May 15, 2007

Looking for Answers

Utter frustration and defeat was what Ceil and I felt after we left the first Evangelical church in 2005. Lamenting over the injustices and questioning the purpose of it all eventually lead us on a deep search for the Truth.

Would we have been treated differently and accepted as part of the church family had we been heterosexual? Would we have had opportunities to minister had we been males in that organization? Would those people have taken time to know us had there been no walls of religious doctrine separating us from them? Sadly, the answer to those questions were YES for both of us.

At this point, however, that was only our assumption and opinion, and not our truth. Neither one of us had ever experienced life as male nor heterosexual. With a burning passion and conviction to find Truth, we embarked on a social experiment to get some answers. Ceil and I would alter our physical appearances and become what we perceived as "acceptable" by church leadership standards. We wanted to see if the Evangelical church would get to know us and connect with us, perhaps even love us, if we looked and acted just like them.

It was unbelievable, some of the things we witnessed and experienced as a man and woman inside the inner circle of a powerful Evangelical church. It's all recorded in the documentary. The most heart-breaking truth we discovered is the fact that many religious leaders in both communities, gay and straight, have lost sight of the most noble purpose of humanity - to build up one another through love.