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You could start off by telling me a little bit about your childhood, when and where, siblings etc. Right, I was born in the early 1950s, 1952, so I was a post-war baby. I have two younger sisters so I was the oldest of three children and we had a very simple sort of upbringing

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but my parents were very caring and wanted us to have a good education and put a lot into making sure we had a good start in life. And I've always had a good relationship with my parents, which is good. They didn't have a good relationship with each other unfortunately, so they split up when I was about 14, no 16 I think it was, and got divorced and subsequently

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married again, but I always had a good relationship with them. And with my sisters I've got the two dearest sisters any man could ever wish for and we have a very good family relationship which is wonderful. Were your parents believers at all?

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My father was very much a Christian believer and a regular churchgoer to an Anglican church and yes he was all of his life and I think actually when he finally died three or four years ago after having a long struggle with cancer, he really modelled how to die in the most wonderful way. He was totally accepting of it and of God's sovereignty and I think

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I shall remember him almost best of all for that, although he was always a very kind man. He wasn't an Evangelical Christian and was somewhat flummoxed when I first became a Christian at the age of 21 through a local Baptist church and my sister subsequently did as well. And of course being at an Evangelical church, I particularly and my sisters too were very

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kind of triumphalistic, enthusiastic new believers who were telling our parents they didn't believe anything and that they needed to repent and turn to Christ, all of which my father found a bit strange and hard to cope with. But he, bless him, was very gracious and learned a lot or said he wanted to learn from us and never became an Evangelical but he did learn

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in his words that being a Christian was more about commitment than about just going to church and obeying the rules. Okay, so did you go to church as a child? Yes, I went with my father fairly regularly and joined the local church choir and that

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then led to me going to St Paul's Cathedral Choir School in the 1960s and becoming a boarding member of the school and a chorister at St Paul's during the 1960s which was actually the most amazing experience. Good amazing.

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Yes, I never liked any of my schools even though they were all good. I felt very isolated and very different and I didn't mix well with the other children but I think that's because I didn't realise about my sexuality before my teens but I think that was probably it, I felt different. I didn't like sports, I wasn't any good at them, I was a mixed

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up rather reserved lonely child but St Paul's was a particularly good experience because I loved the music and I wasn't the most brilliant of singers and I didn't go on to do more singing but I did love the music and it was an amazing experience to go there for lots of reasons really, great privilege.

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Yes, wow, I didn't know that. So your awareness of your sexuality came early teenage? Yes, I put it down to about the age of 13 when I could identify myself as being attracted to the same sex. It all happened accidentally really, it was probably through watching TV programmes and seeing good looking guys on there. I always remember Richard Chamberlain

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and Dr Kildare, oh goodness me, it made me swoon and I felt terribly guilty about it. I don't remember when that series started actually so it might not have been the beginning but it was something like that and I thought this is something I can't talk to anybody about.

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Yes, I think I had the same with Kate Jackson in Charlie's Angels. Oh really? I couldn't talk about it. Higher education, so you went to St Paul's and then? Yes, St Paul's really covered the sort of prep school stage and then when I left there

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I did have an option to board at another school but I didn't like boarding very much and so I ended up going to a local grammar school in the Guildford area and that was a huge school of a thousand boys which having only been 38 boys at St Paul's was a very big culture shock.

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Were you actually born in Guildford? No, I was born in London actually and then we moved out to near Weybridge and then moved to Guildford after my parents were divorced. Oh okay, and then you went on, did you go to university?

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I didn't actually, although academically I think I was probably reasonably good, I was so messed up in myself during my teenage school years that I couldn't concentrate on learning very well so I got some basic O and A levels but I didn't really know what I wanted to do anyway and I tried going to university to do English which would have been my chosen

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subject but I didn't have enough good satisfactory O and A levels so I went and worked for the BBC for a couple of years because in those days I was very keen to get into film or television and anyway I knew quite a lot of people took a route whereby they could go into internal BBC training courses by doing a clerical job and then applying internally for other jobs.

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Unfortunately when I'd been there for a few months I realised that people near retirement in that department had all joined the BBC for the same reason and 40 years later they were still cutting up newspapers and filing clerks and so on so I thought this isn't a job with any prospects so I then went to college and studied photography, professional photography

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and I did get a diploma in that but that was not the same as a university degree but it was 3 years of college training and that was very valuable so that took me into a career in professional photography in fact which actually was good for me in many ways and I ended up working for a publishing company that produced colour slides, 35mm colour

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slides, travelled all over the country and specialised in photographing cathedrals and stately homes so it was amazing and did a lot of work for St Paul's including being their official photographer at the royal wedding in 1981 with Charles and Diana so my association with St Paul's carried on into my professional career later on which was very

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interesting. Wow, that's fantastic. How did you get into LGBT ministry? Right, well that was interesting. All through my 20s, I should backtrack just a little bit to say that during my childhood years I would now say that I was a Christian because of

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my influence from my father and because I was a churchgoer and I did believe something but there was something deep inside stirring in me but of course I couldn't articulate it because in the Anglican church I grew up in nobody ever taught you anything. You know you were a Christian because you were white, middle class, conservative English.

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Yeah, shopped at Waitrose. Yes, shopped at Waitrose or the equivalent in those days and that's how people of that generation seemed to think and when I told my father I'd become a Christian at the age of 21 he said, well what were you before then? Because I'd been christened as a baby in the

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Anglican church and there was no perception amongst the people I'd mixed with that you had a choice whereas when I went to the Baptist church at the age of 21 they taught you very definitely had a choice. You made a confession of faith, you repented of your sins, you got baptised into Christ as a believer and so of course that invalidated all my understanding

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but gave me a new understanding and quite a fundamentalist evangelical perspective. Now of course in those days I'd lived through the 1960s when the media was talking a great deal about homosexuality leading up to the change in the law and following the publication of the Wolfenden Report and in those days people only talked about homosexuality in

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terms of it being a criminal offence. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know what it was about homosexuality that would make people such a criminal that they would be incarcerated in prison for a few years. I had no idea what homosexual sex was about. All I knew was that I felt drawn to and attracted to and desiring of a close relationship with a man. So I was

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very messed up by that because nobody could explain to me but I also knew that society was treating gay people like the scum of the earth beneath contempt and so I was terrified of coming out. So that messed up my teenage years and I suppose really in my own mind the last thing I ever wanted to be was gay because I just thought this is a terrible

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thing. It's abnormal, it's deviant, it's horrible, there's something about this. I don't understand what it is but it's awful so I just tried everything I could to shun the whole process and try to be straight. But I think my spiritual hunger that led to me going to the Baptist Church at 21, that was inspired by a school friend who'd been converted and changed a

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lot as a result. I went there hoping that God could change me, that this would resolve my sexuality and of course he didn't. But in the process I met some wonderful people and I had a lot of counselling and I got introduced to the idea that God can heal people so I thought well whatever it is that's wrong with me that's led me to be attracted to the same

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sex, maybe God can heal that and maybe I can go on and marry and be normal and forget the nightmare of this horrible scenario. So that was my focus really and even though through the church I did meet a gay couple, a wonderful gay couple actually, who had been through the same journey and decided in the end that it was okay to be gay and Christian and got

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together and are still together today, 35 years later or 40 years later, to their credit. I envied them really and I wished I could take the same route but I didn't dare because I didn't think my parents would understand. When I got into the job in publishing, doing the photography, it was a conservative old fashioned firm, I didn't think they would

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understand. The church I knew would probably kick me out. I thought I can't afford to go independently in this, I don't have the self confidence to believe in my own opinions about anything. How did you get into LGBT ministry?

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During my 20s and then for the first half of my 30s I was working for a publishing company doing photography and during those years because I felt desperate in size and very alone and isolated, I went for counselling, I went for psychiatric help. The psychotherapist I saw thought my biggest problem was my religion not my sexuality and he had a point, a good

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point. I then sought Christian counselling and deliverance ministry. I was offered it all and people would spend hours and hours and hours trying to delve into my past and working out what it was that went wrong in my childhood that could have resulted in me ending up gay, looking for the love of a father was how people interpreted it. And

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although I had a good relationship with my parents, of course from a classic pop psychology point of view, the fact that my parents were not happy, they split up, my mother was often upset, my father was absent because he buried himself in his work, it looked like the classic situation which would cause a young man to grow up gay. It wasn't true at all of course

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but it was how we saw things. I exhausted all the possibilities of deliverance ministry and none of them worked. You didn't have any physical aversion therapy? No, it was all psychobabble stuff. And then I discovered the ex-gay movement in America. In England we had the True Freedom Trust but the True Freedom Trust were very much a gentle pastoral

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organisation that basically was preaching you might change if God does that but we can't lead you to change, basically you've just got to be celibate but we try and support each other, which actually was quite a mature approach. But it was not enough for me in my twenties and early thirties, I wanted something more and being part of the charismatic movement

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the church was promising more, it was promising revival, it was promising miracles of healing and I wanted to find that, I wanted to be a Christian who changed the world in those days, I wanted to see resolution to this. And in America I discovered an ex-gay ministry called Love in Action in California at that time and they were preaching a very positive

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message, oh yes God can change you. They still had the same pop psychology back then to their thinking but they thought if you went through a Christian discipleship programme and you absolutely shunned any thought of gay relationships and pursued Christ, following Christ, then you would become heterosexual which we all saw as our intrinsic creative

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capability or potential. And being American they were all so upbeat, they were positive, they were friendly, nothing was too difficult for God and I was very caught up with that kind of spirit, it sounded wonderful, much better than anything I'd seen in England which was very kind of cynical and downcast. Over there they were all up for changing the world.

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So I left my job in photography when I was thirty-five and I went and stayed with this ministry for four months and unlike most people I didn't go on their programme as such, I worked in their office trying to learn on the job. And I think I'd always had a pastoral acumen and ability so I naturally found myself being drawn into the whole pastoral care aspect

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of the ministry. People liked me, people found me helpful and although none of us changed actually, we were all seeing this as being on a journey together. We were following Christ together, we were encouraging one another to live a holy life together, we got a lot out of the camaraderie, the community, the sense of being on this journey together. We

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were no longer isolated and I think this is what was life-changing for a lot of American gay Christians because up until the point where they joined Love in Action they'd only known total isolation and fear and loneliness. Now they knew a community of people who were all on this exciting journey together. So it felt really good. But I had to fund the

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trip over there and I ran out of money and I had to come back. And then by this time I'd lost all my fears of telling people and my local church by this time was up in Harrow, I was going to a church in Harrow. I'd moved up to Watford because of my job and went to a church in Harrow and they said, well we think you should start a ministry like

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this here. So they gave me every encouragement and I basically gave up any idea of returning to secular work and I began the Ministry of Courage and I chose that name specifically because I didn't want to suggest there were easy answers. I wanted to give the message right from the start, this is going to be difficult but with courage and perseverance

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we'll win through and we're on the journey to find that way through. Now of course the term ex-gay was actually a bit like the term Methodist for the early Wesleyan followers. It was a derogatory term used by other people but as a label it stuck and so we became an ex-gay ministry. It was not a label we liked, it was a name that stuck. And of course

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people's expectations when they came were hugely beyond what we could promise them. I knew from the beginning none of us could promise that God would change us. We could promise that we believed God was in the business of changing us but how that was going to work out we were still exploring. But we set up a discipleship programme along the Love in

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Action lines, it was called Steps Out of Homosexuality and I never ever looked for people to come, they just came, they just found out about us. And this was before the internet, before email, before websites, before even mobile phones. But people would ring us up and they would write and they would say, we hear you're doing this ministry, I want to be with you,

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I want to experience this. And so very quickly we were having inquiries from all over Europe, from all over England and I was stunned that people even found out we existed. We were new on the block, we weren't people who had been there around for years like True Freedom Trust, we were new kids on the block. But I just interpreted that God brought them

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and I also was very fortunate that three or four other young men who I'd met through True Freedom Trust and lived in the area all wanted to be part of this with me. And so I won't mention their names for exposing them but I had these four absolutely wonderful young men who were utterly committed to following Christ, all from strict evangelical backgrounds,

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none of us had been involved in any kind of gay life at all and we all wanted to follow Christ. So not only did I have a great team of people but I had all these people coming wanting our help. So we all made the pilgrimage to love and action. They all went for at least two or three weeks to see what it was like and see what the model was and we went

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to conferences of a group called Exodus which was an umbrella organisation connecting ex-gay ministries and they were all enormous fun. We were riding high in those days, we thought this was this great adventure in following Christ and to be honest at the time it was the only positive thing we saw. It is true that LGCM existed but the trouble was LGCM

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in those days we saw as being very liberal, very theologically woolly and just really like a political organisation that was campaigning for change and that unnerved us. We wouldn't go anywhere near LGCM because its image was that of a provocative campaigning organisation and that's not where we were at. We were looking for the pastoral care which LGCM wasn't

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offering. So that's why there were these two routes going on, there was the LGCM on the political side and there was us offering the pastoral care. It wasn't until years later that I met Richard Kirker first and other LGCM people and discovered the closer connections.

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Were you supported through the church with the courage ministry or did you become independent and pay yourself through people joining? Well what happened was initially it was purely a step of faith. I didn't know how on earth I was going to be financed and the church which recommended we started up were not in

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a position to finance me. We had one special gift day when the congregation all put money into a collection and they raised I think it was about two and a half thousand which was very impressive to help get me launched. But that was it. After that they did give a small amount each month but it was like a small contribution, it wasn't financing

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us. And two of us were working full time for courage very quickly and having to rent an office and so on. So we had outgoings of I think I remember about five thousand a month which in those days seemed enormous. And I think we got in terms of income about 500, about a tenth of what we needed. So we all literally put in everything we had. We sold

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our homes, we contributed everything we had to try and make it work. And we were so full of faith in those days we thought God would surely provide for us. But anyway we ran out of our money very quickly and in the end by setting up a community and people living in and that was really our income. People living in and paying a little rent and paying what

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we call a program fee which was quite modest but it was a contribution towards us running it. But in fact the whole thing virtually bankrupted us really within a few years. And we were limping along. I think we honestly thought that first of all we couldn't go wrong that God would finance it. But we also believed that the evangelical churches who said they

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wanted to support gay people would support us. But actually they weren't really interested at all. They were just glad to think that somewhere we could send these poor people. Like the lepers cave. Exactly. So we were like the token evangelical response to gay people. It was like churches could say oh we're not anti-gay. In fact we have this lovely

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ministry called Courage we can send you to and they'll sort you out. But of course they didn't support us much. A little bit. There were one or two people who did make generous contributions but it was a small percentage of what we needed to make it function in a viable way. And I think some people think ex-gay ministries get huge funding even in

00:23:02.920 - 00:23:35.540

the States from big evangelical churches but they don't. I don't know any of them have got big funding at all. Most of them were run at a hugely sacrificial level by the people who founded them. In terms of a timeline when was this? Late 80s? Yes. I went to Love in Action in 1987, September that year and returned in 1988 and began Courage then. Because of

00:23:35.540 - 00:23:57.180

the number of people who straight away showed interest we kind of quickly grew within the first year or two and were running a community house within a couple of years which we did until the end of 1994. How did you run a community house? Did you rent somewhere? No. Three of us sold our homes and bought a bigger one and we all lived in that one. Then actually

00:23:57.180 - 00:24:21.900

a couple of other people joined in and bought homes in the area. So we ended up being able to at one point accommodate about 14 people which was as much as you could fit into a living room to have our discipleship group meetings and so on. We had a little office nearby too. I would say for the first three years we were all riding high and it seemed

00:24:21.900 - 00:24:46.000

to be immensely positive. Then after that our first group of house leaders burnt out. I knew from seeing the Love in Action experience three years was as long as they could cope and they would need to move on. Then after that I couldn't find anybody else who was really available and equipped to do this. By the end of 1994 the whole thing was really

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becoming unmanageable and we had to close the houses not to mention the fact that it was financially ruinous for us. So we ended up closing the houses and then 1995 came and by this time I realised because of my pastoral concern for the long term value of the working people's lives I realised that it wasn't changing anybody, myself included. By that

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time I'd got married and my wife had been very courageous in joining the ministry and the church and everything else and supporting it but it was a very, very tough time. So we had to close the community houses and go back to leading weekly group meetings. I was just thinking well actually none of us have experienced any kind of change of sexual orientation.

00:25:34.400 - 00:26:01.300

A tiny handful have married but most of us were limping along thinking we're still waiting for the miracle. We never got into deliverance ministry because I'd known from personal experience that that not only got nowhere but I was highly suspicious as to its value. We didn't do a lot of counselling because although we did get counselling training, again the inner

00:26:01.920 - 00:26:24.400

healing prayer type ministry, I just didn't see the long term fruit. And in the end what we really came down to, because people often ask what did you do to help people change, we came down to the bottom line being that we were here to follow Christ which meant you don't go the way of the world which was to go down the gay route. You go the way of

00:26:24.400 - 00:26:47.220

Christ which means being obedient to him, repenting of anything in your life which would contribute to unholy living, it could be anything you like really, but homosexuality was one of them. You were just being Christ centred and living a life of worship and service, all of which was perfectly okay. It's what anybody in Christian ministry would

00:26:47.220 - 00:27:10.440

devote themselves to but it didn't change anyone's sexuality. So what was happening was that people who left us to move on, which I encouraged because I would say we're here to be an oasis and a place of support for you for a period but more people are coming all the time, we can't become a long standing community, you have to move on and use the

00:27:10.440 - 00:27:31.440

things we've taught to pursue your life. And then I would keep in touch with all of these people after they'd left and I would see that none of them were doing well. For one thing, nothing had changed their sexuality. They'd also go back home and be faced with questions like, so when are we going to hear wedding bells then? From people who knew they'd

00:27:31.440 - 00:27:50.140

made this investment in the ministry and they would think there was no way they were going to be ready for wedding bells. And so they began to think, well what was all this about? I've committed these two years of my life to following Christ and nothing has changed and I now feel even more of a failure than ever. Nothing's changed, what is this about?

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Is this that I'm not good enough? Is this I'm beyond reach of God's grace? Is there something so awful about me that I just can't change? And what this did was I could see it was leading to the destruction of people's faith. And so I began to think there's something awfully wrong here and I don't want to be running a ministry that sets people up to

00:28:12.140 - 00:28:33.020

lose their faith. It was bad enough that we didn't change our sexuality but to lose your faith as well. It's like losing everything that was of value. And I think from about the mid-1990s onwards I was beginning to question more and more the whole ex-gay ethos or message. And I would ask around, I would ask other exodus ministries, well what are you finding

00:28:33.020 - 00:28:48.220

here? In reality they were all finding the same thing. Were they honest with you? They would be honest insofar as saying this is difficult. Yes we have lots of setbacks, we're not seeing great successes but we've got to press on. The Evangelical Christian

00:28:48.220 - 00:29:06.960

message was however difficult life becomes you press on because we're not supposed to be people who give up. We're supposed to be people who persevere and you look at the New Testament and the Acts of the Apostles and all of the early apostles went through terrible times of imprisonment and shipwreck and martyrdom and they were saying we're not

00:29:06.960 - 00:29:22.420

going through that are you? It's not that bad. So think yourself lucky and press on. You're not inside a whale. You're not inside a whale, that's right. It's not anything awful like that. You're living in a civilised wealthy capitalist society and really life's not bad for you just get on

00:29:22.420 - 00:29:48.460

with it. That was the message. But when it came to people's faith being destroyed I thought there is something going on here which is wrong. I couldn't put my finger on what it was. So I started saying to people coming to us if you come here thinking or hoping we can change you we can't. Go away. And I'd say it light heartedly and they'd all laugh

00:29:49.220 - 00:30:09.020

and we all sort of knew well there's no great promise of change here but we had nowhere else to go. The churches weren't talking about homosexuality in any positive way. They were rejecting us. They may have rejected the people who are pursuing what the church called a gay lifestyle or even a relationship. But actually they really had no time for

00:30:09.020 - 00:30:31.340

those of us who were struggling through. They saw us as hangers on. They saw us as people who were lacklustre in our Christian commitment even though actually we were far more committed than the average church member. If the whole church was as committed as we'd been it would be a completely different church. And I just thought there's something wrong

00:30:31.340 - 00:30:53.960

here but it wasn't until the late 1990s that what I was seeing was that people who left us say in the early 1990s what they were doing was that they were saying to themselves I can't choose whether or not I'm gay but I can choose whether or not I'm a Christian. So if I can't be gay and Christian I won't be a Christian. And when they were kind of

00:30:53.960 - 00:31:17.580

thinking this through once they accepted being gay they would then perhaps find a partner and their lives changed for the better immeasurably. And I saw a number of people who they were just so much better and so much happier having found a partner. I thought actually this is the sort of fruit we expected to see from coming to follow Christ. So why isn't it happening?

00:31:18.120 - 00:31:39.920

Why is it they're giving up Christ and embracing a partner and now doing well? So I thought we must be the ones who've got this wrong. But at this point when I talked to other Exodus leaders they were warning me that I was on the slippery slope to heresy, I was giving up the way of Christ, I was leading people astray and they were suspicious of me. And

00:31:39.920 - 00:32:02.580

when in 1999 I first began saying I think we should support or at least respect same sex partnerships that finished my reputation in the evangelical world. And in fact an article was published in the year 2000 which then went viral in those days. And that ended my association with the evangelical church. Not because I wanted it to but because they

00:32:02.580 - 00:32:25.480

didn't want me. But from then onwards I thought right we're going to support same sex partnerships and we're not going to support anything goes, sleep with who you like, nothing like that. It's a case of if you meet somebody you love and you want to be with then we want to support you in that. But let's see it as a gift of God rather than a choice between God or being

00:32:25.480 - 00:32:46.780

gay. And by the year 2000 I was again thinking well, because I'd had this crisis in 1995 when we had closed the Lyddon houses, I thought well is there anything for us to do? But there were still people coming in their droves so we did run the group meetings. And then by the year 2000 I thought well we've turned right around, we're now supporting same sex

00:32:46.780 - 00:33:06.960

partnerships. Is there anything for us to do? Is this a time to close courage? And once again still loads of people were coming and they were saying things to me like well I'm so relieved you've gone public and said you think you've got it wrong. I've been on this journey too but I've not been able to talk to anybody. And so we were still having discipleship

00:33:06.960 - 00:33:29.940

meetings, we were still having worship meetings, we were still doing bible study. But there was now all gay Christians who still wanted to follow Christ but be openly gay. So I then found I was still busy. My ministry still hadn't ended. This is the early 2000s. And so it went on. We would run two retreats a weekend a year, we would run conferences,

00:33:30.320 - 00:33:52.300

we would try to work with churches that were open to us but there weren't many. And I continued to be supported just by voluntary donations from individuals, which is still true today. But we became infamous as the ministry that changed its mind and changed its approach. Because in 2000 I was desperate to give up the name Courage. I thought we've got all

00:33:52.300 - 00:34:15.860

these terrible associations with ex-gay ministries that were beginning to be seen as abusive of people. But I discovered by accident that actually we became infamous as the ministry that changed its mind and so it became important to keep the name. There's a funny little story. I had a telephone call from Father Harvey in New York who ran the Roman Catholic ministry

00:34:15.860 - 00:34:37.720

called Courage. And actually they'd started before we did. But when I began Courage in 1988 there was no internet, no email, nothing. New York was 3,000 miles away, who's going to know about New York? By 2000, 2003, everybody knew because there was the internet and the news of this was everywhere. So Father Harvey rings me up one day from New York saying

00:34:37.720 - 00:34:57.640

I want you to change your name. I said oh really? He says I'm sick and tired of people saying to me, running the New York Roman Catholic Courage committed to celibacy, oh you're the ministry that's changed your mind. We are not. He said we have not changed our mind, we are still committed to celibacy. So I need you to change your mind, change your

00:34:57.640 - 00:35:17.940

name. So I said to him, I think this is an inspiration from God, I said well it might interest you to know that there's a brewery by the name of Courage in England which has been there for generations and he threatened legal action against me if I didn't change my name. He said he'd done this with somebody else and they had to pay out thousands of

00:35:17.940 - 00:35:39.560

dollars in costs you see. So I said well there's this brewery in England, I don't think it would be in your interests, never mind mine, to contest the use of the name in the courts. So he backed off. But I did agree to publish a disclaimer on our website that said this is not the ministry, the Roman Catholic ministry in New York that's committed

00:35:39.560 - 00:35:58.820

to celibacy. Anyway, we were infamous for being the ministry that changed our minds. Oh gosh, that's fabulous. The old message, the old courage in the ex-gay ministry was homosexuals can change you see. In other words, the implication being you can change from being gay to straight, homosexual

00:35:58.820 - 00:36:21.760

to heterosexual. And I used to say oh yes, homosexuals can change. We need no longer be the neurotic self-obsessed people seeking healing, we can change and embrace who we are as a gift of God and be thankful. That's great. You mentioned that you got married, I mean that's your wife, ex-wife

00:36:21.760 - 00:36:40.300

story to tell, I'm not going to go into that, but just basically the kind of theory behind, were you the only evangelical gay Christian who got married in that era and what was the thinking behind that? Well yes, that's a very important question actually because of so many people now who

00:36:40.300 - 00:37:01.320

did marry and hoping it would change them and now are getting divorced, many of whom will come to me today. I mean in those days we hadn't experienced change of orientation but as far as finding a same-sex partnership concerned, there was a complete roadblock, we couldn't go there. We couldn't go there theologically, we couldn't go there

00:37:01.320 - 00:37:23.720

within our churches or anything. And marriage to somebody of the opposite sex was seen as right, it was the road to walking out your heterosexual potential, very dodgy stuff but it seemed to be plausible to us then. And of course it did give companionship and we all wanted companionship, we didn't want to be on our own for the rest of our lives

00:37:24.740 - 00:37:46.400

and I could see even then how many people who were on their own were very damaged people and became unable to make relationships. So it seemed like a positive step and it did seem that God brought my wife and I together, we were from different traditions, well different areas of struggle and we did have companionship and love but it was a platonic love, not a

00:37:46.400 - 00:38:09.440

heterosexual love. And we're still married technically though we don't live under the same roof now and my wife has been very supportive of the gradual change process because she could see too that the ex-gay process wasn't working. And I think people were quite astonished that my wife would support the change towards supporting same-sex partnerships and we are

00:38:09.440 - 00:38:33.900

still the best of friends. But for many others it's not been such a good story because many would get married, they would say to their potential wives, well I had this period of my life when I was struggling with same-sex attractions but I'm moving on now and if God seemed to have brought us together then let's go for it. And a few have managed to, and

00:38:33.900 - 00:38:57.900

I think possibly they may be more bisexual or more able to cope with the dichotomy and they've got the kind of personalities that cope with it better, but I'm sorry to say that many have not. And a lot of the people I see now whose marriages are on the rocks or are divorced didn't come through us, they didn't get married because we encouraged

00:38:57.900 - 00:39:16.460

them to. In fact we never encouraged people to get married unless they were absolutely sure in their own minds this is what they wanted to do because we knew the potential for difficulty. There have been people who married because they went to evangelical churches that basically gave them an alternative and they were not even allowed to think about

00:39:16.460 - 00:39:34.260

same-sex partnerships because to think about it was a heretical thing. And so they were going to bury it all and stuff it all down and if they met somebody they got on well with and they were good friends with they thought well hey you know friendship and companionship isn't that what marriage is all about? Let's go for it, let's take the step of faith.

00:39:34.960 - 00:39:55.780

And they'd often bring children into the world and be raising families and then after seven or ten years their lives would be full of work, full of trying to earn a living, full of trying to bring up a young family. Often their relationships were such that they would be co-existing under the same roof and then you know the gay husband perhaps

00:39:55.780 - 00:40:19.100

would meet somebody in the course of his work or accidentally and suddenly you know something would click and they'd realise I've been gay all the time. I just didn't realise it. Suppressing doesn't work and now I know that I really want to be with a man. I can't help it. And at this point it was often for many people to start another few years of torment really

00:40:20.040 - 00:40:44.280

until in the end they think I can't stand this any longer. I've just got to make a break. And often the wife who'd given her life to the husband, to the family would feel totally betrayed and devastated as a result and it'd been a very hard process for her recovering her life. And I have to say the churches if they're bad at handling the issues with gay people

00:40:44.280 - 00:41:06.920

they are hopeless, completely hopeless at supporting the spouse who married the gay person. Whether it's a man who married a female lesbian woman or whether it's a woman who married a gay man. And the churches just think well surely you knew before they got married or they say stupid superficial things that do nothing to support them and only make them feel even worse.

00:41:08.120 - 00:41:32.080

So a lot of my work today now that I've finished Courage officially in 2012 after basically 25 years of focusing on that ministry I'm still finding myself overwhelmed with pastoral care work. Just being there to be a listening place and a safe place for people who are still struggling to work out the implications of that hardline evangelical Christian message that you can't be gay and Christian.

00:41:32.400 - 00:41:56.300

Are these people still within a church environment? Most of them are yes. If their marital breakup is particularly messy and the issue of being gay has become public then they'll often be cold shouldered out of their churches as well. But some of them do try to continue as independently and go to their churches and serving in their churches.

00:41:56.740 - 00:42:22.820

But it's a very difficult path. Very difficult. What do you see personally as the future of the church in this country? Well the good news is that although it's probably 20 years too late there are more and more evangelical churches that are facing the questions and beginning to change their minds.

00:42:24.220 - 00:42:41.620

Famously Steve Chalk as a Baptist minister has actually published that he feels we've been wrong and wants to lead a church that's affirming of gay people and their relationships. And he's not alone now. There are other Baptist churches like this. There are other churches, I mean there are more Anglican churches like this now.

00:42:42.440 - 00:43:00.520

And there are more and more churches beginning to change their minds or talk about it. Of course it's much too slow for those of us who've given the best years of our lives to churches but nevertheless there is a groundswell of change. A new younger generation today who've grown up with gay people around them,

00:43:00.520 - 00:43:20.420

with the fact that the law has changed, that civil partnership is now gay marriage. And they just think what on earth is the problem here? And I think there'll be a new generation of leaders growing up who simply won't buy into traditional theology and will say no we're going to support any gay couple who are sincere about being in a relationship.

00:43:20.600 - 00:43:32.820

We're going to support them. So I think the church will gradually change. For a lot of people it would be 50 years too late but it'll happen eventually. And it'll have to because otherwise the church will lose all credibility with the modern generation.

00:43:33.240 - 00:43:51.840

As it is, young people today, they don't think of the church as being wonderful at reaching out to the poor or doing marvellous works even though the church is. They just think of the church as anti-gay in which case that means it has no credibility at all to speak into their lives on moral issues or spiritual issues.

00:43:52.740 - 00:44:10.980

And that has got to change. Do you think it'll become polarised that you will have accepting churches and then you'll have almost religious wars and have extreme fundamentalist churches? Yes. I mean in America that's definitely the case. That is happening now.

00:44:11.120 - 00:44:28.040

There is a great polarisation. I think the church in this country has become so small that many of them are struggling to survive at all. And I think that those ones that have any real vision for the future will say God includes gay people in the kingdom of God as well as straight.

00:44:28.420 - 00:44:41.460

That isn't an issue here. And so we will become a church that's inclusive of all. And there are some wonderful churches, particularly in the London area, who are like this. It just needs to go country-wide.

00:44:43.480 - 00:44:55.920

And if they don't, they'll become moribund. And I have seen, because of the pastoral work I do, I've seen quite a lot of churches where at this moment as I speak there is a polarisation within the one church.

00:44:56.660 - 00:45:11.120

They'll have some members of their congregation, often the older ones, combined with some younger ones who have said, well we've changed our mind about this. We think it's OK to be gay and Christian. And then there are the hardliners who split the church over this and say we can never tolerate this.

00:45:11.120 - 00:45:26.940

But what they're doing is they're splitting small churches into tiny churches and they're eroding what's left by their hardline attitudes. But I think they will be the ones now becoming isolated. And I've had one or two Conservative pastors saying

00:45:26.940 - 00:45:47.080

I can see that I shall be very alone in my Conservative views within a few years and it won't be a comfortable place to be in. I suppose they hope to retire or something. What contact have you had with LGCM historically or more recently?

00:45:48.140 - 00:46:04.600

Right, well with LGCM, my first real contact was in about the year 2000 when I contacted Richard Kirker, who was still writing about Carriage in the most inflammatory way, saying we were running Nazi concentration camps to convert gay people.

00:46:04.600 - 00:46:18.500

So I wrote to him and said, look Richard, this is really ridiculous. We never did that in the first place, but actually we left our ex-gay message quite a long time ago and we now are supporting same-sex partnerships. And I went and saw him and had a discussion.

00:46:18.660 - 00:46:30.480

He looked astounded and said, would I write an article for the LGCM magazine about this? Which I did, which he then leaked to the press everywhere and kind of created a great furore. But that was Richard.

00:46:31.760 - 00:46:47.700

He seems to be a bit of a Marmite person from my other interview. Yes, that's right. He has done a huge amount for gay people and he's a different kind of person with a different kind of approach. But I thought, oh well, in one sense he made it easier for me.

00:46:48.960 - 00:46:58.740

He kind of blew my cover. I was just trying to tread this tightrope, thinking what on earth can I do? How can I handle this? And he blew my cover and that was it.

00:46:58.740 - 00:47:09.080

And it didn't end everything. In fact, it turned things around a bit more quickly and we were able to move forward in our gay family direction. And so I would see Richard now and again at different events,

00:47:09.520 - 00:47:19.040

but we didn't do anything together. He did suggest doing a conference together at some point, but it didn't quite gel or come off. And then, of course, when Sharon Ferguson took over,

00:47:19.580 - 00:47:31.440

I think I invited her to come and speak and she spoke at a conference that I was involved in organising and we got on really well. But because of my own sort of retirement from Courage,

00:47:31.640 - 00:47:51.200

I've not been really involved in the latest incarnation of the LGCM with Tracey. I think I've met her, but I don't think we've ever sat down and had a conversation. But I suppose I'm trying to leave behind the whole Courage ministry and I'm just hoping to semi-retire and do the pastoral work,

00:47:51.340 - 00:48:02.360

so I'm less involved in the events and things. I'm just trying to remember the questions I was going to ask you. That's all right. I'm having a geriatric moment.

00:48:02.600 - 00:48:16.260

Oh heavens, don't worry about that. Yeah, I was wondering what you thought about, do you think that the Church these days is accepting in the sense if gay relationships model heterosexual ones?

00:48:17.020 - 00:48:32.060

I'm thinking if there's commitment and middle classness and almost shopping at Waitrose, then that's fine. But if you're non-binary, if you're trans, they can't cope with that. Is that fair or am I?

00:48:33.700 - 00:48:46.880

I think, again, among the evangelical churches, there's still two sides of this. There are a few who are now saying, we will accept same-sex partnerships and support them.

00:48:48.160 - 00:48:57.420

There are others who basically, probably the best they could do is say, we're not the Church for you if you want to do that. We can't support them theologically.

00:48:58.360 - 00:49:13.900

I think the trans question is an interesting one because I've had a few trans people come to me recently and it's been wonderful to hear their stories and I think the courage and the isolation they've suffered is simply terrible.

00:49:15.200 - 00:49:28.800

Again, I think there are some churches who are pastorally a bit more aware, who are a bit more open or trying to understand, and there are others who can't. It is a very interesting thing, if I might just slip this in here,

00:49:29.680 - 00:49:45.680

that there is, among fundamentalist churches, there's this very strange theological dichotomy that some of them could accept a trans person more easily than a gay person because their theology tells them, we are made male and female.

00:49:46.800 - 00:50:04.680

If you feel you are a woman trapped in a man's body and you go through sex reassignment surgery, they can accept that because they see it as corrective surgery. But the idea of two men or two women having a relationship together is perversion.

00:50:05.860 - 00:50:19.460

I knew this back in the 1970s, the church I went to then. The pastor told me, because I had a trans school friend, he told me it is perfectly compatible for a Christian to go through sex reassignment surgery and live as a woman.

00:50:20.100 - 00:50:35.800

But if you're gay and you want a relationship with a man, no way. And I've discovered actually from a BBC Horizon programme, I think it was a few years ago, in Iran, which is a very fundamentalist Muslim anti-gay society where you could be stoned to death for having a gay relationship,

00:50:36.220 - 00:50:48.960

they do more sex reassignment surgery operations than almost anywhere in the world except Thailand because they will accept that if medically there's a case for you being the opposite sex and they can do it, that's okay.

00:50:49.580 - 00:51:04.580

This is really weird, a weird dichotomy. Now for the trans people I know in our churches in England, don't experience this level of compassion or care or understanding at all. But I think it's because there's still just a lot of mystique

00:51:04.580 - 00:51:16.240

about the whole thing in people's minds. They don't understand it. The number of people who are trans is quite a small percentage and so they don't come across it often enough to have to engage in the pastoral questions.

00:51:17.140 - 00:51:32.960

But I hope and pray that for trans people in the future they're going to gradually see a more understanding and compassionate and supportive approach. Not just a case of, yes we'll pray for you, it must be difficult, but a case of real hands-on support

00:51:32.960 - 00:51:46.400

because we all need to be part of the community of the Kingdom of God. Absolutely. One thing I didn't touch on, going backwards to the late 80s, obviously you were a fully-fledged adult during the AIDS crisis.

00:51:46.640 - 00:52:02.020

I was kind of late teenage so I didn't kind of live through it as such. I just remember terrifying adverts on TV. How did that impact your life? Well of course this was before I ever got into the ex-gay ministry thing

00:52:02.020 - 00:52:18.180

and I must admit I found the whole thing terrifying because in those days I still believed in the angry God who loved you if you repented and adopted the church's line. And it did seem like AIDS was like a judgement from God.

00:52:18.340 - 00:52:32.640

It was like a spectacular indication of God at work in our society judging people who led immoral lives. And of course a lot of people said it was a gay problem but I knew quite quickly from research that in African countries

00:52:32.640 - 00:52:43.660

there's loads of heterosexual people getting AIDS but of course they were promiscuous. So it was like God is sending his judgement on promiscuous people whether they're gay or straight.

00:52:44.280 - 00:52:54.460

There is only one rule, monogamous heterosexual marriage and that's it. Anything else is sin. So it fitted in very well to my theological understanding of life

00:52:54.460 - 00:53:09.160

and it terrified me because I'd never got into the gay life. I'd never been promiscuous. I had one encounter with somebody just to try and prove to myself whether I was gay or not and that was it, which of course proved that I was.

00:53:10.480 - 00:53:24.620

But I couldn't cope with it even then. But of course it just seemed to me, well, God is speaking to us. And then when I went to Love In Action in the States in 1987 I would think two-thirds of the people on our programme were HIV positive

00:53:24.620 - 00:53:37.460

and several of them had full-blown AIDS. And I have to say that Love In Action was very caring and compassionate and loving towards them and in a few cases nursed people right through to their dying day

00:53:38.100 - 00:53:47.820

and were full of love and care and they fully accepted them. There was no rejection or anything. They would say, well, you lived a lifestyle at one time that was ungodly. There are consequences.

00:53:48.220 - 00:54:03.580

Like a woman who has a baby out of wedlock, she may get pregnant and she's not married but she still has the baby. We will support you but there are consequences and this is just those consequences working out in your life.

00:54:04.440 - 00:54:16.500

But we will support you. So in that sense the ex-gay ministries were a huge step forward from the hardline evangelical churches that would just reject you totally and say, well, off to hell with you.

00:54:17.100 - 00:54:28.680

There's nothing we can do for you. How did they account for lesbians? Well, again, we didn't see as many lesbian people, lesbian women, but there were some and the message was just the same.

00:54:30.900 - 00:54:39.600

This has happened because of problems in your life. You probably were abused. This was always the thing. If you were a lesbian, it was because you'd been sexually abused in your youth.

00:54:40.080 - 00:54:50.080

Whether this had happened or not. Despite all the people who are abused who are straight. Oh, yes, of course. Like all the straight people who had absent fathers.

00:54:50.260 - 00:55:07.680

If the absent fathers theory was true, 95% of the population would be gay. It would be like the Oscar ceremony. But in terms of AIDS, obviously it would be gay men with HIV, AIDS. And that was a sign from God.

00:55:07.780 - 00:55:17.400

Yes, it was a sign from God that God was not tolerating this. So was God tolerant of lesbians because they didn't get... No, God's message was the same. You must repent and not be a lesbian.

00:55:18.500 - 00:55:26.640

So it was the same message. No partiality here. Just don't be a lesbian. Don't even call yourself a lesbian.

00:55:27.360 - 00:55:41.020

You're not. You're a straight woman who just hasn't realized your potential yet. And as you see things God's way, you'll realize that you're heterosexual. And one day you'll happily marry a man who will be your head

00:55:41.020 - 00:55:51.160

and you'll submit to him as your husband and you'll be happy and everything will be hunky-dory. That's how we thought. It all seems so quaint now.

00:55:51.320 - 00:56:07.900

It does, doesn't it? Can you think of anything I haven't covered that you might deem significant? A lot of people ask me what changed your mind to move away from the ex-gay thing

00:56:07.900 - 00:56:19.300

and adopt supporting same-sex partnerships. A lot of people love me to tell a Damascus Road experience when suddenly the scales fell off my eyes and I realized that it was okay to be gay.

00:56:19.400 - 00:56:33.760

It never happened like that. From my point of view, the background was probably about a 70-year stretch of seeing the damage that the ex-gay message was doing and realizing how much better people were off if they accepted who they are

00:56:33.760 - 00:56:48.800

as being a gift of God and that God loves us as we are, gay or straight, no partiality. However, underlying all of that, I believe there's an unspoken, much more important theological issue here.

00:56:49.600 - 00:57:04.620

Now, I was brought up with what is known as an understanding of the atonement that this was satisfying God's anger against sin. God is an angry God who hates and will not tolerate sin of any kind

00:57:05.480 - 00:57:20.640

and has made his son die on a cross in agony to pay the price for our sins and therefore, if we accept that, we have a ticket to heaven. If I put it that way, you realize instantly how ludicrous that is

00:57:21.620 - 00:57:30.160

because nobody could pay the price of our sins in that way. It doesn't make us right. The idea that just saying, Oh, well, Jesus, thank you so much.

00:57:30.280 - 00:57:36.940

Well, I'll try and be a good boy from now on, but I won't make it most of my life probably, but I'll try and be a good boy. Thank you for what you did.

00:57:37.480 - 00:57:48.300

It doesn't really redeem anybody. In fact, it makes us pharisaical religious people who can live with our sins and do awful things in the name of Christ. Nothing really changes.

00:57:48.460 - 00:57:57.960

The heart changes. And frankly, the whole theology makes God look an idiot, not to mention an absolute monster, a barbaric monster

00:57:57.960 - 00:58:08.920

who's going to probably cast 95% of the population into the lake of fire to burn forever. And the theology behind it is so monstrous and so dreadful

00:58:08.920 - 00:58:17.860

that how we can imagine this could be biblical or right or anything, I don't know. But I do see how people think about it like that. And of course, it's the same kind of thinking

00:58:17.860 - 00:58:30.480

that's behind Islamic fundamentalism, just that they have guns and use them. But I began to realize in the late 1990s that this is where our problem lay.

00:58:30.920 - 00:58:41.300

As long as we were appeasing an angry God, there could be no negotiation. But if we saw the Atonement very differently, as I would now, that God is a fully loving God,

00:58:42.080 - 00:58:52.200

that yes, sin is a terrible thing, and it does need repenting of, but you're never going to get people to repent of it by holding them over the pit and saying,

00:58:52.480 - 00:59:06.040

you know, repent or I'll drop you in it. You actually win people over to a Christ-like set of values by loving them, by empathizing with them in their difficulties, by walking with them as Jesus walked with people.

00:59:06.480 - 00:59:15.500

With all the dropouts in society, he walked with them and healed them and associated with them whatever, whether it was physical or mental illnesses

00:59:15.500 - 00:59:29.140

or whether it was lifestyles that were not religiously correct. And if you look at the kind of life Jesus modeled, it was one full of compassion and mercy and loving-kindness, and people couldn't resist following him.

00:59:29.380 - 00:59:40.260

They knew he loved them. They just wanted to be with him. If as churches we behaved towards people like this, including all the minorities, helping the poor,

00:59:41.000 - 00:59:53.140

focusing on being Christ-like to people, our churches would look completely different. They would no longer be riven by doctrinal disputes. It wouldn't really matter what you believed about the virgin birth

00:59:53.140 - 01:00:03.540

or infant or believer's baptism or any of those things. What would matter is, are you living a life that's Christ-like in mercy and compassion and goodness and so on,

01:00:03.880 - 01:00:19.920

rather than the capitalist materialistic society we live in? And I think if we live more by Christ's values, and realize that what he was doing on the cross was actually suffering the consequences of our rage against God,

01:00:20.780 - 01:00:31.740

and saying, I will not do the same thing. I will not retaliate with violence and retribution. You can do your worst to me, and you can't stop me loving you. If that was the message we got from the cross,

01:00:32.580 - 01:00:44.300

the church would be transformed, and so would the world be transformed. And that is why I can still say I'm an evangelical Christian. I believe in following Christ. I think he's got the best message for the world we've ever had.

01:00:45.300 - 01:00:56.880

It is the best news for everybody, but it's not like the message the churches are putting out, which are often politically motivated and motivated by a very skewed idea of the character of God.

01:00:57.700 - 01:01:11.140

And I think that's where the real issue lies, to do with homosexuality and many others. We've got our essential core values wrong, and because of that we abuse people instead of saving them.

01:01:12.220 - 01:01:22.300

Do you go to church? I wish I could. I can't find a place to go to where people understand. I do know of one or two churches,

01:01:22.660 - 01:01:31.760

like St. Luke's Holloway with Dave Thompson. If I lived near, I'd definitely be going there. I love everything he stands for, and I'm on the same page. There are a few others, but there are not many,

01:01:31.820 - 01:01:42.180

and I don't know of any in this area. The more liberal understanding ones, bless them, are not interested in what I'm doing because they can't see the point of it.

01:01:42.320 - 01:01:52.640

Of course we accept people, gay or straight, of course we do. Why wouldn't we? And they are society-type churches, which people go to and don't have that sense of community

01:01:52.640 - 01:02:04.360

as I'm used to. And the evangelical churches that do don't want me. I'm a heretic in their midst and likely to infect their thinking and their congregations

01:02:04.360 - 01:02:13.880

with devilish schemes. So I can't go there either, even though there are some lovely people there. Yes, I'm on that page.

01:02:14.920 - 01:02:24.960

It's difficult, isn't it? There is a community on that page. But I have loads of Christian fellows that I meet all the time. Even though I'm not running Carriage,

01:02:25.000 - 01:02:37.060

I still have two meetings I'm involved with on a monthly basis, small meetings that are a great opportunity to introduce people. And the 223 network, which succeeded Carriage, are doing a wonderful job.

01:02:37.860 - 01:02:51.440

I really take my hat off to them. They're a ministry for the 21st century and I'm a 20th century dinosaur. I acknowledge it and I'm happy to use the experience

01:02:51.440 - 01:03:00.120

that dinosaurs can have, but I shouldn't be in the front running of these things anymore. I'm too old and I'm happy to leave that to younger people now. Okay.

01:03:02.320 - 01:03:07.060

That's great. I think we'll end here. Thank you very much. Pleasure. Thank you.