E-Mail This Article to a Friend Straight talk (continued)

HOUSTON LIKES to say that there’s "much more to Larry than the former homosexual," and he’s right. Six days a week, he works as a cook at a Harvard University dining hall. He spends three months of each year in the Ukraine, where he teaches English to high-school kids for free. These days, he has achieved what he would consider a normal, successful life. He’s gained enough respect at Harvard that his co-workers elected him union shop steward, which carries managerial responsibility. In the Ukraine, he’s gained the love and affection of a middle-aged nurse, Angela, whom Houston says he’s "not going to pass up." He explains, "Angela is an attractive woman and has good character traits." Asked what that means exactly, he has a hard time articulating his response. "People talk about an ‘inner beauty,’" he says, "and she has that." He also stresses that others think she’s great. "My friends say she is a great catch. They were all very impressed."

Still, Houston’s "struggle with homosexuality" has colored much of his life. Born the oldest boy (along with his twin brother) of seven children, he grew up on a grain-and-livestock farm in Chapin, Illinois, a town of just 500. As a kid, he and his siblings attended Sunday school at a local Lutheran church. His parents, however, weren’t especially devout. By the time he entered junior high, the family had abandoned religion altogether.

Houston says his parents quit "doing stuff as a unit" around then, too. His late father was an alcoholic. At night, he left the family behind and headed to Jacksonville — the area’s big-city equivalent — where he indulged in booze and women. His late mother maintained a steady stoicism despite his father’s extramarital affairs. "She never said anything bad about my father," Houston says. But even as a child, he confides, "I knew I wanted something better for my mother — and myself."

By age 10, his relationship with his father had become so strained that Houston made a promise to himself: "I swore I was not going to be like that man." His resentment only worsened over time — with each football game, school play, and band concert that his father missed. Looking back on his childhood, Houston blames his "homosexual problem" on this troubled relationship with his dad. He believes his rejection of the person who was supposed to be a "role model" — to teach him how to be a man and husband — caused his gay behavior. "My father was absent," he explains, so he had an acute need for "male intimacy."

Houston discovered that he could meet this need at 13, when he began experimenting sexually with boys. Specifically, he engaged in "mutual masturbation" with his twin brother, Jerry. This eventually stopped, but not before Houston questioned his sexuality. "It planted a seed in me," he recollects. "I thought, ‘I’m a homosexual because of this behavior.’"

Even then, he says he knew that homosexuality was "wrong," so he refrained from what he describes as "same-sex physical sex acts" in high school. But that changed once he arrived at the University of Illinois, where he studied agriculture. "I had anonymous sex encounters with men," he says. Sometimes, he masturbated with men in bathrooms. Other times, he had "sexual encounters" in YMCAs. All told, Houston had "six, seven, or eight" such experiences. When he talks about them today, he suggests that he had simply seized an opportunity. "If there was an opportunity and I gave in, well, that’s that," he says. "I never initiated anything. I let my emotions get in the way."

In the 1970s, while Houston was having sex with other men at school, the gay-rights movement was surfacing on the Illinois campus. He can remember articles about "gay pride," pictures of men "putting on makeup." It didn’t seem to fit him. "I was never part of the homosexual lifestyle," he says. He even dated his only girlfriend, Renée, but the relationship fizzled because "I could not express my love and be intimate both verbally and physically." He says he "failed to take the risks as a male to relate to a female" because he didn’t want to open himself up to vulnerability.

What he did open himself up to was "a relationship with God." As soon as Houston had learned to drive, he returned to the Chapin Community Church — the only one among his siblings to do so. After several years of farm labor, he began working at Christian institutions. He bounced from a Christian boarding school for troubled teens in Wisconsin (where he learned to cook) to two Christian day camps for children in California.

By age 31, he had traveled to the Associated Free Lutheran Bible School, in Minneapolis, where his life took a dramatic turn. After two years at the school, Houston was encouraged to apply to the three-year seminary. Although he "didn’t feel called to be a parish priest," the seminary accepted him. "I love Jesus," he says, "so I went." He became one of five seminarians in the class of 1993. But when he was only one semester short of graduation, a fellow classmate turned him in for what Houston will describe only as "anonymous same-sex behavior" that had taken place two years earlier. He was kicked out, stripped of his chance to receive a theology degree. "I was angry," he says. "I had said that I didn’t feel called to be a parish priest. Now you know why."

The night he was expelled from the seminary, Houston turned to his friends for comfort, and his conversations changed the course of his life. When he called the first one, he says his friend replied, "Larry, I know you have a problem. But you’re not a homosexual." When he called the second, he heard the same thing. Ditto for three others. All told, five people responded to Houston’s news of expulsion in the same way, word for word. "I took it as a sign." Indeed, it dawned on him that "I had a problem with homosexual behaviors," but that he could change those behaviors. He explains, "I gained a new point of reference — it’s not who one is, it’s what one does."

Houston stayed in Minneapolis, cooking at a hospital and hotel. All the while, he subscribed to the newsletter of Exodus, the ex-gay group. He spotted a "prayer request" seeking a volunteer to start a ministry in Boston, and it got him thinking. "I told God I was open to moving to Boston," he says. He had two "conditions": first, he had to get a job cooking at Harvard, whose prestigious reputation appealed to him; second, he had to meet people in his new home who were not like him — "people who aren’t broken," he says, his voice cracking. "I did not want to live in the ex-gay ghetto. I wanted to surround myself by people who aren’t struggling in the same way." So in January 2000, with no job or housing lined up, he boarded a plane for Massachusetts.

AS THE SOLE "former homosexual" in the Bay State who speaks out on the Hill, Houston inspires mixed emotions. To his detractors, he’s a spectacle trotted out by right-wing groups to dupe those unfamiliar with homosexuality into thinking that gay folks don’t deserve equal rights. To his supporters, he’s a brave man bucking the trend toward anonymity among the ex-gay population. Most former homosexuals steer clear of the political arena because they feel embarrassed or ashamed about their pasts, supporters say. Or they’re ridiculed for believing they can change. The MFI’s Reilly says it "takes a lot of courage for people like Larry" to discuss their lives. "It takes courage to talk to strangers about a personal experience that might make people feel awkward. It takes even more courage when the other side claims you don’t exist."

Regina Griggs, the director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, who recruited Houston to lobby with her organization on Capitol Hill last year, puts it more succinctly: "It takes inner strength to do what he’s doing."

For gay-rights advocates, however, Houston arouses more ambivalence than admiration. Some, like Arline Isaacson, the co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus (MGLPC), find him and the entire ex-gay movement "bizarre." After all, she doesn’t go around telling legislators that she’s an ex-heterosexual, even though she used to consider herself straight. Besides, Isaacson adds, "It’s one thing to be ex-gay. But it’s another thing altogether to try to prevent a group of people from having benefits they deserve." Others say they feel sorry for Houston, whom they regard as a "wandering soul," uncomfortable with his sexuality, period. Still others believe he’s sincere. Explains the NGLTF’s Cianciotto, who underwent three years of "conversion therapy" as a teen in an attempt to will away his homosexual tendencies, "I think that every ex-gay spokesperson firmly believes that he or she is a heterosexual. But it’s because they want with all their hearts to be heterosexual in a society that shuns homosexuality."

Like Cianciotto, many view the handful of former homosexuals who’ve spoken out on gay issues nationally as pawns in someone else’s game. Same goes for Bay State advocates who’ve witnessed Houston in action. One State House insider who supports same-sex marriage sums up the sentiment: "MFI is using him. It’s all part of this they-can-change message to the public."

Houston, for his part, dismisses such a notion. Since he contacted MFI last September, he’s visited only "a small number" of legislators with Reilly — all voluntarily, without pay. If anything, he says, MFI has failed to take advantage of him. "How often do you hear MFI making reference to me?" he asks. "Is MFI ‘parading’ me out in the press conferences and rallies that it holds?" To paint him as a pawn of the organization, he insists, "is not accurate."

Clearly, Houston has his own motivations for activism. And if there’s one thing on which his friends and foes agree, it’s this: he’s having an effect at the State House. Though some legislators look upon him as a joke — as someone who lives in denial about his suppressed homosexuality — many who have met him over the past five months respond differently. According to Reilly, legislators who had assumed that sexual orientation is immutable react with "surprise" when introduced to Houston, "a living witness to the opposite." As a result, she claims, "a number of legislators have reconsidered their former conviction that homosexuality is inbred." She insists, "Larry is being taken seriously" up on the Hill.

Gay-rights advocates don’t discount his message either. "It can be an effective lobbying tool for the other side," the MGLPC’s Isaacson says. Houston’s story of struggle pushes buttons in straight people, causing them to wonder about gay folk. Is homosexuality inbred? Or is it just sexual license? When it comes to the volatile issue of gay marriage, such questions help shore up barriers that gay activists have long worked to break down. Says Isaacson, "There is plenty of fertile ground for that message in the legislature."

You might expect that to please Houston. But it seems that convincing legislators to vote his way isn’t his top priority. Already, he assumes the majority of Bay State politicians reject same-sex marriage, but embrace civil unions — a reality that he doesn’t expect to alter significantly. What matters more to Houston is sharing his perspective and, in doing so, encouraging other ex-gays to come forward. After all, he says, "Isn’t what I’m doing offering hope and encouragement to even one person?"

Call him a man on a mission. As he likes to tell those who wonder about his fight: "I have this friend, his name is Jesus, and he’s asked for my help."

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com