Heterosexuality: It’s about obedience, says local group
by BY COLLEEN KEATING
10-28-2005

Editor’s note: This is the third in our series of four articles on the ex-gay movement. In an effort to present a complete picture, we are exploring all sides of this issue, including the viewpoints of those who work to help others live straight lives. The next piece will highlight gay-affirming religious and psychological responses to the ex-gay perspective, and touch upon alternate ways of interpreting the Bible's views of sexuality, since the ex-gay movement is primarily religious in nature, in addition to exploring the consensus of modern psychiatry.

If you are an ex-ex-gay, and would like to tell your story anonymously or otherwise, we would very much like to hear from you. We also welcome letters on the topic of the ex-gay movement.

Looking for support in your journey from gay to ex-gay to straight? First Light may be the place for you. Ron Lutjens, of Old Orchard Presbyterian Church, along with others, some affiliated with Covenant Theological Seminary (CTS), located in Creve Coeur, formed the group in response to a series of articles about gay rights in the Webster-Kirkwood Times around three years ago. While First Light sought advice from other ex-gay ministries such as Harvest USA (located in Philadelphia), they are independent and not connected with any individual church or organization.

I spent around an hour with Luke Brouwer and Beth Simmons, both part of the ministry, discussing their group's goals:

"We're not a psychological organization. We're very careful in how we deal with the psychological and therapeutic issues. Our goal mainly is … to provide Christian support and discipleship … we are very careful about how we talk about the process of healing," says Brouwer, who is heterosexual and First Light's ministry coordinator. He is a master's of divinity and counseling graduate student at CTS. In addition to handling administrative duties, he leads a group of men struggling with same-sex attractions. They're glad to have a straight man working with them, he says. "We're just guys," Brouwer explains, saying that they have more in common than not.

Simmons, on the other hand, has been in relationships with women, though she never was out as a lesbian. She is the newest member of the Board of Directors and will be working with the women's group, which has only a few members so far. Asked if she was ever in a committed, monogamous relationship, Simmons answers in the affirmative:

"I had three lesbian relationships, ranging in length from six months to a year." She's now been married for seven years, to a man, and while she admits to occasional attractions to women, she is happy. When I asked how she identifies — ex-gay, straight, or struggling — she responded that she doesn't like those labels.

Both Simmons and Brouwer frame the discussion about homosexuality in terms of obedience: to God and scripture. The focus, they say, is not to "become straight" (they do not keep statistics about the success or failure rate of participants), but to become more faithful and obedient Christians.

When pressed about those Christians who are living contentedly as gay, having reconciled their lives with God and scripture, Brouwer casts doubt upon the possibility of a truly happy gay “lifestyle.” The gay men he has interacted with, he says, are "lonely," some of them are promiscuous (a friend of his in New York was a male prostitute) and they feel "empty." Even aside from his interpretation of scripture, Brouwer said, he hasn't seen that the gay “lifestyle” can promise fulfillment. This fits with the view, held by evangelical theologians such as John Stott (who is quoted on the First Light Web site), that "At the heart of the homosexual condition is a deep loneliness, the natural human hunger for mutual love, a search for identity, and a longing for completeness."

Simmons, on the other hand, spoke of at least one Christian woman that she knows who is in a partnership going on twenty years. They have a child and are happy together. However, Simmons says, she asked her friend what she would do "if she one day came to the conclusion that she had been wrong, that homosexuality is against God's will." Would she leave her partner? The friend said no, she probably would not. That, for First Light, is evidence that the root of homosexuality is disobedience.

Their Web site, firstlightstlouis.org, says it explicitly: "homosexual desire is something to be resisted rather than embraced, since it is contrary to the sexual boundaries set by God for our good." First Light also has a group for straight men who consider themselves addicted to pornography-in addition to homosexuality, First Light sees masturbation and pornography as outside of God's "sexual boundaries."

The organization doesn't require that one be a Christian to attend a support group. Brouwer explained that all they require is "openness" to Christianity. He wouldn't tell me precisely how many non-Christians are attending the support groups, but he did say there may be a couple of men (out of around twenty) who are in a place of questioning. Faced with the question of whether one must be a Christian to overcome homosexuality, Brouwer and Simmons didn't give a definite response. There is no cookie-cutter cause for being gay, they said. Simmons herself comes from a non-abusive family, and simply found herself, in her late teens, attracted to women.

She is now in a place where she views those attractions as sinful and — as a married woman — refuses to act upon them. Whether she, and the countless other men and women who are struggling to defeat same-sex desires, will be completely "successful" isn't the concern of First Light.

In the organization's own words: "We believe that the complete victory over sexual temptation — homosexual as well as heterosexual — will only come in the end when Christ returns."

LOCAL NEWS HEADLINES