Posted by pj on September 30, 2005 at 07:48:37:
This is a great article on Doug Pinnick that I found, it really ministered to me, I hope it does the same for you.
His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. Luke 1:50
Doug Pinnick is the lead singer of the band Kings X. The band is very popular among both Christians and Non Christians alike. Kings X is known as a "Christian Band" whos lyrics have also swayed in that allegorical direction.Earlier last month Doug has "admitted" to the public that he is Gay. This of course opens up allot of questions. Get out your Bibles and seek God's word on this issue. Read on...
Ponder God,
Dennis R. Olson Jr.
If There Is A God, Then We Need To Talk
by Mark Joseph
For over a decade, King's X provided inspiration to the mainstream rock world and the Christian subculture alike, proving that Christians could succeed on their own terms, faith intact, in the big, bad world of "secular" rock. Their deeply spiritual and specifically Christian lyrics, along with their refusal to be sequestered in ccm, put the music culture on notice that a new generation of believers was no longer content to languish in cultural isolation. King's X was living out the biblical admonition of being in the world but not of it, opening for bands like ac/dc, Pearl Jam, The Scorpions, and others.
But King's X carried with it a secret.
"I never denied being gay,"
says lead singer Doug Pinnick.
"Nobody asked."
In retrospect it seems amazing that nobody seemed to pick up on that fact, but with the benefit of hindsight it's clear that Pinnick's struggle appeared frequently on past records. Take these lyrics from Pinnick's recent solo release:
"Oh wait, tomorrow, I'm not ready, maybe Tuesday or the next, / outside my closet, roller coaster / a place that I don't wanna face / It's just my closet's getting smaller / painted my walls a color rainbow but I can't see it in the dark,"
he sings on "Red."
For the first time Pinnick is talking rather than singing about it.
"I didn't want to be this way,"
he says in an exclusive interview.
"I fasted and prayed, begged God to change me, did everything I could. I even became celibate and was miserable and lonely and desperate for love... [But] I've always been a person who told the truth. If the truth will set you free, then be honest, be true. When I finally said, 'This is who you are, Doug, you are this person'--along with all the bad qualities I have--when I accepted it I accepted myself."
Unlike some who contend that sexual orientation is biologically given and immutable, Pinnick believes his adult sexual struggle has roots in childhood sexual abuse and the lack of a father.
"The person who [sexually abused] me was a great, nice person who was my hero and loved me to death. Now I look back and realize he was a complete pedophile. I willingly accepted it because he was the only person who gave me any attention. I grew up in a very abandoned family. My mother was gone when I was three, and my dad never came around. He denied me until I was a teenager, and then I called him one day and said, 'Look, I'm your son.' He accepted it, but I don't even know where he's at now. So pretty much, since I was a child, I've always been given the signals that no one cared."
In spite of the pink triangle placed strategically on his bass guitar, Pinnick is hardly ready to join the gay rights movement.
"I'm not going to walk down the street and do gay pride,"
he says.
"I don't care about it. I'm a person. I've lived this long in my life dealing with it.... I've got a sticker on my bass, and I do that only because most straight people don't know what it means anyway. If there is somebody who understands it, then hey, I can meet someone who feels the way I do.... I won't go to a bar and pick up somebody every night. On the other hand I would like a lifelong companion. [In] this whole thing about sex and love, there's a balance."
These statements are sure to raise questions for longtime fans of Pinnick who have noted his biblically informed lyrics and his commitment to his faith. Pinnick admits the contradictions. He is in obvious turmoil as his two worlds--gay and Christian--prepare to collide in public.
"The noble Christian position would be 'This is who I am but I won't act on it,'"
he says.
"But that is a terrible fate: to have to walk through your life knowing that you'll never ever experience the love of someone else. And that's what I want. Everyone wants that companionship. We were born to be that way. If someone comes along and wants to be there for me I'm going to accept it. "There was a time when I couldn't. Even when there was someone in my life who wanted to go that distance. I rejected him and I ran. But now I'm willing to accept it and go for it.... "I know that in the Christian world we do believe in celibacy until we get married, and adultery and all... but as I look around at what's going on in the world, very few people even have a chance to make that decision to be celibate--so many children are sexually active at an age where they don't even know better. And there's so much sexual abuse going on it's overwhelming. I would say half the people I know have had some sort of sexual encounter at a very early age."
At this point Pinnick seems more inclined to adapt his religious beliefs to his lifestyle than the other way around.
"God says it's wrong, God says it's an abomination,"
he says.
"So what do I do with that? The only way I can be completely free is if I don't believe in God. That's not what I believe. I don't know what's up there anymore, and I reserve the right to say that if God does exist, then we need to talk. If he doesn't, then I've got to live my life as it is. Every now and then I just look up at the sky and say 'God, that's why I have trouble believing in you. Please help me.'
And that's where I leave it.
"I do believe that if God exists, when I die, I will be there with him because he knows my heart. He knows how desperately and deeply I want to do the right thing.... I'm not an evil person. I love people and I believe there are people who don't believe, who are better people than I am, and I believe that they will have a place in heaven, too. "I've rewritten my Bible for myself. A lot of people believe that it's the Word of God and it's the only Word of God, but to me the Bible is a bunch of books that people wrote from experiences with God, and it's either true or it's not. I don't know. The bottom line is the Word of God is Christ--that's what the Bible says.... [The Bible is] just a book that we can take and pick and choose from, because we don't know and maybe we never will. At the end of the day it's between us and God."
Prominent in Pinnick's revised Bible would be the story of two Old Testament characters.
"There's a scripture in the Old Testament where it says that David and Jonathan loved each other more than their wives. That was the only scripture that saved my life, because I took it as they could have been gay. They just didn't say anything--they had their wives and they could have been bisexual, and they lived their lives. It didn't tell me it was okay, it just made me feel like I could breathe. We don't know if they acted on it and we don't even know what the love was. Was it just good friends or more than that? But it was just enough to help me not to choke myself because I'd been suicidal for a long time."
In a time when many Christians still treat homosexuality as a joke and homosexuals as pariahs, perhaps Pinnick's public confession will make believers less willing to indulge in such simplistic responses.
"When a person comes to church and confesses [that they are gay], quit treating them like they're a terrible person or it's the worst thing in the world," he says. "Gay people are taught that we're an abomination. Where do you go from there? Where do you go from saying, 'You're an abomination?' You don't act upon it--you sit there and go, 'God, I'm really an abomination.' Gay people in the church are looked on like, 'Don't touch them.' People are afraid--they think that we're going after somebody in the church and we're going to try to screw every little kid who comes in there. I guess the bottom line is, 'Stop making us feel like we're terrible people.' We're already convinced that we're terrible."
What makes the situation even more unbearable in Pinnick's view is the greater tolerance the church seems to have for heterosexual sins among its members.
"That's a different story, because it's 'natural' and it's accepted. Even though they say, 'You're in sin and you should stop,' you're not looked on like, 'Don't touch them.'"
Pinnick's bandmate Ty Tabor--who has known for years of his friend's predicament--is one Christian, at least, who has no plans to abandon his friend. "I love Doug as a brother," he says, "and I can't fathom what it must be like to struggle with the feelings he's struggled with. There are a lot of Christian brothers I know who are struggling with this too."
"Jerry [Pinnick's other bandmate] told me that if I did come out of my closet, it would probably help a lot of people" Pinnick says, "but who knows. If I'm going to be a person who preaches truth and honesty then I need to be truthful with myself and the world. And so that's where I'm at right now. If people can find something from that and find some freedom or release from it I'm more than willing to go for it. But I have no real answers. I'm just going through it."
Pinnick's honesty leaves some hard questions--some for Pinnick himself, and some for the church. C. S. Lewis once observed that many heterosexuals--if left to be "who they really are"--could singlehandedly populate small villages. History is full of those who have given up money, homes, families, even their lives for the sake of a God who sacrificed himself for his children. Is such sacrifice--in the arena of sexual orientation and desires--out of the question today? What does it mean to embrace Christian community, not just to live according to one's best devices with the outcome between oneself and God alone?
These are challenging questions for Pinnick and all serious Christians who find themselves attracted to the same sex--and for the rest of us who experience more culturally accepted forms of temptation. Meanwhile, if growing up without a father did indeed contribute to his homosexual orientation, as Pinnick believes, churches are sure to find more and more young men like Pinnick in their midst as the fatherless generation comes of age.
Right now, accumulated years of pain and loneliness speak louder and more persuasively for Pinnick than the words on the pages of "a bunch of books." Where are the communities that are willing to welcome and walk with someone in such pain? How can the church minister the truth of the gospel to its sin-ravaged followers in a way that balances--as God himself does--judgment with compassion? If these questions are debated and eventually answered, then Doug Pinnick's courageous confession will not have been for naught. ---------------------
Mark Joseph is president of the L.A. based MJM Entertainment Group and RQ' contributing editor for music.