Survivor Narrative
David Christie
My name is David Christie, and I am a survivor of ex-gay therapies. While still in my teens, I began seeking help for what I had been led to believe was an abnormal and sinful condition. From ages 15 to 28 – that is, for thirteen years – I was almost constantly involved in some form of counseling or therapy designed to thwart my homosexual orientation. Never accepting that a homosexual identity was an option, and believing I would eventually be able to manage or even overcome my homosexual desires, I got married at the age of 21. When that fell apart two and a half years later because of my sexual indiscretions, I became profoundly committed to ridding myself of homosexuality. So much so, that I remained celibate for the next 4 years, while in my mid-20s. While still married, I had discovered Exodus, whose like-minded associates and organized programming gave me hope. For 5 years, I attended weekly support-group meetings in one of their affiliated programs through a local church. I attended 4 annual Exodus conferences in various locations across the country, and even lived for one year within an ex-gay residential program known as Love in Action.
All of this required a drastically altered lifestyle. I had to move. I had to change churches. I had to change friends. I dropped out of a promising graduate school career and took on a dead-end office job in order to minimize conflicts with my ceaseless schedule of therapy, support groups, and related events. Hoping to truly purge myself of homosexuality, I threw out old letters and photographs, books, and music, – things I loved, but which I had come to believe were negative influences.
Throughout all of this, I constantly battled feelings of worthlessness, self-hatred, and guilt. The doctrine of God’s unconditional love was useless to repair the damage done by the doctrine of homosexual sin. This led to a chronic depression for which I had to take costly medications from my late teens until I finally came out, at the age of 28. On a few occasions, in panicked despair, I seriously contemplated suicide.
Once when I was at Love in Action – the residential ex-gay program – I became mutually infatuated with another client. Of course, this development clashed with the program’s teachings, cultivating even deeper disgust with myself. To add injury to insult, I was later even beaten by a staff member who lost control of his temper. Although he and the organization apologized, the physical, mental, and emotional damage was done. (This, by the way, was a direct result of Love in Action’s lack of standard requirements in education and training on the part of their staff. Like many of these organizations, they operate outside the norms of standard therapeutic practice.)
It has been said that “living well is the best revenge,” and since coming out nine years ago, this has been my strategy. Since that time, I have moved to New York and gone back to school; I have new friends and reconnected with some I had lost; I have a wonderful partner of seven years now. To my great satisfaction, I am friends once again with my ex-wife, who herself is now happily remarried and recently become a mother. I no longer have need of anti-depressants. I now value, respect, and trust myself in a way that is common to most people, yet a way that an ex-gay is taught not to. I am at peace with myself in a way that a could never be as an ex-gay.
But I am scarred, and every day I feel the burdens of regret and grief. I grieve for my own years of anguish, but also for the confusion and pain I caused my wife, my family, and my friends. And sure, I spent a lot of money in this process, but what I want back more than anything is the time and energy I put into it. At school, my peers are a decade younger than me, and hardly a day goes by that I don’t wonder: where would I be now if not for my ex-gay detour? where would I be professionally? how much more financially stable would I be? how much more confident? how much closer to self-actualization? I realize such questions could poison my progress, but nonetheless, they arise naturally, and I must wrestle with them all the time. I even credit my ex-gay experience with contributing to the self-reflection that lead to where I am today, but I maintain that no one should ever have to go through such hell to get to such a place.Look at the collage David presented to Love In Action as a part of the Soulforce Survivor's Initiative on July 17th. You can also view some of David Christie's art exploring his time as an ex-gay on our Visual Art page.
Read other ex-gay survivor narratives.