Homosexuality healed

Michael Glatze recently wrote a powerful guest column for OneNewsNow.com. Glatze was once a practicing homosexual, gay activist, and editor of a national gay magazine. He writes that when he became a Christian, he realized he could no longer continue in that lifestyle: "Soon, I found help to heal from homosexuality, and found myself living a new life, as a heterosexual man. . . ."

He recounts taking part in a protest against the Christian Coalition's Faith and Freedom Day event in San Diego in 1996:

"I was dressed in what we called 'Republican Drag,' and shouting obscenities at the crowd of what we called 'hateful' Christians. . . . Then a small group of brave Christian women formed a circle and began---calmly, lovingly---praying for me and my fellow 'queer youth' protesters. . . . I remember being less than a foot away from a nice lady who was telling me she loved me. I remember being so angry at her, raising my voice, shouting right into her face some awful, profane words."

It was a moment Glatze never forgot:

"And when Christ finally came to pluck me out of my bondage, it was memories like this one that combined as a powerful testimony to the truth of the gospel, and the saving power of Jesus Christ."

There are many compelling messages in Glatze's testimony.

One is the difference that one woman made in his life. When she and her fellow Christians lovingly prayed for Michael and the other protesters, enduring derision, verbal abuse, and probably fear, she wouldn't have had any way of knowing whether she made a difference or not. But she did.

Another is that Glatze speaks of finding help and being healed. The idea that homosexuals can be healed is another target of derision, not only from gay activists, but also from the culture itself. A recent episode of the television series House was devoted almost entirely to this subject. A bridegroom collapses at the altar with complex symptoms that have Dr. House and his team digging through his past. They discover---da da dum---that his ex-roommate is actually his former gay partner. The bridegroom insists that he went through a healing process and is not gay. The openly bisexual member of the medical team dismisses the idea as absurd, and accuses him of being dishonest with himself and unfair to his fiancée. The patient is cured of what brought him to the hospital in the first place, but the marriage is called off and viewers are left feeling that justice has been served. The message is clear that he couldn't possibly have changed his sexual orientation and had no right to be getting married.

Hollywood has its own way of practicing derision, albeit in subtler, more insidious ways.