(Wow! THE Peterson Toscano. I’m blushing. )

I’ve often been impressed by how you don’t entirely disvalue your experiences.

I have more thoughts in response to yours but I think they belong more in the future post I need to write on this subject.

In the meantime, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

This resonates with me deeply too. Sometimes I meet gay people who claim they never questioned their same-sex attractions. They act shocked when I tell them all that I did to pursue God and holiness (which was the opposite of homosexualality for me), “Why would you do that? What a waste of time?” They ask.

I don’t regret that time I spent pursuing the path I was on–an ex-gay life. It seemed the right thing to do at the time and as far as I know, I did it for noble and pure reasons (for the most part). The experience, though painful, was not fruitless. It bore different fruit than I imagined it would (not always healthy fruit, but not all rotten either).

Fortunately I have a familiy who accepted me when I came out, and I think that made all the difference for me, and I have art to help me understand my experience, not to mock it, but to explore it and value it.