{"id":12509,"date":"2023-10-05T15:24:23","date_gmt":"2023-10-05T20:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=12509"},"modified":"2023-10-05T15:24:23","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T20:24:23","slug":"how-many-more-dear-god-how-many-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/12509","title":{"rendered":"How Many More Dear God&#8230;How Many More&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gay teen, terrified of his emerging sexuality, falls into a hyper conservative Christianity with the usual outcome. Thankfully he drew back from ex-gay therapy figuring (correctly) that it would likely push him over the edge.<\/p>\n<p>I have seen firsthand what this does to people. I wish there was some way to get it more forcefully across, but all there is are testimonies like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abbi.org.au\/2023\/09\/is-my-family-better-off-with-a-gay-dad-or-a-dead-dad-2\/\">this one<\/a>, and a slim hope that someday it\u2019ll finally sink in\u2026<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Is My Family Better Off With A Gay Dad Or A Dead Dad?<\/h3>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In order to distract myself from my internal core issues, I spent the next 17 years pouring myself into my marriage, work, and leadership roles within my Churches of Christ congregation. While I prayed daily that God would take away my feelings, the internal conflict persisted, leading to an increased level of self-hatred. I would sometimes go to large Pentecostal church rallies seeking healing, but never divulged my struggle, knowing I would be \u2018marked\u2019 and disowned by my community.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, all this took its toll and brought my life to a crisis around the age of 40. While recovering from major depression, I was under the care of a clinical psychologist. Once again, because of fear, I didn\u2019t divulge my same-sex attraction in these sessions, but I did become aware of the interplay of internalised stress on my wellbeing.<\/p>\n<p>During this time, my anxiety over my homosexuality became unbearable, and I contacted a gay conversion organisation seeking change &amp; healing. I was also dealing with increasing levels of suicidal thoughts. This terrified me. I reached out to a well-known conversion \u201ctherapy\u201d organisation, Exodus. After several email interactions, I knew that if I followed through, it would drive me faster down the path to suicide, so I ceased communications.<\/p>\n<p>The years of self-hate had led me to the darkest point of my life\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the entire thing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abbi.org.au\/2023\/09\/is-my-family-better-off-with-a-gay-dad-or-a-dead-dad-2\/\">Here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gay teen, terrified of his emerging sexuality, falls into a hyper conservative Christianity with the usual outcome. Thankfully he drew back from ex-gay therapy figuring (correctly) that it would likely push him over the edge. I have seen firsthand what this does to people. I wish there was some way to get it more forcefully [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,65],"tags":[30,12],"class_list":["post-12509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-thumping-my-pulpit","tag-ex-gays","tag-the-struggle-for-our-lives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}