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E302: Why He Walked Away from Homosexual Hookup Culture | E302 Lila Rose Show | E302 Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  I'm curious about your first sort of self identification as I
• 0:03
  might be gay. My introduction to pornography
• 0:05
  was so early. These boundaries were broken so
• 0:09
  early, kind of as a matter of course.
• 0:11
  Most in our culture have some sort of sexual wound, addiction,
• 0:15
  trauma, bad experience. They need to be accompanied.
• 0:18
  There's. A type of good masculinity that
• 0:20
  isn't entirely safe. It's kind of being called into
• 0:24
  something a little risky, I think.
• 0:26
  I perceive that as only threatening, not a challenge
• 0:31
  that I could navigate effectively.
• 0:33
  If you were the therapist for your father growing up, what
• 0:36
  would you tell your father to do differently?
• 0:38
  If I had had something like that, it could have been so
• 0:41
  helpful. Really, the culture would say,
• 0:43
  well, somebody who's born again, becomes a Christian, leaves the
• 0:45
  same sex lifestyle, once gay, always gay.
• 0:47
  I don't want to be with a guy, I want to be with her.
• 0:51
  I mean, I got through something, you know, my wife.
• 0:55
  Previously on the show, you said that you began to practice
• 0:59
  homosexuality at a young age. Yeah.
• 1:01
  But then you eventually chose to leave that lifestyle.
• 1:04
  Yes. And had a transformation, yes.
• 1:07
  What was the instigation for that?
• 1:10
  Honestly, I think it was the kind of wooing power of Jesus.
• 1:15
  So I was raised in a very nominal Christian family, so it
• 1:19
  didn't figure in so much to my early sexual desires and early
• 1:26
  experiences of homosexuality. So I kind of got on a track to
• 1:33
  sort of integrating my homosexuality early and, and I
• 1:41
  wasn't, you know, so I wasn't a Christian.
• 1:43
  I was just kind of making meaning of my feelings and
• 1:50
  efforts at securing some kind of masculine intimacy with, with
• 1:55
  peers wrongfully. And I had two older brothers who
• 2:03
  I, I didn't get along with very well.
• 2:05
  And so there was kind of an estrangement from them and how I
• 2:11
  viewed myself as a male and these two older brothers who in
• 2:15
  some ways you could say we're a little bit more traditional and
• 2:18
  into each other and not so much me.
• 2:21
  I mean, my family was pretty good.
• 2:23
  So I'm, I, I don't want to paint a bleak picture or sort of a
• 2:28
  trauma based picture that this happened.
• 2:32
  And then I was disorienting. I was disoriented.
• 2:36
  I would say it was a more, a lot of different factors in my
• 2:41
  family combined with what was going on in the culture.
• 2:45
  It was the sexual revolution was breaking out in this beach town,
• 2:50
  Long Beach. And so this interplay between
• 2:55
  personal insecurity and isolation and I think skewed
• 3:01
  perceptions of myself as very inadequate as a masculine being
• 3:07
  though that was that was kind of the dark thread in my early
• 3:12
  life. And then that morphed into
• 3:17
  sexualizing my need for connection with the masculine,
• 3:22
  trying to secure good peer relations, which I simply had
• 3:28
  not done before. But of course that also skews
• 3:32
  things that much further. So whatever divide I had, which
• 3:38
  I did have, one got bigger through the homosexual
• 3:43
  identification and acting out. Now I had these two brothers and
• 3:48
  they both became like radical Christians through Jesus people,
• 3:54
  Chuck Smith, Lonnie Frisbee, all that stuff.
• 3:57
  They were older. So I I kind of just missed it,
• 4:02
  but they didn't gratefully. And they, they changed so much
• 4:08
  from being kind of sullen, bullying, indifferent to me to
• 4:15
  being very concerned. And they could see that I was
• 4:22
  changing. I was beginning to get identify
• 4:25
  and hanging out with these dudes and they could see that I was
• 4:30
  changing. I was changing like something
• 4:33
  was happening with me, which was not good.
• 4:37
  And they saw that and they were concerned.
• 4:41
  So that was the beautiful thing about my brothers as Christians.
• 4:45
  They weren't just like, oh, he's violating the moral code.
• 4:51
  They were more, oh, we care about you, where are you?
• 4:57
  Are you okay? You know, I remember my mother
• 5:01
  sitting us all down. Do you remember the book?
• 5:03
  Go Ask Alice? Do you recall?
• 5:05
  Oh, it was like a, it's like in the late 60s.
• 5:08
  And it was, it was written by some girl who died from a drug
• 5:12
  overdose or something. But it was her diary.
• 5:14
  It was actually her diary. And it it, it, it was just, it
• 5:19
  was kind of a window to this kind of sensual chemical world
• 5:27
  of Southern California. Was it about like, her sexual
• 5:29
  experiences? Yeah, and drug.
• 5:31
  Drugs. And how old were you when you
• 5:33
  read it? Maybe 11.
• 5:35
  Oh, wow. And yeah, but my mom was, you
• 5:37
  know, she was kind of up. They were educators and they
• 5:39
  were kind of up on what was happening.
• 5:41
  And my mom was just scared. She just said, you know, I don't
• 5:44
  want, I don't want this to happen to you guys, you know,
• 5:49
  and, and, and in fact, it was happening.
• 5:53
  So the, my introduction to pornography was so early, you
• 5:59
  know, maybe 9 or 10. This is before Internet.
• 6:02
  So you, you sort of had to go out and get it and do movies.
• 6:06
  And you know, so these boundaries were broken so early
• 6:11
  kind of as a matter of course. You know, your friends, they
• 6:15
  were just into it. And so you got into it.
• 6:18
  And so I think all of this contributed to a kind of
• 6:22
  emotional malnourishment, but then this over saturation with
• 6:28
  sort of sensual connectedness both chemically and physically
• 6:34
  with others. And, and early on I, I, I began
• 6:38
  to act out homosexually. And so I I just kind of got on a
• 6:43
  track early with it all. So you're growing up basically
• 6:47
  in the sexual revolution in Long Beach and your mother is having
• 6:51
  you read this Ask Alice book to try to prevent you from drug
• 6:56
  fueled sexual escapades? It sounds like it's like her
• 6:59
  Diary of the consequences. Basically my understanding from
• 7:04
  her. Probably because the.
• 7:07
  Free love movement was like, you know, going hard at this point
• 7:11
  and you are exposed to pornography.
• 7:14
  I'm curious about your first sort of self identification as I
• 7:18
  might be gay. What was that for you?
• 7:21
  Yeah, I think it was finding peers that felt similarly.
• 7:27
  So there was a solidarity with a handful of guys that I met.
• 7:31
  I think I was maybe 9th grade. So what would that have been?
• 7:37
  15? So just identifying with them.
• 7:42
  There had been acting out before, but no identification.
• 7:46
  A lot of bullying tied to our queer comiskey and stuff like
• 7:51
  that. But no, no, no identification at
• 7:57
  that point. But at about 15, finding a
• 8:01
  handful of guys that I liked that we're also gay identifying
• 8:06
  and and honestly just starting to run with them.
• 8:10
  So I think this kind of pack mentality, that hunger, the need
• 8:16
  for solidarity, the need for I'm, I'm, I'm, I finally have
• 8:22
  found a good identification and we have this kind of exotic
• 8:28
  identity. We can go exotic places.
• 8:31
  So this, this was a point around which we were starting to drive.
• 8:35
  You could go up to the LA area and go into clubs as a teen.
• 8:39
  You could find clubs that you could go into.
• 8:42
  So it was all sort of exciting, you know, and it was LA.
• 8:47
  And so there was a sense of we were shirking, you know, kind of
• 8:51
  the burbs of Long Beach and going into something slightly
• 8:55
  exotic. So I think all of that kind of
• 8:58
  provided a little bit of a niche of sorts until it just kind of
• 9:06
  revealed its own emptiness. And it did.
• 9:10
  And I think my brothers were a big part of that with a
• 9:16
  connectedness that was not tied to, you know, something
• 9:22
  definitely in the outer courts as far as being deeply
• 9:27
  meaningful. And that really was the
• 9:31
  beginning of of, of of an authentic faith in Jesus.
• 9:38
  I think tracing these details of childhood, though, is very
• 9:42
  freeing. I hope for people listening
• 9:44
  because there's going to be people listening who are going
• 9:46
  to be relating to experiences that you had and you telling
• 9:50
  your story can help other people understand their own stories.
• 9:53
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• 9:58
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• 11:19
  So for you, you know, you had these older brothers who had
• 11:21
  this mother and father you, you know, we're not really running
• 11:25
  with the pack like you described.
• 11:27
  What was the earliest experience of having same sex attraction
• 11:31
  that you can remember? It was just a deep longing for
• 11:37
  connection with the masculine. It's hard to say.
• 11:41
  I I wouldn't even describe it as being highly erotic or phallic.
• 11:46
  You know, it became that. But I think it was a it was just
• 11:53
  a deep longing for connection with the masculine.
• 11:57
  I don't know how else to put it. Did you have a close
• 11:59
  relationship with your dad growing up?
• 12:02
  No, they're they're my dad was a good guy.
• 12:05
  So I don't I would say if there was a problem there I was AI was
• 12:11
  the Co creator of the problem. So.
• 12:15
  And, and this is of course neutral in terms of any
• 12:18
  judgement like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:20
  He was in any fault or any pair was in any fault anymore to just
• 12:23
  discover what are the what's the environment often.
• 12:27
  Absolutely. That this.
• 12:28
  Deep. Desire for the masculine can
• 12:30
  rise up and and not be quenched. Exactly.
• 12:33
  As a kid. Yeah.
• 12:34
  And you could say my brother's got enough of it.
• 12:38
  They did. They got it with each other.
• 12:40
  They got it with my dad. They were able to draw from him
• 12:44
  and identify with him in a way I think was meaningful and
• 12:48
  nourishing and had a, a, a positive natural impact on them.
• 12:55
  I would say with my dad. There, there, there, there.
• 13:01
  There were a few things that happened that I recall that kind
• 13:05
  of registered to me as being a little toxic with him.
• 13:09
  Again, that sensitivity and this perception of there's something
• 13:16
  a little chaotic or out of control hurtful with my dad.
• 13:24
  You know, some experiences of his anger, some there was some,
• 13:29
  some physical injury that I sustained with him, not because
• 13:33
  he was abusing me, but we were both injured in this particular
• 13:37
  situation. And I just associated a kind of
• 13:42
  pain and injury with my father, I have to say pretty early on.
• 13:47
  And and that, I dare say, wasn't even a big fault of his own.
• 13:53
  Maybe he was being clumsy, but he wasn't being malicious.
• 13:56
  But my response was, was to guard myself and then rather
• 14:03
  quickly 567 to judge him. So I had a strong judgement
• 14:08
  against my father. And I remember that grew as I
• 14:13
  grew and I I think. Did you express that to him?
• 14:19
  Not at the time. When you would feel this
• 14:22
  effectively, it's distancing, Yeah.
• 14:24
  And also it's a lack of trust. Yeah, it sounds like what you're
• 14:28
  saying. You know, you could say it's a
• 14:29
  lack of respect, but yeah, distance and trust.
• 14:31
  Yeah. And say respect.
• 14:34
  Yeah, I would say that and. But you were at the same time
• 14:38
  deeply desiring the masculine as a boy, needing to be masculine.
• 14:42
  And it became, I mean, Doctor Joseph Nicolosi, you're familiar
• 14:45
  with his work, talks about the phenomenon with a lot of male
• 14:49
  same sex attraction. As like you said, it's not so
• 14:51
  much a sexual sex attraction, same sex attraction as a child,
• 14:55
  but it's more seeing the masculine as foreign, almost and
• 14:58
  untouchable, or even rejecting the masculine but still deeply
• 15:02
  needing it and desiring it becomes eroticized.
• 15:05
  That's right, later it can become a hey everybody, if
• 15:09
  you're enjoying this video with me and Andrew, please hit that
• 15:12
  subscribe button. And if you're really enjoying
• 15:14
  it, leave this video a like and share it with a friend.
• 15:17
  Thank you so much. I totally line up with what you
• 15:21
  said, distilling that reality of, of there's a vacancy here
• 15:29
  and in my case, a judgement. So now I at that point, I was
• 15:36
  actually blocking the good that I actually could have been
• 15:40
  receiving. I think my father was trying to
• 15:42
  give me good things, and I don't think I could receive them from
• 15:47
  him in a way that would have been nourishing and fortifying
• 15:54
  of my masculinity. And so I think there was a kind
• 15:59
  of a, a widening of this divide for me as I went into my teenage
• 16:05
  years. And at that point, my father
• 16:07
  was, I think he stopped knocking, if you will.
• 16:12
  And I think as an independent man, as a man himself who had
• 16:16
  been significantly fatherless, I think his credo was OK, well,
• 16:23
  you're of age work it out. And I was OK.
• 16:27
  My dad really was OK. He was fiercely independent, but
• 16:30
  he was pretty much OK. And I wasn't OK.
• 16:35
  And I was getting into some dark stuff fast.
• 16:41
  And my dad wasn't a Christian at that point.
• 16:45
  And so I, I don't think he had a lot of sight or a lot of fight
• 16:52
  for me in the period that kind of the next phase of sort of gay
• 16:57
  formation, identification, strengthening of that pursuit.
• 17:04
  And I mean, I, I dare say I, I needed some good fathering in
• 17:10
  that period. I, I, I may well have been
• 17:12
  ambivalent. I think I would have been
• 17:14
  ambivalent, but I, I, I've been a dad now to kids and daughter
• 17:21
  and three boys. So I, I think I learned
• 17:25
  something from what didn't happen for me.
• 17:28
  And that is I need to be kind and accepting of the fact that
• 17:34
  parenting changes, you know, different stages.
• 17:36
  But I, I, I, I was watchful for my kids, you know, if those
• 17:43
  phases of their life like what's going on or are you OK or what's
• 17:49
  happening for you, you know, the sort of the mild depressions
• 17:53
  and, and yeah, so I think all of those things were operating
• 17:58
  without this father. There's a few things I want to
• 18:00
  ask about about that. When you were trying to connect
• 18:06
  with your dad originally and he was trying to connect with you
• 18:09
  and then there was this disconnect, right?
• 18:11
  Was there a moment when you thought I'm done with dad?
• 18:15
  I mean, you mentioned you physically having an accident
• 18:18
  together and you maybe not trusting him anymore, respecting
• 18:21
  him. Yeah, there were some two or
• 18:23
  three, I mean, I dare say mildly traumatic things that happened
• 18:28
  early on with my dad and I, I think they had more of an impact
• 18:34
  than I was conscious of at 4. You know, it wasn't like.
• 18:38
  Oh, like like an arm break? Kind of thing, yeah, like an
• 18:41
  injury and, and just a kind of startling kind of fearsome thing
• 18:50
  with him when he would get angry and he, he would be very scary.
• 18:54
  And it wasn't like, oh, a traumatic memory that in the
• 18:59
  classic sense of repression, I just blanked it out.
• 19:02
  It wasn't that I remembered things, but I, I had never
• 19:08
  accessed the, the sort of the deep pockets of, of anger, of
• 19:14
  resentment of a kind of hatred of him and this rather deep
• 19:23
  process of therapy that I, I, I was in.
• 19:27
  This all happened right when I was I, I want to stay
• 19:31
  chronological here, but it was, it was just in the very early
• 19:34
  days of my marriage. It was very interesting timing
• 19:39
  the demands of of of a new life, the blessing of a wife, but also
• 19:46
  the demands of setting up a household.
• 19:50
  And in the light of all of that, I thought I really need, I need
• 19:55
  to do some deeper work with my father because as I was seeking
• 20:00
  to step out rightfully, not presumptuously in, in my own
• 20:06
  masculine authority. And it's interesting, my wife.
• 20:10
  Yeah, she had her own issues with sexual abuse.
• 20:14
  She also, it was right before we began to have children that she
• 20:19
  said I need to deal with my abuse history.
• 20:24
  It's interesting in that. Well, the big like life events
• 20:27
  trigger because if it hasn't been healed and excavated, yeah,
• 20:30
  any wound, any trauma. It comes up, it's.
• 20:32
  Going to impact your marriage, Yeah, you're ultimately you're
• 20:36
  parenting 100% Yeah, it's going to impact.
• 20:38
  Everything. Yeah.
• 20:38
  My fidelity. Yeah, My capacity to be
• 20:41
  faithful. You mentioned your dad and you
• 20:44
  had this deep seated anger towards him that you didn't even
• 20:46
  fully realize that you had that basically prevented him from
• 20:50
  being able to father you. And what did that stem from you?
• 20:55
  You mentioned some events, if you're willing to share.
• 20:58
  You know, you guys are wrestling.
• 21:00
  He breaks a bone or you fall out of a car.
• 21:02
  Like what was the, what were some of the the what was the
• 21:04
  impetus? I, I mean, I think it was self
• 21:07
  protection. I think it was a the perception
• 21:10
  that he's not safe for me, which I think it's fair to say there's
• 21:18
  a type of good masculinity that isn't entirely safe.
• 21:23
  It's kind of being called into something a little risky, maybe
• 21:28
  a little rougher, and I think I perceived that as as only
• 21:35
  threatening, not a challenge that I could navigate
• 21:40
  effectively. Because you didn't trust
• 21:41
  yourself or the person inviting you in.
• 21:43
  Exactly. Because the boy to do the daring
• 21:46
  has either trust himself enough or trust whoever is calling them
• 21:49
  into the daring enough that they're going to still be able
• 21:51
  to make it out alive. And I would say I I mistrusted
• 21:56
  on both counts, myself and the other to enter into that world.
• 22:01
  And I remember there would be moments or seasons or events,
• 22:07
  not seasons, but events where I would cross that line and I
• 22:12
  would discover something of strength and goodness with a
• 22:19
  male peer or two. And I would think this is
• 22:24
  awesome. It was like all cylinders on
• 22:27
  it's kind. It was kind of an experience of
• 22:30
  the awakening of my agency as a masculine.
• 22:34
  What was an example of that experience?
• 22:36
  I remember this is a fun, fun experience.
• 22:39
  We as actually it was slightly elite.
• 22:41
  We actually got in trouble for doing it.
• 22:43
  It was kind of breaking the law. All right, so sorry about that.
• 22:48
  But no, actually we were at Knott's Berry Farm and it was
• 22:51
  raining. How old were you?
• 22:53
  11. 11 Oh wow. Yeah, I was with a couple peers.
• 22:57
  By yourselves. No, I was with them.
• 23:00
  No, but with your parents, nobody.
• 23:01
  No, no, no, they. Just let 11 year olds run around
• 23:03
  Knott's Berry by themselves. Yeah, yeah.
• 23:04
  And it was different world. It was a rainy night and night
• 23:08
  no one was there. And it was so fun.
• 23:12
  And it was like, let's like we kind of climb.
• 23:15
  Remember, you know that the log ride there's like a log ride
• 23:20
  miners. You weren't supposed to do what
• 23:23
  you were going to do. And we?
• 23:24
  Climbed up into it. We went into this ride because
• 23:29
  no one was there. And it was like, let's just
• 23:32
  like, let's, let's do what you're not supposed to do.
• 23:36
  And we did it all and we got caught.
• 23:38
  And in a way it was awful. I mean, we didn't get arrested
• 23:41
  or anything, but we got kicked out of the park.
• 23:44
  But it was so fun to be doing something super risky with these
• 23:51
  guys, taking a risk, experiencing this kind of
• 23:57
  aggressive expression of our we were had to climb up and out and
• 24:01
  it was all sort of will we get caught?
• 24:03
  Will we not we did, but the the effect of that was actually so
• 24:10
  empowering. Yes, I thought I can, I can, I
• 24:15
  can leap. I can leap tall buildings.
• 24:18
  That's what I felt and it was, it was it was kind of a A1 off
• 24:24
  memory of that. Later on, when you would be
• 24:27
  coming out of homosexual lifestyle and discovering more,
• 24:30
  your true identity was that. Did that memory help give you
• 24:33
  confidence? Absolutely it did.
• 24:35
  I thought, no, I can. I can go further than I think.
• 24:39
  So I think a lot of people listening might say, well-being
• 24:42
  masculine isn't necessarily being machismo, right?
• 24:44
  You don't have to go and illegally at 11 yourself and
• 24:48
  that's very far. This is not a good.
• 24:51
  No, but it, but I think it is though, because there's a seed
• 24:53
  here that I think is very valuable.
• 24:55
  And you, I know you, you, you explore this and teach about
• 24:58
  this. What is it in the masculine
• 25:02
  identity that is so essential, that does reside in every
• 25:06
  masculine soul, and that you were basically searching for
• 25:13
  your entire childhood? And I think like not quite
• 25:16
  hitting the target, but coming. I mean, you know, if the
• 25:20
  bullseye is here and it's like, you know, 300 points that far
• 25:25
  out 300, I'll take it, you know, and would you?
• 25:30
  Describe that as though that masculine identity, I think.
• 25:33
  We're so I I, I dare say our our bodies in some ways tell us the
• 25:38
  truth. There is something focused,
• 25:41
  there is something strong, there is something about delighting in
• 25:45
  a certain resistance and taking the risk that I could be
• 25:49
  diminished. I may not make it, but I'm
• 25:52
  really going to try. I'm aiming for this and I need
• 25:56
  my posse to do it. It's not just me by myself, the
• 26:01
  noble prophet or, you know, always alone.
• 26:05
  But now I'm romanticizing it. It's like, no, I've got I've got
• 26:09
  a guy here and a guy there and we're going to do it and we're
• 26:12
  going to enjoy each other's power in it.
• 26:18
  And I do. I dare say there is something
• 26:20
  about sport that that accomplishes that.
• 26:22
  Did you do sports at all? That not not well, not well.
• 26:26
  I would kind of go like I said there.
• 26:29
  So, and that may be reinforced for you then I'm not one of
• 26:32
  them. I'm not one of them, but I could
• 26:34
  have been. Honestly, I could have been.
• 26:36
  I mean, there's, there's some lost years there really that
• 26:39
  aren't I'm I'm not going to reclaim.
• 26:42
  Here's a question for for people listening who may hope to be
• 26:46
  parents one day, or maybe they're already our parents and
• 26:49
  our culture is sick. You know this very well.
• 26:52
  That's why you have your ministry and you're here willing
• 26:55
  to be on the show. You're trying to heal, help
• 26:57
  people heal and find freedom and the sickness today, people are
• 27:03
  always being told false identities about who they are.
• 27:06
  And there's a lot of lack of a connection and attachment, you
• 27:08
  know, to mother, Father God, certainly, right.
• 27:14
  What would you tell parents, especially fathers, for how they
• 27:20
  can ensure that they're really fathering as best they can to
• 27:26
  shore up the masculine identity of their sons?
• 27:29
  And I know this is a concern for every father, but the culture
• 27:33
  tells them all kinds of things about how to do this or not do
• 27:35
  this. They have their own hang ups.
• 27:36
  If you were the therapist for your father when you were
• 27:40
  growing up and that when you there's two of you now and your
• 27:46
  father came and said, I really want to connect with my Andy,
• 27:49
  I'm struggling. What would you tell your father
• 27:51
  to do differently? Yeah, I think and actually as
• 27:55
  you're speaking, I'm, I'm, I'm remembering something about my
• 28:00
  dad that was actually very good that he did do, which I probably
• 28:07
  never really gave him credit for.
• 28:09
  But my, my point is, if I as a as a dad, and because all kids
• 28:15
  are different and kids have different interests and kids
• 28:18
  have different strengths. So it's not to say every kid has
• 28:21
  to be the football captain and and show this extraordinary
• 28:25
  amount of machismo and, you know, be the star on the field
• 28:30
  or some kind of elusive thing that is has its own emptiness.
• 28:35
  Possibly. I would say the main thing for a
• 28:39
  father to do is to ensure relationship.
• 28:44
  Just ensure relationship. And that means meeting the kid
• 28:48
  often on the ground of what are the kids proclivities?
• 28:52
  What are the kids aptitudes in that way a parent has to be
• 28:56
  aware of sort of the uniqueness of each child and be near enough
• 29:01
  to know what it is that fortifies and empowers that
• 29:07
  child. You know, in terms of their
• 29:10
  interests and what it is that kind of makes them sore.
• 29:15
  Makes them shine, yeah, and feel like they're conquering things
• 29:19
  in their. Exactly.
• 29:20
  And for the for the father to know that at some level to come
• 29:24
  alongside of that and to strengthen that is a is a
• 29:29
  beautiful thing. And, and in that way, we're not
• 29:34
  falling into, I think there, I mean, there is masculinity and
• 29:37
  there is femininity and there's something essential about both.
• 29:41
  But there can be a range of interests that that can go from,
• 29:47
  you know, aggressive pack mentality to a very focused
• 29:51
  creativity. To a male ballerina, Yeah, yeah.
• 29:56
  Which can be very masculine. Or a or a chef, or a fashion
• 30:00
  designer, or even a makeup artist.
• 30:02
  Yeah, yeah. But but being grounded, being
• 30:04
  grounded, none of that being in some ways a reaction to a wound,
• 30:11
  to an experience of I am so other that and that's the thing
• 30:16
  that I experienced. And that I think is also it's
• 30:20
  something that we see rife in the culture.
• 30:22
  And in that way, the culture can be an arm of, of the enemy, but
• 30:27
  I think the enemy is the enemy and the way that some of that
• 30:32
  thinking can be planted and, and, and can grow so deeply, so
• 30:40
  early. And I've, I've worked with kids
• 30:42
  before whose parents have said, you know, can you help me?
• 30:49
  I'm I'm concerned my boy at 5 at 6 is is only wanting to identify
• 30:58
  with the feminine is it's not it's not like a healthy
• 31:02
  creativity where he's he he loves to move and dance, but
• 31:07
  he's dancing as a boy. This is a boy who's actually
• 31:12
  dressing up in girls clothing and is twirling like a female
• 31:17
  dancer. And it's like we're concerned.
• 31:20
  Like, do we have reason to be concerned?
• 31:23
  What do you say to them? I say, well, I would say not a
• 31:29
  life sign. A life sign.
• 31:31
  Not a life sign. What does that mean?
• 31:33
  Meaning I would I would be concerned and I would move a
• 31:41
  little bit closer and I would help the child to find a
• 31:49
  reference point, a point of interest.
• 31:52
  If it's dancing, then then you dance as a male, then you're
• 31:58
  dancing as a male. You find your center as a male
• 32:03
  in whatever it is that you're doing.
• 32:07
  Not misidentifying at that age with the opposite sex as the
• 32:13
  opposite sex, but but securing the interest in the light of a
• 32:20
  healthy enough identification. And when I've when I've when
• 32:25
  I've counselled parents to do this, it's never, oh, your kid
• 32:29
  is probably gay, but God bless you.
• 32:32
  That just happens, you know, and that that those, that's what
• 32:36
  elementary school teachers are taught.
• 32:37
  That's what therapists today do. We're just, we're just helping.
• 32:40
  They code, they code the kid and they're.
• 32:42
  Helping him find his way. I'm saying, Oh no, I have I'm
• 32:46
  empowering this, this father or this mother to say no, I'm, I'm
• 32:51
  a Co creator of this kid. I I have a vested interest in in
• 32:56
  her making peace with the good of her little girl Ness.
• 33:02
  So, so specifically for the boy, in this case the baller, he's
• 33:05
  kind of, it sounds like he's mimicking a female ballerina.
• 33:09
  And your advice to the parents would be let him and discover
• 33:14
  and. And how would they do this,
• 33:16
  right? Yeah.
• 33:16
  Not how to mimic, yeah, but how to understand in his own body.
• 33:21
  Yeah. Which is a male body.
• 33:23
  Yeah. He can dance freely.
• 33:25
  Yeah, without having to mimic the feminine.
• 33:28
  Exactly. Because it's sort of like he's
• 33:29
  playing at at a game where he's mimicking and kids do this all
• 33:32
  the time. Yeah, it's normal that in a
• 33:34
  sense, but he's an he's overly, overly identifying or excited to
• 33:40
  mimic the feminine. So what?
• 33:42
  What exactly would the parent should the parent do in a
• 33:44
  situation? Sit him down and say, look,
• 33:47
  you're a very special boy. God made you amazing.
• 33:51
  We love that you dance. You dance so wonderfully.
• 33:54
  This kind of dance you're doing. This is like what how girls
• 33:57
  dance cuz girls have girls bodies.
• 33:58
  Let's find out how You Can Dance with your boy body and you can
• 34:01
  still twirl and jump but how do you want to dance in your boy
• 34:04
  body? I mean I'm I'm just guessing
• 34:05
  here, but. No, exactly that.
• 34:09
  I, I, I do there, there was this kid at our church and, and he
• 34:14
  was a great, great little guy and his parents were concerned
• 34:18
  and just kind of wanted to know. And so I said, well, I'm it's
• 34:23
  your kid, you know, let's just spend some time with him and you
• 34:28
  guys be doing your thing in the living room and in this other
• 34:31
  corner. I'll just be with him.
• 34:34
  And and we just started talking and playing and engaging.
• 34:39
  And I mean, it was his kind of undue identification with the
• 34:47
  feminine was so short lived. I mean, it was it, it in some
• 34:52
  ways it was a passing fancy, if you will.
• 34:55
  And I think kids go through that.
• 34:57
  Kids go through so much with that.
• 34:59
  And and one shouldn't catastrophize it.
• 35:02
  And to catastrophize it would be to label them and to say this is
• 35:06
  their trajectory and you just bless, bless it.
• 35:10
  It's like, Oh no, don't misinterpret it, but be mindful
• 35:16
  of it and draw near for the purpose of doing what you can.
• 35:23
  And I I dare say God honors this in parents because you're acting
• 35:28
  like a concerned parent. There's no shaming.
• 35:31
  There's no certainly not naming the child according to any kind
• 35:39
  of confusion, but confirming what is good, real and true
• 35:45
  about his boyness. And that's all I was doing with
• 35:50
  this kid. I, I, it wasn't, we were just
• 35:53
  playing and talking and I was, I was accentuating the good of his
• 35:59
  boyness that I could witness. And he so loved it.
• 36:03
  He was so grateful for it. He was in no way adverse to me
• 36:07
  doing it. In other words, he was not in a
• 36:10
  position of distancing, detaching.
• 36:14
  He wasn't resisting the masculine.
• 36:16
  He was the thing of the masculine.
• 36:18
  He was just. Yeah.
• 36:19
  Exploring, which is what kids are prone to do.
• 36:22
  Yeah. And if if I had had something
• 36:25
  like that, it could have been so helpful.
• 36:27
  Really. Absolutely.
• 36:29
  And I would say my brother at that phase, little bit later on,
• 36:34
  you know, this is now the teen years when my brothers were
• 36:38
  doing that, I was because it came through a kindness, it came
• 36:43
  through an attentiveness. I drank it in.
• 36:50
  What did it look like when your brothers so you ended up getting
• 36:53
  this once your brothers became Christian, they had special
• 36:55
  maybe gift of the Holy Spirit here, I would say what were they
• 36:59
  doing with you that met you where you were living now, the
• 37:02
  gay lifestyle out and active and they like love their brother and
• 37:07
  they just want to not just rescue you, but they wanted you
• 37:10
  to find wholeness. Yeah.
• 37:11
  And to be a part of their Christian world, Yes, come be a
• 37:15
  part of our world. So what did it look like
• 37:17
  practically? Well, I mean I remember once
• 37:19
  with my brother, he was so sweet.
• 37:22
  Again, I I do think there is something in the Holy Spirit
• 37:26
  here which we cannot. I will not deny that is really
• 37:32
  the power, the converting power of Jesus.
• 37:35
  So my, I remember my brother once saying, you know, let's
• 37:38
  let's just go out and throw the ball.
• 37:39
  Let's throw the football. I wasn't very good at football.
• 37:42
  I couldn't throw very well. And I remember my brother, he
• 37:46
  was just talking to me and we were throwing the ball.
• 37:48
  And he said, you know, you don't have to be like the big
• 37:51
  quarterback. He says it's just fun to throw
• 37:55
  the ball. So he directly address the
• 37:58
  elephant in the room. Yeah, he did without saying.
• 38:00
  It you're right. Oh, he.
• 38:01
  Without saying like you're, you've always kind of been a
• 38:04
  loser pal. But no, he's just like, come on,
• 38:07
  let me just go. Let's just let's just play
• 38:09
  catch. And I remember going, thanks.
• 38:13
  I felt, I felt, I felt included and I felt.
• 38:18
  Respected. Yeah, respected.
• 38:20
  And like I, I, I have a reference point in him because
• 38:25
  he's my family. He's he bears my name.
• 38:28
  I bear something of his masculinity and vice versa.
• 38:31
  And it was a just a really cool thing and.
• 38:37
  Do you think back to your father if that had happened with your
• 38:41
  father at 5? Hey, let's go throw the ball.
• 38:45
  It's OK that you don't always catch it.
• 38:47
  Like I love doing this with you. You got this.
• 38:49
  Like let's, let's there was regular activities like that.
• 38:53
  It would have created and it would have fostered more of the
• 38:56
  connection and the respect. Yeah, it would have definitely
• 38:59
  it would have definitely fortified that connection.
• 39:03
  And yeah, I and, and as as I pointed out in even in this
• 39:09
  example with this, this family from church, I think when that
• 39:13
  can happen sooner than later, it the distancing is less profound.
• 39:21
  It just is. It's not as deep.
• 39:24
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  How important is the quality versus the quantity?
• 41:10
  I know this is a very practical question.
• 41:11
  I'm curious your opinion on it. So like, even that simple thing
• 41:14
  of like, let's throw the ball and let's kind of do it on your
• 41:16
  pace. Like, not like the dad as an
• 41:18
  agenda. I want you to be a football
• 41:19
  star. Or maybe he's like, I don't want
• 41:20
  to throw the ball, the kid. But there's something else more
• 41:23
  maybe physical they can do together that the kid enjoys,
• 41:25
  You know, find those things that's really tailor made for
• 41:28
  the kid. Yeah.
• 41:29
  So you're not trying to put him up to a standard he can't feel
• 41:31
  like he can reach. Exactly.
• 41:33
  And. But in terms of the regularity,
• 41:35
  yeah. What?
• 41:35
  Would you say is important? I mean, I think I would say that
• 41:39
  the quality necessitates some continuity as opposed to sort of
• 41:45
  the Disney dad thing. And you know, I show up and I'm
• 41:50
  extravagant or I'm this. I think if the damage has been
• 41:54
  done and there is a distancing and even on the part of the
• 41:59
  child a critique and a judgement that's so now this distancing is
• 42:04
  a little calcified. It's a little hard.
• 42:09
  I I don't think the grand gestures are going to be
• 42:12
  helpful. It has to be the little normal
• 42:15
  things on a regular basis. I, I think so it's not to say
• 42:18
  that it, it can't be repaired or healed, but I think it has to be
• 42:23
  acknowledged and dealt with at some level and with, you know,
• 42:31
  the help of good therapists. For me, an active young adult
• 42:35
  seeking it, I was able to work it out and I was able to pursue
• 42:44
  my father in such a way as to build a real bridge with him.
• 42:49
  This was later. This is much later, yeah.
• 42:52
  So a couple more quick fire questions on childhood just for
• 42:55
  parents or hopeful parents and just for understanding.
• 42:58
  And then we're going to deep dive the conversion.
• 43:01
  As a kid, you're having this distancing, you know, we're
• 43:03
  talking about how to repair basically distancing or help
• 43:06
  ascertain is the child moving One Direction or another?
• 43:09
  What do they need to help them in their identity, right?
• 43:13
  When you were growing up, did you still have affectionate,
• 43:17
  regular affectionate interactions with dad?
• 43:21
  Was that a part of your childhood that you can remember?
• 43:23
  56789 hugs, kisses, I love you. Or do you not really have those
• 43:29
  memories? Not much.
• 43:32
  Yeah. And he was, he was there.
• 43:34
  He wasn't gone. I'm grateful.
• 43:36
  So there there was some presence, but I don't recall it
• 43:40
  as an affectionate presence. And how important do you think
• 43:44
  masculine affection is? I think it's really important.
• 43:47
  For children. Yeah, I think it's super
• 43:49
  important and it normalizes good affection.
• 43:54
  Same sex and opposite sex. It normalizes non sexual touch.
• 43:58
  Absolutely. And makes sort of the feminine
• 44:00
  or the masculine, depending if you're a boy or a girl, less
• 44:03
  mysterious and more real and physical.
• 44:05
  Yeah yeah and and chaste like clearly intended like intended
• 44:13
  to bless and not to take or to confuse and how important that
• 44:23
  is. My family was not that, but I
• 44:27
  gravitate towards people whose families were who who are so
• 44:33
  naturally able to show affection and I just drink it in I still.
• 44:41
  It's so essential, I mean that for a child.
• 44:44
  And that's where somebody says, well, my love language isn't
• 44:46
  words of affirmation or quality or, or physical touch.
• 44:50
  And I say you got to do all of the acts of.
• 44:53
  Exactly you. Can hug that kid, you can give
• 44:55
  him a kiss on the. Cheek and to be bilingual.
• 44:58
  Exactly. I don't want to hear the love
• 45:00
  language. For both specialty, the mother
• 45:01
  and the father. I mean, yeah, men may pretend to
• 45:04
  one versus the other, but I think, you know, to build up the
• 45:07
  identity of a child. And again, I am a work in
• 45:10
  progress. We're we're figuring out
• 45:11
  parenthood now, but studying it, learning it, talking to, you
• 45:14
  know, amazing people like you like that, that whole picture of
• 45:19
  the attentiveness, the intentionality, the time spent
• 45:22
  physical touch, the words of affirmation, all of it matters.
• 45:26
  It's it's so matters and I've even now having had good hard
• 45:31
  conversations with my kids at this point like what didn't I
• 45:36
  see? You know, that's the other
• 45:37
  thing. There's, there's an unknown
• 45:40
  quotient here that in spite of all of our good intentions, and
• 45:46
  I dare say my wife and I are, are were maybe in the top 10% of
• 45:52
  actively engaged parents because of the work that we did.
• 45:56
  But just because we love having kids and wanted to have kids,
• 46:00
  wanted to have more kids than we did.
• 46:04
  But even conversations where my kids would say, I need to talk
• 46:06
  to you about something that was going on with me when I was in
• 46:10
  junior high and I just never told you.
• 46:13
  And I want you to know that now. You know, kind of as a way of
• 46:17
  saying there was some shadowy stuff and I just could not bring
• 46:22
  it up to you. And it wasn't because, oh,
• 46:26
  because you were so religious or you were heavy-handed.
• 46:29
  It was there was no blame, which I'm grateful to my kids for not.
• 46:35
  But it was more, I just never told you what I was wrestling
• 46:39
  with in that time, right? And I'm like, oh, I.
• 46:44
  So in other words, every person has this inviolable part of them
• 46:51
  that a parent doesn't know and that a parent may not be invited
• 46:57
  to know, right? And I think there's a way in
• 46:59
  which his parents is like, well, man, if you're 14, I'm going to
• 47:02
  know. I think what you're saying is
• 47:04
  that at the end of the day, we can and should do all these
• 47:07
  things as parents. Yeah, our children deserve it,
• 47:10
  but there's still the, the inner heart and soul of the child and
• 47:13
  the older child, and they have their own inner life and their
• 47:17
  own experiences. And we are not Privy to it all,
• 47:19
  nor can we fully pry into and try to excavate.
• 47:22
  We have to have that respect, especially as they grow older.
• 47:25
  But the showing up, the intentionality, the affection,
• 47:28
  the, the curiosity, you know, the invitations, all those
• 47:31
  things matter. I want to go through some of the
• 47:34
  milestones of your life now and explore your experience.
• 47:39
  And so I'm going to try to take us through conversion.
• 47:42
  You mentioned it already. And then coming out of gay
• 47:46
  activity, right? And, and just rejecting it,
• 47:49
  getting married, which is quite the milestone, especially for
• 47:52
  someone that was living as a gay man.
• 47:55
  And then now obviously with your ministry running that and, and
• 47:58
  raising the family that you've raised.
• 48:00
  So your brothers basically evangelized.
• 48:03
  You and. And what point did you say I now
• 48:06
  accept Jesus into my heart? How old were you?
• 48:08
  I was 19. And when you accepted Jesus into
• 48:13
  your heart, did you, I'm going to guess, feel a sense of love
• 48:18
  and freedom? I did, yeah.
• 48:20
  I I I experienced the indwelling Holy Spirit.
• 48:24
  I did. I I mean, in a way.
• 48:28
  Did anything immediately change? No, my desires didn't change.
• 48:33
  I, I think I picked a fight at that point with sort of now kind
• 48:41
  of going against the flow of my cultural experience of
• 48:45
  homosexuality, but I experienced the indwelling presence of God
• 48:49
  and I thought, for lack of a better word, one grader is
• 48:54
  living within me. Were you still at this point,
• 48:56
  actively living a gay lifestyle? I was trying not to, but I was,
• 49:01
  I was poised to, I was still living in the midst of, you
• 49:05
  know, surrounded by gay friends and, and.
• 49:08
  Were you in an active gay relationship at this point?
• 49:10
  At that point, I I had moved out of a relationship that I was in,
• 49:15
  but I'd done that before I became a Christian.
• 49:18
  But I still had two or three people with whom I was hooking
• 49:21
  up and, and, you know, I kind of continued with some of that for
• 49:27
  about the first year, less and less until after a year it was
• 49:32
  just like, no, that that needs to be a closed door.
• 49:34
  I cannot open that up with another human being because it's
• 49:38
  not fair to them. And I'm not I'm, I'm, I'm my
• 49:43
  worst self in all those scenarios.
• 49:46
  I'm not being true to Jesus, and I'm also not being true to this
• 49:49
  person who knows I'm trying to do this weird Jesus thing.
• 49:53
  How? How did you find the support or
• 49:56
  accountability to be able to do that?
• 49:58
  So you're accepted Jesus into your life?
• 50:00
  Yeah, this is. You're not Catholic yet.
• 50:02
  Yeah, but you're born again. Yeah.
• 50:03
  Have you been baptized by the way?
• 50:05
  I have well, so yes, I was baptized in sort of a Beachy.
• 50:10
  But it was a valid baptism. It was valid, yeah.
• 50:13
  So you were baptized? It stood when I became a
• 50:15
  Catholic. I love it.
• 50:16
  You were baptized. You experienced the indwelling
• 50:18
  of the Holy Spirit. Yeah.
• 50:19
  You're still in and out of gay activity.
• 50:21
  You're kind of struggling. You know?
• 50:22
  It's not right. Yeah.
• 50:24
  What helped you? Yeah.
• 50:25
  In that year post your conversion.
• 50:27
  Yep. To reject and have the strength,
• 50:29
  quite frankly. Yeah.
• 50:30
  To not act out on the same sex. Attraction.
• 50:32
  Yeah, I had to find, and I did find gratefully, like 3 people
• 50:37
  that I knew at this little funky beach fellowship that I knew and
• 50:43
  that knew me, knew what I was dealing with and had their own
• 50:46
  stuff. They were dealing with opposite
• 50:48
  sex stuff. It was, you know, it's just like
• 50:51
  a Beachy young. Everyone's trying to work out
• 50:56
  their sexuality better. And I was maybe a little bit
• 51:01
  more of an obvious, like comiskey, come on, deal with
• 51:04
  this. But my friends were dealing with
• 51:06
  this too, so I had to get real with them and say I really have
• 51:12
  to work with your help to establish roots in this little
• 51:15
  community. So would you?
• 51:17
  Would you confess your I would failure the friends and that
• 51:21
  help create accountability? Oh, I, I chose to be accountable
• 51:25
  because I didn't want to, I, I didn't, I wanted to keep the
• 51:29
  door closed on gay felonies. And, and so it I, I was able to
• 51:35
  do that after a year. Then I determined I need to take
• 51:41
  this up a notch because I was in school.
• 51:44
  I was at UCLA at the time. The temptations were still very
• 51:49
  strong, but my commitment to chaste fellowship was stronger.
• 51:56
  I knew I could, I could be a friend, I could be a supportive
• 52:00
  person. I had enough going on within me
• 52:05
  internally to be able to handle that.
• 52:08
  So I there was a conservative fraternity, there was a
• 52:11
  Christian fraternity. They, I thought, I'm not a
• 52:16
  fraternity guy. That's so far from my DNA, this
• 52:23
  kind of ratty, Beachy kid. And I thought, I'm going to do
• 52:27
  it. I'm, I'm going whole hog into
• 52:30
  this fraternity. Best thing I ever did because I
• 52:34
  was surrounded. It's, you know, it's a ratty,
• 52:36
  you know, you know, fraternity sororities.
• 52:38
  UCLA ones are kind of fancy, but they're.
• 52:40
  Still inside their ratty sororities are probably better,
• 52:45
  but this was like on the lower end, like like, you know, frat
• 52:50
  house, you're you've got four different roommates every
• 52:53
  quarter. So you're it's like a it's like
• 52:56
  a little bit of a boot camp. I mean, it's like you're, you're
• 52:59
  doing it with the dudes and, you know, doing all these service
• 53:03
  things and keeping things clean and having to be responsible.
• 53:07
  And it was there that I began to exercise some leadership.
• 53:11
  So they would like, you've got some gifts there, bro, You know,
• 53:14
  and I was always very frank with them.
• 53:16
  I didn't use my sexuality and I could have, I didn't use it
• 53:21
  defensively. Like, well, what do you think?
• 53:23
  You know, I'm coming out of this.
• 53:24
  But it was just like, you need to know that, you know, these
• 53:28
  are my temptations. So you told them openly, hey, I
• 53:32
  used to live the gay lifestyle? Yeah, yeah.
• 53:34
  And I'm not into you, so don't worry.
• 53:36
  It's like, I'm not like. What did you do, though, if you
• 53:39
  felt an attraction to a man in the house?
• 53:41
  I, I usually didn't, but I actually, that actually became
• 53:46
  kind of a situation with one guy.
• 53:48
  And that was actually what invited me into therapy.
• 53:54
  And I thought, OK, well, now I have something to really work
• 53:56
  out because I'm not going to seduce this guy or be weird
• 53:59
  about it, but I need to, I need to work this out.
• 54:03
  Like I can't flee from this because this guy is in trouble.
• 54:07
  He's not troublesome. This isn't Potiphar's wife, you
• 54:11
  know, this is just a guy. And I'm kind of like get forming
• 54:14
  this friendship and now I'm beginning to have fantasy and
• 54:18
  like, I need to, I need to get through this.
• 54:20
  So that was my first, that was my first excursion into
• 54:23
  psychotherapy. I thought I need someone who's
• 54:26
  outside of this world to help me navigate what's going on with me
• 54:30
  in this world. And during any of this time, I
• 54:32
  should have asked this earlier, did you ever experience
• 54:34
  attraction to sexual attraction to women?
• 54:37
  OK, so that's, that's what began to happen as I was in this
• 54:42
  setting. I didn't know like, am I going
• 54:45
  to be with girls? I, I really didn't know at this
• 54:48
  point. I just thought I'm, I've got to
• 54:50
  learn how to be chased, you know, without chastity involving
• 54:56
  its other components of having a normal regard for women or
• 55:01
  something, which I I think is a part of chastity, but I wasn't
• 55:05
  there yet. So it was enough to say that I
• 55:08
  needed to navigate the reality of the you me with this guy.
• 55:13
  I, I wasn't telling him what was going on with me.
• 55:15
  I was telling a therapist. But it was very helpful and I
• 55:19
  actually made it through that and I got through the other
• 55:22
  side. I'm like, I don't want this guy
• 55:23
  sexually. I need this guy to be a brother.
• 55:26
  And you know, so it is, it does go to show that in a certain
• 55:30
  setting, a, a guy could be, I could be still responsive to a
• 55:34
  guy and I had to be open about that appropriately.
• 55:39
  And I was, and I felt like I found a narrow way through it.
• 55:43
  It was so helpful. I couldn't run from it because
• 55:46
  guys are always going to be there.
• 55:48
  And in this case they were, you know, they were, it was raining
• 55:53
  men. I mean, because I was in this
• 55:54
  like tight little frat house. So that was just a great time.
• 55:59
  And that way I was in it for like 3 years.
• 56:02
  In the frat house. Yeah.
• 56:03
  So that's a long time to be. It is kind of sorting this stuff
• 56:07
  out. It's very powerful what you're
• 56:09
  saying though, because you mentioned chastity a few times
• 56:11
  and chastity is it's love, ultimately willing, the good of
• 56:17
  the other, not using, abusing, sexualizing them.
• 56:20
  It's also not acting out sexually on a desire that might
• 56:23
  come. You know, you don't fully
• 56:24
  control your desires, but you can act on them.
• 56:27
  You can't obviously control your environment to some degree, so
• 56:30
  you're not putting yourself directly in temptation.
• 56:32
  But to your point, if temptation is you get to know a guy and you
• 56:35
  have a a sexual urge for him, you can't just then just run
• 56:39
  away all the time because you need to be able to live and
• 56:43
  befriend men. And a woman who might struggle
• 56:45
  with same sex attraction needs to live and befriend women.
• 56:48
  So you went to the therapist. What did the therapist do with
• 56:51
  you to help you be able to ultimately be freed from the
• 56:55
  attraction that you felt to this man?
• 56:57
  Yeah, well, the very fact that I was Speaking of it and bringing
• 57:01
  it out into the light kind of reduce the energy of it, you
• 57:06
  know. So almost immediately it ceased
• 57:09
  to be kind of in that slightly isolated fantasy world.
• 57:13
  It it something broke of an intensity with it.
• 57:19
  I think the invitation that this therapist invited me into was in
• 57:27
  kind of looking at the ways that certain men sort of tempted me
• 57:32
  to sort of abdicate my own value and solidity as a male.
• 57:37
  So almost like what's going on with you when you're feeling
• 57:41
  that attraction? Like what, what, what is drawing
• 57:46
  you to that person? In other words, it was a little
• 57:48
  bit of an examining of of what's happening in this desire.
• 57:53
  Meaning there was like a lack almost in love that you saw in
• 57:57
  this other man, and it became sexualized.
• 57:59
  Yeah, a little bit of that and the, yeah, the what were the
• 58:06
  qualities? What, what was it that I was
• 58:11
  sort of idealizing in this person and, and, and in turn,
• 58:20
  not losing sight of my own value and solidity as a masculine
• 58:27
  being. And so I think in a way what I
• 58:30
  learned in this particular situation was how to in a way
• 58:35
  hold my own in relationship to this guy to not to, I would say,
• 58:42
  like abdicate something of myself for what I would
• 58:47
  perceived as being a greater or richer expression of
• 58:51
  masculinity. Maybe the difference between
• 58:56
  respecting and drawing from something good in him and kind
• 59:01
  of almost idolizing or or being reduced to something childish in
• 59:10
  regards to him. It was more like a learning how
• 59:15
  to man up a bit in regards to this particular guy.
• 59:21
  It honestly was not it. It began to touch on some deeper
• 59:27
  things with my father. This this particular.
• 59:30
  Thing Did he remind you of your father or he kind of had
• 59:33
  qualities your father didn't have?
• 59:35
  Yeah, I I would say perhaps qualities that my father didn't.
• 59:39
  Have but that you desired. Yeah, that I desired and and
• 59:43
  yeah, there, there. Yeah, he was.
• 59:45
  He was a great guy. There was just so many good
• 59:47
  qualities that I wanted to emulate, but I, I, I had to
• 59:52
  learn that I, there could be guys that I really, that I
• 59:55
  really, and I and my dad and I long after this talked about
• 1:00:00
  this and he, he spoke of how certain men as a fatherless kid,
• 1:00:07
  my dad, certain men for him when he was high school, kind of pre
• 1:00:14
  war stuff. He would, he would say, I want
• 1:00:18
  to be like this guy. My dad would say this, he told
• 1:00:22
  me this. I want to be like him.
• 1:00:24
  There's so many things I like. He's smart, he's strong.
• 1:00:27
  My dad was able to kind of catch that train and say I want to be
• 1:00:33
  his friend because I, I, I want to be like him.
• 1:00:37
  And I thought when my dad was telling me this, this was long
• 1:00:40
  after this therapy thing in the frat house, I thought I, I had
• 1:00:45
  to learn how to say, I want to be like this guy.
• 1:00:48
  I like, I so like, I want to be with him.
• 1:00:51
  I so like his qualities. It's not a gay thing.
• 1:00:54
  I don't have to eroticize it. I, I, I'm big enough to do that.
• 1:01:00
  And I did it and I got through it.
• 1:01:02
  The, the and. You probably felt much stronger
• 1:01:05
  afterwards. Like wow, stronger but.
• 1:01:06
  I can become what I admire. Exactly that.
• 1:01:09
  That's it. As opposed to making this iconic
• 1:01:14
  person an idol, you know, like, you know, almost slavish.
• 1:01:19
  Cause the with the duality of the feminine and the masculine,
• 1:01:22
  there are some things feminine wise, the masculine can never be
• 1:01:25
  and you know, masculine wise, the feminine can never be.
• 1:01:29
  And so it's good to desire in the other something that is
• 1:01:34
  foreign, you know, and and that you can't possess in yourself.
• 1:01:37
  But like you're saying, with the masculine, it was things that
• 1:01:39
  you admired, you kind of learned or neuroticization of it, but
• 1:01:42
  then you discovered, hey, I can actually model it in myself.
• 1:01:45
  And I got to get it. I got to make peace with it.
• 1:01:49
  I can't leap over it or avoid it because it makes me
• 1:01:52
  uncomfortable. And, and it was in that period,
• 1:01:55
  as per your question a while back that I began to experience
• 1:02:00
  like I want, I want a girlfriend.
• 1:02:03
  I want a woman. I, I, I mean, I did, I felt
• 1:02:07
  naturally ready to begin to avail myself to a particular 1,
• 1:02:14
  you know, and one of my frat brothers prompted me and said,
• 1:02:19
  So what, when, what are you doing with all that?
• 1:02:21
  I mean, like, we're all kind of freaking out with the girl
• 1:02:24
  thing. And there was a sister sorority
• 1:02:28
  and, you know, we do stuff together and there were lots of
• 1:02:31
  awkward hits and misses with everybody.
• 1:02:35
  But they were like, well, what are, what are you exempt?
• 1:02:39
  Like, what? What's your deal?
• 1:02:42
  And they kind of didn't let me play the gay card, you know, not
• 1:02:46
  that I would have, but kind of like, well, like almost like,
• 1:02:49
  oh, don't ask him. He's in a different category.
• 1:02:53
  You know, they just said, well, what are you going to do?
• 1:02:56
  Like, what's up with you and girls, you know?
• 1:03:01
  And I said, yeah, what is up? But at the same time, I was
• 1:03:06
  beginning to experience like, a longing to position myself as a
• 1:03:12
  man for a woman. And I began, you know, I kind of
• 1:03:16
  was interested in a couple of the girls and kind of got to
• 1:03:20
  know him a little bit. And couple of them kind of got
• 1:03:24
  into me. And then I'm like, I don't know
• 1:03:27
  if I can do this. I don't know if I want to do
• 1:03:30
  this. I mean, all the insurance and
• 1:03:31
  outs of dating, that's a whole nother thing which most people
• 1:03:34
  just go through. And whatever junior high and
• 1:03:38
  high school, I was experiencing it, you know, little bit later,
• 1:03:42
  but yeah. But then I, I, I, there was a
• 1:03:45
  Christian bookstore in Westwood and I met a woman there and I
• 1:03:51
  liked her and I thought I like being with her.
• 1:03:55
  It was a working relationship, so I had lots of opportunities
• 1:03:58
  to see her. And I thought, I like this girl
• 1:04:03
  and I began to woo her. I just did.
• 1:04:05
  I thought, hey, I'm, I am, I am engaging you as a man.
• 1:04:10
  I'm not just your work buddy. I was, I, I was good.
• 1:04:13
  I, I love women. I had a good mom, so I I was not
• 1:04:18
  like, oh, women. I I just wasn't honestly, I
• 1:04:22
  wasn't man enough to offer myself to.
• 1:04:26
  I just wasn't. I mean, yeah, God bless me.
• 1:04:29
  I just no shame. I just wasn't there.
• 1:04:33
  But I was getting there. And this woman that I was
• 1:04:37
  working with, I said I want to get there with her.
• 1:04:40
  I like her, I still like her. She became my wife.
• 1:04:45
  I like her more than amazing I am.
• 1:04:50
  I've been married a long time. How many years now, Andrew?
• 1:04:54
  45. It's amazing.
• 1:04:58
  Almost 40. 6 and when you ended up courting her and then getting
• 1:05:01
  engaged and getting married, yeah.
• 1:05:02
  Did you share with her? Yeah, I used to live the gay
• 1:05:05
  lifestyle. I.
• 1:05:06
  Yeah. And one of the things that we
• 1:05:07
  began to speak of, I, I did share with her kind of early on
• 1:05:13
  that I was coming out of this, but it was good.
• 1:05:16
  It wasn't like, oh poor me, I'm so hard or.
• 1:05:20
  Or like, I have to be with you because I just can't be with
• 1:05:23
  men. Yeah, no, I was just like, no,
• 1:05:25
  I'm, that's what I come out of. But yeah, I, I was a little
• 1:05:29
  frank about that. I, I, I think because again,
• 1:05:33
  call it oversensitivity or maybe just a kind of integration, it
• 1:05:38
  was, but that is what I'm dealing with.
• 1:05:41
  And if I'm going to, if we're going to even deepen friendship
• 1:05:44
  quite apart from is this date dating thing going to become an
• 1:05:48
  engagement? It was more, I want you to know
• 1:05:51
  kind of what is going on and how I'm, how I'm dealing with this.
• 1:05:57
  And my wife had had a brother at the time, still did.
• 1:06:01
  He's he's since passed, but he was a he, he was a lot older
• 1:06:06
  than she was and he he really well.
• 1:06:10
  What a what a bittersweet story. He experienced homosexuality
• 1:06:18
  very early on in his life at a time when he was traumatized by
• 1:06:24
  his early awkward experiences of homosexuality.
• 1:06:30
  My wife then, when she heard from about me, was like, oh,
• 1:06:35
  that's not a good thing. That's a painful thing.
• 1:06:38
  That's a disruptive thing. That's a shameful thing that
• 1:06:43
  that hurts my parents deeply. And her brother also had
• 1:06:49
  significant drug problems and was always kind of on the move.
• 1:06:54
  And I mean really just a wounded guy.
• 1:06:57
  So did she. Was she almost tempted to reject
• 1:06:59
  you fully because of that? Kind of wanted to know what is
• 1:07:02
  your experience of this because my experience of this is is
• 1:07:07
  really toxic. She loves her brother, she loved
• 1:07:11
  him then, but she was in a position of often in between her
• 1:07:16
  brother and his escapades and her wonderful Christian parents
• 1:07:21
  who were kind of deer in a headlights in regards to the
• 1:07:27
  brothers activities. And so yeah, so we had to work
• 1:07:31
  that out together. Like how is this different?
• 1:07:34
  And and I had to work that out with her parents.
• 1:07:37
  I think a lot of people wonder if someone is coming out of the
• 1:07:40
  same sex, like the culture would say, well, somebody who's born
• 1:07:42
  again becomes a Christian, leaves the same sex lifestyle,
• 1:07:46
  once gay, always gay. You don't really change.
• 1:07:48
  That's what people would say, you know, I'm Born This Way,
• 1:07:51
  right? And so if you get married to a
• 1:07:53
  woman, you know, they call it a lavender marriage.
• 1:07:56
  It's not really a real marriage. And you might still be able to
• 1:07:59
  mechanically act out intimacy with this woman, but you're
• 1:08:02
  always going to be wanting to be with a guy.
• 1:08:03
  What would you say to those people?
• 1:08:05
  I would say I don't want to be with a guy, I want to be with
• 1:08:10
  her. I mean, I got through something,
• 1:08:13
  you know, my wife was not my ticket out.
• 1:08:16
  My wife was someone that I loved.
• 1:08:19
  I loved a person, a female person, and I wanted to be
• 1:08:25
  united with her. So that stands and the union
• 1:08:30
  stands. And what I discovered in the
• 1:08:34
  experiences that I described is that I have a responsibility to
• 1:08:39
  ensure that I'm clear in how I'm meeting good needs for masculine
• 1:08:45
  love and attention. And I know what those are, and
• 1:08:49
  I've got through that significantly.
• 1:08:51
  But I still know what those are. And I'm still strongly fortified
• 1:08:57
  by good friendship with guys. All of this is towards the end
• 1:09:02
  of being a faithful whole enough man.
• 1:09:06
  And when you discover that with a woman, I've, I've been
• 1:09:09
  discovering it for a long time now.
• 1:09:13
  I, I don't want to, There's I, I, there's not a void.
• 1:09:16
  There's not this increasing void for a fantasy lover.
• 1:09:21
  I've walked that walk and I don't want it.
• 1:09:24
  I want to continue to grow in my integrity as a husband and as a
• 1:09:29
  father. And that's my commitment.
• 1:09:32
  And I'm going to be true to that to the end.
• 1:09:35
  Do you think that all men or women with their different
• 1:09:39
  experience, obviously of same sex attraction, who through
• 1:09:43
  their faith, through therapy, through shoring up their own
• 1:09:46
  true identity, they can heal? Do you think that they should
• 1:09:52
  all be open to marriage? You know, I know of some
• 1:09:57
  Christian same sex attracted people who left that lifestyle.
• 1:10:01
  And they're not necessarily saying I'd never marry, but they
• 1:10:04
  have no desire for it. They don't really experience
• 1:10:07
  other sex attraction. And so they just say, hey, I'm
• 1:10:09
  going to live like Saint Paul says, as a celibate.
• 1:10:12
  Yeah, I would say celibacy is a calling, not a default.
• 1:10:17
  Like, well, I'm just not so interested, so I'm going to call
• 1:10:20
  myself celibate. I don't think that's the spirit
• 1:10:24
  of what Saint Paul is saying in First Corinthians 7.
• 1:10:27
  I think what he's saying is I'm all in for the Kingdom.
• 1:10:31
  I'm just into Kingdom stuff. I'm so busy advancing the
• 1:10:35
  Kingdom, I don't have a lot of time to be forging a domestic
• 1:10:40
  life. That's great celibacy, I would
• 1:10:44
  say to say, well, I'm just not that interested in the other.
• 1:10:48
  I would say no, keep growing and keep going.
• 1:10:52
  Don't don't live under now a new ceiling of I still have this
• 1:10:58
  condition that prevents me. I wanted I wanted more.
• 1:11:05
  OK, admittedly I wanted more. I was at a formative time.
• 1:11:09
  I was a young adult, lots of sexual energy.
• 1:11:13
  I wanted to channel that in a constructive way, and the only
• 1:11:16
  way we can do that as Christians is by discovering and loving one
• 1:11:23
  person. I wanted that.
• 1:11:26
  So I do think there's something to the want, and I think there's
• 1:11:30
  something to the reach, and I think there's something to
• 1:11:34
  having to be authentic about. If I don't really love you,
• 1:11:37
  body, soul and spirit, I am not going to fake it.
• 1:11:42
  And I think that's great. That's authentic.
• 1:11:46
  But I dare say we need, we need to amplify the witnesses of how
• 1:11:55
  Jesus actually enables us to aspire and to attain for more.
• 1:12:01
  And when I say more, I mean the normal reality of my agency as a
• 1:12:06
  man to to help secure a woman in love with my pretty good gift.
• 1:12:14
  And I wanted to do that. I hope there's a lot of men
• 1:12:17
  hearing this who say there's a lot of amazing women out there.
• 1:12:21
  I, I, I'm going to activate and not play it safe.
• 1:12:28
  I mean, I think again, a lot of the roots of my thing where I
• 1:12:31
  was self protective and I played it safe early on through, I dare
• 1:12:37
  say no one's fault other than my own variables for sure.
• 1:12:43
  And I would say to guys, come on, let's activate.
• 1:12:46
  And I think the things that I've learned in coming out of
• 1:12:49
  homosexuality have actually equipped me to be, in some ways,
• 1:12:53
  maybe a a more attuned father and husband.
• 1:12:58
  You're you're very self aware, yeah.
• 1:13:00
  And you've plumbed the depths of your own identity and
• 1:13:04
  masculinity and that a lot of men that don't have same sex
• 1:13:08
  attraction might never go through that process that you
• 1:13:10
  went through. And it makes and it makes you
• 1:13:12
  more free to love. I think it does.
• 1:13:14
  And to love the guys in my life and to need them.
• 1:13:18
  And to to continue to cultivate meaningful masculine friendships
• 1:13:23
  that only empower The Maine in the plane of being a husband and
• 1:13:28
  a father. What was it like becoming a
• 1:13:30
  father? It was great.
• 1:13:33
  It was just great. I was so ready to be a father.
• 1:13:38
  We were in grad school. Desert Stream had had started,
• 1:13:44
  but it was going strong. We were our lives were so full.
• 1:13:48
  And in the midst of this finals week, my wife went into labor.
• 1:13:55
  I got a call during a final like get to the hospital, you know,
• 1:14:00
  my wife was at a checkup. They said we're, we're, we're
• 1:14:03
  taking the baby. She had AC section, the first
• 1:14:05
  one. And it was just great.
• 1:14:09
  It, it was, I mean, it was, it was only joyful and the grace
• 1:14:16
  that God gave both of us to, to just welcome this life at such
• 1:14:23
  an intensive time in our young adulthood.
• 1:14:27
  I'm I'm just amazed at, at the gift and, and also the, our
• 1:14:34
  capacity to, to welcome another. And then the babies came very
• 1:14:43
  quickly after that. And so, yeah, beautiful.
• 1:14:47
  What inspired you to start Desert Stream?
• 1:14:50
  The people that I was in fellowship with still at UCLA,
• 1:14:54
  at this First Vineyard church and on the West Side, and so
• 1:15:00
  many people who I was coming to know who were struggling either
• 1:15:05
  with homosexuality or just with like life defining sexual sins.
• 1:15:11
  And my pastor said would you help them?
• 1:15:14
  Could you do something? They need something in some ways
• 1:15:18
  a little bit more to to take root in this community.
• 1:15:22
  So many people were coming to know Jesus, but it was really
• 1:15:27
  parable of the sower, thin soil, too much sun, not enough
• 1:15:33
  shelter. And the pastors were like, hey,
• 1:15:36
  would you help them? Would you give them a little
• 1:15:38
  shelter? And this is not just people who
• 1:15:41
  have same sex attraction, it's people who have sexual addiction
• 1:15:44
  or sexual. Wounds.
• 1:15:45
  Right desert stream serves. Both.
• 1:15:47
  So there's a whole, I mean, we're living in the post sexual
• 1:15:50
  revolution culture. Most people in our culture have
• 1:15:55
  some sort of sexual wound, addiction, trauma, bad
• 1:15:58
  experience, and they need to be accompanied because it's not
• 1:16:02
  just like you become a Christian and then everything's like
• 1:16:04
  great, you know, there's a process and a journey of healing
• 1:16:07
  and transformation that you went on that you wanted to shepherd.
• 1:16:10
  I really did understand that, like, no, this is important.
• 1:16:14
  This is kind of a formation issue, almost a healing and a
• 1:16:18
  discipleship issue that people need in the context of the day
• 1:16:25
  in and day out of a worshipping community.
• 1:16:29
  And my pastors knew this. So the fact that they had that
• 1:16:32
  site and I was this kind of eager layperson with this neat
• 1:16:37
  woman now. So like she was game.
• 1:16:40
  And I just love that. I honestly, I love young
• 1:16:43
  adulthood about, you know, let's put on a show, let's do it.
• 1:16:47
  We can do this and I'm like, I can do we can do it help God.
• 1:16:52
  And so we began to be helpful and that that was the beginning
• 1:16:57
  of Desert Stream many years ago, as old as my relationship with
• 1:17:01
  this woman. Amazing.
• 1:17:02
  And and I I dare say, even though we were just dating, of
• 1:17:06
  course, in the beginning, it it was the fruit of our yes to each
• 1:17:13
  other and are growing together saying, oh Lord, I hope I can do
• 1:17:20
  this many good challenges. How?
• 1:17:25
  Many people do you think have been part of Desert Stream now
• 1:17:28
  in the last 40 years. Oh, wow.
• 1:17:30
  Well, we've been in like over 45 countries, so.
• 1:17:34
  Yeah. So I mean, it would be hard to
• 1:17:36
  say numbers. Our goal is always to equip lay
• 1:17:40
  people to do this. Living Waters group, this 20
• 1:17:44
  lesson pretty intensive thing. So and to and to and to make a
• 1:17:50
  way for sexual integration where people worship whether they're
• 1:17:53
  Catholic or not or wherever, wherever in a parish or a
• 1:17:58
  diocese that would be inclusive of all Christians.
• 1:18:01
  Like if you want help in these areas and we'll help you.
• 1:18:05
  One thing I love about being Catholic now I love being
• 1:18:08
  Catholic. It's been 15 years since I've
• 1:18:11
  only 15, so it's not long given how long I've been doing this
• 1:18:14
  work. But one thing I love about it in
• 1:18:17
  my parish, I have a great parish and my pastors love Living
• 1:18:21
  Waters. And I have, I have a great team.
• 1:18:23
  My daughter actually leads the team now, but I'm right behind
• 1:18:28
  her. But the Catholic Church in our
• 1:18:32
  area, it's a very Christian sort of, you know, Kansas City, the
• 1:18:35
  Catholic Church is like the seat of healing for sexual
• 1:18:40
  brokenness. It's not like, oh, that's the
• 1:18:42
  big mega church, does it? You know, the big whatever
• 1:18:46
  Methodist thing, it's no, it's Catholic.
• 1:18:49
  So these evangelicals and Pentecostals, they're coming
• 1:18:52
  into the Catholic Church for the first time and saying I need to
• 1:18:56
  heal. Like my marriage is a mess.
• 1:19:00
  My normal life is completely abnormal with sexual brokenness
• 1:19:06
  and I need help. And they're discovering the help
• 1:19:10
  in the Catholic community with all the riches, all the graces
• 1:19:15
  of the Catholic Church that are active in all the Holy Spirit
• 1:19:20
  mix that we bring from our sunny, optimistic Southern
• 1:19:27
  California experience of healing.
• 1:19:29
  Like, come on, Lord, of course the Lord wants to help you.
• 1:19:34
  Of course there's more for you in your life.
• 1:19:37
  Give me the run through of what this 20 course experiences for a
• 1:19:43
  Living Waters group to heal sexual brokenness.
• 1:19:46
  Yeah, so it's men and women coming together.
• 1:19:48
  So there's men and women on the team.
• 1:19:51
  I've written this Living Waters guidebook thing that is, it's
• 1:19:55
  pretty, it's intensive, but it's not too much.
• 1:19:58
  So it it simply begins by just like, let's welcome Jesus into
• 1:20:04
  where we are. Let's just welcome him.
• 1:20:06
  He can handle it and we can handle each other.
• 1:20:09
  The group has very good boundaries.
• 1:20:11
  That keep the group safe and clean so that we're actually
• 1:20:16
  able to help each other and not overdo it with each other
• 1:20:20
  because we're lay people, so there has to be limits, good
• 1:20:24
  limits. So that's operative.
• 1:20:28
  We share these teachings. People who embody the teachings
• 1:20:31
  share it. And then honestly, we say, come
• 1:20:35
  Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, would you meet us that that this is an
• 1:20:40
  area where I need the saving love of God.
• 1:20:44
  And then we would close the evening with the same sex small
• 1:20:48
  group. So for half a year, you're going
• 1:20:51
  strong with five other people with a, with A2 leaders in the
• 1:20:58
  group that are going deep with you in the specifics of your
• 1:21:03
  world. Having gone into this teaching
• 1:21:06
  and large group ministry thing, we then sort of focus it on the
• 1:21:12
  particulars of what God is doing in that integration.
• 1:21:17
  And basically by the end of the six months, people have taken
• 1:21:22
  significant ground in their chastity.
• 1:21:25
  And we hope that they are going to continue with us, become a
• 1:21:30
  part of the leadership team, continue to heal and grow.
• 1:21:34
  That's not everybody, but it it ensures that this kind of good
• 1:21:40
  empowered accompaniment in a small group setting is going to
• 1:21:45
  continue in the community and really becomes a part of the
• 1:21:50
  diocesan offering. Amazing.
• 1:21:53
  So that frankly counterfeits counterfeit advocacy groups and
• 1:21:58
  things, they can't take root in the diocese.
• 1:22:02
  I also love that you're combining different elements of
• 1:22:05
  sexual pain or confusion or addiction or attraction, so
• 1:22:09
  you're not singling out one group says you have some special
• 1:22:12
  issue. It's sort of this whole, it's
• 1:22:15
  better whole kind of scope of of where chastity can go wrong.
• 1:22:18
  And and where we can all be on the same page with where we're
• 1:22:21
  going. It's so needed.
• 1:22:23
  Andrew. I I would love there to be a
• 1:22:25
  Living Waters group in every church.
• 1:22:28
  How? How can people listening find
• 1:22:30
  you and your work and maybe start a Living Waters chapter?
• 1:22:34
  Yeah, thanks. Just get a hold of us on our
• 1:22:36
  website. It's Desert Stream.
• 1:22:40
  One word. Not stream stream.
• 1:22:42
  Yes, stream singular, desertstream.org and just yeah,
• 1:22:46
  find out about us. You can you can come on board.
• 1:22:49
  We just did a a week long training with Christopher W at
• 1:22:52
  his institute and we do other ones in on either coast and in
• 1:22:58
  Kansas City. So please come out.
• 1:23:00
  We'd love to see you and we'll take steps together.
• 1:23:04
  How beautiful Andrew, thank you for your long beautiful ministry
• 1:23:10
  and work for the church and his people and are coming on and
• 1:23:13
  sharing so beautifully. Thank you.
• 1:23:16
  Thank you, Lila. I so appreciate it.
• 1:23:18
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• 1:23:20
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• 1:23:28
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