Stories of faith, hope and healing on the road to self acceptance as gay men.
A story from Chris:
My dad and I drove in relative silence through San Francisco, over the Golden Gate bridge and into the emerald hills of Marin County.
I felt awkward. I didn’t know what to say. At the time he and I didn’t get along so well anyhow … and that was besides the fact that he’d just found out I was gay.
Two years prior I had left home early and actually asked him to allow another family from my High School Youth Group at church to legally adopt me. After my mom died … well, it just seemed like everything went downhill … steeply and drastically downhill into the realms of sexual, verbal and physical abuse. The abuse was not from my father, but like most kids I thought my dad was supposed to be my protector … instead he found a new wife and devoted his time to her while these other things happened to me.
During my last few years in high school I spent a lot of time contemplating suicide … until I joined the Army to get money for college that is. The Army kicked my butt right out of depression … there simply wasn’t time for it any more. That did not change my view or feelings regarding my father at the time though.
From my vantage point almost twenty years later I can understand the humanness of what he was going through and see that it wasn’t really his fault. At the age of twenty, however, it all seemed very MUCH his fault.
The forested hills descended into a narrow bay with a few random apartment buildings and houseboats scattered around. I numbly stared out the window of his white station wagon. I specifically remember thinking,
“Where IS this freaking place, out in the middle of nowhere??”
We finally pulled into the city of San Rafael and then into the driveway of a tan, flat-roofed apartment building where a flowering vine grew from the balcony along the front walkway of the second level. We were here … New Hope Ministries.
I meekly followed my dad up the stairwell and he knocked on the front door. A large, muscular man with a bald pate and a smile that stretched from ear to ear swung the door wide open, greeted me by name and invited us in. He introduced himself as the House Leader and said his name was Draymond.
I immediately felt connected to Draymond. I wasn’t attracted to him, but I just felt connected to him somehow. He informed me that I would be his suite-mate and walked me over to the far left side of the house. There was a sort of private suite separated from the large dining room by a glass door. The whole living area, where fifteen or so men were to live, was basically comprised of four conjoined apartments. Ours being at that end of the house meant we had a lot more privacy than anyone else in the house. Something I grew to appreciate!
Draymond showed me to my room and on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed sat a heavyset man with wavy brown hair, a sweet smile and sparkling blue eyes. His name was Barry and the two of us were going to become the best of friends that year. In fact, having Barry as my roommate influenced my life quite a bit as he had been a gospel singer for Jerry Falwell. I loved to sing and it was based on a lot of his advice that I ended up pursuing a career in music later on down the road.
I didn’t know what to say at the time though. I was still completely embarrassed that my dad knew I was gay and was still standing there. I just sullenly set my stuff down with a look on my face that said I wasn’t happy and really just wanted him to leave … or at least that was what I hoped it was saying.
He eventually left and I went about unpacking and meeting the other men who had arrived. The first guys in the house I remember bonding with were Lennon, who was from Singapore, and Jim, who was from the Philippines. They both were very friendly and, being the son of a missionary who worked with refugees who had migrated to the Bay Area, I had spent most of my childhood befriending either Vietnamese or Cambodian kids from the families my father worked with. So I felt like I had some sort of background that allowed me to connect with them.
I had some uncomfortable feelings come up during that first day as well. There were some openly effeminate guys, one who had actually been a drag queen. It wasn’t that I was mean or disgusted or anything … I just didn’t know how to react at the time. These were the kind of guys I would have avoided in high school, simply because I didn’t want anyone else to think I was gay.
I learned that these men I might have avoided before were beautifully sensitive souls whom I became great friends with … and who mirrored and revealed a lot to me about who I truly was. In a sense, being in New Hope Ministries taught me more about being a part of a gay community than I had ever experienced on my own.
– pic shared from SummitPost
CHRIS ANDERSON was born in San Jose, CA and raised in a Christian missionary family as the youngest of nine children. Chris moved to New Hope Ministries when he was twenty years old. He lived there for two years, and began being mentored to be a Youth Pastor by the pastor of the church that supported the ministry, Church of the Open Door. When Chris began asking questions and then ultimately “coming out”, he was excommunicated from the tight-knit community. Feeling rejected by virtually everyone, at age 23 Chris decided to follow his dreams. He quit his corporate job and began waiting tables with the hope of becoming a singer. A year later he was discovered by a voice teacher, and later accepted into The San Francisco Conservatory of Music as a Voice Major. Chris has performed opera in venues throughout Europe, China and the United States.
Currently, Chris is working on furthering his original dream; composing and performing his own original songs, in the form of Collaborative Composition: a music project where anyone, anywhere in the world can contribute their ideas for accompaniment to the “a capella” vocals of his original, spiritually focused songs.
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Two friends, Larry and Chris, whose joint stint in New Hope ministries, a communal “reparative therapy” (or “ex-gay”) program, has sparked a friendship lasting almost twenty years. Through those years Larry and Chris have struggled to discover who they are as spiritual gay men whose relationship with God could never be taken away or denied.
They’ve fought, they’ve laughed, they’ve loved and somehow, through Guidance neither could have foreseen, they’ve found their way to loving and accepting themselves as gay men … gay men who are loved by God, just as they are.
These are their stories.
New Hope: "Ex-Gay" Therapy and Coming Out Stories 