As a child and adolescent, I had only one prayer: God, make me straight. I wanted nothing more than to meet a girl, fall in love, have 3.5 children, live in the suburbs, drive a minivan, and own a Sam’s Club card. Over time though, I was confronted with reality of my sexual orientation. The more I resisted it, the more lonely I felt. I wanted to tell other people my “secret”, but I chickened out at the last minute every time. I poured myself into memorizing numerous Bible verses, going to every religious conference I possibly could, and singing louder than everyone else at church. While some people end at “pray away the gay”, I tried to “wash away the gay”. I was baptized four times, with each time proving that no force on heaven or earth could rid me of my unwanted sexual orientation.

In college, I heard a speaker cite a statistic that gay men have an average of forty anonymous sexual partners per year. The speaker’s assertion peaked my curiosity and after just a few minutes of research on Google, I realized the speaker had been misleading. This led me to ask myself whether other things I had heard about gay people were consistent to reality. Somehow, I happened upon the website of gay Christian Bible study group in New York City. I e-mailed the facilitator and asked him if I could Skype in to one of their sessions and he said yes. Sadly, I didn’t go through with my intention. However, I kept that facilitator’s information and contacted him the next summer about the steps I needed to take to begin the process of slowly disclosing to others what I thought I had been hiding for a lifetime.