Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic

A gay survivor of a Christian cult finds new purpose in LGBT activism and attends Columbia University with the aim of becoming a journalist, only to find himself in a new cult devoted to “queerness,” anti-Zionism and anti-Western radicalism.

In 1983, Ben Appel is born into the Lamb of God, a Christian covenant community in Maryland. From an early age, his gender nonconformity is evident, and he is made to feel sinful and bad in God’s eyes. When his parents’ marriage crumbles and his family is exiled from the sacred community, Ben is thrust into the real world, which he finds to be even less tolerant of “girly” boys than the Lamb of God.

Unable to reconcile his gay identity with his religious programming, he prays obsessively for God’s forgiveness and self-medicates with drugs and alcohol. Within a few years, his inner demons drive him to the edge of mental and emotional collapse.

Later, in recovery, Ben rebuilds his life and finds a new calling in LGBT activism, setting him on a path to the Ivy League and a hopeful career as a journalist. Finally, at the late age of thirty-three, he enters Columbia University, eager to join his progressive peers in their fight against right-wing authoritarianism. Yet he soon discovers that he has joined a new “sacred” community, one as conformist as the Christian cult of his childhood and as cruel as his middle school bullies. Even more frightening than this mob’s so-called progressive mentality is its rigid ideology—an illiberal orthodoxy that threatens the very principles of freedom and equality.

For resisting indoctrination into this new progressive cult—the Cult of Queer—Ben will once again face the shame and loneliness of excommunication. Only this time he will discover that true freedom can be found on the other side of exile, in a celebration of genuine diversity based on hard-won individual identity.