My Egypt: Why I Left the Ex-Gay Movement

Egypt, in the Bible, represents slavery and oppression, until Moses showed up and led his people in a mass Exodus out of Egypt. Before reaching the Promised Land, they would wander in the Sinai desert for forty years, probably because Moses was lost, but refused to stop and ask for directions. This is the metaphor that the Ex-Gay movement uses under the guise of Exodus International. In their philosophy, gay men and women are in bondage, suffering from “unwanted” sexual attraction, and they are the modern Moses, here to set the community free. My Egypt is the story of one man who spent over fifteen years of his life inside of this movement; only realize that the Exodus movement is really Egypt in disguise. In his struggle to be “free from homosexuality,” Benjamin David discovered that “freedom” comes from being who you are. Benjamin realized he was in Egypt. When he finally came out (or was thrown out by the police), Benjamin was then forced out of Egypt; and he would spend the next decade wandering through the wilderness, searching for the Promised Land. My Egypt is the story of one man’s struggle with God, his sexuality, the Ex-Gay movement, and evolution. The journey out of Egypt and into freedom was a thorny one, one that would lead him into the dark side of God.