sing over Me screening. Yet for “thousands of people out there” with SSA, Doyle emphasized, “this does not define us as who we are” and change is possible. “You have been out of homosexuality as long as I have been alive,” Doyle commented upon his birth year and Jernigan’s 1981 “tombstone.”

Now accordingly Goodspeed’s “primary message is to exhort other ex-gays” to tell their stories, her presentation argued. With homosexuality, the “sooner you get out, the more opportunity…to change your life,” Goodspeed in her 50s with no husband or family noted. Family Research Council analyst Peter Sprigg also noted on the PFOX panel that knowing ex-gays could influence public perceptions, just as opinion polls indicate the same for homosexuals.

Yet “there may be a price that comes with” coming out as ex-gay, Sprigg warningly agreed with Goodspeed’s previous presentation. A “grand crusade” currently seeks homosexuality’s approval, Rios observed. Thus the message that “young people with same-sex attractions have choices” on PFOX fliers does not unanimously please, Sprigg noted in his presentation on high school curriculum battles in his Montgomery county, Maryland, home. Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr judged school-distributed PFOX fliers to this effect “reprehensible and detestable,” Sprigg recalled.

“Insidious” and “hideous legislation” prohibiting sexual orientation therapy for minors backed by powerful supporters, meanwhile, provoked a “feeling of David against Goliath” in Goodspeed’s presentation. “But who won,” Goodspeed cheered in noting the defeat of 14 of 16 such state law proposals, even with mendacious therapy opponents noted by Rios. Yet, Doyle noted at the closing award ceremony, his volunteer colleagues lobby on these matters “out of pure love” against homosexual activists enjoying budgeted millions. While “thank you Jesus” audience cries greeted Doyle in discussing these victories before Ambassador Alan Keyes’ keynote address, Doyle demanded “therapy equality.”

Former PFOX President Greg Quinlan praised the courage of Doyle and other former homosexuals while presenting Jernigan’s Courage Award. Ex-gay Quinlan is now attracted to women, but they are no longer attracted to a 56-year old Quinlan, he joked. Nonetheless, “I have to proclaim that there is freedom in Jesus Christ.”

  1. Comment by Greg on October 19, 2014 at 2:04 pm

    I’ve always been struck by the virulence of the “anti-conversion therapy” crowd. They claim that we can’t change who we are, and if they are religious, they throw in, “God made us this way.” So-called conversion therapy, therefore, is un-natural and “un-scientific” because it doesn’t work. Or so the charge goes.

    Yet the very same people support “sex-change” operations! Now what is more un-natural and un-scientific than believing that a male becomes a female, or vice versa, merely because they changed their hair style and had their genitals mutilated?

  2. Comment by Paul Hoskins on October 19, 2014 at 5:21 pm

    Indeed.

    “Born gay” but not “born male.”

    I guess it makes sense to mental defectives.

  3. Comment by Veritas1965 on October 27, 2014 at 11:09 pm

    You are the one who is mentally defective, and an asshole to boot.

  4. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 25, 2016 at 10:01 pm

    And they are contradicted by every medical association.

  5. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 26, 2016 at 12:14 pm

    The World Psychiatric Association joined every national medical association calling for an end to reparative gay conversion therapy, explaining it cured nobody but harmed many. The decades-old ex-gay ministries totally collapsed, too, after 40 years of ‘change’ claims.

  6. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 26, 2016 at 12:14 pm

    Gregg has zero understanding of LGBT issues, but the most ignorant always think they know it all.

  7. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 26, 2016 at 9:52 pm

    Gregg has learned nothing after years of blabbering. He just changes his comments to mask his continued wallowing in the shallow pool of bitter bigotry. He has no desire to learn about the issue, simply to spew hate.

  8. Comment by Gregg on September 26, 2016 at 8:57 pm

    “Appeal to authority” fallacy.

    As I asked two years ago…”What is more un-natural and un-scientific than believing that a male becomes a female, or vice versa, merely because they changed their hair style and had their genitals mutilated?”

  9. Comment by MarcoPolo on October 19, 2014 at 3:20 pm

    The event sounded like a technical success. Too bad you had to mention the involvement of Alan Keyes. How is it that people even listen to that man?

  10. Comment by AEHarrod on October 19, 2014 at 4:47 pm

    He had an interesting discussion of natural law, some themes of which I have heard before. He may not, on the other hand, be the best politician.

  11. Comment by Supertx on October 20, 2014 at 3:29 pm

    I would love to share the documentary with someone who is in that struggle, but there is that fear that it could push them further away. Seems like we are preaching to the choir while the culture tells them what they are doing is fine. Tough battle.

  12. Comment by AEHarrod on October 20, 2014 at 6:13 pm

    The documentary is a very compassionate story.

  13. Comment by Supertx on October 20, 2014 at 6:57 pm

    Good to know. Maybe it would be helpful, then. Thanks.
    I do know someone else who went through this. She is now able to look back very objectively and understand why it all happened, why she was caught up in it, etc.

  14. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 25, 2016 at 10:02 pm

    And she is still a lesbian, but denouncing her own kind.

  15. Comment by Supertx on September 26, 2016 at 8:36 am

    Not so, but by saying that, it is a great way to discredit anything that doesn’t fit your agenda.

  16. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 26, 2016 at 10:05 am

    Look at the evidence. She herself does not claim to be heterosexual. And after 40 years of ‘ex-gay’ claims, the leaders admitted what they had long known: Nobody changed from homosexual to heterosexual.

  17. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 26, 2016 at 10:06 am

    People do not get duped into being homosexual, in spite of your earlier comment. Sexual orientation is not a choice, per every medical association. And it is not something a person can choose to change.

  18. Comment by Supertx on September 26, 2016 at 1:37 pm

    Your comments are not proven facts, despite you feeling that they are. I believe there are multiple reasons why people are in a gay lifestyle.

  19. Comment by Evan Hurst on October 22, 2014 at 9:30 pm

    Talk to ex-gays, their stories are worth hearing. Those stories will never get told in the MSM, no chance. The message of the left is,”Shut up and act like you enjoy being gay, whether you like it or not!”

  20. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 25, 2016 at 10:02 pm

    No such thing as ‘ex-gay’ turned heterosexual. I was in the ex-gay ministries until they folded up in 2013 after the leaders admitted what they had long known: nobody changed from homosexual to heterosexual.

  21. Comment by Supertx on September 26, 2016 at 1:38 pm

    Really? What organization? Which leaders came to this conclusion? Names?

  22. Comment by Robin on October 25, 2014 at 12:24 am

    http://inaweofhimumc.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/exhomosexual-just-my-story/

  23. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 25, 2016 at 10:00 pm

    “Gays can change through Christ” proclaimed ex-gays for 40 years, but in 2013 the leaders admitted nobody changed from homosexual to heterosexual. Every major, ex-gay ministry from the US to Australia faded into history. Doyle never was gay; he admitted to trying to molest girls before leading a few people in his new “Ex-gay for pay” scam. https://www.truthwinsout.org/news/2013/03/33747/

  24. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 25, 2016 at 10:04 pm

    There are a few dozen ex-gays left, and they all make money off the claim one way or the other. They sell ‘ex-gayness’ like Amway, with phony testimonials to dupe the public.

  25. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 25, 2016 at 10:05 pm

    When you hear an ex-gay testimony, just ask the person if they lust for the opposite sex, and they will look at you like you are crazy, then admit they are not hetero.

  26. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 26, 2016 at 12:12 pm

    Dennis Jernigan is typical of the few remaining ex-gays – they all have a financial stake in the claim. But the ex-gay leaders admitted nobody changed from homosexual to heterosexual.

  27. Comment by Rusty Writer on September 26, 2016 at 12:18 pm

    We now know that was the last national ‘ex-gay’ event that group ever held, after having 9 people the previous year and none in 2015. This year they sent out their press release and got zero interest. The ex-gay scam is dead.

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