EX-GAYS TELL THEIR STORIES

Sam Allberry, a British born pastor, apologist and author who admitted to an inappropriate relationship with another man, is not the only narrative on same-sex attraction. Thousands of men and women have renounced the gay lifestyle, married, and now live with spouses and children. Here are some of their stories.

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD

www.virtueonline.org

May 8, 2026

Elizabeth Woning

"Today I am fulfilled, joyful, and feminine — all things I never was while living as a lesbian. I am no longer sexually attracted to women."

Throughout most of her life, Elizabeth Woning never felt she belonged. She questioned both her sexuality and her gender identity, rejecting femininity as foreign to her experience. Her first deep emotional bond was with another woman in her mid-teens — an intimacy so formative it set the standard for her relationships for years afterward. Though she occasionally dated men and was briefly married in her early twenties, those relationships never took hold.

She came out as a lesbian after that marriage ended, believing lesbianism finally explained her life. She adopted masculine dress and mannerisms and found community in the gay neighborhoods of large cities. She went on to attend seminary as one of a handful of openly gay students, then worked with youth — but over time began questioning her faith.

That season of doubt became a season of re-evaluation. She revisited her beliefs about God, Scripture, and herself, and concluded that some of her foundational assumptions might have been wrong. She resolved to follow her faith sacrificially, which required rethinking her understanding of Christian sexual ethics. She had long believed she was born gay; eventually, she no longer held that view.

She pursued pastoral care and counseling that addressed childhood wounds and what she came to recognize as a deep rejection of her own womanhood. She did not set out to change her sexual attractions — but they changed nonetheless. She fell in love with a man, an experience she describes as among the most unexpected and disorienting of her life, given how fully she had identified as a lesbian. They married in 2005 and have maintained a strong marriage since.

Woning is co-founder of the CHANGED Movement (changedmovement.com).

Dawn McDonald

Dawn McDonald served as rector of Holy Cross Japanese Canadian Anglican Church in the Diocese of New Westminster before publicly identifying as an ex-gay Christian. She now lives in Sanford, Florida, with her husband, where she teaches, counsels, and speaks on sexual wholeness, gender wounds, and pastoral care for same-sex-attracted individuals. She holds advanced theological degrees, is a Certified Pastoral Sexual Addiction Specialist, and is a founding member of The Zacchaeus Fellowship, which supports those holding to the church's historic sexual ethic (oslregion8.org).

McDonald experienced her first same-sex attraction at thirteen. She entered a lesbian lifestyle at twenty and lived within it for more than thirteen years. She describes what she calls a profound spiritual healing through faith, after which she says she was freed of same-sex attractions. At the time of her public testimony, she had been married to a man for nearly eight years and expressed no doubt that her sexual orientation had genuinely changed.

She is candid about the cost of her position. "Being an ex-gay is even more difficult than being gay," she has said. "To many in the Anglican Church, my story is 'politically incorrect,' and there is opposition from every corner."

Darryl

Darryl, now in his forties, first experienced same-sex attractions at fourteen. Raised as a lifelong Anglican in Winnipeg, Manitoba, he valued the church's sacramental and apostolic traditions — and felt profound shame that his desires seemed to place him outside them.

For years he cycled through fantasy, pornography, guilt, and desperate prayer. "Only God knows how often I prayed and begged Him to change my unwanted orientation," he recalls. At twenty-two he moved cities to study psychiatric nursing, using pornography as a pressure valve and eventually making contact with other men who shared his attractions — though fear kept him from acting on them. He approached his parish priest, found him empathetic but uncertain how to help, and did not return.

Back in Winnipeg at twenty-six, he began cruising gay areas and eventually acted out with another man. "It was a very dark day for me," he says. What followed was a rapid descent into compulsive anonymous sexual encounters, a secret life that deepened his anguish.

The turning point came when the public health department contacted him as a possible exposure to chlamydia. All tests were negative. "I made a promise to myself: if I'm clean, then I'm going to get help." He went to his priest, entered an extended period of counseling, and was referred to New Direction for Life Ministries, an Exodus North America affiliate.

The hardest day of that journey, he says, was telling his girlfriend about his struggles — and giving her the choice to stay or leave. She stayed. They have now been married for ten years and have two daughters. "Never have I felt so whole or complete," he says. He believes change is possible and says he has personally witnessed hundreds of people find release from same-sex attraction.

Don

Don, now a priest in his fifties, grew up largely without his father's presence and came to equate homosexual desire with the longing for male affirmation. He pursued that longing into university, graduating in Los Angeles during the emergence of the AIDS crisis. "A few moments of sexual pleasure did not touch my deepest needs," he reflects. He drifted from the Anglican faith.

In 1989 he had what he describes as a born-again experience. He came to see that he had spent years assigning blame — to God, to his father, to circumstance — rather than taking ownership of his own choices and healing. He found the liberating power of that realization transformative and believes that ideologically driven theology, which removes the possibility of change, denies people access to that same liberation.

These are not stories of sudden, blinding conversions. They are accounts of gradual, often painful reckoning — the slow recognition that something was wounded within, and the long road toward healing with God's help. They are stories of love, forgiveness, wholeness, and grace.

They are not Sam Allberry's story or Gene Robinson. But they are real, and they deserve to be heard.

END