I continually wrestle with this dynamic in leadership of Your Other Brothers: where do I keep proper distance in the name of boundaries and self-care, and where do I let someone else enter my birdcage? Can I do both well? Can I lead and participate well?

To recognize Christ as fairer than the sons of men, maybe I must first recognize the fairness of men themselves. Not boil down and shy away from the patterns of fairness I behold in them, but simply say, "Hey, he is very beautiful."

I honestly don't know the meaning behind dreams – whether they're because of the subconscious, or for something God wants to tell us, like He did for people in the Bible. Are dreams, in part, resulting from what's happened to us, things that we need to relive, or are they something altogether different?

This year for Lent, I felt like the Lord told me to give up "selfishness." But what the heck does that mean? Isn't that kind of...generic? Vague? A little too open-ended? Perfect, I can open the door for others before opening it for myself. Check. Well, let's back up a bit: I'm 27 years old, I'm an actor, and this last year has been a whirlwind, at best.

I believe that if I hadn't come to this retreat, I wouldn't have found this perspective shift – especially with my brother's encouragement. Perhaps I did need to have my hope renewed. My time with my brothers that weekend would facilitate this renewal, refocusing our eyes on the source of our hope, our Lord Jesus Christ.

I'd be spending the weekend with an entire group of gay/SSA/bi/queer men. Something I’d never done before. But, you know, YOLO. I'd told one of my friends from church, "It will probably be a lot like a typical Christian men's retreat." "Except with more hugging," he replied. But, really, why was I going?

I've thought a lot about writing a manifesto for Side B people. In fact, I've written multiple drafts of a manifesto for a few years now, but I've never been satisfied with the result. In the end, I figured I should get one of those drafts out there, so that people can imagine what Side B Gay people are advocating for. So, here it is...an incomplete rough draft of the Side B Manifesto.

Sometimes the scariest question in the world is: How are you doing? That question comes like a longed-for drink of water at the end of a grueling race. It comes like a lover, surprising and enticing in all its warmth and inquiry. It means someone cares. And yet...

I had dinner with a friend one day, and out of nowhere he mentioned something about Your Other Brothers. We had never discussed issues of sexuality together, and regardless of his intention, God was working. He suggested I check out YOB's podcast on the way home, and I did, and I got hooked.

All the other gay films I'd watched were nice, but this was the first gay film I watched and thought: I wish I knew what it was like to be in a relationship. All the other men I've ended up with were only about sex. I didn't care about them or their feelings, much like the son at the beginning of this film. This film brought up feelings I never knew I even had or wanted, for that matter.

How do I deal with unmet sexual desire? It's a question which led me to ask, what is my sexual desire? Of course, "sexual desire" is a category with a lot of things in it. "There's a lot of different fish in that bucket," I told myself. But let's not call it a bucket. Let's call it an aquarium so all the fish have plenty of room to swim around, and so we can get a good look at them.

Who was it that said Pride is a celebration of having survived? I can certainly relate to that. I don't know who said it before Ryan did, but I'm processing Pride with new eyes and new appreciation this year, and hopefully for the rest of my life. Recognizing the blessing, even the miracle, that I'm still alive. Indeed, I could have died years ago because of my sexuality.

I threw every Bible I owned into a dumpster and decided to embrace a gay life even more than I had done previously. For four years, I had sex with as many guys as I could and didn't care. In my mind, since God and the church didn't care about me, why should I?

While I have had many wonderful, supportive Christians in my life, I find many more who just do not want to meet me where I am with my sexuality. Instead of being a great cloud of witnesses encouraging me onward, some act as a voice of the enemy telling me I have no place at God's table.

We get asked the why question so much because this life is hard. Being a Christian is hard; being LGBTQ+ is hard. Being both can be exhausting. And it may continue to be exhausting if we don't do the work to understand why it's hard and figure out how to keep going.

I'm not one to call out miraculous. And I didn't grow up thinking that miracles happen. I wondered how to handle this gift, this grace when my teammates were in the hospital and even needed surgery? The answer wasn't obvious then. The emotions and lack of understanding come back swiftly when I think back on that weekend.

Many of us with same-sex attractions have experienced that well-meaning friend or family member who feels the need to "love us well" by telling us, "God made you gay, so how could marrying someone of the same sex be wrong?" I appreciate not being cast out by said people because of my sexuality, but they also seem unwilling to believe that I've actually given my sexuality some thought.

While I do not want to ignore the subject of temptation and what to do with it, I think it would be more relevant to talk about the positives of this weekend retreat spent with my brothers in Christ. A better question to ask and answer about our YOBBERS retreat would be: "Why do you gather together?" And also the question: "What is the fruit of such a gathering?" Perhaps by looking at something more culturally familiar, we can draw a parallel to our experience as gay/SSA "Side B" Christians.

I was anxious our "vibe" would be too new, too foreign, too strange, and too uncomfortable for too many people. Would the ratio just be off? Would our vibe be off after 27 months apart? Beyond logistics and numbers, I felt anxious about the purpose of this retreat more than either of our previous ones. It all goes back to that nebulous definition of YOB: what are we here for?

It seems the only celibate communities forming are only by fellow "Side B" gay Christians, done so out of necessity. That really bothers me. Don't misunderstand me: it is good for celibate gay Christians to form communities. What bothers me, though, is that those communities should have already been started by celibate straight people.