Reading all of the articles in The Minnesota Daily about homosexuality and gay marriage has given me a little zeal to say a few things. I agree with Matthew Hernick completely on “You can love the people and not their practices,” from the Daily on April 15. I should know. I used to be gay.

My dad died when I was only 8 years old, leaving my sister, brother and myself without a father or masculine role model. I missed out on the important father/son relationship. I had no one to play catch with me, to wrestle with me, to discipline me and to comfort me as a father comforts his son. I became isolated, and by age 10 I had discovered homosexual pornography. Because I had never learned any alternative to male/male relationships, I assumed that this is how men showed love.

It wasn’t long before I started experimenting with other guys who were willing to mess around with me. I didn’t know better, and even if I did, I still didn’t know how to express love to another guy. I missed my dad. I needed a man to show me love and I thought this was it. I tried to entice other men. I slept around. I gave myself away in hopes that I would find the love I was missing in my life. I never did find that love.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t force someone out of something they enjoy doing. My peers would pick on me and beat me up, but I wouldn’t stop my lifestyle because I thought it could be the “something missing” in my life.

Still, there were some people who loved me for who I was and who I was going to become. A classmate invited me to start coming to a Bible study Wednesdays at school. First I went because I was lonely, but soon I started to be interested in the things they were teaching, and even the Bible. But I was still gay, and thought, “Once gay, always gay.”

The next thing I knew, I was going to a church where people were real to me and they loved me with a love that didn’t have anything to do with what I could do for them. They called it the love of Christ. I didn’t understand that concept then, but I do now. I know that it’s the

only true love there is. Every other kind of love is selfish. This love is unconditional, even if I screw up. I have struggled. I’ve slipped up. But I’ve found that there is victory over destructive things in my life such as homosexuality.

John 3:16 says that God loved every single one of us so much that he sent his perfect and only son Jesus to pay the price for our mistakes. That means I’m the guilty one, but he paid the penalty. Then in the book of James it says that trials and tests are a good thing because they teach us patience. It also says that God cannot tempt anyone, so if you’re tempted to do something you don’t think you should do, it’s your own selfishness to follow your desires, and that leads to death.

But remember, he already paid the penalty for that selfishness. He forgives and forgets, but we have to admit that we’re wrong.

Homosexuality is a choice. You choose to interpret the way love is presented to you and how you present love. Physical or sexual love is not what love is all about. There’s a better love that will never let you down. The door is wide open. I have made the choice to walk through the door to that love. If I can do it, anyone can. There is freedom from addiction and from sin, and that’s in Jesus. Read the Bible and see for yourself.

Michael David Wallen is a staff member at the University’s intercollegiate athletics department. He welcomes comments at [email protected]