My sexuality is my ministry

I guess it may be easier for me to see my sexuality as a part of my value, witness and ministry when I spend most of my life talking to Christians about it - and get paid for doing so! However, when I look back over my Christian life it has always been that way, even before TfT. I did not become a Christian in order to escape from or be 'cured of' my homosexuality. I was happy with it in lots of ways. For me, becoming a Christian meant seeking to avoid sexual behaviour (ie sex) but also opened up exciting opportunities for learning more about love and more about myself. I am so grateful to my pastor at that time, Canon Roy Barker, who sought every opportunity to utilise a person's unique background and experience as their value and witness within the Body of Christ and outside it. For example, a few years earlier, Cliff Richard was visiting Merseyside to share at an evangelist's meeting. Roy seized the opportunity to organise a private meeting between Cliff and local pop stars of the 'swinging sixties'. Likewise, when I came along - hardly a superstar! - Roy had me speaking to the young people at church about my sexuality and organised a 'consultation' encouraging church people to have more understanding of the issue by hearing my story. A couple of non Christian gay friends of mine invited themselves to the meeting, not realising I was the speaker! I wonder if Roy's intention was not simply to bring more understanding of the issue but to encourage me to feel a valued part of the Body of Christ.

I believed I was expressing my sexuality by simply being honest with people about it. I did not feel celibacy meant being denied love, so my previously promiscuous lifestyle was replaced by developing affectionate male relationships, without sex. Sexual temptation was not a problem for the first three years, which probably made honesty with other Christians about my sexuality much easier.

After many years of good and bad experiences, I no longer emphasise same-sex relationships with other Christians as the major solution to the problem of loneliness and homosexual frustration. Although we have been created to love, and to receive love from others, human relationships can easily become our major focus for self worth, rather than God. In many ways these relationships may seem to help, but they can open a minefield of other issues, because sexual attractions (often denied) are involved. Physical affection may be wonderfully therapeutic but can also be a 'slippery slope' towards accepting some genital expression as legitimate, especially when the 'feel good' factor is high on the agenda. We can soon convince ourselves that sex is not harming us (or anyone else) when love is involved, and therefore believe it does not offend God. I believe God's reason for saying 'no' to homosexual behaviour is not because it may hurt or harm us or anyone else, but because it does offend His ideal for the sexual act. In other words, homosexual sex is not primarily condemned for sociological ('feel good') reasons but for theological ones.