GSLEN founder Kevin Jennings recently published his Memoir, Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son. In it, he describes an upbringing not unlike what is described by many of the same-sex-attracted men who come to Exodus ministries seeking freedom. The New York Blade, a gay newspaper, reports:
Jennings writes that when his father died on Jennings' eighth birthday, he learned what is expected of a man. At the funeral, as his mother continuously faints, Jennings starts to cry.
"Don't cry," his brother admonishes him. "Be a man. Don't be a faggot."
"Faggot" and "queer" are terms Jennings heard throughout his childhood from the mouths of his bigoted family members and bullies who teased him in school.
Although his mother reminded Jennings throughout his childhood that he was not wanted, their relationship becomes the book's focus...
Did Jennings really learn what manhood is about on that awful day? Or did he learn what his brother--who was also hurting deeply--thought men were supposed to do?
Many of us who have struggled with same-sex attraction were unfairly judged this way, shamed as different from the time we were small children. Automatically, we build a maze of defenses around ourselves, and this is not a foundation upon which our true identity as men can be built.
It's sad that Jennings believed in the names others called him, and let the pain and rejection of his past dictate his identity. It's also sad that he now influences countless young people to do the same. Sometimes I can't understand why homosexuality is so widely accepted when it is so often and so obviously rooted in pain.
I'm grateful that Jesus Christ is at work in my heart and in my life, so that my destiny is defined by his pain and not mine. That's why I have a heart for the work of Exodus; it's just another facet of the Good News.