Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E227: From Rainbow Pride to Radical Faith: One Man's Unexpected Story w/Becket Cook | Lila Rose Show

Transcript

E227: From Rainbow Pride to Radical Faith: One Man's Unexpected Story w/Becket Cook | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  I never had an emotional connection with my father.
• 0:02
  Jake and I started going out to gay bars.
• 0:05
  I was 15, he was 14. I just felt like, wow, these are
• 0:08
  my people. Like these are the misfits of
• 0:10
  the world, that you continuously do it and you become numb to
• 0:13
  that shame. And that's what happened to me.
• 0:14
  God wasn't relevant to my life. I didn't want anything to do
• 0:17
  with God. At what point do you have the
• 0:19
  transformation? We're just minding our own
• 0:22
  business having coffee and we look over and it was a shocking
• 0:25
  sight to see in LA and I just started bawling like I've never
• 0:29
  cried before in my I was crying so hard that they were people
• 0:32
  were going to call the medics because they thought like.
• 0:34
  He was raised in a Catholic family in Dallas, the youngest
• 0:37
  of eight children, but from his earliest years as a teen, he
• 0:40
  would go to gay bars secretly at night.
• 0:42
  Today on the Lila Roche Show, I sit down with Beckett Cook, a
• 0:45
  podcaster, YouTube and author, who shares with me his
• 0:48
  incredible story of transformation.
• 0:50
  How we went from living 20 years in the gay lifestyle to these
• 0:54
  unexpected and supernatural events that transformed his
• 0:57
  life. This episode will bring hope and
• 0:59
  inspiration as we collectively wrestle as a culture with key
• 1:03
  questions about identity and sexuality.
• 1:05
  I hope you enjoy this conversation and can share it
• 1:07
  with somebody that you love and care about.
• 1:09
  As always, don't forget to subscribe to the show.
• 1:11
  It helps the show reach more people.
• 1:12
  And if you're on podcast app, make sure you leave us five
• 1:15
  stars and a review so we can help bring these important
• 1:17
  conversations to more people. Beckett Cook, welcome to the
• 1:20
  podcast. Good to be here, Lila.
• 1:22
  I'm so happy you're here. It's so fun to meet you finally.
• 1:25
  I know I I follow you on social media and I see you and now I'm
• 1:29
  finally here in person. I love it.
• 1:30
  Awesome. Well, same.
• 1:32
  And I've actually known about your story and you for years and
• 1:35
  I've always thought fascinating would be great to talk to him.
• 1:38
  So thanks for agreeing to come in today.
• 1:40
  I'm very excited for our conversation.
• 1:41
  I am too. I think you're Ala guy.
• 1:44
  Yes. How's that going these days?
• 1:47
  Oh, it's, you know, L as a struggle, but I've lived there
• 1:52
  since 1993 and it feels, it just feels like home to me.
• 1:58
  So it's kind of, I kind of have an ambivalent love, hate
• 2:01
  relationship with it. LA used to be so amazing.
• 2:05
  Like in the 90s and the early 2000s, it was like paradise And
• 2:09
  and then it's kind of devolved into, you know, not so much good
• 2:14
  stuff. So but I still love it.
• 2:19
  I kind of want to move to Orange County.
• 2:21
  You're. Welcome anytime.
• 2:22
  And you can't. You can't beat the weather.
• 2:25
  Yes, that's true. I mean, I tell people we feel
• 2:28
  called to be in California to fight the good fight.
• 2:29
  They're like, yeah, the weather, the weather's volume like.
• 2:34
  You're always like the most beautiful.
• 2:35
  It's a. Complex picture.
• 2:36
  I'm from here, you know, there's, there's, but I, I'm
• 2:39
  also very hopeful because there's people like you and
• 2:40
  there's so many other people out here that are on mission and I
• 2:44
  do think it's making a difference.
• 2:45
  And like lots of families that are pioneering the way.
• 2:48
  So I I, I am hopeful for the future of the state.
• 2:51
  I am too. I am too, yeah.
• 2:53
  So for people that are meeting you for the first time, tell us
• 2:55
  a little bit about your background.
• 2:58
  Well, I was raised in Dallas, TX in a large Catholic family.
• 3:04
  I was the youngest of eight kids.
• 3:06
  The six boys, 2 girls. Oh amazing.
• 3:08
  I know my mother. My mother had eight kids in nine
• 3:13
  years. Yeah.
• 3:15
  Amazing woman. It's funny because the I don't
• 3:20
  know if you saw the New York Times article yesterday about
• 3:22
  Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, and they were
• 3:25
  basically mocking him for having nine kids.
• 3:27
  By the way, I know the Duffy's personally.
• 3:29
  Soul to the earth people. Amazing.
• 3:32
  It was crazy. Rachel and Sean are the real
• 3:33
  deal. Beautiful kids, beautiful
• 3:35
  family. Yeah.
• 3:37
  And yeah, the New York Times eviscerates them over what?
• 3:40
  They hate the family, but my parents were very procreative
• 3:46
  and I had a really fun childhood, like a really nice
• 3:52
  childhood. But at a certain age, I guess, I
• 3:57
  don't know, it was kind of mid elementary school, I started to
• 4:01
  have these kind of feelings, these same sex attractions and
• 4:07
  didn't know what to make of it, didn't know what to do because
• 4:11
  at that time it was very, very taboo to even speak about
• 4:17
  homosexuality or to talk about it or to to be, you know, to
• 4:21
  even anything associated with that was taboo.
• 4:24
  And so I kind of, and then when I was when I was in 3rd grade, I
• 4:32
  mean, not to be it's like very dramatic at the beginning, but
• 4:36
  when I was in 3rd grade, I spent the night at a friend's house
• 4:41
  from my school. And in the middle, middle of the
• 4:44
  night, I woke up to his father molesting me.
• 4:49
  And it was like it was the scariest moment of my life
• 4:51
  because I thought he was going to kill me if he knew that I was
• 4:55
  awake. And, and so anyway, how old were
• 5:00
  you? I think I was 9 years old.
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  And were you in a bedroom with his son?
• 5:05
  No, we were in two. We were like in adjoining
• 5:08
  bedrooms. So I was in my own bedroom and
• 5:12
  he came in three different times.
• 5:14
  It was crazy. And I.
• 5:15
  Finally. In the same night and I finally
• 5:17
  like got up and well, I sat up in bed and he came in the third
• 5:23
  time and obviously he knew I was awake.
• 5:26
  And I said, and he said something like, oh, do you need
• 5:31
  a fan? I'm like, no.
• 5:34
  And I wish I had told my my father was a lawyer.
• 5:39
  And I wish I told my father at the time.
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  My I wish I told my parents. I regret not doing that.
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  But I was concerned that if I had told him, because my father
• 5:53
  had like some crazy clients and I was afraid if I told my
• 5:58
  father, he would have him killed.
• 6:02
  So I didn't want that, the weight of that on me, like the
• 6:06
  our family being destroyed by this situation, my father going
• 6:09
  to prison for murder. Like because my father, he was
• 6:13
  such a like man's man and he, I don't know what he would have
• 6:16
  done. Actually, I do know because
• 6:20
  shortly before he died in 2015, I was in Dallas and we went to
• 6:27
  lunch and I said and we had never really he he had found out
• 6:31
  about it. Later, through my brother, my
• 6:34
  whole family found out about it. How old were you when your
• 6:36
  family found out about it? I was in Lai was an adult I.
• 6:40
  Was an adult man, yeah. Probably like, I don't know, I
• 6:42
  was in my late 20s. But anyway, I, I finally,
• 6:48
  because my father and I had never talked about it.
• 6:50
  So I finally asked him. I said, Dad, what would you have
• 6:53
  done if I came to you and told you what?
• 6:57
  What? And I told I explained to him
• 6:59
  all the details of the night because he didn't know.
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  I don't think he knew the details.
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  So I said this is exactly what happened.
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  He didn't even remember the the boy I was friends with in school
• 7:09
  that his father he couldn't remember him.
• 7:11
  But I said, what would you have done if I had told you?
• 7:15
  And he said, well, I would have given him two choices.
• 7:18
  I'm like, what choices that he said I would have he either to
• 7:21
  turn himself in or and then he didn't finish the sentence and I
• 7:26
  was like, OK, so I he so that's what he would have done.
• 7:33
  He would have literally said you turn yourself in or you're going
• 7:37
  to die. Like, and I kind of like, you
• 7:42
  know, I wish I wish I had told them because I, I fortunately I
• 7:47
  was able to tell a close friend of mine.
• 7:51
  So it wasn't at the time. Yeah, when I was 9, who also was
• 7:56
  he's now he identifies as gay this this guy.
• 7:59
  And but so it wasn't like I bottled it up my whole life.
• 8:04
  You know, it wasn't. So I at least I had that kind of
• 8:06
  release valve. But I wish I had, I had told my
• 8:12
  parents and and it just kind of like worked through it with them
• 8:16
  because I think it would have changed the trajectory I went
• 8:20
  on. Of your life, yeah.
• 8:23
  Because that had a dramatic effect on my life, obviously.
• 8:26
  And and then I and then when I got into high school, I went to
• 8:32
  Jesuit high school and all boys school and in Dallas and I I
• 8:39
  still, you know, was starting the the same sex attraction was
• 8:43
  getting more. It was increasing and it wasn't
• 8:50
  until my junior year, junior year at Jesuit, I met a
• 8:55
  sophomore and we became best friends and he was, we ended up
• 9:01
  coming out to each other. We were both same sex attracted
• 9:05
  at that point. We wouldn't have called
• 9:06
  ourselves gay because that wasn't even, we wouldn't
• 9:09
  identify like that. And so once that happened, we
• 9:18
  I'll, I'll call him Jake. That's not his real name, but
• 9:22
  I'll call him Jake. Jake and I started going out to
• 9:29
  gay bars in Dallas. I mean, I was 15, he was 14.
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  And my parents were so oblivious, like because they had
• 9:38
  so many kids, they couldn't like when they got to when it got to
• 9:41
  me, they were just like exhausted and couldn't, they
• 9:45
  couldn't keep tabs on me. And because I was making
• 9:49
  straight A's in school, so they didn't, they weren't concerned
• 9:52
  about me, but and they had no idea they lived upstairs.
• 9:55
  They had no idea that I was going out and coming home at
• 9:57
  5:00 in the morning from nightclubs and gay bars.
• 10:02
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  gift at sevenweekscoffee.com. There was a club in Dallas
• 10:45
  called the Stark Club, designed by this famous French designer
• 10:49
  Philippe Stark. And it was partly owned by Grace
• 10:52
  Jones and like Stevie Nicks. And it was like a really bit.
• 10:55
  It was like Studio 54 in Dallas. Jake and I were on the guest
• 11:00
  list. The first time we got like went,
• 11:02
  we were immediately put on the guest list.
• 11:03
  I mean, I, we looked like we were 12.
• 11:06
  It was crazy. But I remember walking into this
• 11:09
  place and seeing straight people, gay people, drag Queens,
• 11:15
  transsexuals, like the whole gamut.
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  And I just felt like, wow, like these are these are my people.
• 11:23
  Like these are the misfits of the world.
• 11:24
  And so it was weird because I lived this double life like at,
• 11:28
  in, in high school, I would go to like debutant balls with
• 11:31
  Hockaday girls in Dallas or yeah, Hockaday girls.
• 11:35
  And I went to several debutant balls and, and, or homecoming or
• 11:40
  prom and, and I dated girls in high school.
• 11:43
  I dated 3 girls. Like I had three serious
• 11:45
  girlfriends, but it was all just for show.
• 11:48
  Nobody knew, and except for Jake, that you were living.
• 11:52
  For Jake and like a couple other people, that kid from my
• 11:56
  childhood that knew about the molestation.
• 12:01
  So I live this double life because I mean I literally we,
• 12:07
  Jake and I would go to we would go on double dates to Debbie
• 12:11
  Tomball, like a Debbie Tomball, for example.
• 12:13
  And then at the end of the night, at midnight or one when
• 12:16
  the girls had to go home, we would go down to the Star Club
• 12:21
  or to gay bars and stay out all night.
• 12:23
  And so that was a huge turning point in my life, like having
• 12:31
  someone in high school like a confidant like that and have
• 12:33
  being able to talk about everything and explore
• 12:38
  everything. And that was a big deal.
• 12:41
  My my parents were pretty much unaware of what was going on
• 12:47
  again, because I had so many kids.
• 12:48
  But so, yeah. And then the same thing and the
• 12:57
  same thing happened in college. I, I immediately became friends
• 13:01
  with on the first day of school, I became friends with someone
• 13:03
  who was same sex attracted, although we didn't really know
• 13:06
  it at the time. But then we came, it was another
• 13:09
  like 6 months later, we came out to each other.
• 13:11
  It was a big deal. So again, I had another in
• 13:15
  college, I had a confidant we, you know, we would go to gay
• 13:19
  bars, we would blah, blah, blah. We would explore day life and.
• 13:23
  I've got to ask, and I know there is so much to the story
• 13:27
  about college and then being a young professional.
• 13:30
  And you know, we're going to, I'm excited for you to share
• 13:33
  that because it's so incredible, your story.
• 13:36
  But I've got to ask back to that event of your childhood, the
• 13:40
  molestation. And you said it totally changed
• 13:43
  you. I mean, it affected you deeply.
• 13:45
  What, what would that have looked like for Beckett the next
• 13:50
  day after you endured that? It's almost like you
• 13:58
  disassociate from it. It's this weird phenomenon
• 14:02
  because the next day I wasn't, it wasn't like I was
• 14:06
  traumatized. The next day.
• 14:08
  I just, I immediately called that friend from my childhood
• 14:13
  friend and he came over. Why?
• 14:16
  Why that friend? We had known each other since
• 14:19
  birth because our parents were best friends and he was same sex
• 14:24
  attract. He was he was same sex attracted
• 14:27
  and so. And you knew that at 9 or?
• 14:30
  I think so, yeah. I think I knew that it was
• 14:33
  clear. Like with him, it was clear.
• 14:35
  He was different, yeah. So you thought he would
• 14:37
  understand what you just experienced?
• 14:40
  Yeah, I and, and he did. And he was very, he was very
• 14:44
  kind of like you should, you know, do something, you should
• 14:47
  say something. And I'm like, no, no, no, no.
• 14:50
  But it kind of like the next day I didn't again, it was kind of
• 14:57
  like, I just sort of, it's almost like you just
• 15:02
  disassociate from it and you don't think about it and you
• 15:05
  sort of bury it. And I remember, but it, it had
• 15:11
  so many like effects on my life in so many different ways, which
• 15:15
  we can maybe talk about. But I remember thinking when I
• 15:20
  did later in my life become, quote UN quote, gay, I remember
• 15:25
  thinking like, that experience had no effect on my sexuality
• 15:30
  because I didn't want this like horrible experience to be
• 15:35
  identified with my identity, you know, So I always denied that,
• 15:40
  oh, that wasn't a big deal. Like that had no effect on me
• 15:44
  and. Meaning like you would have been
• 15:46
  gay regardless. Of that and you know.
• 15:49
  That was a blip on the radar in terms of your innate sexuality,
• 15:52
  that you're a gay person. Yeah, I, you know, at that point
• 15:55
  in my life when I was an adult, I was like, I was born gay and
• 15:58
  like that, that did, of course, that didn't change anything.
• 16:01
  And I didn't want that associated with my identity,
• 16:05
  that really kind of tragic night.
• 16:08
  And it wasn't until I became a Christian that I realized how
• 16:17
  important and impactful and destructive that night was.
• 16:23
  That's when I was like, Oh my gosh, that was a terrible thing.
• 16:27
  And actually tried to contact him, the man.
• 16:30
  And I got a hold of his wife and he, she told me that he had
• 16:35
  passed away in 1991 or something like that.
• 16:38
  And so I was like, oh, OK. And so it has, it's had a
• 16:45
  lasting kind of effect on me in terms of because one of the,
• 16:50
  I'll just give you one example, one of the things because it was
• 16:54
  like I was, I was awakened in the middle of the night and it
• 16:57
  was so scary. And I thought he was going to
• 17:00
  stab. I had this vision of him
• 17:02
  stabbing me with a knife. And I think since then, because
• 17:07
  I've always had trouble. I've always, I've not been an
• 17:09
  easy sleeper. I'm not, I'm not like the kind
• 17:13
  of person I'm sure you are that you can just hit the pillow and
• 17:15
  you fall asleep naturally. It's so easy.
• 17:18
  I've never been like that since that time and sleep has always
• 17:24
  been kind of difficult for me. And so and I think that night
• 17:28
  had kind of had that effect on me where it's not it's not easy
• 17:35
  for me to fall asleep. I mean, sometimes it is, but but
• 17:39
  it also just kind of instilled this sort of, I don't know, this
• 17:46
  kind of underlying fear in me or anxiety because I think after
• 17:51
  that I, I became pretty anxious. Well, and you mentioned you're
• 17:54
  going out to nightclubs at night, you stay up all night.
• 17:57
  Were you also kind of escaping sleep?
• 18:00
  I don't know if that's too much of A stretch.
• 18:01
  Like was sleep hard for you Because.
• 18:03
  No, that wasn't no. That was more just.
• 18:05
  That was just for. Rebellion and fun and doing your
• 18:08
  thing. And I remember with this, this
• 18:12
  is crazy. Like one time I came home at
• 18:14
  5:00 in the morning from a from out on a school night.
• 18:17
  It was like, it was like, was it Thursday?
• 18:20
  Yeah, it was a Thursday night. So I I came home Friday morning
• 18:23
  at 5:00 AM from the club. I walked in the front door of
• 18:26
  our house. My dad was up getting ready.
• 18:28
  He walked from the kitchen and he was walking past me and he
• 18:32
  just kind of looked at me and I looked at him and we didn't say
• 18:36
  a word. And that was it.
• 18:37
  Like there was no. Did he know you were coming in?
• 18:40
  Yeah, he knew I had just come in from somewhere and he didn't ask
• 18:45
  me where I was, what I've been doing.
• 18:48
  He just kind of went about his business and.
• 18:50
  Why do you think that is? I don't know.
• 18:54
  I again, I think they were just, my dad was just kind of like
• 18:59
  resigned to, I think at that point my dad sort of suspected
• 19:04
  that I was, I was different and I wasn't, we never really
• 19:09
  connected. My father and I, he connected
• 19:12
  with my brothers who were all like sports fanatics and like,
• 19:15
  you know, but I was, I was always kind of the sensitive
• 19:20
  child and I was more of like a mama's boy.
• 19:23
  My mother and I of course, were very, a very unhealthily close,
• 19:28
  like to an extreme point. And I almost felt like her
• 19:33
  surrogate husband, like she would come to me with, like when
• 19:37
  my she would run to me for comfort, like if she had
• 19:41
  conflict with my father. It was not a healthy situation.
• 19:45
  Starting at what age? Very young, like, and I think my
• 19:48
  dad resented me for that. He resented me for being like on
• 19:52
  my mom's side all the time. And sorry, why you and not your
• 19:55
  brothers? Is that because you were just
• 19:56
  the baby? I think because he, my dad, was
• 19:59
  such a man's man that he. Couldn't he didn't know how to
• 20:04
  process a sensitive boy. He didn't know how to like
• 20:09
  handle that or understand that. I don't really remember doing
• 20:15
  anything with him. I mean, because my dad was
• 20:18
  worked all the time. He provided for the family.
• 20:21
  He was like, he was a very state.
• 20:23
  It was a very stable environment.
• 20:25
  Like we had dinner every night at 6:00 PM at the table.
• 20:28
  Like my dad would say a blessing, you know, pray over
• 20:31
  the the meal and, and they, we were very, you know, devout.
• 20:36
  Like we would go to Saturday night Mass and then my mom would
• 20:40
  go to daily Mass and, and you know, every morning I would see
• 20:45
  my, my dad would be at the kitchen table reading his Bible,
• 20:49
  his Jerusalem Bible, those giant things.
• 20:51
  And it was this weird dichotomy because that set the stage for
• 20:58
  me feeling this kind of security because it was, it was very
• 21:02
  stable, but I never had an emotional connection with my
• 21:09
  father. We never, I don't think we ever
• 21:11
  once. We never hung out, just like the
• 21:15
  two of us. Did he hang out with the other
• 21:17
  sons or he just didn't really hang out generally because he
• 21:19
  was so big? He hung out with a couple of
• 21:24
  them, like my brother Peter, who was a year older, 11 months
• 21:28
  older, Irish twins. Peter was like the captain of
• 21:32
  the football team at Jesuit and like, so my dad was very into
• 21:36
  Peter and like would go to, he would go to all of his games and
• 21:40
  you know, so they were very close.
• 21:41
  They were very connected, but I I wasn't connected with my dad.
• 21:45
  You didn't do football. I tried, it didn't really work.
• 21:50
  What did you do? Theater.
• 21:51
  Did you? Know I didn't do theater I
• 21:54
  played football in 7th and 8th grade at Saint Rita, which was.
• 21:58
  Like I don't like getting hurt. Yeah, well, it was more the
• 22:00
  heat. It was like.
• 22:01
  The Heat, it was Dallas. Oh my.
• 22:04
  Gosh, it was. I still have PTSD from it, but I
• 22:09
  play football because I mean, everyone you, you're expected.
• 22:12
  To they all play football, sure. So I play football 7th and 8th
• 22:15
  grade, which was a nightmare. I didn't like it at all, but I
• 22:18
  just did it anyway. And then my freshman year at
• 22:20
  Jesuit, I signed up for the football team.
• 22:24
  I actually did like whatever the training is.
• 22:28
  Is it called spring training? I don't know, but we did the
• 22:30
  training and they put, I was on the starting team of the
• 22:34
  football team. And but fortunately for me, I
• 22:39
  like hurt. I injured myself like pretty
• 22:42
  soon into it, like a month or two into it.
• 22:44
  And so I, I couldn't continue playing and I was like, Oh, I
• 22:48
  get the best of both worlds. I I'm on the team, but I don't
• 22:51
  have to actually do anything. And I think my dad was kind of
• 22:55
  like disappointed in me for that, like for hurting myself.
• 22:58
  It was almost like, why are you so weak and like kind of thing.
• 23:02
  I could sense that from him. But I love, by the way, I love
• 23:05
  my dad, my, I love my parents. They're amazing.
• 23:07
  They're in heaven. And but I'm just telling you the
• 23:11
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• 23:13
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• 24:17
  today. I had doctor Nicolosi, this he
• 24:22
  on my show, he, he works with men with unwanted same sex
• 24:29
  attraction. And but basically this, there's
• 24:33
  this key and I didn't really understand this until he
• 24:36
  explained it, but the child, the boy, the the boy attaches to the
• 24:45
  mother for the first, I think 2 1/2 years is the attachment.
• 24:50
  And then at, or maybe it's two years and then at that two year
• 24:53
  mark, that's when the boy separates from the mom and
• 24:57
  attaches to the father. And if that attachment doesn't
• 25:00
  happen, then that that oftentimes leads to homosexual
• 25:07
  desire in the boy that he calls it a pre homosexual boy.
• 25:12
  And and I think that was the dynamic in my family, like my
• 25:17
  mother was. It's like usually an anxious
• 25:20
  over involved mother and a distant kind of unattainable
• 25:24
  father and a father that you can't attach to, you can't
• 25:28
  connect to. And so there was not like I told
• 25:33
  my friend Josh, I told him his he just had a baby boy.
• 25:39
  And I said, listen, Josh, if you don't want your son to be gay,
• 25:43
  here's what you do. Yeah, what do you what do?
• 25:45
  Tell him first of all, have skin on skin contact with him all the
• 25:49
  time as a baby. Tell him you love him all the
• 25:54
  time and that you're proud of him all the time and spend time
• 25:57
  with him and attached to him. Like, and I explained like and
• 26:01
  when at this certain point at two years old, when he's kind of
• 26:07
  leaving the mom he needs that he needs you to attach to him.
• 26:11
  So make sure that happens and he's already done that.
• 26:13
  And what when you say make sure he attaches to you, obviously
• 26:16
  that includes like a lot of affection.
• 26:18
  Affection and spending time with him.
• 26:21
  Doing stuff together. Doing stuff together and.
• 26:23
  Then maybe anything. Yeah, anything.
• 26:25
  And they hang out all the time. Josh and his his son know other
• 26:29
  he knows adorable, but that's such a crucial time for that to
• 26:35
  happen. And if it doesn't happen either
• 26:38
  the child becomes pre homosexual or then there's the child can
• 26:44
  become rebellious in other ways. So that is a key moment at two
• 26:50
  years old. That's such good advice.
• 26:53
  I am familiar with Doctor Nicolosi's work to some degree,
• 26:56
  and I just think it's such an incredibly valuable perspective
• 27:00
  that most people I have no idea about.
• 27:03
  Like it's not, it's not like a common language that we talk
• 27:06
  about what might dispose a kid to same sex attraction.
• 27:09
  It's just like, well, you're born that way and you should
• 27:11
  celebrate it and affirm it endlessly, right?
• 27:13
  That's the cultural message, the culture's message.
• 27:16
  So it's so powerful to explore, like what really is going on,
• 27:19
  you know, with that kid, with that family system and.
• 27:22
  Nobody knows there. No scientist in the entire world
• 27:26
  knows what causes homosexual attraction.
• 27:30
  They I mean, there's the there's three options.
• 27:34
  There's and I think it's a combo platter.
• 27:36
  There's a genetic predisposition.
• 27:38
  There's possibly hormonal in utero issues like too much
• 27:43
  progesterone for the, you know, the boy is being I don't know.
• 27:48
  And then the third is nature. I'm a nurturer.
• 27:51
  Sorry, like the what I we just talked about the father mother
• 27:54
  dynamic. So I don't I'm not sure what how
• 27:57
  much what played into what, but it certainly wasn't It's not a
• 28:03
  choice like it's a choice to act on it, obviously, but it's not.
• 28:06
  It was never my choice to be attracted to the same sex.
• 28:09
  Like it was the last thing I wanted in Dallas, TX and the you
• 28:13
  know, 80s like no, like I didn't.
• 28:16
  I had wanted nothing to do with that.
• 28:19
  But for whatever reason, all those things came together and
• 28:25
  that happened. Back to just picking up the
• 28:28
  thread, two of the abuse right, that you experienced, do you
• 28:32
  have a memory of that? Like did you have a sense at the
• 28:38
  time when you were a kid of an intensity of same sex attraction
• 28:44
  after that event that came that seemed to kind of grow for you?
• 28:49
  Looking back on it now, perhaps you have a different perspective
• 28:52
  than what you were, how you saw it at that time.
• 28:56
  But I guess what was your narrative to yourself about
• 28:58
  that, about the abuse when you were 10/11/12, you know, going
• 29:03
  into your teen years? Again, it's kind.
• 29:05
  Of is it like a story you've told yourself?
• 29:07
  About well, I again, I just like pretended it didn't happen.
• 29:10
  I just almost went into denial about it.
• 29:14
  And so I don't know. Yeah.
• 29:19
  So I don't know if I again, I don't think I really started to
• 29:25
  think about it again until I became a Christian.
• 29:27
  That's when I was like, oh, this is a huge, it was a huge deal.
• 29:31
  Why was it? Why do you believe now that it
• 29:34
  was a huge deal and so consequential for you ultimately
• 29:37
  exploring same sex? Because.
• 29:39
  I think it's, it was almost like that night was eroticized or
• 29:43
  something for me. And so it I think had that night
• 29:48
  not happened, I would have gone on, I would have gone on the
• 29:53
  path of heterosexuality. But I think after that night, it
• 30:00
  whatever was maybe pre homosexual in me or, or
• 30:04
  whatever, if there was anything that was going on, I think it
• 30:08
  they kind of just confirmed it or like it exacerbated it and
• 30:14
  kind of sent me on this track. So yeah, it that's why I think
• 30:21
  it had a huge impact. Is it it just it almost like set
• 30:29
  in stone? What was what I was already, I
• 30:32
  was already a sensitive boy, but it's set in stone that I was
• 30:36
  like almost like a sensitive same sex attracted boy.
• 30:43
  I don't know. It's it was weird.
• 30:44
  I'm not. It's hard to explain it.
• 30:46
  Even though that abuse was done to you, you maybe internalized
• 30:49
  it as it's done to me because I am a gay boy.
• 30:53
  Maybe. Maybe was that possibly it or
• 30:56
  more that you your one of your first sexual experiences?
• 31:00
  I mean, was that your first sexual?
• 31:01
  Experience. Oh yeah, OK.
• 31:02
  Your first sexual experience is being abused by a man as a boy.
• 31:07
  Yeah. And that, yeah, that has an
• 31:11
  impact on anyone. And so, I mean, thankfully it
• 31:15
  was, it didn't get very far because I woke up and stopped it
• 31:23
  because it could have been very bad, but it didn't get terrible.
• 31:27
  I mean it, but it was pretty terrible.
• 31:30
  It kind of just like compressed this whole, it compressed my
• 31:37
  like sexuality into this one thing.
• 31:41
  And then I was sent on that thing, that one thing.
• 31:44
  I was like, on this train, on this track to becoming a gay
• 31:50
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• 33:02
  I've heard, you know, I think about one person I know, very
• 33:05
  dear friend and she was sexually abused as a little girl and she
• 33:10
  dealt with that. It was a big secret.
• 33:12
  She didn't tell anyone. It was a family member, extended
• 33:15
  family, but a family member horrific.
• 33:17
  And she dealt with it in her teen years by being super
• 33:20
  promiscuous. I mean, she just went like, the
• 33:23
  nightclub version, except it wasn't lesbianism.
• 33:25
  It was, you know, with other guys.
• 33:27
  But she was just out there, like, doing sexual things.
• 33:31
  And that was what she thought was normal.
• 33:33
  That was, like, her bent. And now she looks back on it and
• 33:36
  she says the hyper sexualization of herself as a child primed her
• 33:41
  for that. That's the thing with me.
• 33:43
  I mean, I was, I was very precocious actually, even in in
• 33:48
  high school, I was very, I was experimenting.
• 33:50
  And so it I that definitely had that impact on me where it be it
• 33:57
  sexualized me, hyper sexualized me.
• 33:59
  And so that, and I think that all that kind of abuse does that
• 34:06
  to people. So yeah, that was another
• 34:11
  outcome of that. I want to get back into your
• 34:14
  story and then I have more questions to ask just about the
• 34:16
  larger, like cultural climate we're in.
• 34:19
  And you know, there's a lot of people who've been abused as
• 34:21
  children in our society. I mean, I know a ton of people
• 34:24
  personally. Unfortunately, it's like
• 34:26
  everywhere. And then on top of that, there's
• 34:28
  all these agendas. So there's so much to explore
• 34:29
  there. And I know you have a lot of
• 34:30
  thoughts on it. Yeah, and I don't think, I think
• 34:33
  people don't ever let people, your kids spend the night
• 34:36
  anywhere, ever. Wow, it's.
• 34:38
  Never a good idea. You don't know.
• 34:40
  Even if it's like your best friend, you have no idea what's
• 34:44
  going on. Wow.
• 34:46
  So I I how? Well, did your parents know this
• 34:47
  couple? They didn't really.
• 34:50
  They didn't know. That they were like a Christian
• 34:52
  couple. Yeah, they were, you know,
• 34:53
  they're, they were Catholic and they sent their kids to we're in
• 34:57
  the same school. But yeah, I would, if I could
• 35:02
  recommend anything to parents, I would just say do not, just
• 35:05
  don't do sleepovers. You don't know what's going to
• 35:08
  happen. Anything could happen.
• 35:13
  I mean, I'm already on the no sleepover train so that affirms
• 35:16
  my early parenting decision. Which again, I'm I'm a newer
• 35:19
  parent but yeah, makes sense to me.
• 35:22
  Growing up as a kid, my mom would not allow sleepovers
• 35:25
  because she's she's a hyper vigilant Italian woman.
• 35:28
  So she's just like no one like the neighbor's family would be
• 35:30
  like, come on, have fun. And she's like, we don't know
• 35:32
  anything about this, you know, family.
• 35:34
  So I think that did protect me as a kid.
• 35:36
  Yeah. It's not like a fail proof,
• 35:38
  right? But it does.
• 35:40
  It does protect. It does, yeah.
• 35:43
  So you were back in college. You're talking about you're
• 35:46
  like, you know, you're still sort of, I don't know if it's
• 35:48
  fair to say, living a double life.
• 35:49
  That sounds too strong, but you're kind of not out yet.
• 35:52
  Yeah, so in college and high school.
• 35:55
  And where did you go to college? I went to College in Texas at a
• 35:59
  small liberal arts college called Austin College.
• 36:04
  I was supposed to go to UT University of Texas, but I was
• 36:07
  enrolled at UT Austin. But I, I freaked out at the last
• 36:11
  minute and because I thought it was too big of a school.
• 36:15
  I was like, I'm not used to 50,000 people.
• 36:19
  And then I, this is another weird thing, but I had applied
• 36:23
  to a bunch of schools on the East Coast like Georgetown and
• 36:28
  other like, you know, I think Princeton as well and other
• 36:32
  schools because all my friends went there to Brown and
• 36:35
  Princeton and Harvard. And but because I was the
• 36:40
  youngest of eight kids, like my, when I graduated, I've never
• 36:44
  really talked about this, but when I graduated at, from
• 36:47
  Jesuit, my, I didn't know this, but my dad owed Jesuit all this
• 36:50
  money and they withheld my transcripts.
• 36:54
  So I, what I, all these colleges I applied to on the East Coast,
• 37:00
  I never got responses back from and I didn't know why.
• 37:02
  I was like, that's weird. I didn't find out until years
• 37:05
  later that they withheld my transcripts.
• 37:08
  And I was like, what did? Your dad know this.
• 37:12
  Yes. He didn't tell me why.
• 37:14
  I think he was just ashamed or like a.
• 37:17
  Was he in debt? No, it was well, my dad was
• 37:22
  again, just with such a large family, he was just constantly
• 37:27
  juggling everything. And like for put it this way, if
• 37:31
  if we had if it was were just my mom, dad and two kids, we would
• 37:36
  have had, we would have been very wealthy, but with eight
• 37:41
  kids. Well, in private school, it
• 37:42
  sounds. Like, yeah, with eight kids,
• 37:43
  it's like that changes the game. And so anyway I.
• 37:48
  And I guess you said 8 within nine years.
• 37:52
  So there's like they're all in high school.
• 37:53
  That's like fancying high school at the same time.
• 37:55
  And yeah, and so I, I, I was really bummed about that whole
• 38:01
  situation. But anyway, that's where.
• 38:03
  I. Ended up going to college and I
• 38:05
  don't know why. I just should have just waited a
• 38:07
  year or something and then reapplied to.
• 38:10
  But at the time, it's like everyone at Jesuit, it's like if
• 38:13
  you didn't go straight to college, there's something
• 38:15
  crazy, awful wrong with you. And so I just was like, oh, I
• 38:19
  have to go, but I don't want to go to UT because it's too big.
• 38:22
  So I guess I'll go to this small liberal arts college and that's
• 38:27
  what I ended up doing. And so then you're at the school
• 38:31
  and you meet this guy and, and I have another question about the
• 38:34
  meeting, because you said you ended up meeting a guy, kind of
• 38:37
  connecting with him and then coming out to each other six
• 38:39
  months into college. Is there because of the
• 38:43
  sensitivity and maybe the emotional openness and sort of
• 38:46
  receptivity that the more sensitive people have?
• 38:51
  Right. And I think there's like, it's a
• 38:52
  temperament. It's like a personality thing,
• 38:54
  honestly. But then that also temperament
• 38:57
  may also be like if there's a Venn diagram, people who are
• 39:00
  same sex attraction attracted often might have that kind of a
• 39:03
  temperament. Do you do you?
• 39:05
  I'm just kind of curious as to why you kind of found each other
• 39:08
  and then discovered, oh, we're both same sex attracted.
• 39:11
  And if you're in your experience, you've seen sort of
• 39:13
  these themes of people who have same sex attraction often also
• 39:18
  fit this not stereotype, but these sort of temperaments,
• 39:21
  these sorts of personality traits.
• 39:23
  Totally. And I, and it's, we used to call
• 39:25
  it gaydar. I mean, yeah, 'cause like it's
• 39:27
  like radar. You said it much more simply
• 39:29
  than I do. You could tell what's over, you
• 39:31
  know, You could tell like I could tell immediately the first
• 39:34
  day of school, like he was same sex.
• 39:36
  I could tell he was quote, UN quote gay, whatever the words.
• 39:40
  So but in high school and in college, I never, it's this
• 39:45
  weird. It was, this is another weird
• 39:47
  kind of phenomenon. But in high school and college,
• 39:49
  I never thought homosexual desire was like a permanent
• 39:54
  thing in my life. I thought it was just going to
• 39:56
  go away at a certain point and then I was going to get married
• 39:59
  to a woman, have a family. Did you desire that?
• 40:03
  I guess I desired it because I wanted like social acceptance
• 40:10
  and that and that was my kind of motivation for that.
• 40:13
  But I never considered myself gay like in high school or
• 40:18
  college. I wouldn't, I would never have
• 40:19
  called myself gay. That came later after college
• 40:23
  when I moved to Tokyo, which we'll get into.
• 40:25
  But because even in college, I was just like, I don't really
• 40:30
  want this, but this is what I it's like Emily Dickinson when
• 40:37
  she says the heart wants what it wants.
• 40:39
  It's like. What's that?
• 40:40
  Selena Gomez? I'm joking.
• 40:44
  It was probably Emily Dickinson. But she has like heart, wants
• 40:46
  what it wants, and she got Emily Dickinson.
• 40:49
  Your reference was better. Than mine.
• 40:51
  So I just, you know, you don't really think I just kind of went
• 40:56
  with my desires. Like that's what you just do.
• 40:59
  And yeah, but you can definitely tell.
• 41:01
  I could tell who, who's same sex attractive, who's not, you know,
• 41:06
  I could tell. Immediately what?
• 41:08
  What were the traits? Oh gosh, I mean, you know,
• 41:12
  there's just like a sensitivity. There's most often the person is
• 41:22
  interested in the arts or you know, into into like art films
• 41:28
  or music, like kind of interesting music.
• 41:32
  And there's also kind of like the effeminate aspects, like
• 41:35
  this friend in college was slightly effeminate.
• 41:38
  So I kind of, I could tell, you know, I could tell physically
• 41:41
  that he was. And and not to belabor this, but
• 41:43
  are you saying in your experience these people always
• 41:46
  have same sex attraction or if they have same sex attraction?
• 41:49
  If someone does they typically have these traits?
• 41:51
  Because I've also heard people say, OK, that's so rude to label
• 41:55
  me like you think I'm gay because I like care about my
• 41:58
  fashion and I have these things that are more feminine traits.
• 42:01
  Well, 300 years ago, men in Great Britain all wore wigs and
• 42:05
  powdered their faces. And that was like hyper
• 42:07
  masculinity 300 years ago, right?
• 42:09
  So, cultural context. Has certainly.
• 42:11
  An impact on the masculine versus the feminine.
• 42:14
  Right. So there were quote, UN quote,
• 42:17
  you know, gay guys who kind of would read more masculine and
• 42:23
  you it was kind of harder. It was harder to tell actually.
• 42:26
  I mean, there, I'm sure there were a lot more gay, like same
• 42:30
  sex attracted guys in high school and college that I, I
• 42:33
  wasn't aware of because they, they could quote UN quote pass
• 42:38
  they were passing. But I think now in today's
• 42:43
  culture, I think it's even more extreme.
• 42:46
  I think there's so many and this is has to do with pornography.
• 42:51
  You know, young guys watching porn their whole lives.
• 42:55
  And I think that has a huge impact on their sexuality.
• 43:00
  So there's all these today. I think there's, there's so many
• 43:04
  guys who seem totally heterosexual who are secretly
• 43:11
  not. And so I think today it's, it's
• 43:14
  almost harder to discern that in our culture.
• 43:17
  But back then it was easier to discern it.
• 43:20
  And today, like, you know, everyone's gay.
• 43:22
  Basically. It's like this contagion, social
• 43:24
  contagion. And everyone wants to be, It's
• 43:27
  crazy. Like when I was, you know, same
• 43:31
  sex attracted in high school, it was just like me and a couple
• 43:35
  other people. And now it's like half the class
• 43:38
  in high schools are saying are claiming to be LGBTQ.
• 43:42
  It's. It's like a status almost today,
• 43:44
  yeah. And it's like, cool.
• 43:47
  It's cool for guys to. Be you got a whole month to
• 43:49
  celebrate yourself Exactly. Yeah, So you were.
• 43:53
  So you're at college. You're not identifying as gay
• 43:55
  yet. And by the way, during this
• 43:57
  time, do you have a faith? I should have already asked
• 43:59
  that, but like, are you practicing a faith?
• 44:01
  You were raised Catholic, but are you?
• 44:02
  Connected. I was so not connected to it.
• 44:05
  I mean, I would, I would have to go to Mass on Saturdays with my
• 44:09
  family and it was just like an expectation.
• 44:13
  And then, you know, a Jesuit, we would say the Lord's Prayer in
• 44:18
  Latin every day. And I took Latin for four years.
• 44:21
  Love. I actually took Latin and
• 44:23
  growing up too. Isn't it lovely?
• 44:25
  I love it. Yeah.
• 44:25
  Do you remember? Anything.
• 44:26
  I was first in Latin all four years.
• 44:28
  I was first in my class. This guy, wow, I know it was
• 44:30
  crazy, but so, but I never in high in high school.
• 44:37
  I just, I just was like this God's God wasn't relevant to my
• 44:44
  life. I didn't want anything to do
• 44:46
  with God and just because I, I was already just kind of like on
• 44:50
  this other path and I was already searching for other
• 44:53
  things and doing other things. And, and so God was just like
• 44:58
  not something he was, I didn't think about God.
• 45:02
  I didn't, I didn't really care. I just wanted to pursue my my
• 45:08
  life and do my own thing. Did did you ever feel like what
• 45:12
  I'm doing might be a sin and I might go to hell like did was
• 45:15
  there a sense of like sin and good and evil and what I'm doing
• 45:19
  is like bad? Did they talk about, oh, same
• 45:21
  sex activities are bad? I mean, was any of that part of
• 45:24
  your consciousness or was it more like, hey, God is nice but
• 45:29
  not relevant? Well, in the beginning that
• 45:32
  when, when my first kind of few sexual experiences, I felt such
• 45:38
  deep, deep shame and guilt, like so much shame.
• 45:43
  But as you continue to keep doing it, you just become more
• 45:46
  callous to it and it, your heart just becomes calloused and then
• 45:51
  you just kind of forget you just at at a certain point, I mean,
• 45:54
  especially when I moved to LA, my heart was so calloused at
• 46:01
  that point that I just, I didn't even think there was anything
• 46:06
  wrong at all with homosexual behaviour.
• 46:09
  So, yeah, in the beginning there certainly was.
• 46:13
  And it's like you have to sort of it's like in Romans one Paul
• 46:21
  talks about, you know, suppressing the truth and he
• 46:26
  talks about the three exchanges, exchanging the life or truth,
• 46:29
  exchanging life or truth. And, and he uses the
• 46:33
  illustration he uses for suppressing the truth is really
• 46:37
  interesting because he uses homosexual behavior as that
• 46:40
  illustration. And why does he use that
• 46:42
  illustration? Because anatomically,
• 46:46
  physiologically, psychologically, it's clear that
• 46:50
  a man and a woman goes go together.
• 46:52
  You have to really suppress the truth to engage in homosexual
• 46:57
  behavior. And so that's what you have.
• 47:00
  That's what I was doing in high school.
• 47:02
  I was continuously suppressing the truth, like after each
• 47:07
  successive kind of encounter with somebody or going out to a
• 47:12
  gay bar or whatever it was, I was just consistently and
• 47:16
  continuously suppressing the truth more and more and more
• 47:18
  until like, until the truth was no longer even in my vision.
• 47:25
  So yeah. If someone had asked you at 15
• 47:29
  why is homosexual activity wrong, would you have known what
• 47:33
  to say or just said the church says so or the Bible says so?
• 47:37
  I probably would have said the church I the church says so.
• 47:42
  And also kind of in an Aristotelian way, I would have
• 47:45
  said it just it's clear from nature, you know, that it's not
• 47:51
  it doesn't, it doesn't work. And I think the, the reason God,
• 48:01
  the Bible is so clear on this issue in the Old Testament and
• 48:04
  the New Testament, But I think the reason it is because it was
• 48:10
  a capital crime in the Old Testament, right?
• 48:12
  So why was it a capital crime? Because in I, I don't know if
• 48:19
  you remember the story of Onan and Genesis.
• 48:22
  And so he's, he is, is God tells him he has to marry his
• 48:27
  brother's wife because the brother dies and Onan doesn't
• 48:31
  want to do it. And then he he has sexual
• 48:33
  relations with her and then he basically spills his.
• 48:37
  Basically masturbates yeah using her but like.
• 48:40
  And God strikes him dead. OK, so why did God do that?
• 48:45
  Because God's all about life and he's all about procreation.
• 48:50
  And so that's why I think in the Bible, homosexual behavior is,
• 48:56
  is dealt with so severely is because it is, it brings death,
• 49:02
  not life. And that's why it's such a,
• 49:08
  that's why Paul is so harsh on it.
• 49:10
  And people, people love to say, I just, I was at lunch yesterday
• 49:15
  with someone who said this, but Jesus never talked about it.
• 49:19
  And I was like, OK, well, Jesus was speaking to Jews and the
• 49:24
  Jews had the Torah and they knew very well that homosexual
• 49:28
  behavior was a capital crime and that it was very, it was wrong.
• 49:33
  So they didn't, Jesus need didn't need to reiterate that to
• 49:38
  them. He did reiterate the creation
• 49:41
  ordinance that a man shall leave his wife and the two become a
• 49:44
  man shall leave his family and join to a wife and the two will
• 49:49
  become one flesh. He reiterated that and what?
• 49:55
  He reiterated what marriage is, but he didn't have to say.
• 49:59
  And but Paul was speaking to Gentiles and Gentiles had no
• 50:02
  idea what was. They didn't know what was up or
• 50:04
  down. And the Corinthians were just
• 50:07
  like, oh, I'll sleep with my stepmom.
• 50:09
  So Paul had to make it clear and.
• 50:12
  And if you want to follow Jesus, you don't do promiscuity, you
• 50:16
  don't do the homosexual acts, you don't do fornication.
• 50:21
  These are things you don't do if you want to be a Christian.
• 50:23
  He had to like, spell it out. He.
• 50:24
  Had to spell it out for the Gentiles and and also, yeah.
• 50:28
  And, and so that's why Jesus didn't I in, in my opinion, and
• 50:34
  I think it's very obvious and clear that Jesus didn't have to
• 50:37
  speak about it because he was speaking to Jews.
• 50:41
  But so I think, I think I did. I just suppress the truth so
• 50:48
  hardcore. I mean, I mean it just for years
• 50:50
  and years and years because they're, as I said, for for a
• 50:54
  long time I did feel shame, a lot of shame.
• 51:00
  And shame's a good thing to feel like when you're doing something
• 51:05
  wrong, that's a good thing to feel.
• 51:08
  But when you just, you continuously do it and it just
• 51:12
  become, you become numb to that shame and you don't feel it
• 51:15
  anymore. So you become shameless.
• 51:18
  And that's what happened to me. When you were the first time
• 51:23
  going to these gay nightclubs in Dallas, you mentioned I think
• 51:27
  you were 14 or 1514 or 15. Well.
• 51:30
  I started at 14. OK, you're 14 years old.
• 51:33
  Don't ask me how I got in. Well, that's a question.
• 51:36
  But then also once you're in there, are you with older men?
• 51:41
  I mean what, what? I mean, not to be graphic here,
• 51:44
  but you're a 14 year old boy. I mean that I'm, I think back
• 51:47
  then, I'm going to guess it would have been statutory rape
• 51:48
  for anyone to do anything to you.
• 51:51
  Yeah. And there are probably some guys
• 51:54
  that did were involved in statutory rape, although I mean,
• 51:59
  yeah, I don't. I think the guys were probably
• 52:04
  in their 20s, but they seemed so much older.
• 52:07
  Oh yeah, that there's a big age difference, A 14 year old and a
• 52:10
  25 year old. Yeah, I didn't really think
• 52:13
  about it. I just, I just kind of was just
• 52:15
  so kind of wrapped up in the exoticness of it.
• 52:19
  Were you drinking? I was never a drinker.
• 52:23
  I never tried drugs because I because I was a sensitive kid.
• 52:28
  I just, I felt like because at the start club people.
• 52:31
  It was when ecstasy was legal in Texas.
• 52:34
  Wow. And people would literally put
• 52:36
  ecstasy pills in my hands every night.
• 52:38
  As a 14, yeah. And, and I and I never took it
• 52:42
  because I just thought I just always was always afraid that it
• 52:47
  would have this crazy effect on me and I would end up in the
• 52:50
  hospital. So I never tried.
• 52:52
  It might have, right? I never tried drugs and I didn't
• 52:54
  really, I didn't like drinking. So I would go out to to these
• 52:57
  bars and to the Star Club and I would never drink.
• 53:00
  I just all. That people were offering you
• 53:03
  drink, drink and drug as a 14 year old and gay bars is, is
• 53:07
  that a typical thing? Like does that happen today?
• 53:13
  I don't know, I haven't been to Kmart long time, but that's.
• 53:15
  Fair, but. I don't know you.
• 53:17
  Think that culture still there's a culture like that is that.
• 53:20
  Would you say that that culture because there's certainly like
• 53:23
  regular bars, right? Yeah.
• 53:24
  And kids that will sneak into a nightclub when they're not
• 53:27
  supposed to be there, right? But typically you get like ID
• 53:30
  checked at the door, you know, typically.
• 53:32
  They never checked my Idi. Never.
• 53:34
  It was weird. No one checked our IDs.
• 53:36
  I think, you know, because the doorman at the the doorman at
• 53:40
  the Star Club were all gay men. And so it's like, here's some
• 53:44
  young fresh boys, like let's let them in.
• 53:49
  It was that kind of thing. It's yeah, it's not a good
• 53:56
  situation, but. Was that ever traumatizing or no
• 54:01
  you just had fun in your view? It was just fun.
• 54:03
  It was never I just I, I had fun.
• 54:06
  That was it was like I was this whole new world for me.
• 54:09
  And it was kind of like this is it was exciting.
• 54:11
  It was very exciting for me. And I, yeah, I, I kind of loved
• 54:17
  it. I mean, and I love because I
• 54:19
  love dancing. And so at the star club, like
• 54:21
  the music was amazing. And so I would dance like from
• 54:25
  10:00 PM till 5, AMI would Just Dance like non-stop.
• 54:31
  And so that was kind of, it was just like I was, it was a really
• 54:34
  fun kind of outlet for me because in high school I wasn't
• 54:39
  really, I wasn't into sports, I wasn't into other curricular.
• 54:44
  No, it wasn't because in high school at my school theatre,
• 54:50
  they were called the theatre geeks or whatever.
• 54:53
  So it was. It was frowned upon to be in
• 54:55
  theatre at my school and so. It's too bad you probably would
• 54:59
  have. Loved it, I know I would have
• 55:00
  loved. It and maybe the gay bars
• 55:01
  wouldn't have missed it. I know.
• 55:02
  I would have. I should have.
• 55:04
  Done dinner during the day. I don't have to be up at 2 AMI.
• 55:06
  Know, and so it's funny because instead of doing, you know, what
• 55:12
  normal kids do to, for their college resumes, do all these
• 55:15
  extracurricular activities beyond the, you know, beyond do
• 55:19
  the school newspaper or whatever.
• 55:22
  I was coming of age and I was going through all of these
• 55:26
  experiences of kind of like this new world to me.
• 55:30
  So that was my focus. I couldn't even, I couldn't even
• 55:34
  think about being doing some sort of extracurricular
• 55:38
  activities at school that that was like the last thing I wanted
• 55:40
  to do. All I could think about was
• 55:42
  like, I can't wait to go out tonight to the Star Club on a
• 55:46
  school night, like I can't wait to do.
• 55:48
  You think your mom or your siblings ever suspected anything
• 55:52
  besides that one night your dad saw you coming home?
• 55:55
  No, no, they the, the, the house, our house was so big and
• 56:01
  kind of like it was set up in a way where you could just kind of
• 56:03
  come and go and no one really noticed.
• 56:06
  So they didn't really know. And my mom was sort of out of it
• 56:11
  after having any kids. Tired she was.
• 56:13
  Just kind of out of it. And didn't she?
• 56:16
  She loved me so much that she didn't.
• 56:21
  I mean, this is funny. It's not funny actually, but
• 56:24
  this happened. I went to Acapulco for a week in
• 56:29
  Mexico. Uh huh, with my.
• 56:30
  Restaurant. With my best friend and from
• 56:35
  high school, we went to Acapulco for the weekend with two like
• 56:39
  these two older gay men rented this house, this beautiful house
• 56:43
  in Acapulco. How old were you?
• 56:45
  I was probably 18 and my friend was like, let's go to Acapulco.
• 56:52
  These guys, you know, invited us and we went and I never, no one
• 56:57
  ever found out. No one in my family knew that I.
• 56:59
  No one said where's went to Mexico.
• 57:01
  No one said where's Beckett this weekend.
• 57:05
  Literally I. Think I got home and my mom was
• 57:07
  like, oh, Beck, where have you been?
• 57:09
  I was like, oh, I was just like hanging out at Jake's house or
• 57:13
  whatever, you know? I just.
• 57:15
  This was is this pre cell phone? Oh yeah, way pre cell phone.
• 57:19
  Well, there you go. Like there's no location.
• 57:21
  Tracker to track anything so. So you got in an airplane?
• 57:26
  I Yeah. She had no clue.
• 57:28
  No, no. It was also, I think that like
• 57:32
  American Society with technology has also just shifted.
• 57:35
  I think because helicopter, what was seen as helicopter back then
• 57:41
  probably is now normal today in terms of like, like you let your
• 57:44
  child walk himself to the grocery store at 8 years old and
• 57:48
  buy a pack of gum in the, I don't know, 1990s even.
• 57:52
  And today it's like, no, he's going to get kidnapped, molested
• 57:55
  or otherwise traffic's like, you know, or, or somewhere, you
• 57:59
  know, something horrible or someone's Pitbull is going to
• 58:01
  eat him. I'm not letting him walk alone
• 58:02
  to the to the I mean weed. Story It's funny, I just think
• 58:05
  back on my childhood and and it's it's kind of why in my
• 58:09
  adult life I was I was able to take so many risks and in
• 58:12
  different ways and and career and stuff, but we had such a so
• 58:20
  much freedom in our childhood because it was so safe in Dallas
• 58:23
  and our neighborhood was so safe.
• 58:24
  Like we would swim like we would swim in all just run around
• 58:29
  neighborhood and swim into everyone's pools and our just
• 58:32
  like, and I remember we would go to this one place that had a
• 58:37
  gigantic high dive. I mean, like no mother.
• 58:41
  I don't think it's, I don't even know if it's legal to have that
• 58:44
  high of a high dive, but we would just like do just triple
• 58:48
  backflips off this high dive. But that's the kind of childhood
• 58:51
  we had a very permissive childhood like we there was, we
• 58:55
  kind of just all did our own thing.
• 58:56
  We ran around, no one really knew where we were but it was
• 59:00
  all safe ish unless you're spending the night.
• 59:04
  Unless you're going to Acapulco or a gay bar.
• 59:07
  And so, so for better, for worse.
• 59:12
  I mean, I appreciated except for that night, but I appreciated
• 59:16
  the permissiveness of the childhood of my childhood just
• 59:19
  because it helped me grow. Just it helped me have a sense
• 59:23
  of self and a sense of kind of adventure and like risk taking.
• 59:28
  And you know, I doesn't like, I didn't have any fear.
• 59:31
  Like when I decided to move to Tokyo after college, I had zero
• 59:35
  fear about that. Like a lot of people would be
• 59:37
  now kids today would be like, Oh my gosh, that's scary.
• 59:40
  It was just like I, I didn't even have enough place to live
• 59:43
  in Tokyo. I just got on a plane with my
• 59:45
  friend and we went to Tokyo and found an apartment the first day
• 59:48
  and got jobs the second day. Well, and I do think I think
• 59:51
  about like the book the anxious generation, Jonathan Height and
• 59:54
  just and I mean, and that people are too anxious, they're too
• 59:59
  controlling, they're too fearful today.
• 1:00:02
  I mean, I was I'm one of eight kids too, and we had a bit of a
• 1:00:05
  chaos growing up. It's eight kids and there was
• 1:00:07
  that permissive style to some degree as well where we just got
• 1:00:10
  to try things, go places, run around, and I'm grateful for
• 1:00:13
  that. I actually think that's good to
• 1:00:15
  lean in that direction. Obviously with certain safety
• 1:00:18
  reels, like no sleepovers, like, you know, like they're saying
• 1:00:20
  that that could be a change. But I do think American Society
• 1:00:23
  is too hyper vigilant and it. And it does punish the kids.
• 1:00:27
  It it's a different kind of punishment.
• 1:00:29
  And we, I think we're seeing the results of that now with kids
• 1:00:32
  not knowing just like they're, they're going out and protesting
• 1:00:36
  about things and they, they don't even know they're, they're
• 1:00:42
  so there, there's no resiliency to these kids.
• 1:00:45
  And they, they're like snowflakes, quote UN quote or
• 1:00:48
  they, you know, they need safe spaces.
• 1:00:51
  Like the idea of safe space. I've never, when I was a kid,
• 1:00:53
  there was no such thing as a safe space, right?
• 1:00:57
  And then I didn't even know what that crept up.
• 1:01:00
  Like when I was in a seminary, I remember the undergrads at Viola
• 1:01:05
  talking about safe spaces. And I'm like, what are you
• 1:01:07
  talking about? What do you, why do you need a
• 1:01:09
  safe space? Like, what do you, are you that
• 1:01:12
  fragile? And so that's, that's the point
• 1:01:15
  I was thinking about my childhood.
• 1:01:16
  It, it, it, it made me the opposite of fragile because I, I
• 1:01:23
  got to experience all these things and do all these things.
• 1:01:26
  And so not for better and again for better for worse, but I it
• 1:01:30
  made me very resilient. I mean, I don't know if this is
• 1:01:33
  a stretch. It's almost like you felt
• 1:01:35
  confident to like go the route of even ultimately same sex
• 1:01:39
  activities, you know, whatever, because it's almost this sounds,
• 1:01:42
  I don't know, I'm going to mess with the theology here.
• 1:01:44
  Maybe keep people listening, like what are you talking about,
• 1:01:46
  Lila? But you were, you could say, in
• 1:01:48
  some ways, well loved. You were secure.
• 1:01:50
  So you were willing to kind of in a way sin greatly and you
• 1:01:53
  didn't care because you felt like you had you weren't living
• 1:01:56
  in fear. You were almost, you were very
• 1:01:58
  confident, it sounds like. And there's there's good things
• 1:02:02
  about that, wonderful things about that that you can take
• 1:02:04
  with you. Obviously any good thing could
• 1:02:06
  be weaponized as a bad thing, right.
• 1:02:09
  Thank you for letting me ask those questions because it's, I
• 1:02:11
  think it's really fascinating, but meaningful to look at what
• 1:02:16
  happens next in your life. I know we're getting to college
• 1:02:19
  and then you're you, you're mentioned Tokyo a couple times.
• 1:02:23
  At what point did you decide, OK, I'm doing this, I'm gay?
• 1:02:28
  Yeah, so I, I in college I was pre Med because in high school I
• 1:02:34
  was, I really excelled at math and science.
• 1:02:37
  Like that was kind of my Forte. English was not.
• 1:02:42
  I wasn't like that. I was good at English.
• 1:02:45
  I mean, I was good at writing and stuff, but I wasn't, I
• 1:02:49
  didn't excel like in math. I mean in everything, calculus,
• 1:02:53
  everything, I made straight A's. Like it was so easy for me.
• 1:02:57
  So I was like, oh, because I'm so good at this.
• 1:03:00
  I must, I guess I'm going to become a doctor because in
• 1:03:03
  Dallas at that time in, in my high school in particular, it's
• 1:03:07
  like you either become a doctor, a lawyer or a businessman.
• 1:03:11
  Like that's it. Those are the three.
• 1:03:12
  Choices. So I was like, I don't really
• 1:03:15
  want to be a lawyer. That sounds like dreadful.
• 1:03:19
  So I after college, I realized I took the MCAT, which is the
• 1:03:27
  medical school admissions test. And I did reasonably well on it,
• 1:03:32
  but I didn't do as well as I had wanted.
• 1:03:34
  And I was, and then it made me kind of like think more about
• 1:03:37
  being a doctor. And I was like, do I really want
• 1:03:39
  to do this? Like I don't even think I want
• 1:03:41
  to do this. I have no interest in this.
• 1:03:44
  I have no interest in seeing like touching bodies and doing
• 1:03:48
  things with bodies like. So I took a year off.
• 1:03:54
  In the meantime, I also took the dental admissions tests.
• 1:03:57
  Keith are not as bad as body. I know and I got accepted to
• 1:04:00
  Baylor dental School in Dallas and then while I was in Tokyo so
• 1:04:05
  I moved to Tokyo with my best friend cuz we were both like
• 1:04:08
  what are we gonna do with our lives was.
• 1:04:09
  This Jake or someone else? This was someone else.
• 1:04:12
  Now I can use his name because it's in my book.
• 1:04:14
  He allowed me to use his name Martin.
• 1:04:16
  His name is Martin. He actually is the one who was
• 1:04:18
  came up with the idea. I had no idea.
• 1:04:20
  He was like, hey, like there you, you can teach English in
• 1:04:24
  Japan and they pay you really well.
• 1:04:26
  And why don't we do it for a year and figure out what we want
• 1:04:30
  to do with our lives Because he was he didn't know what he
• 1:04:32
  wanted to do. He ended up going to becoming a
• 1:04:35
  chef and but while I was in Tokyo, I took the LSAT and I did
• 1:04:43
  really well on the all set And so, but I only applied to one
• 1:04:47
  law. I applied to SMU law school in
• 1:04:48
  Dallas because I didn't first of all, I was just kind of like, I
• 1:04:53
  don't really even want to go to law school, but I'm just going
• 1:04:55
  to apply to one just in case. And I got accepted to SMU and I
• 1:05:00
  was so I was actually enrolled. I enrolled in dental school and
• 1:05:05
  law school at the same time and I had my classes everything
• 1:05:09
  until I decided two weeks before school started to move to LA.
• 1:05:13
  But in Tokyo, it was a it was Tokyo was an amazing experience.
• 1:05:21
  I mean it was such a it's such AI don't know if you've been to
• 1:05:24
  Tokyo. It's.
• 1:05:25
  Great sushi. Great sushi and the city is like
• 1:05:29
  just like it's beautiful. It's insane.
• 1:05:31
  And I bought a motor scooter, a motor scooter when I got there.
• 1:05:35
  And so I, I used to zoom around Tokyo on my screen and it was so
• 1:05:39
  much fun. And it was weird because in
• 1:05:44
  Japanese culture, so homosexuality was so forbidden
• 1:05:50
  and it was extremely forbidden. And so it was like 20 years
• 1:05:54
  behind the US in terms of that issue.
• 1:05:58
  Did you know that when you were travelling there?
• 1:06:00
  Yeah, you could. Well, yeah, you could.
• 1:06:02
  Yeah, I kind of knew that. But especially when I got there,
• 1:06:05
  it's like, so the gay bars were all the gay bars in Tokyo were
• 1:06:09
  sort of like kind of underground.
• 1:06:11
  Interesting. And the gay guys in Tokyo were
• 1:06:19
  just so extremely closeted. Like they just would like if
• 1:06:24
  they told their family, it would bring so much shame because it's
• 1:06:27
  an honor, shame culture. It would have brought so much
• 1:06:29
  shame on the family that it would have been unbearable, you
• 1:06:32
  know. So it was a weird situation
• 1:06:35
  because I felt so free, as you know, in my sexuality in Tokyo
• 1:06:44
  because I was so far away from home and from reality.
• 1:06:49
  But at the same time, it was a very restricted kind of culture
• 1:06:54
  in terms of this and it was very taboo.
• 1:06:57
  But while I was in Tokyo, I think it was like 8 months into
• 1:07:03
  it, so my roommate's friend from Dallas, he was on, he was on an
• 1:07:12
  art. He was a student at, let's call
• 1:07:16
  him Adam. Adam was a student at UT Austin.
• 1:07:19
  He was a Fine Arts student. And so he was on this exhibition
• 1:07:23
  with Christo, the artist Christo who used to drape like he, he
• 1:07:29
  draped the Reichsag with fabric in Berlin.
• 1:07:32
  He would put, he did this huge gigantic art installations all
• 1:07:37
  over the world. His this Christos of a husband
• 1:07:40
  and wife team, French husband and wife team.
• 1:07:43
  And they did these umbrellas in California and Japan along the
• 1:07:47
  coast. They did.
• 1:07:48
  I think blue umbrellas and these giant umbrellas, I think someone
• 1:07:53
  died from one of them because the umbrella hit them.
• 1:07:55
  But. I'm not laughing at my.
• 1:07:58
  Mind so yeah so this is what art art death by art so there were
• 1:08:03
  blue umbrellas and and in California and yellow umbrellas
• 1:08:06
  in Japan Adam came to to Tokyo on with the Christo exhibition
• 1:08:14
  he was part of that whole team to help you know put up the
• 1:08:17
  umbrellas like it was a huge deal I'm.
• 1:08:20
  So sorry. I know I could tell too were.
• 1:08:34
  They like when you say the umbrellas, was it like a?
• 1:08:38
  It's not like an umbrella you hold in the rain.
• 1:08:40
  It's like a. No, it's like a giant.
• 1:08:42
  Like like a patio umbrella? Yeah.
• 1:08:44
  And I think, I think it was in Japan or California, one of them
• 1:08:47
  hit one of the student or the students and the student died
• 1:08:51
  and like. Why?
• 1:08:52
  Why were they doing like? Because that's what they thought
• 1:08:56
  was conceptual art. Well, it is conceptual art, but
• 1:09:00
  it's, it was ridiculous. But it was like he did like in
• 1:09:05
  the in in Central Europe, he in Central Park, he and his wife
• 1:09:13
  did this. They were these.
• 1:09:16
  It's just Google Christo you can see.
• 1:09:18
  You gotta see this, really. Google Christo.
• 1:09:20
  So Christo did the umbrellas. He did the umbrellas, yeah.
• 1:09:23
  All right, Christo umbrellas. All right.
• 1:09:26
  I mean, it looks like a. Yellow.
• 1:09:27
  You see it? Yeah, do.
• 1:09:30
  You have the yellow patio umbrella, Christo.
• 1:09:31
  Reichstag I. Mean, that's kind of cool.
• 1:09:33
  Looks like flowers. De Christo Reichstag and.
• 1:09:36
  You'll see you How do you spell Reichstag?
• 1:09:38
  Reich Stag, Reichstag. That was one of his pieces.
• 1:09:48
  I mean, it looks like they wrapped it in paper towels.
• 1:09:52
  They wrapped it in fabric. It was like this, you know?
• 1:09:55
  Toilet paper. Beautiful.
• 1:09:56
  Amazing. They TP Ed the buildings of
• 1:10:01
  Berlin. OK.
• 1:10:02
  All right. That's the that's like the, the
• 1:10:05
  Reichstag is the is like the Congress or.
• 1:10:08
  What? What does this look like without
• 1:10:10
  toilet paper on it? 90 professional climbers and 120
• 1:10:20
  installation workers. The Reichstag remained wrapped
• 1:10:23
  for 14 days and all materials were recycled.
• 1:10:25
  They wrapped it with polypythane fabric.
• 1:10:29
  They basically put Saran wrap on it.
• 1:10:31
  I mean, the big question is why? So wait, where was I?
• 1:10:36
  You're bringing up the orange umbrellas, and then I took a
• 1:10:38
  little tangent. So where, where was that?
• 1:10:40
  Yeah. So while we're, we were in
• 1:10:43
  Tokyo, Adam, this guy Adam from texted from Dallas or from
• 1:10:49
  actually from Austin. He came to Japan on this Christo
• 1:10:55
  exhibition and he stayed with us for five days in our tiny
• 1:10:59
  apartment the size of this rug. And by the end of the five days,
• 1:11:06
  it was the weirdest thing because that when I first met
• 1:11:08
  Adam, I was like, oh, like, I'm not interested at all in this
• 1:11:11
  guy. But by the end of the five days,
• 1:11:13
  I was like, I'm in love. And that's when homosexual
• 1:11:21
  homosexuality became my identity.
• 1:11:23
  That's when I, that's when I was like emboldened to completely
• 1:11:27
  come out to everyone, my friends, family and Adam and I,
• 1:11:34
  when I got back to the states, we got into a relationship for a
• 1:11:38
  like a year and a half. I don't maybe 2 years, can't
• 1:11:41
  remember, but that was a big turning point in my life because
• 1:11:47
  it was like, OK, this is who I am.
• 1:11:49
  This is the immutable, It's the, it's the core of who I am.
• 1:11:53
  And my parents, my family had already found out because my
• 1:11:57
  sister when I was in Japan, she wrote me a letter and asked if
• 1:12:01
  if I was gay and I wrote her this.
• 1:12:05
  She had her suspicions for a long time.
• 1:12:06
  And I wrote her this long letter back and explained, yes, I am
• 1:12:10
  and blah, blah, blah. And I said, PS please don't tell
• 1:12:14
  mom and dad, I'll tell them when I get home.
• 1:12:16
  And of course, she got the letter and immediately told
• 1:12:19
  everyone in my family. So I was kind of happy about
• 1:12:22
  that because she did the heavy lifting for me.
• 1:12:24
  I didn't have to like, have that awkward moment with my parents
• 1:12:27
  like, mom, dad, sit down. I have to tell you something.
• 1:12:31
  So everyone knew. And I get home from Japan.
• 1:12:35
  It was December right before Christmas, and I walked into the
• 1:12:40
  kitchen and my mom started crying and I knew why she was
• 1:12:44
  crying. I was like, mom, what's wrong?
• 1:12:47
  And she said, I know you're homosexual and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:12:53
  And I was like, mom, don't worry about me.
• 1:12:55
  Like this is not a big deal. And I just even it was back in
• 1:13:00
  the day when AIDS HIV was like a death sentence.
• 1:13:04
  And so she was terrified. I was terrified.
• 1:13:07
  And so it was, it was a scary time.
• 1:13:09
  And so I just tried to kind of allay her fears.
• 1:13:12
  And I with my mom, I sort of just almost framed it in a way,
• 1:13:19
  I don't even know if I consciously did this, but I just
• 1:13:21
  framed it in a way that was almost like, don't worry mom,
• 1:13:25
  like I'm not going to do anything about it.
• 1:13:30
  The next day, my dad comes up to me in the driveway.
• 1:13:33
  He pulled up behind me when I I pulled in and he then pulled up
• 1:13:38
  and and he said, Hey, Beck, I'm, I heard that you're homosexual
• 1:13:43
  and are you angry at me, you know, as a father, like, did I
• 1:13:47
  do anything wrong? And he and he said, like, you
• 1:13:50
  know, did I do this? He listed three things.
• 1:13:53
  I can't remember all of them, but I think one of them was
• 1:13:57
  like, you know, did I not spend enough time with you or did are
• 1:14:00
  you mad at me for, for not defending you against your
• 1:14:03
  brother when he would hit, you know, beat you up?
• 1:14:06
  Or are you mad at me for this or that?
• 1:14:08
  And I was like, no. And I was like, Dad, no, this is
• 1:14:10
  just who I am. It's not a big deal.
• 1:14:13
  And and that was the, the last conversation I had with my
• 1:14:18
  parents about it. They never brought it up again.
• 1:14:23
  They plus I moved to LA shortly after that.
• 1:14:27
  What what's so great about my parents is they 100% believed
• 1:14:34
  homosexual behavior was sinful and wrong.
• 1:14:37
  And again, this is part of the youngest of eight parents
• 1:14:42
  exhausted. They didn't try to argue with me
• 1:14:48
  or or convince me to, to not be gay.
• 1:14:53
  They didn't try to, you know, stop me from, from doing what I
• 1:14:59
  wanted to do. They didn't quote Bible verses
• 1:15:02
  to me. They didn't like beat me over
• 1:15:04
  the head with a Bible. They just like literally just
• 1:15:07
  were so kind and sweet and loving to me.
• 1:15:12
  And we can get to what they did, what they did behind the scenes.
• 1:15:16
  Because I don't know if you'd know about my mother's prayer,
• 1:15:20
  but I, my mother, I just discovered this, I think a year
• 1:15:25
  ago. I did a whole episode on it
• 1:15:27
  about my mother's prayer and my sister-in-law found this typed
• 1:15:35
  written prayer and it says a prayer for Beckett and my mother
• 1:15:41
  typed like these 24 prayer points to God and my
• 1:15:47
  sister-in-law found it in a box and sent it to me a year ago.
• 1:15:51
  And I and I was like, she sent me the PDF of it and I was, I
• 1:15:55
  read it and I was like, I'm not, I started bawling.
• 1:15:58
  I could not believe my mother was praying so ardently for me.
• 1:16:03
  And so specifically this is what's key about this is my
• 1:16:08
  mother was brilliant. She knew that this was not
• 1:16:12
  something that she could control or do in the natural.
• 1:16:16
  She knew it was a supernatural issue.
• 1:16:18
  It was a spirit, something in the spiritual in the spirit
• 1:16:21
  realm. So the first prayer point of
• 1:16:24
  hers is in the all powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 1:16:27
  I come against the enemy with the sword of the spirit, the
• 1:16:31
  word of God. And then she and then she goes
• 1:16:34
  on to say, like, you know, give Beckett a desire for a woman.
• 1:16:42
  You can't remember all the points, but this was crazy.
• 1:16:45
  One of the prayer points was protect him from AIDS.
• 1:16:49
  Now what's crazy about this is in 1999 I was living with a
• 1:16:57
  boyfriend in Benedict Canyon and up in Beverly Hills in this
• 1:17:03
  house with we were living with a bunch of friends and he in the
• 1:17:11
  middle. A year into our relationship, he
• 1:17:13
  comes home and says, oh, today I was on Santa Monica Blvd. and I
• 1:17:19
  got tested for HIV. And because we had never talked
• 1:17:22
  about it, we never had the discussion.
• 1:17:24
  We never. And we were not safe at all, at
• 1:17:27
  all. That was back in the day where
• 1:17:29
  you had to wait a week for your results.
• 1:17:31
  And so a week goes by and I'm like, what should I call him?
• 1:17:39
  Joe, you should go get your results.
• 1:17:42
  And I was terrified. I was freaked out.
• 1:17:43
  And I was like, you should go get your results.
• 1:17:46
  And he was like, oh, I forgot all about that.
• 1:17:48
  I'm like, what? This is like crazy.
• 1:17:50
  What are you doing? Like go get the results.
• 1:17:52
  We didn't have cell phones at that time.
• 1:17:56
  And he was supposed to go, it was supposed to be just like a
• 1:17:58
  quick, you know, drive down the hill to West Hollywood and get
• 1:18:02
  the results and come home. Well, an hour goes by, two hours
• 1:18:05
  go by, three hours go by, 4 hours go by And I'm like, what
• 1:18:09
  is happening? And then he, I get a phone call
• 1:18:13
  and he calls me from a pay phone and he's like back.
• 1:18:17
  I'm positive. I'm like, what?
• 1:18:21
  And I was devastated. I was like, Oh my gosh, I, I
• 1:18:26
  just assumed automatically that I was HIV positive too.
• 1:18:30
  I just absolutely assumed. He comes home, we both are just
• 1:18:34
  bawling and I'm just like, how am I going to tell my mom?
• 1:18:37
  Oh my gosh, I can't believe how am I The next day we go to the
• 1:18:42
  same clinic or we go to a clinic in West Hollywood.
• 1:18:45
  I get tested, have to wait a week.
• 1:18:48
  It's the worst week of my life. And then I go and the guy, the
• 1:18:53
  counselor at the clinic, he knew the the story between us.
• 1:18:56
  He knew what was going on, that Joe was HIV positive.
• 1:19:01
  And so he brings me into his office and it was like the
• 1:19:05
  scariest moment of my life. He's and he sits me down.
• 1:19:08
  He's like, so I'm very surprised, but you're negative.
• 1:19:13
  I was like, what? And I was like, and I just had
• 1:19:17
  this relief and, and for years I thought I, because there was
• 1:19:23
  some study, I think, I can't remember the details, but in the
• 1:19:26
  90s there was a study about this certain group of northern
• 1:19:30
  Europeans who were, had this sort of natural immunity to HIV.
• 1:19:34
  And I thought maybe I had, maybe that's what I have.
• 1:19:39
  Turns out it was my mother's prayer.
• 1:19:43
  It was God protecting me and he's protected me my whole life
• 1:19:46
  from that like, which is a total miracle.
• 1:19:49
  And so my mom, instead of berating me or calling me and
• 1:19:55
  nagging me about being gay or whatever, she just behind the
• 1:19:59
  scenes prayed for 20 years or whatever.
• 1:20:01
  How long? From 1992 to 2009, However long
• 1:20:06
  that is. You are 20 years living the gay
• 1:20:08
  lifestyle. Well, it depends what you mean
• 1:20:14
  by because I was already kind of in high school as I was already
• 1:20:17
  experimenting. But out How many years out?
• 1:20:21
  Out from ninety 1992 to 2009. How many years is that?
• 1:20:29
  17 years I was living the gay. I don't like the word lifestyle
• 1:20:32
  because it sounds like a Martha Stewart playset.
• 1:20:36
  But anyway, the gay life I was living that life when I saw that
• 1:20:41
  letter from my mom. I, I just lost it and I did, I,
• 1:20:45
  as I said, I did an episode on it and I mean it's gotten like
• 1:20:49
  1,000,000 views, but it, it just is that that was just so her to
• 1:20:55
  like instead of try to fight me on this, to just go straight to
• 1:20:59
  the throne room of God and pray. And my dad did the same.
• 1:21:05
  And some of my siblings, I think I don't know who of my, but
• 1:21:10
  several of my siblings were praying for me while one of my
• 1:21:12
  sisters, Mary was fasting and praying for me a lot.
• 1:21:18
  And and my sister-in-law, Kim, who's in the book, she was
• 1:21:22
  praying for me a ton. Like she prayed Acts 2618 over
• 1:21:27
  me. I don't have the verse with me
• 1:21:29
  right now, but it's Paul in front of King Agrippa and he's
• 1:21:34
  explained to King Agrippa what God has sent him to do to preach
• 1:21:37
  to the Gentiles and it picks up it's kind of mid sentence.
• 1:21:41
  But open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and
• 1:21:43
  from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive
• 1:21:46
  forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified
• 1:21:48
  by faith in Me. My sister-in-law prayed that
• 1:21:52
  first for me for years and years.
• 1:21:55
  Wow. So I was, I was, I was very
• 1:21:59
  appreciative that I for, for lack of a better word, just like
• 1:22:04
  that. My family was very chill about
• 1:22:07
  my situation. When you say you're appreciative
• 1:22:10
  that they were chill, you're appreciative at the time.
• 1:22:13
  Looking back on it, do you recommend that posture to
• 1:22:17
  families that have a family member who identifies as LGBT to
• 1:22:21
  be chill about it and just to pray a lot or what?
• 1:22:24
  I mean, I guess it also depends on the relationship.
• 1:22:26
  Depends on each situation is different I think.
• 1:22:29
  And it also depends on the age that she said.
• 1:22:30
  Like if it's if it's a minor, there's a different situation.
• 1:22:34
  But in general, I would say the best approach is to go to
• 1:22:39
  straight to prayer. That's what Christopher Yuan's
• 1:22:42
  mother did, you know, like she just prayed and prayed and
• 1:22:45
  prayed in her prayer closet. So I think that's because trying
• 1:22:52
  to the only thing is like the only thing that can change you
• 1:22:56
  in, in that regard is the Holy Spirit's conviction.
• 1:22:59
  It's really, it's a supernatural act from God.
• 1:23:01
  It has to be the Holy Spirit that changes you.
• 1:23:04
  And that's what happened with me.
• 1:23:06
  And so there's nothing, there's nothing in the world my parents
• 1:23:12
  or my siblings could have ever said to me while I was living
• 1:23:15
  the gay lifestyle that would have changed my mind.
• 1:23:18
  Nothing, absolutely nothing. They could have said you're
• 1:23:20
  going to hell a million times. I would have been like,
• 1:23:23
  whatever, like I'm, I'm busy, I'm having fun.
• 1:23:27
  So there's not a word they could have done said to me.
• 1:23:32
  But they all prayed. For him, the prayer, yeah, the
• 1:23:34
  prayer was prayer was what to the That's why it's when people
• 1:23:39
  ask me, I get this question all the time, like what should I do
• 1:23:41
  about my my son just came out. What should I do?
• 1:23:43
  What my daughter and I it's, it's hard because I can't really
• 1:23:48
  give them a satisfactory answer. Because they want to do.
• 1:23:50
  Something because they want to do something, they want to
• 1:23:52
  control the situation, but you can't, you can't do it.
• 1:23:55
  I mean, in certain situations you can do certain things, but
• 1:23:58
  in general that you just have to trust God's timing.
• 1:24:02
  You have to pray, you ask, you have to it's, it's a spiritual
• 1:24:06
  battle. It's a spiritual homosexual.
• 1:24:12
  That desire is a spiritual distortion of what how God
• 1:24:18
  created us. And so you have to combat it in
• 1:24:22
  the spirit realm and with it, with, you know, with the sword
• 1:24:25
  of the spirit, the word of God. And so, yeah, I think that's the
• 1:24:29
  best solution to it. So you are actively living the
• 1:24:34
  gay life? In LA, you just find out you are
• 1:24:38
  not HIV positive even though your boyfriend is HIV positive.
• 1:24:43
  At what point do you have the transformation that you're
• 1:24:48
  living now? Well, needless to.
• 1:24:52
  Say, I mean, the relationship with that boyfriend immediately
• 1:24:55
  took a nosedive because of that, because we were basically
• 1:25:01
  unequally yoked. Like he was HIV positive, I was
• 1:25:04
  negative. And so that relationship ended
• 1:25:06
  very quickly. And then I was part of this
• 1:25:12
  whole world in LA of like kind of society LA.
• 1:25:17
  Like I was invited to all the stuff all the time, the Oscars,
• 1:25:20
  the Emmys, the Golden Globes, all the the Grammys, the after
• 1:25:23
  parties, the Vanity Fair parties, fashion weeks in New
• 1:25:27
  York and Paris all the time. I I was like constantly having
• 1:25:32
  these kind of amazing experiences and dinners with,
• 1:25:36
  you know, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, like Drew Barrymore's
• 1:25:39
  house, Paris Hilton's house, like hanging out with all these
• 1:25:43
  people and having and for a long time that was really fun and it
• 1:25:48
  sustained me and it was it was really exciting.
• 1:25:51
  So all my friends were becoming famous pop stars, movie stars,
• 1:25:56
  directors, actors, everything you like if you watch those
• 1:26:00
  Netflix or HBO, like they're the ones my old friends are the ones
• 1:26:04
  who create that content. That's what I was just kind of
• 1:26:07
  like along for the ride. I was like, this is fun, this is
• 1:26:09
  exciting, This is so cool to watch all this happening.
• 1:26:12
  And you were a production designer, so you were like
• 1:26:15
  supporting. All these different gigs that
• 1:26:17
  your friends were doing and you were kind of the artsy technical
• 1:26:20
  guy who could kind of like set the stage for things.
• 1:26:22
  Literally. But, but early on, before I
• 1:26:24
  became a production designer, I was.
• 1:26:26
  As I was a struggling actor, writer, and so I ended up doing
• 1:26:30
  a ton of commercials act I acted in a ton of national commercials
• 1:26:34
  and then I started writing. I was actually a writer's
• 1:26:38
  assistant on a show, Ryan Gosling's a show when he was 16.
• 1:26:43
  It was called Breaker High and I was a writer's assistant on the
• 1:26:46
  show, but I ended up just the showrunner.
• 1:26:49
  This woman just brought me in the, the writers room for the
• 1:26:52
  entire show for a year. And I wasn't, I was never an
• 1:26:57
  assistant. She, I was basically a writer in
• 1:26:59
  the room, but it didn't have the pressure of it.
• 1:27:01
  I, I would pitch jokes, I would pitch storylines.
• 1:27:05
  And then I started writing screenplays and, and I ended up
• 1:27:10
  selling a couple of TV projects projects, but they never took
• 1:27:15
  off. They never went to series.
• 1:27:17
  So that everything kind of just was failing.
• 1:27:19
  And I, I wrote these two screenplays that were really
• 1:27:23
  good according to the world. They were really good.
• 1:27:27
  And they almost sold. Like we had meetings with, you
• 1:27:30
  know, I always forget her name, Sandra Bullock.
• 1:27:37
  We had meetings with her producer and Sarah Jessica
• 1:27:40
  Parker's producer and other people.
• 1:27:45
  And, but they all ended up falling apart.
• 1:27:47
  So that was always but so I was kind of in the business with my
• 1:27:51
  friends, but they all succeeded wildly.
• 1:27:54
  And I was kind of like, never I I was, I was always struggling.
• 1:27:58
  And then I fell into set design. So I had all this fun travel the
• 1:28:04
  time love, you know, we go to New York all the time.
• 1:28:06
  I had taught lots of I had a boyfriend in New York at one
• 1:28:09
  point and I had a boyfriend in Rome.
• 1:28:14
  I briefly was in Rome for a while.
• 1:28:18
  But after so much of this, I just was like, is that all there
• 1:28:21
  is? Like I started the law of
• 1:28:23
  diminishing returns started to set in and I was like this, this
• 1:28:28
  is not fulfilling and satisfying.
• 1:28:31
  I mean, it was for a long, long time, but it's not really doing
• 1:28:37
  it for me. And I and I wanted to know the
• 1:28:38
  meaning of life, but God was never an option for me because I
• 1:28:42
  was gay. So I looked for meaning in every
• 1:28:46
  in relationships and art. I was obsessed with art.
• 1:28:50
  And then I would, I would re I was, I would try to find meaning
• 1:28:53
  in novels. I was obsessed with Russian
• 1:28:55
  novels. Tolstoy, I'm sorry.
• 1:28:58
  And yeah, and. Until and and Anna.
• 1:29:01
  Karenina there was there's a whole section on Levin, this
• 1:29:06
  this character Levin, who's modeled after Tolstoy.
• 1:29:11
  And Levin has this whole conversion experience to
• 1:29:15
  Christianity while he's cutting the grass.
• 1:29:19
  It's the craziest thing. It's like the most mesmerizing
• 1:29:22
  section in the book and you're reading this.
• 1:29:25
  I remember I was reading it and I was like.
• 1:29:27
  That had a big impact. On me, I was like, whoa, like
• 1:29:30
  what is going on? This does God exist?
• 1:29:35
  And and so I looked for and then I went to the theatre all the
• 1:29:40
  time in New York and London. I would go to really serious
• 1:29:44
  plays by Tom Stoppard, who's Tom Stoppard is like, I used to
• 1:29:49
  think he was brilliant. I think he's, you know, when you
• 1:29:53
  be, when you come to to the Lord, you're actually, that's
• 1:30:00
  when you become wise. But I used to think that these
• 1:30:05
  guys were brilliant like Tom Stoppard, Eugene O'Neill, Harold
• 1:30:07
  Pinter, Tony Kushner, Tony Kushner wrote Angels in America,
• 1:30:12
  the play, which is a six hour play and the subtitle of the
• 1:30:17
  play is a gay Fantasia with national themes.
• 1:30:21
  And I remember I saw the first three hour, 3 hours in London,
• 1:30:24
  in the second three hours on Broadway.
• 1:30:27
  And I remember thinking like, Oh my God, this is so brilliant.
• 1:30:31
  Like this is unbelievable. So HBO ended up making a series
• 1:30:37
  out of it. And but now I look back on those
• 1:30:44
  playwright and I would always leave the theater frustrated
• 1:30:46
  because I would think these guys are so brilliant.
• 1:30:49
  Like they're I'm going to glean some sort of understanding of
• 1:30:53
  the meaning of life from these plays, But I would never, I
• 1:30:56
  would always leave the theater empty and just feeling like
• 1:30:58
  frustrated that they never, they never came to any real
• 1:31:03
  conclusion. It was always like talking in
• 1:31:06
  circles. There was there was no tell us
• 1:31:11
  or, or yeah, there's no tell us. Like, what's the final purpose?
• 1:31:14
  Yeah, what's the purpose? And.
• 1:31:17
  So that was frustrating. And then in 2009, March of 2009,
• 1:31:22
  I was at Paris Fashion Week. I was there for I think I was in
• 1:31:27
  Paris for two weeks and I had rented an apartment in the
• 1:31:31
  Marais, which is like, which is like the West Hollywood of
• 1:31:34
  Paris. It's really beautiful.
• 1:31:38
  And and I went to a bunch of the runway shows and they have after
• 1:31:43
  parties and I was at an after party and I was sitting with
• 1:31:48
  Rachel Zoe and Roger, her husband.
• 1:31:50
  Rachel Zoe was like this fashion it girl.
• 1:31:52
  I think I've warned Rachel Zoe before.
• 1:31:54
  Yeah, at some point. So I was sitting.
• 1:31:56
  With them at their table and. Everyone was dancing on the
• 1:32:01
  dance floor at this. It was at a club called Regine,
• 1:32:05
  which is this very legendary club and not raging.
• 1:32:08
  No Regine, Regine. So I.
• 1:32:11
  I just remember looking out over the crowd of people dancing and
• 1:32:15
  having the time of their lives. And I think Kanye West was
• 1:32:19
  there. Kanye was at a bunch of the
• 1:32:21
  shows. I ran into him.
• 1:32:23
  But I just, I just felt this overwhelming sense of emptiness
• 1:32:28
  and like is like, what is this about?
• 1:32:31
  Like, I can't, I can't go on living like this for the rest of
• 1:32:34
  my life. I can't keep going to fabulous
• 1:32:36
  parties and dinners and award shows.
• 1:32:40
  And you know, I can't. This isn't doing it for me.
• 1:32:44
  I can't go hang out at Arianna Huffington's house for
• 1:32:46
  cocktails. Like, yeah, this doesn't.
• 1:32:50
  It's not. I need, I need answers.
• 1:32:53
  Like, I need answers. What's happening?
• 1:32:56
  So I was, I went back to my apartment that I'd rented in the
• 1:32:59
  Marais after the I just left the party and I was up all night in
• 1:33:04
  a panic about my future and I didn't know what, I didn't know
• 1:33:08
  what I was going to do. I was like, am I going to be put
• 1:33:10
  out to pasture in Palm Springs like older gay men?
• 1:33:13
  Like that's what happens to older gay when you age out of
• 1:33:15
  LA, you go to Palm Springs. That's what used to happen.
• 1:33:19
  I don't know if it still does. But anyway, I was totally in a
• 1:33:23
  panic about my future and got back to LA a few days later, got
• 1:33:28
  busy with work again. And then six months later, this
• 1:33:33
  is when it all went down. I was with my friend, my best
• 1:33:36
  friend. We would hang out all the time.
• 1:33:38
  We would have dinner almost every night.
• 1:33:39
  We got to dinner every night. It was very expensive.
• 1:33:41
  This, this friendship was very expensive.
• 1:33:44
  We were best, best friends. He was gay, he still is.
• 1:33:52
  And we were at a coffee shop in Silver Lake on the east side of
• 1:33:55
  LA and we, we're just minding our own business having coffee.
• 1:34:02
  And we look over and there's a table of young people next to us
• 1:34:06
  with five Bibles, physical Bibles on the table.
• 1:34:09
  And it was a shocking sight to see in LA, especially Silver
• 1:34:13
  Lake. You don't see that in Silver
• 1:34:14
  Lake. And so we were fascinated by it,
• 1:34:19
  by it, because my friend, he loved to kind of, he was, he was
• 1:34:23
  very curious, very, very, very smart guy.
• 1:34:29
  And so we ended up in a conversation with this table of
• 1:34:33
  people and I, I asked him, I said, what do you guys are you
• 1:34:37
  guys Christians? And they're like, no, we just
• 1:34:40
  carry 5 Bibles and you know, it's like a Christian.
• 1:34:43
  Fantasy comes come true when a, A and you.
• 1:34:45
  Got gay atheist and you got it. Are you a Christian?
• 1:34:49
  Like what's the gospel? I literally asked.
• 1:34:50
  Him. What?
• 1:34:50
  What? What?
• 1:34:51
  Do you believe oh, they you made their day.
• 1:34:53
  I know I was like, So what do you?
• 1:34:54
  Believe like and they so they. Explained what they believe.
• 1:34:58
  They said they went to a church, an evangelical church in
• 1:35:02
  Hollywood on Sunset Blvd. And.
• 1:35:06
  And then of course, I asked them, well, what does your
• 1:35:08
  church believe about homosexuality?
• 1:35:09
  And they say, well, we believe it's a sin.
• 1:35:12
  And they were just very blunt about it.
• 1:35:14
  And that. That's impressive.
• 1:35:16
  Yeah. Because I think most.
• 1:35:18
  Of your average Christians today if they're in a coffee shop with
• 1:35:20
  the Bible a gay guy as they see it is asking them what's the
• 1:35:23
  gospel is what I'm doing a sin they'll be like well the Lord
• 1:35:26
  loves you I know he welcomes all and it just did that they're.
• 1:35:30
  Just like, yeah, it doesn't, but they were.
• 1:35:32
  Just very but see those same people probably.
• 1:35:34
  Wouldn't they probably would have died, dodged it more today
• 1:35:37
  had I asked them that question. And that's a tragedy I mean,
• 1:35:40
  that we're so scared of. So and I was so appreciative, I
• 1:35:44
  expected. Them to say that but sorry to
• 1:35:48
  say it's a sin or to soften it I.
• 1:35:50
  Expected them. I wasn't shocked, but.
• 1:35:54
  A year before that or five years before that, I would have been
• 1:35:57
  like, you guys are crazy and like I, it was nice to meet you,
• 1:36:01
  but I'm going back to my table. But because of that night in
• 1:36:03
  Paris six months before, I was open to hearing something
• 1:36:07
  different, like a different narrative.
• 1:36:10
  And they invited me to their church the following Sunday.
• 1:36:13
  And I said, I don't know, like just give me the address and
• 1:36:17
  I'll, maybe I'll come. And I saw I had a whole week to
• 1:36:21
  think about it. And it was a big deal because
• 1:36:23
  all my friends, like if they, besides the one I was with who
• 1:36:27
  was very private, he would never have told anyone.
• 1:36:29
  But if any of my other friends had found out that I had gone to
• 1:36:35
  an evangelical church, they would have thought I had lost my
• 1:36:39
  mind. I mean, evangelicals were the
• 1:36:42
  worst of the worst, worse than Catholics.
• 1:36:44
  Oh, worse than Catholics. They were like the.
• 1:36:47
  Bible. Thumping, you know, the moral
• 1:36:52
  majority, like whatever the all those things.
• 1:36:56
  I had a whole week to think about it and I was kind of like
• 1:36:59
  everyday I was like, should I do this?
• 1:37:01
  If I go, what if nothing happens and it's going to be
• 1:37:04
  embarrassing and humiliating and I don't know if I want to do
• 1:37:08
  this like it's it's risky. It was a risky thing to do for a
• 1:37:12
  for a number of reasons. And anyway, the, the following
• 1:37:16
  Sunday rolls around and I wake up and I'm like, I'm going to, I
• 1:37:20
  guess I'm going to do this. What?
• 1:37:21
  I don't have anything else to do today.
• 1:37:23
  So I went to the 12:00 service, the noon service and I, it's a 2
• 1:37:29
  hour, The services are two hours long.
• 1:37:30
  I walk in and the worship music is playing Christian work.
• 1:37:34
  The band is playing. And I was like, immediately I
• 1:37:37
  cringe because I'm like, I forgot Christian music existed.
• 1:37:42
  And then I was like, he thought it was bad.
• 1:37:43
  No, but then I then I just just. And then I.
• 1:37:45
  Waited for a minute and I was. Like wait, it's actually kind of
• 1:37:48
  beautiful. And then I walked to Oh, I
• 1:37:51
  didn't before I walked into the this is key.
• 1:37:53
  I before I walked into the auditorium, it met.
• 1:37:55
  It meets in high school auditorium on an LA public high
• 1:38:00
  school auditorium on Sunset. And before I walked in the
• 1:38:05
  auditorium, I remember just mentally putting the idea of
• 1:38:10
  homosexuality as my identity in a white box and putting it on a
• 1:38:14
  shelf. And I thought, I'm just going to
• 1:38:17
  go in here. Just with an open mind.
• 1:38:20
  And not have this attached to me kind of thing.
• 1:38:23
  And so I went in, sat down by myself.
• 1:38:27
  The pastor comes out after the music stops.
• 1:38:29
  He comes out, preaches an hour long sermon on Romans Chapter 7.
• 1:38:33
  He was doing a two year thing through Romans.
• 1:38:36
  He was on Romans 7 that day. Part of it, and I mean
• 1:38:41
  everything he was saying, every word he was saying, every
• 1:38:44
  sentence he was saying was resonating as truth in my mind
• 1:38:47
  and my heart. And I didn't understand why.
• 1:38:48
  I was like, what is going on? I was riveted to the sermon.
• 1:38:53
  I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat the entire time.
• 1:38:56
  I was like talk I And when after an hour when he was about to
• 1:39:01
  wrap up, I'm like, no, no, no, keep talking.
• 1:39:03
  I want to hear more. He leaves the stage and there's
• 1:39:08
  another 30 minutes of worship time.
• 1:39:11
  And he's before he left the stage, he said there's people on
• 1:39:15
  the side of the auditorium. If you want prayer for anything,
• 1:39:17
  you can get prayed for. And that was another moment of
• 1:39:20
  like, do I go over there? If I do, it's going to be
• 1:39:23
  humiliating. And like, what if the people who
• 1:39:25
  invited me here are watching me, which I'm sure they are.
• 1:39:29
  So I was like, whatever. So I walked over to the side to
• 1:39:32
  this guy on the prayer team and I, I just said, Hey, I don't, I
• 1:39:37
  said I literally quote UN quote, hey, I don't know what I
• 1:39:40
  believe, but I'm here. And he said, OK, can I, I'll
• 1:39:43
  pray for you, Let me pray for you.
• 1:39:45
  And he prayed for me and it was just really powerful.
• 1:39:49
  The prayer just seemed really loving and just like, it just
• 1:39:52
  seemed like, why does this guy care about me so much?
• 1:39:55
  This random straight dude like he's so loving and.
• 1:40:00
  I thanked him, went back to my seat, everyone else was still
• 1:40:03
  standing and singing for another 25 minutes.
• 1:40:06
  As soon as I sit down in my seat, the Holy Spirit just comes
• 1:40:12
  crashing and I go to it's a Reformed Church.
• 1:40:15
  It's not like a crazy charismatic church like it
• 1:40:18
  would, but the Holy Spirit just is like, and God revealed
• 1:40:26
  himself to me in that moment and it was a, again, it was a road
• 1:40:30
  to Damascus moment. And God said it was so clear in
• 1:40:33
  my mind. God said, I mean, it was like
• 1:40:35
  clearer than, I mean, it was this real, this glass, this is
• 1:40:39
  clear as this water. And God said, I'm God, Jesus is
• 1:40:43
  my son. Heaven is real, hell is real.
• 1:40:45
  The Bible's true welcome to my Kingdom.
• 1:40:47
  And I just started heaving, like bawling, like I've never cried
• 1:40:53
  before in my life. I mean, I was doubled over
• 1:40:56
  crying and crying for the next 25 minutes.
• 1:40:59
  I was crying so hard that they were people were going to call
• 1:41:02
  the medics because they thought like something really bad was
• 1:41:05
  happening. They didn't know something
• 1:41:07
  really good was happening, but so I met and it was like Jesus.
• 1:41:14
  I was crying over the conviction of sin, but also over the joy of
• 1:41:18
  meeting Jesus and knowing, finally knowing the meaning of
• 1:41:21
  life. I was like, Oh my God.
• 1:41:23
  It was like the curtains parted and I could see.
• 1:41:26
  It was so clear. I could see the I knew what the
• 1:41:29
  I knew where I came from, what I'm doing here and where I'm
• 1:41:31
  going. It was like that clear
• 1:41:32
  instantly. And then when I got home after
• 1:41:36
  the service, it happened again. God was like, let me show you
• 1:41:41
  some more of my glory. And I was like, whoa.
• 1:41:45
  And I burst into tears again in the middle of my bedroom.
• 1:41:49
  I said, God, you have my whole life.
• 1:41:51
  I'm yours. I'm done.
• 1:41:52
  And I knew that homosexual behavior was wrong.
• 1:41:55
  I knew that it was a sin. I knew that dating guys was no
• 1:41:58
  longer a part of my future, but I didn't care because I'd just
• 1:42:02
  met Jesus And I'm like, I'm going with Jesus.
• 1:42:04
  Forget that old life. And and I knew that and I I
• 1:42:09
  immediately knew that homosexuality was not my
• 1:42:12
  identity at all. It was the opposite.
• 1:42:14
  Like Christ I was, my identity was in Christ suddenly and I
• 1:42:19
  immediately I was pro-choice. I immediately became pro-life
• 1:42:24
  because I understood the imago day.
• 1:42:26
  I understood that we are made in humans, are made in the image of
• 1:42:29
  God. Immediately was that conscious?
• 1:42:31
  Like, yeah, these are all the things I used to believe of.
• 1:42:34
  No, no, no. I believe yes.
• 1:42:35
  It was conscious. I, I was just like, Oh my gosh,
• 1:42:37
  I'm. I became ardently pro-life
• 1:42:42
  because I immediately understood that we're creating the image of
• 1:42:46
  God. But yeah, I remember my mom
• 1:42:48
  called me like years before. She was like she we were just
• 1:42:51
  talking on the phone and she's like, oh, your sister Rachel is
• 1:42:55
  at a pro-life rally in Dallas and blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:42:57
  I was like, and I was mad at my. I was like, mom, that's
• 1:43:00
  ridiculous. Like women should have the right
• 1:43:02
  to. I was like yelling at my mother,
• 1:43:04
  OK, with your seven siblings. Yeah.
• 1:43:08
  And then I become just like extremely pro-life, like the day
• 1:43:14
  I get saved and and then everything like I, my whole life
• 1:43:20
  did a 180. Like even my, my worldview
• 1:43:23
  completely changed. I became AI was a total lefty
• 1:43:28
  liberal progressive person in all my my beliefs and all my
• 1:43:34
  thoughts. My in politically, socially, I
• 1:43:39
  became extremely conservative. Like the second I got that day,
• 1:43:45
  I just instantly became conservative because I
• 1:43:47
  understood the fall and I understood that Rousseau it was
• 1:43:51
  wrong. Augustine and Rousseau are are
• 1:43:53
  the Saint. Augustine and Rousseau are the
• 1:43:55
  opposites. They both wrote books called
• 1:43:57
  Confessions, autobiographies, Confessions.
• 1:44:00
  Augustine stole pears with his friends.
• 1:44:03
  And he realized after that event because he did it just for fun.
• 1:44:06
  He didn't do it because he needed the food or didn't want
• 1:44:09
  them. He realized after that event
• 1:44:12
  that he was sinful and that he had.
• 1:44:15
  He had a wounded nature. Yeah.
• 1:44:18
  From. Rousseau was the opposite
• 1:44:20
  Rousseau stole. Asparagus.
• 1:44:21
  It's really weird how. This this is centuries later in
• 1:44:25
  the 18th century, Rousseau, when he was a kid, he stole asparagus
• 1:44:28
  because this man asked him to steal him for the the asparagus
• 1:44:33
  for him so he could sell it for money.
• 1:44:36
  And Rousseau from that experience blamed it on the man.
• 1:44:42
  So it was outside influences that compel you to do things
• 1:44:46
  wrong, not your internal sinful nature.
• 1:44:50
  And when you believe that, Melanie Phillips, who's a
• 1:44:55
  British journalist, she's brilliant.
• 1:44:57
  She said that Rousseau is the greatest villain of all time,
• 1:45:01
  and he really is, besides Adam in the Garden.
• 1:45:05
  Rousseau is the greatest villain of all time because everyone,
• 1:45:10
  especially like on the left, are, they're all Rousseauians.
• 1:45:16
  And when you're a Rousseauian, because that led to Marx and
• 1:45:20
  other people. And but when you're a
• 1:45:22
  Rousseauian and you think that man is intrinsically good and
• 1:45:26
  it's society that corrupts man, as soon as a man enters into
• 1:45:31
  society, that's what corrupts him because all of these social
• 1:45:36
  and religious norms are put on are put on him.
• 1:45:41
  And constrain him. And restrict him.
• 1:45:44
  And so it, it has all kinds of effects in terms of education,
• 1:45:50
  crime and punishment. And then with Rousseau, you
• 1:45:53
  believe utopia is possible. If we could just get the right
• 1:45:58
  policies in place and the right, you know, then utopia we can be,
• 1:46:02
  we can be perfect. We can become perfect human
• 1:46:04
  beings. That day I got saved.
• 1:46:06
  I went from a Rousseau into an Augustinian.
• 1:46:09
  And I understood that I had a sinful nature and I understood
• 1:46:11
  the fall and I got, I was like, it was clear as day.
• 1:46:16
  The interestingly, the Catholic view on it is that.
• 1:46:19
  It is, you could say, Augustinian.
• 1:46:21
  I mean we consider Saint Augustine a St. and a doctor of
• 1:46:24
  the Church, but we have a sinful nature like you're saying
• 1:46:28
  because of the fall, right Adam's first sin, we need Jesus
• 1:46:32
  Christ. We we cannot progress without
• 1:46:35
  the saving power of Jesus Christ.
• 1:46:36
  We can't get to heaven obviously without that because of sin.
• 1:46:39
  We're wounded by sin, but they see the original design was we
• 1:46:41
  were made good in the image of God.
• 1:46:44
  Sin concupiscence has wounded us.
• 1:46:46
  So we have this desire for sin even very young right.
• 1:46:50
  It's it we all share that, but that we're not innately evil
• 1:46:54
  like we weren't. We're, we're first made in God's
• 1:46:56
  image and then we fell. And so we need to be healed of
• 1:47:00
  the wound of original sin. And only Jesus Christ, of
• 1:47:02
  course, can do that. And he does that for us.
• 1:47:04
  Yeah. So, so.
• 1:47:06
  So anyway all. That just switched.
• 1:47:08
  Like it was like a big giant, you know, breaker in my brain
• 1:47:13
  just went and like everything just switched.
• 1:47:16
  And I so did you immediately stop?
• 1:47:18
  Oh yeah. Your activities that you were.
• 1:47:22
  Involved in that were sinful you're Oh yeah.
• 1:47:23
  Yeah, like I immediately and I had to tell all my.
• 1:47:26
  Friends, you know, like I'm born again.
• 1:47:28
  I mean, what was the? What language did you use?
• 1:47:30
  To describe your conversion, I'm born again.
• 1:47:33
  I mean, I told them. I told them my whole story.
• 1:47:35
  And what? Happened and I sat everyone down
• 1:47:38
  one at a time. It took like 3 weeks or a month
• 1:47:41
  to do this. And they, the general reaction
• 1:47:44
  was kind of like one of my, my best friend, my best, best, best
• 1:47:51
  best friend. This girl woman, her first
• 1:47:54
  reaction after I told her the whole story was you're not
• 1:47:58
  pro-life now, are you? Oh gosh, I was like, what I just
• 1:48:02
  told you. I met the king of the.
• 1:48:03
  Universe. And that's your first question.
• 1:48:05
  You cannot be gay, but don't be. Pro-life I.
• 1:48:07
  Know I was. Like what?
• 1:48:08
  That's your first question to me and.
• 1:48:12
  And then my my other best, best, best male friend, his first
• 1:48:16
  reaction was after I told him the whole story.
• 1:48:19
  Beckett, I'm happy for you. Don't ever proselytize me.
• 1:48:22
  I'm like, what? You don't wait so I can never
• 1:48:26
  talk about God to you ever again.
• 1:48:28
  Like this is crazy. Like I've known you since high
• 1:48:31
  school. We've been best friends.
• 1:48:33
  So anyway, but the general reaction was we're you know,
• 1:48:37
  we're happy you found your path kind of thing.
• 1:48:40
  Like, well, it's actually the path.
• 1:48:43
  It's the way, the truth, the life.
• 1:48:46
  But I actually talked to Aubrey Plaza.
• 1:48:51
  Do you know the actress Aubrey Plaza?
• 1:48:53
  I was at AI, went to a dinner and she was there and I told her
• 1:48:59
  I was late to the dinner and I sat next to her and you're like,
• 1:49:02
  I'm saved. She was in the parks and I think
• 1:49:05
  parks and. Recreation that show I.
• 1:49:07
  Never saw it, but anyway, and she was in the White Lotus,
• 1:49:09
  which I never saw. But anyway, she but I told her
• 1:49:15
  she was like, she kind of said like, oh, I'm, you know, I told
• 1:49:18
  her I was late. I was late.
• 1:49:20
  I just came from my Bible study and I'm late, I'm being blah,
• 1:49:23
  blah. I'm and I told her a little bit
• 1:49:24
  of my story and she was kind of like, oh, I'm happy for you, you
• 1:49:27
  know, and I was like, well, it's not really about you being happy
• 1:49:31
  for me. I mean, it wasn't the right
• 1:49:33
  context for me to do this. You're like repentance and no
• 1:49:36
  repentance and. She like, got time.
• 1:49:39
  So let me just. Say you you lost a few friends.
• 1:49:41
  I. Lost.
• 1:49:42
  Well, or no, maybe not. They still.
• 1:49:46
  My friend I was still. They still wanted to my friends
• 1:49:48
  still wanted to hang out, but it was, it was kind of it became
• 1:49:54
  very difficult because first of all, I had a whole new world,
• 1:49:59
  like in a whole new group of Christian friends at my church
• 1:50:02
  that night, every night we had like Bible studies, prayer
• 1:50:04
  meetings, like events, dinners like this not.
• 1:50:08
  And so like the last thing I wanted to do was go to the
• 1:50:11
  Chateau Marmont and have dinner with my old friends and talk
• 1:50:15
  about nothing, talk about fashion, you know, And so I
• 1:50:18
  would go to these dinner parties with my old friends and just be
• 1:50:23
  like, I want to talk about vertical things and you all you
• 1:50:27
  can only talk about horizontal things like you're in Plato's
• 1:50:32
  cave. I escaped The Cave and I know
• 1:50:35
  what's reality. It really is.
• 1:50:37
  You're still stuck in The Cave and the shadows on the wall is
• 1:50:40
  what your reality is. At what point did you realize?
• 1:50:45
  The information about your parents praying so much for you
• 1:50:49
  because I think back what you were saying earlier, which is so
• 1:50:51
  powerful because I'm even as you're speaking, I'm thinking
• 1:50:54
  about people I love in my life and people that don't have the
• 1:50:58
  aha moment of that gift of faith.
• 1:51:00
  I mean, really, you got the gift of faith.
• 1:51:02
  You were given the gift of faith by the Holy Spirit, all God.
• 1:51:05
  And I didn't do a thing. I mean, I did I.
• 1:51:07
  Showed up to church, you showed. Up but.
• 1:51:08
  God, yes, He gave you the gift of faith.
• 1:51:11
  Yeah, He gave you and. Repentance and on all the
• 1:51:14
  things. And so.
• 1:51:15
  To your point earlier, like that is a gift from heaven and we can
• 1:51:19
  pray that for other people. And in the spiritual realm, God
• 1:51:21
  can give that to other people and they can choose to have a 1
• 1:51:25
  little chink open in their armor to receive it.
• 1:51:27
  And then there's the, your whole life can be transformed, right?
• 1:51:30
  That's just the beauty of our faith, right?
• 1:51:32
  And I think about your friends, I think about people that I
• 1:51:35
  love, I think about myself, right?
• 1:51:37
  We need the gift of faith in order to, you know, be saved
• 1:51:41
  ultimately and, and God can give that freely, but we need to pray
• 1:51:45
  that for other people. Well, this is a big
• 1:51:47
  misconception with, I think, the world they think.
• 1:51:50
  That faith is like a leap in the dark and you're just kind of
• 1:51:53
  guessing. But as you said, it's a gift
• 1:51:56
  from God. God.
• 1:51:58
  That's why Jesus healed the blind so much like God has to
• 1:52:02
  open your eyes. He has to give you the gift to
• 1:52:05
  be able to see who like that he's real.
• 1:52:09
  And when he does that, there's no turning back.
• 1:52:13
  I mean, I could never after that experience and I've had multiple
• 1:52:18
  just I've had so many crazy experiences with God since then.
• 1:52:22
  I'll tell you one of them in a minute, but there's no turning
• 1:52:25
  back because God is Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit.
• 1:52:29
  They are more real to me than this table.
• 1:52:32
  I mean, they are I, I know that, I know that I know that I know
• 1:52:37
  that they are there and that I am in Christ.
• 1:52:42
  I'm united to Christ that on the last day when God judges, when
• 1:52:48
  God judges the living and the dead, that because I'm in
• 1:52:51
  Christ, he, I'm declared righteous.
• 1:52:54
  I'm going to be righteous before God, and I can stand before God
• 1:52:57
  because I am united to Christ. There's no way for me to be
• 1:53:02
  reject it because I'm united to Christ and the Holy Spirit is in
• 1:53:05
  me and you're choosing Christ you say I want to be with.
• 1:53:09
  God, I want to serve God, even if we do it imperfectly, right,
• 1:53:11
  because we're sinners. I want this and God gives us
• 1:53:15
  this gift of salvation right through Jesus Christ.
• 1:53:17
  But I, I think I might have been theologically slightly imprecise
• 1:53:20
  and maybe even accurate. I hope not a moment ago and how
• 1:53:23
  I said this thing about the gift of faith, because you know, I
• 1:53:26
  think about the, you know, that I believe helped my unbelief,
• 1:53:31
  right? And I think about this idea of
• 1:53:34
  we may not feel the gift of faith like you have this thing
• 1:53:38
  of like God is more real to me than this cup, right.
• 1:53:40
  And then you have people who are saying I want to believe in God.
• 1:53:44
  I have this inclination, this desire, but I don't have this
• 1:53:47
  full gift yet. I'm, I'm, I'm, you know,
• 1:53:49
  hammered by doubts and all these things, right?
• 1:53:51
  But God can still obviously bring salvation to that person,
• 1:53:55
  of course. Right?
• 1:53:56
  Yeah. So it's just an interesting
• 1:53:57
  thing of, like, how we live out our salvation like Kirkegaard
• 1:54:00
  says, Soren Kirkegaard. Like you live out your salvation
• 1:54:02
  with fear and trembling. That was like, big time.
• 1:54:04
  Just like, how do I really know that God?
• 1:54:06
  Do I really trust God? Do I have this invincible faith?
• 1:54:08
  And. And maybe he didn't have the
• 1:54:09
  experience you have, but he still was seeking after the
• 1:54:12
  Lord's heart. Yeah.
• 1:54:13
  And not everyone has a dramatic experience.
• 1:54:16
  Like mine, I mean, some some people have their their
• 1:54:19
  experience is very minimal or almost unnoticeable.
• 1:54:22
  Like, you know, when they come to faith.
• 1:54:26
  So it's not, it doesn't matter. What matters is believing.
• 1:54:31
  It's like, I can't think of the verse now, but if you confess
• 1:54:35
  with your mouth and believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, you'll be
• 1:54:38
  saved. That is the worst.
• 1:54:44
  But it's that, I mean, it's, it's that simple, but also God
• 1:54:50
  has to do that work of opening your eyes.
• 1:54:52
  So it's not just like you guessing kind of like, Gee, I
• 1:54:55
  hope this is real. And it's not like Pascal's Wager
• 1:54:58
  where it's like, I hope this is real.
• 1:54:59
  And maybe, you know, when I die, I hope I go to heaven.
• 1:55:02
  No, no, I know this is real and I know that I'm going to heaven.
• 1:55:09
  Like there's no doubt in my mind that's coming on an emotional,
• 1:55:12
  psychological level. You may experience through our
• 1:55:15
  human frailty. You don't have the beatific
• 1:55:17
  vision yet, right, like in its fullness, at least you may have
• 1:55:21
  glimpses, like you've had glimpses, you've had tastes of
• 1:55:23
  it, right? Tastes and see the Lord of good
• 1:55:25
  is good. You've had taste of it.
• 1:55:26
  But I just think about people that I am in my life, even that
• 1:55:29
  because I, I do believe I, it's a gift from God.
• 1:55:31
  Like I have a gift of faith. Like I just know God, like there
• 1:55:33
  is no way God is not real that Jesus is not God.
• 1:55:36
  Like there is no way, right? I'm not like, Oh, I don't know,
• 1:55:39
  like it's just clear as day. It is the most real thing to me.
• 1:55:42
  And I do think that is the disposition of, you know, most
• 1:55:45
  believers, but there are some sincere believers that they may
• 1:55:48
  be happy. You know, I don't know that they
• 1:55:51
  have like doubts in terms of like it's even real.
• 1:55:54
  But they are still sort of wrestling in a position of
• 1:55:57
  wrestling. But God can work through like he
• 1:56:00
  does in the Holy Scripture. I mean, I think it's the the
• 1:56:02
  scene of the the father who had the child who was seeking
• 1:56:05
  feeling. Yeah.
• 1:56:05
  How I believe, how my belief or or doubting Thomas, right,
• 1:56:08
  Unless I see the holes in your hands, I will not believe.
• 1:56:11
  And he shows him the holes in his hands and then he says,
• 1:56:14
  blessed are those who have not seen and believe, right.
• 1:56:16
  But Thomas still eventually did believe.
• 1:56:19
  It just took him a little while. Yeah.
• 1:56:21
  So yeah, I. I with with people with kind of
• 1:56:26
  doubting that you're doubting your faith.
• 1:56:29
  I just always say just, you know, just keep asking the Lord
• 1:56:34
  to make it clear and and and just and just keep reading his
• 1:56:40
  word until it comes to life. And that's the other thing when
• 1:56:43
  I got saved, I mean, when I started reading the Bible, I
• 1:56:46
  mean the words just like jumped out from the page at me, just
• 1:56:49
  like every single word was like this is a perfect Symphony the
• 1:56:55
  entire from Genesis to. Revelation.
• 1:56:57
  It's a perfect Symphony. And if one word, if one note
• 1:57:01
  were taken out, it would be, it would not be a perfect Symphony.
• 1:57:05
  One of the things I wanted to tell you is, so I was at a
• 1:57:08
  church service. There were 1000 people in, in
• 1:57:11
  the auditorium and I was, I went up to the front and kneeled down
• 1:57:18
  on the carpet and I was praying during the worship time.
• 1:57:21
  And I, I just said God, I had never done this before.
• 1:57:24
  I was like God. I knew that there was an elder
• 1:57:27
  in the auditorium. I saw him on the other side and
• 1:57:31
  I said God, will you send Nick over here to pray for me Right
• 1:57:34
  now I need someone to pray for me.
• 1:57:37
  And 5 minutes later I feel a hand on my shoulder.
• 1:57:39
  I look up and it's Nick and he said the Lord just told me to
• 1:57:43
  come pray for you. I'm like God.
• 1:57:45
  God is real, my friend. That's so.
• 1:57:47
  Cool. That's.
• 1:57:48
  Crazy. He's so real.
• 1:57:50
  God is real. And then the same so.
• 1:57:52
  Beautiful I had I had struggled with.
• 1:57:56
  A morning depression since I was a teenager.
• 1:57:58
  And Long story short, I was at church and I told Nick he was
• 1:58:05
  praying on the side of the church and I went up to him this
• 1:58:07
  time and I was like, will you pray for me?
• 1:58:11
  This depression has come back because I was on antidepressants
• 1:58:13
  that took it out for 10 years. But I, I got off the
• 1:58:18
  antidepressants because I was a, a believer and I was like, Oh my
• 1:58:21
  gosh, I don't need this. Like I'm so euphoric.
• 1:58:24
  And but two months later, that old feeling came back and that
• 1:58:28
  depression, and I was like, Oh my gosh, it's back, told Nick.
• 1:58:33
  He prayed for me. James Fife pulled out anointing
• 1:58:36
  oil. He anointed me.
• 1:58:38
  And while he was praying for me, I felt this thing rise up
• 1:58:43
  through my body and out of the top of my head and I burst into
• 1:58:46
  tears and the depression was gone.
• 1:58:51
  Like God supernaturally took it out of me.
• 1:58:54
  Forever. So.
• 1:58:57
  God's. Real God is so real, even when
• 1:59:00
  we don't get. The immediate.
• 1:59:01
  Prayer answer we're. Seeking God is real, working all
• 1:59:06
  things for our goods. Mysteriously, Romans 828 and
• 1:59:09
  that's where the life of trust comes in.
• 1:59:11
  But he does reveal himself and it's it's spectacular.
• 1:59:18
  Welcome to it's the Kingdom of heaven.
• 1:59:20
  I mean how how amazing the gay a gay man's incredible story of
• 1:59:25
  redemption. This is we were talking about
• 1:59:27
  this earlier you don't like that title Well, why?
• 1:59:32
  And you obviously don't identify that way, so I.
• 1:59:34
  Don't. I don't.
• 1:59:35
  Identify. I don't use.
• 1:59:36
  I would never. Call myself a gay Christian.
• 1:59:39
  I think it's, I think it's there's this whole movement, you
• 1:59:43
  know, with it's called side B or Revoice.
• 1:59:45
  I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's a whole group of ex
• 1:59:49
  gay Christians who call themselves gay Christians or
• 1:59:52
  queer Christians or sexual minorities.
• 1:59:55
  Like there's no such thing as a sexual minority in the Bible.
• 1:59:57
  It's only sexual sin. So but number one, calling
• 2:00:05
  yourself a gay Christian is very, it's a bad witness to the
• 2:00:08
  world. It's very misleading #2 why
• 2:00:12
  would I want to that? Person died I'm a new creation
• 2:00:17
  in Christ. Why would I want to drag around
• 2:00:18
  a corpse with me with a label gay?
• 2:00:22
  I would never call. And #3 it's very dangerous
• 2:00:27
  because you're, it's also the profane with a sacred together
• 2:00:30
  gay Christian. It's, you're, you're putting two
• 2:00:33
  things together that should not be.
• 2:00:35
  And the third reason it's really bad to call yourself a gay
• 2:00:40
  Christian or queer Christian, even if you're a genuinely a
• 2:00:42
  Christian and you've, you're, you know, you're not pursuing
• 2:00:47
  that lifestyle anymore. I know a lot of guys who who do
• 2:00:51
  that and still call themselves gay Christians.
• 2:00:54
  The problem is, is you're cutting off the sanctifying work
• 2:00:58
  of the Holy Spirit by clinging to this, this sinful identity.
• 2:01:05
  And so why would you want to cut off the Spirit from sanctifying
• 2:01:09
  that part of you? So I'm, I, I, I would never call
• 2:01:13
  myself a gay Christian. I don't even like saying I'm,
• 2:01:16
  I'm, I don't even, I don't, I just call myself a Christian.
• 2:01:21
  I'm, I just, I'm in Christ, I'm the, I'm, I'm adopted into the
• 2:01:27
  Kingdom of God. And I don't know your take on
• 2:01:29
  this, but you know this is something you talk about in the.
• 2:01:30
  Show a lot and live action. Actually, we did a whole series
• 2:01:33
  on sexual identity, desire, you know, the history of the sexual
• 2:01:38
  revolution, things like that. And this idea that our identity
• 2:01:42
  is our disordered sexual desires.
• 2:01:45
  Like your identity is your lesbianism, your identity is
• 2:01:48
  your homosexuality, your identity.
• 2:01:49
  Yeah, it's Freudian. And it's also, it's also Alfred
• 2:01:52
  Kinsey who kind of tried to mainstream these ideas of
• 2:01:55
  different like, I mean, there are other folks involved too,
• 2:01:57
  but kind of. Oh, everyone's perverted,
• 2:01:59
  basically. And and yeah, everybody, most
• 2:02:02
  people have had broken sexual desires.
• 2:02:04
  That's very human. It's not like you're weird and
• 2:02:06
  I'm not in this. No, we've all had brokenness in
• 2:02:09
  different categories for different reasons.
• 2:02:12
  But that doesn't define you as a human being.
• 2:02:15
  Now, if you're unrepentantly living a certain life, right,
• 2:02:18
  and certain behaviors, it becomes they can become so
• 2:02:20
  habitual that you can be like, well, I'm an alcoholic.
• 2:02:23
  Like, I'm this is who I am. Like, this is how I behave.
• 2:02:25
  But that's not your deepest identity.
• 2:02:27
  Yeah. Like, and our deepest identity
• 2:02:30
  is to be sons and daughters of God.
• 2:02:32
  That's what we're called to be. Yeah.
• 2:02:34
  And there's so much beauty in that.
• 2:02:35
  Yeah, exactly. And.
• 2:02:37
  Yeah, so I just find it. Baffling when people.
• 2:02:39
  Still want to use that adjective or that modifier to describe
• 2:02:43
  themselves as a Christian. I'm like why?
• 2:02:46
  How did your parents respond and your family when they found out?
• 2:02:49
  They were just like blown away. They.
• 2:02:54
  My, all of my. So I, I, I rolled it out slowly
• 2:02:59
  with my, because I, I was, I was in such a state.
• 2:03:04
  I couldn't, I could barely just, you know, see, I was just crying
• 2:03:09
  all the time. But I emailed all of my
• 2:03:12
  siblings, you know, slowly, one at a time.
• 2:03:16
  And I as the second I hit send on an e-mail, I would get a
• 2:03:19
  phone call and they would just be weeping like, Oh my gosh, I
• 2:03:22
  can't believe. So they're all practicing faith.
• 2:03:24
  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 2:03:25
  Yeah. All my.
• 2:03:26
  Siblings are are. Christians are like half of them
• 2:03:30
  are Catholics, half are Protestant, but all practicing
• 2:03:34
  us. They're all they discussing on.
• 2:03:36
  Fire for Jesus, every one of them.
• 2:03:38
  Like, and their spouses, they're all are the Catholics, by the
• 2:03:41
  way, saying the Protestants like guys, come on.
• 2:03:44
  Yeah, yeah. But we're doing that to the
• 2:03:45
  Catholics as well. We're like guys.
• 2:03:46
  Come on. OK pick up that can be episode.
• 2:03:49
  Two Beckett. OK, I was Protestant and became
• 2:03:52
  Catholic. Oh, you did?
• 2:03:53
  Oh, I didn't know that about you.
• 2:03:54
  And I'm always like, guys, come on.
• 2:03:56
  Because we have all these like. What you're describing, we've
• 2:03:58
  got that and the anointing oils, we have those too.
• 2:04:01
  And we got the Eucharist and confession.
• 2:04:02
  So it's like the water's so warm, so great.
• 2:04:05
  I know we we could have that. We could have that debate, OK,
• 2:04:08
  for four hours. But but my dad was the only one
• 2:04:14
  in my family who didn't call me, and I didn't understand why.
• 2:04:18
  And I found out later that he was afraid that it was going to
• 2:04:22
  get snatched away, like the parable of the sower.
• 2:04:26
  He and I think he thought also like, maybe I wasn't giving up
• 2:04:32
  my gay identity or something. I didn't know.
• 2:04:34
  I don't know. But anyway, a year later, I
• 2:04:37
  think it was a year later, I was at home in Dallas.
• 2:04:40
  I was in his kitchen and I said, Dad, I, you know, I hear you're
• 2:04:46
  still practicing law. You're like, you know, almost 80
• 2:04:49
  and you're like falling down in the courthouse and having all.
• 2:04:53
  So yeah. And I said, well, what, what's
• 2:04:55
  wrong? And he's told me like he had,
• 2:04:57
  you know, different problems physically, just, you know, oh,
• 2:05:01
  my back hurt, this hurts and I have this problem.
• 2:05:04
  And I was like, let me pray for you.
• 2:05:06
  And I, I, I had never prayed for my dad in my life.
• 2:05:10
  And I, so I went up to, went up to him, I laid hands on him and
• 2:05:14
  I prayed for him. And after I finished, and I,
• 2:05:20
  because I was on the prayer team at my church at that point.
• 2:05:22
  And so I was so used to praying. I was so used to praying for
• 2:05:25
  people like it was all I did. So it was just a very natural
• 2:05:29
  for me. And I prayed for him.
• 2:05:30
  And after I finished, he turned and looked at me and he's like,
• 2:05:34
  Beck, you have the Holy Spirit. I'm like, I know that I'm trying
• 2:05:39
  to tell you that. And he said, and you're going
• 2:05:42
  to, you're going to appreciate this.
• 2:05:43
  But he said, I am so happy for you.
• 2:05:48
  I'm so happy for you. And then he, and of course, he
• 2:05:51
  at the end, he had to say there's just only one more thing
• 2:05:54
  that would be really before he dies, you know.
• 2:05:56
  But you know, he was like, it would make me.
• 2:05:58
  Really happy if you. Came to the Catholic Church.
• 2:06:02
  We should do an episode. Come back, Come back down from
• 2:06:05
  LA. Where the where?
• 2:06:05
  The water's so great down here in Orange County.
• 2:06:07
  But you have now since written a book.
• 2:06:11
  You have a whole ministry. You go around the, I think maybe
• 2:06:14
  world, I don't know, but certainly the nation speaking.
• 2:06:16
  You are reaching millions of people with your content.
• 2:06:19
  And this is, you know, the month of June.
• 2:06:21
  We're filming this the end of June.
• 2:06:22
  Obviously, there's a whole culture out there in the world
• 2:06:24
  out there that says gay is an identity.
• 2:06:25
  It is a true identity. You're born gay.
• 2:06:28
  People that say you shouldn't act out on this identity are
• 2:06:31
  bigots. You know the whole drill, right?
• 2:06:35
  What is your response to that prevailing narrative today in
• 2:06:39
  our culture? It's a lie, My response?
• 2:06:43
  Is that again is and I, I, I want to broach this with a
• 2:06:52
  spirit of humility because there before the grace of God go I so
• 2:06:57
  like I was that person. I was living in that life.
• 2:07:00
  I've heard 20 years I was living that life and it's only by God's
• 2:07:05
  grace that I my eyes have been open and I see the truth and I
• 2:07:09
  understand it. So I would my response to people
• 2:07:14
  who are living in that life, I would just say to them that I
• 2:07:20
  promise you nothing. Everything in this world pales
• 2:07:24
  in comparison to having a relationship with the King of
• 2:07:28
  the universe and he's Jesus Christ and he's real.
• 2:07:32
  And what I would recommend to people who who are don't believe
• 2:07:37
  or non believers. I mean you probably would
• 2:07:39
  recommend joy the Catholic Church.
• 2:07:41
  But either way, it's Jesus go. The reason I'm Catholic is
• 2:07:44
  because of. Jesus.
• 2:07:45
  OK, so I would I would recommend that you.
• 2:07:50
  I would do a 30 day challenge. Let's make it very concrete
• 2:07:53
  every night. This is what happened with a a
• 2:07:56
  guy who read my book. I had him on my show.
• 2:07:59
  He was, he's 35, this young. He's this this nicest guy.
• 2:08:04
  And his mom said, I want you to do me a favor.
• 2:08:11
  Will you do me? Because she had done him, him a
• 2:08:13
  big favor. And he he she said, will you do
• 2:08:15
  me a favor now? And he said, OK, because he was
• 2:08:18
  living as a gay guy. And she said, will you for 30
• 2:08:23
  days ask God to reveal himself to you?
• 2:08:27
  And I would say read the Bible also read the Gospel of John.
• 2:08:30
  But she said, and will you read Beckett's Becca Cook's book, A
• 2:08:36
  change of affection? And and then and he did.
• 2:08:41
  He agreed to do it and he did. And after the third, he
• 2:08:44
  completely got convicted. And what's beautiful about
• 2:08:48
  what's amazing about I love this part about the what convicted
• 2:08:53
  him wasn't my words because I quoted a lot of a little Bible
• 2:08:57
  verse on top. I have a Nope.
• 2:08:59
  I have a lot of scripture in my book.
• 2:09:00
  And so he read. One it was First Corinthians.
• 2:09:05
  It's the foolishness of God, the folly of what's that verse Where
• 2:09:10
  is the wise? Where is the scribe?
• 2:09:12
  Where is the debater of this age?
• 2:09:13
  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world for since
• 2:09:16
  the wisdom of God the the world did not know God through wisdom.
• 2:09:20
  It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those
• 2:09:24
  who believe he that's what like in God's word is it's powerful.
• 2:09:31
  It's like a it's a double edged sword.
• 2:09:33
  And so I love that he read my book, but that was the one
• 2:09:37
  section that cut him to the quick and cut to the heart like
• 2:09:41
  he and that's when he got saved. Amazing.
• 2:09:45
  Yeah. Wow.
• 2:09:48
  Very. Very cool testimony.
• 2:09:50
  Beckett God's amazing God is amazing I'm.
• 2:09:54
  Still, I just, I'm still like, first of all, I don't.
• 2:09:56
  Ever want to go? Back to Egypt.
• 2:09:59
  And secondly, I'm just still, I just wake up every day and I'm
• 2:10:03
  like, I can't believe that I'm in the Kingdom of God and that I
• 2:10:09
  have eternal life. Amen.
• 2:10:12
  And I I'm just. Stunned by it?
• 2:10:17
  I love it. It's amazing.
• 2:10:19
  Thank you. Thank you for sharing your.
• 2:10:22
  Story and your testimony. Thank you for having and let's
• 2:10:26
  do this again. Thanks for.
• 2:10:27
  Taking the time to talk through all of the testimony with me,
• 2:10:30
  but I'm sure we could talk about a lot of other things, including
• 2:10:33
  faith stuff. So we'll do it again.
• 2:10:34
  Yeah, let's do it. And where can people find your
• 2:10:37
  YouTube channel and then? This is Beckett's amazing.
• 2:10:39
  Book a change A change of affection my YouTube it's it's.
• 2:10:44
  Called the Becca Cooke show I the only reason I called it that
• 2:10:47
  is because I didn't because I had started a clothing line
• 2:10:50
  years a long time ago and I had this trademark like major
• 2:10:54
  trademark problem and it was cost me thousands and thousands
• 2:10:57
  of dollars to fix OK I'm the Lila Roche show so so that's why
• 2:11:01
  I. Just I'm like OK if I just use
• 2:11:03
  my name. I'm not going to get sued or
• 2:11:05
  whatever. So that's why you call it.
• 2:11:06
  It's anyway. It's on YouTube and on any
• 2:11:08
  podcasts. Amazing.
• 2:11:10
  Thank you. Thank you so much.
• 2:11:12
  This has been awesome. Thanks so much for listening to
• 2:11:14
  this episode of the Lila Roe show.
• 2:11:16
  I so enjoyed my conversation with Beckett.
• 2:11:18
  He's amazing. Go check out his stuff.
• 2:11:20
  It's in the link in the description.
• 2:11:21
  Also, make sure that you share this episode with a loved one.
• 2:11:24
  This is how the podcast reaches people the most is word of
• 2:11:27
  mouth. And make sure you're subscribed
• 2:11:28
  to the show. Leave us five stars.
• 2:11:30
  Write a review on podcast app that also helps the show grow.
• 2:11:33
  Thank you so much and we'll see you all next time.
• 2:11:35
  And a huge thank you to EWTN Eternal Word Television Network,
• 2:11:39
  which is the largest religion broadcaster in the world.
• 2:11:42
  You can get access to Lila Rose Show episodes 24 hours in
• 2:11:46
  advance at ewtn.com. Slash on demand.
• 2:11:49
  And a big thank you to EWTN and their incredible mission to
• 2:11:52
  bring souls to Jesus.