After decades of bouncing between hope and despair, Evangelical,
Baptist-raised Julie Rodgers found herself making a powerful public
statement that her former self would have never said: "I support
same-sex marriage in the church."
When Rodgers came
out to her family as a junior in high school, she still believed that
God would sanctify her and eventually make her straight. Wanting so
intensely to be good, she spent her adolescent and early adult years
with an ex-gay ministry, praying for liberation from her
homosexuality. In Outlove,
Rodgers details her deeply personal journey from a life of
self-denial in the name of faith to her role in leading the take-down
of Exodus International, the largest ex-gay organization in the
world, to her marriage to a woman at the Washington National
Cathedral. Through one woman's intimate story, we see the larger
story of why many have left conservative religious structures in
order to claim their truest identity.
Outlove is
about love and losses, political and religious power-plays, and the
cost to those who sought to stay in a faith community that wouldn't
accept them. Shedding light on the debate between Evangelical
Christians and the LGBTQ community--a battle that continues to rage
on in the national news and in courtrooms across the country--this
book ultimately casts a hopeful vision for how the church can heal.