Following last summer's vote by the Methodist Conference to ban conversion therapy, the Revd Joseph Neil Adams shares his experiences.
Watching the live feed from Methodist Conference in 2021 I was moved by the way our Church followed the Holy Spirit's leading and accepted marriage equality, but the decision to ban conversion therapy and the call on the UK government to ban the practice without delay moved me to tears.
I came to faith in 1983 and it was the most profound and moving experience. I felt loved by God and was so excited by my new faith and the warmth of fellowship at my first Methodist Church.
Then I made the mistake of telling my Methodist Minister I was gay. Immediately I was told that unless the evil within me was driven out and I was converted to be normal, to be heterosexual, I would not be welcome in the Church or even by God anymore.
My world fell apart.
Of course the prayers were said with a caring voice, offered with a kindly smile. I was offered a comfy chair and sympathy, but the words were anything but kind or what I would now describe as Christian. I was told to find a nice girl marry and become a father so that the gay conversion could be completed.
Those prayers damaged me and the damage to my confidence and self worth remains today, I guess it always will.
The big problem of course was that they were praying for the impossible, changing someone's sexuality is as possible as praying for my skin colour or ethnicity to change, or for God to make me taller.
Imagine telling someone that God loves everyone but not them unless they are not them at all, for example not black or female or Scottish, it would be scandalous and not tolerated in any way in our Church, yet that is what our church told so many LGBTQ+ people including me through these conversion therapies and prayers.
I was advised to go a Pentecostal Church my Methodist Minister was friends with so that the conversion therapy could be completed. Nice prayers quickly moved to bring screamed at, accused of being the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of my dad, then hit and threatened.
It is so important such things can never happen in the name of our Church again.
I obviously didn't change, how could I?
I did though learn how to pretend, to live as a shadow character, knowing God didn't love me because I was still gay and always would be.
During my ministry as a Methodist Minister I have spoken with great passion about the evangelical faith and offered countless people hope and salvation in Jesus, all the while knowing that none of that could ever apply to me. What a sad pathetic creature I was.
So yes I cried hearing that our Church banned the practice that harmed me so much, and I pray we all will follow this leading of God and hold to this ban. We should never seek to pray the gay away and torment LGBTQ people telling them God doesn't accept them as they are. I would hate for my grandchildren or anyone else to go through the hell I did.
The Revd Joseph Neil Adams