How far are you willing to go to walk a mile in another person’s shoes?
For Timothy Kurek, a Portland based author and Liberty University graduate, that meant pretending to be gay for a year.
Kurek grew up a conservative Christian and learned to fear the gay community from an early age. However, an encounter with a lesbian acquaintance four years ago began a journey that changed all of that.
Kurek told ABC News that “God really kicked (him) in the gut” when his lesbian acquaintance was crying in his arms after being rejected by her family and all he could think about were “the arguments to convert her.”
Soon after the encounter Kurek decided to “come out” as a homosexual in order to better understand the LGBT community.
Kurek spent a year living as a homosexual working in a gay cafe, hanging out in gay bars and even joining a gay softball league, all the while maintaining his inner identity as a straight Christian.
The only people that knew of Kurek’s plan were an aunt, a close friend and a gay friend who was recruited to play his boyfriend.
Kurek explained to the Observer that “In order to walk in their shoes, I had to have the experience of being gay. I had to come out to my friends and family and the world as a gay man,” he told the Observer.
The experiment prompted Kurek to write a book about his experience, entitled “Cross in the Closet.”
Below is a book trailer in which Kurek describes his journey from a gay-fearing Christian Pharisee to a humbled Christian who learned to “meet Jesus in drag.”