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I met Bill at a party two months after I graduated in January 1970 with a bachelor's degree in education. Both of us were Christians. Both of us struggled with homosexuality. In June, we moved in together. A year later, unable to reconcile our relationship with Scripture, I repented and moved out. In March 1972, I met a Christian girl from North Carolina who, to my surprise, told me she struggled with lesbianism. Her forthrightness motivated me to tell her about my homosexual struggle. Four months later, without counseling or taking time to get to know each other, let alone fall in love, we married and settled in North Carolina, thinking marriage would grant us new and happy lives as heterosexuals.

We soon discovered our mistake. There was no passion between us. No desire for emotional intimacy. No tenderness. No real communication. Only remorse that we had acted so quickly. I was willing to try and make the marriage work, but she wasn't, and she left me after seven months. The divorce became official in 1974. Tired of trying not to be gay, I threw myself into the gay lifestyle in Chicago. On the outside, I was happy. But after six years, something, or rather someone, was missing in my life: Jesus. He wanted back in.

In July 1981, my sister, Rachel, also a Christian, died of brain cancer. Her final words to me would change my life. "Denny," she said, "the Lord told me you're gay. You'll never find true peace and love until you come back to Jesus." A week later Rachel died.

On the train back from her memorial service in Ohio, I began to miss Jesus like one misses a friend. I knew that I couldn't live without him any longer. The next day I ended my homosexual relationship and asked my partner to move out. I also decided to totally remove myself from the gay social scene. More importantly, I cried out to the Lord for forgiveness and came home to the one I should never have left in the first place, the Lord Jesus.

To my great joy, he was waiting for me with open arms.

During the 25 years since then, I've been used by the Lord, and I praise him for his goodness. Yet no one knows, except the Lord, of the shame I bear because of my past. Only the Lord knows my pain for never having fulfilled my dream of joining Campus Crusade. Only God knows that I went into public education because I felt homosexuality barred me from ever serving him in fulltime ministry—though that dream has remained, like an ember that dimmed but never went out.

Homosexuality has been like a ghost, hiding in the shadows of my shame, telling me I can never reach my full potential as a Christian. As strange and contradictory as it may sound, seeing Brokeback Mountain helped me bury that ghost and begin moving forward.

What I saw in Brokeback Mountain tore my heart apart. I cried with Alma when she discovered the truth about Ennis and Jack. I also cried for the countless wives in real life who know that their husbands are leading a secret existence. I cried even harder for the men, more in number than we realize, who are trapped in sexual sin and don't know how to escape it. And as I wept, I wondered if God could use me to help reach some of them with his grace and delivering power.

No scene touched me more than the one in which Ennis's daughter pays him a visit after Jack dies, and tells him he needs to buy some furniture to liven up his cold and barren trailer. Ennis responds, "If you ain't got nothin, you don't need nothin." I made up my mind then and there that I would not let homosexuality rob me like it had robbed Ennis. To my surprise, I left the theater with the determination to quit holding back and to allow the Lord to help me achieve all that he has for me to do.

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April 2006, Vol. 50, No. 4