I'm going to tell you a great story. It happens to be mine, but it's my favorite story. I'm going to tell you about what my life used to be like and how I got to where I am today. Sometimes it's difficult for me to share this story, because I don't want to remember the way things used to be. I've been out of homosexuality more than twice as long as I was ever in it now, as the years go by. And I wouldn't trade my life today for anything. And I laugh when reporters ask me if, if I'm repressing my homosexuality, or if I'm secretly going back to gay bars. You know, you can have all that. I've been there, I've had it, I've done it, and the life I have cannot compare to what I left behind.

When I was a senior in high school, I was in the boys' restroom one day, and a male student came up to me and made a sexual advance towards me. And it terrified me, and it frightened me, and I ran out of the bathroom. And it repulsed me, but over the next few weeks I started thinking about that advance, and wondering to myself, "Are all those things that have always been thrown at me and said to me all my life true? Am I really a queer? Am I a sissy? Am I a homo? I've always been told that I was, so maybe I am." And if you give a label to a child long enough, that's what he or she will believe. So on my 18th birthday, a group of friends thought it might be fun to take me to a gay bar. And when I entered that gay bar it's like a magical, new world opened up to me. Finally, I felt accepted. I found a group of people that weren't judging me, that didn't make fun of me. It didn't matter anymore that I couldn't swing the ball...swing the bat and hit the ball. It didn't matter anymore that I couldn't climb to the top of the rope in gym class. It didn't matter that I was afraid to go into the locker room and take showers with other boys. None of those things mattered anymore, because I found in the gay life that all those things I could put behind me, for a time.

Now I had grown up in a difficult household. My mother and father married when they were 20 years old because my mother was pregnant with me. I was the first child of four. And back in 1963 that's what you did, you got married. And my parents' marriage was not built on a good foundation, so by the time I was 7 they divorced and I remember the day my father knelt down in front of my younger sister and me at the time and said he was moving out and leaving us. I didn't know how, how do you process that? The person you look up to, the person that's you're foundation, the person who's stable for you, is leaving you? But nonetheless, my father left, and as the years went by my mother and father each remarried three different times. And what I learned was that, truly, people that cared about you would eventually leave you and walk away. There was no stability in my life, except for my mother. She was the one stable person, that no matter what came, she was always there, through the highs and lows. And I became my mother's best friend, and I remember, as she would go through divorces, and drinking, and all kinds of infidelity with her husband, that I was her caretaker and I would sit on the sofa with her until 1 or 2 A.M. in the morning as an 11 year old kid, and try to help my mother deal with her problems. 

And as I started to get a little older, and I would going through puberty, I realized that there was something different about me than the other boys in school. And I had always felt comfortable being around girls. I was raised by a very strong, very emotional mother. I was afraid of boys, I didn't have any male role models. I was the oldest boy. My grandfather died when I was 10. I had no brothers. No male cousins. I was in a female dominated world. And I started developing all these effeminate characteristics, voice patterns, mannerisms, etc. And what happened was at school the other kids started to pick on these things, and hurl these labels at me. And I had no place to fit in. 

When I was 15 years old there was a girl in my class that had a crush on me, and started talking about a relationship with Christ, and that the end of the world was happening, and I needed to give my life to Christ or I wouldn't go to heaven. And now we know in missionaries and, and denominations do studies to show 15 is the ripest age for someone to give their life to the Lord. You know you're on that teetering place. And so I did. I, I knelt down in my bedroom, I lifted up the window, 'cause I thought I wanted to clear the passageway [laughter].to God, and I knelt down and I gave my life to Him. And I was scared into heaven, and it worked! Fear was a good motivator. But as time went by, I fell away from that. I had no Christian support. By the time I was 16, I started drinking hard alcohol. From the very first drop of alcohol, I thought to myself, "I don't ever want to pull this bottle away from my mouth." The, the motive was to drink, and get drunk, and get as drunk as I could, and drink it till the bottle was gone, at the age of 16. And things kept getting worse, I kept getting more alienated from my Dad, as much as he tried to be a part of my life. I just didn't accept it and he didn't do it the way I wanted him to. 

So, when I went into that that gay bar at the age of 18, I slipped into gay life like a duck takes to water, no problem! Loved it! I thought it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I finally had an identity. I finally fit in somewhere! You know, all of us, all we want is to fit in, to belong, whether it's at work, or in the Sunday School or Brownie Troop. We want to fit in. We have a longing to be loved and respected, and in gay life that's what I thought I found. And within that first night in gay life I found somebody, I fell in love with him, I had a relationship for a year. After the first night. Graduated from high school, went to college, we were roommates, but what I started discovering was, there were little secrets coming out, little...little dalliances with other people by my boyfriend. And I thought to myself, "I recognize this. This is infidelity again. This is what I've grown up with." And I realized that truly nobody in the gay community would be faithful. I never saw it, I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I never saw it, I never experienced it, but I wanted it more than anything! All I wanted was permanency. I wanted someone who wouldn't walk away, who would be there, who would follow through on what they said, and nobody ever seemed to do that. 

And as the years went by, I found myself falling into the same pattern as everybody I knew. You, you'd...you'd go out on Friday and Saturday night, you'd go out to the bars, you'd drink, you'd cruise around the bars, you'd look for somebody, you'd pick them up, you'd take them home, you'd get up the next morning, and you'd go home, maybe without even knowing their name. And this became a pattern of life, for me. When I turned 19, I found myself in financial straights, and I had just finished reading a book about a male prostitute, and I thought, "Oh, this might be fun." So I became a prostitute for about a six month period of time, and involved myself in behaviors I can't...I'm too ashamed to tell anybody. And as time went by, I began feeling more and more depressed, more and more despondent. After 2 years in gay life I was out in a bar dancing one night, and I looked over out of the corner of my eye and I saw this strange-looking female presence. And I realized, "I went to high school with _him_." [laughter] And this was my friend Larry, who is a well-known female impersonator, and he thought it would be cool if I might do the same thing. And what ensued was four years of me being, becoming one of the most well-known drag queens in the Mid-West. I was famous, I would walk into bars and restaurants, people would pick their silverware up and bang the table chanting my name. I thought I was a celebrity, I was finally loved. But when I went home at night, and took the make-up off and threw the wig down, there was me, staring at myself again in the mirror, alone, wanting someone to be permanent and never walk away. 

And life kept going this way. I went to college, I worked on a degree, I became an opera singer, I was working, I was doing all these things, I was a drag queen, I was a gay man, and we all thought this was normal. Came out to my parents, came out to my grandparents, and we all thought, "Well, you're just born this way, what's the big deal, we'll accept it, we're a very cosmopolitan family, no problem whatsoever," or so I thought. That's what I thought was the case. And everybody accepted it. Never experienced discrimination, never experienced homophobia, never...never encountered anybody that had a problem...except, you people. And I remember in 1983, 84, and 85, when I would so graciously ride in a Cadillac convertible, with my train flowing behind me, and that tiara crown just fit on so snugly, that we would go through the route of the gay pride parade, and there you'd be, the Christians. And I remember at every gay pride parade the Christians were there, holding up those signs that told me how much God loved me! As a matter of fact, what the sign said is that He hated me, "God Hates You. Turn or Burn!" I remember this one sign that said, "L E V period eleven three." And I thought to myself, "What's L E V period?" Like I was reading Leviticus in my spare time or something! And I kept thinking to myself, "Why don't you Christians go home?" And I felt more and more rejected by them. 

And then time kept going by. And, you know, a wonderful thing happened! I started seeing a gay psychologist, surprise! And he said, "I think you have a problem with alcohol."[laughter] And, really, after four years of therapy he said, "I don't think we can get anywhere until you stop drinking."[laughter] And so I did, I started going to gay AA! It was all over the country, every city I went to there was gay AA! [laugher] And, you know, God used that, because I stopped drinking and everything started to clear up. And I started to get my life together, and I stopped being promiscuous, and I started having decent relationships, and I started meeting some really good people in the gay community, really decent, neat, wonderful, creative people, and time went by. And I realized, "I still feel the same!" Won't there be anybody who will be permanent, who will love me just the way I am? Who will love me with no strings attached? And so, one night, I decided to take my life, because I just was not finding the love that I needed, that deep love, that I never knew how to get, that people could not give me. 

And, thankfully, that, that suicide attempt failed, and I got on with life, and very shortly after that, as I was working at a copy center, and I was going to college, this quirky weird couple kept coming to the store. And they were just this strange couple, you know, I just could not deal with them. They were so square, and he wore a tie, and she had this little dress on, and...they were the weirdest people. And here I was, I had hair down to here, and it was bleach blond and earrings and...you know, I was, I mean if I had walked down the street, people would walk down the other side. And these people started coming to my store week after week after week after week...and they were so kind to me. And I couldn't figure out what they wanted. Because somebody always wants something. You don't get anything for nothing. It's either sex somebody wants, or money, or something. Nothing was free. And I started to realize these people were Christians, of that born-again variety. And I thought, "Oh, great, you were probably in the parade that I was in." And time went by, and I started running into these people all over the place. When I was on the bus going downtown to gay bars, when I was going to class, and there they were, with these stupid little smiles on their face! "Hi, John! Wanna cupcake?" [laughter] I had never encountered people who were innocent before, and untainted by the world. 

And increasingly I started to rely on these people. And one time I developed, due to my illustrious lifestyle, mononucleosis, and couldn't get out of bed, and one day I heard a knock at the door, and I opened the door, and there these two people were, with bags of groceries, and casseroles, and flowers, and they came in and took care of me. And I broke down and wept. Because what I was seeing was the real thing. The real thing. It was real love. No strings attached. They didn't want anything from me, I tried to pay them but they wouldn't take it, and my number was up. And I started getting more and more interested in who these people were, because if anybody could treat me this well and was this kind, they must have something I need, even if I don't know what it is. So one day, the man sat me down with this great big black Bible and he opened it up, and I thought, "Oh...here we go! This is the 'conversion'!" And I was all prepared in my sarcastic state of mind for this big speech. And he so lovingly started in Genesis, and as he started talking about what God meant, and He created male and female, and God said it was not just good, but very good. And I started to cry, 'cause all of a sudden, it was like the scales fell from my eyes and I realized that way back when I was 15 that person I opened my window and talked to was still there. And I remembered a time when I was out on the dance floor, in a gay bar, in drag, on LSD, and I looked up at the ceiling of this gay bar and I heard this voice say, "Come back to me and I can change your life!" And I said, "What?" "Come back to me and I can change your life!" And I remembered that that had happened. And what I realized was God never left me. I turned my back on Him. And I knelt down at the foot of my bed, and I said to God, "No matter what happens to me or how hard it gets, I will never turn my back on You again." 

And that was 13 years ago. And the minute I did that, I start...I, I am a big mouth, you talk to anybody who knows me and they can hardly shut me up. I've always been this way, and I was this way in the gay community, and the minute I became a Christian, I started telling everybody about it, and my life was threatened. And I realized I had to hide, I couldn't talk about this, I couldn't tell people what had happened to me, that someone was there, who always loved me, who didn't leave me, and who would always be there to love me no matter what. And that's why I gave my life to God, because if God was like those two people, that man and wife, then finally I found somebody that could be trusted. And He became the father and the parent to me that I never had. And I'm telling you, I would comb through that Bible, I would get up at 5:30 in the morning, and I would read that thing, and the tears would pour...out of my face! Because you know what? I didn't see a rule book of "Thou Shalt Not's," and "Don't Do This," all I saw was how much this Person loved me. I saw it as a good thing. I saw sin as pro...as, as, admonition of sin as protective to me. God loved me enough to say, "No! No! I created you! I made you! Don't do this! Not because I'm a Cosmic Killjoy, but because it will eventually harm you!" 

And I thought I was all alone, and finally, after a year of struggling with this by myself, I found Exodus and moved from Ohio, went all the way to California. And there was few Exodus ministries then, it's not like now where it's all over the place, and I went through Love In Action, that's here in Memphis now, but it was in California then, and I stayed in there for 6 years, baby! I needed a long time in the oven! [laughter] And what I found there was there were roots to my homosexuality, as we've been talking about all day long. And me was the biggest proponent of being born that way, and we would sit on stools in the bars and talk about how we were born this way, and you wouldn't dare talk about, "Well, what happened in your childhood?" And what I found out there at Exodus was who God was and who I was. Now, as you can imagine, my family was freaking! They didn't know what to do. Although my Mom told me that she'd been praying for me. And I thought, well, that's strange, because you're not a Christian. But she was praying nonetheless, and as time went by the relationships in my family began to repair, especially with my Dad. 

I remember a day that I took down...I was particularly troubled by the fact that I could not get over this bitterness that I held towards my Dad...and I got down a box of letters. I kept every letter he ever sent to me, because he lived across country. And I put them in chronological order according to the date, and I started reading from beginning to end, and I saw over and over again, "Son, I love you," "Son, I care for you," "Son, I'm there for you." And I thought, "Why didn't I see this then?" And I realized that in my mind's eye as a child, for whatever reason, I didn't have the capability, or the willingness, or whatever, to see or to receive love from my Dad. And maybe he didn't love me in the right way, but nonetheless he loved me, and I accepted that, and I got on the phone, and I called him up and asked him to forgive me for always holding him at arms length. And from that day on, my orientation changed. Because I realized that I could connect with my own gender. And I began to participate with other men in church, and I became like them, and I picked up that baseball bat. And you know what, I could hit it. And I fit in. And I belonged. And I was changing.

And about three years went by, into this process. And I was singing in church on the worship team one day, and I realized the woman standing next to me had blossomed into this wonderful creature. And when I first met this girl named Anne she was a hardened, hurt lesbian. And we bumped heads and couldn't stand each other. And I saw her, over about four years, soften, and become strengthened, and mature, and become feminine, not in a frilly, lacy sort of way, but in a way that someone, a woman trusts in God as her protector, and all those outer defenses fell off of her, and she became soft and gentle. And we both realized that something was going on. And one thing led to another, and in July of 1992 we were married. And the greatest gift we ever got was that on our wedding day my mother and her husband accepted Christ. [applause] 'Cause how could you look at son standing up there...see your son standing up there, knowing what he had been involved in, and deny the power of God to change a life? And since that time, almost everybody in my family has come to the Lord, just through walking our life day after day. And last December, on Christmas Day, my mother passed away...and it was wonderful, because 6 people came to the Lord at her funeral. And I've seen this trickle-down effect, from obeying God, and not buying the lie. 

And, God, I am here to tell you, can change someone. And I find it disconcerting that just to stand up and say that is so difficult in our society. You know, it is harder to be ex-gay than it was to be gay, in certain respects. When you tell someone you're gay, they believe you, they take it at face value, they accept it. When you tell someone you've come away from homosexuality you're challenged, you're questioned, you're disbelieved, they follow up on you, they research you, they don't believe it. And I'll never forget, this one day, my wife and I, just, the Lord has just thrown us into the media in unbelievable ways, and we just walk every, every day try to walk forward and talk about what He's done. And I remember one day that we were sitting on our front yard, getting ready to go on 60 Minutes, and I thought, "Oh, man! 60 Minutes! They go through your garbage can, looking for stuff!" [laughter] And you know, my wife and I have always made it a point, when we talk about this, to never...to not argue, to not get angry, to not be defensive. What for? If you're defensive, that means you're insecure about something! If you argue, that means you might have something to hide, which we don't! And we just decided then and there that we didn't have anything to prove to anybody. You can disbelieve us all you want. We know what's, we know what's true. We know what God did, and what everybody else thinks does not matter at all.

And the biggest joy in my life is to come home every day from this sometimes very difficult work, and pick my two-and-a-half year old son up, and swing him around in my arms, and have him call me, "Daddy." And know that this, I can have the opportunity to do it right. And I can love him and kiss him and play with him and wrestle with him and play trucks with him. And that kid is going to have to push me off! But he will grow up knowing he is loved and cared for, and he will know who his father is. And that's all that matters to me really. Thanks! 

Mike Haley's testimony at the Love Won Out Conference in Seattle