Sam Allberry’s fall: What the Church must learn about LGBT identity.
The news of Sam Allberry’s fall sparked a question among our team at CHANGED: How might things be different today had the Stonewall activist movement of the '70s failed to pressure the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to reform its position on same-sex sexuality?
That might seem like an odd tangent when discussing the moral failures of a favored Christian leader, but it is an important one for our cultural moment because the rhetoric and dogma of the 1970 and '80s LGBT activist movement continue to dictate what we believe today and how people respond to those of us with these feelings. Activists have given us our understanding of a “unique people group” that only finds satisfaction and peace in same-sex sexuality and the subculture around it.
It wasn’t primarily scientific research that changed medical perspectives around same-sex sexuality; it was activist pressure. Charles W. Socarides, M.D., a psychiatrist during the 1970s, said: “Those of us who did not go along with the political redefinition were soon silenced at our own professional meetings. Our lectures were canceled, and our research papers turned down in the learned journals … mainstream publishers turned down books that objected to the gay revolution.”
The ultimate determination that homosexuality could offer satisfaction and healthy functioning was a conflict-ridden conclusion. Today, the medical establishment continues to embrace the ideals of the LGBT subculture while also steadfastly refusing to accept scientific evidence out of step with its dogma, e.g., the harms of surgical interventions to treat adolescent transgenderism.
But it’s the LGBT “community” that is paying the price for their freedom from the APAs. In the decades following Stonewall (1969), and despite significant advances in legal and social recognition over the last 50 years, LGBT-identifying populations continue to experience disproportionately high rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicidality relative to national population averages.
We are told that bigotry and discrimination are the cause; however, similar disparities exist in European nations that provide even greater acceptance than the U.S. in civil protections for LGBT-identifying individuals, including the Netherlands (which legalized gay marriage in 2001). Current public health data consistently indicate that LGBT-identifying youth remain at significantly elevated risk for suicidal ideation and self-harm compared to their heterosexual peers. The APA is failing this population despite its wholehearted embrace of LGBT.
In 2019, Science Magazine published the largest genome-wide association study (GWAS) on same-sex sexual behavior, which analyzed data from nearly 500,000 individuals. Researchers found no evidence for a “gay gene.” Instead, the researchers found genetic correlations between same-sex sexual behavior and several psychiatric or mental-health-related traits, including major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism, and addiction.
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Returning to our opening question, “What if activism had not reframed the experience of SSA for medical professionals?”
The LGBT population is at risk for mental illness, and the medical establishment currently fails to link SSA to emotional distress, something many of us at CHANGED experience.
Consider this thought experiment comparing SSA to clinical depression. When a person seeks a psychologist for severe depression, the psychologist is not going to promise a joy-filled life free of depression. No, she will likely suggest that biological factors and temperament may be involved.
The professional will explore life pressures and may revisit family systems and attachment issues before turning to a modality of talk therapy for relief, such as cognitive behavioral therapy. This gives the individual comfort and life strategies, as well as a deeper self-understanding of the formative and developmental factors involved.
Perhaps there is overall emotional relief, even a diminishment of the life-dominating attraction. The individual may move on and live several years without issue, using life strategies and growing healthy. CHANGED co-founder Ken Williams is an example of a man who worked through issues in his life with Jesus and a counselor, ultimately marrying his wife, Tiffany, and forming a family. They are very healthy and happy together.
Neeza Powers became an Instagram sensation when he published his day-by-day journey reading the Bible to discover Christ, documenting his path of detransition. But recently, Powers made an abrupt retreat into his alt-identity as a trans woman. Some are saying his priest had denied him the opportunity to be baptized.
Perhaps Allberry experienced some similar kind of life pressure, leading him into an illicit relationship. I’ve seen this reaction time and again. Does this mean once gay, always gay? Well, perhaps only in the same way as once depressed, always depressed. We easily silo ourselves into groups that share our life-dominating issues for comfort.
It happens among those suffering from autism, ADHD, depression, alcoholism and same-sex attraction. People live meaningful lives married to their same-sex spouses, raising families, etc.
However, they have also given themselves over to their primary mode of comfort and coping rather than pressing against the underlying issues. That is a personal choice all of us at CHANGED have had to grapple with. But we have chosen to move on from LGBT to embrace the biblical anthropology. It is far easier to give in.
Our shared societal failure to think more deeply and creatively about the lived experiences of those who identify as LGBT pushes people unnecessarily into these identity categories based on progressive, activist premises.
Today, we need new answers, new approaches, a better understanding, and a different narrative for all of us with this condition. Please, as you pray for Sam Allberry and others like him, remember that God’s Kingdom will bring full restoration to men and women of body, soul and spirit.
Maranatha.
Elizabeth Woning is co-founder of the CHANGED Movement, an international network of men and women who have left the LGBT subculture and identity to follow Jesus. She earned her master’s degree from a PCUSA seminary while openly lesbian and ministered within the LGBT-affirming church movement. A radical revelation of Jesus led her to a different path. Today, she is a licensed pastor at Bethel Church in Redding, California, where she lives with her husband, Doug. CVP.
