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I would say I became a Christian when I was probably 7 years old.
I don't remember the exact time, but I remember that I had truly accepted Christ as my
personal Savior, that I had prayed the prayer, and that I truly believed it.
I knew that I had a void in my heart that couldn't be filled with anything else.
And so I got really involved with that church,
and was involved with the youth group there, was a youth leader,
was president of the Christian club in high school...
"Gay is wrong and you're going to hell."
I was like, well, gay is wrong.
So why am I having these feelings?
So I kept praying and praying, and I would go to my bedroom
and cry and cry, "Lord take this away, take it away."
And it honestly was something that I thought I'd never tell anyone about.
I was very dead set on, you know, "Being gay is wrong.
I can't be gay. I'm not gay. That's a choice; I'm not going to make that choice."
Started getting really depressed, cuz like, "God doesn't like me. God hates me. I'm going to hell."
And I didn't have anybody to talk to about it, 'cause I was afraid to.
And he looked at me and he said, "Rob, you will probably always be gay.
I can't change your feelings. But we can change your behaviors."
And so that was very discouraging to me because I'm like, well that's not good enough.
I felt uncomfortable talking to any other Christians about it
because of how fearful my pastor seemed about the whole topic.
That made me afraid as well, afraid of rejection. I kind of felt...
like I was a disease.
"I know you've tried to change it; I know that it hasn't worked.
But still, this is really something that I can't get my head around."
There's a lot of confusion on the part of the gay world about what it means to be a Christian
and there's a lot of confusion on the part of the church about what it means to be gay.
And I think that there's so much confusion that no one has stopped and said,
"Well why don't we go ask them?"