Survivor Narrative
Marcus Lira
It starts with a desire.
And it ends with conflict.
That’s why it’s called the Struggle.
When I was 18, Jeff, a buddy of mine, I recently met at work and I were driving in his 280Z when he started talking about Jesus. Jeff came from a Christian family and his brother was dying of AIDS. Jeff talked about how Jesus was going to heal his brother – not only of HIV but also of homosexuality.
“How was Jesus going to do that?” I inquired. And I guess I asked too many questions.
“Are you gay Marcus?” He finally asked.
I denied it and we kept on driving. 
I went home that night and played “December,” piano solos by George Winston and I sat in my solitude and cried. I asked Jesus to come into my heart. I was 18. Maybe Jesus could heal me too.
My prayer for a solution I thought finally came when I was accepted into a year long Christian live-in program called Love In Action. On New Year’s Eve, the Director, John Smid addressed the new members.
“What I see in this room are all heterosexual men. That is the truth, no matter what’s been your experience.” Over the new few weeks, we each would share our own experience with the “gay lifestyle.” Tales of broken hearts, broken bodies, broken families, broken relationships. And the root cause of all of this tragedy? Homosexuality. Everyone of us had moved across the country and left our worlds behind to find the answer to our own individual pain.
And so I believed, as we all did in the beginning, that somehow Jesus was going to change us. I lived with these men, day after day, night after night. We bonded. We became brothers. We all hugged one another daily and we all said “I love you.” And eventually the feelings matched the words. What LIA was about – more so than about change or a movement – to me was about family.
Yet, it’s hard living life in what I called “The Waiting Room.” You’re not straight. You’re not gay. You’re in the middle – waiting to see if the surgery by Jesus is going to be successful. In the meantime, you try desperately to relate to other straight men, to other Christian men, trying to believe that your struggle is equivalent to their lusts for women or booze or any other so called addiction. Surrendering my attractions to Christ didn’t absolve them, it didn’t make them go away or make them any less true.
“Then why are you here?” John, asked me one night in our group Steps Out of Homosexuality class.
“Because I choose to change,” I barked back, “and I’ve tried everything else!” 
And the months go by. Then I started to crack. After getting drunk one Saturday night with one of my brothers, Keith and I had sex. Hung over and ashamed, I confessed to John, Jay my Houseleader and Jimmy, the assistant the next morning and slept all day.
“What were you thinking,” John asked me, “having sex without a condom when you know Keith is positive?”
I couldn’t mouth the words out loud but I knew what I was thinking while Keith was inside me, “I just don’t care. I just don’t care.” I was drunk and horny and depressed that I had come all this way to end up on the doorstep of the biggest screw up of my life. So much had happened, but nothing had changed. Keith apologized and bolted three days later to be with an ex-ex-gay while I waited for Leadership to decide my fate. I was kicked out a week later.
“That’s all right,” I told John, Jay and Jimmy as I stood up from the table. “I’m leaving here with my integrity. I told you the truth and I honestly tried.”
Jimmy was in tears and I know behind closed doors he rallied to my defense and I loved him the most because he was the older brother I never had. Of the 11 men I was with in my house at LIA, Jay and Jimmy both married after leaving the Program. Of the other 9, 2 came out again as gay but later died from AIDS, 5 came out as gay and the other 2 are still trying to change.
God and I had been a team since I was seven. I was now 27.
I came back home after the Program feeling like a failure but decided to give it one last shot. I decided to bring in a specialist – a reparative therapist with a Ph.D in Psychology from Cal Berkeley. If he didn’t have the answer – nobody would. Dr. Levy announced on my first visit that homosexuality was just a “red herring.” My real problem was fear of hurting others. He said I was afraid of hurting other people, possibly women, which made me fearful of them. Like my Mother. Well that was a stretch, but I meditated on his words anyway and realized Dr. Levy was right. I was afraid. I was afraid of being gay because I was afraid of what being gay meant.
A few weeks later, God was kind to me and sent in an angel who would love all the hurt away. Travis held me as I cried for months over my disappointment with God and over my own failure to change. He showed me that I needed to forgive the one person I hadn’t yet – and that was the boy Marcus – the boy inside of me that I had secretly hated and blamed for being gay in the first place. Travis held me, night after night, wound after wound, tear after tear until my heart was finally healed. I tested HIV negative and I was given a second chance. Our being in love lasted five years. Our relationship lasted seven. 
Two years ago, God was again kind to me. I met Shannon, the man of my dreams. To behold him – this sweet and loving and faithful man – I know he is a gift from God. And each night when I hold Shannon and he falls asleep on my chest, I am honestly humbled at the sacredness of his trusting me with his heart. I wrap my arms around him and I quietly say to God, “thank You.”
Sometimes, the only cure for male homosexuality is a real man’s love.
And you quote me on that.
To those who are struggling today – you have my compassion and respect. It’s a damn hard road – in either direction – but it’s about perspective and it’s about choices. You are in command of both.
Love from San Francisco,
Marcus