One Ex-Lesbian's Plea to Pastors Across America — Charisma News

So the ex-gay community has another new face, Linda Italiano, who claims a meeting with a pastor changed her sexuality after 30 years as an out gay woman.  What is not mentioned in her Charisma magazine piece, one of the main purveyors of this crap, is that this individual comes from a background of self loathing and the need for acceptance.

It wasn’t always like this. I didn’t always enjoy a life full of quality friends, days spent productively, and a real understanding of why I am on this earth. No, just a few short years ago I stayed mostly in the house and isolated myself. I was afraid to live and afraid to die. Allow me to back up and fill you in as to what led to this amazing transformation in my life.
,,,
Thankfully, I was wrong about all of this. I requested a meeting with the pastor where I told her everything and I was met with love and respect. I was also shown exactly what the Bible says about homosexuality and it was made clear to me that it was unacceptable and wrong. [I would love to know exactly what the pastor showed her about homosex, since it is not in the Bible.]* I came away from that meeting still feeling welcome and accepted in the church, but understanding that homosexuality is a sin like any other sin. I understood that the Word of God is more important than anything else, and He is the answer to all of my problems. It did not take very long before I was completely delivered from the homosexual lifestyle and I totally renounced it. God did for me what I had been unwilling or unable to do for myself.  

Self-reported alcoholism, or as I like to call it - self-medication,

In 1980, the drinking age was eighteen, much to my detriment. It had become increasingly difficult for me to spend time at home because my mother was taking out all of her unhappiness and hurt on me. I had become her target for all that was lost in our family. I began to spend much of my time in bars. I drank to excess from the start and I quickly became an alcoholic. I also met a woman who introduced me to lesbianism. I chose this lifestyle for thirty years or so until I became a Christian in 2014.  [Notice the seduction by another women, ie. lack of personal responsibility.]

Drinking for me was like a job. I lived in fear of withdrawal and tried unsuccessfully to walk that line between maintenance drinking and blackout drinking. Blackout always won. This lasted until the age of thirty-three when I finally stopped drinking.

All wrapped up in a history of a traumatic, dysfunctional family life.

In 1980, a month before I turned eighteen, my older brother was killed in a car accident. This was the event that changed everything for me. I went from a stable person with goals and dreams to an angry, hopeless, directionless person. My family started growing apart immediately after the accident as we each dealt with the loss separately. This began many years of victim mentality thinking, which hindered me in a big way as it colored all of my decisions going forward.

If the formula sounds familiar it should. It is the same story used by recent right-wing, anti-gay poster children Linda Wall and Katy Faust.

• dysfunctional family life due to traumatic event
• development of self-loathing:  lack of self-worth, a reliance on "others" for perception of self or acceptance
• self-medication:  drugs or alcohol
• seduction by another:  lack of personal responsiblity
• a "god" fixes everything, at the flip-of-a-switch "I'm" healed

Not that it would have mattered much to the readership of Charisma, but her full story needs to be examined.  Italiano is in need of a therapist, not a minister.  As I said in regards to Katy Faust, "Having the personal, private belief that same-sex relationships are not Biblical may not be hateful per se (wrong IMO); it is her belief.  BUT, traipsing around the world spitting rhetoric that is not even your own,,, is vile; it is hurtful. Being loud about it, so that the whole world can hear you, is being hateful."

One Ex-Lesbian's Plea to Pastors Across America — Charisma News


*Just like with Linda Wall I would like to ask Italiano if she and her pastor delved into the complexities of the following:

• 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 (arsenokoitai and malakoi)
• Genesis 1:26-28; 2:18-25, Matthew 19:3-12, Romans 1:26-27 (male/female, sexual/gender complementarity)
• Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 (toevah)
• The sins of Sodom and Gibeah (Genesis 19/Judges 19)
• Also have you studied the socio-cultural norms of cultic temple prostitution (OT-Ashteroth /NT-Cybele)

You see, even after 30 years of "study", I still don't think I have all the answers.