GCN Radio - October 27, 2004
Transcribed by Vombatus

To listen to this episode, visit http://www.gaychristian.net/gcnradio

[GCN Radio Intro]

BRIAN: Thank you for joining us today. I was just kind of thinking a little bit, Justin, about what’s happening in our country right now. As we’re taping this we are less than two weeks away from an election.

JUSTIN: Hmmm… Yes.

BRIAN: And I know that, at least where I am and maybe where you are too, everything on radio and TV is a political ad. Everything is, “I am such-and-such a candidate, and I approve this message.”

JUSTIN: Yup!

BRIAN: It’s just everything, right in a row… not to mention the national races, but local races as well, and I ask myself, “Boy, I really hope God is a part of this, somewhere.” Because I think when we vote in this election going to be a real act of faith and an act of prayer, of whomever we’re electing no matter what the race.

JUSTIN: Yeah, and you know, my prayer is not just that God’s will is done in this election, but that whoever wins, in these various races, that we’ll be able to support those people and that God will be able to guide those people. Because no matter who wins these elections, there’re going to be people that voted against them and that didn’t feel they were the best candidate for the job. And so I think we’re just going to have to continue to pray that no matter who gets elected that God’s blessing is going to be on us as a nation and on these folks to have wisdom in making good decisions.

BRIAN: I hope so.

JUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. I am looking forward, though, to not having the negative attack ads.

BRIAN: Well, the next thing we’re going to be at Christmas. After the election it’ll be time for Christmas advertising.

JUSTIN: Well, it’s already time for Christmas decorations in the stores! We haven’t even had Halloween yet and all the stores have Christmas trees and stuff. What is that about?!

BRIAN: This is the first time I’m buying a Christmas tree, so I’m actually happy that there are some decorations out there to give me some ideas.

JUSTIN: Are you?

BRIAN: But, at the same time, it is slightly early, I have to admit.

JUSTIN: Just a little bit. I’m surprised they don’t put them up in June.

BRIAN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Well, you know, we have different kinds of guests on the show, and its always interesting, Brian, when you and I are talking about who we’re going to have on the show next…

BRIAN: Who’re we going to draw out of the magic GCN basket to be on our show? For them to subject themselves to our abuse…

JUSTIN: I think it’s really interesting that we’re able to have such a variety of guests, because we’ve had guests who are well known figures in the gay world, in the Christian world. But we’ve also had a chance to have individuals who maybe the whole country doesn’t know who they are, but they are people who have interesting stories and testimonies. We get a lot of requests for those kind of shows… some people worry sometimes that we’re going to abandon those shows altogether, but we’re not. And I was talking to someone recently, and she’s a woman who came across GCN—she just sort of stumbled across it—and was really enjoying our show and contacted me and wanted a chance to share some of her testimony. And I think that she’s got such an interesting story and has been through interesting stuff and so we’ve got her on the show today. It’s Sherri Cheeseboro from… I’ve forgotten where you’re from! Where are you from, Sherri?

SHERRI: The Bay area in California.

BRIAN: Wow, so we’re doing one of those three time-zone shows where it’s a different time for all three of us.

JUSTIN: Well, welcome to the show, Sherri.

SHERRI: Thank you. I might say ‘dude’ a lot, so just don’t hold that against me.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

BRIAN: Oh, no one else here does, of course!

JUSTIN: [continues laughing] Oh, you missed that one. We had a whole discussion about how much I say ‘dude’.

SHERRI: You know it’s funny. As I was preparing to come on the show today I was thinking about it all day and I got two e-mails from my cousin. And I have to say, my cousin lives back east, which is where I’m from originally, and she and I get along fine, but we don’t stay in great contact. In fact, I know we haven’t e-mailed this year at all, maybe it’s been two years, and all of a sudden today—the day I’m doing this interview—I get two e-mails from her this afternoon both talking about the ‘horrors of the gay community’. They weren’t addressed to me specifically, it was a bunch of people she sent it to. And one of them was about the, “you won’t believe this when you click on it! It’s the truth behind Proctor and Gamble and it’s horrific!” And it’s about how Proctor & Gamble had this one commercial or something with two guys in it, or whatever, and of course the commentary was “they’re spreading the gay agenda” and I though, “What is the gay agenda?” I have a Palm Pilot™ that has my calendar on it… is that the gay agenda? What is all this rhetoric that’s used, but I really don’t even know what it means. I think we just, all of a sudden on both sides of whatever fence we’re on, we just believe the rhetoric and we just use it, and I’m thinking, I just want to know what is the gay agenda?

JUSTIN: Yeah.

SHERRI: But I thought that that was kind of bizarre that I got those two e-mails from her today, it was interesting.

JUSTIN: We hear that a lot from both sides of the fence, whether it’s in politics or theology or social issues, that the other side has some kind of evil agenda or that there’s some conspiracy. Now, are you out to your cousin?

SHERRI: Yes, I told her…actually, she’s one of the first people I told when I was a teenager. We were relatively close then, she’s just a few years younger than me. I don’t know how much she’s thought about it, so I didn’t take it like a personal attack at all or anything. We’re both Christian and we went to the same church and so I assumed that this was just one of those kind of things that she’s sending out to people, and probably because of the different things about gay marriage that have been in the news.

BRIAN: You told us in an e-mail that you’ve been out for quite some time. Tell us a little bit about your journey over the past decade or two that you’ve been out.

SHERRI: You know it’s funny, as I was thinking about this, I thought, you know, my life, in a way, as a Christian I can divide into sort of three categories: the beginning, the middle, and the end/future, which is where I’m at now. The beginning is that I came to faith through street witnessing at age sixteen. I don’t know why—I guess it’s because I already knew that I was gay, and I’d already had a crush on a girl at school—I wanted to ask the people that led me to faith, I had a born-again experience, you know, I had this one little question. It’s probably one of the, “Well, it’s not me, but a friend of mine (you know) is gay. Is there anything in the Bible that says it’s wrong?” They took me to Romans 1. They didn’t take me to Sodom and Gomorrah, they took me to Romans 1, which has always been this serious, hard-core passage for me that has been difficult. That was the starting point of probably a lot of self-hatred and feeling condemned by God and it really shaped my view of my life as a Christian. Basically the passage, and their commentary, which was “It’s wrong. Period. And so you need to de-gay yourself.” That’s what I’m thinking. And so I know it’s no wonder that I really couldn’t quite get God’s love for me for years, and ultimately sort of back-slid, but that come further in the story.

JUSTIN: Hmmm… so you ended up in ex-gay ministries?

SHERRI: Yeah. [laughs]

JUSTIN: What? You’re laughing!

SHERRI: Because it’s really lots of them. I had five different counselors, much because of my friends, who loved me and I was in Bible study and they’re like, “You need help, you need to change. We love you. You can see a therapist.” But since one didn’t work, I’d go to a different one… it was just nuts. You know, just trying to figure out— Nothing was changing me, so we discovered these Exodus ministries. And I can honestly say that I’ve been to some Exodus-type ministry in five different states. So if that’s not trying, I don’t know what is. I even went to one that was called Homosexuals Anonymous. I just remember driving from where I lived in Pennsylvania in the dark to this place for what felt like this dry experience where we would—it was literal modeled after the 12-step program, so it was “you have to admit that you’re homosexual and that you’re powerless to change it.” And it’s really comic when I think about it now, but I was sincere and I thought if this isn’t the way I’m supposed to be, then I’ll do whatever it takes to change. Now ironically, I thought about that same thing recently and said, “Now wait a second, Sherri, if it’s something that’s supposed to change, am I the one that is supposed to change me, or would it be God bringing the healing?” And I feel like a lot of what I was doing, which was well intentioned, was about me trying to change something in myself and that can’t happen on my own. And if it really is wrong, then it has to be the Lord to do it. Clearly that hasn’t happened, and I obviously was praying and everything. But yes, I’ve been to a ton of these ministries and I’d run into people at gay bars when I would quote-unquote “fall” and not go to the program, and then I’d run into people and think, “I know you from somewhere.” And then we’d look at each other and realize, “Oh, Yeah, Exodus.” We were like, “I won’t tell if you won’t tell”, and then we’d be “Oh, look, there’s another one!” And it was really like that and it was weird and I thought, this isn’t working. So I would just try another program after another program in another little area, and again, nothing was changing. And I have to say, it was kind of depressing being at different ministries. I remember going there thinking, this is what I need to do, I guess, but I always felt like it was a dark time. I don’t know, I never felt that good about being there even though I tried to fit in. And I would read the literature… I kind of do everything with all of my heart, so I was doing it with all my heart. I remember feeling that I thought so much about being gay because I was constantly trying to de-gay myself. It was like an obsession, and I thought, “This is weird,” so, I don’t know…

JUSTIN: Yeah, the ex-gay thing is something that comes up over and over and over for our community. Brain, we’ve had this come up so many times already on GCN Radio. But it’s something that’s on a lot of people’s minds because I think so many of us grow up in the church, or don’t but know we’re gay and come to the church, and either way the church says, in many cases, unfortunately, “If you want to come to Christ, first you have to be straight.” Or, that as soon as you come to Christ you’re going to become straight, somehow. So there’s so much emphasis on trying to become straight, and so people try these ministries and get involved. And the folks there, they’re well-intentioned, but I think your story and so many others that I’ve heard and people that I’ve talked to directly when I’ve gone to these ministries and talked to folks, it’s… the story that you hear on the conservative Christian radio station or when someone comes to your church and speaks and says, “Oh, I used to be gay and I’m not anymore.”, it’s not the whole story.

SHERRI: Right, right.

JUSTIN: You know? They have this public image of how well it all works and everything, but then, as you were saying, you meet these people and then you see them at the gay bar. Or even if they’re not at the gay bar, they’re still dealing with all kinds of private temptations…

SHERRI: Oh, most definitely. And I think that when you’re fighting yourself, and that’s exactly what you’re doing—and again, I’m not knocking these ministries, either, like you said, I’m sure they’re well-intentioned—but the reality is, look, I’m an African American woman. If I went to some sort of ex-black program and tried to de-black myself, it would just not work and you’d just end up fighting yourself and feeling miserable. I mean, I was depressed and suicidal for almost six full years. I used to say to myself every year for this period of time from being a teenager up until my early twenties, “It will be by my hand that I will die.” That’s ridiculous! I didn’t even know what it was like to love life, because the one thing that occupied my mind was that I am a sinner like this and God won’t really love me. And even though I had moments of feeling like God loved me, I was so aware that I was gay that it was like this big thing. It was worse than a thorn, it was like a tree stuck in my side. I need it gone. And since it wasn’t disappearing… and I would cry, and cry out God. And I remember during this time Keith Green died, you know, this was way back in the day, Keith Green died and I remember hearing about it on Christian radio and I went down in the basement and I literally cried and cried out to God and said, “Why him? He is so righteous and he serves You, and look at me, I’m disgusting!” I should say that at this time, I doubt that I’d even kissed a woman, I just was gay by orientation but hadn’t had a partner or whatever. But still, I despised myself because of all of this or despised this part of me, so for me, knowing that I was going to these programs and still I couldn’t like myself, just made me think what’s wrong. And it all came to a head at some point in my early twenties and I remember thinking I’m going to lose it. And I thought, this is ridiculous, I want to die and I think that’s wrong. And I wasn’t even sure at the time, will I go to Hell? I mean, I’m thinking of all this kind of stuff, and I thought, “This is crazy. If God won’t love me the way that I am, or if He’s going to send me to Hell for that anyway and then I’ll be sent to Hell for killing myself, well then, I might as well just live my life and have some happiness and maybe then find someone to love.” And I just got down on my knees and I just poured my heart out to God and I said, “I love You and I love women. And if You won’t love me for loving them, but also can’t seem to change me or haven’t changed me or maybe I don’t know what to do to change myself, then I don’t know what to tell you Lord. I do care about You and wish You wouldn’t not love me for the way that I am, but I’ve just got to live my life. And please, if this is wrong, don’t let me stay this way…” I mean, this was just an elaborate, really sincere prayer. And that was it. From that moment on I just tried to live my life. Most people that I’ve told—well, I haven’t told too many people—but some people that I have told this story to, I ended by saying that I ended up for the next fifteen years being quote-unquote “out in the lifestyle” and it was the first time in my adult life that I did not struggle with depression and I was literally happy and having a blast. It cured the depression problem, which I knew wasn’t chemical or an imbalance, I knew it was very much situational and very much because I was feeling that I couldn’t be who I was.

BRIAN: One thing that we’ve heard, as people have told their stories of ex-gay ministries, is they are driven to stay in these programs and keep going back to these programs for years and years and years because they so badly wanted to love God and to feel God’s love and acceptance by God. And church leaders keep telling us that we’re wrong and that we’re going to Hell and that certainly drives us back into these ex-gay ministries, but that must have been a real point for you to be able to say, God, this is who I am and I may not be perfect but I ask for your acceptance. And then you’re over the depression. That must have been huge!

SHERRI: It was huge. It revitalized my life, in a way it was like being born again then, like as a human. I was born again at 16 and then at 22 or whenever it’s like I all of a sudden became a real person and I realized I can live my life—and like I said, I made some bad choices as well. Then ultimately sort of fast forward to the year 2000 I was dating this woman for a brief time, we were kind of new in this relationship, and I don’t know, I guess I wasn’t very satisfied in it and things weren’t great just in terms of our interactions. I just thought, “It’s got to be better than this!” and I missed God. I didn’t feel bad about being gay but I just missed the Lord. I felt that I had to choose and so it wasn’t like I could be a gay Christian in my mind, so I’ve got to give up God to get happiness in my life and to have people to care about. So anyway, all of a sudden this depression that I hadn’t experienced in years—like a decade and a half—started to creep back in. And not with the severity that it was when I was younger. It would be like, I would end up really sad throughout the course of a day and really wanting to escape so I started drinking too much. And I was hating my life. I remember telling my pastor’s wife. She called one day during this time and I was buzzed. I’m just like, “I just think my life sucks”, and she knew that I was quote-unquote “struggling with being gay”, and I just remember her not being particularly warm and her telling me to just suck it all up. And it sort of pushed me into a new period of another ex-gay ministry. And this was at the end of 2001, beginning of 2002 and it was the longest program I’d been in in terms of the set-up. Most of the time I would do the drop in Exodus ministry where you would just go on a Sunday or something every week. Well, this was a 21 week intensive called Living Waters. So I went. You pay money for it, $150 bucks or something, you get materials, you spend two or three hours there… it was a pretty big ordeal for me and a big commitment of my time, a little distance from my home, and I was serious about it. Ironically, during this time at the Living Waters program ended up having this little affair with this woman, so I guess it wasn’t doing me a heck of a lot of good, but it was sort of my last-ditch effort to say, “I’ll try this again, things aren’t right.” And of course, that didn’t work either and caused even more problems.

JUSTIN: Well, you know, praise God that he’s brought you this far, that He was able to be there for you through all of this. But it’s so sad for me to see how we as Christians, because we’re gay, end up some times struggling to find that happy medium. You know, on one hand trying to not be gay, and on the other hand feeling like if you’re gay, you can’t live the Christian life you were living. You know? And you go back and forth. And I’m thinking, we talk so much about gay Christians as sort of the minority within the minority and here you are, you’re gay, Christian, and an African-American woman.

SHERRI: Yeah, it’s like a triple whammy or something.

JUSTIN: That’s like a quadruple whammy! What is that like for you?

SHERRI: You know, I’ve felt a whole range of emotions. Luckily for me, I live in a very diverse area and so being a person of color is not that big of a deal. But ironically a lot of churches that I have attended have been predominantly white and sometimes I feel that maybe there’s a bit of a cultural difference on a number of levels for me. Most notably, people don’t seem to know what to do with me when I do tell them that I’m gay. And keep in mind: gay and celibate. It’s not even like I’m gay and I have a lover, because I wouldn’t be accepted at these churches. But I’ve been in ministry, I’m currently on the worship team at my church and was in the worship team at the last churches that I was at. I led a women’s retreat, the first and only one ever at the church that I currently go to. And one of my friends back East was like, “Doesn’t that just beat all. Do they know that you’re a lesbian? Check this out, you’re leading this women’s retreat.” And we just laughed and I thought if I had a girlfriend at the time, I would have been disqualified in their eyes from doing that. And that freaks me out. It freak me out because so many people—and I just say this not as a praise of myself, because I know that God was with me during that retreat and there were, like, twenty of us—and these women were just like “Wow!” and I thought, well, you know, God is good. We were just all together and we had a chance to pray and delve into the Word. My topic was ‘Our Identity in Christ’. And I’m thinking, I wonder if they would have even listened to me if they knew that I was gay. But in any event, I landed with GCN and that’s been the one thing that’s kind of helped me to start a dialogue with God again and to take away some of the anger I feel. And to really make me think, “Okay, wait a second, this does not work. This de-gaying myself stuff. If it’s something that needs to be healed, Jesus is the great physician, not me. So if it’s something that needs to be healed, wouldn’t God want to heal it? There are so many passages that talk about how He will give us the desires of our heart, how if we pray in His Name—not for a Lexus or something—but something that He wants, He’ll give it to us. I have prayed, and I have cried, and I have seen counselors and been to ministries… I mean, anything short of an exorcism, only because I didn’t believe that was necessary, I have done and I am just as gay as I was the day before and the day before that. So I started thinking maybe, just maybe, it’s not God that’s wrong or me being gay that’s wrong but it’s the things that I’ve been fed, the things that I believed, culture, whatever, but it would serve me well to at least look into it. And I have before, and I have read some other stuff from the quote-unquote “other side” that always came back to the, ‘well, it’s wrong’. But now I’m like, “Lord, I’m not willing to go into bouts of depression, I’m not willing to escape through alcohol, I’m not willing to do any of these things, I want to live that abundant life that You talk about. There’s got to be a way to find it. I want to know who I am and who You are.”

JUSTIN: Amen.

BRIAN: Wow. Another big show here, with big issues…

JUSTIN: I know. I’m glad that all those people keep fussing at us to have some more testimonies of real people.

BRIAN: Well, it’s been a real pleasure and I think your story is going to mean a lot to people who hear it, Sherri. Thanks for joining us today.

SHERRI: Thank for having me.

BRIAN: And people can find you on GCN…

SHERRI: Yes, most definitely. Feel free to e-mail me. I don’t do the IM thing that much, but if I’m ever online… I don’t even remember what my handle is, but yeah, feel free to send me an e-mail.

JUSTIN: So what’s your e-mail address, Sherri?

SHERRI: It’s drumgroove@mac.com.

JUSTIN: Well, thanks so much for being on the show, Sherri, we really appreciate it. It’s a great testimony.

SHERRI: You’re welcome.

JUSTIN: That wraps it up for this week. As always, you can join us on the web to listen to more GCN Radio shows at http://www.gaychristian.net/gcnradio.

BRIAN: And you can e-mail us at gcnradio@gaychristian.net, we always appreciate your comments and questions. So for this week, I’m Brian…

JUSTIN: …and I’m Justin. God bless!