“Ex-gay” activist Anne Paulk (ex-wife of ex-ex-gay activist John Paulk) joined Janet Parshall yesterday to discuss the “way out of homosexuality.” Paulk, who has previously claimed that the majority of lesbians were sexually abused as children, told Parshall that “the reason most people end up gay is because they’ve had some really broken experiences in their early childhood” and that they are “acting out in this way” in response to “sorrow and pain.”
This “expression of sin,” she added, is “really not that much different” than alcoholism, drug abuse and “relational addiction.”
I do believe that if the Church understood that it’s the outcome of pain and sorrow and interpersonal challenges, and it’s the product of personal confusion. And that’s what I used to talk on all the time in years prior, is you know what, the reason why most people end up gay is because they’ve had some really broken experiences in their early childhood. It’s just manifesting in this way. And the more you get to know about what’s underlying of homosexuality, the more you get to understand that they’re just a human being that’s been wounded. That’s a little boy who’s grown up, who’s been very desperately hurt and is acting out in this way. That’s still, that was once a little girl whose heart was broken and her body misused. And the outcome is sorrow and pain, and this is the expression of it.
And I think that’s the expression of sin altogether, and it’s our rebellion against God, our rebellion against -- what we believe we want our way to be. Homosexuality is, not unlike any other sin, it’s a shortcut to getting your own needs met, and it’s not a healthy shortcut. Drugs don’t solve the problem of trying to hide from one’s trouble. Hiding doesn’t work at all. Alcohol doesn’t work that way, relational addiction doesn’t work that way, promiscuity doesn’t solve anything. Same thing with homosexuality. And I think when people understand that they’re really not that much different, it’s just a different outworking of similar underlying issues, it helps a lot.
But, like Sandy Rios, who takes heart in the fact that gay people sometimes get their hearts broken, Paulk has hope for gays and lesbians. “Even people in the gay community will celebrate someone’s amazing marriage, like the prince and the princess of England,” she said, meaning that they are in fact capable of understanding “the big picture of beauty that God has in mind.”
