CBNNews.com -
After 29 years as a gay activist, former lesbian magazine publisher Charlene
Cothran stunned the homosexual community when she announced she had become a
Christian. She has renounced her homosexuality, and changed the format of her
magazine to spread the Gospel to the gay community.
As a gay rights activist, Cothran
was never afraid to fight for what she believed in. For 30 years, she was as
vocal and in your face as they come. She organized and marched with other
lesbians in gay rights parades. And as editor-in-chief of Venus
magazine , a national gay and lesbian publication, she wasn't about to change
-- until something happened at a gay pride celebration that she never expected.
"In 2003, I was in Chicago at a gay pride event, in the middle of this beautiful
park," Cothran recalled. "I took a panoramic view, and as far as I
could see there were men with men and women with women, all just partying and
having a good time. But a shame fell on me, I felt so out of place. I knew
something in my spirit spoke that, 'this is that road that leads to
destruction, and you're on it.'"
It took several years to come to
terms with this vision, and during that time Cothran continued to publish her
gay and lesbian magazine. But she couldn't escape the message she'd heard that
day in 2003. She said, "I kept myself busy with marches and activism and
public appearances. But in the still of the night when everything is over,
there was still that little voice, "You're not right with God."
Cothran says she longed for peace,
but even in the midst of a long-term relationship, she felt intense loneliness.
She'd grown up in a Christian home, and had come into the lesbian lifestyle at
19, after several bad relationships with boys. "I didn't want anything to
do with men anymore," she said. "I was away at college and that was a
whole new world, and in that world there were many, many women who were
attracted to me, and, of course, I was attracted to them. And these women were
nurturing, wanted to get to know me intellectually -- they were organizers whom
I found a lot of comfort in. It felt good, it felt right."
But it didn't feel right anymore.
Then in June 2006, local Pastor
Vanessia Livingston of Miracle Deliverance Church called Cothran, regarding an
article in one her publications. She didn't know anything about Cothran's life
and proceeded to talk to her about God. Livingston asked Cothran, "What
are you going to do about your life?" Then she told her, "'You need
to get your life together.' Cothran said, 'I'm in the life.' I said, 'Yes, I
know, that's why I'm talking to you, but you don't have to stay in the life. You
can be delivered today, right now, right where you are.'" They talked for
awhile and Cothran remembers her words: "I can tell that you want to come
back to God, but you feel unworthy, you feel that God can't use you because
you've been marching and publishing and you've been such a proud lesbian all
these years, but that's not true. He's waiting."
That day changed everything for
Charlene Cothran, as she finally asked Jesus Christ to come into her heart and
forgive her.
It was a personal transformation
that she immediately wanted to share with her gay and lesbian followers. She
wrote a front page article in her magazine called, "Redeemed! Ten Ways to Get Out of the Gay Life,
if You Want Out." "When the Lord saved me, I knew everything
would change," she said. "All of the ads, the editorials, the mission
of the magazine had changed. We're going to be calling people out of
homosexuality."
Most of the response from the gay
and lesbian community has been fierce and negative. But she says she knows that
many of them are just as conflicted as she was. Cothran said, "In order to
fill up this empty space, they pretend to put on this wonderful face, 'how gay
and happy I am,' when in fact -- there's a lot of loneliness in the gay
community that's not talked about, and it's real." But there has been
positive feedback as well. Cothran says she gets lots of e-mails from people
who say they struggle with homosexuality and want out.
CBN News asked Cothran, "I know
people probably ask you, do you still have feelings for women, and are you
dating a man?"
Cothran replied, "I'm living a
celibate life. I'm so focused on the spirit right now, that I have no urges for
anyone -- man or woman."
With a new outlook about herself and
life, Cothran is still on the frontlines of the gay rights battle, only now she
sees it as a spiritual fight to lead others to the freedom she's found. "Our
mission now," she said, "is to educate and to turn people away from
the homosexual lifestyle simply by presenting the truth. We simply want people
to question what they've learned through the pages of Venus
magazine over the past 13 years."
Prior to Cothran's conversion, Venus
circulated about 35,000 copies per issue which ran four times a year. But after
the issue featuring her testimony, the gay political machine pressured
advertisers to drop the magazine. And gay pride events and college campuses no
longer subscribe. But in her own words, Cothran has no regrets about her
change. She said, "There is a joy and a peace that you can't find in a
club, I don't care how good the music is. You can't find it in the middle of a
gay pride parade, I don't care if you have the biggest, prettiest float. I have
a joy and a peace that I wouldn't trade for anything."
Prominent U.S. Gay Activist Now Publicly
Speaking Out Against Homosexuality
Encouraging others to
leave way of life he says "is by its very nature pornographic"
By John Jalsevac
July 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Michael Glatze, once a rising star in the
homosexual movement, having become the editor of the popular Young Gay America
magazine in his early 20s, has since left the homosexual lifestyle and is now
publicly speaking out against homosexuality, and encouraging other homosexuals
to leave the way of life that he says "is by its very nature
pornographic."
In a powerful testimonial printed yesterday on WorldNetDaily, Glatze
publicly reveals his conversion, and chronicles his tumultuous and unhappy
journey through homosexuality, to where he is today, a recovered homosexual and
a Christian, eager to lead others out of the lifestyle that claimed him for so
many years.
"Homosexuality, delivered to young minds, is by its very nature
pornographic. It destroys impressionable minds and confuses their developing
sexuality; I did not realize this, however, until I was 30 years old,"
writes Glatze in the article on WorldNetDaily.
Glatze is the second prominent homosexual rights activist involved with a
pro-homosexual magazine to have publicly left the lifestyle in the last year. Charlene
Cothran, the founder and publisher of VENUS magazine, formerly a pro-homosexual
publication, has since become a Christian, left the homosexual lifestyle, and
has radically altered the nature of her magazine, changing it into a forum by
which to "encourage, educate and assist those who desire to leave a life
of homosexuality."
"Although I have lived as a lesbian for my entire adult life, it is
without a doubt my soul's purpose to use my gifts to LOVINGLY share the truth
about how we got here," Cothran wrote in the first issue of the magazine
dedicated to its new purpose. "How we came to be gay or lesbian, how we
came to enjoy our 'lifestyle' and how we came to believe that this was OK with
God."
For his part Michael Glatze relates how, after years working at the very
forefront of the pro-homosexual movement, he began to have increasing doubts
about what he was doing with his life. This feeling heightened, he said, after
reviewing his "performance" during an appearance on the
prestigious JFK JR. Forum at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in 2005, in
which he appeared as an "expert" on the pro-homosexual side.
"Knowing no one who I could approach with my questions and my doubts, I
turned to God." The young homosexual activist says that he had developed a
relationship with God some time before, as a consequence of a painful illness
that stemmed from the way he had been living.
"It became clear to me, as I really thought about it--and really prayed
about it--that homosexuality prevents us from finding our true self within. We
cannot see the truth when we're blinded by homosexuality."
"We believe, under that influence of homosexuality, that lust is not just
acceptable, but a virtue."
From that point onward, says Glatze, he simply began to call his homosexual
desires what they were--lust--and by focusing on his truest self he was able to
begin the long process of healing. "Healing from the wounds caused by
homosexuality is not easy," he says. "There's little obvious support.
What support remains is shamed, ridiculed, silenced by rhetoric or made illegal
by twisting of laws…Part of the homosexual agenda is getting people to stop
considering that conversion is even a viable question to be asked, let alone whether
or not it works."
Despite the immense difficulties of the transition, however, he says, "In
my experience, 'coming out' from under the influence of the homosexual mindset
was the most liberating, beautiful and astonishing thing I've ever experienced
in my entire life."
He concludes, "Healing from the sins of the world will not happen in an
instant; but, it will happen--if we don't pridefully block it. God wins in the
end, in case you didn't know."