Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef podcast

August 06, 2024 Episode 261: A Gay Man's Incredible Story of Redemption: Becket Cook

In this profound episode of Candid Conversations, Jonathan Youssef sits down with Becket Cook, author of "A Change of Affection: A Gay Man’s Incredible Story of Redemption" and host of The Becket Cook Show. Becket shares his powerful testimony of living a homosexual lifestyle until a radical encounter with Jesus transformed his life. Raised in a conservative Christian family in Dallas, Texas, Becket navigated the complexities of his identity and faith, eventually finding his true calling in Christ.

Join us as Becket recounts his journey from Hollywood's elite circles to a devoted follower of Jesus. He offers insight into how the church can compassionately and truthfully engage with issues of sexuality. Becket’s story is a testament to the redemptive power of God’s love and the importance of unwavering faith.

Don't miss this inspiring conversation, a story of transformation and a guide for churches and individuals to navigate conversations about sexuality with grace and truth.

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Transcript:

This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 261: A Gay Man's Incredible Story of Redemption: Becket Cook

[00:02] JMY: Today’s guest is a very special guest. It is Becket Cook. Becket has written a book called A Change of Affection: A Gay Man’s Incredible Story of Redemption. He is the host of The Becket Cook Show, which can be found on YouTube. Raised in Dallas, Texas, Becket attended a Jesuit college preparatory school, lived the homosexual lifestyle until the Lord radically called him and drew him to Himself. And now Becket is out to help churches have the conversation about sexuality and help the church navigate. Becket, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.

[01:13] Becket: Thank you, Jonathan. Good to be here.

[01:17] JMY: We’ve got to start with your story. It’s profound and amazing. All salvation stories are amazing; yours is unique. I’d love it if you’d just give us a few minutes and navigate us through your testimony.

[01:39] Becket: Yeah, I mean, I’m still in shock. I’m still in shock that this is my story after fifteen years. So, when I was very young I started to notice that I was attracted to the same sex, which was very a disorienting thing, especially at that time when it was very much taboo in Dallas and in my family. My family were Christians and of course, all of my peers and my schoolmates unanimously believed that, I mean, we didn’t even have to say it; it was known that homosexuality was just wrong or bad or weird or sinful. And so I had this kind of dark secret. But I was very social in school. I even went steady with girls in seventh and eighth grade, and in high school, I dated three girls, seriously dated them. But it was all the while I knew I wasn’t attracted to the girls. It was just like a social thing for me. And so in my junior year at Jesuit, I met a sophomore, and he was dealing with the same thing. He was dealing with the same-sex attraction. So when that happened, the floodgates opened because we became friends, and then like three months or six months, I can’t remember how long into our friendship, we basically came out to each other one night at this club.

And when that happened, we just started exploring gay life and gay culture in Dallas and going to gay bars. I was 15, he was 14. I don’t know where my parents were, but by the time I was in high school, my parents were so checked out that I could be gone for three days, and they didn’t even notice. God bless them, they’re in heaven now.

So we were going to gay bars in Dallas, not sure how we got into these bars, but we did, and then we were going to this one nightclub called the Stark Club. I mention this because it was such a seminal moment in my life. The Starck Club was very famous in Dallas, and it was designed by Philippe Starck, the French designer, and it was beautiful. It was just so, for lack of a better word, it was very chic. And so we started going to the Starck Club, and the first time I walked in, it was just very grand. There was this grand staircase with a red carpet that went up to these giant doors, and you walked into this beautiful space. And I walked in, and there were gay people, straight people, artists, trans people, drag queens—it’s a whole mix of kind of the subculture, and the whole mix of artists.

And so I walked in and it was like, ah, these are my people!

[05:28] JMY: You felt like you belonged.

[05:29] Becket: Yeah, I belong here. And I started going. And we would go to Starck Club—it was open Thursday through Sunday, and we would go every night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night we would go. And sometimes I wouldn’t get home until 5:00 in the morning. And one time my dad was up. My dad was a lawyer. He was up at 5:00 in the morning (he would always get up at 5:00), and I walked in the front door, and he walked past me and kind of looked at me, and I was like, “Hi, Dad.” He didn’t even say anything like “Where have you been?” My childhood was very permissive, for better or worse.

So then, when I went away to college, the same thing happened. I met someone at college who was same sex attracted and then we eventually came out to each other and again I had a confidant, I had someone to talk to because I still wasn’t out, but at this point in my life, I wouldn’t have described myself as “gay” because I just thought this was a phase. This was a phase that will probably go away and I’ll probably get married to a woman and have kids.

It wasn’t really my identity for this whole time in high school and college until after college I moved to Tokyo with my best friend from college. And we moved to Tokyo because we didn’t really know what we wanted to do with our lives. I was premed in college, and then I realized I didn’t want to be a doctor, which was bad after four years of studying.

[07:23] JMY: A lot of investment.

[07:25] Becket: You know it was really upsetting. And so I applied to law school, and actually, then, as kind of a backup, I applied to dental school. And so I got into law school and dental school. I was kind of like, “I don’t know if I want to do any of this.” So both of us moved to Tokyo to kind of have a gap year, basically, to figure out what we wanted to do. And it was when I was in Tokyo that his friend from Texas came to stay with us, we’ll call him “Adam.” Adam was part of the Christo exhibition in Japan. Christo was a very famous artist who recently died, a French artist, but he and his wife used to do these dramatic art projects like covering the Reichstadt in fabric. And they did this thing in Japan where they lined parts of Japan with umbrellas, like yellow and blue umbrellas. They did it in California and Japan.

And so anyway, this guy Adam was part of that exhibition. So he stayed with us for like a week in Tokyo. And it was weird, because when I first met Adam, I had no interest and didn’t think anything of it, but by the time he left, we had fallen in love, quote unquote. And so that was the first time I’d experienced that rush of emotion, that romantic feeling. And then we got into a relationship, and it was my first real relationship with a guy.

And so that was a game-changer, too, because that's when it became my identity, homosexuality became my identity. And I was happy to be gay. I was like, “This is who I am. This is immutable.” I was thrilled. And while I was in Japan, my sister wrote me a letter asking if I was gay because she had had her suspicions for a long time. And so I wrote her back and I said yes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. By the way, p.s., don’t tell Mom and Dad. I’ll tell them when I get back home. And, of course, she told them immediately when she got my letter, which I was happy about because she did all the heavy lifting for me.

[10:03] JMY: Softened the blow.

[10:04] Becket: Yeah. So by the time I got home, my whole family knew. My family is very conservative, all believers, and so they, especially my siblings, were not happy about this. And my parents weren’t either, but my parents’ reaction was so loving and gracious. My mother, whom I was very close to, of course, was quite surprised, gay son, close mother, surprise, surprise. My mother cried. I walked into the kitchen that first night after I got back from Tokyo, and my mother just started crying, and I knew why she was crying.

And I said, “Mom, what's wrong?” And she said, “I heard you’re a homosexual.”

And that's when AIDS was still kind of a death sentence, and so she was terrified, I was terrified about it, and so I just tried to calm her down.

I said, “Mom, this is not a big deal. Don’t worry about me.”

The next day, my dad came up to me, and my dad is such a man’s man; it surprised him to respond. Because he came up to me and he said, “Hey Beck, I heard you’re a homosexual, and you know”—

[11:32] JMY: Like he read it in the newspaper or something.

[11:36] Becket: Yeah, and so he said, “Is there anything I did wrong as a father? Are you angry at me for this?” He listed three things, and it was basically—I can’t remember what they were—did I not spend enough time with you? Did your brother beat you up or whatever, and I didn’t intervene? Are you angry about that?

And I was like, “Dad, no. This is not your fault. This is just who I am. It’s not a big deal.”

And that was kind of the end of the conversation with my parents. They never brought it up again. And what they did was so genius. Because I moved to L.A. So, when I got back from Tokyo, I realized I was not going to grad school; I was moving to Los Angeles because a lot of my friends moved here, and I was like, “I’m going to pursue writing and acting. And so I moved to L.A. My dad was so confused when I told him. It was like a couple of weeks before law school. I was enrolled in law school, and I was like, “Dad, I’m moving to L.A. tomorrow.”

And he was like, “Huh?” He was so confused. And so I moved to L.A. and I had this group of friends that were brilliant in L.A. When I got here, I had this built-in group of friends because several of my friends from high school already lived here, and they all came from Brown and Princeton and moved with all their friends to the West Coast and to L.A. to work in Hollywood, in showbiz. My group of friends were so smart and funny and brilliant and ambitious. And they all were movers and shakers. All those people, guys, girls, straight, gay, the whole mix, the same people run this town now; they run Hollywood. So whatever you’re watching on Netflix or whatever–

[13:51] JMY: They’re behind it.

[13:52] Becket: And in fact, the Jeffrey Epstein whatever, Filthy Rich, was produced by one of my dear friends from back in that time. Anyway, so I had this great group of friends, I was out, and we all wanted to make it in Hollywood, which they were all—my friends were becoming huge stars or becoming huge directors or writers overnight. I mean, it was wild to see how quickly they became successful. Minnie Driver was a dear friend, and she did Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon. Suddenly, she was a movie star, and this was happening to all of my friends. Like Mariska Hargitay was Jayne Mansfield’s daughter, but nobody really knew her, but then she got—I drove her to her audition for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and she’s still on the show twenty-three years later. She’s made a fortune on that show. Well, I won’t tell that part about Mariska, but we’re still friends.

But this was happening to all of my friends. We all wanted to make it in Hollywood; we all wanted to find true love, and I cycled through five serious, serious boyfriends over the years in L.A., live-in boyfriends. And then we all wanted to have extraordinary experiences, which we were doing in spades because my friends were all in the business. And the guy I just talked about was Diane Keaton’s producing partner. So we were always invited to everything—the Grammys the Oscars, the Emmys, the Golden Globes, the afterparties, to movie premiers every week. I was kind of in the mix.

I met everyone in this town, literally everyone. I mean, name the person. I had dinner with Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and many, many other people. Hung out at Drew Barrymore’s, went to Prince’s house where he performed a concert in his backyard for three hours, hung out with Paris Hilton at her house, and went to her wedding engagement. For years, this was my life.

And then I was successful a little bit, and I acted. I was successful at commercial acting, and I did a couple of indie films, one was at Sundance, and that wasn’t really taking off. The writing was difficult. I sold a couple of projects that didn’t make it to series, so then I ended up becoming a production designer in the fashion world. I just fell into it with The New York Times Magazine because my friend was the editor for it. And so that became my career, doing fashion shoots, these super-high-end fashion shoots. And I did that for a very long time, probably twenty years, seventeen years, I’m not sure.

And so after the years of all of this and years of going to all of these fun things and experiencing all these things, I just started to feel the law of diminishing returns and I just felt like, What is this all about? I can’t keep going to these dinner parties and going to these events. And it all came to a head at Paris Fashion Week in March of 2009. I used to go to Fashion Week in New York and Paris and that particular week I had gone to a bunch of the runway shows and a lot of them had afterparties, and I was at this one afterparty in this club called Regine, in the middle of Paris, a legendary place. The owner just died recently. But I was there, and everyone from the fashion world was there.

I was sitting with Rachel Zoe, who’s a fashion girl and has a TV show, and her husband, Roger, and I just remember drinking champagne and looking out over the crowd, and everyone was dancing and having the best time of their life, and I just felt such an overwhelming sense of emptiness. I was like, whoa, where did that come from? So, I ghosted the party and went back to the apartment I’d rented in [unintelligible] and I was up all night in a panic about my future. I was like, what am I going to do for the rest of my life? This isn’t satisfying me anymore. I can’t just keep going to parties and fabulous things and traveling the world. Yeah, it was fun for a long time, but it’s not doing it for me anymore. And I knew that Christianity was not an option because I was gay, so I can’t pursue that, so what am I going to do? So I was very, very troubled.

[20:07] JMY: Can I ask, did that thought enter your mind, the pursuit of faith? Was that a cognizant thought or was that just sort of part of the narrative? Did you sit there and take an account and think perhaps ...?

[20:26] Becket: Well, no. I knew that from my entire life.

[20:31] JMY: It was always there as a separation.

[20:33] Becket: God’s not an option for me. And by that time in my life I was a practical atheist. All of my friends were atheists (they still are, most of them, my old friends). And I just, by that time in my life, I really just believed or felt like the Bible was an ancient myth, like any other ancient myth. God was not real. It was weird. It was a weird kind of disconnect because I believed my family’s faith was real, which was interesting. So when I would go home to Dallas, it was weird. They would talk about their faith, they would pray, and I could sense that it was real, but I just felt like it could never be something for me because—

[21:21 JMY: It’s like a compartmentalization, right? This works for you; that won’t work for me. Interesting.

[21:28] Becket: And so six months later in L.A. I was at a coffee shop with my best friend, who still is gay, although we’re not nearly as close, in fact, we barely see each other, if ever, because of this. But I was with my best friend, and we were chatting, hanging out at our favorite coffee shop in Silverlake, and we looked over, and there was a group of young people with Bibles on the table. There were five physical Bibles on the table, which is a shocking sight to see in L.A. But not only L.A. but Silverlake, which is a super progressive part of L.A.

We were stunned because my friend was an atheist as well. He was culturally Jewish, a secular Jew from New York, and it was just like we were shocked. But I was intrigued because of that night in Paris six months before. I was kind of intrigued about what this Christian thing was, and I wanted to explore it.

So my friend said, “Talk to them. See what they’re doing.”

And I was like, “No, I don’t want to talk to them!”

And anyway, I ended up turning to them, and I always say this, it’s like a Christian’s fantasy come true when a gay atheist turns to you and says, “Tell me all about Christianity.” And so we got into this conversation for like an hour or two. It was a long conversation. And I said, “What is your faith? Like what do you believe? I don’t remember. Just tell me what you believe.”

And they were very competent with the Scriptures, and they knew what the Gospel was and were very knowledgeable. And they said they went to a church in Hollywood called Reality L.A., an evangelical church. And with my friends back in the day, evangelicals were the enemy. They were somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun. But it didn’t bother me. So I, of course, get to the question and I ask them, “What does your church believe about homosexuality?”

And I kind of expected this answer, so it wasn’t shocking. They said, “Well, we believe it’s a sin.” Of course, that was 2009. Now, who knows what people will say.

[24:27] JMY: It’s a grab bag now.

[24:29] Becket: I wasn’t surprised by their response, but I was surprised by mine because I just kind of accepted that, and I didn’t protest. And it’s because of that night in Paris. I was open to hearing something different. I was just open at that point. God, obviously, was working with me.

So they invited me to their church the following Sunday and I said, “I don’t know. Just give me the address and I’ll think about it.”

So I had a whole week to think about it. And it was kind of a big deal because if any of my other friends, all my other atheist, Hollywood friends, found out that I’d gone to an evangelical church, it would have been super embarrassing, and they would have thought I was crazy. So I was debating all week: Should I do this? What if nothing happens? What if it’s just fake and what if it’s not real?

But that following Sunday I woke up and I just was like, I’m going to do this. And I got in my car, drove to this high school auditorium where it meets on Sunset Boulevard, and I walked in. Before I walked in, I put the idea of homosexuality as my identity in this imaginary white box and put it on an imaginary shelf before I walked in. It was kind of weird. I don’t know how that happened.

And then I heard the worship music, which kind of freaked me out a little bit a first because I was like, Oh my gosh, Christian music, because I just saw this True Blood episode where (it was an HBO show that was disgusting, but anyway they satirized evangelical Christian worship music. And so I was like, Oh, this is weird.

[26:38] JMY: That's not hard to do.

[26:39] Becket: Yeah, exactly. But then it was actually nice, the music’s nice. And I sat down by myself, I found a seat by myself, and the pastor came out and started preaching on Romans chapter 7 for an hour, and that's when everything started happening. Everything he was saying, every word he was saying, every sentence he was saying was resonating as truth in my mind and my heart and I didn’t know why. I was literally on the edge of my seat, totally riveted to the sermon and to him, his speaking. And I was just like, What? This is true. What is he saying? I remember thinking, “This is the Gospel? This is good news!”

And then after the sermon there were people on the sides of the auditorium on the prayer ministry that you could go get prayed with, and after his sermon there’s another thirty minutes of worship time. So I walked over to this guy, which I reluctantly walked over to this guy on the side because, again, I was embarrassed to do this because I knew the people who had invited me there were probably watching me. And so I walked over to this guy and I said, “Hey, I don’t know what I believe, but I’m here.” And he said, “Okay, let me pray for you.”

And he prayed for me, and it was so loving and caring, and I was like, How does this random straight dude care about me so much?

[28:14] JMY: Right.

[28:16] Becket: Anyway, I went back to my seat and everyone else in the auditorium (there were a thousand people in the auditorium) everyone else was standing and singing and worshiping. And I sat down because I was just so overwhelmed by the sermon, by the music, by the prayer, and as soon as I sat down, the Holy Spirit just flooded me. I mean, it was like a Road to Damascus moment. God revealed Himself to me in the most powerful way. It was like God said, in my mind, God said, “I’m God. Jesus is my Son. Heaven is real, hell is real, the Bible is true. Welcome to my kingdom.”

And I just burst into tears. I was doubled over, heaving and crying and crying for twenty-five minutes. And it was the most cathartic cry I’ve ever had. Everything came out. I was crying over the conviction of sin, but also the joy of meeting the king of the universe, Jesus Christ. And then I got home after the service. I don’t really know how I made it home because I was such a wreck, and I got into bed to take a nap. And again, God did it again. God was like, “Here, here’s some more Bible.”

And I just, again, I just immediately, it was so real. It was like God’s presence was right—it was there. And I burst into tears again and I was bawling in my bedroom, jumped out of my bed and was like, “God, you have my whole life, I’m yours. I’m done.”

In that moment I knew that homosexual behavior was a sin. I knew that it was wrong. I knew that dating guys was not my identity anymore and I knew that dating guys was not a part of my future. But I didn’t care at all, because I had just met Jesus. And I’m like, I’m going with that guy, forget those guys.

And that was September 20, 2009, and I’ve never looked back. And I’ve never felt like life is unfair. Because I’m single and chaste, and I’ve never felt like life is unfair for me or like I’m being cheated out of something. I just feel like I can’t believe that God had mercy on me and I’m in the Kingdom of God. And I have, by the way, eternal life, which is cool to have. So yeah, that's the story.

[31:09] JMY: Oh, it’s such a wonderful story, just even the way you give us the snapshots of those moments of what you thought you knew what you wanted and you know now the Spirit was preparing you and doing the work of tilling the soil of your heart to culminate in that moment. But as we know, that's not the end of the story. Your story continues on. And so I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about your family, how your family interacted with you. So a number of our listeners will be people who have family members, friends who are near to them who are living this lifestyle and they don’t know what to do, they don’t know what to say. Do I say a lot? Do I say a little? Do I say nothing? Where do I go?

And I know some of that will be kind of case by case, but I think it will be helpful to hear what was it that the interactions of your friends and family who were believers? How did they sort of walk this out with you?

[32:35] Becket: Yeah. My family ... Well, first of all, you know, because I moved to L.A. I was very disconnected from my family. But my parents, I was very close with my mother. We talked on the phone all the time. She came out and visited many times. My family was just kind of very hands-off because there was really nothing they could do. I was an adult, I lived in L.A. What would they do, come hunt me down and drive me to church?

My parents were just brilliant. I just loved how they responded to and dealt with it. Because I did this episode on my show where I recently discovered a typed prayer that my mother did. My sister-in-law sent me a text, saying, “Hey, I just found this prayer that your mother typed to God basically, and I found it in an old box from some of your mother’s things.” And she sent me this prayer. And that's what my parents did. They just loved me and prayed for me.

My mother and this prayer are amazing; it’s like twenty-four points. And the first point, because my mother knew, I guess, which was shocking to me, she just knew instinctively that she wasn’t going to convince me not to be gay. So, she went straight to the throne room of the grace of God. She knew it was a spiritual battle. I wish I had the prayer with me right now. She said, “In the all-powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we come against the enemy with the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.”

And when I read this prayer recently when I got it, I was stunned because my mother was praying for me all this time, but she never told me. Because if she had told me, “Hey Becket, I’m praying for you,” it would have been a disaster because I would have been like, “Why are you praying for me? I don’t need prayer. This is who I am. Stop praying.” It would have upset me, so she never said that. My dad never said that.

My sister-in-law, who is in my book, Kim, the way she dealt with it was brilliant, too, because whenever I would go to Dallas for the holidays, she would call me. She’s an evangelical Christian, and I knew where she stood on this issue, too, but she would call me all the time, which I was kind of like, Why is Kim calling me? Why does she want to hang out with me? She knows I’m gay and she’s a super-conservative Christian. She would call me and invite me to coffee, and we would hang out. And I would talk about my boyfriends, she would talk about God and what was going on in her life, and she never once pulled out the Bible and said, “Hey Becket, you know in Leviticus 18 …” She never, ever once did that. She just loved me.

And then she prayed, unbeknownst to me, she was praying this verse over me for twenty years. In Acts 26:18, when Paul is in front of King Agrippa, and he’s talking about how God sent him to preach to the Gentiles, he says, “to open their eyes so that they may be turned from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. That they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those sanctified by faith in Me.”

So she was praying for me, my family members were praying for me, I get the impulse for parents, family members, friends, the immediate impulse is “I want to fix this. I want to fix the problem.” That rarely, if ever, works. However, there is an exception, a caveat I’ll get to. But the best thing you can do is just be diligent in prayer and go straight to God. Because it has to be a supernatural thing. The Holy Spirit has to convict a person. There’s no other way. Otherwise, it’s just behavior modification.

[37:31] JMY: Praise the Lord. Praise God that it’s His work and not ours because we’d screw it all up.

[37:37] Becket: Yeah, exactly. However, because of this new sort of generation of social contagion of LGBTQ+, you know, Brown University 40 percent of the student body—this just makes me laugh—40 percent of the student body identifies as LGBTQ. I mean, that is laughable. When I was in college, it was about 1 percent.

[38:05] JMY: Now everyone is.

[38:06] Becket: Yeah, now it’s super popular. So I came out as gay at the wrong time, and now I came out as Christian at the wrong time. [unintelligible]. But anyway, so with that aspect of it, when you’re a teenager just suddenly claims, “I’m LGBTQ,” or “I’m pansexual,” or “I’m nonbinary,” “I’m queer,” I think in those cases there should be, there could be some pushback from the parents in terms of saying, “Look …” Because this happened with me with a young woman, a teenage girl who came up to me at a conference and said, “I’m pansexual and nonbinary.”

And I said, “Why? Why are you?” She didn’t have an answer for me, and I said, “Are you that way because you want attention, popularity, street cred? Why do you think you’re... because when I was your age, there was no such thing, so why do you think you’re this way?”

And she just started welling up with tears, and she needed, I just sensed in that moment she needed to be pushed back on. And later that day she ended up breaking down, getting prayed for my somebody, and she came to Christ.

[39:39] JMY: It was a crisis moment for her, not a … it had not become a true identity where she had been encapsulated in something. She seemed confused more than anything. I mean, obviously, you could make that argument for anyone.

[39:55] Becket: Yeah, this young teenage boy was like, “Oh, and I’m asexual.” And I was like, “You haven’t even gone through puberty yet.”

So yeah, I do think that when it is this kind of contagion aspect, I’ve done episodes on this, and I talk about this. You can trace exactly how we got to where we are in the culture from obviously from if you’ve read Carl Truman, you can go back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but even going back to the sexual revolution in the Sixties or the gay movement that started in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, you can trace so clearly how we’ve become indoctrinated into believing the lies of the world. And it’s just so obvious to me, and it’s like, just the TV shows, Will & Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Brokeback Mountain and all these gay-themed shows and movies were so powerful in the culture, and it changed so many people’s minds on this issue.

Of course, I was thrilled at the time. When I was living that life, I was thrilled. I was friends with Sean Hayes on Will & Grace, and I was friends with many of the people who created these shows.

[41:33] JMY: They were changing the narrative.

[41:34] Becket: Yeah. And it was like Madsen and Kirk, the book After the Ball, they published. These two Harvard guys, graduates, published a book called After the Ball, and I wish I had it right here. Where’s my copy? Anyway, the book was published in 1989, and basically, it was about how to normalize homosexuality in America. It was the subtitle of the book. And everything in that book has come true. Everything they said in that book has come true. Basically, it was like talking about homosexuality until it was thoroughly tiresome. That was one of their points. Another one of their points was to make heterosexuals feel like you are a victim, and they’ll come to your side and to your aid.

And so all these things have come to pass, and that's why, even in the church, people are falling for this and caving to it, caving to the culture and buying this lie. And again, I challenge people to, okay, would you be … would you be thinking this way fifty years ago? Would you be thinking this way a hundred years ago? So obviously, the culture—

[43:16] JMY: Not critically thinking.

[43:117] Becket: Obviously, like the culture has influenced you. Because some of my friends, some of my high school—I say this all the time—in my high school, everyone believed it was a sin, it was wrong, in the girls’ school, in the boys’ school. Now some of those same people are like allies, LGBTQ allies, and it’s like, gee, I wonder what's happened over the last thirty years? Maybe it’s the power of persuasion from movies and TV, which I get. It is very powerful.

And so yeah, that's why I think with some cases, in some cases it is good to say, “Hey, why don’t we walk through the last fifty years and see how it has shaped what we believe?” And so that can be helpful, too.

[44:17] JMY: You’re uniquely gifted, coming out of that world and into the Christian world, to have a voice to the church. We even laughed about the fact that some churches wouldn’t even have you to come and speak because you’re kind of against them.

What are the things that you’re putting in front of churches and trying to coach them through or equip them with? How do we deal with the culture? How do we deal with our young people who are falling into it or our children who maybe are saying and asking these questions? It sounds like there’s a level of asking good questions and pushing back, as you’ve just given us examples. But what are some ways you’re helping the church navigate all this?

[45:27] Becket: There are so many different ways. But like Jesus was the master at balancing grace and truth publicly. I read through all four Gospels, not often, in one sitting, and I just watch what Jesus does and how He interacts with tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners. And at the woman at the well, first of all, He’s talking to a Samaritan woman, which is crazy for a Jewish man to do, and He’s so loving and kind to her. And she, you know, He’s like, “Oh, go get your husband.” And she’s like, “Oh, I don’t have a husband.” And He’s like, “Yeah, you were married five times.”

[46:17] JMY: “The one you’re with now isn’t your husband.”

[46:19] Becket: “And the one you’re with now isn’t your husband.” So Jesus doesn’t compromise the truth, but He also is super gracious and grace-full. That's what I see in the church is I see this happen all the time where parents when their kids come out, they love their kids—and I get it—like they love their kids so much that they suddenly change their theology and become [Overlapping voices] in their theology. And it’s like, no, that's not the answer, because if my parents had affirmed and said, “Oh, Becket, you’re fine,” I would not have respected them, number one.

And my family when I got saved, the first people I contacted were my family because they never lied to me. I talk about this in my book, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; they refused to compromise God’s Word by one iota. And they knew that they were going to go into a fiery furnace. They were not willing to compromise God’s Word. And so that's my main thrust to the church is don’t ever give up your convictions on this issue, but love your neighbor, your child as generously as you can, love them, love them. And the real key is to pray for them.

The worst thing you can do is affirm them and say, “Oh, I don’t think it’s a sin anymore,” because that is leading them down a path of eternal destruction. That is the meanest, cruelest thing you can ever do to a child or anyone is say that to them. And so that's partly what I try to convey to churches. Also, I try to, sometimes, talk about what I go through; I spend a very long time going through every turning point in the history of the gay movement and how it has affected the culture and affected us.

[48:48] JMY: I mean, just quickly if you’ve given that talk enough times, what kind of the high points of that? If you had to kind of—maybe you haven’t prepped for that, but if you could just hit a couple of those high points for us.

[49:02] Becket: The first high point was the Stonewall Inn in 1969, when police raided it. Because it was illegal to be gay in 1969 in the country. And so police raided the Stonewall Inn, which was a gay bar in the West Village in New York, and then there were riots, like three nights after that there were three nights of riots. That was June 28th. That's why Pride Month is in June. It used to be just one day, but now it’s a whole month. Pretty soon it’ll be all year, but that's a whole thing.

[49:39] JMY: Perpetuity.

[49:40] Becket: Yeah. And so that was a huge turning point because the year following, San Francisco, L.A., New York, I think Chicago had gay pride marches. That's when the pride marches started. They used to be called marches and now they’re parades.

[49:59] JMY: Like a protest.

[50:00] Becket: Exactly, and that was a huge turning point of the gay movement. Then the AIDS crisis was a huge turning point because that's when the culture, right or wrong, the culture started to see gay men as victims, and so that was a huge, huge turning point. And there were so many movies, like Philadelphia, with Tom Hanks in that, and there were so many movies about that issue. And, interestingly, AIDS was something that propelled the gay movement forward. You would think it would do the reverse, but it propelled it forward. And so that was a big deal.

And then in the Nineties—I mean, I’m skipping ahead of a bunch of stuff—but the Nineties, Will & Grace, Ellen, the sitcom with Ellen DeGeneres, she came out as a lesbian on the show, her character came out as a lesbian. And Will & Grace, it’s like these guys are hilarious. I mean, what could be wrong with this? So—

[51:22] JMY: Yeah, they’re approachable,

[51:23] Becket: They’re cool. What could be wrong with this? And then a significant turning point was—oh, and then Sex and the City was a big deal in the Nineties. There was a gay character on that show. And Sex and the City was created by Darren Starr. I know Darren. And a lot of the writers on the show, the showrunner, is gay. Anyway, so what was interesting about Sex and the City is there were a lot of gay male writers on that show, and they were turning these women into gay men. The way these women had one-night stands and all this stuff. My friends and I would joke about it, like these are gay guys but in women’s bodies. This is crazy. It’s hilarious. So that show was a big game-changer.

And then Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, that was major because that was the first time—I remember when that came out in 2003, I think, and it was five gay guys giving clueless straight guys makeovers. And that's when not only women and gay guys were watching, but that's when straight guys started watching because their girlfriends were like, “Oh my gosh, honey, you’ve got to watch this show; it’s brilliant!”

I remember telling a good friend of mine at the time, “This is going to change everything. This show is going to change everything.” And it did.

And then you can skip to the, I mean, there were a lot of things, but you can skip to the legalization of gay marriage in 2015.

[53:18] JMY: Yeah, Obergfell, sure.

[53:19] Becket: That, of course, that's where we are now. And then now, of course, every city—

So I lived right next to Beverly Hills, and Beverly Hills is very conservative because it’s mostly Persian Jews who live in Beverly Hills. They’re a very conservative group of people. They are very family oriented. And I was riding my bike the other day, and there was a pride flag painted on the sidewalk, in the middle of the street, an intersection, a pride, yeah, just like a pride thing. And I was shocked because I was like, wow, that's interesting that Beverly Hills would do this, because I know the mayor is conservative.

But what I subsequently found out is that just like corporations have these rating systems where you have to be [Overlapping voices] you support—

[54:24] JMY: Cities have them as well. Wow.

[54:25] Becket: They get rated by I think it’s the Human Rights Campaign, HRC. They get rated, so Beverly Hills doesn’t want to lose tourism, so they will go along with it and put a pride flag on the street. And so now it’s so ubiquitous, and I don’t even know it at this point. I don’t even know at this point how an unbeliever, or even some believers, can even believe that homosexual behavior is still a sin after all that's going on in the culture now. It’s a rare thing, even for Christians now, to believe that it’s still a sin.

[55:15] JMY: it’s almost like going back to first-century Christianity, where we’re just so countercultural and so bizarre. How could you think there’s only one God in Rome? And it’s like we have all this plethora of gods? It is a sense of returning to thinking you’re so backward and all this sort of thing.

But the Lord’s in control, and He knows what He’s doing, and He’s raised individuals such as yourself, and as we mentioned before, Rosaria and others, who are helping the church think critically and think helpfully and equipping and we’re so grateful for the work that the Lord’s doing in you. And so I want to say, Becket Cook, I’m so grateful for our time together and pray the Lord would bless your ministry.

[56:24] Becket: Thank you, Jonathan. I appreciate it. And I’m really looking forward to coming to Atlanta and meeting you guys in person.

[56:33] JMY: Absolutely.

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