Hi guys,
Since coming to Freedom 2 Be I have met so many amazing people with so many stories, I felt it only fair to share a little of my own.
Shane Cathcart
My name is Shane, and I have a story to tell. Now, I know what you’re thinking, who doesn’t? But this one’s a secret, and boy do we love secrets.
Growing up in a Christian household, my view of being gay was that God was not a fan. I learned the rules like every Christian about love the sinner and hate the sin and came to believe it was something about myself I was expected to change.
My parents are amazing people who love me very much and taught me about accepting others no matter what, to view them the way that God would. I’m not always successful with this, from time to time there have been people in my life that behave and do things that make me uncomfortable, but I have never tried to change them or stop them from being the person that they are.
It was towards the end of high school when I began to realise that my interest in other guys was more than just curiosity and I came to realise that I wanted more out of the friendships I had formed.
I spent my last years as a teenager in an Anglican church that had become more Pentecostal than most in Sydney and there was more a sense of freedom to talk about things that were controversial to Christian life. I was inspired and looked up to the assistant minister of this church who used to lead home group discussions on speaking in tongues, abortion, euthanasia, and sexuality to name a few. Because of this, I decided to tell him of the way that I felt about guys.
The initial fear of being thrown out of church didn’t happen. Even today in my thirties this man I first told has never once rejected me and we have stood by each other through many tough times since, coming through them with our friendship intact. But after my disclosure he wanted to make sure I had every avenue available to me, even one of change, which is when I came across my first ex-gay program, and so I enrolled.
I spent three months listening to a series of talks given by a man who had been about to undergo a sex-change operation before God intervened and spoke to him. He has since changed his life and become married with kids and leaves you with the impression that changing your orientation is possible.
I loved God so much and knew that everything in my life was a gift from Him. Throughout the program I learned that He had the power to change me if I worked hard enough to try and discover what made me feel this way and so I learned the psychology of these talks and about the factors that can influence orientation while in the womb and growing up, trying to apply it to the way I felt. We also talked about our attractions amongst others in the group but not wanting to disclose personal information about my sexual life to a group of strangers did little to help me understand more about myself. Most, if not all, of the other men in the group found repressing their feelings and not acting out almost impossible, as they would confess to being attracted to other men every week. Some men who were married also confessed to cheating on their wives with other men.
After going through the program, no change had taken place and I longed to try and understand why. I went through the program again in case I missed something the first time through and also talked to counsellors who specialized in same-sex attraction. I did all the things the man from the talks had done but no answers came.
I didn’t know if I communicated my growing up properly or worked hard enough to confront any issues that I had, but little effort was also made by these experts to try and understand me or help me to change. One counsellor I talked to asked me if I was staying fit by playing enough sport. I couldn’t believe that he would take such ingrained feelings in me so lightly. Issues about faith and sexuality were never thoroughly questioned by them or walked through with me and I was ultimately told that I had no reason to keep seeing them.
I did alot of prayer and began to tell a number of people in church about how I felt. Some people became more distant, some offered unhelpful advice about getting married to fix things. I was also told that I enjoyed my feelings too much, which made me feel guilty instead of happy about who I was.
The homegroup I was going to at the time encouraged each other to get deeper with the issues in our lives. I had a desire to be understood and so I talked about what I was going through. It was not long after this that the structure of the group changed and became a young married couples group only. The rejection I felt over this hit me hard cause I had considered some in the group to be close friends who I trusted, only to be pushed away.
In my quiet times I would repent of the way that I felt. It became the first thing I would pray for, along with the guilt and rejection that went with it, but soon it felt very routine, then like an obligation and from there turning into boredom. The change that people said would happen never did so I got lazy in my quiet times and grew distant from God. The people who I disclosed my sexuality to never really followed through on my struggles to ask how things were progressing or gave any additional guidance, and so the guilt and rejection remained, and I slipped further away from God.
I kept my struggle quiet and sat in church week after week putting on a Christian front, making sure that I was the safe person I was expected to be. It was not long before these unmet needs in me began to manifest in unhealthy ways and I started to act out with other guys in secret without my friends or family knowing. This only increased the guilt I felt and satisfied me for a short amount of time before I would need to act out again.
Something had to change and I knew that I needed to talk with other Christians who had been through similar journeys to find some kind of support.
A period of leadership change in the Anglican church I went to saw a small group of us, myself included, form a church more in line with Penticostal values, instead of the more tradiotnal ones that were starting to make their way back in. I also went through a job change after 8 years in the same place, bringing with it the need to learn new skills if I was to succeed. God blessed with with the patience and opportunity to do this, and a new phase in my life began.
A year after starting a new job, I came across a group whose gay members were made up of people with church backgrounds from all denominations. I built up the courage to go along to one of their meetings and started talking to people about their own stories. Some had been asked to leave their church, some were married but had same-sex attractions, but most had decided not to run away from or bury the way they felt and had come out to their friends and family.
My involvement with the group was discovered amongst my current church friends and lead me to disclosing my need to connect to other Christians who felt same-sex attracted. My honesty with my church friends and the relationships I have begun with other gay Christians have taken away any desire for meaningless sex, instead giving me a desire to value people and support them in what I know is a difficult struggle. I also feel that churches need to handle people who have same-sex attractions alot better after hearing so many horror stories of rejection or lack of understanding. Maybe not just homosexuals but all the wrongfully accused.
There is still a lot of confusion in my life. I’m still sorting out how being gay fits into being a Christian but for now I remain committed to God and my church and have found that not trying to hide anything anymore from God, my friends and my family and by relating to people who have been through similar journeys has lifted a very heavy burden.
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