I love gay people; their gender preference makes no difference to me at all.

This non-judgmental attitude won me an audience with the Gay/Straight Alliance Club at El Camino Jr. College, a campus of over 26,000 students, where we minister every Thursday afternoon.

Something surprising happened when we spoke to some members about eternal things….

Peter Johnson, the top graduate of our last evangelism class (and also, at 16, the youngest ever, along with his twin brother, Timothy), had started a conversation with some members of the club.
I sat down to listen in to see where the conversation was headed. Peter was an apt pupil; he never deviated from sharing the Law, the 10 Commandments, with his new found gay friends.

Friends? Of course. Why not? Everyone is a friend of ours; every person a candidate for God’s love as shown through the cross of Christ. Who knows? After sharing a little of what we believed, maybe our homosexual friends will become friends of God, too.

“You see,” Peter explained patiently and graciously, “if you hate someone, God will see you as a murderer….”

That’s all I heard; he was on the right track. I knew that he would clearly explain that any violation of God’s Moral Law was sin. He would show that the Bible says clearly that hatred is murder, lust adultery. Lying one time made them a liar, stealing one thing made them a thief, misuse of God’s name, blasphemy. On Judgment Day they would be found guilty of being liars, thieves, blasphemers, murderers-at-heart, and adulterers-at-heart. As penalty for their sin they would end up in Hell for eternity.

The issue of these people’s homosexuality never came up. The “gay issue” was a non-issue for us. We were there for one purpose: to seek and to save that which was lost. We were there to explain that God sent his one and only son, Jesus, to die on a cross for all their sins. We wanted to persuade them—plead for them—to repent and trust in the Savior.

One young woman shook her head in disagreement to this truth, and that was okay. We don’t have to convince anyone of anything, that’s God’s job. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…”  (John 6:44)  We are heralds, messengers of the truth, ambassadors of God. Our job as Christians is to “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks us to give the reason for the hope that we have.”  And we are to do it with gentleness and respect. (1 Peter 3:15)

A gay man was astonished. “You mean you don’t hate us?”

“Of course not,” I replied. “We love you.”

Isn’t it sad that Christians today are viewed as harbingers of hate instead of laborers of love? Isn’t it unfortunate that a bad crop from the Midwest, with their banners of bile and shrill slanderous speech, along with immature and foolish believers, have sown seeds of discord and mistrust in the perishing communities?

Not once was I asked what I thought—or what the Bible said—about homosexuality. If asked I would gladly answer, but the subject never surfaced; there was no need to talk about it. And that opened a door….

Tamara, the president of the Gay/Straight Alliance, invited me to speak to their group on campus. “They will have a lot of questions,” she cautioned.

I look forward to bringing them the answer.

Read another evangelist’s account at a Canadian “Gay Pride” event here.