After I had surrendered my life to Christ, been delivered from my addictions and started a family of my own, I saw the world in a wholly different light. A nineteen-year old man, who had “come out” as “gay” after being molested seven or eight years earlier, himself molested a four-year-old boy. I was close to both families and watched that child change from sweet and loveable to hyperactive and rage-driven. He never became homosexual himself to my knowledge, but never really recovered either and now in his 40s lives a miserable life of addiction and crime.

Later as my compassion grew for homosexuals, we took in a repentant ex-“gay” who was dying of AIDS. Sonny lived with us for the last year of his life and I was with him when he died. He attributed his homosexuality to being raped at age seven in a YMCA men’s room by a friend of his father. Sonny’s form of Sodom Syndrome compelled him to seek “gay” sex in settings with the strong smell of urine. He never chose to be that way and expressed deep shame in it, but even in his last days in Christ, the pattern burned into his brain by the youthful trauma remained the identity of his flesh while his mind and spirit were freed only through sexual abstinence.

In the earliest days of my ministry I had the pleasure of making friends with Anthony Falzerano, a leader of the ex-“gay” movement. He said the most common denominator in boys who get recruited is a kind-of “father-hunger” due to troubled family relationships, and that this is easily recognized by predators on the prowl because they suffered it themselves. He and other ex-“gay” leaders showed me by example that the cure to homosexual dysfunction is restoration of male normalcy through long-term healthy relationships with fatherly mentors.

My ex-“gay” friend Richard of Portland, OR sought me out in this way after the predator who made him his houseboy at age 12 (his piano teacher) kicked him out and replaced him when he got too old. My fatherly help blessed Richard through some rough times and gave me personal experience in mentoring ex-“gays.” He never went back and is doing well today.