A survivor from the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., in 2016 has announced that he found a new identity in Jesus Christ, is no longer gay, and will join the Freedom March in Washington, D.C., this weekend.
“I should have been number 50!” Luis Ruiz posted on Facebook, referencing the 49 people who tragically lost their lives in the shooting. “Going through old pictures of the night of Pulse, I remember my struggles of perversion, heavy drinking to drown out everything and having promiscuous sex that led to HIV.”
Responding to those who might claim Ruiz was never gay to begin with, he declared, “My struggles were real! The enemy had its grip, and now God has taken me from that moment and has given me Christ Jesus. I’ve grown to know His love in a deeper level.”
The ex-gay man said the Pulse nightclub shooting hit him particularly hard. Two “out of the 49 were my close friends and are no longer with us. They lost their life that night.”
“I should have been number 50 but now I have the chance to live in relationship and not religion – not just loving Christ but being in love with Christ and sharing His love,” Ruiz added.
He concluded with a powerful declaration of his identity in Jesus. “I know who I am and I am not defined with who the enemy says I use[d] to be – but who Christ Jesus says I am,” Ruiz declared.
Meet Luis Ruiz (Pulse nightclub shooting survivor):I should have been number 50! Going through old pictures of the…
Posted by Freedom March on Monday, April 30, 2018
Along with this message, Ruiz promoted the Freedom March, an event bringing together former homosexuals and former transgender people to celebrate freedom from LGBT lifestyles. Ruiz shared a powerful video from the Freedom March featuring many different former LGBT people who found freedom from the LGBT movement in Jesus Christ.
https://www.facebook.com/luisjavier.ruiz.5245/posts/617931651879412
The Freedom March will take place on May 5, and the organizers have partnered with Voice of the Voiceless, an organization dedicated to defending “the rights of former homosexuals, individuals with unwanted same-sex attraction, and their families.”
Christopher Doyle, co-founder of Voice of the Voiceless, told NBC News that the event is “about celebrating our lives and not hating the LGBTQ movement. We made a conscious choice to leave homosexuality, and we should be able to do that without being mocked.”
Instead, however, ex-gays are mocked mercilessly and their existence is blatantly denied by LGBT organizations. Indeed, Doyle himself joined groups over 20,000 licensed therapists, psychiatrists, and physicians in filing a complaint against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Human Rights Campaign, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, accusing these groups of “mass deception and fraud.”
These and other organizations routinely claim that transition out of LGBT lifestyles is impossible. Indeed, just last month, the California State Assembly passed a law that would effectively ban anti-LGBT books in an effort to prevent any messages that freedom from same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria (the disorder leading to transgenderism) is possible.
According to Doyle’s complaint, the SPLC and others are “committing mass deception and fraud in their efforts to ban counseling by licensed professionals for clients distressed with unwanted same-sex attractions and gender identity conflicts.”
Even NBC News’s Alamin Yohannes, in reporting Ruiz’s story, noted that “the controversial practice of trying to change one’s sexual orientation or gender identity is often referred to as ‘conversion therapy.’ A long list of health organizations have spoken out against the medically debunked practice.”
This comment proved particularly ironic, given that Yohannes called “conversion therapy” “medically debunked” even as he reported on a man who left the gay lifestyle. If it is impossible to reject homosexuality, then Ruiz must be lying. If Ruiz is telling the truth, however, then some form of “conversion therapy” must be effective, and therefore is no longer “medically debunked.”
Ruiz is far from the first person to find freedom from the LGBT lifestyle and an LGBT identity by embracing Jesus Christ. Black singer and actress Montreea Bailey found Jesus and rejected a transgender identity, and she has compiled the stories of dozens of others just like her.
After all, from a Christian perspective, no good thing is impossible for God. When the LGBT movement declares that it is impossible to overcome same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, activists are denying God’s sovereignty over human beings and their problems. The Bible promises a new identity to those who accept Jesus Christ. Montreea Bailey and Luis Ruiz have claimed that new identity.
Whatever its merits, the LGBT movement should not deny that people like Montreea Bailey and Luis Ruiz exist.
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