Dear Editor,
That anyone turns to Christ and leaves homosexual behaviours is a miracle to be celebrated! We should listen to the writer of ‘I am same-sex attracted, committed to celibacy’ to discover more about his journey. I relate to his pain. When I shared with my own pastor about changes in my life and the help I received, his celebration was only partial. He thought I was brave, but he didn’t want me, a married man, to tell anyone in the church! I felt silenced and my experience marginalised.
What would help me is to hear more about why his identity as a ‘Gay Celibate Christian’, is so important to him and what the nature of his celibacy is. In counselling, an early step is to check that the labels people use about themselves are their own, and in the case of Christians, whether they reflect Biblical teaching, as they understand it.