Arch Kennedy lived as an openly gay man for decades after he realized he was same-sex attracted — but that all changed when he found Christ.
“It’s a horrible lifestyle. I was full force into it, out at the bars on my off time, and the whole lifestyle revolves around sex and your sexuality. Everything. That is your identity. Everything revolves around that and that superficiality of it, the soullessness of it,” Kennedy tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.”
“Is it true that drugs and alcohol are a major part of the LGBTQ, if you want to call it, community or world?” Stuckey asks.
“It revolves around sex and drugs and alcohol. That’s all there was. I mean, every event was a drinking and drugging event. … It was so superficial. God certainly wasn’t part of it,” he explains.
Kennedy tells Stuckey that many of those in the gay community had negative past experiences with church and attempted to mask the feelings that came with being homosexual via drugs and alcohol.
“People had no outlet. They had no place to feel safe, I guess, or secure, and so drinking, you know, drinking or drugging definitely helped,” he explains, noting that alcoholism and homosexuality might not be all that different in the first place.
“I think that biology has a lot to do with this same-sex attraction too,” he tells Stuckey. “I think it’s part of it. It could be trauma — that could be part of it — but also biology. You know, with alcoholism, we look at genetics. We look at repetition. So, you see some people that just have such a social life, they get to the point where they cross over from drinking a lot to addiction.”
“And once you’ve crossed that point, you no longer have a choice. … Why couldn’t that be the case for homosexuality?” he asks.
“And really, at the end of the day, for the Christian, it’s like, well, it doesn’t matter because all of us are called to repentance and new life. And so, that whole debate that people have had for a long time — what causes it — as you said, there could be a variety of things in a person’s life that causes what God would call a disordered disease,” Stuckey says.
Regardless of what causes homosexuality, Kennedy found himself trapped in the lifestyle until his early 50s, when his sister encouraged him to join a Bible study.
“It was the best thing of my life. Best thing that could have happened in my life,” he tells Stuckey.
“When I started studying God’s word, I feel the Holy Spirit started working within me. And I noticed a change in me. I noticed that I was becoming convicted for the first time in my life, that I had a deep conviction of my sins, and I was hyperaware,” he explains.
By year three of studying God’s word, he was “sinning less and less.”
“And I decided that celibacy was what I needed to do. I still had the struggle. I still do. Speaking to you right here, right now, I still have the struggle, but God is calling me to be celibate,” he says.
“I think there are very few gay people that get to where I’m at. I still have a long way to go. I still sin; we all do,” he continues. “But I am much more at peace.”
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