Tim Wilkins has loved men since he was 11 years old.

But, at 46, he says the romantic love he once felt for gay men is 24 years, a sexual conversion, a heterosexual marriage and a religious arm's length away from the love he now feels for them.

Wilkins, a former homosexual, directs the CROSS Ministry in Raleigh. The ministry is a member of Exodus International, an organization that helps lead all “sexually broken persons” away from their sin, he says.

Wilkins says he now offers the unconditional love of Christ Through CROSS, he preaches that homosexual activity is a sin and hopes to bring homosexuals to Jesus, whose grace, be believes, can change them.

“Although I'm no longer gay, I'm the happiest I've ever been,” he said. “When Christ takes residence in the heart of a person, he enables that person to be in obedience to his word.”

Wilkins will address gay and lesbian guests at Springs of Life Fellowship, at 6611 Guess Road in Durham, Sunday morning. His appearance, in the spirit of a recent summit between the Rev. Jerry Falwell and gay Christian leader Mel White, marks a growing movement among fundamentalist Christians to accept homosexuals, despite their “sin.”

“I disdain, I abhor the comments that come from so-called Christians that attempt to dehumanize homosexuals,” Wilkins said. “I am diametrically opposed to Ellen DeGeneres' views, but I am even more opposed to those who call her Ellen Degenerate.”

But opponents of. ministries like CROSS and Exodus say their unwillingness to accept gays and lesbians “as God made them” only leads homosexuals away from true Christianity and toward a hurtful, destructive self-image. “It's manipulative”, said the Rev. Michael S. Piazza, who heads the world's largest gay and lesbian congrega­tion at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas. He believes Exodus is mean spirited and illogical and damages homosexuals more then it helps them before driving them away.

“We have more ex-Exodus members than Exodus has members in Texas,” Piazza said.

Piazza also says that Wilkins' fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible is hypocritical, interpreting the book literally when it suits his purpose but ignoring other illogical sections.

“They don't believe that dashing your children against a stone will bring happiness, but it says that in the Bible,” he said.

Still, Piazza said an authentic apology from fundamentalist Christians is a first step toward acceptance for homosexual Christians.

To advertise Sunday's event, Springs of Life minister Stan Geyer bought ad space in The Herald-Sun for a printed “confession” on behalf of church leaders.

“We have in many cases been more interested in being right than being loving,” the confession said in one of 11 statements. The ad invited gays and lesbians to hear Wilkins speak.

Geyer says the event is not an attempt to convert homosexuals to heterosexuality, but to “reach out with God's love and forgiveness.”

“We want dialogue with them,” Geyer said. “We want to hear where they're coming from.”

Wilkins says without this dialogue and love, the church cannot expect to bring homosexuals to Christ.

“There are churches that have been giving the undiluted truth of the Bible -- that homosexuality is wrong --but have not given unconditional love,” Wilkins said. “If you just thump the Bible, you do little to build rapport. Jesus befriended sinners.”

As a former “sinner,” Wilkins says he knows firsthand the role of Christ's love in overcoming his homosexuality. Although a believer in Christ and His intent for people to be heterosexual since he was 9, Wilkins practiced homosexuality until he was 22, when biblical lessons inspired him to change.

“I honestly did not know how to be heterosexual,” Wilkins said, “but I did know how to be obedient. The Bible does not tell us how a person comes out of homosexuality: step 1, step 2, step 3. But I peeled away passages in the Bible and found passages that applied to me.

Wilkins said he ceased his homoerotic activities, including looking at male pornography. He said he even stopped looking at Men's Health magazine to avoid temptation.

But while he believed God could make him celibate,. he never expected to became heterosexual. Today, Wilkins has been married for six years to his wife, Lisa.

“If somebody had told me,” he said, “that 24 years later I'd be very, very, very happily married and would have a baby on the way, I would have laughed at them and then I would have cried, because that was what I wanted.”

Before Wilkins married his wife, he told her about his homosexual past. Lisa immediately suggested that they spread his story to help other struggling homosexuals. Two years later they moved from Winston-Salem to Raleigh to work for a like-minded ministry. When that organization closed two months later, they began CROSS.

Wilkins, who received a master's degree in divinity at Southwestern Seminary, now runs the ministry out of a converted hotel room on the fourth floor of the Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh.

CROSS, a “speaking, teaching, writing ministry,” does not counsel homosexuals, Wilkins says, but helps inform them of God's plan and how accepting Christ can lead them from homosexuality, if not to heterosexuality.

Both CROSS and Exodus dismiss theories that homosexuality may be biologically natural, and therefore cannot be a sin. Arguments by scientists, like genetic researcher Dean Hamer and neuro-anatomist Simon LeVay, cannot derail God's intentions, Wilkins says.

“Down syndrome is inborn,” Wilkins said. “Spinabifida is inborn. We don't consider these normal conditions. We use medicine to treat them.”

He also says that Jesus' command that people “must be born again,” means gays and lesbians must find a way to resist their urges. While Jesus may not lead all homosexuals to a heterosexual lifestyle, he said, Jesus' grace can remove the urge.

This article was originally printed in the Durham Herald-Sun (Durham, North Carolina) on December 4th, 1999 on pages B1 & B3. It is reprinted here with permission.