Out of the Closet, Into the Light by Michael S. Munger (Pacific Press, 1980, 144 pp.)
“Homosexuality: Why Can’t I Love the Way I Want?” by David A. Hubbard (Fuller Evangelistic Association and “The Joyful Sound”, n. d.)
by Dr. Ralph Blair
From a lifestyle filled with prostitution, “fetid smells [that] pour from the aileys … [cross-dressing …cat calls [and] crazy clothing”, Munger tells of coming “into the light” of the “ex-gay” experience. His old life “offered nothing [and] took everything”, he says. Yet he reports that he has often wanted “desperately to go back completely to the old life” and that the temptations have required “mustering all the spiritual authority I could [and] scream[ing], ‘No, Satan! In the name of Jesus I rebuke you!’ ”
He quotes from correspondence with “ex-gay” adviser, Greg Reid, who confessed: “I’m especially vulnerable to temptations. … When I’m … lonely. … Thought-life is a very difficult thing to control”. On masturbation, Reid advises: “It’s too easy for fantasies, particularly about a certain someone, to eventually become a strong urge to act on the fantasy. … I know that happened with me many times”. Reid admits: “To call myself heterosexual would be untrue”, but he says: “To say I am still homosexual is not good, because Proverbs 23:7 says that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he”. Failing, ironically, to apply this verse to the fundamental nature of his sexuality, he explains: “If I continue to say I am gay, then it’s got to have a negative effect in the change process”. He tells Munger not to call himself “heterosexual” or “homosexual” – terms he views as “earthly” and “fleshly” – but to call himself “Christo-sexual”. But Munger writes back asking: “What can I do about the thoughts that continually permeate my head?” Reid’s answer, though he himself has “no marriage plans”, is that, “the most important thing in determining how you feel for Debbie [a friend], Mike, is not how you FEEL about her or toward her, but whether you are willing to spend the rest of your life with her regardless of whether feelings come”. Munger learns the line well. “God”, he writes, “is still able to work with me when it comes to women. But for right now I am still a homosexual”. Just two pages later, though, after writing throughout the book about his attempts to become romantically involved with Debbie, he says that. “it became evident to Debbie that our relationship was rapidly deteriorating”. Six months later, Debbie married someone else.
The easily misinterpreted meaning of the term “ex-gay” is that the “ex-gay” is no longer gay – no longer homosexual. When Munger tells his mother that he is writing a book about his “ex-gay” experience, “trying to find out why I am a homosexual”, his mother interrupts: “But you said you used to be! Are you still? Oh, my God!” He replies: “No, I no longer practice it, Mom. But my sexual orientation still se4ems to be homosexual. I can’t help that.”
He admits, even at the end of the book: “Eventually I learned that the denial of self is an ongoing process, a daily habit. …without denial …there is no victory over homosexuality”. He continues: “As I struggled to escape from myself, to perceive my past, moments came when I seemed to be free of every trace of my orientation, only to be slapped in the face, anew, with the truth. ‘I am homosexual’.” In the last few pages he writes that, “homosexuality is a terribly difficult and expensive thing to overcome”. Without any evidence of others’ having “overcome” it either – certainly neither he nor Reid has overcome it – he continues: “Yet in Jesus it can happen. But it seems to be a rare occurrence”. He closes with a pitiful prayer “that God will touch each person that shall read this account of an ex-homosexual who found liberty in Jesus Christ”.
David Hubbard, president of Fuller Seminary, is the preacher on The Joyful Sound, a radio broadcast aired over 100 stations around the world. Sadly, there is nothing joyful about his picture of homosexuality. For example, he lumps it with bestiality! Nor is there anything joyful about his demand for total, lifelong, celibacy for all homosexuals. He says we should be guided by “information gained from human experience or scientific research”. But he evidences no awareness of either the stability of good, gay Christian, partnerships, nor of the data uncovered by scientific research in the behavioral sciences, biblical studies and church history. Even his subtitle shows he fails to understand even the most fundamental point about romantic attraction and sexual orientation, i.e., its basic involuntary nature. The real question is: Why can’t I love in the only way I can?
Hubbard admits that, “literally millions of Christians are contending” with their own homosexuality but he has nothing to offer them but the demand for celibacy. One of these millions – a young man reared in Texas in the churches of Christ – wrote to The Joyful Sound after hearing the sermon on the radio. He wrote of his continued inability to meet such an unreasonable demand. He received, by return mail, a copy of Hubbard’s sermon and a form letter that stated: “How grateful I am to be able to offer you, on the assurance of God’s own word, that His power and strength have been made available for your need”. This young man has since killed himself. He jumped in front of an oncoming subway train in Manhattan. Both he and Hubbard believed the same thing, but he was homosexual and Hubbard is not.