This transcrpit has been edited for clarity.

Episode 041 – Nope, NOT Okay! Part 1 – We Renounce Our Last Days Ministries’ Attack on Gays, with Guest Anthony Venn-Brown

June 5^th, 2024

 

T: Hi, I’m Tracey!.

S: And I’m Sharon. And we are Feet of Clay…

T: Confessions of the Cult Sisters! Today we are going to take a brief intermission between Era 1 and Era 2 in our series, which I call the longest god-damned series of all times…

S: It would be called The Demise Of Last Days Ministries!

T: Yes, and since this is Pride month, we wanted to address something that through the years, for both of us, has been – oh Sharon, just a really major regret for us from our Evangelical days, from Last Days days…

S: Oh god yes.

T: And of course, that’s our participation and involvement with the horrific harm and damage done to the Queer community through our printed literature, and our training schools at Last Days Ministries. For many, many years I’ve wanted to make a formal apology, and I know as we started this pod, Sharon, you and I have talked about that.

S: Yep.

T: So this being Pride month this would be a really great time to delve into this. And of course, what is the main piece of literature that came from that was the 1984 June/July issue of the Last Days Newsletter.

S: Yes. So the cover article of that magazine was called “I’m Gay – OK?” It was written by Martin Bennett, and also in that issue were two additional – oh god, they’re just like, travesties. The Man in the Mirror by Sy Rogers, and Who Will You Deny by John Wesley. And yes folks, it is that Wesley, that historical Wesley. He was 18^th Century English itinerant preacher, so we’re working with a 200 plus year old writing and that was edited and paraphrased, also by Martin Bennett, for this edition.

T: Yes, and at the time that particular issue was printed, our magazine circulation – and I know we’ve gone into this in one of our other episodes as far as the clean mailing list that we had, these were people that had renewed and wanted to get our magazine, it was 500,000 people, both US and international. That’s a half a million copies, just from the original printing of the magazine.

S: But wait folks, there’s more! As usual, we reprinted all of the articles from the magazines in pamphlet form for you very fortunate non-religious folks. Those were called tracts. Tracey, we don’t know the actual numbers but what’s your best guesstimate about those additional quantities? What would those have been in all the years that followed the magazine being printed?

T: I did try to do this math before. I know in the past I have posted a few pics of where we had those big bricks of tracts – I don’t know if you remember seeing one of those, Sharon.

S: Yeah. Yeah I saw those fucken bricks! I saw tens of thousands of them.

T: We used to band them, and I’m pretty sure there was about 1,000 per brick, and on a pallet we had about 50. So my guesstimate would be about 50,000 for a run after we did a newsletter; then of course, we would reprint every time we sold out on those. It was kind of like – in warehouse language – min-max, when you started running out you’d go in and print some more so that we never ran out of tracts, Sharon.

S: Mmhmm. Well, you just said when we sold out but they were available for whatever people could afford, and I think they also started really flowing out to political organizations and churches as this whole fucking religious right movement got going. Ok, rabbit hole, not going there right now, but yeah.

T: It’s not totally a rabbit hole. You know you recently got a whole box of old vintage (I guess we could call them) of past issues of the Last Days magazines that you left at my house for me to look through.

S: Yes, and a mega-mega thanks to our listener and former LDM member, John Z – not gonna totally call you out there, for making – to me it’s like a rare treasure trove and making that available to us.

T: It is, and of course what you don’t get in the reprint tracts that we have copies of and what you do get in the magazines are the little ministry updates and titbits. One that I found – Sharon, get ready for this. They had reported how many tracts they’d actually printed. So from 1979 to only 1982 – and this was just before Keith died, so he was alive when this update was going out – they recorded a count of having printed and shipped 11 million tracts.

S: Oh my god. Oh my god.

T: And that’s of course all the articles put together, but I back that math in and I think the 50,000 per run is pretty reasonable.

S: Yeah. I also think if you do that, there’s no doubt that these particular articles that we’re going to discuss – Who Will You Deny, I’m Gay Okay, and The Man In The Mirror – they went out to at least a million people. At least.

T: Yeah.

S: Yep. Well, since we’re speaking numbers, Tracey, our episode number 39 ,we went just over two hours on that one, and when we were recording number 40 – actually you know what, before I even finish this – thank you, a huge thank you to our listeners. So many of you have reached out with messages to us, both from our website and on our Facebook page, just expressing your compassion and support for me personally going through and looking at all the trauma and shit from that, and I just wanted you to know that your love and your concern and your kindness – they mean a lot. And I really am doing well, everybody. It’s been eye opening and that is a good thing.

T: Yeah. Yeah, good. Thank you for sharing that.

S: I like that I interrupt myself, but I’m allowed.

[laughter]

S: Well, when we were recording that number 40 Tracey, you were saying oh I think we’re going to be a bit shorter, so we know how that turned out.

T: I am aways trying to edit us down, Sharon, and you just won’t have it.

S: Oh my god. Well I’m not even asking you to try and predict on this one. I’m going to go out on a limb, and I am prophesying that we are going to be at least that long today but never fear listeners, if we go way over in the editing I will break this into two separate parts.

T: Yes, because we’re going to be reviewing some very key points in each of those articles because Sharon, there is something I have noticed in our alumni circles. It’s something that came up when we were doing our tour together of the old LDM property. A lot of people, when they get upset with us, they will be very quick to tell us about how great the relationships were, yada yada.

S: Mmhmm.

T: But one of the things I don’t think they seem to ever mention is the – now we know – 11 million pieces of propaganda that we actually printed and put out there.

S: Way more. Wait Tracey, that was just spring of 82.

T: That was just 82 and that was just the tracts! I mean, as we’ve been going through what is being said in so many of these articles I think what you’ve said before so aptly applies; shit tons of shit. I don’t mean that for hyperbole, this is some really bad stuff Sharon. It’s really bad stuff that I am so, so sorry that we participated in.

S: Oh my god, yes. Yes. You know, another thing. Once we decided to dive in on this topic – so I went back and I reread all three of these articles, a couple of times. They just stirred up so much emotion in me. I felt overall I was just astounded at the arrogance, and I felt embarrassed and ashamed, at the just ghastly ignorance. Laughable ignorance. More than anything else, I was truly heartbroken thinking about all the people who read these, who have suffered trying to live up to these myths and lies that we – WE – at Last Days Ministries told over, and over, and over again.

T: Yeah. As I was thinking about it, we need to go on record and we need to make apologies, but apologies are just so inadequate when I think of how many of these countless dear souls that we know, ones that have actually reached out to me since we started this podcast, who had been in one of the training schools, and sharing their stories at how much we denied them a sense of peace, a sense of self-love, a sense of belonging, and how we reinforced that message of rejection, and ultimately empowered the rest of the church, who may not have been dealing with that issue, to basically hammer it down on all of these precious, precious people. Like I said, apologies are very inadequate, but we need to do it and want to do it, and go on record and say we are very sorry for our part in this.

S: And Tracey, it’s not just the folks in the past. What I wonder is how many people today, as we speak, as we’re recording this, are still being suppressed by these belief systems that we – by the millions – helped instil and lay the foundations for. People that wind up living their entire lives trying to repress who they really are. It just breaks my heart.

T: As I started to grow up and have children and become a mother, it was the biblical teaching on homosexuality that was actually one of the first cracks, Sharon. I was like, this does not make sense. It was one of many topics, but this one was a big one. It just wasn’t gelling, and I can see now in these articles as I’ve looked back and reread them, just how short on good logic they are; how full of hubris, like you mentioned, that they are. It distils very complex subjects down to our neat little bible boxes that we’ve talked about, that when we were young, really worked for us. I am really glad that we’re taking the time to do this. I am thrilled that it’s not just gonna be you and I, even though that’s pretty awesome Sharon!

[laughter]

T: But we’re being joined by a very special guest, Anthony Venn-Brown.

S: Woohoo hoo!

T: I was first honored – I met him after I did my interview with I Was A Teenage Fundamentalist with Troy and Brian, because he was a big Keith Green fan.

S: Did you meet him in person? Or virtually?

T: Well, he is from the land Down Under, so I actually didn’t meet him in person in Australia but I met him over the phone and we had several conversations, so I feel like I did meet him.

S: Oh. That’s so cool. It is such an honor to have Anthony joining us. I know I’ve still got a lot to learn on this Tracey, for sure. Anthony’s experience – well, listeners you’ll hear more, but he was a former fundamentalist and now he’s an internationally respected leader in the LGBTQ community. I can’t think of anyone better to help us slog through this stuff, this shit, and we are going to give him a full and proper introduction in just a few minutes, but just a few more things we wanted to give as background. In addition to dissecting the portions of these articles, we are going to talk about the broader impact and the widespread harm that we caused, and that includes promoting other organizations, and legislation, and so-called conversion therapy, and the tons and tons and shit tons of shit.

T: Uh yeah. Those are really, really hard for me but thankfully there are some rays of sunshine that continue to shine on in parts of society. So we’re going to hear from Anthony about some of those, because you know Sharon, it’s been 40 years since this magazine was first printed.

S: Oh my god.

T: It still stuns me to say that, and I know there has been some progress – we’ll talk a little bit later about how there needs to be much more progress, but we’ll be shining a light on what’s transpired in the past 40 years.

S: Yeah. 40 fucking years ago. 40 fucking years. Alright Tracey, let’s start with the why. Here we are at Last Days Ministries, Keith Green, the prophet of God – whatever. Of course, he was dead when this was printed, but what is your theory on why we did this? What made Last Days Ministries want to take aim at the “gay” issue?

T: Well, true story. So when Anthony reached out to me to have a couple of conversations about that particular magazine, I decided that I would do some digging. I actually reached out to the author.

S: Oh, you’re kidding!

[laughter]

S: Oh my god. What did you do? Did you call him?

T: No, I emailed him. For listeners, if you guys have been paying attention, you’ll recognize the author and the name on this tract is Martin Bennett, who was Sharon’s former husband. Obviously we were very close over the years, so I felt like I had a good enough relationship, so I reached out to him. I know that at Last Days Ministries I was somewhat separated from the day to day stuff that was happening, because usually a lot of our articles were shared at house meetings. It’s kind of like, this is what the Lord is dealing with us in the ministry, so this one kind of took me by surprize.

S: Well, that’s because the reason was because you were a leader in the Intensive Christian Training School, so you guys were kind of off in your own little facility and stuff, so that’s why you weren’t integrated with strategy or whatever the fuck this was.

T: Yeah, but we still went to the – every week we fasted, so we still went to the house prayer meeting where a lot of that news was shared. So I didn’t have really any specific memory of why we chose to do that, so I thought let me ask Martin.

S: Mmhmm. And what did he say?

T: He did answer right away, which surprized me. He was very cordial, which didn’t surprize me – like I said, I think we had a pretty good relationship through the years, but when I started asking him about my memories of Sy Rogers visiting the ministry, and why did we do that magazine article, and he just said, for that answer you will need to ask Melody.

S: W…wh…what?

[laughter]

S: I mean, he wrote it, what?

T: So I thought that was a really odd answer, and I was like, ok – you know how you go through, well maybe it was forty years ago and he doesn’t remember, but come on Sharon, he knows that I’m not in conversation with Melody. He is, to my knowledge, not been any conversation with Melody. All of us – we were not in any conversation with her when we left the ministry. So I thought that was a very, very strange thing for him to say to me, and of course I didn’t ask.

S: Ok. So…

T: So I need to back up – in our commune living we had some pretty … ummm … I would say strict rules, or at least understanding about how you should spend time with the opposite sex, right?

S: Oh yeah, that was like a lockdown. That was locked down.

T: Yes. But we’re in commune living, all in the sisters’ dorms and the brothers’ dorms, so there weren’t any guidelines about same sex relationships. In the school there was – this is how I remember it – we counsellors were called together for a special meeting, and given a handout that was four or five typewritten pages stapled together, and folks, that was our training. So, counsellors delving into the deep psyche of young people, we were trained by typewritten handouts.

S: Oh god.

T: So – I have to double check, but I think this handout came from a Youth With A Mission, a YWAM source, and it was all about emotional dependency.

S: Ohhhhh. I remember that now.

T: You might have some memory from maybe some leadership meetings about that, because it became this – I would liken it to a witch hunt, because it caught me off guard.

S: Yes.

T: I had been working in the school for years at this point. You’re in a ten week session with sisters; we’re living in the same dorm, we’re sharing bathrooms, we’re eating together, these poor students have left family, they’ve left friends, they’ve left support systems, so of course they’re forming close relationships, so now what’s on our radar is – not too close! Not too close, because emotional dependency – and with any of this stuff it’s like, what the fuck. What is too close? You had to be on the lookout for if someone who is supposed to be trusting Jesus putting too much trust in their same sex relationship, because that’s the gateway to homosexuality.

S: Oh god. Oh fuck. It’s always our fault, right? It’s always our fault. We’re not leaning enough to God. Oh my god, Tracey.

T: Yeah, but it became a witch hunt, I’m saying, and I personally – thankfully either my radar wasn’t working very well; I had different types of sisters in my group and I never had to confront on this. I never had to roll this out, but Kathleen Dillard – oh, she was calling people, people had to be separated, friendships were broken, it’s – I shouldn’t be laughing, because it was a really terrible, weird thing.

S: It was traumatic!

T: Very, very horrible.

S: And you know what? Now that you’re saying this, I do remember it and I do remember Kathleen coming and talking to me about – I don’t know, a few of the different sisters that really enjoyed, and we would do horse stuff together and they weren’t worried about me, but they were worried about – oh, are they getting too close, is their friendship too whatever. Yeah. It was a creepy feeling of you’re supposed to be looking out over people, and I don’t remember ever personally confronting anyone, but it’s possible I did. But yeah. That was horrible. And, not only horrible Tracey, it’s a pile of this ridiculous, fraudulent, Christian psycho-babble bullshit. I mean, it’s just more and more shit.

T: Yeah, because it wasn’t clear. A lot of what you said when you left the LTS with YWAM – you just need to repent, and then it will be made known to you what you’re repenting for.

S: Right.

T: This was a lot of that, it was well, you’re just too close – how are we too close? Well, you just need to repent for being too close and God will show you.

S: Oh my god.

T: It was a lot of that. So I don’t know if this magazine came on the heels of some of that that was happening, but I would say my real skeptical, cynical view of this is Melody Green was wanting to really make a voice for herself with her Americans Against Abortion, and I think that having another publication and making a splash in the anti-homosexual movement put her in the good graces of the religious right, with the Pat Robertsons and the Jerry Fallwells of the time that would give her a bigger platform, a more respected platform, and ultimately increase her reach for Americans Against Abortion. That’s my really real take, and I think when Martin said ask Melody, that made more sense to me. So…if Martin’s out there listening he can confirm that, but it just seemed to have a political tie.

S: Wow. Because he didn’t say like, the Lord has put this on my heart to write, or anything. He didn’t say that to you.

T: No. And he would!

S: Yeah, he would. Oh my god. Tracey, ok – alright woman, once again, you’re just pulling a rabbit out of your hat. I had never thought of that possibility, and I’d never heard anyone else suggest it. Holy shit. I think you are so right.

T: I do too, and I think – I don’t know if Melody just assigned Martin to have to write this.

S: Well, he was the only one really doing a lot of writing at that time.

T: Yeah, but I would think that he would have answered me hey, that was what the Lord – usually it was what the Lord was leading at that time, and that’s kind of what I expected him to say, so when he said that I’m like – oh. Oh, ok. Which brings me to the question, so…how do you feel about this article being written by the person that you were married to?

S: Hmmm. Well, it does bring another layer of weirdness. It’s uncomfortable. It’s icky. You know, the hubris is so obvious to us now and the pride that we all had – when I was reading it, I realized I could totally hear his tone of voice – kind of this pontificating way of speaking these words, and that’s something that’s been happening too as we’ve started reading these old writings from Last Days, like Keith’s and Martin’s and Melody’s. I remember personally watching each of them give all sorts of teachings – mostly Keith, and a lot of Martin. Occasionally Melody. But giving these teachings, every week, for years. Years!

T: And every day in the schools. I had to sit through two hours a day in the school.

S: Well, all I can say is I can’t believe we were all so blind to the utter arrogance, but now as I read it – that’s front and center to me. I can’t not see the arrogance. The other thing is, the fact that it was Martin who wrote this article, in a way that is utterly ridiculous too. What made him qualified to write it? He wasn’t gay. He did not struggle in that area – remember folks, I lived with him for almost 25 years, so I know that his sexual temptations were all heterosexual, and I’m thinking I don’t know if he even personally knew one single gay person. So, why him?

T: Yeah, and that’s why I wondered, after the emotional dependency thing, if there were Art Department relationships that may have been happening and maybe some people came to Martin and disclosed that. It would be hard for me to believe.

S: Yeah, I don’t know. It wouldn’t have just been Art Department. It would have been Art Department, Dark room, Printing – I mean, he oversaw the staff in all of those departments.

T: Yeah, and we know now, some have come out since then, who were in the Art Department.

S: Yes.

T: And some, who I think may never have come out, struggled under such condemnation.

S: You’re gonna have to tell me privately, off the air – I don’t know who in the Art Department came out, so we’ll talk later.

T: Yes, so we will talk later, and maybe Martin held it in confidence and didn’t even tell you. That’s my only other connection if it weren’t a political thing, but that also seems far fetched because I don’t think it was a safe space. I think – which we’re going to get into – all of us were suppressing our sexuality, so I don’t even know how many knew enough to even come out and share that, because we were just pushing, pushing it all down.

S: Yeah, we were. One other thing I thought about Tracey – I guess it’s kind of in juxtaposition to these articles and this whole attack we did – I know that you and I both experienced what felt to us like really positive gay and trans influences on our lives, before we came to Last Days at the ripe old age of 17.

[laughter]

S: And that also many years later, when we were deconstructing in our mid-30s and early 40s, there were positive feelings and memories about the gay folks that I knew.

T: Yeah I mean, it was the 70s, and I was in a competitive drama team where a lot of folks were getting brave and coming out then, right at the end of the 70s and into the early 80s. One was my duet partner, and we were super, super close. It was all layered with as I was joining this born again group, and there was tension. There was already tension in my high school about what Christianity said. It didn’t gel with me then, and then – we didn’t really talk about it in Last Days, that’s why this article seemed to come out of left field. Then all of a sudden we go hard after it. I know I didn’t have a whole lot of time, theologically, to put all the pieces together, even at that time, but I guess through all of our openness and brokenness confessions, and we talked about how anything, that if you’re living in a way that’s not pleasing to God it’s because of the hurt that’s been lodged in you somewhere, and you just need to confess that. So I did buy into that; ok if this is sinful then it must have come from some deep wound that these folks were experiencing. So I did buy into that then it needed to be set free.

S: Mmmph. Yeah. We drank that Kool-Aid. But going back for me – like you, I do remember high school being in the drama department and the choir. There were several obviously gay guys, and one openly bisexual guy, and they were friendly and funny and smart and great. I think I probably had a vague awareness that the bible says homosexuality is wrong, but I don’t remember really thinking about it all that much.

T: It was brave. It was brave for someone to come out as bisexual in high school in the 70s.

S: Yes it was. Oh – oh wow, you know what, I just remembered. There was this one Christian friend, a girl, that I met in public high school. I think in our last year there several of us started worrying that she might be lesbian, but I don’t think we ever talked about it. Yeah, we never talked about it, it was just this oh no, is she ok.

T: Is she ok. Because she wouldn’t be ok, right.

S: Oh my god that’s the name of the article, I didn’t even think of that.

[laughter]

S: But the next year, like that brief time when I was “backslidden”, my university drama friends, they took me to see the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. They popped my cherry on that one.

T: Oh my god, and I have to interrupt you now, because I – until you were prepping for this show, I never knew that you went in high school. I’m so disappointed in you Sharon. [laughing]

S: No, no, it wasn’t high school. It was in the summer session at the university.

T: Ok.

S: Don’t do that to me girl. Don’t exaggerate.

T: Ok, because it was my high school drama group that was going every weekend, so I refused to go because I heard Christians shouldn’t go, and I really didn’t understand more than that. Later when you even had a Rocky Horror Picture Show party at our house, I thought that was the first time you ever saw that, because that was my first time.

S: Well, no, no, points for you girl (again), you win more points in who was most spiritual, because I actually went back. I went and saw that show quite a few times on the midnight showing. Then when I got right with the Lord again and Keith brings me out to California to live at Last Days, I still loved the movie, but I had to keep that secret, I couldn’t tell anyone that.

T: [laughing] That’s a big secret. So wait listeners, we just read Sharon’s repentance letter from when she was 17 years old during this time of falling away from the Lord, and I never hear her mention even going to see Rocky Horror Picture Show.

S: No, no I didn’t, and I did not even confess that in that fucking Bruce Thompson Plumbline Confession Sessions. How’s that for keeping my sin hidden?

T: Well of course, today now I applaud you. Go, Sharon, go. Thank God.

[laughter]

S: When we had that party in – oh my god, it’s like, 2005 – didn’t you wonder why I could sing along with every song, every word, and dance the timewarp?

T: No, you’re just very prepared, all the time, so I chalked it up to that.

[laughter]

T: I do have a picture, because there was a certain young man in our picture who you were not married to yet.

S: No, I wasn’t.

T: I think his arm is actually around me, by the way.

S: Oh, it might be. That’s all right. I got him in the end so it’s ok. Alright, we gotta rein this back. We’re going down rabbit holes. So for me, even all the time I was at Last Days, and as a “committed Christian” after we left, I always, Tracey, always had this cognitive dissonance. I’m trying to reconcile the idea of these people, most of them honestly seemed like much better people than many of the “Christians” I knew, and the idea that all these wonderful people are all going to hell because of who they are and who they love – just like it was for you, that ultimately became one of the catalysts in me starting to question my entire belief system.

T: Mmmm.

S: Yeah. So coming forward in our timeline a little bit, I guess about ten years ago it was, when the laws started changing here in the US to allow same sex marriage – I was really happy about that. I really celebrated.  But it seems like now we’re going backwards again, and that makes me so, so sad. We’re seeing it where each one of us lives; you’re in Tennessee, I’m in Florida, and we’re watching a resurgence of this fearmongering and hostility, the anti Drag Queen legislation where you are, and the whole fucking Don’t Say Gay laws and agenda down in Florida. I really thought our society was evolving and moving past all this hate, but alas, alas it is not so.

T: Well that’s a great segue way Sharon, because I think it’s time now to bring Anthony in, who can – I know he is in Australia, so I don’t know how close he is to all the laws in the US, but yeah, I do live in Tennessee and it has been pretty stunning for me personally, to see us headed in some of the legislation that we’re headed in, which makes us wanting to do this episode all the more important.

S: Mmhmm.

T: So, welcome Anthony!

A: Hello!

S: Hi!

T: I am going to read through your very impressive bio here, and then you can jump in and start in on this conversation with us. Anthony is an internationally respected LGBTQI community leader and bestselling author, but long ago – which I think is so fascinating and gives him such a voice in this space, he was a high profile Pentecostal preacher in Australia.

A: Hallelujah!

T: One of the megachurch preachers. Oh god. His autobiography, A Life of Unlearning details his rise to prominence, and his decades long batter with homosexuality. His struggle included – and this kills me to read this – exorcisms, traditional marriage, and conversion therapy. All vain attempts trying not to be gay. And then a chance encounter shattered Anthony’s wall of denial and thrust him through a major public scandal, rejection, isolation and trauma, until he finally found freedom on the other side. That obviously is a snippet there – I of course read your autobiography Anthony, and we’ll have a chance to say a little bit more about that, but it broke me. I wept through pages and page and pages of it, as well as completely identifying with how you set the landscape and really brought us into what it was like to be in that church sphere with the thinking we’re talking about today. You’ve worked with over 4,000 survivors of conversion therapy, thank, thank, thank god you’re doing this work, and many more individuals wrestling with faith and sexuality conflict. Anthony is the founder and CEO of Ambassadors and Bridge Builders International, working with other survivors and even the state government (which we can’t wait to hear more about) and he helped achieve a major recent victory to see legislation passed in Australia banning conversion therapy. Yay.

S: That is so incredible. That is SO incredible! And now I want to shut up and listen to Anthony, so can you share with our audience a little bit about yourself personally, and your links to Keith Green, Last Days Ministries and the Christian scene of that time?

A: Well, first of all I have to say how thrilled I am to be joining you on this podcast! And to be talking with both of you – we’re probably going to go for 24 hours I think, aren’t we?

[laughter]

S: We might!

T: Especially how long we’ve gone now. Also I just want to say, Anthony’s been on waiting for Sharon and I to give the back story of this magazine, so thank you Anthony for being so patient and waiting in our green room. I hope we fed you good M&Ms and a good alcoholic beverage while you waited.

A: That’s one of my qualities – patience, so that’s fine.

S: Nice.

A: So you’ve given a lovely overview of who I am. I think, for your listeners particularly, it will be good for me to go back just to say I was born in 1951, so this is my 73^rd year. Yes.

S&T: Mmm, wow.

A: Yeah. 73^rd year. I was born again in 1969. In Sydney the Charismatic movement had just begun, so it was like, a church service at the Cathedral, the Anglican Cathedral healing service, there was a house meeting, there was something happening at Sydney University amongst some students, so it was really, really early days. Of course, YWAM had also started up in Sydney at that time and was just beginning to come into Prominence. I loved Winkie Pratney, I got all his tapes and listened over, and over again. Leonard Ravenhill – actually my first encounter with Christians was I had a friend at high school who was a Baptist, and his mum and all her female friends were following this guy who was very much into holiness teaching, so all that stuff about the old revivalists, Wesley, Finney, and Whitfield, all of them – I loved all that stuff. Of course, Dave Wilkerson and the Cross and the Switchblade, and Keith Green and Last Days Ministries, so I was totally entrenched in all of that at that time.

T: Wow. You know, the box that Sharon dropped by my house of the old issues of the Last Days magazines, there was a ministry update where Keith had just gotten back from Australia, Sharon.

S: Oh really?

T: I was going to highlight that and send it to Troy and Brian, because I think somebody mentioned him going – did you remember him going to Australia at all, or go to a concert?

A: I don’t recall that, I was living out of Sydney at that point, but I believe he may have preached at Christian Life Centre which was Frank Houston’s church in Sydney. His son is Brian, who founded Hillsong.

S: Ohh. Ohhh.

T: We’re all connected.

A: I have a friend who remembers him preaching, I believe, at Christian Life Centre in Darlinghurst. I think that there was a little bit of a very judgemental message that came through.

S: Oh, that’s what he did all the time!

T: That wouldn’t shock me.

[laughter]

A: Great revelation, sorry about that.

T: That’s so funny. Did you want to say something more to get our listeners oriented, or can I ask my burning question to you?

A: You can go right for it now. I’ve given them enough haven’t I – I was steeped in it. Steeped in all of this stuff.

T: You were so steeped in it, and we are going to plug, plug, plug your book, and of course it’s going to be in our show notes, but honestly listeners I’m not just saying that. A Life of Unlearning is just a poignant move through all that time and space and that journey, and I am so glad you wrote it, Anthony. So, back into this newsletter that we printed in 1984 – do you remember if you would have been on our mailing list at that time? Would you have read the magazine, or would you have gotten a hold of some of the tracts later?

A: There’s a good chance I did come across it, and I did read it – I don’t recollect that actually happening, because in 84 I was already out there being a prominent preacher so my focus was on evangelism. I was what you could call a closet ex-gay. Whereas Sy Rogers and others in Exodus were talking about how they had been gay, and they were no longer, most people had no idea that in 1972 I was one of the first in the world to go through a Christian conversion therapy program in Sydney, even before Exodus was founded.

S: Wow.

A: I got married, but it wasn’t something I promoted or talked about. If ever I talked about my previous life, I was very, very general. But of course there were people who knew that I was queer!

[laughter]

S: Of course!

A: There’s something about my voice? Something about the way I used to dress. But I was very careful, I monitored all the time my voice – whenever I preached, I preached on a lower register all the time, and I would never flap my hands, and I would never squeal!

[laughter]

T: Oh my gosh. Did they try to call that out to you in conversion therapy or is that just something you learned the hard way of hey, I’d better put this on the down low as much as possible?

A: I knew from early days, when I was converted homosexuality was a crime and you could go to jail for it, or could be forced into therapy and things like that, so you did everything possible to try and hide that. That was a part of my life, but even more so of course when I was in the church. Now when I was married and had two children, wife on one arm, two kids on the other – most people tend to assume oh well, if there was a problem in that area he’s obviously been cured now. But I never preached, I never talked about it, at all.

S: Wow.

T: Ok. So then you wouldn’t have been getting our tracts and handing them out to anybody.

A: No.

T: Yay.

A: I was not out to convert the homosexual community. I was out to bring everybody I could find to Jesus, that was my goal.

T: And you were very successful – back to the book, it really shows that, but one of the things that jumped out to me in your book Anthony, is obviously Sharon and I are straight (some may question that, but we are) …

S: [laughing]

A: Well, I wondered.

[laughter]

T: And it so resonated with me because of that whole battle to really just kill yourself for Jesus. At times I would just weep because I think you portray that struggle so, so well.

A: Yes, for example, David Wilkerson’s books, he would talk about hating the sign of your naked flesh, despising the sin and you’d work so hard at getting rid of this, because I’m being told you love your sin more than you love God. You know? Things like that. So you are trying so desperately to hate this curse upon you and reject it completely, so that the real heterosexual you can start to rise. The cultivation of self-hatred and self-loathing during those years was very, very thorough. It’s a Tmiracle that I’m not totally fucked up.

T: Ohh, I know. hat’s the part that we as fundamentalist street people resonated with so much, because we also spent those years trying to crush our own souls. We’ve done a lot of thinking – it’s kind of like ok, you have this wickedness supposedly inside of you, but we all had this wickedness inside of us that we were all trying very hard to crush and get rid of. You’re right – David Wilkerson, we don’t talk that much about him Sharon, in our podcast, but for those of our listeners who know that in the area of Last Days Ministries, David Wilkerson was down the street. He did also lead prayer meetings and church services from time to time, and my students in school, when they would go hear him, they would come back wrecked and we would have to take walks and try to unwind them in their own self-loathing, because his message was so intense in that direction.

A: Mmmm.

S: Well, we were all about helping people crush their own souls. I mean, we absolutely were. I do think though, Tracey, yes we were trying to crush ourselves, but I think the message to the queer community, to a queer person, that the essence of who you are is an abomination, I think that takes it to a whole other level.

T: It does!

S: Yeah.

T: And I think that’s the part I’m seeing when we’ve read through these articles. You know, when you’re caught up in your own sense of shame and guilt, you don’t have a whole lot of time to think about other people’s guilt and shame, and that horrible sense of despair that they were going through, because we couldn’t. I couldn’t relate to that at that time.

S: Well, I think this is a great place to kick off examining this whole anti gay issue of the Last Days magazine. So, let’s start with the first article that was right there at the front of the magazine – Who Will You Deny, Yourself or The Lord, by John Wesley. Edited and paraphrased by Martin Bennett.

T: Ah. Your former husband again.

S: Yep. Yes. So looking back now Tracey, as I saw the whole topography of this magazine, I think there was a very intentional, pre-meditated strategy, of putting this self-denial article right at the front of the issue. Hey, you were an Army brat. Is there a military term for when they would do this big barrage of artillery, or bomb the shit out of an area like, the front lines, to soften up the enemy before sending in ground troops?

T: Blitzkrieg! A blitzkrieg. I totally can see that this was a spiritual blitzkrieg.

S: Ok.

T: It’s a German term, and my German’s not so great.

S: Ok! [laughing] How come the American army had a German term? That doesn’t seem…

T: Because we were fighting the Germans.

S: Ok. Well anyway, I think this first article was an intentional first assault. What’s ironic Tracey, is that when we started prepping for this episode, I didn’t think we’d need to be talking about this article at all, so I didn’t even read it at first. I was just focused on we’re going to have our hands full with Gay Ok, and Man in the Mirror ones, right?

T: Mmhmm. And for listeners, if you don’t know what she’s talking about, if you have only been able to access this article through the tracts and you don’t have the actual magazine, you might not know that usually we had several articles in each edition. One of the main articles was this Who Will You Deny that Sharon is mentioning. So it was there front and center, before the other articles in the magazine.

S: Yeah, so I’m kind of skimming past it, and my eye gets drawn into one of the middle paragraphs, and I read that, and I felt so angry, so disgusted, and literally nauseated in the pit of my stomach, so Tracey that’s when I knew we’ve gotta start here, because this toxic concept, it is the fucking foundation of it all.

T: Yes it is, and I know we’ve kind of screwed around it a little bit as we’ve been taking with Anthony, but this is part of the conditioning for us all. I mean, if it wasn’t our own sexual orientation we were trying to beat out of ourselves, it gave us permission to help beat it out of other people, because it basically said this is the way, you have a nature that is a sin nature, and if your brother is in this sin then it is our responsibility to hold the line for them as well.

S: Mmhmm.

T: Ugh. So it’s got far reaching tentacles. It sets people up – we’re willing victims of spiritual abuse, and we become the spiritual abusers, which is what we did in our ICT training school. Even trying to ferret out people who have too close of a relationship because they’re in the gateway to homosexuality – it’s so insidious and it is so bad, and it basically gives them permission and the cement to go hog wild, and I’m here with you Sharon. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

S: Mmhmm.

T: So in order to uncover some of those more insidious aspects, we’re going to call out a few things.

S: Yeah.

A: I have a copy of that magazine.

S: Oh yeah?

A: I’ve been doing lots of research and writing, so Dave Wilkerson was quoted in that article, and also researching about the life of Sy Rogers, that I was trying to figure out what was that magazine that says is Gay Ok? Man in the Mirror – I was trying to figure out how it all worked, so for $40USD I got a second hand copy of the actual magazine.

T: Oh wow. When did you get that?

A: About three years ago. Yes.

T&S: Wow.

A: I’ve got some good stuff in my library.

[laughter]

S: Oh my god.

T: I’m sorry you had to pay $40 for it.

A: Yeah, but when it arrived it was just a gem. I poured over it going oh my god. When you’re writing about all this stuff, you’ve definitely got to backup the references. It’s not just ideas and stuff, you’ve got to really prove what you’re talking about actually happened, and you can refer to it exactly. That’s why I spent $40 on the magazine.

T: Yeah, and that’s why we ended up getting a box as well, because you’re exactly right. We have memories, and being able to validate some of that. I think it’s been more horrifying to us Anthony, to actually read it now, so many years later, and just seeing the stuff out there. It’s a horrible message.

A: Should I mention, that thing about the evil self that is in that article, about denying yourself, that was so ingrained in me through all of those teachings. Winkie Pratney, YWAM, all those things about the old revivalists. I remember in my early Christian walk going to a retreat up in the Blue Mountains, and we were all there shaking, literally visibly shaking under the preaching and the fear of God, so a gay person – there’s a gay self, and what you’re being told is that this gay self is evil, and you’ve used the word Tracey, abomination. How disgusting is that? In the King James English it’s an abomination, and it was used regularly. So that level of self-hated and self-loathing, and rejection of self, and seeing that as being everything about that is evil. It’s about flesh, it’s about lust, it’s about self, it’s about turning from God, it’s about rebellion – it’s about all those things so you are doing everything you possibly can to destroy that gay self.

T: Yes, and you’re right. Keith Green ate that message up. He loved – we had talked about this article that was front and center by John Wesley, who lived in England in the 17 fucking hundreds – why are we reprinting his stuff? For those who don’t know, he was the famous preacher’s brother, Charles Wesley, founder of the Methodist church out there, the Wesley and Methodist denominations, and of course then, we’re centered right by Leonard Ravenhill, and I’ve often thought is it him that gave us such a love for that old time religion, but I think about that Jesus movement – we’ve been doing some studies on Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, and this peace, love movement that I think originally drew us, and how it devolved into this old time religion that is so concentrated on the evil of the heart. I guess it reached to Australia. Ugh. I’m so sorry.

A: I think one of the things that was so appealing about that was that the stories of the old time revivals with the Wesleys, the Finneys, all of those people that Leonard Ravenhill used to write about, everyone who talked about that was like, out in the fields there’d be thousands of people listening to the preachers and they’d begin to weep, so it was like these visual images of this amazing revival, and we’re not seeing that today and we need to get back to their message, and get back to experiencing a genuine revival where people repent; genuinely repent of their sin, not play around with it.

S: Oh. Ugh.

T: That was Keith’s total intent when he did the concert crusades. He was trying to recreate Finney’s old time revival.

S: So fucked up.

T: Mmhmm.

S: Alright, so let’s start dissecting a little bit of this article. It poses two distinct concepts; there’s denying yourself and then there’s carrying your cross. Anthony, you’ve got the closest thing to a British accent of the three of us, so we’re going to ask you (you can hold your nose if you have to) but we’re gonna ask you to read a few sample sentences for us. Alright?

A: Certainly. So, under the heading Denying Self. Denying ourselves and taking up our cross is absolutely necessary to becoming, or continuing to be a disciple of Jesus. If we don’t practice self-denial, we aren’t his disciples. All the things that hold us back from being right with God, or growing in the Lord, can be boiled down to this. Either we won’t deny ourselves, or we won’t take up our cross. If God’s way is the right way, in everything big and small it follows that we shouldn’t go our own way in anything.

S: In anything. And who is it that is telling us exactly what “God’s way” is? It’s men. Arrogant, ignorant, homophobic and misogynistic men.

T: Yeah. And it’s anything and everything and we all know what it’s like to live under that. So when you read that Anthony, what do you have to say?

A: Ah ha ha. I was listening previously to your reactions to when you read the article, and it brings back so many memories of that torturous time, trying so desperately to please God, and trying so desperately on a daily basis, you know. I think you’ve tackled masturbation before, haven’t you?

T: Yes. Yes we have.

S: Not enough! Not enough, we need to do more.

[laughter]

A: I remember I kept a record, I knew how many times I did it so I could try and get it down to zero, but that torment was horrendous. As I say, it’s a miracle I still have my mind, because I would go through periods where I would have a bit of a breakdown, an emotional meltdown, just trying so desperately to do the right thing, to not be who I was, and to please God.

S: Right.

T: Ohhh.

S: Hey Anthony, there’s two more sentences we pulled out from that section of Deny Yourself. Can you read those last two?

A: Mmhmm. By following our desires in anything, we strengthen the rebellion of our heart. We must give up our own will, deny ourselves any pleasure which doesn’t come from, or lead to God.

T: Ugh, yes. We’re so conditioned. What really jumped out to me is that word rebellion. It goes to that whole of A=B, and B=C, and then A=C. We totally lived that, on anything in our hearts that was in rebellion to God and then of course, rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, so then – it’s demonic. That’s where you get into the exorcisms you talk about, because if you were struggling with this, and you can’t get over it – guess what. The demons are involved.

S: Yeah.

A: I was being told those scriptures in the conversion therapy program in 1972.

S: Oh shit.

T: Hmmm.

S: Ugh. Alright. The second part is about bearing our cross. Anthony?

A: Taking up your Cross. Everyone who wants to follow Christ must not only deny himself, but take up his cross as well. Your cross is something that not only brings you no pleasure, but something that is a burden or a pain. Picking up your cross is allowing something that is unpleasurable to enter into our lives. In one way or another, every follower of Christ will surely have to take up his cross daily. It means embracing the will of God, even though it may be totally different from what we want. It means freely accepting hardships, trials, and temporary pain of whatever kind, as we walk in our path to eternal life. If God puts us through any kind of pain, it’s only in order to heal us.

[disgusted and horrified laughter]

S: Oh my god.

T: I hate this so much, and you know, in reading this sometimes you’re like oh my god, it really did say this. Sometimes I think when we think back, I internalized this message. I internalized it – maybe I made it worse because of my own trauma. It’s like, NO! It’s right here!

S: It’s right there.

T: It says it over and over again!

S: The other thing that’s so fucked up is this message – it’s just perfect for people who are already stuck in trauma and abuse victimhood. It keeps them stuck and it gives them the reason to not even try to get out of it, then if you look at those who are not yet being subjected to direct abuse from others – it’s like, my gosh, if I don’t have enough pain in my life, ok – let’s go looking for things that we dislike! Let’s go looking for things that are difficult and painful, and even harmful, because the worse it feels, the more it must be God. So – oh my god, the self-flagellation, and the willingly suffering. I think it’s like telling the battered wife she should thank her abuser for the broken bones, and a shattered spirit because guess what, they’re just for her own good.

T: I mean, IBLP taught this absolutely, and taught us to be grateful for the times we would suffer. Ultimately they pull the scripture – you get an opportunity to share in the fellowship of the sufferings of Jesus. It is so insidious. In the article it pulls that quote out exactly, as far as hey, if you’re struggling with this, you should count it all joy because you have an opportunity, right.

S: Oh god.

A: In your circles, did you have that teaching about the different Greek words for love, and agape love was the highest type of love, the unconditional love, that only comes from God?

S: Yes, we did. We were taught that.

A: So in this residential program I was a part of, that was used constantly to humiliate people. I was humiliated in front of the church more than once. They said, we’re doing this for your own good. You’ll thank us one day.

T: Ohhhh.

A: In the meantime you’re totally traumatized. I remember seeing a girl with a black eye, and being told well, she had a bit of a tough counselling session with the female pastor.

S&T: Oh my god.

T: I’m glad you bring that out, because this teaching – it really does reinforce that, and that we talked about earlier that it makes abusers out of the rest of us, because we’ve bought into a lie that the greatest thing we can do, which goes into corporal punishment for your children, is to drive out their rebellion – out of the homosexual, or anyone who is fighting God. I think I mentioned this a little bit later, but when I saw Boy Erased and they actually showed what some of those counselling sessions are like, and the fact that physical abuse is happening in that – you mentioned that someone had a black eye, I’m like how? How, Anthony, did we internalize that to such a degree that we would strike our brothers and sisters for the cause of Christ?

A: Yep.

S: Oh shit.

A: We believed the lie.

S: Yeah we did.

A: We believed this was for their good, and therefore was justified.

S: Yep. Alright Anthony, can you read that last sentence that is kind of in the summary of this article?

A: Of course, because I believe this with all of my heart.

[laughter]

S: Now you’re a liar. Now you’re gonna have to repent for lying.

A: Ok. So we can see that it’s always because a man will not deny himself, or take up his cross, that he doesn’t completely follow his Lord. It’s for this reason that he’s not fully a disciple of Christ.

T: I do remember this being the lowest blow, the deepest cut that you could tell somebody – even in our schools. It was like, you’re not even good enough to be a disciple of Christ. You’re not willing to take up your cross. You’re not willing to lay everything down – while they’re struggling to do just that.

S: Yeah, we desperately wanted to be sold out disciples of Christ. That’s what we wanted, right?

A: Totally. Exactly, yeah. There was only one thing in our hearts, it was to follow Jesus with all of our hearts.

S: Yes.

A: With all of our desires – you know, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength, and to get to that place where we are completely sold out for God. That was what it was all about.

S: I’m going to jump in there though – it was love the Lord your God with all your heart, but remember Jesus also purportedly also says to love your neighbor as yourself. But to us, the word self – it was…I don’t know – we viewed it as one of the most evil things in the universe, and we did all we could to try to die to self; to kill off our self, to totally de-self, and we knew nothing about self-awareness, sef-respect, self-care, self-acceptance, or self-love. So if we’ve only learned how to despise ourself, we can’t possibly truly love other people.

A: I was waiting for you to get to that final word, self-love. That was beautiful. You’re going through that self-awareness, self-care, and then finally self-love. When you’re deconstructing, there are revelations that you have, and one of those revelations is learning to love yourself. It’s such a foreign concept from our backgrounds, because it’s the antithesis of what we were told, what we were taught, what we believed, and what we practiced.

S: Yeah. Yeah, it was. Alrighty then, let’s pivot to the cover article, “I’m Gay, OK?” We are not going to read the whole thing…

T: THANK GOD.

S:…because it’s way too long, and infuriating and depressing.

T: Oh yeah. Even in this – listeners, we are wanting to really get Anthony’s insight on some of this stuff that was printed and actually written, but honestly, it makes me nauseous returning to this thinking and this theology of old. I hated this so much, reading through it – like I said before, sometimes you wonder how much did I just internalize it? It was so much worse in print. It’s all of this very complex stuff, it’s these little pat answers that are put into nice, neat little topic boxes with very simple answers. I found myself infuriated. I don’t know – when you first read it Anthony, after not seeing it for a long time, I don’t know what your visceral reaction was. I had a visceral reaction reading this.

A: Me not so much. I have a whole library of this shit.

[laughter]

A: I don’t know how, but somehow or other I can read this, especially with research, and not be impacted. It gets to the point where that’s enough, but it’s quite bizarre but in reading I’m Gay, Ok, your husband’s lovely article.

S: Former. Former – FORMER husband, thank you.

A: Former husband. I didn’t realize, that didn’t twig until today – what was happening was – and I have all the books going right back, the Christian books on homosexuality. What you find is everybody is regurgitating, recycling what somebody else said to the point where there’s a quote that Dave Wilkerson used in one of his books – homosexuality begins at home, was the title of this chapter.

S: What the fuck does that mean? What does that mean?

A: Well you’ve gotta blame somebody! It’s the parents’ fault.

[laughter]

T: Oh yeah, that’s what we believed. Yep.

A: He’s quoting a New York judge saying that 50% of the murders and suicides in major cities like New York are homosexually based.

S: Oh bullshit. [laughing] – oh god.

A: I know! You read that and go – what?? This is what you would say Sharon. What the fuck??

[laughter]

S: What the fuck.

T: He’s onto you Sharon, he’s onto you.

A: What the fuck. So I tracked down the original book that he is supposedly quoting from, which actually has nothing to do with homosexuality. It is a history by the judge, of prostitution in New York, recommending that the laws be changed, because there were Police provocateurs who were getting girls from the street, they were arresting them but they were actually playing a part in the crime by approaching them. And he was trying to change it. I’ve read through the entire book. It’s fascinating, but there’s nowhere that it’s ever mentioned. And then Anita Bryant quotes it – I’ve got a list of how it goes on, and this is what was going on. I’ve read through Martin’s article and I’m thinking – you know what? This is pretty poor. It doesn’t really have a lot of content and it was not one of the better articles on homosexuality.

T: That is true. I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s so hard maybe, and so visceral for me, that it’s also personal – these are the teachings we sat under and I think I had that same thought – this isn’t even good logic! This is such bad circular thinking and how, how did we think this was so good?

S: Right.

T: Yeah, it’s bad logic, it’s circular thinking, and especially this very simplistic thinking of at your core, you’re wicked, and all you have to do is trust God and that wickedness is gonna be dealt with. I personally know so many people who really came under that message and struggled to the point – Anthony, I think you’re going to share more – to the point of suicide. This drove people to the point of utter despair. I think for me, not only being a poor article, it was also just insulting. It insulted the intelligence of the people reading, and the depth of what people were trying to work through. So, I concur with your review of the article. Of course, folks, we’re gonna post it so that you can wade through it yourself.

S: If you want to. Is that gonna be on the website or on Instagram?

T: Yeah, it’ll be on Instagram for sure, which links into Facebook, and then get it up on the website.

S: Ok.

A: An interesting aside is this $40 second-hand magazine that I got, their actual article I’m Gay ok, there’s only one part that is underlined by the previous owner, and it’s this: The Lord makes it clear that he never intended men and women to be gay, and he also makes it clear that those who practice these things cannot be at peace with him, or even at peace with themselves.

T: Ohhh.

A: Full stop.

S: So the person that received that original magazine – that’s what they took away.

A: In the whole article, that’s the only part that’s underlined, so…

S: Wow.

A: There was that teaching, well, God never made us to be gay. That would have happened after the fall. You know, everybody deep down inside is heterosexual.

T: Ugh.

S: [sigh laughing]

A: It’s funny isn’t it. The deeper you dig into me, the more queer I become.

[laughter]

S: I love it. I love that.

T: Yeah, so it’ll be posted on Instagram, or on our site, because I don’t know how hard you had to look Anthony, it’s not available on the Last Days website.

S: Hey Tracey, you know why it’s not on the Last Days site? Because sometime after Martin and I, when we were kicked out of Last Days – this is embarrassing. We did ask them to discontinue all the articles we had written, but not because we were disavowing the bullshit we had written; we were doing it because we didn’t want our writings to be supporting Melody and YWAM. That was our reasoning.

T: Yeah, that was your reasoning. I know when I emailed Martin, he did not say that he disavowed this article, or anything, which I was hoping for. I found it – I don’t know where you found it, Anthony, but it is listed in the University of North Texas library, in a special collections department. That special collections department is keeping resources and sources for how the Christian theology made its case against homosexuals, for the LGBTQ community. I thought it was really interesting that this is archived and available as a source material for the supposedly the “Christian case against homosexuality”. I know that’s in the United States; Anthony, I don’t know if you’re aware of that collection at all.

A: Not that particular collection, but I know because I was looking for the original source of all this stuff, it took me a little while to get it and I’m pretty sure I bought the magazine from an Amazon site, but I found I could get stuff through eBay and other places as well. If you know how to dig, you can find that stuff.

T: Yeah. So Sharon, I just thought it was interesting that your ex-husband’s article will live on – kind of, maybe forever, in a collection, and I didn’t know how you felt about that.

S: [laughing] Actually, I absolutely love that. I love that right now. It’s an example, a shining example of fucked up and horrible logic, and a shit ton of shit. So, yeah.  Let it be there. Let it live on in infamy. Alright, well I do want to get digging into this article. I’ll just add that my overall thought when I reread it was – what the hell is this? Besides being immature and ill informed, it was just this arrogant attempt to justify these horrible, horrible theological positions. But I did find it odd that it tries to walk somewhat of a weird fine line, because on the one hand it’s trying to convince people that maybe it’s not that bad to deal with homosexual temptation, because it’s just any other kind of temptation, because homosexuality is something you do, it’s not who you are. But then it also kind of completely contradicts itself.

T: Yes. For me, obviously because I know the author personally, it’s definitely like reading through Martin’s systematic theology. You know how we had to read through Finney’s – it was really, really long. Well, I gotta give Martin points for being very succinct, because he just boils everything down into these very neat little topic boxes, and it goes all the way from the beginning of how did this all start, and why were we made, and how we had this fall, and how God needs to forgive us. Of course, my favorite topic box called The Manufacturer’s Manual, for those listeners who may not know, Martin led a lot of the departments that had the equipment that we were using to print and publish the newsletter. He was often giving us little teachings by the side of the equipment, and bringing the manufacturer’s manual into play all the time. It was so important, if you were going to get effective use out of anything, that you follow the manual. That one jumped out at me because obviously he makes the case that God didn’t make people gay, so follow the manufacturer’s manual. Case solved. Anthony, maybe if you’d read this article you wouldn’t have had to struggle for so long!

[laughter]

A: Well, you know, Martin’s article is like so many of those articles at that time, that they try to make it all sound so simple.

T: Simple! Yes.

A: This is evil, this is not what God wants; if you follow the manufacturer’s manual, if you keep in relationship with God and Jesus, if you do these things, and these things are not really very hard, then God will give you the power to overcome and then you will become heterosexual. The simplicity of it was quite seductive.

S: Yeah. And also it’s great, because if you don’t get the results, if you don’t get the freedom, if you don’t get the deliverance, the change you’re praying for, it’s definitely not God’s fault, because he’s perfect. It’s you. You have failed.

A: Yeah.

T: And that’s what we carried through to the training school, so everything – and that’s why I say it’s this little simple, systematic theology – in any area, if you fail, it is not God’s fault, so you are not trusting God enough.

A: Yes. It’s always your fault when it’s not working. That’s what the simplistic theology does to you in the end. There must be something wrong with me – not just wrong with me; I don’t have enough faith. I must be very – you quoted before, Tracey, that the heart is desperately wicked, who could know it. That verse used to cut my heart. What am I doing to do? I try so hard, but it’s still there, I still fall, I still have those same thoughts. What is wrong with me? It’s not God that’s the problem, I must be the problem. Not enough faith. Not trying hard enough. Loving my sin more than I love God. It just went on, and on, and on.

T: Mmm.

S: Yeah. So, something that stood out to me in this article is the totally misguided premise that runs all the way through it, that points to any kind of emotional or relational, or personal problem, and says see – all this bad stuff is because someone is homosexual. But nope. That’s a nope, nope, nope. These problems – they’re not because of homosexuality. They’re not because of heterosexuality. They’re because we’re human, and with all humans, if we’re not in a healthy, connected human relationship, we’re going to experience all sorts of pain and difficulties. That’s just reality. But I want to mention a couple of sentences that followed along that vein. Here’s the first one. “But by the admission of those who’ve been there, the gay lifestyle delivers a drop of pleasure, and a gallon of loneliness and pain.” So, first of all the reference to “gay lifestyle” – that’s just such ignorance. What is a gay lifestyle? What is a straight lifestyle? It’s just ridiculous. If someone’s choosing to spend their Saturday nights going bar hopping or they’re sitting at home reading books, it has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It’s just a basic spectrum of the human experience, but that is what was labelled the gay lifestyle. Ok, everybody who’s gay, they’re out cruising. Again, loneliness and pain – it’s not about homosexuality, it’s not heterosexuality. Those things are really just about healthy, supportive human connections, versus a person who is under societal judgement and therefore unhealthy isolation, and therefore self-loathing.

T: I think that’s a really good point, and Anthony, I’d love to hear a little bit more of your thoughts on that. In this simplistic thinking that’s what they say – A=B, B=C. Homosexuality, homosexuals, they’re lonely. They feel this God-centered need, so they’re out trying to fulfill it through meaningless sex, which proves it wasn’t God’s design, which proves that it’s in sin. It’s like, whoa, whoa, there’s a whole heterosexual community out there doing the same thing! It doesn’t go back to their sexual orientation. I just feel the whole gay community got really hit on this, as far as being blamed for their own loneliness in the sense that they don’t belong, when society has literally made them feel lonely and like they don’t belong.

A: You’ve got to really understand the history of this, to understand what was going on, because leading up to this there were decades where gay men and lesbians lived with societal shame, lived with the fear of being arrested, being scandalized. There was decades of this, and we had mental health professionals who were trying to find out the reason why so they could find a cure, once they found out what made people gay. So you’ve got decades of the self-loathing, of the fear, of the full shame, and everything. That’s not healthy!

T: Right.

A: So you a have a generation, a couple of generations of people who are living with some self image problems, which are playing out in their relationships, in their – god forbid I’m going to use the word lifestyle.

[laughter]

A: But that was the way it was. Finally, a little bit of freedom comes after stonewall rights and the uprisings of 69, and there are more gay bars, there are more meetings, so finally they’re finding each other, you know? And men, particularly, the way that they’re sexually made – and I’m going to stereotype here. Men can have a very strong sexual appetite, and it’s frequently about relief, and it can be fairly instantaneous, so when you start finding it’s freely available, there’s going to be lots of activity – which then people go oh my god, they’re so promiscuous. No, you’ve got two willing partners.

S: Right. Well you know Anthony, when I got out of my first marriage and – I don’t know, you probably haven’t listened to Tracey and I’s Virgins and Volcanos, that’s our whole journey through purity culture and coming out the other side, but I’m not in this marriage anymore, I’m in my early 40s, and I’m going to go have some fucking fun. My lifestyle was, I’m gonna have fun, and I did. I was smart about it, and safe about it, and up front with partners saying hey, I’m just looking for fun and friendship. It was just me exploring who I am because I’m just finding freedom, and it’s no different if you’re homosexual or heterosexual. If you’ve been suppressed, and if you’ve been shoving down the essence of who you are, when you get a moment of freedom it’s going to bubble up, and that’s normal. That’s good!

T: So Sharon, were you living the gay old time lifestyle?

[laughter]

S: I was having a gay old time!

A: I would just like to pronounce a blessing over your lifestyle.

[laughter]

S: Thank you!

A: Go and explore, sister.

S: Thank you. Well, I have since settled down again and very happy, but I don’t regret any of it. It was a wonderful time of my life.

A: Can I just make an important point here – to note, in the 50s and 60s the mental health professionals making all their judgements and theories about homosexuals, was that they were always dealing with people who were tortured. They were always dealing with people who were tortured, who had issues, some of them were prisoners, and they were doing all this theorizing about homosexuality. This is not a healthy community to make your assumptions on.

T&S: Right.

A: And the same thing happened in the church! The only dealing that the church or Christian leaders had was with gay and lesbian people who were tortured about their sexuality, and were having all sorts of issues, so it really clouded the way they viewed it. They didn’t realize there were actually people out there in monogamous relationships, or people that had been together for 50 years, because they didn’t know any of those people. I was told constantly, if you follow this then you will end up lonely desperate people. Relationships don’t last, they’re all bitchy, they’re all nasty, and Tracey, you would have read about when I left the conversion therapy residential program, how I was humiliated by that pastor and told – my sister was told, he’s one of Sydney’s worst homosexuals, and he will never find love, he will never find a relationship that will last. All this was constantly implanted, because that’s all that they knew.

S: You know I want to tell you a parallel. This may sound a little weird, but the study of ethology is the study of animals in their natural environment; how they interact, how they behave, how they relate, when there is no interference from humans, and no environmental constraint. Decades ago, early scientists were looking at various animal behavior, trying to document it, and this whole theory about the alpha wolf, and how there were the relationships and the dominance and the aggression within the wolf pack came out of the observation that was done with captive wolves. Captive wolves that were not related to one another, that were put together in a big enclosure, and then looking at how they behaved with one another. It was totally artificial, because the aggression, the disputes – whole ways in which they behaved, was because they weren’t in their natural family units that they would be in the wild. As an Equine Behavior consultant I see this as well. We see this all the time with horses, because free ranging horses would be travelling 10 plus miles a day and they would form their own bands they way they want them, and they would be able to move away from one another, and they wouldn’t have limited resources. So aggression between horses in the wild – other than stallions competing for mares, for breeding rights – is very, very minimal. But in domestic herd situations you can see a lot of aggression and a lot of injuries, and it’s wrong to assume that is natural horse behavior. No. That is the behavior of horses who have had an artificial and unhealthy environment imposed upon them. So I think you’re basically talking about a very similar phenomenon, when they’re trying to study and look at ok, this is our population of homosexuals that we’re gonna say look at how they’re living, and look at how their emotional health is, but you’re not looking at the full population. You’re looking at a small segment that have been subjected to artificial and poor welfare situations.

T: Yeah. That’s really good.

A: Mmm.

T: That’s really good, and you’re looking at the population who has had society betray them over, and over again. So we created the very unhealthy environment of rejection, then we study them and say look, see? They’re unhappy.

S: Mmm. That brings me to this next thing that I want to read from this article, and the interesting thing is – it’s coming from the article I’m Gay, Ok but in that article he’s actually quoting from another source, which was Two of Me by David Wilkerson. Here’s the quote. “Some of my best friends have committed suicide. I feel terribly sad when all alone, even when I have no reason to feel that way.” Again – this is what we’re just talking about. People who are isolated, who have been rejected and ostracized by society, by family, by church – who have been told that the core of who they are is an abomination to God and man? Well, shit yeah, they’re going to feel terribly sad. And sometimes, understandably, suicidal, because how else do you escape the pain.

A: That’s exactly what happens. Today, of course, we have marriage equality, we have diversity inclusion programs – we’ve made some really, really important progress, but if you’ve come from certain cultures, certain races, if your family or also not just your family but also the culture that you’ve grown up in – these are the things that will put people almost back where we were 20-40 years ago, they can’t come out. Religion is involved, culture, where they live geographically, and even sometimes a race of people. We live in a multi-cultural society here in Australia. Very multi-cultural, and it’s relatively successful; our problems are with certain cultures, with certain people, and religion. For some people, they’ve got all those things together, so there is that unhealthy environment once again, which impacting them psychologically. So sometimes, like all of us, we get friend requests on Facebook. I don’t automatically delete them, I check do we have friends in common, etc, so I got this email from a guy from the US, by the name of Matt. I said I don’t add people automatically, just wondering why, and he wrote back, and he said I just wanted to you to know that you are an inspiration to me. Between 14 and 30 I tried to get rid of the gay by ex-gay conversion therapy programs. I did informal programs with my pastors and read a lot of awful books about homosexuality – being a sinner and abomination, etc. I also did a six week at Love Wins, a program of Exodus International. I’ve always been taught God hates me. When I turned 30 I realized the futility of all these efforts. Around 32-33, I became happy that I was gay. I’m now 34. Half of my life does seem wasted. Reading your book, A Life of Unlearning really assisted my mental health, and acceptance for myself in a very tangible way. I used to be on six anti-psychotic drugs; I’m now on only one mild anti-depressant. Thank you. It truly did help. I made a lot of friends in my years of conversion therapy. Out of 40, only six are still alive.

S: [gasping in horror]

A: One died naturally, the rest suicide. Your book gave me hope.

S: Oh my god.

T: Mmmm.

A: Yeah, we will never, ever be able to count the cost of these lies about sexuality, and the impact it’s had on people’s mental health, but on the lives that have been lost. If you’re in a church – how many churches are there where somebody has committed suicide, and maybe they’ve put in a note that they were struggling with their sexuality – are the parents going to talk about that? No. Is the pastor going to talk about it? No. It will be brushed underneath the carpet. It’s shocking. People don’t know, that’s why we had to ban conversion therapy.

T: Yes.

A: It destroys people’s lives.

T: Yes. And that’s why this – it’s so hard to know that we were once a part of spreading this propaganda that had such devastating consequences.

S: Yeah.

T: We started off earlier – it’s inadequate to be able to apologize for this stuff, because how many got this article into their hands and of course, as you said there’s so many things that are written out there that kind of say the same thing. But yeah – that we had a part, that I ever had a part in the propaganda of this – it breaks my soul, Anthony.

A: Yeah. Yep.

S: Hey Anthony, I just want to tell you personally, I am really sorry that we perpetrated this horrible, horrible stuff on you and others, and I just want to ask your forgiveness.

A: That’s very special. Very special. I’ve had the privilege of being involved in a number of apologies that people have wanted . We had 100 ministers here in Sydney sign an apology to the LGBT community for the way they’d been treated, and marched in our Mardi-gras parade, which is like your Pride parades. People gave them standing ovations; people were weeping on the sides, and in the crowds, people had never heard that – we are sorry. We are so sorry. We were wrong. And how many more denominations – the denomination I was ordained with, the Assemblies of God, now known as Australian Christian Churches – have buried their heads in the sand and in their churches there are young people still struggling, of course. There are young kids which are coming to this point right now when they’re beginning to realize I’m different. I’ve fallen in love with my best friend, oh my god, I’ve never heard a positive thing about these gay people. What’s going to happen to me? And it’ll be a secret journey, until they tell somebody in the church, and then of course what will happen? We have a special ministry in the church to look after you, and we will be praying for you, and if it’s a demon we’ll get rid of it. If it’s inner healing you need, we’ll deal with that. In many circles it’s still going on, and I would reach out to them out if they’re listening and say, will you please do something, because you are killing people with your error and with your lies. The enemy is ignorance. Educate yourself.

S: Thank you Anthony.

T: Yes.

A: And thank you.

T: Thank you for the work that you’re doing. It’s beautiful that you have a testimony out there that can speak to those preachers, because you also were a preacher. I hope that there are people who are going to churches that are listening to this. Most of our listeners have deconstructed, but they’re involved in some out there, and we hope they become active and involved and say yes, make it a safe space, make it a safe zone.

A: Yep, and I’m sure you’ll have our website on your pages.

S: Absolutely.

A: We have resources, we do seminars, we do workshops, if anyone is out there and not really sure about this, whether they’re a pastor, church leader – honestly, we can have a very respectful conversation about this. There’s no attacking, there’s no blaming, there’s no judgement. If you want to talk, you will find a safe space with me, to do this journey. As I said, the enemy is ignorance, and that’s what we need to do – overcome that ignorance with some facts and knowledge, and I’m more than prepared to sit down and have conversations with you, and help you any way I can, to become more informed and aware.

S: That’s beautiful.

…

S: Wow, wow, wow. The enemy is ignorance.

T: Yes. The enemy is ignorance. You know, the beautiful thing is that anyone with truly an open heart can learn – like us, right? And we can eventually be a part of the solution. You know, the whole thing about an open heart, open mind – that was something that was actually used as an accusation to me when I first started deconstructing. Someone from our old church circles basically said well, now you’re just starting to have an open mind.

[laughter]

S: Oh god.

T: And that was an insult!

S: Right. That is so crazy.

T: It is. It’s like,  I had mentioned earlier, in this sphere it’s like all the definitions are upside down and turned inside out.

S: Oh yeah. Yeah.

T: But to have an open and inclusive heart is really good news.

S: Yeah. It is. That’s the true good news, isn’t it.

T: Mmhmm.

S: Hey Tracey.

T: Mmhmm?

S: You know what else is really good news?

T: I’m afraid to ask.

[laughter]

T: When you ask it like that, a little afraid to ask.

S: Well, two things. First, number one, I am not a false prophetess, so you don’t have to stone me!

T: Haaa. Hmm, well that is good news for you, because earlier today before we recorded this, I was out in my garden with a lot of garden stones, Sharon, so I could have had some ready.

S: Yep. We went way over the two hours, didn’t we. Oh my god, you know what, I’m going to pull out – do you remember that little tit bit partway through when we were talking and I said – hmmm, we just might …

…

S: I figured we were recording till midnight.

T: Oh Jesus. Ok.

…

T: And listeners, that was the wrong me, because it was late at night. I think Anthony had joked about going 24 hours, and for us to go till midnight I was still facing down four more hours!

[laughter]

T: But you know what? We went almost five.

S: We did, went five hours. So, that brings me to good news number two – there’s a lot more to come. A lot more. So, we continued our conversation with Anthony – really great, deep discussion about this awful Gay Ok article, and then the story of Sy Rogers, and of course the havoc that was brought into so many lives – and, yeah. More stuff we talk about.

T: Yeah, so please stay tuned. As you know, we are never able to be short winded cult sisters, so that is good news because it means instead of our two week schedule, we get to go back to back every week, because we recorded so much.

S: That’s right. For this month. For this month only. And I really want to encourage all of you, please consider sharing this episode with anyone you know who might be struggling with loving themselves for who they really are, or people who struggle with loving others who are different from themselves in any way. And I think Tracey, even for those of us who do already embrace our queer brothers and sisters, there is still so much more for us to learn, so – I don’t know everybody, maybe just share it with everyone?

T: Share it with everyone. And I hope, hope, hope that some of our former LDM communers (how about that for a word) who we know kind of do a dive in from time to time to our episodes…

S: They might dip their toe in the water, I don’t think they’re really diving in to us Tracey, unfortunately.

T: Maybe not diving in, but from things they say I think maybe they’re listening to at least little titbits, so my hope is that this is one that they would actually listen to. There’s so much that I would love for them to hear.

S: That goes back though Tracey, to those open hearts and open minds. I’m not sure they’re there yet.

T: Well, one can hope. One can hope. While we’re talking about sharing, please give us a rating and a review, because that’s the thing that helps our show turn up when people are actually searching for topics like this one.

S: Yes, we appreciate your help in that, everyone. And in our show notes you’re going to find links to Anthony’s organization, Ambassadors and Bridge Builders International, and to his book, A Life of Unlearning, but I’m also going to give it out here right now for those who are just listening. It would be ABBI.org.au, and for the book – really simple, www.alifeofunlearning.com. Nice and easy

T: Oh, he was so gracious. I mean, listeners, he hung with us the whole time. Great. And as always we always appreciate each and every one of you for also hanging with us for so long, and if you’d like to join the conversation with other listeners, please pop over to our Facebook group, it’s Confessions of the Cult Sisters Community.

S: Community. And everyone, Tracey would really appreciate it if you’d follow our Instagram account; feetofclay.cultsisters. Seriously folks, she does some amazing shit there. Really amazing.

T: We look forward to talking to you soon. Until next week.

S: Hugs and kisses everybody! Mwah, mwah, mwah!