Tim Johnson

We were gay…but you can’t be gay at Bob Jones. . . .But a lot has changed since then, and although I did have some really fun times at school, there were too many dark days that I’m glad are gone now. I finally found who I am and I’m happy with the guy I found.


Blair Madison Durkee

I was twenty-two years old before I was allowed to ask the question, “Who am I?” That’s not a privilege afforded to those in the culture in which I was raised. It would be fair to say that I had very little choice in the substantial aspects of my life. I was not free to choose my religion, my schooling (including college), my activities, my friends, my music, my philosophy, my politics, my lifestyle, my gender.


Bill Ballantyne

To hell with everything I’d ever been told was ‘the right thing to do’, and the preaching, and the twisted, flawed logic. I was both scared and excited, and regardless, I finally felt better about myself than I could ever remember.


Colin Gray, Part Two

During this difficult time of transition, I started to see the value of a community that could look beyond individual compliance and conformity to truly see the person underneath; a community that recognizes that all of us deserve love and acceptance, and understands that being “different” may actually be the most beautiful thing of all.


Colin Gray, Part One

I always knew that I was different. I grew up in a large family with four siblings, so it was easy to get lost in the shuffle, especially when you were shy, introverted, and more sensitive than any of the other kids. I lived two short blocks from Bob Jones University campus, which formed my own little world—a world where everyone knew each other, everybody believed the same things, and everybody looked (more or less) the same. I walked home from school every day, and attended church three times a week with people who also shared my own little world. This homogeneous, naïve environment shaped me from the very beginning—from my birth at Barge Memorial Hospital on campus to my years of K-12 education.


Jaclyn Walker

Here’s my story, then. It’s pretty simple. Not too pretty, but not horribly ugly. It is what it is, but it’s mine—and that just might make it meaningful.

Like most everyone else here, I was born into a Baptist family, one of the Independent, Fundamental, Bible-believing (IFB) variety. I went to a Christian school starting in third grade when we moved from Montana to California. I’d actually attended public school in MT because the academics were stronger in the public schools than in the church’s Christian school. My parents were more dedicated to the development of actual cognitive abilities than to whether or not I had Bible class each day because they were so strong in their faith, and faith was something incorporated into virtually every part of our lives.


Jared Porter, Part Two

I used to frequent a prayer room in the basement of Johnson dormitory at BJU. It was dark and quiet there, and a welcomed change from the fast-paced campus. In the corner I would pray with tears in my eyes for as long as I could spare before my next scheduled obligation.


Jared Porter, Part One

I grew up in an Independent Fundamental Missionary Baptist Church in Indiana. The same church that my parents still attend. Those are good people that know how to greet you and feed you! My great-grandfather, Ford Porter, wrote the gospel tract “God’s Simple Plan of Salvation,” and my parents lead Lifegate, Inc., the ministry that distributes the tract (so I was considered a missionary kid growing up). Like my grandmother, I became church pianist at age 12. I attended Christian schools my entire life. Was a “spiritual leader” in High School, winner of the “most spiritual” awards, etc. I attended L.A.M.P. at Northland Baptist Bible College’s summer camp and C.I.T. at The WILDS (both are selective teen Christian leadership programs). And I traveled on two summer sacred musical drama teams with The Academy of Arts, based in Taylors, SC.


I Was a Twenty-Something Gay Basher

I don’t remember how the subject of homosexuality even came up, but one Sunday morning on the way to breakfast at the Bob Jones University dining common, I told one of my friends that “gays ought to be lined up and shot.”

“Oh, you mean people like my brother?” my friend replied. I literally stopped in my tracks. I don’t remember how I responded, but I do remember I instantly understood I was in the wrong. Those two sentences between friends proved a catalyst to me. The frankness of my friend’s response to my words shocked me into realizing how I sounded. I knew his brother, knew he was likely gay and still I had made this incredibly callous comment. Nonetheless, my friend’s frank yet polite response had an extraordinary impact: It coupled my vulgar generalization to the specific humanity of one single person. Someone I knew. Someone I most certainly wouldn’t want to see “lined up and shot.” That remark made me instantly aware of an inconsistency in my thinking. So I began to think further and having begun to think, I couldn’t turn back.


James Bow

The first time I knew I was gay was when I was 6 or 7 years old. My mother stopped by the pharmacy on the way home from swim practice. I found my older sisters standing in the magazine aisle giggling over some magazine. I walked up to see what was so funny. It was a Playgirl magazine. To them it was all elementary school girl giggles. To me, it was the moment that I knew something was different about me. Why was I drawn to those images? I couldn’t understand what it was, but I instantly knew that it was something that I could never tell another soul.