The Daily Signal - #455: Ex-Gay Pastor's Counseling Could Be at Risk With Equality Act

Episode Date: May 6, 2019

Ken Williams represents what some activists say is impossible: previously gay, he’s now married to a woman, and has kids. He says God has helped him change. Williams now works at a church and counsels people who face their own unwanted sexual attractions -- but some say his work should be illegal. We also cover these stories:•Democrats are beginning the process to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt.•Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is proposing a national gun licensing program.•Hillary Clinton is talking about the 2016 election was "stolen" from her.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Ken Williams represents what some activists say is impossible. Previously gay, he's now married to a woman and has kids. He says God helped him to change. Ken now works at a church and counsels young people who face their own unwanted sexual attractions, but some say that his work should be illegal. Today, we'll talk to him in studio.

By the way, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five-server rating on iTunes and please subscribe. That will help us grow and reach more listeners. Now on to our top news. The House Judiciary Committee is gearing up to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt after he has refused to honor their subpoena to see the full report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. House Judiciary Committee Chair, Jerry Nadler, Democrat of New York, said in a statement, Even in redacted form, the special counsel's report offers disturbing evidence and analysis that President Trump engaged in obstruction of justice at the highest levels. Congress must see the full report and underlying evidence to determine how to best move forward with oversight, legislation, and other constitutional responsibilities. The Attorney General's failure to comply with our subpoena after extensive accommodation efforts leaves us no choice but to,

initiate contempt proceedings in order to enforce the subpoena and access the full unredacted report, end quote. However, reportedly the Justice Department is trying to come up with some kind of solution, offering to hold a meeting to discuss possible compromises on Wednesday. The same day the House Judiciary Committee is now scheduled to vote on holding barring contempt. Michael Cohen is officially in The Slammer. The president's former attorney reported to federal prison in Otisville, New York, on Monday, where he'll begin serving a three-year sentence. Cohen pled guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations, and has used the last several months to turn on his former boss, testifying against the president before Congress. Before heading off to prison, Cohen told reporters, quote, I hope that when I rejoin my family and friends, that the country will be in a place without xenophobia, injustice, and lies at the helm of our country.

There still remains much to be told, and I look forward to the day that I can share the truth. Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, is out with a new plan that would require people pass a government background check, among other things, before getting a gun. Booker wants to essentially create a gun licensing program, as he explained on CNN Monday. It's actually really simple. We do it for passports. We do it for TSA pre-check. We make sure that the documentation people are putting before aligns with the truth. And so this is just basically licensing. We do this for people who are driving cars. The New York Times reported that per Booker's team, quote,

the process would involve submitting fingerprints and sitting for an interview and would require applicants to complete a certified gun safety course. Each applicant would also undergo a federal background check before being issued a gun license, which would be valid for up to five. years. The U.S. Navy is sending a strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East after U.S. officials received a tip-off that Iran could be planning a strike on U.S. interests in the Gulf. On Sunday evening, National Security Advisor John Bolton took the unusual step of announcing the move, saying it was in response to troubling and escalatory indications and warnings, and that this would

send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States' interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force. He added, quote, The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces, end quote. Axios is reporting that Israel shared information

with the White House prior to Bolton's announcement. The report quotes an anonymous Israeli official saying, quote, as a result of the growing U.S. pressure campaign against them, and they are considering retaliating against U.S. interests in the Gulf. After fighting throughout the weekend, begun by a Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, between Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Israel, there appears to now be in place a ceasefire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, over the last two days we struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad with great force. We hit over 350 targets. We struck at terrorist leaders and operatives and we destroyed terrorist buildings. We are prepared to continue. The goal has been and remains ensuring quiet and security for the residents of the South. End quote. According to the Wall Street Journal, four Israelis and 27 Palestinians were killed during the weekends fighting,

and Islamic jihad and Hamas set off close to 700 rockets. Well, President Trump is once again threatening tariffs on China, just as trade talks were set to wrap up this week. The president tweeted over the weekend that negotiations were going too slowly and that he would ramp up tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods starting on Friday. Those tweets came as a surprise to Chinese officials and cast some doubt on the talks plan for this week. China has vowed not to negotiate under threat. At a press briefing on Monday, China's foreign ministry spokesmen said that the China trade team

still planned to travel to the U.S. for talks this week. Chinese markets have taken a downward turn since Trump tweeted. Speaking at the Clinton's speaking tour in Los Angeles this weekend, former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton made a surprising statement. You can run the best campaign. You can even become the nominee. And you can have the election stolen from you. Per Fox News, Clinton also said,

so part of our challenge is to understand what it will take to put together not only, only the popular vote, but the Electoral College. But given that that was the case in 2016, it's not clear why she would have ever campaigned otherwise. Next up, we'll talk to Ken Williams, who is concerned that the Equality Act could make it illegal for him to counsel others who are trying to leave the gay lifestyle. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share?

Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205, or email us at letters at dailysignal.com. Yours could be featured on the Daily Signal podcast. Joining us is Ken Williams, a Christian pastor from California, and a man who once lived a gay lifestyle, but now counsels those who want to leave it. Ken, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me.

Okay, so you once lived as a gay man. Can you tell us a bit about that lifestyle? Okay, so actually, I didn't actually live as a gay man. I was not like out and publicly living that lifestyle. I just was struggling every hour of every day with same-sex attraction, which for me was unwanted. And then I had several different experiences and a relationship for a period of time that was homosexual. And how did, at what time, what stage of your life was that, like around college or after?

That was, that was like teens and into college. Okay. So why did you decide to abandon that way of life? I never wanted that way of life. I never wanted to have sex with men. That's just the only people I was sexually attracted to. That probably doesn't seem like it makes any sense. But that's pretty common, actually. You know, we don't really plan our sexual desires. We find ourselves with our sexual desires. And when I found myself with mine at, I don't know, 13 or 14 years old, I realized to my shock one day, wow, I'm not like. the other boys, I'm sexually attracted to the boys. I feel like I'm more like one of the girls. And so eventually over time, I succumbed to some of my temptations, but that wasn't in alignment with what I personally wanted. It wasn't in alignment with my faith or my understanding of what I felt like God was calling me to. It's just where I found myself. And it's striking that you've mentioned a few times now. That wasn't something you wanted. And why did you not want it? And I

I mean, you mentioned your faith, but obviously a lot of people have decided that they have an understanding of, you know, Christianity that does allow it. So why do you think that didn't change your mind? I had conviction whenever I would move in a direction or if I would, you know, undress a man with my eyes or if I looked at porn or something like that, I had, I felt like I was violating my conscience. And, you know, I wanted to have the family scenario. I loved my family and was really close to them. And so I wanted to one day have my own wife, have my own children, all of that. It was just for multiple reasons, I didn't want that. It's just I had this gaping hole inside for masculinity.

And so at least in my case, it felt like I was trying to fill what was missing in me with someone else. I actually really, I had a lot of self-hatred going on. So I just really wanted to delete me and replace me with the better, looking more impressive male guy that I looked up to. So it was very codependent and really unhealthy. So Ken, you mentioned that you are married, which I think probably surprises a lot of people. Can you tell us about how you met your wife and how she came to peace with your past? Yeah, sure. I met my wife at the church that we were both going to and a group of just young people that got together periodically. And what had happened to me there that had never happened to

me before was I just really started, well, I had respected plenty of women before, but this time it turned into, wow, I really kind of keep looking at you. She was sitting across the way. She had, you know, long hair. She was playing with her with her hair. And she had this sparkly belt on. And I kept, I kept needing to look at her. And I realized, wait a minute, I've never done this before. What's going on? And I realized, wow, I profoundly respected her because I had known her for a year. And I loved how I felt when I was around her, but this time it crossed the threshold of actually becoming more intense than just a friendship. And so I thought, wow, okay, so I just started spending more time with her.

And eventually just wanted to ask her out, got up the gumption to ask her out by text message, very courageous. Yes, not the proudest part of my story. But anyway, she gave the multiple choice answer back that I wanted. and I took her out on a date and she, when I take her to this nice restaurant, as I sit down, she's about to sit down, she says, you know, I'm going to run to the restroom,

walks over, taps my shoulder to say, hey, I'm going to the restroom. And when she, I know it sounds weird, but she touched my shoulder and electricity shot from my, you know, shoulder down to my toes, back and forth a few times. And I was like, what is going on? And basically, I just fell in love with her.

I fell in love with her. I developed sexual attraction for her. in the early days I had some attraction to men still as well but nobody was captivating my heart or my tension like she was and and so you know we we got married within a year of that and we have I've never once I'm just being graphic but it's real I've never once fantasized about another man in our entire marriage we have a great sex life we have four children twins you know had four four kids in less than four years, which to the listening audience, please spread your kids out more than that because you could lose your mind. But I love being a family man. I love my wife and my kids. I'm living really somebody else's life is what it feels like. And I'm loving it. And I have quite a few friends that share my same story. But if I can answer your secondary question, how is it for her? So I, you know, I tell people too, it's like, hey, people need to know in marriage what they're buying.

So, you know, within a month of dating her, I felt like, okay, we've been going out enough now that she needs to really know who I really am and where I've been. And so we were spending a weekend together at Thanksgiving at her parents' house. But a few days prior to that, we had taken a trip together. And so on the trip, I thought, oh, maybe this is the time. And so I opened up to her and said, hey, FYI, I've dealt with this in my life. And here's what it looked like. And she said, oh, okay. And she acted like, no problem at all.

And so she said, hey, can we pull over? I'm going to use the restroom. Another restroom story. And so go into, she pops into the restroom while I'm filling up with gas. And I didn't know it, but she was having a full-on panic attack in there. And so she was like, oh, my gosh, God, what am I going to do? She's like, God help me because I love this guy, but I don't know what to do with this. And she felt like, I don't know what everybody's faith journey is like here listening,

but she felt like God very clearly just relayed to her, hey, don't look at him that way because I don't. Because I really wasn't that person anymore. And so she thought, wow, okay, so she endeavored to go that direction. And so we had talks in the coming weeks about it. She needed to kind of process it. And so she would say, well, what about this or what about that? And it kind of came down to, I said, hey, listen, I've told you everything. And I said, everything I just told you, there.

are five people in my life, close friends of mine, pastors of mine, they all know all of this story, and they all are present in my life. So they're aware of who I'm hanging out with, who I'm not. And I said, you are welcome to talk to any of my friends, that kind of thing. I said, you know, the reality is any of us could fall to all kinds of temptations in life. And I said, at the end of the day, you're just taking a risk that I'm going to put God ahead of every other relationship. and then I'm going to be true to my faith in God, which means that I would be faithful in marriage. And I said, all I know to tell you is I will endeavor to always put God first and you next.

And at the end of day, it's a risk, but I hope you'll choose me. And she did. So that was 13 years ago in August. Wow, that's an amazing. I mean, there's just so much hope there for people who might find themselves just trapped. And there's a category there that people today don't seem. to make room for, which is that you might develop a certain attraction. It seems like your attraction, maybe you can explain this, was for her specifically,

not just for like the female gender so that, I mean, is that the case? It did start that way, for sure. Yeah. And, you know, just getting, as we've gone further through marriage, and I've continued to work on my own heart and being part of that men's purity group where I'm, I feel like I'm constantly getting better as a man and taking more responsibility for my life and and just, I don't know, continuing to grow. Actually, my sexuality has as well,

and it's like I actually have some attraction now for other women as well. It's like I really am not trying to increase any. I don't really need any. But that's, and that's a lot of my friends that I know that share my similar experience, it kind of becomes kind of fluid that way as far as your understanding of yourself

and of your sexual desires. They can shift. I mean, even the APA, will tell you that that, you know, there can be a shift in sexual desires. And so contrary to popular opinion, they can shift both ways. Actually, it's funny you mentioned that because I was reading an advice column on Slate recently where someone wrote in and said they had been lesbian in their 20s and 30s, but now they were only attracted to men.

And I don't believe this person was religious or they didn't present themselves as religious. And they said, I feel really embarrassed to come out as straight. And how do I do this? Yes. Yes. my ministry partner, Elizabeth, at first was humiliated, she said, when she started having sexual desires for her husband because so much of our identity had been staked on being a lesbian feminist. And she's a brilliant lady. She had a master's degree in theology and all this and was an out and proud lesbian Christian.

She was out in her seminary. And so her theology was such that she did not have any problem theologically, but she started having some experiences at church and with and with God that just led her away from that. And she was humiliated to all one day discover I'm sexually attracted to this guy. What is going on here? Because so much of her reputation was staked on her being a lesbian and a feminist. And so she had to figure out who she was all over again. And now she's been married to that man for 14 years.

And she's no longer, she's no longer humiliated. She loves him. But yeah, I mean, change is possible. And I mean, if you're a person of faith, it's like all things are possible is in the Bible. So I don't know why we would remove this one area from being in reach of God. You said you had a whole lack of sense of masculinity or desire to be connected to other source of masculinity. Did you have that growing up? Are you close with your dad or another man who could kind of mentor you?

That was a challenge for me in my childhood. My dad loved me a ton. but for whatever reason we had trouble connecting deeply. He traveled quite a bit. My mom was more my same type of personality type, so she was easier to talk to. And so I actually remember forming some judgments internally as a child like, oh, women are better than men, because when I would be at church, I would see the women stereotypically were standing around talking about God together, where the men were talking about football. And so not that there's anything wrong with football. And, of course, that was a very short-sighted, limited perspective as a child.

I'm sure that the men had great faith as well. But I just drew some conclusions as a child that sent me in a way of saying, I don't really actually want men. I disapprove of masculinity. But then I found myself, as I grew, craving masculinity because I had pushed it away. So you are now a pastor and you counsel, my understanding is a lot of people on issues of sexuality. Can you tell us a little bit about how you approach that? Yes. So I'm really the only people that come to me for consulting are wanting to deal with

same-sex attraction that's unwanted or they are wanting to leave homosexuality behind. So I wouldn't be qualified to help people that wanted to embrace it because I don't have any experience with that. But it's interesting. There are all kinds of trigger points for people. I find that a very common characteristic is that there was some kind of a breakdown normally in childhood with their sense of intimacy of love and belonging. So you heard some of that even in the story I told you about myself. I didn't feel like I was deeply valued or known really by anyone and certainly not by other males. So there can be all kinds of things. It's very common. It's not politically correct to say it, but it's very common that sexual abuse is a part of the background of people

who experience same-sex attraction. It's definitely not 100% of the time, but it's over 50, and that definitely bears out in the people that I minister to as well. So if you have one individual who experiences desires that they don't want, how would you approach counseling them? Yeah, we try to ascertain, okay, did something happen in your childhood? Let's see if there was a moment. Is there like do you remember that when you first started experiencing these feelings? Because that also happens for some adults as well. That's a thing now. So, you know, I know a lady who didn't deal with any same-sex attraction until she was in her 40s and then experienced it then.

So, you know, did you have something traumatic happen? Did you form a judgment? Do you have any unforgiveness can sometimes be a factor, which therefore kind of separated you from a person or people group? did you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend situation that went south on you and you were traumatized by that? There can be so many different ways. We look for pain in there and we just try to connect them to a loving God that has grace for them exactly where they are, loves them extravagantly right where they are,

but also loves them enough to want to take them deeper into his presence and to an understanding of who they actually are. So would you consider what you do conversion therapy? No, and I don't know, you know, I know over 100 people that have left homosexuality. And I don't know a single one of them that has ever experienced what people would say is conversion therapy. And they don't know of anyone who has either. It's this term that gets used in culture that all of us with life experience, we don't

even know what you're talking about. Like, that didn't happen to us. And in the movies that are out there, it's very unfounded. So have some things happen that were harmful to people. I'm sure that there are some cases out there, but I don't personally know of any. And what's so common, though, is people are confused about their identity or their sexuality. They go and they talk it out with a counselor. And the counselor helps them figure out what they want to go.

toward and and leads them that direction, you know, follows what they're wanting to pursue and helps them go that direction. So I know tons of people who have been so helped by things that could be labeled as conversion therapy that were merely a person talking with a counselor and figuring out why do I feel the way that I do. So there's a bill in Congress here that you've been active in speaking on, the Equality Act, that would have a pretty sizable effect on the kind of services that you offer, the counseling. Tell us about that. Well, yeah. I mean, if we're going to call something the Equality Act, it sure would be great if it felt equal to all people. And so, LGBTQ, the Q stands for queer or questioning. Well, questioning. Okay,

let's take that. So if someone's questioning their sexual identity, shouldn't they be able to consider going down multiple paths if they're questioning. So if we're going to make it equal and fair to remove from the table only the kind of therapy that would help a person walk away from homosexuality, how is that equal? How is that fair? How is that allowing someone to really question? It's basically elevating one viewpoint that says that all sexual fluidity must head in the direction of homosexuality.

You're not able to flow back another direction, and that's just not fair. Any rational person can realize we must leave all of the options on the table if we're going to be equal. Have you had any LGBT activists attack you for doing this kind of counseling? And if so, why do you think there's such concern on the LGBT movement's part that this counseling exists? Yeah, great question. Yes, I've had death threats. I've had heinous things said. There's a lot of really inappropriate things that definitely we've experienced me and my ministry partner, Elizabeth Wanning.

But I'll tell you why I believe that that exists out there. I think some of the responsibility does belong to culture and even to the church that for so long gay people were not loved well. I'm just being honest here. Like for so long, in Christian circles, it was, this is the mandate. Gay people are detestable. They're going to hell. They're terrible or whatever. And there wasn't any offering for, okay, wait a minute, God loves you and he wants to help you.

It was just, you shouldn't be who you are. And that can't be God, first of all. And who wants to behave that way? So I feel like some of what we're experiencing today is a reaction from a society that was holding expectations of people without helping loving them into what that expectation might be. And so I so regret that that happened. But the way to fix it now is for all of us to be loving of people without necessarily agreeing. I mean, I don't agree with my wife 100%, you know, like, but I love her. You know, and so we've got to now have a culture that allows people to make decisions for themselves

still has standards for truth, but we love people no matter where they are. And that's got to work on both sides. So there have been some notable ex-gays who have been in, I guess, done counseling and left the lifestyle, but then returned to it. And sort of in the media, that's kind of looked at as well, obviously this canceling doesn't work, how would you respond to those claims? Yeah, I'm sure that with any area of counseling or people dealing with any life situation, there's a dissistance or however you would say it. There's people that revert back to a previous way of living. And, you know, I mean, there again, that should be

their right. Of course, from my personal viewpoint, that's sad for me because I feel like they were probably on a direction, a pathway that was going to be very fulfilling for them, but something happened or it could be a lot of things happen in our lives. I don't know what actually happened to cause them to go back in a previous direction. But we only tend to hear about the fantastic stories, don't we? So what you don't hear is all of the other stories of, well, I didn't return back to that. Those people just kind of go off into their lives and they maybe have a family and grow old together. Those aren't as fantastic as the, oh, look, somebody that didn't work for them.

Like, yeah, okay, it didn't for a percentage. But what about all the other people that it did? So you briefly mentioned pornography. And I was wondering, what do you think about the role of pornography in our current culture? We know that there's a lot of Americans who regularly view it. But we don't really know that much about how it affects people. Do you see pornography playing a role in the kind of work that you do in affecting people? Oh, my goodness.

Absolutely. I know what it's like to be addicted to pornography. I was addicted to gay porn for whole seasons of time. And I have not dealt with porn at all in 15 years. So thank God that is no longer a part of my life. It is very damaging. It's damaging to culture in general at a very basal level. Because what it does is it steals your voice.

It steals your passion. It puts men in particular into passivity. because you're basically medicating, very often, people addicted to porn are medicating emotional wounds, disappointments. They're not dealing with life head on anymore, and instead they're going to a quick, you know, hit of chemicals across their brain to make themselves feel better. And they get very disempowered, very passive, not leading their families any longer. I mean, the fallout from porn, we haven't even been able to completely grapple with yet. but it's immense. And I know this for one reason because I've been one of the leaders of a men's purity group

at my church for 10 years. So we have 200 or 250 men every Monday night that gather. And porn is just, you know, an issue for most of them. And if you can get them off of porn for three weeks, they come back. It's like they're present. They can think more clearly. They start leading their families again. They feel so good about themselves.

I could talk about this for a long time. I feel very strongly. Wow. You know, we're coming up on the month of June pretty soon, which the LGBT movement considers to be Pride Month. As we approach June, what would you say are the most helpful and loving ways for us to engage those in that movement? Yeah, thanks.

We need to consider our relational capital that we have with another person before we speak. So if it's somebody I don't even know, I have no business going out. up and telling them how to raise their children or whether they should be smoking or not or if what I think about their sexuality, you know, I mean, that just doesn't work well when you just do a drive-by comment. So people that are in our lives, though, that we might actually have a conversation with, you know, I say, hey, in my experience of homosexuality, so often it's a search for self, self-love, and a search just to be known and valued like I shared earlier. So I encourage people, hey, before you try to have any kind of conversation about whether they

should quit alcohol addiction or anything else, really so, you know, put more deposits into the person than you're taking withdrawals, a lot more. And really try to find common ground with them, try to be the person in their life that they feel knows them more deeply than anybody else. Like, strive for that. Let them be heard, seen, valued so that now you have relational capital and then maybe you will have an opportunity at some point to say, hey, tell me, you know, questions, first of all, are great instead of commands or who wants to be told what to do.

So questions about, hey, so let's talk. We haven't talked in a while. So you're in a relationship with another woman. and tell me about that. Have you always felt that way? So, you know, I mean, it's, again, that's just like a good counselor, any counselor, or even a consultant would come in with questions instead of their own expectations. So I think we really should do the same, just be really loving and relational.

And then maybe you'd have an opportunity to share whatever's on your heart for the person. Okay. Well, Ken Williams, thanks so much for being on with us. Thank you. It's an honor. I appreciate it. And is there anywhere that people could find your, work or reach out to you? Yeah, absolutely. You can go to equipped to love.com for our ministry. And then

also if you just want to track along with all of the people who have left homosexuality and are having different testimonies there, you can follow us on Instagram at changed movement. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? If you want to understand what's happening at the court, subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast, breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. And that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review and a five-star rating on iTunes.

We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to The Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis, sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and the Leah Rampersad. For more information, visitdailysignal.com.