Beyond the Shades of Gray: Because Homosexuality Is a Symptom, Not a Solution

By Dean Bailey

Beyond the Shades of Gray is based upon Christian fundamentals and beliefs. It was not written to convince anyone that homosexuality is "wrong." It was written primarily to assist those who are inwardly convinced that their own homosexuality is "wrong for them."

Over 10 years in the personal journey of its writing, the author uses practical applications of Bible scripture throughout the book, without religiosity. Scripture is used to confront various aspects of this very controversial subjecthead-on. Therefore, the author makes no apologies for the portions of this book that may seem to be more graphic in nature than your average Christian book. Homosexuality is a subject that absolutely needs to be dealt with truthfully, and without religious avoidance of difficult topics.

If you are a person who has ever had doubts or questions about your sexual orientation or behavior, then what the author has written here is for you. The work contains a wealth of practical, biblical principles, and also includes information for women. But the book is otherwise a work written by a man, for other men who also desire freedom and heterosexual restoration from their own unwanted homosexual behaviors. "What we long for is a deep and heartfelt sense of brotherhood," and the author proposes that the real issues behind homosexual behaviors are not about sex!

Gods love (agpe love) always has both a balance of truth, and a responsibility that goes along with it. In this book, I take the same agpe love approach toward homosexuality, as Jesus did in the Book of John, Chapter 8, with the woman caught in the sin of adultery. Jesus showed great love and compassion toward the woman, both in the way that he dealt with the hypocritical crowd that had brought her to him, and in the way he spoke to her as he sent her on her way, and told her, Go, and sin no more.
- Dean Bailey

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781449732028

Dean Bailey

Dean Bailey was born and raised in the east San Francisco Bay area, and remained a resident of California until he graduated high school at the age of eighteen, and began his military career in the armed services, where he traveled to many different places across the United States, and around the world, including: Germany, Belgium, France, the Sinai of Egypt, Israel, South Korea, as well as combat tours to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. Dean continues his close ties with the U.S. Military, and he remains a strong and outspoken advocate of the truth concerning homosexual behaviors, speaking out against the Obama Administration's aberrant and forced repeal of the Department of Defense "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy.   Dean met his wife while attending their local church in Texas, and she has been a constant source of support, encouragement, and inspiration to the author in his life journey, ever since.   If you would like Dean to speak at your church or event, please send your inquiries to [e-mail]   Dean is a member in good standing of the American Association of Christian Counselors.  

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Our Preface: Who am I?

They are just three little words: Who am I? However, when we put these three words together in this order, they form one of the most complicated questions that many of us will ever try to answer about our own existence, when we try to understand ourselves from out of our own limited reasoning, human nature, and experiences.

So, what is it, exactly, that does define who we are as an individual? Is it many things, or is it just one thing in particular? Is there a simple answer that can define every person in some way, or is the answer more unique and complex from individual to individual? Or, is the truest answer found only after considering all of these things?

What about you? What do you look at inside of yourself, in order to form a personal answer to this very self-defining question? When you’ve searched inside yourself, have you ever felt like there was some part of you that was missing? Or, what if you don’t like something about the person that you see yourself to be—what then?

If you are a person who has ever had doubts or questions about your sexual orientation or behavior, then what I’ve written here is for you. I include information for women, however, this is a book written primarily to other men, from a man’s perspective of his own, unwanted homosexual behaviors. It is not intended to be an all-inclusive compilation of answers with regard to homosexuality, homosexual orientation, or homosexual behaviors. I readily admit to you that I simply don’t have all of those answers. But everything that I have included here is honest, truthful, and shared openly.

If you have struggled to understand yourself in the ways that I have, then I believe that I can help you to find some of the answers that you may be searching for, through what I’ve written about it, here in this book. I have no doubt that you will see yourself within certain aspects of my journey, and in the struggles I’ve had while trying to understand such things. I will also point you back in the right direction, toward the One who holds all of the answers that any of us might ever seek to discover about who we are. We can trust our lives to his wisdom and counsel, because his very nature is Love, and in his wisdom is found the fullness of Truth.

My intent in this book is to illuminate that truth, and allow it to expose homosexual behaviors as a symptom and evidence of our human frailty, and broken spiritual condition, rather than homosexuality being the pre-determined or uncontrollable human trait that it is most often portrayed to be. Because we (meaning the Human race) will turn to many different kinds of things, including different sexual activities, in order to try and fill up the voids that we sometimes sense within ourselves. And we grow up trying to figure out just how it is that we are supposed to fit in to our surroundings, within the much larger world that surrounds us.

In coming to terms with my own human failings and brokenness, I discovered that homosexual behavior was just one of the many things that people do sometimes turn toward, hoping to find the answer to what is missing inside of them, or hoping to discover their true self in some significant way.

However, for many people who’ve sought out their self-identity through a homosexual experience, or who continue seeking out the temporary comfort they found in such behaviors, they soon discover that the familiar and uneasy feeling of emptiness eventually returns—and along with it, the nagging voice inside of them that whispered, There’s still something missing. This happens even to the people who make the choice to live out their lives in open homosexuality, or to engage in long-term homosexual relationships.

I know these things to be true, because I’ve been through all the motions myself. So, I can tell you that seeking out yet another homosexual experience, and thinking all over again that the next one could finally be everything that you’ve been looking for, is not the right answer now—nor will it ever be.

However it is that you came to be reading this book now, I don’t believe that it was just by some accident. I believe that God intended for you to be reading these words right here, and at this exact moment in time. Otherwise, God would not have inspired me throughout the ten years it took me to write it all down. But God knew beforehand that there would be people just like you, who needed and desired to know the truth that is found within this information.

Some of you may be reading this book, hoping to find some honest answers about yourself. Or, perhaps you are just trying to find a personal connection with someone else who has already been down this road of uncertainties that you now have, concerning your own sexuality and inward desires. I believe that you will find what you are looking for, as you continue reading.

Other people have read portions of the book, with their only real motive seeming to be that they desired to criticize its message, or make negative accusations toward me. Do some people just desire to remain ignorant of these truths? Or, is it that they need to ridicule the evidence, so that they can go on feeling comfortable within the lies that they’ve been unable to convince themselves of? For many, I believe it was simply their attempt to defend a personal attitude that is unwilling, and absolutely refuses to acknowledge or accept any real hope, or possibility of changing their own sexual behaviors. Then there are other people who just refuse to believe that there is any person at all who could ever become free from homosexuality, because they are so convinced that it is who we are.

In spite of the few negative-minded readers like those, my hope is that you have come here seeking some honest and truthful answers about yourself, or that you are reading the book out of a legitimate curiosity. If you’ve never personally experienced same-sex attractions (SSA) yourself, then you might be a person who is seeking to understand a family member, friend, loved one, or co-worker who is gay, for example. Or, it may be that you just desire to learn more about it, and about the people who claim to be homosexual. Each one of these is a good reason to continue reading.

Some of you may disagree with the information you’ll read, because you’ve already made some personal conclusions about yourself, about your sexual behaviors, or about another person you know of who is gay. And it is certainly not my intent to build a wall of animosity between us, if you do disagree with me on some point. However, before you completely reject my views, please, take the time to personally read through the entire book, and allow yourself the fair opportunity to make a balanced conclusion about everything that I have learned and shared here, regarding homosexuality. At the very least, take the time to read the chapter that contains my testimony. Be open-minded enough to consider that some of my experiences may be very similar to your own environment, circumstances, or past experiences. Otherwise, we will just have to agree to disagree about certain things.

I’m confident that many of the things I’ve written about can open your eyes to consider life events or circumstances that you may not have thought about previously, concerning the origins and nature of your own homosexual feelings and behaviors. Processing it all can make you angry inside while considering some points, depending on your own pre-existing assumptions and conclusions, regarding homosexuality. It is not my intent to make you angry. However, you will have to stop at some point to begin to realize that regardless of what you may desire to believe or disbelieve about the nature of homosexual behaviors—it will never change what the truth actually is.

If you are able to do so, determine to set aside all of those pre-conceived notions right now—those you have about homosexuality, and also those you may have about the beliefs of Christianity, either as a religion, or as a way of life. In sharing this very honest, open, and personal journey with you, I’m hoping to give you the opportunity to personally identify with all of these very same things that I have come to understand, and allow you to see how both of these life-issues have tugged at, impacted, and influenced my own behaviors, decisions, and life-choices, over the course of most of my forty-something years. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to avoid the much more difficult path of trying to figure it all out on your own.

I want other people, who may be facing the same kinds of challenges, to be able to understand what I did to resolve the internal conflicts that these intense feelings, and my opposing Christian beliefs, caused within me. These two forces brought about an urgent sort of soul-searching within me, to try and understand them both truthfully. I found that only one of them could be completely catered to or accepted. And, you will eventually have to make that same personal decision—which one of them it will ultimately be—just as I had to.

I share this all with the sincere hope that in my willingness to do so, you will have an easier time of sorting through all of it than I did. I also hope for you to avoid the loneliness and emotional turmoil that came in trying to figure it all out on my own, and the fears that no one else would understand. Because, there are other people who understand us, and I know what it is that you are going through.

Just as much as I’ve written it all down for you, the reader, I’ve realized over the years that I have also written it down for myself. I have recorded everything that I’ve discovered, through my own journey out of homosexual behaviors, as a personal memoir of life-lessons and truth. It is so that I also have a place to return to, and remind myself, if I become discouraged.

We all become discouraged at times. When that happens, now I am also able to read these words again, remind myself of their truth, and encourage myself through what I’ve already learned along the way. It helps me avoid the pain of having to relearn difficult lessons all over again, through even more wrongful choices and mistakes.

For about the first year of writing, this was a far more condensed internet article. I didn’t realize it then, but that original writing was the beginning of a much larger work in progress—this book. After that first draft was published in February 2001, time itself began teaching me more and more of its own life-lessons. I continued learning more about the character of the God who was inspiring me, about myself as a person, and still more about the struggles I was writing about. So, I began adding each of those things into the article as it expanded in size.

When my internet audience began e-mailing their own comments and questions to me, I began to notice some very common and distinct issues that seemed to be present among most of us. I was inspired to address those things, by adding each of them in as well, until finally, the article developed into the book you have in front of you now.

If you take time to read every chapter, you will find that I repeat certain points again and again. I don’t do this to be redundant. I do it because I want you to grasp those things—I want you to get it. And I also want those of you who choose to skip around in the book, to be able to have enough information to understand each of those points, and apply them into your own circumstances. However, there is also a biblical principle behind repeating each of those important points, as I do: That principle says, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing . . ." (Romans 10:17, NKJV). So, the repeating helps you to have the faith to believe what is being said, and to apply it more assuredly into your own life.

I truly believe that every reason I had for writing all of this down was divinely inspired by God, and genuinely sincere in the desire I have to share my own knowledge and life-experience with other people. However, the one reason that will matter to most of you, is that I sense a very real connection with, and a compassion for those of you who are caught right in the middle of these issues—those of you who are trying to find some personal sense of hope, direction, and belonging, while also trying to gain a comfortable but honest understanding of yourself.

While the world around us is choosing sides and continuing to debate over the many different outward issues of homosexual behaviors, we are simply trying to come to grips with the evidence of it that we’ve seen inside of ourselves. That is very difficult to do, with so much inaccurate information being propagated to us about homosexuality today by the gay-rights activists, and also by so many of the other people who have bought into their lies.

Regardless of anything else you may or may not have come to believe about the origins of homosexual behaviors by this point, one simple fact of it is this: When a person does self-identify as a homosexual, then they have allowed their homosexual feelings and/or behaviors to define who they are as a person. If you are such a person, and you also say that you are comfortable in your sexuality, then I can accept that on the surface. But beneath what you say, or allow other people to see, I am also compelled to ask if you simply accepted your homosexual behaviors ignorantly, or have you actually taken the time to consider where they may have come from?

Have you ever weighed some of the largely ignored, but readily available and entirely feasible evidence and research, which so clearly identifies non-biological and non-genetic, environmental reasons for our homosexual behaviors? If you have never considered such evidence before now, then I hope that you will at least be willing to give these things some sincere thought, as I bring many of them to light, and discuss them throughout this book. I began to see myself so much more clearly as a person, once I actually did so myself.

Such information has been intentionally censored at times, in the montage of political correctness that now exists within our Western and European cultures. These are the environments which have favored and spread so many of the blatant lies, and unproven biological theories that exist, regarding homosexual behaviors. Those unproven ideas and theories are being spoon-fed to us by the gay-rights activists, and also by the prominent people and organizations which are ignorantly supporting them.

In this book, I will also confront those very one-sided, and activist-minded schemes, along with their legislative and political agendas, which are all attempting to force everyone else in our society to become morally accepting of homosexuality, against personal will and better judgment.

Because of the government lobbying of gay-rights groups, and because of their guilt-fostering tactics, our state and federal governments seem to be purposely ignoring the validity of any evidence which contradicts or refutes what the gay-rights activists have been saying about homosexual behaviors. However, the most accurate and unbiased research that is currently available, easily refutes an overwhelming majority of what gay-rights activists have led us to believe about homosexuality.

If you are a person who remains uncomfortable with, or questions, or who is confused about your same-sex attractions or behaviors, then allow me to lighten your burden right now, by telling you something very important that no one in the openly-gay culture seems to be willing to tell you:

If you are experiencing unwanted homosexual feelings or desires, it is absolutely acceptable for you to desire to become free from those thoughts and longings!

And there is one more thing I’ll share with you that is just as important for you to know:

You will always have a personal choice and self-determination, with regard to what the final orientation of your sexual behaviors will be in the future, even if you are already living your life as a homosexual right now!

That’s right! It’s called self-determination. So, I hope you’ll hear me out on all of this. You do have the personal, God-given freedom, and self-determining right, as a created human being, to seek out your own destiny, with regard to your sexuality and behaviors—just the same as you do with the other personal and spiritual aspects of your own life. So, don’t ever allow any person, government, or activist organization to get away with trying to convince you otherwise. You do not have to just accept the idea that you are gay, or that you are destined to live the rest of your life as a homosexual, or that you have no further choice or say-so in the matter, once you’ve experienced or acted upon those kinds of feelings in a homosexual way.

Advice like that is simply not true. I’ve found out for myself that all of us do still have a choice in this! First, we have a choice to understand how we got into this mess in the first place. Then we also have a choice either to do something about it, or to just continue to succumb to it.

In the Holy Bible’s Book of the Psalms, King David made a very simple, yet profound observation that is still very relevant today: David said, "Many are asking, ‘Who can show us any good?’" (Psalms 4:6). In other words, "Who is it that can tell us for certain what the difference really is between what is right or wrong, and truly define what is good or evil?" And then, without any further pondering for the answer, David simply adds: "Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord." With these words, I believe that King David understood and acknowledged that there are some situations in life that only God himself can help us to sort out. Homosexuality, in our day and age, is clearly one of those life-issues.

But are we actually willing to allow God to help us sort out such an issue within our own life? Or does the thought of turning to God for help with this issue simply scare us to death, because we have been told that he will reject us for these attractions and longings that we have felt so strongly inside of ourselves? After all, we’ve all seen how negative and uncompassionate some religious people can become, when speaking toward this subject. I’d simply encourage you not to let such people turn you away from God himself, especially while you are looking for the honest and compassionate answers that God alone can provide to you.

As a man who grew up having come through this inward struggle myself, I can especially identify with you younger men out there, who are now at the point of trying to either deny, or to accept those inward passions we’ve felt, that long so deeply for the love and acceptance of another male, human being. I know that sometimes they can drive you to the point that you feel like a worthless person, while at other times you feel alone and incomplete until you’ve satisfied them somehow. I also know what it feels like to seem to have no choice or control at all over these passions and emotions—and what it is like to keep them all bottled up inside, as they are fighting to get out. Even in a large crowd of friends, these feelings can often make us feel as though we are all alone.

But ask yourself, honestly, if you are actually convinced that you could ever truly obtain this need or this thing that you are sensing from deep within your soul, by seeking it out sexually—and yet you can’t even put your finger on exactly what it is in the first place? Can you even find the right words to adequately describe what it causes you to desire from another person, within your soul? Then how can you keep suggesting to yourself that homosexuality is the answer?

Having tried to myself, I’ll tell you plainly that you can’t fill this emptiness sexually—not with homosexual or with heterosexual behavior! Because what you are actually longing for inside is not something sexual at all. It is, however, something that can easily distort our sexual attractions, through the misunderstood desires that it cuts so deeply into our souls.

What we long for is a deep and heartfelt sense of brotherhood. What we are actually seeking is a kind of validation and acceptance within our own soul that agrees with who we see ourselves to be as a man (or woman), according to the physical gender that we were born with. This is an inward confidence that is measured out and bestowed upon each person, over time, mostly through the quality of the interaction and companionship that we do or don’t experience within vital relationships, as we grow from childhood into young adulthood. This all usually happens quite naturally, through our healthy interactions with both of our parents.

However, there are many other issues that can come into play along the way, which can interrupt or have a negative impact upon our gender confidence, and upon our sexual behaviors later in life. These things often leave us feeling invalidated, or unaccepted within our gender, and in our personal life experience. That is where our sexual behaviors can become very misled and confused during adolescence.

Homosexuality becomes such a powerful substitute to many of us, because sexual intimacy is one of the highest, most powerful, and pleasurable things that two people can ever share and experience together. The sexual intimacy from persons of our own gender can easily become a very luring substitute for the gender validations and acceptance that we seek, as both men and women.

For many people in our world today, the issue of homosexual behaviors has ceased to be a simple, moral question of right or wrong. In fact, it has created a growing social dilemma, and a war of opposing ideologies that is battling for the hearts and minds of everyone in our culture—and to a larger degree, throughout the entire world as well.

Early on in their political strategy, here in America, the homosexual activists were crafty and cunning enough to expand their battle lines beyond Washington, DC, and extend them into our nation’s public classrooms. It was a strategically planned course of action that was intended to target and influence the next generation of young adults in America, by including homosexual couples within their modern, non-traditional definitions of families.

Through their gay is okay propaganda, and against parental consent in most cases, they have won droves of young people over to their way of thinking about this issue, whether those young people were gay or straight. And once homosexual activists began to successfully influence the hearts and minds of a new generation of young voters and politicians into supporting their cause, then they began to win their battle for the complete acceptance of their sexual behaviors. This kind of unopposed acceptance has been the main goal of their activism from the very beginning.

Just in case you hadn’t yet noticed the many gay rights battles that are indeed taking place in America today, I’ve got more alarming news for you: The gay rights campaign has made some incredible strides in gaining public, corporate, and government support, and most Americans didn’t even realize what was happening. In fact, most people either slept right through it, or their senses became systematically dulled to its impact, as homosexuality was given an increasingly normal place within our society, through what was seen of it on weekly television shows.

However, there is another aspect to all of this that you should be keenly aware of. The very fact that you are now reading this book tells me that you have probably sensed it deep within yourself, already. There is another battle, though unseen and often ignored, which is raging right beside of all of the other external issues. That battle takes place on a much deeper and more personal, human spiritual level. Will that inward battle also come to an end, once all of the external battle smoke has cleared away? In other words, as a homosexual person, would you be able to feel normal about yourself, just because new laws, and even our society itself, may eventually all agree that homosexuality is acceptable? I believe such confidence can only come to us from deep within our own hearts, at the very core of our own spiritual being.

Long after the gay rights campaign is over—long after we have homosexual scholarships and homosexual marriages in America, and specific laws in place to protect the rights of homosexuals, as a civil right-protected class of people—long after any of these things are in place, there will still be one thing that remains unchanged in the final outcome: That something is God himself!

Granted, you may not even believe in God, or much less want to consider the implications if you did. Nonetheless, the biblical writings attributed to his existence have survived thousands of years worth of skepticism, scrutiny, and ridicule already. Those writings tell us that God doesn’t change his own character just because the moral views of a society may change, with regard to his long-standing biblical laws, concerning issues like homosexuality.

I don’t want the people who are personally dealing with this issue to loose sight of that fact, most especially our youth. So, I will also be speaking to you about the very spiritual aspects of our homosexual behaviors and issues, throughout the book. In that context, however, this book is not about forcing change upon people! But rather, the book is about giving the very real hope of that freedom back into the hands of the people who have continued to desire it, in spite of the gay-rights movement attempt to burry that hope.

The bigger picture beyond all of this—much bigger than the moral implications of homosexuality itself—is that the life we are now living is our one and only opportunity to choose where we will spend our eternity in the afterlife. So, more than upon any moral decision we will ever make with regard to homosexuality, or anything else, the Bible teaches us that our place in eternity will be based solely upon the personal decision we must all make, with regard to a man called Jesus Christ.

There is indeed an eternal Heaven to be hoped for, through the complete forgiveness that Jesus provided—and there is also an eternal Hell to be avoided, for as long as we choose to remain separated from God’s forgiveness: Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them (John 3:36).

God’s intent is that no person should ever ignorantly choose to spend their eternity, separated from his love in such a place, by avoiding the personal decision to believe in Jesus Christ. For that reason, my good and sincere hope and desire for you is that you be well informed, and equipped to make that choice and personal decision for yourself—most especially as you consider the many issues and moral implications of homosexual behavior.

In the end, the only sure way you can know that you’ve done so, in and among the din of my voice, and so many other voices out there in our world, is to get to know Jesus for yourself—not to just casually know about him, but to truly and intimately know him well, through a daily and ongoing, personal relationship with him.

May God bless each one of us with joy in that quest.

CHAPTER 2

Confronting Homosexuality

"Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God . . ."

2nd Corinthians 1:3-4

Many years back, I remember opening a newspaper to glance at the political cartoon. The cartoonist had drawn his own rendition of Michelangelo’s painting, The Creation of Adam, which is pictured on the front cover. In the cartoon version, however, the cartoonist included a caption with God speaking to Adam, that read, Sorry son, you’re gay.

The message being sent by the cartoonist that day was somehow a familiar one to me, long before I had ever heard any real discussions about the subject of homosexuality. However, homosexuality is certainly not an issue that will ever be solved via cartoons and politics.

Homosexuals want desperately to believe that they are normal, and to be accepted by their society. And what person wouldn’t want that? But the tragic fact is that homosexuality isn’t normal. Yet, it is something that a small group of normal, everyday people have been forced to deal with, from someplace deep down inside of themselves. Their choices have been that they can either accept it, or try to suppress and ignore it. Yet neither of these is a completely viable option to so many who’ve had to deal with it, and never wanted to. So, what if there was another option open to them; one that offers them the very real hope of change?

Over the years since that cartoon was published in my local newspaper, I think I have probably heard just about every discussion and debate over the issue of homosexuality that can be conceived. And, in all of the fallout over the choosing of sides which has occurred, I am certain of this one thing: Our society doesn’t understand what homosexuality is. Perhaps even more tragic than that is the fact that most of the homosexuals themselves really only pretend to understand it. Because, they do so out of their own ill-conceived notions, and within the strong