I was born in Los Angeles, Calif. on September 28, 1968 to a lower-income, under-educated African American couple. A major part of their self-identity was as Seventh Day Adventist Christians, and were HEAVILY involved in the church locally and regionally.

In all, I grew up with one brother, two sisters, one grandmother and a cousin who lived with her; and one set of parents (one man and one woman...) both of whom cared mightily for us kids and whom we appreciate today.

I'm sure there are thousands of other stories that talk about coming out and many of them might sound the same, mine included. So I will not bore you with the small details of things most all of us have gone through.

Like you, I have had a wonderful life full of sunshine and rain, joy and sadness. I've had highs and lows. My struggle of self-acceptance has not been all-darkness or all-light, utter loneliness or constant companionship. Some of my high and low points are in the area of faith, education, and social relationships. I have both experienced kinship and felt like an outsider in all the categorical groups I more closely identify with: gays, Christians, athletes, and even American blacks.

I have been a very spiritual person most of my life. In turn, I can say that I have been a very sensual and sexual person most of my life. We all are.

For many years I believed that certain feelings I had inside for some other men, were wrong, sinful, and destructive. Most of what I learned to believe came from how adults reacted to various situations. I also learned from what I heard my peers say on the play field. I learned indirectly from other blacks, (particularly through an article that appeared in a 1970's EBONY Magazine) a "racial" and irrational twist to the reasons why of homosexuality. Yet the most powerful lessons of self-hate that I learned, came from the pulpit and those associated with "church". Yes, what I learned from my environment was to hate myself because of the desires and imaginations in my heart and mind.

Now the struggle was on. To become heterosexual, or at least, distract myself for the rest of my life so that I wouldn't have time to think about what my heart truly desired. There were revivals. And how many times, really, did I walk down the isle for prayer during an appeal because as I said before, I've been at once, a very spiritual and sensual/sexual person. I'm sure that if the New Testement Apostle Paul could have gotten free of his cultural beliefs -- and same-sex marriage was accepted -- his comment about "better to marry than to burn" would fit me (and in my mind today, it does fit for me in the context of marriage to another man).

I have had a love/hate relationship with extreme gender-role assignments of crude machismo for men and dainty femininity for women. I have confronted this from within and outside of myself, as I've journeyed, most pointedly during my years at Southern College now called Southern Adventist University and Wall Walla College.

These are all general points. Yet there was one time when most of the doubts I had about accepting myself as a black gay Christian were put to rest. It was the summer of '89, my second year as a camp counselor at NOSOCA (North and South Carolina Conference) Pines

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