“Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes”

By Peter Williams

PART I.

I have always had a homosexual orientation from a very young child. When I realized what it was called as a teenager, I would turn every shade of purple and red if I even heard the word homosexual. I was so ashamed of who I was; and, of course, like all teenagers of the ‘60s, dreaded that anyone should ever know I was queer.

I was raised in an SDA pastor’s family and, in my late teens, abandoned all religion to do the typical “bad preacher’s kid” things, such as smoking and dope. As a teenager, I was very withdrawn, mainly because of my orientation issues. I had very few friends except for the few older girls who mothered me in academy. I had a hard time relating to boys until I started doing dope, and then I was finally cool and accepted.

At about 17, I started trying to pick up older men by hanging around in public washrooms. I had two or three experiences that left me terrified and feeling guilty that I would get discovered. So I just buried myself in the dope scene and tried to stay away from sexual encounters.

When I turned 20 in 1971, I finally got up enough courage—once I had left home—to try sex again. I moved to Toronto to live with my grandparents and ended up becoming very involved in the scene. I was extremely active in it for about a year and a half.

When I was 22, I got scared of damnation (probably because of a bad acid flashback) and started going to church again. I quit drugs and sex and straightened my life out. In 1973, I headed off to Alberta and left my past behind for a new Christian life and an education. While at CUC, I met Jesus in a wonderful and new way after a very dark month of depression and near suicide. I quit smoking and was baptized about halfway through the school year. I was riding high on my newfound faith for the rest of the school year.

In the meantime, I met a wonderful woman who I fell for as a friend. We chummed around the entire school year and were inseparable. I had no intentions of ever marrying. For I knew I was gay, even though I had been converted. But somehow I thought God could change me. My friend and I got along so well that we ended up getting married in 1974.

We had a wonderful relationship in every way, and our relationship was especially deeply spiritual; the only area that was ever a problem was sex. I could make love to her, but it was like trying to push through a wall—kind of like when you try to push magnets with the same polarity together. I was still bothered by gay feelings but buried them deeply and never discussed them. I would perform my sexual duty and then try to run away for as long as I could before doing it again.

Soon I was getting even more deeply spiritual; and anyone from my church would say that I was the most wonderful spiritual Christian they ever knew. I actively supported the church in every way and even brought people into the fold by my wonderful witness. My marriage relationship grew, and we were very close in every way—except for the sexual area.

In the late ’70s, I went through a major depression. I was incapable of holding down a job for about two years. I was an emotional basket case. I read the Bible constantly and read almost every E.G. White book ever published. I tried everything I could to get out of my depression. My wife would come home from work and I would literally be curled up in a ball on the floor, hugging a pillow, sobbing, crying, and groaning somewhere under the quilt over my head. I threw out everything from the house that had anything secular or pagan attached to it, like Christmas tree decorations, and classical music tapes with titles that might say something about wine or dancing.

The entire time I was wrestling with my “sinful” gay feelings and pleading with God to save me from this terrible demon which haunted me day and night. I grew out a beard so I wouldn’t have to shave and look at myself in the mirror. I took very few baths and always with lots of bubbles, so I wouldn’t see myself naked. I would go swimming—which I love—in remote lakes where I wouldn’t see a man; and I would only swim with long shorts and a T-shirt. I don’t think I saw my body for about two years.

I spent at least five or six hours a day reading the Bible and E. G. White, and the rest of the time praying for deliverance. I would go fasting for days; at one time was down to about 125 pounds, and I am 6 ft. 1 in.

In the summer of 1979, I went to BC camp meeting and had about 17 demons cast out of me by a pastor and team who were into this ministry. It was so wrenching that I thought I would die. My tormented soul, however, found no rest; and I knew without a doubt I was damned. This horrible thought tormented me day and night. I was so tormented that I could barely even carry on a conversation. I was still gay but refused to accept it. I continued to cry day and night for deliverance from this for about three years. No one knew what the issue was.

In the early ‘80s, I finally adjusted to the constant wrenching psychic pain and forced myself to work again. I started accepting the fact that I was damned; but I got even more intensely involved in the SDA church to maybe prove to God I was okay after all.

In 1986, I was finishing up an apprenticeship as a funeral director and had to go to Vancouver to school for six weeks. I was absolutely terrified to go to a big city as I had literally holed up in a small, conservative farming community in interior BC for nine years. I wouldn’t travel to any big cities, as they were surely too sinful.

My wife literally had to force me on the bus to go. Lo and behold, if I wasn’t sitting next to a gay man the entire trip down! As I am a people person, I actually talked to him. I had a delightful conversation with him about his family and kids, and he told me how and why he had left his marriage.

Vancouver was a breath of fresh air. I got down there and realized it was a great city (I always was an urbanite). My spirit started to open up with the new experiences. By the time I got home, I knew I had to move out of that stagnant, stale, narrow town and widen my world. Within four months, we had moved to Vancouver.

I started to heal; one of the first things I did was look up a Christian support group for queers. It was a “change” type of ministry run by a former homo who was happily married, with children. I met some great guys, some of whom are still in touch with me. This is when I started to heal, for now finally the fact I was queer was “out” to me, anyway. Of course, I was working on changing it; at least I was talking about it and associating with other gay guys who had so much in common with me (we all wanted to change).

The year of 1986 was the turning point for me. This change ministry was indeed helping me heal. But it did not change that fact I was gay; it only helped me to admit it and bring it to the surface again, so I was no longer the emotional wreck I had been when I was burying it so deeply. I had finally come to accept the things I cannot change and had the wisdom to know the difference. I admitted to myself once again that I was indeed queer; and from then on, I started a slow healing process. The demons, at last, were losing their power.

The man who ran this ministry has, since that time, jumped back into the gay scene with a vengeance. He left behind a broken wife and children, for he is now dead from AIDS.

In late 1987, we moved to the Yukon. After about a year, I started attending The United Church, as the SDA church here was very cold and I did not fit in. I was too “gay acting” and from the big city. In 1990, I had my membership transferred to the United Church of Canada where I am still a member. Shortly after this, I became their organist. In the meantime, I was moving slowly to fully embrace myself as a gay man. Joining the United Church was a significant step in my self-acceptance, as they accept homosexuals, even in the ministry. Our current pastor (since 1993) is gay and in a monogamous relationship; so I feel safe and accepted in this church, and it is now my home. Remember, I am already one of the “damned” so it really doesn’t matter that I go to church on Sunday.

I started to not only accept myself, but I realized the Creator had made me extremely creative and talented; perhaps being gay was just one of the added benefits of being a creative spirit. As I came to this deeper level of acceptance, I started to compose music. My creativity started to gush forth as never before. I was growing more comfortable with myself; and the more comfortable I became, the more creative I became. I realized I was caught up in a true change ministry, as I was slowly changing into a beautiful, creative, very sensitive and loving gay man. I started to like myself and started to thank the Creator for making me so unique. The more I grew to like myself, the more love I had to give others, and the more the music poured forth.

Do I believe in change? Absolutely! The Creator changed me from a wretched, damned, trembling, emotional wreck and has turned me into a loving, caring, accepting, creative, happy queer man. My heart is so full of gratitude and praise for delivering me from the demons that whispered to me that being homosexual was a sin, that my heart wants to explode; and I cannot help but pour forth in hymns of praise! I have written over 75 “church” hymns and songs. I had to force myself to stop for a bit as my hearing was suffering from having headphones on continually.

This is not the end of my journey. In the summer of 1998, I had some experiences on a two-week holiday in Toronto that allowed me finally to come out fully and completely here in my home community. This process is healed me at even a deeper level than I ever thought possible as I came to fully celebrate the wonderful gift and uniqueness of being queer. I love that Q word!

I discovered that, for me, the secret for genuine change and growth, and spiritual, emotional, and relationship healing, is simply coming out! It was the best, kindest, and most loving thing I have ever done for myself! How could it have taken me 47 years to finally get here? Behold all things are made new!

I am shouting from the mountains the good news—the Creator can change me from a codependent, clinging, insecure, fearful, self-hating child, to a fully mature, loving, centered and very-proud-to-be-gay man.

PART II.

Toronto was where I had lived in the early ‘70s and was very active in the gay scene. I had moved west in 1973 to attend school at CUC in Alberta. This is where I met the lovely woman who is now my wife, as I explained in Part I of my story. I had been back to Toronto only twice since the end of the ‘70’s and had forgotten how much I loved that city.

I went down on a last-minute whim to meet my mom and sister who were traveling through there from Boston to see all the relatives in S. Ontario where most of my family lives; they were celebrating their 70th and 40th birthdays by visiting relatives. I thought I’d fly down to surprise them. I had a wonderful time drinking in the human beauty of this most multicultural city in the world. I love diversity with a passion!

From the minute I got off the plane and on to the subway, I knew I was home. I met so many wonderful people. I didn’t realize until I got there that my spirit was so dried up that I had nothing more to give; and my thirsty soul drank deeply of the plethora of sight, sound, and cultures. The more my spirit drank, the more I could open myself to everyone I met. Being all alone, I had no one to relate to except the person sitting beside me on the streetcar or the squeegee kid standing on the corner waiting to wash car windows when the light turned red. I connected with the complete range of humanity—poets, philosophers, street kids, new immigrants, and—most wonderfully—gay men.

I was staying in the gay area of Toronto by choice, as I wanted to experience the community there. I did the family thing; when my mom and sister left to go back to Boston, I changed my ticket to stay longer, since I was having such a rich time there.

One day I was walking through a park in the gay ghetto, and I chanced upon the AIDS memorial in the park there. I was overcome with emotion as I stood there reading the names and wondering if any of those were men I had had sex with in the early ‘70s when I lived there. Suddenly I had this overwhelming feeling, like the Creator was standing next to me and saying, “Here you are today, a living, breathing man. Your name should have been up there, but I had work for you to do. Here you are today, a gifted composer, and alive; if you hadn’t gotten married, you would have come back here and ended up in the gay scene again and today be up there as a name on a monument.” I was overwhelmed.

About that time I was standing in front of that monument, my wife Erin, back home in Whitehorse, was writing me a letter. She read it to me that night on the phone when I called her.

In it, she told me something that she had never told me this before. A few months before she married me she had had a vision in which she saw a long black tunnel with a very faint glimmer of light at the end. She was told she had to go through it. It was revealed to her that the tunnel meant she must marry me (a gay man)—she knew I was gay. She was left crying prostrate on the floor and couldn’t get up for two hours after this vision. She continued in her letter: “I know now I was sent to save your life, but now the tunnel is behind and I must let you go. It is safe now to let you go, and it is okay. Your life has been spared, and now you must make a choice and walk free.” She was crying as she read it to me over the phone, and I was struck like a lightning bolt had hit me.

I always get cold feet before I leave on a trip, and I had wanted to cancel this one at the last minute. But Erin had told me before I left, “I don’t know why I feel this way, but you have to go on this trip. There is a destiny in this trip for you and you will never be the same when you return.” (She always has been one step ahead of me.)

That same night, I met Ross. This is how it happened.

I was standing outside the door of a bath house on Monday night, wondering if I should go in and look around for a while. (I liked to go look but did not have sex when I was in a bathhouse, as I respected my marriage.) I had just decided not to bother and was going to head back to my hotel, when a man came out. I asked him what the scene was like in there and if it was busy. He was a very welcoming spirit and obviously had just had his fill, so he was not looking for a pickup. I told him I had been in one of the other bath houses a few nights before and hated it and found that the Toronto gay scene had a real attitude. He agreed with me.

We ended up standing and talking for about 15 minutes. Somewhere in the conversation, he said he didn’t drink, so didn’t do the bar scene; and I said, “Neither do I.” Then I said something about “one day at a time,” and he asked me if I was into AA. I said, “I am,” although I hadn’t gone to many meetings in the past few years; and, of course, so was he. So, after a bit more conversation, I asked him if he wanted to go grab a coffee. Thus was the start of what turned out to be a very wonderful five days.

Ross was 47, Caucasian, about my height and build, looks much older than I do although we are only four months apart in age, and is a deeply spiritual, caring man. He was married for 22 years and has two teenage sons. He did a lot of volunteer work and worked part time in the insurance industry, earning a very modest income. He had MS and was slightly handicapped because of it. He walked with a slight limp and his face was not perfectly balanced. We found we were very compatible. He was the type of guy who will stop and give a panhandler something. He was very approachable and very much in love with life and humanity, as am I.

I was supposed to leave the next day but had flown down on points so I could easily change my ticket for no charge. I put off my departure “one day at a time” and didn’t end up leaving Toronto until Saturday.

We met for supper Tuesday night. We went to a gay-friendly AA meeting Wednesday night. And on Thursday evening he took me to a “Gay Fathers” meeting. I walked into that room and felt the beautiful welcoming spirit of about 40 mature gay men with a balanced focus on life and their sexuality. It was a very spiritual and helpful meeting; and I felt so much a part of something healthy and good, not the spirit of the flighty gay bar scene crowd which I detest. After the meeting, we went out for coffee; I could hear a lot of stories. I met some great men, just solid, mature normal men who happened to be gay. I admit I, too, had bought into the stereotype of most queers as flighty bar flies looking for a quick blow job.

One fellow at the meeting mentioned that MCC was having a 25th anniversary celebration service on Friday night. I thought, “Good! I’ll change my ticket for Saturday so I can go.”

Well, that was the icing on the cake! I walked into that church and was immediately made to feel so welcome that I could hardly believe it. And if there weren’t a couple of guys I had met at the “Gay Fathers” the night before! They asked me to sit by them. I literally sobbed my way through the entire service. It was so moving; I have never heard any congregation sing with such depth of feeling. They were singing the song of their acceptance found in that sacred place after undoubtedly years of rejection and pain. They simply glowed with joy and love.

I said to the guy sitting next to me, “I didn’t bring my Kleenex box.” They had one there for me in seconds. Turns out, Kleenex boxes are stationed at the end of every row! It was the most moving service I have ever experienced in my life. When they closed with, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul’,” I must have used up half the box, as I sobbed along every word perfectly from memory. I could have never seen the words anyway through all the tears!

Afterwards, I said, “I don’t know what got into me. I was just a bucket of tears.” They waved their hands and said, “Oh, we all did that the first time we came to church here. Why do you think we have Kleenex boxes at the end of every row?” I knew I was home!

I met Ross again for coffee after MCC, as he was working on one of his volunteer jobs and couldn’t attend with me. He ended up coming back to my hotel room where we spent the entire night talking, talking, and talking. I had to leave the next morning, and we knew we had to spend every minute of that countdown time together. By then we were so strongly drawn to each we could hardly stand it; but we kept chatting on and on. Finally I said, “What is happening here?” We fell into each other’s arms in helpless surrender to our longings and held each other in a sweet embrace. We knew we were hopelessly in love.

We did not have sex. He respected my boundaries, which were crying to be torn away. Instead, we just sat and held and comforted each other in our arms. He and I have both felt nothing like this for anyone else ever in our lives. We both felt the presence of the God of love there in such an intense way that we were both in awe.

He ended up coming with me to the airport. We hugged and kissed as I prepared to go through that dark gate which rends loved ones from our sight in those cold airport surroundings, not caring in the least who saw or what anyone thought! I cried for over an hour on the plane and they must have thought I was going to a funeral! After I got home, Ross phoned, and he told me he went into the washroom and was crying so badly after I left that someone asked him if he was okay.

In our first phone conversation, which lasted about 90 minutes, we spent about two-thirds of the time discussing spiritual things. He told me he had never felt like that about anyone ever before. (Remember, he, too, had been married.) He told me that before he met me, he would have had to spell the word “monogamy” since he was so opposed to it he wouldn’t say it. He told me he had never respected someone’s boundaries and put aside his own selfish agenda and put someone else’s welfare before his own. He told me he had felt the presence of God in the room with us as we hugged and held each other. He asked me if I was into some weird cult because he had met no one as deep as I was. He said he has been so full of love to everyone since that time that it is just spilling over everywhere to everyone he meets. He said he told his housemate, who is the manager of one of the popular bathhouses in Toronto, “I think you’ve lost a customer!”

And the strange thing was I felt exactly the same way. I no longer was drawn to surfing porn channels on the Internet. I looked at men differently, not with lust, but with appreciation and love. I had no desire to cruise or have a quick sex fix. My love cup was filled with that deep and total bond between Ross and me. And although we never had sex with each other, I was fully satisfied. I had finally loved and had been loved!

This experience showed to my heart as never before the power of genuine love to change me. I was a new man. Could the Creator have ever used a woman to reach me with love at this level? I have the most wonderful, tender, and caring wife imaginable. She sacrificed 24 years of her prime to save my life, but am I not capable of loving her on this complete level. I know the creator put Ross and me together to bring healing to my long battered spirit, and to help me accept myself finally totally and completely as a gay man.

That night I phoned Erin from my hotel room in Regina where I had stopped to see my grandmother on the way home. Erin said she was releasing me from the expectations of being a husband and would no longer have any sex with me. I felt a deep knife slowly extracting itself from my troubled, weary heart. It was a knife that had been there for 24 years, holding me down to the expectations of a wife toward a husband who could never possibly perform to the “standard.” It felt so wonderful that I would never again have to play games in a role that was false. Never again would I have that deep underlying anxiousness about filling her needs as a hetero husband would do naturally in a way I never really could, though I tried so hard to be that kind of man for her for all those years.

I wept and wept and knew I was really free. I felt such a peace and joy afterward. I wanted to dance around the room and ended up before the mirror, standing naked, hard, eyes glowing in a way that I have never seen, much less imagined. I was free! I was at last in touch with the real me! I was no longer fragmented, anxious, or troubled, but perfectly free. I had finally realized that, as long as I was rejecting who I really am, I was actually rejecting the Creator who created me the way I am.

I came out fully and completely in that two weeks. For the first time in my life, I felt like a real mature adult man and not a clinging codependent little boy! It was wonderful. And, in that coming out process, the love and joy I felt left behind all the compulsions. I felt so full and accepting of myself that I did not need those things to fill that void to feel whole. I had been changed and had been made whole by a miracle of God’s grace. It is a grace that had always accepted me just as I am, but that I refused to accept or believe. It took a gentle, handicapped man to lead me to accept that grace. God truly uses the weak things to confound the wise!!

That Monday evening, I came home to a new woman, fully centered in freedom of her new womanhood. I was stunned when she came to pick me up at the airport. She looked so different, so free, so confident, so charming, and beautiful. I had never seen her glow so wonderfully. And she was so full of the most incredible love that I could hardly believe it. The resents and hidden angers and frustrations were gone. We fell into each other’s arms as precious friends who hadn’t seen each other for years. But there was absolutely no sexual arousal for either of us in this tender exchange.

I came home a new man, proudly wearing a black T-shirt that said “Queerly Canadian” below a row of six little maple leaves in each of the rainbow colors, and a ball cap with the rainbow colors in little squares and rectangles of different sizes and shapes in an attractive arrangement. I left a child; I returned a man for the first time in my life!

She left that Thursday to go to a week-long intensive live-in counseling and therapy session. But, during the three days from the time I got home until she left, we had the most wonderful, deeply caring, loving, and harmonious relationship we had ever had between us in all those 24 years. We could finally be fully honest and accepting of each other. There were no games, no expectations—just perfect love and harmony. She will always be my best friend; but I knew I had to release her as well and let her find that beautiful, caring, hetero man who could truly love her fully. This pain was something we had both carried with us for 24 years. I feel sorry for any woman who is married to a gay man; for the journey and the end are only pain, for the woman as well as the man. Fortunately, we had no children to harm as well.

The night ended and the dancing day dawned, but we will never look back in regret. After all the things that happened in that two weeks, there was no doubt that there was a Creator behind all these “chance” happenings. The timing was perfect; we were both ready for the change at that point. Had I not gone to Toronto and Erin had come back from her treatment with the message, “It is over,” I know my old childish self well enough to know that I would have killed myself.

Erin had lost faith in God years ago. For the first time in many years, she said something to me about God’s leading. I smiled and said, “I think I just heard that ‘God’ word from you.” She said, “Yes, I believe, once again, there is a God.” I was so thankful that her faith had finally been restored through all this. Mine had been deepened as never before.

We took the next year to ease through the transition of separating gently and slowly as a married couple, but we will be the closer forever. Realness and honesty are ties that ever bind more deeply than any piece of paper on a human-printed marriage certificate.

I know now I am alive because of the Creator’s direct intervention in my life. All I want to do with the rest of my life is to be a channel of peace to the world as the beautiful, caring, loving, creative, gay man I am.

Yes, I believe in miracles, and I believe in change! Count me in on those change ministries! But I’m all for joining the one directed by the Creator. I am proud, grateful, and extremely happy to finally be really me! Thanks to all of you who have helped support me on my journey. This is a great fellowship for which I am deeply grateful.

Peter Williams is a pseudonym.