Gay Conversion: I Slept With Over 200 Men, Now I'm a Happily Married Heterosexual Dad

I guess I became straight by accident. It was never a grand plan; the therapy was an attempt to resolve commitment issues, rather than sexual identity. I never had any desire to change my sexuality. But that's what happened – in fact I changed everything.

Having had hundreds of homosexual partners, I eventually married a woman and had a child. And my whole outlook on life changed. I grew from a loud and arrogant person, trying desperately to mask my deep insecurities in group situations, into a strong, assertive guy who loved sports and war films. At the age of 46, I've never felt better in my own skin.

But before we get into the details of my conversion, let's go back to the beginning.

I knew I was gay at about 10 or 11. My cousin himself had come out and I realised my own attractions were the same. At the age of 10 or 11 boys start getting interested in girls, but I was only interested in boys. I was definitely a number six on the Kinsey Scale – an exclusively homosexual male with no heterosexual desires whatsoever.

Teenage years were hell. I often thought of suicide, occasionally self-harmed and had a growing problem with alcohol and gay porn. I came out to my parents when I was 17, in floods of tears. But mum and dad were amazing; they said they had known I was gay and then affirmed their unconditional love for me. My mates at school also told me they had known for some time and supported me. The 'coming out' process wasn't tortuous or traumatic.

At 18 I moved to London from the north of England and fully embraced my gay identity. I became the first person to live openly as a gay man in the section of the university I attended, and even established an LGBT group for other students, actively preaching against those who suggested that being gay was somehow a choice, or even wrong.

I never felt the need to change. I was born gay, it was all I'd ever known – end of. Even though I'd been raised a Christian and attended an LGBT Christian Movement in London, I reveled in the capital's gay scene and led a very promiscuous lifestyle. In fact, I reckon I had 200 sexual partners.

Eventually I settled down with a long-term boyfriend, an ex-soldier and Falklands vet, and we considered going abroad to marry – or at least have a civil-partnership. But around this time I made the decision to enter a relationship with Christ, which allowed me to examine my life more deeply.

I realised I had some issues, centring on commitment. I discovered I had a deep-rooted fear of rejection, I was too anxious, and I used people. I had an innate fear of men – not of their homophobia, but the real thing: a chasm between me and the normal heterosexual male (Kinsey's so-called number ones).

I terminated my relationship with my long-term partner to get a clean slate, and, acting on a friend's advice, I went into therapy to address my commitment issues. There was nothing brutal or harrowing about the help I received; the horror stories you hear from some of those gay-straight 'conversion' documentaries don't apply here. It was simply a mixture of cognitive therapy, to challenge my core beliefs and root out one-sided thinking; behavioural therapy, to change problematic actions trained through years of reinforcement; and EMDR, which uses rhythmic eye movements to dampen the power of traumatic memories.

My therapist and I never focused solely on my being sexually attracted to men, but my "being gay" had to be part of the dialogue, otherwise I'd have been leaving a part of my life at the door. Much of my journey was about forgiving those I needed to forgive, and recognising where I had built walls against significant others in my life, especially my parents and siblings.

I eventually came to realise that as a boy I had failed to interact with other men on any significant level. I had perceived myself to be rejected by men even as a small boy and had made an inner vow never to deeply trust them. People had reached out to me and I had spurned them, including my father and two older brothers. No wonder men had become a mystery to me and even an obsession by my teens, when I began erotically craving men and feeding this through porn.

I also realised I had thrown myself wholeheartedly into a world of the feminine, with no masculine counter-balance, yet I despised women for having the natural ability to woo every aspect of a heterosexual man, which I could not do. I discovered that my natural place was not among women.

A lot of core behaviours were challenged - my looks, my body, my walk – and my therapist challenged me to look at where I wasn't like other men, and where I was. The therapist began to work on things like my voice and my gait - he was giving me permission to think in a different way, to do things differently.

Feeling of acceptance

My fears and anxiety gradually subsided, and I began to feel more accepted around both men and women. I moved from constantly rejecting masculine identity to embracing it; my posture changed, I began to walk straighter and lost my old mincing walk. My voice gained a whole new resonance, such that people would regularly comment on it to me.

I began to see that maybe, just maybe, I was never truly gay and that there was a man as real and as noble as the men I had often admired, worshipped and yearned for hidden deep within me, waiting to be freed and released.

Physical contact with women, even touching a woman's hair, became more enjoyable. I began to enjoy being a man, and enjoy women's company more. This doesn't mean I went out and was attracted to every woman I met; I wasn't an on-heat teenager. But it was a gradual process, eventually leading to dates and relationships.

Today I've been married to a woman for eight years, and we have a five-year-old daughter. I love art and theatre, but I enjoy team sports in a way that frightened me as a child. One of my favourite movies is Saving Private Ryan, because it's about brotherhood and deep male friendships, something I'd never enjoyed before.

Am I now exclusively heterosexual, some people ask? Most of the time, yes. But for most people there are periods where sexuality can be quite fluid. At times this is true for me too. I don't miss the gay lifestyle I left behind –when I visited my ex-boyfriend, five years after therapy, it brought to home to me the drawbacks of that life. His voice had become camp and weak, and he had even contracted HIV.

I know more than ever that my decision to entertain therapy, and at a later stage the therapy which concentrates on repairing malformed sexual orientation, saved my life in the long run. It also saved a lot of taxpayers' money too. I now believe I would have ended up considering, and no doubt requesting, gender reassignment at the expense of the public purse.

But the changes in my life (and my ex-boyfriend's) don't make me want to preach or convert anyone. Therapy can be dangerous, and there's no reason why anyone should feel compelled to 'convert'.

But I now believe people aren't born gay, and anyone can develop the sort of hidden identity I've found.

Source: http://bit.ly/PXt0r7d

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'The most evil man in the world'

It is 1982 and as day breaks in Liberia, the Krahn tribe prepares for the initiation of its high priest. Against the sound of the drumbeat, he is taken to an isolated area, led by a man in a carved black mask. The priest stands before an altar, naked. The elders bring a little girl, unclothe her and smear her body with clay. The priest slays the child.

In a ritual that spans three days, her heart and other body parts are removed and eaten. In the course of those days the priest has a vision: he meets the devil who tells him he will become a great warrior.

The devil says to increase his power he must continue the rituals of child sacrifice and cannibalism. The initiation is complete and the priest is now one of the most powerful leaders in West Africa. The priest is 11 years old. As prophesied, the boy priest grew up to become one of Liberia's most notorious warlords: General Butt Naked. He and his boy soldiers would charge into battle naked apart from boots and machine guns.

The initiation sacrifice that he carried out aged 11 was the first life he took out of the 20,000 deaths for which he now claims responsibility.His rivals dispute the number of deaths as impossible to prove.Yet what is indisputable is that during Liberia's 14 years of civil war, the man became known as one of the most inhumane and ruthless guerrilla leaders in Africa's history.

After the former General Butt Naked confessed his past to Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2008, one internet blogger asked: 'Is this the most evil man who ever lived?' His crimes included child sacrifice, cannibalism, the exploitation of child soldiers and trading blood diamonds for guns and cocaine, which he fed to boy soldiers as young as nine.

Yet today he says he is a reformed man. In July 1996, the warlord had 'an epiphany'. Having spent 14 years holding nightly conversations with the devil, he had a blinding vision of Christ who told him to end the killings and convert.

This was a Damascene conversion like no other: the former tribal priest and warlord is now known as Pastor Joshua Milton Blahyi. Aged 39, he is married, a father of three and lives as a Christian preacher. He says if he can change, anyone can. He also calls for the tribal religious practice of child sacrifice and cannibalism to end, saying it still goes on in Liberia to this day.

Liberia's TRC, set up to investigate the war's atrocities, reported in 2009 and called for a pardon for Blahyi on the grounds of his candour and remorse.Now in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, Blahyi says he is willing to go the International Criminal Court at The Hague and be tried for war crimes.

He lifts the lid on Liberia's secret societies that conduct child sacrifice and cannibalism, as well as his role in the war  -  and his desire to change.His interview paints a terrifying portrait of one man's descent into Hell and his quest for redemption. It is a confession that will leave many asking whether such crimes can ever be forgiven. It is a question he asks himself. Along with Ethiopia, Liberia is the only African country without roots in European colonisation. It was founded and colonised by freed American slaves in the early 1820s.

Yet its recent history has been blighted by civil war.

Between 1989 and 2003, Liberia's inter-tribal war killed 250,000 people, displaced one million and led to one in five children becoming soldiers. During the course of the conflict, this corner of West Africa became a nexus for the trade in blood diamonds and cocaine, gunrunning and laundering the funds of terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.

The instability emanating from this one country posed a danger far beyond Liberia's border, as far as our shores. General Butt Naked was one of the leading warlords, fighting guerilla groups including that of Charles Taylor, who later become president of Liberia and is now being tried for war crimes at The Hague.

I meet Blahyi for the first time in the dusty courtyard of Hotel Zeos, 45 minutes' drive from Monrovia, Liberia's capital. He has chosen this deserted spot because, after his confession to the TRC, he became the subject of assassination attempts.

He strides towards me, arms spread, smiling widely. 'Welcome to Liberia.' It had taken months to find Blahyi because he went underground after the last assassination attempt. In the end, I obtained his number from a Liberian film director living in New York.

I remember calling his mobile for the first time.The voice that answered was initially wary. But once satisfied of my identity, he became warm, even friendly and would ring my mobile in London at random times for a chat. Interest in the General has renewed since his evidence to the TRC and, of course, his dramatic conversion to evangelical Christianity.

He is the subject of an American documentary at the Sundance Festival next year.The filmmakers' interest was the same as mine: could a man who claimed to have done such evil truly change or is he just a brilliant trickster?

Over the days spent with him in Liberia, I get to know a man who is many things: genuinely sorry; tortured by the knowledge of his actions; frighteningly honest about his atrocities; and at other times vulnerable and desperate to please. Lucid, compelling, charismatic.

But a damaged man, nonetheless. The first thing you notice about the General is his bulk.He left armed combat more than a decade ago, yet his physical presence remains intimidating.

The second thing is his eyes  -  everything he has done is held therein. We take a seat in the gloomy bar. Against the buzz of traffic we talk, him sipping a bottle of malt drink.

His shoulders and arm muscles strain against his khaki T-shirt. When agitated by a particular subject, he gesticulates wildly, his face reliving every moment.

At one such moment, he knocks his bottle off the table. Without taking his eyes off me, he catches it a split second before it smashes to the ground. The soldier's reflexes remain as sharp as ever.

I ask him how his life was as a child. He describes how he was told first by his father, then by his tribal elders that he was born to be a warrior.

On the orders of the elders, he was conceived and taken from his mother minutes after birth. Aged seven, his father handed him to the elders who tutored him in the rituals of the priesthood. When he was initiated, he became a powerful figure as every tribesman now bowed to him.

In 1982, as the high priest, aged 11, Blahyi remembers performing black magic rituals at the presidential palace to protect the then Liberian leader, Samuel Doe, from enemies. Doe had been a member of the Krahn tribe and came to power in a violent coup in 1980.

In 1990, Doe was seized in the presidential palace and murdered by the troops of a rebel leader  -  an act that led to an escalation in the conflict which raged for another 13 years.

During the whole time, Blahyi was a high priest. One of his most important jobs was the performance of sacrifice rituals and cannibalism. In Liberia today, 75 per cent of people are Christian, 20 per cent are Muslim and the rest follow the tribal religion that performs these sacrifice rituals.

But during the war, experts claim many more practised the tribal faith.

In his book The Mask Of Anarchy, Professor Stephen Ellis of Free University, Amsterdam, wrote of the rituals practised by various tribes in Liberia and used during the war.

'Of the countless atrocities carried out by various factions, perhaps the most appalling was the eating of human flesh. This was a practice with a long history . . . after 1991 it became common to encounter traumatised refugees who witnessed such events.'

By 1994 the Catholic Church was so disturbed by such reports it officially condemned the practice. But Blayhi maintains it still goes on in secret in the villages. As a priest, he says, he would have a vision about a chosen child. He would tell the elders the child's village, the family name, and certain secrets of that child known only to the family.

The elders would then lead a procession to the child's house, known as 'the House of Honour'. The child would often remain oblivious until the moment came where he was taken away from the village to the altar, where he would be stripped and covered in a type of mud.

'As priest, I said the invocation. The child is killed. His body has different, different parts taken off.'

Were you alone during this time? 'I was the only one with the body.'

Does this still happen in Liberia? 'It still happens. If you went to my village now and spoke of this, they'd kill you. Since my conversion, I know witchcraft is wrong. I know "eating" is wrong. I must speak out now.'

During his days as a tribal priest, Blahyi says, the rituals were for the good of the tribe. But once he became leader of the Butt Naked Brigade, Blahyi would sacrifice a child before every battle. In this case, there was no religious significance for the tribe. Blayhi has an appallingly clear recollection of how he sacrificed children before battle  -  and the cannibalism involved.

The belief was that by killing and eating children, the soldiers would be strengthened and purified for the battle. The worst aspect of all was many of the Butt Naked Brigade were children themselves.

It was not the only guerrilla group to use child soldiers. Aid workers estimated that as many as 20,000 child soldiers were recruited by rebel and government forces during the last war. The Butt Naked Brigade had a sideline in drug, weapons and diamond dealing. The Liberian coast was used as a drop-off point by Mexican drug cartels. The General's men would do a trade.

'I was not giving cocaine for arms, I was giving gold and diamonds for arms and cocaine,' he explains.

What did you do with the cocaine? 'Gave it to the boys. Mashed it into their food.'

From the age of nine? 'Yeah.'

His voice drops as he bends his head into his chest. The diamonds came from territory captured by the Krahn tribe factions.

The guerrilla groups would use captured civilians to mine the diamonds and then use the gems to finance their war, just as was depicted in the 2006 Leonardo DiCaprio film Blood Diamond, set in Sierra Leone.

It was the diamond-funded drugs  -  sold to finance conflicts and bankroll warlords and diamond companies across the world  -  that helped push many of the younger rebel soldiers across the boundaries of humanity.

The naked dress code proved to be a terrifyingly effective military tactic.

'The fear principle was behind it. The first thing you want to impose on the enemy is that you're an animal, not a guerrilla.'

For years Blayhi was priest and warrior for his tribe. He coerced his brigade of 80 boys to kill without pity.

Although his figure of 20,000 deaths has been accepted by Liberia's TRC, others accuse him of wild exaggeration, saying the total is impossible to verify.

'How can he know?' Liberia's Information Minister, Norris Tweah, asks me. 'Two hundred and fifty thousand people were killed in the 14-year war. He is using this to make himself sound like a great warlord.'

But sitting with Blayhi and listening to him describe his personal depravity in forensic detail, it seems clear that he, at least, believes every word. Yet the turning point came. It was the summer of 1996 and his clansmen were caught up in a ferocious battle. It was decided that a sacrifice was needed. As the rockets rained down, a mother brought her three-year-old daughter to him.

Something about the child struck the pitiless General and for the first time in his life he hesitated. As he relives the moment with me, his face becomes contorted.

'The child was very unusually beautiful and kind. Most of the children are brought to me by the elders, they're crying, they're fighting. This child was peaceful,' he recalls. 'I thought, "This child must not die." I struggled.

'Of all of the thousands that I killed, I wish I did not kill that little girl . . . ' his voice trails off.

He is close to tears for the first and only time. 'Right after killing her, I had my epiphany.'

He claims he saw a white light in the shape of a man. A voice told him, 'repent and live or refuse and die'. He believes it was Christ.

The impact was immediate. From that day the killing, the sacrifices and cannibalism ended and Blahyi entered a period of turmoil that led his men to believe he had gone mad. Within months he had left the Butt Naked Brigade and by the end of September 1996 he was baptised in the sea near Monrovia.

By now the sun has set. Blayhi looks wasted from describing the encounter with the little girl and its impact. The confession has left him consumed by guilt. The next day he is due to preach to a congregation at a church 15 minutes away. We arrange to take him there.

As we leave, the hotel manager checks that Blahyi is going for good. In the eyes of others Blahyi is not just a pastor: he is still seen as the murderous General and cannibal. His reputation and name still strikes terror into Liberian hearts.

We cannot talk in public places, we cannot sit in busy hotels, we cannot be seen eating together. As we drive to the church, Blahyi sits in the front. I sit behind, watching him. He's wearing a red suit and black shirt and his shoulders loom either side of the seat. He is singing hymns.

'Did you sleep well?' he asks. 'Yes,' I lie. 'You?' 'Very well.' 'You seemed upset at the end of our interview,'

'I was. But I always sleep well. No matter what.'

He jumps out of the car and greets the local pastor, who is wearing white winkle-picker shoes. His battered old, red Mercedes with a numberplate reading 'Be Holy' is parked outside. A band is playing and the 300-strong congregation is clapping, singing and dancing. The church is at the site of a former Liberian army barracks and Blahyi has been invited to address the 'deliverance service'.

As the drums and synthesiser grow louder, the crowd chant 'Jesus, Jesus' as if at a rock concert. When Blayhi takes the microphone, the place erupts. He is electrifying and sinister at the same time. His sermon ranges from the dangers of fast food to the devil's ways and to the inappropriate dress sense of singer Beyonce.

An hour later, sweating in his red suit, he leaves the building to sit alone in the shade, praying. Preaching is now his mission and part of that is saving former child soldiers. Later in the week, Blayhi takes us to a rehabilitation centre he runs for ex-combatants in the bush outside Monrovia.

The photographer and I realise Blahyi is our only guarantor of safety.

As we turn up it is clear all is not well. There is a split in the camp as half the boys complain of getting too little to eat  -  one cup of rice a day.

They live in two or three brick rooms with no running water or electricity. Blahyi remains the adored father figure. But the reunion turns sour.

Nana Gbolor is the most angry. He is 26 and had been a soldier since 18.

Joshua Milton Blahyi threatens a fellow fighter with a knife in May 1996

'When the war ended, I moved to a ghetto called Solale. I slept in a cemetery among the bodies. Then one day the pastor came for me, he wore a T-shirt that said "God Bless Liberia". He didn't give up on me. Now all is want is more than one cup of rice a day and to learn construction.'

Unless boys like this are saved, many fear the past could return.

Liberia is a country with 80 per cent unemployment. Eighty-five per cent of its 3.9 million population live on less than 78p per day, according to UN figures. Inter-tribal warfare brought Liberia to its knees.

The TRC report on Blahyi is just one part of the clean-up. It also called for 49 individuals to be banned from political office for 30 years, including the current president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former World Bank economist who has been dubbed Africa's Iron Lady.

The TRC states she was a former supporter of Charles Taylor. But she has been widely credited with helping turn around the troubled nation  -  by securing the cancellation of £3.7 billion of debt to the World Bank. Her government looks in no hurry to implement the TRC's demands on prosecutions.

Could victims really go back to living alongside their persecutors? I ask Information Minister Norris Tweah.

'Everyone's a victim here,' he says. 'Everybody lost somebody. In a country where everyone was complicit, everyone has blood on their hands, where does the blame end?'

Blahyi is in no doubt that saying sorry is not enough. Talking to him inside the shade of an empty church, he says he feels forgiven by God. But forgiveness on Earth is another matter.

'I believe the Bible strongly and it says God has forgiven me.'

Would you be willing to be tried for war crimes at The Hague?

'Yes. I would say I am guilty and if the law says I should be jailed for war crimes, then jail me. If the law says I should be hanged, then hang me.'

Blayhi tells me he still struggles to cope with the enormity of his savagery. At times it threatens to break him.

Did you think of suicide?

'Many times.'

Before we leave him, he goes to a second - hand shoe shop and spends £6 on trainers for his boys and his children. Carrying them in a black binliner, he says his goodbyes and for that moment he seems alone. He heads for the bus that will take him home.

Home is not where his family is; they live in hiding in Ghana. His greatest fear now is not death, but losing his own children  -  an irony not lost on him.For me, our week together has been like being with a split personality. Describing his past life is a painful and violent catharsis, leaving him and those around him drained and traumatised.

Then there's the other side: the reformed pastor dispensing a bag of doughnuts to local schoolchildren, telling the story of Jesus and the loaves and fishes with great warmth and humour. We all get caught up in the laughter, until I suddenly find myself recoiling with the memory of all he has told me.

This is his fate from now on: for as long as he lives, no matter how much he reforms, he will never be able to escape the horror of his past. The story of Joshua Milton Blahyi is more than a story of Africa's bloodshed and savagery. It is also a story of a man struggling for redemption and change.

His victims cannot forgive him. He is more likely to face a bullet in the head than the day in court he says he wants.But his story is evocative of his country as it struggles to leave the demons behind and look to a future of prosperity and peace.

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Miracles on the border: Syrians encounter Jesus

NOTE TO READERS: The deepening crisis created by the civil war in Syria poses a major threat not only to the continued existence of that nation but to the stability of an already chaotic Middle East. This story and the following other stories cover the growing Christian ministry to thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing into neighboring countries.

As Syria disintegrates in war, Christians give refugees hope

Wounded warrior learns power of forgiveness

BEIRUT (BP) -- The Christian relief team heard about the needy Syrian widow living outside a Lebanese Muslim village near the Syrian border. So they took food to her.

Apparently, Jesus had been there first.

A refugee from the civil war in Syria, the Muslim widow, along with her three children, had sought shelter in Lebanon -- like more than 100,000 other Syrians. She was observing a traditional 40-day period of solitude to mourn her dead husband, so she had received nothing from the local Islamic aid society.

When the Christians knocked at her door, the widow appeared fully covered in black, including an opaque veil over her face. She explained her period of self-isolation. They offered to leave the food outside, but she unexpectedly invited them in. They sat with her and her children on the floor of the temporary dwelling.

"Who are you?" she asked anxiously.

"You don't know us, but we have great love in our hearts toward you," the team leader answered, explaining their reasons for helping Syrian refugees. "That love comes from God, who has worked in our lives."

To their amazement, she responded by removing her veil --— unheard of in her conservative Muslim culture. Then the words came flooding out.

"I want to tell you what happened to me yesterday," she said, her voice trembling with emotion. "As I was sleeping during the night, someone knocked on my door. I was so scared, but I opened the window to see who it was. No one was there. After a while, I heard the same knocking. My heart was beating so fast, so I went and sat beside the door, and I fell asleep there.

"As I was sleeping, someone put His hand on my shoulder. He said, 'You don't know Me. You have passed through a great pain. I experienced a great pain, also. But I will not leave you alone. Tomorrow I will send you someone who will tell you about Me. Listen to him.'"

When she finished the story, she began to weep. She turned to the team leader and said, "Tell me about this person that I saw in my dream."

Through his own tears, the leader told her about Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the friend of widows, orphans and outcasts. "This Book that I'm going to give you will explain to you about God's love," he promised, giving her a Bible along with additional aid to help her and her children survive the mourning period.

The widow later returned to Syria. No one knows for sure what has become of her. But God knows.

'Dead or alive?'

Sami*, the Lebanese Christian pastor who told the widow about Jesus, has had similar experiences with other Muslims. He and several Christian partners have been reaching out to Muslim villages in Lebanon with the simple Gospel message. They expanded their outreach to Syrian Muslims when refugees started streaming across the border last year.

"When we started to serve among those villages and communities, I had a doubt in my heart," Sami admits. "Will it work? Are we going to experience what we hear from different parts of the Middle East and the world about Muslims coming to know Jesus as Savior and Lord? It was a challenge, a discovery process for me personally and for many with us in the ministry. But as we have shared the Gospel faithfully, the Lord is showing us signs of people who are opening up, asking questions and opening the door for us to reach a wider community.

"We started a couple of house groups in different areas with Lebanese and Syrian Muslims, and we are discipling those people. Some of them have come to know Christ. Others are discovering who Jesus is. They are showing signs of changing in their lives."

A Muslim community leader the Christians befriended last year helped them gain entrance to the homes of many Muslims -- Lebanese and Syrian. During those visits, he heard the Gospel message of God's offer of salvation through Jesus Christ perhaps 100 times.

At the beginning of one such visit, the Muslim leader walked up to a refugee family, pointed at them and said, "Are you dead or alive?"

The family was taken aback; so were the Christians. He repeated his question: "Are you dead or alive?" Then he pointed at the Christians and declared, "These people have a Book, and it's going to tell you how to find life. You need to read it!"

"This is a Muslim guy who probably has never read the New Testament himself," marvels Christian worker David James*, who participated in the visit. "But he's opening doors for us now because he saw something different in us as he heard the things that we were sharing."

In another village, the relief team made a repeat visit to the home of an influential Syrian Muslim. He knows many other needy families, so they brought a large supply of food for distribution.

"We don't need your boxes of food," the Syrian leader said. "What we need is somebody to come and teach us how to walk in the way of Jesus and how we can forgive one another. We don't know how to live with each other." The Christians were happy to oblige.

'I want to follow Jesus'

Perhaps the boldest new evangelist in Lebanon, however, is an older Syrian woman whose home has become a center for teaching truth.

Sami met Noora* at the end of a long, exhausting day of aid deliveries to refugees. He was ready to go home, but his guide insisted on one more stop to a particularly needy group of families. Reluctantly, he agreed. They distributed food portions and New Testaments along with a simple Gospel presentation.

Noora, one of the Syrian Muslim women in the home, started asking questions about baptism. As it turned out, she already was reading the New Testament. She had plenty of other questions about Jesus: How do you address Him? How does He differ from the other prophets?

"We read Matthew, the first chapters, about Jesus' incarnation and that He is Immanuel," Sami recounts. "Immanuel means 'God with us.'"

"I don't understand," Noora replied.

Sami explained the concept of a king visiting his people disguised in plain clothing and humility, yet remaining in every aspect a king. He told her about Jesus' sinless life compared to the other prophets, all of whom had failed God in various ways, despite their greatness.

"Who do you want to follow -- Jesus or the prophets?" Simi asked.

"I want to follow Jesus," Noora answered.

During another visit Noora suddenly declared, "The message that you shared with me changed my life. I'm a new person." The changes in her life proved her words.

"Once we visited her and she was reading the Old Testament," Sami recalls. "After another week, she was in the New Testament. She told us, 'This is my third time of reading the whole Bible.' After that we continued visiting her, encouraging her and discipling her. She said, 'Everything you tell me, I go and I share it with others. I tell the traditional Christians that worshipping saints is not good; you have to worship God. I'm sharing with the Syrians [Muslims] about how God changed my life.'"

Recently Noora returned to Syria for a visit with family, despite the dangers. When Sami called her to make sure she was OK, she reported: "I have a group of women gathered in my house from Muslim and Christian backgrounds and I'm teaching them.

"It's hard," Noora acknowledged, "but God is helping me."
--30--
*Names changed. Erich Bridges is a global correspondent for the International Mission Board. Contributions to relief ministry among Syrian refugees can be made by visiting imb.org/syrianrefugees? and designating "Syria relief" in the comment line. For updates on how God is at work through the crisis in Syria and ways to pray and help, email love4syria@pobox.com. Contributions to the spread of God's Word among Syrians can be made by calling Faith Comes By Hearing at  1-800-545-6552and designating a gift for the Syrian Refugees Project. Get Baptist Press headlines and breaking news on Twitter (@BaptistPress), Facebook (Facebook.com/BaptistPress ) and in your email ( baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP.asp).

http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=39178&mobile=no

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‘I promised God that if he would save my baby, I would leave the homosexual lifestyle’

Source

February 6, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Lisa Miller, an ex-lesbian who made national headlines during her battle to protect her daughter from a custody transfer to her former sex partner, is now telling the story of her struggle through a book by one of her attorneys, Rina Lindevaldsen.

“Only One Mommy: A Woman’s Battle for Her Life, Her Daughter, and Her Freedom” (New Revolution Publishers, 2011), gives readers new insights into Miller’s inspiring odyssey from abused and neglected child, through the horrors of sexual and chemical addictions, to redemption through faith in Jesus Christ.

Miller’s final act of bravery was her decision to enter into hiding with her child, Isabella, to escape her former lesbian partner Janet Jenkins, who was successfully seeking to transfer custody of Miller’s daughter, Isabella, to herself. Although Miller remains in hiding, she speaks to readers through journals and letters left with her attorney, and through Lindevaldsen’s own narrative.

At the root of Miller’s nightmarish childhood were two elements: contraception and divorce. Miller’s early memories are filled with the bitter reminder that her mother, who was using birth control at the time she conceived Miller, had not wanted her.

“Whenever my mother was mad at me, she would pull out the oval peach colored pack of birth control pills that she had saved all those years to show me that only one week was missing, and that was the week she got pregnant,” Miller writes.

At age seven, Miller’s parents divorced, leaving herself and her brother alone with an increasingly mentally ill, distant, and cruel mother. Miller’s isolation and lack of affirmation from her parents led her to seek solace in unhealthy fixations on food, diet pills, and pornography. In order to relieve herself of emotional pain, she began to cut herself, which added to the scars that her body already held from her mother’s beatings

However, Miller was also the recipient of positive influences through friendships with leaders in her church and schoolteachers, who took an interest in her and provided her with adult role models. Her religious education would come back to her in her darkest days, providing a way out of her seemingly impossible situation.

After entering a troubled marriage, and finally making a suicide attempt that left her in intensive care for days, Miller received another major blow. During her recovery in a psychiatric ward in Virginia, a counselor informed her that she was a lesbian and must seek the sexual companionship of other women.

“As part of my treatment, in order to be released, I had to meet with my immediate family, including my husband, and tell them I was a ‘lesbian.’ I complied, and not surprisingly, my marriage ended. Even though I had left behind all of my childhood addictions at that time, sadly, I entered into the addiction of homosexuality,” writes Miller.

Lisa eventually entered into a relationship and a Vermont “civil union” with a recovering alcoholic named Janet Jenkins. During that time she was artificially inseminated, resulting in the birth of her daughter. She recalls that in the misery of her sexually immoral and conflictive relationship with Jenkins, she almost lost Isabella before she was born. It was then that she made a special petition to God, promising him that “if he saved my baby, I would leave the homosexual lifestyle.”

Isabella was born healthy, and although Miller did not keep her promise immediately, she recalled it as her relationship with Jenkins continued to deteriorate. “It was then that God brought to mind the covenant that I had made with him just months earlier. I knew enough from my religious background that one does not make covenants with God and not keep them without suffering negative consequences. When my daughter was 17 months old, I left the homosexual lifestyle and moved with my daughter back to my home state of Virginia, where she had been conceived and born.”

Judicial tyranny and the struggle to save Isabella from her lesbian “other mother”

After Lindevaldsen’s summary of Miller’s victory over homosexual vice and her other addictions, the attorney leads readers through the maze of legal arguments that have been used to justify giving parenthood rights, and ultimately guardianship, of Isabella to Jenkins. In the process she shows that no state is truly safe from the effects of homosexualist legislation in other jurisdictions.

Although Miller was artificially inseminated while in a civil union with Jenkins, Isabella was never adopted by her, and Jenkins’ name does not appear on Isabella’s birth certificate. Moreover, Miller and Jenkins were residents of Virginia when they entered into their Vermont “civil union,” and Virginia’s constitution explicitly denies all recognition to such unions.

In sum, while Jenkins appears to lack all standing to make a claim of “parenthood,” that did not prevent judges in Vermont and Virginia from twisting the law like a pretzel to ensure that Jenkins had access to Isabella.

Miller’s legal nightmare began when a Vermont judge decided to literally create a law where one did not exist. Vermont had no law giving parenthood rights to the spouse of a woman who is artificially inseminated - the spouse had to adopt the child. But despite the fact that civil unions were to be treated like marriages under Vermont law, Vermont Judge Richard Cohen decreed from the bench that Jenkins was Isabella’s “mother.”

Noting that “the court admitted that the legislature still hadn’t answered the question of how a child born by artificial insemination by an anonymous sperm donor would gain the legal status of a child to the spouse who was not biologically related to the child,” Lindevaldsen observes: “To its credit, the court at least admitted what it was doing—creating new law in order to reach its decision.”

However, despite all of the protections inserted into the Virginia constitution against the enforcement of civil union or homosexual “marriage” legislation from other states, prosecutors managed to make use of a federal law that was designed to stop one parent from denying custody to another: the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (FKPA).

Although the law was created to prevent parents from fleeing to another jurisdiction to get a better custody settlement through another set of courts, it was used in Miller’s case to claim that Virginia could not cancel the custody order issued by the Vermont court. Lindevaldsen argues that this is false reasoning because the federal Defense of Marriage Act protects states from the obligation of giving “full faith and credit” to homosexual unions formalized in other states, and even under the FKPA, states don’t have to enforce the decisions of other states’ courts. Nonetheless, the Virginia courts ruled in favor of Jenkins, and agreed to apply the Vermont decision.

Lindevaldsen goes on to discuss the destructive effects of the homosexual lifestyle, and documents the damage to children and teens caused by the movement’s influence in the school system.

The author, who is a an associate dean and professor of law at Liberty University, told LifeSiteNews that Christians need to be aware of the Obama administration’s relentless pursuit of Miller and her daughter, and the implications of their decisions at the voting booth with regard to family issues.

“I think certainly the current administration has obviously made a commitment that this is a high priority for them, that they are going to track down a biological mother and attempt to take this child away from her biological mother and I certainly think that there is some political pressure that could be taken,” Lindevaldsen said.

“I think the word needs to get out. Christians need to know that these things are happening, the idea that a woman apparently had to flee the country to protect her child, shouldn’t be happening in America, and I don’t think enough Christians know about that and don’t realize that the people they vote for in an election year, who they vote for has direct consequences on things like this.”

She added that, in addition to their involvement in the national political process, Christians can work at the state level to ensure that other children are not victimized by ant-family legislation. Lindevaldsen says she has handled dozens of other cases that are similar to Miller’s.

“We need to pass laws at the state level making it very clear that courts do not have the discretion to do this, to declare a child to have two parents, because we need to avoid these situations happening in the future, because they are happening on a regular basis.”

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