Speaker 1: This is false prophets. The story of Hillsong, the Hipster's church.
Speaker 1: It made millions of dollars, turned preachers into stars, but
Speaker 1: fell to earth. I left Hillsong feeling spiritually abused and exploited,
Speaker 1: and now I'm telling my story of life inside the megachurch.
Speaker 1: I'm no Ami Uribe, and I'm proud to say I'm queer.
Speaker 1: This episode is deeply personal. It's about my sexual identity
Speaker 1: and rejection that might resonate with you, and I know
Speaker 1: that could be triggering for some of you. The stories
Speaker 1: you are going to hear are intense, with some moments
Speaker 1: of distress, but also moments of joy. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: the year when I first walked into Hillsong Church, I
Speaker 1: saw the huge welcome home sign. I thought welcome home
Speaker 1: meant everyone. Later on I learned that welcome home had
Speaker 1: terms and conditions at the bottom. That we're invisible, but
Speaker 1: you kind of learn as you go. I'm mosta, how
Speaker 1: are you? I'm good. This is my mom, Lorenza. She
Speaker 1: was born in Mexico and lives in Arizona. We talked
Speaker 1: most days, so I've had a bit of a bicultural
Speaker 1: That's what I like to call it bicultural experience in
Speaker 1: two countries where I can speak in Spanish and I
Speaker 1: don't have an accent because I learned it so young,
Speaker 1: and I don't have much of an accent in English either.
Speaker 1: My parents told us that inside our home it was
Speaker 1: Mexico we needed to speak Spanish, and as soon as
Speaker 1: we stepped outside the door, it was the US and
Speaker 1: we had to speak English. My mom's church preached that
Speaker 1: homosexuality is a sin. I grew up in that kind
Speaker 1: of church, and I walked away. When I moved to Boston,
Speaker 1: I found Hillsong and I started to explore my sexual identity. Finally,
Speaker 1: it was time to have a conversation with my mom,
Speaker 1: so I ended up calling my mom after work. I
Speaker 1: was laying on my bed and my room was really dark.
Speaker 1: I wanted the safety of darkness. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I felt safe in that. And I dial the phone
Speaker 1: and I call my mom. I say I need to
Speaker 1: tell you something, and she stays really quiet, and she
Speaker 1: asked me, yeah, like what's happening, what's going on? And
Speaker 1: I tell her I'm queer. I don't know what this
Speaker 1: means for religion. I don't know what this means for
Speaker 1: my life. But I need you to know that this
Speaker 1: is who I am, and I'm letting you in a
Speaker 1: little bit more into who I am as a person.
Speaker 1: I'm figuring things out, and I know you're going to
Speaker 1: have a lot of questions coming from her perspective as
Speaker 1: a person who had been in the church I grew
Speaker 1: up in. She immediately to You're going to hell, and
Speaker 1: she started crying and had so much fear in her
Speaker 1: in her voice, because that's all I could hear. I
Speaker 1: could see, I could hear and feel that fear that
Speaker 1: she had that I was not going to be in
Speaker 1: heaven with her and she was losing me. And she
Speaker 1: started bible thomping, which was what often we use when
Speaker 1: someone is just throwing scripture at you and like hurting
Speaker 1: you with a Bible as if they were banging the
Speaker 1: Bible on your body. And so I had to go
Speaker 1: back in my mind to the sessions and therapy where
Speaker 1: I had talked to my therapist that if this happened,
Speaker 1: I needed to set a boundary. I stopped her and
Speaker 1: I said, Mom, I cannot do this right now. If
Speaker 1: you're going to continue not allowing me to speak, if
Speaker 1: you're going to continue to be hurtful with your words.
Speaker 1: I need to step away. So I said, I'm going
Speaker 1: to hang up the phone and I will leave it
Speaker 1: at that, and I did. If you've been through this,
Speaker 1: you need to know that you have good friends. You
Speaker 1: need to know you are loved. You need to be affirmed.
Speaker 1: Step by step, I started to find out if Hillsong
Speaker 1: was going to affirm me. First, I talked to my leader.
Speaker 1: I vividly remember she was folding her clothes, her laundry,
Speaker 1: and she asked me, so, what happened last night? And
Speaker 1: I was like, seriously, Like I had said, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk about this, and she says, well, why
Speaker 1: did you feel the need to come out to your mom?
Speaker 1: And I tell her because it's a big part of
Speaker 1: who I am, and I wanted to no longer be
Speaker 1: hiding this from her. I want to be openly me,
Speaker 1: all of me. And she tells me, well, what is identity?
Speaker 1: Is an identity so elusive? And I say, what, Like,
Speaker 1: identity is a big part of who we are where
Speaker 1: there's so many little things that make up our identity.
Speaker 1: But I start telling her all of these identities. I'm
Speaker 1: Latin X, I am a student. I am a Christian
Speaker 1: at that time, and all of these things are coming up,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is who what makes who
Speaker 1: I am? And being queer is right now a big
Speaker 1: part of that identity. And she says, well, shouldn't our
Speaker 1: identity in Christ be so much bigger than all of that?
Speaker 1: Shouldn't you be identifying as a child of God first?
Speaker 1: And I tell her, well, one thing isn't before the other.
Speaker 1: It's just a whole combilation of who you are. It's
Speaker 1: like a big circle. And that was really really eye
Speaker 1: opening for me and for our friendship. And I realized
Speaker 1: in that moment that I was not going to have
Speaker 1: save conversations with her about this. It went from experiencing
Speaker 1: friendship and everything so beautifully to having to hide this
Speaker 1: big part of me and not be able to show that,
Speaker 1: of fanning the door like it's beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Andrew and Anthony arriving at a hot studio in Sydney.
Speaker 1: To be honest, if you had asked me to wake
Speaker 1: up a seven am, I would have politely said nine.
Speaker 1: They're linking up with us to talk about sex, identity
Speaker 1: and God. Yeah. Andrew found Jesus at Hillsong when he
Speaker 1: was thirteen years old. He's now thirty seven. Anthony is
Speaker 1: a former Pentecostal preacher. He's seventy one. I'm twenty seven now.
Speaker 1: So between us we have more than five decades of
Speaker 1: the bizarre and painful things religion can throw at us.
Speaker 1: LGBTQ people. Oh, three of us like to laugh at stuff,
Speaker 1: but some of it has been really, really bad, and
Speaker 1: we are all healing. Here's Andrew. I would say that
Speaker 1: we are an ongoing work in progress. I think the
Speaker 1: human experience is one of navigation and exploration, not setting
Speaker 1: and forgetting. And so I would say that even with
Speaker 1: these very challenging experiences, that sometimes it does take time
Speaker 1: and not to judge that. And so one of the
Speaker 1: things that I often think about and have been invited
Speaker 1: to think about in the last several months, is honoring
Speaker 1: the fact that my experience at Hillsong Church has been
Speaker 1: an experience of complex trauma and complex PTSD. This for
Speaker 1: me is a powerful remembering, a powerful telling of my
Speaker 1: story that I think is really important to my healing
Speaker 1: and really important to the next several decades that I
Speaker 1: have here on this planet. Andrew wrote an amazing heartbreaking
Speaker 1: blog about his experience. He's going to read some of it.
Speaker 1: We start in the summer of nineteen ninety seven, the
Speaker 1: summer Andrew discovered Hillsong. Wow. What an intoxicating mix of fellowship, community, love,
Speaker 1: acceptance and best of all, great music. I finally had
Speaker 1: an identity and an identity in Christ. I had instant friends,
Speaker 1: I had a community. I also had two goals. Number
Speaker 1: one be more like Jesus and number two sing in
Speaker 1: that bloody band. I didn't have criteria, you know, the
Speaker 1: criteria of a thirteen year old walking into a church.
Speaker 1: I needed just love. And Hillsong at that time was
Speaker 1: exciting and expansive. We were recording albums and you know,
Speaker 1: new convention centers and the Prime Minister opening a building
Speaker 1: in Norwest of Sydney. You know, music pumping, and lives changed,
Speaker 1: meaning created. It was everything. I embraced every single aspect
Speaker 1: of Hillsong Church. I was thriving in my new found faith, well,
Speaker 1: at least thriving on the outside, hidden behind closed doors.
Speaker 1: I had a really big conflict and at the time
Speaker 1: I definitely did not have the resources to handle it.
Speaker 1: It turned out I had quite a strong passion for
Speaker 1: looking at naked men, a passion I could not shake
Speaker 1: very easily. This secret would stay with me for many
Speaker 1: years and actually come to haunt my every day. When
Speaker 1: I was twenty years old, it came time to tell
Speaker 1: Hillsong leadership about my big, dark and scary secret. My
Speaker 1: world instantly collapsed. Leadership asked me to leave the worship team.
Speaker 1: I was asked not to tell anyone, and as a result,
Speaker 1: I became incredibly isolated in my sin. I sobbed most
Speaker 1: of these days. I felt numb. I feared that this
Speaker 1: sense of evilness and isolation would never ever end. My
Speaker 1: friends of ten years plus were not able to offer
Speaker 1: support or love because they were kept totally in the dark.
Speaker 1: I was encouraged to exercise to enhance my masculinity. We
Speaker 1: prayed the demons off my back, and I was sent
Speaker 1: to an outside minister for counseling who had a specialization
Speaker 1: in homosexuality and more earth shatteringly for me, child sex offenders.
Speaker 1: I felt evil beyond words. I felt demons crawling all
Speaker 1: over my body, and the depths of despair cannot be
Speaker 1: described here. The identity I had rated within God's eyes
Speaker 1: had vanished overnight. It is hard to say how one
Speaker 1: survives these earth shattering moments, but most of us do.
Speaker 1: Andrew decided to tell a close circle of friends and
Speaker 1: leaders at Hillsong that he was going to live as
Speaker 1: a gay man. He sent an email explaining his decision
Speaker 1: and telling them he was leaving the church. Andrew said
Speaker 1: I love you and asked for their love and return.
Speaker 1: What happened after that is everyone abandoned the situation and
Speaker 1: refused to engage, except for this email that I got
Speaker 1: from the most senior pastor that I was sort of
Speaker 1: being handled by at the church. So I sent that email.
Speaker 1: Let me just give you the date. I sent that
Speaker 1: in June twenty five, and I received this email back
Speaker 1: from Hillsong. This is from an at Hillsong dot com address.
Speaker 1: Hey Bro. Sorry, that's really funny. Can you believe he
Speaker 1: wrote hey bro like it's actually written there? Oh my
Speaker 1: fucking god, Hey Bro, I had a good read through
Speaker 1: your email. I am a bit surprised, but not shocked.
Speaker 1: I am going to have a shot at looking through
Speaker 1: the eyes of the spirit to see if I can't
Speaker 1: shed some light on your thinking. It's a long email
Speaker 1: with references to lust of the flesh and advice to
Speaker 1: Andrew that he should listen to his inner man. It
Speaker 1: rounds off with this, even though you have thought this through,
Speaker 1: it is possible that you have been influenced by the
Speaker 1: enemy and his tactics. So I think it would be
Speaker 1: good to talk this over and make sure that you
Speaker 1: are not deceived or influenced by the spirit of the world,
Speaker 1: which is very pro towards this type of lifestyle. See
Speaker 1: what you think, still here to help out. I ignored
Speaker 1: that email back in the day. Doesn't even hurt to read,
Speaker 1: because it's just mad Hillsong speak. Mad hearing Andrew's story
Speaker 1: is not shocking to me. Sad, yes, but not surprising.
Speaker 1: The level of intensity is greater than mine, and the
Speaker 1: counseling he was referred to costs so much pain. But
Speaker 1: I do identify with what he suffered, and I admire
Speaker 1: his courage. I look back at my twenty year old self,
Speaker 1: the brave one who, even in that intoxication of Hillsong,
Speaker 1: backed himself to leave. And you know, I sit here
Speaker 1: feeling quite powerful that at twenty and twenty one, I
Speaker 1: was able to make those moves and step out and
Speaker 1: create the life that I get to live now. As
Speaker 1: a thirty seven year old. It makes me think of
Speaker 1: the things that I would like an apology for, potentially
Speaker 1: if it was possible, But I just don't think it
Speaker 1: is possible, which is, you know, the silence and the
Speaker 1: shaming when I disclosed my same sex attraction to leadership
Speaker 1: and the leadership response and being sent to an outside counselor,
Speaker 1: and that really really fucking with my mind. You know
Speaker 1: what I would love I want people to recognize that
Speaker 1: these sorts of decisions made out of faith and what
Speaker 1: they would describe as love or God's plan and their
Speaker 1: lasting pain, hurt and harm that is caused by those
Speaker 1: types of decisions. I would love for them to be
Speaker 1: able to see it, connect to it. That's what I
Speaker 1: would like them to know. I am Anthony Van Brown,
Speaker 1: and in the form of lit I thought I was
Speaker 1: a high profile Pentecostal preacher. I am the founder and
Speaker 1: CEO of Ambassadors at Bridge build As International Abbey as
Speaker 1: we call it, and author of the best seller A
Speaker 1: Lot of That Learning a preachers struggle with his homosexuality
Speaker 1: Church at Faith. Anthony is a really big part of
Speaker 1: Andrew's story. When Andrew first read Anthony's life story, he says,
Speaker 1: it was like every cell in my body was being noticed.
Speaker 1: Anthony stories extreme, but in a way it is all
Speaker 1: our story. Anthony wasn't a part of Hillsong, but his
Speaker 1: story is all about being gay in the same type
Speaker 1: of evangelical and Pentecostal churches, and his life story is
Speaker 1: kind of living history and it helps us understand the
Speaker 1: past and the present. There was constant prayer, daily prayer.
Speaker 1: There was lots of self hatred and self loathing and
Speaker 1: confession to God and tears and praying and fasting and
Speaker 1: exorcisms though through then. Finally in nineteen seventy two, submitted
Speaker 1: myself to a residential program, which was one of the
Speaker 1: first two in the world before it became a formal
Speaker 1: thing like Exodus Internationalists some people would know about. So
Speaker 1: as full on, you know, it was my constant focus.
Speaker 1: I have to get rid of this thing because God
Speaker 1: can't use me with this sin in my life. So
Speaker 1: I've been around long enough to see this whole thing
Speaker 1: of old so as I say, I was one of
Speaker 1: the first to go through a conversion therapy type program.
Speaker 1: In those days, we didn't even have a name for it.
Speaker 1: It later became known as b X game, but there
Speaker 1: was no name when I was doing in the seventy two.
Speaker 1: Many people know this gay conversion therapy, and millions of
Speaker 1: gay people have been subjected to this. It's been banned
Speaker 1: in some countries, but is still legal in many, including
Speaker 1: in parts of mine. In twenty ten, Hillsong Band referrals
Speaker 1: to X gay or conversion therapy programs. But you don't
Speaker 1: have to have been through gay conversion therapy to have
Speaker 1: experienced trauma. In many churches. You know the hurt and
Speaker 1: the damage, the trauma that almost every single LGBTQ person
Speaker 1: within a pedecostal or evangelical church has been through. They
Speaker 1: need to experience, Healey. One of the ways is through
Speaker 1: an apology. It is so important to have those people
Speaker 1: say we are sorry. I talked about the residential program
Speaker 1: I went through recently. I worked with that church to
Speaker 1: become affirming, and I was there and they she's an
Speaker 1: apology to me and to other people that have been harmed.
Speaker 1: It's hard to describe in words just how meaningful and
Speaker 1: how profound and how life changed, how a liberating that
Speaker 1: can be for you. Fifty years later, and we went
Speaker 1: and stood on the verandah where the leader of the program,
Speaker 1: had humiliated me in front of my sister and brother
Speaker 1: in law when they came to pick me up, and
Speaker 1: her opening words to them was, your brother is one
Speaker 1: of Sydney's worst homosexuals. And then she went on to
Speaker 1: totally discredit me and shame me in front of them.
Speaker 1: So after the apology, we walked down to the corner
Speaker 1: of that veranda where that happened, and I took back
Speaker 1: my power and I made some declarations about who I
Speaker 1: am and who we are as LGBT people. I feel very,
Speaker 1: very blessed, you know. I feel like I'm in a
Speaker 1: good place that I would love to see others be
Speaker 1: able to move on to that place, because I see
Speaker 1: so many people still carrying the hurt and the trauma,
Speaker 1: and I believe there's a way forward for you, and
Speaker 1: I would love for you to experience some of that
Speaker 1: resolution and some of that peace that I've found. Why
Speaker 1: would someone who was treated so badly by evangelical Christians
Speaker 1: want to spend a moment of his amazing life and
Speaker 1: energy on them. It's because Anthony believes change is possible.
Speaker 1: His work is about resolution, building bridges, and education. This
Speaker 1: is how it works. Some people hate gay people, but
Speaker 1: then others from hatred to dislike. Some people be from
Speaker 1: dislike to discomfort. Some people then are able to be
Speaker 1: from discomfort to tolerance, that others could be from tolerance
Speaker 1: to accept the then people can be from acceptance to affirmation,
Speaker 1: then finally to advocacy. So that's the continuum that I
Speaker 1: work with with church leaders and Christian organizations to see
Speaker 1: this as a journey that you are on and you
Speaker 1: actually have made some progress in this. You're not back
Speaker 1: with the people who hate people you know or that
Speaker 1: you dislike. You know, you're in a much better space.
Speaker 1: But you also need to do some work to move forward.
Speaker 1: And what is it that you require to be able
Speaker 1: to move forward? And it's going to be number one,
Speaker 1: more education, more understanding. But of course they would never
Speaker 1: really move forward unless they have some contact with LGBTQ people.
Speaker 1: Anthony preached on a regular basis for Brain Houston A.
Speaker 1: Hillsong from the time the church was founded until he
Speaker 1: resigned from the ministry in nineteen ninety one and he
Speaker 1: came out. So where does Anthony think Hillsong is on
Speaker 1: the sliding scale from hatred to advocacy? I remember, but
Speaker 1: I used to take Sometimes people used to say, oh,
Speaker 1: we'd love to go to hill Song Church. I said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to take you along, you know, and then
Speaker 1: we would go to the coffee shop afterwards. And because
Speaker 1: they was known there that one of the pastons will
Speaker 1: come over and chat and introduced them to this dear person.
Speaker 1: You know, they've just come to see what the churches
Speaker 1: like us. They've heard so much about it. And invariably
Speaker 1: the person would say, so, how do you feel about
Speaker 1: gay or lesbian people here and the church? And almost
Speaker 1: every single time, everybody would say, well, everybody's welcome here
Speaker 1: like it. It It doesn't matter whether you're a prostitute, you know,
Speaker 1: whether you were a burglar, whether you were a murderer,
Speaker 1: no matter what, whether you've been to jail, everybody's welcome here.
Speaker 1: What a slap in the face. And also it showed
Speaker 1: it demonstrated the person's complete ignorance about sexual orientation. Behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, Anthony van Brown was working to change that,
Speaker 1: but churches like Hillsong walk with them line Brian hoosted
Speaker 1: before he resigned for the ministry. You know, we were
Speaker 1: having conversations Brian and I and the porter conversations. We
Speaker 1: weren't making them public because once you make them public,
Speaker 1: then suddenly everybody else gets on board and hijacks the conversations.
Speaker 1: So that was something I learned very early, the piece
Speaker 1: keep it all under wraps. Initially those conversations were very
Speaker 1: amicable and respectful and warm and beneficial, I believe, and
Speaker 1: I remember that Brian went to New Yorker did a
Speaker 1: media conference, and at the media conference he was asked about, so,
Speaker 1: what's your view on gay marriage? And he was being
Speaker 1: very careful about how he worded things, and instead of
Speaker 1: being condemning, he said, you're, well, you know, this is
Speaker 1: an important issue that all churches are dearly with and
Speaker 1: it's true. It was not just hill Song, it was
Speaker 1: it's run across Christendom. And he says, the church is
Speaker 1: deally with this, and we're having conversations what he was
Speaker 1: he was having them with me. But as soon as
Speaker 1: he said that, there was this huge backlash from the conservatives.
Speaker 1: What do you media having a conversation. There's no conversation
Speaker 1: to be had. The Bibles really clear, you know these
Speaker 1: people need to be pedan come to Jesus. So then
Speaker 1: I call it the homosexual hip hop. The pope doesn't.
Speaker 1: Bride's done it several times, so there where they get
Speaker 1: the backlash, then they have to then jump in and
Speaker 1: then issue another media release. And his media release was
Speaker 1: needs a lot of work. I wish I could have
Speaker 1: helped him with that because it used all the red
Speaker 1: flag words like gay lifestyle you know, and practicing you know,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, all the wrong words. I know what
Speaker 1: he was trying to say, but we're using or the
Speaker 1: wrong worthy, which then cause another Then it wasn't the conservatives,
Speaker 1: it was the LGBT people and their allies who are
Speaker 1: up in I was like, how can what do you
Speaker 1: mean the lifestyle? What's this lifestyle business you're talking about? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so to ask you a questions, I think that here's
Speaker 1: something interesting which possibly a lot of your listeners would
Speaker 1: not know about. There are meetings of big megachurch pastors
Speaker 1: every day and again who get together as anybody would,
Speaker 1: to talk about the issues that they're facing, all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. And I do happen to know that
Speaker 1: within those meetings the gay issue is brought up, and
Speaker 1: that there are mega church pastors who are further along
Speaker 1: the continuum than they would ever admit. Publicly. And so
Speaker 1: within these mega church fast as, there are pastors which
Speaker 1: are pretty well at the point where they have accepted
Speaker 1: that gay marriage is okay. But if they ever said
Speaker 1: that for the pulpit, that they could lose half their
Speaker 1: congregation tomorrow. So the thing that's holding that back Number
Speaker 1: one is power. A church split is very traumatic, by
Speaker 1: the way, on all people involved. I would wish that
Speaker 1: on anybody. But also there's the financial aspect. Don't you
Speaker 1: lose half your congregation, you lose half of your financial
Speaker 1: support as well. So there's a lot at stake, which
Speaker 1: is why they're not standing up and saying this is
Speaker 1: what I believe. Which, of course, when you consider that
Speaker 1: some of them are writing a lot about leadership, well hello,
Speaker 1: does it the leaders stand out and actually lead where
Speaker 1: he believes is the right way to take a congregation
Speaker 1: or you play it safe and a lot of the players.
Speaker 1: And that brings me right back to Boston and my
Speaker 1: Hillsong story. It's October of twenty nineteen. I knew I
Speaker 1: was queer, and I was deep into the church that
Speaker 1: was not being honest. Was Hillsong ready to affirm me?
Speaker 1: My leader of Hillsong urged me to identify as a
Speaker 1: child of God. I wasn't buying that. Next one of
Speaker 1: the Boston pastors, Steve de Grosa, stepped in with an offer,
Speaker 1: I want to mentor you. And I look at him
Speaker 1: and it's this white guy, a straight, cisgender Christian white man,
Speaker 1: which is like all the privileges you can think of
Speaker 1: in this country, in the US, And I'm like, you
Speaker 1: want to mentor a brown queer, a non binary Latin
Speaker 1: XT person. I'm like, okay. I didn't tell him those identities,
Speaker 1: but that's what I was going through my head. I
Speaker 1: was like, how can you provide any guidance to someone
Speaker 1: like me? But I was like, okay, sure, yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I'm down. I honestly just like didn't really care. And
Speaker 1: then we go back to the LGBTQ conversation and I say, well,
Speaker 1: that's honestly holding me back because I have not had
Speaker 1: a straight answer from anyone. What is hillsong stance on
Speaker 1: LGBTQ people and what are the LGBTQ policies that this
Speaker 1: church has. He kind of just stays quiet, and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a case by case basis. So he
Speaker 1: starts giving me the same response that my leader had
Speaker 1: given me, and I'm like, I'm not going to fall
Speaker 1: for this again. By this point, I had learned about
Speaker 1: queer theology and I knew how to ask these type
Speaker 1: of questions and how to frame him in the way
Speaker 1: to help you realize if this was a safe, affirming
Speaker 1: church or not. So I look at him and I say, Okay,
Speaker 1: like I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole
Speaker 1: with you. Of like, it's a case by case basis
Speaker 1: and it depends on the pastor and this and that.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm going to ask you yes or
Speaker 1: no questions, and he's like okay. I was like, would you,
Speaker 1: as a pastor who's ordained, be able to marry me
Speaker 1: and my partner who happens to be of the same sex.
Speaker 1: And he just stares at me and is like, well,
Speaker 1: at Hillsong Church, we don't really perform marriages. It's rare
Speaker 1: on rare occasions for like friends and family. And I'm like, okay, Steve,
Speaker 1: you are my friend, are you not? And he's like,
Speaker 1: well yeah. I was like, okay, you as my friend.
Speaker 1: I go to you and I say, hey, Steve, can
Speaker 1: you marry my partner? And I who happens to be
Speaker 1: of the same sex. We want to get married, and
Speaker 1: we've been together for a while and it's a loving, consensual,
Speaker 1: committed relationship. And he kind of just stares at me
Speaker 1: and it is like, well no, and I'm like okay,
Speaker 1: and he's like, well, I believe marriage is between an
Speaker 1: amount and a woman. And he goes off a spiel
Speaker 1: and I'm like, Okay, that's not what we're going to
Speaker 1: go into. You said no, we're taking them now. It's like,
Speaker 1: next question. And I started feeling like a lawyer in
Speaker 1: this moment and someone was on the stance, and I say, okay,
Speaker 1: next question. I am a qualified public health professional and
Speaker 1: Hillsong posts a job description for someone they're looking for
Speaker 1: to hire. It is an amazing job, and I have
Speaker 1: all the qualifications to perform that job, and I apply
Speaker 1: to that job. But I happen to be married to
Speaker 1: someone of the same sex, or I happen to be
Speaker 1: openly queer. Would Hillsong Church hire me or at least
Speaker 1: let me go through the interview process or anything. Would
Speaker 1: they just hire me if I happen to be queer,
Speaker 1: Like if that happens to be another one my identities
Speaker 1: and openly queer, not hidden like openly and he stays quiet.
Speaker 1: He's like, well, we don't know who's going to apply
Speaker 1: and who's going to go through the process. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's not the question, like reassess, like coming back, would
Speaker 1: Hillsock to retire me as an openly queer person for
Speaker 1: this job that I'm like qualified and maybe even overly qualified?
Speaker 1: And he's like, well, no, because the people we hire
Speaker 1: at Hillsong need to have the same stance and we
Speaker 1: believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Speaker 1: And I was like, Okay, finally someone said something. Thank you,
Speaker 1: that's the answer I've been looking for for almost two years.
Speaker 1: And he kind of realizes that he fucked up because
Speaker 1: he told me and he was like, um, well, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, it's a case by case spaces, so
Speaker 1: we don't really know. And I was like, no, that's
Speaker 1: all I needed to hear. And I was like, I
Speaker 1: honestly feel like I have finally had the answers that
Speaker 1: I needed, that I've been asking for for over a year,
Speaker 1: and I am ready to go. It makes me smile
Speaker 1: listening to myself just remembering how I put them through
Speaker 1: the ringer when you know what questions you should ask.
Speaker 1: It seems so simple, doesn't it, But it took a
Speaker 1: long time to get out. I want to thank Andrew
Speaker 1: and Anthony for sharing their story. You can learn more
Speaker 1: about the work Anthony ben Brown is doing at Ambassadors
Speaker 1: and bridge Builders International on the website at www dot
Speaker 1: abbi dot org dot AU. And my mom. She went
Speaker 1: to a women's conference for her church and stood up
Speaker 1: and talk to people about me. She shared her story
Speaker 1: and how she was struggling, but she was also encouraging
Speaker 1: them to love people like me, to love gay people,
Speaker 1: to love LGBTQ people, because the way the church was
Speaker 1: treating us was not the way Jesus would for me.
Speaker 1: It was shocking. Honestly, I didn't expect her to get
Speaker 1: up and talk about me. She was in a church
Speaker 1: that was excluding people like me, and for her to
Speaker 1: do that was going to cause retaliation for her, and
Speaker 1: it did. So I'm really proud of her because I
Speaker 1: realized that she was actually listening, that she was actually learning,
Speaker 1: and that she was actually putting that into practice by
Speaker 1: sharing with others and encouraging them to love LGBTQ people
Speaker 1: in general, and the next part of my story, I
Speaker 1: hit my lowest point. My mental health crisis leads me
Speaker 1: to a psychiatric hospital and an incredible friendship. A drag
Speaker 1: queen and a bad sermon from Carl Lentz only gets
Speaker 1: me to the exit door.