Sophomore Ian Blanchard is reluctant to talk about the two years he spent dating a man. He’s quiet about his thoughts on the one long-term relationship in which he said he succumbed to his homosexual desires.
He would rather quote Jesus Christ and let Jesus do the talking for him.
“There’s a quote I love [of Jesus’]: ‘He who would be my disciple must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me,'” Blanchard says.
Since childhood, Blanchard has struggled to reconcile his fervent faith in Christ with his homosexuality. Now a sophomore classics major, Blanchard identifies both as a gay man and as a Christian who must keep his sexual desires for men in check in order to comply with church doctrine and his own beliefs.
For Blanchard, who carries a Bible in his backpack and who regularly attends Severna Park Evangelical Presbyterian Church, acting on his homosexuality is something he cannot allow himself to do again. He has chosen a life of celibacy in favor of his faith – but that choice has come at a heavy price.
“It’s been crazy hard,” he said, “because nobody wants to think their emotions aren’t what they are supposed to be…I mostly deal with it by trying to focus on Christ and thinking, ‘Yeah, emotions suck, but they aren’t the be-all, end-all.'”
“I’ve tried more than once to abandon my faith, but I just can’t do it,” he said.
Recent campus protests during which evangelical preachers denounced homosexuality as wrong exemplify the passion surrounding religion and sexuality. Few know this better than Blanchard, who showed up to a counter-demonstration to emphasize the need for more understanding, because it is so difficult to be caught between the two.
“I am here for two reasons: firstly, because I am a Christian; and second, because I am a homosexual,” he said at an Oct. 12 demonstration in which various Christian students confessed their sins in a response to the Soulwinners Ministries anti-gay message. “I am not practicing because, as I said, I do think it’s wrong. But it’s important that people do treat homosexuals with compassion.”
Blanchard said the conflicting emotions are the hardest part to work with.
“The sex part isn’t that hard. Sex is a bodily appetite. It’s like not being able to have your favorite food,” Blanchard said, adding that intimacy and companionship are more important.
His views were shaped after years of anguish stemming from a disconnect between his personal feelings and religious beliefs.
Growing up, Blanchard was mostly home-schooled until he got to high school and attended Rockbridge Academy in Millersville. It was during his years in high school that Blanchard began living what he describes as two separate lives – one as a devout Christian, and one as a gay youth struggling with sexuality, he said. Between the ages of 14 and 16, he engaged in a homosexual relationship while feeling extremely guilty about it the entire time.
“For a while I just went about living a neurotic double life, which didn’t work out on either end,” Blanchard said, recalling feelings of intense guilt for his actions and other feelings of depression for his inaction. “I have indulged in a lot of self-pity, a lot of melodrama. You can’t ignore something out of existence.”
Since ending his only relationship, Blanchard has had a few minor romantic encounters with men – partly out of spite for a Church that he says “has done such a bad job of explaining, above all, the Gospel, but more particularly the part of the Gospel that says God can hate our actions but love us.”
What brings him back to his faith is his relationship with Christ, which he describes as being like any other relationship, except that Jesus “is never wrong.”
“In the Bible and the church, the flesh is said to be sacred; it’s the kind of thing that must be handled with care and caution and respect,” he said. “There’s a sacramentality to gender among other things, and if you try to use a sacrament in the wrong way, it’s not being used for its true purpose,” which he says is to serve Christ through procreation.
He hopes to someday contact Exodus International, a national organization that “exists to help people who are seeking to bring their sexuality into line with their faith and their beliefs” by offering counseling sessions and group discussion sessions, according to Mike Ensley, assistant director of the organization’s youth department. Ensley added that 30 percent of the organization’s clients go on to lead “a successful life of heterosexuality or celibacy.”
“We believe that the Bible specifically states that homosexuality is outside of God’s will,” Ensley said. “Therefore, we seek to overcome homosexuality not only in behavior but also in identity.”
Such organizations are controversial, especially among the gay community, because they espouse the idea that homosexuality is unhealthy and potentially curable. Gay activists have denounced such organizations for years for their insensitivity and narrowmindedness, and condemn the idea that homosexuality is something to feel guilty about.
For Blanchard, the organization represents a ray of hope that one day his feelings will match his religion and that – if he ever feels attracted to women – his dreams of fatherhood will be fulfilled.
Dealing with organized religion has been difficult. He has not been able to tell many of the members of his church about his homosexuality for fear of their reactions.
“I have friends who I love dearly, who I don’t think would deal with it well,” he said.
Telling his family – even with the assurance he would not act on his feelings – was hard enough.
“My mom handled it pretty well. My dad had a harder time, which is funny to me because my mom is a Christian and my dad is not,” Blanchard said. “But the assumption [with them] is that I’m not going to act on it.”
Liz Ray, who is Blanchard’s aunt and a junior at this university, said they “joke about [his homosexuality] occasionally to keep things light, but [they] don’t deeply discuss it often.”
Before she found out about her nephew’s homosexuality, Ray said she held harsher opinions of homosexuals than she does now. When she did find out about it from one of Blanchard’s sisters, her perspective changed, she said.
“I think that he is brave for being willing to be open with people because the Christian community is incredibly hostile toward that type of thing,” Ray said.
As a result, Blanchard does not have many people in whom he can confide. He relies on a friendship with God to help him retain his view that it is “not so much an issue of sex as much as turning yourself to God.”
Despite any comforts he draws from his faith, he knows his struggle with homosexuality will probably last a lifetime.
“There are very few sins we wholly defeat in this life,” he said.
Contact reporter Kevin Rector at rectordbk@gmail.com.
