October 2001
My name is Jason Sizemore and I am a 25 year old gay Christian. I’d like to share my journey with you. I grew up in a loving Christian family with a caring and loving father and mother, not a distant father and overbearing mother, that so many "professionals" would assume I’d been raised by. My first memory of being "different" is church camp in the 3rd grade where I was "in love" with my teenage male counselor while all of my friends were chasing the girls. A few years later, the sexual urges that began to grow in my changing body, found a place to "play" in my Boy Scout Troop. I wasn’t aware of the fact that sharing myself was considered wrong. I thought it was fun. I thought it was normal.
My only memory of homosexuality being mentioned in the United Methodist Church where I was raised, is a flier that was tucked in our bulletin one Sunday morning. The flier reported that there were a growing number of homosexual men who were becoming part of "unsuspecting" congregations around the country. These men were said to live secret lives that included mutual masturbation with other men and the consumption of each other’s feces. My heart raced and guilt paralyzed my body as I read this. Was this the person I was becoming? Was I a homosexual? Was God mad at me for fooling around with other boys in Boy Scouts? If anyone found out, would I not be allowed to come to my church, a place I spent more evenings in than my own house? Did God send me this message in the bulletin so that I would change what I was doing? I was 12 years old when I was "enlightened" by this flier.
A year later I met a wonderful Christian girl who I would date for seven years and become engaged to. Throughout our years together I struggled with two contradicting thoughts: I loved her and enjoyed the time we spent together, but I couldn’t "shake" my attraction to so many of the boys and men I met each day. I couldn’t help but think of the guys at school who I had crushes on, when I was holding her. I believed I was evil. Included in every prayer I prayed was a plea to God to change me.
During my senior year in college I met a guy who I felt close to. He eventually told me about feelings he had for me. In order to deal with our mutual attraction for each other, we drank. I only felt sane when I was drunk. I could forget about my fiancee and have fun with the guy who seemed to understand me more than anyone else on earth. One drunken night, our partying turned sexual, and our "relationship" began for close to two years.
I called off the wedding claiming that I just wasn’t ready. No one understood because I didn’t give a very clear explanation. I lost my best friend, my fiancee, and many of my friends in the process. I ended up living with the guy I had known for a little over a year, until discovering that he had built all that we had on lies of his own. He had been unfaithful, had been abusing me emotionally, and lied about believing in God, so that I would believe in him.
Throughout that entire period in my life, I constantly felt as though God was angry with me, and disappointed with me because I was acting out on my gay feelings. I wondered if he had given up on me since he never answered my prayer to be changed. I thought that maybe the only way to be "healed" was to announce my "problem" publicly in my church, but I couldn’t do that either. I had talked to my preacher and he told me that I needed to go through a 12 week therapy session with him to become "the man God had intended me to become". I told him I would think about it, and he said "the pressure of the mistake you are making, the mistake of believing that being gay is OK, will cause you to come back to me when you are ready". I never returned.
There is great light at the end of this story! After escaping from the abusive relationship, I began to realize that God had been pushing me away from that situation with that particular guy, but not from living the life he had intended me to live, the life of a gay Christian man.
God sent me a gift. He sent me Bill, the man I have been committed to for the past year and a half. In Bill I have found most importantly, a man of God, as well as honesty, trust, safety, love, encouragement, respect, and healthy comfort. At the conclusion of my other relationship, I told my parents about the issue I had been dealing with since third grade. Initially, they were confused and blamed themselves. We’ve grown, through God’s help, so incredibly close over the last two years. I couldn’t have asked for a more understanding set of parents who believe in who I am.
This past summer I performed a show in NYC called "jasonSongs". It consisted of about an hour of poetry and song lyrics that I began writing in 1994. The writings were a personal journal for myself, a way of getting my feelings out and dealing with who I am. The project is the honest story of how I’ve grown over the past seven years. My poems deal with love, lust, God, family, friends, mistakes, disappointments, dreams, and so much more. Opening up my journal to the audience that night was scary, but the most therapeutic thing I’ve ever done.
My parents attended as well as a group of gay and straight friends. Bill is a director in NY, and he directed the show. Together with God, we created a performance that touched everyone in the room that night. Following the show, I talked to my friends and family. So many had been moved by the message, comforted by the events and struggles that they could relate to. Every gay person who attended, told me they were longing for a place to worship God, a place that supported their Christianity as well as their homosexuality. I shared with them my new understanding, that people have made us feel unwelcome in our churches, not God.
As I continue writing and acting, and as Bill continues directing and creating, our goal is to always spread the goodness that God provides. Although we don’t want to perform or write only "gay plays", we both believe that God has a definite purpose for us. We believe we are to help conquer some of the unfounded hatred towards gays and lesbians and spread the message, as well as set an example, that homosexuals are living moral and Godly lives, committing themselves to their partners, and worshiping their Creator.
Jason Sizemore
Email: jdsnb23@yahoo.com