A couple of days ago, Tony Woodlief’s WoW post, “Anti-homosexual Christianity,” stirred quite a conversation. Tony looked at a piece of the book UnChristian, whose authors observe of the church that “outsiders say our hostility toward gays – not just opposition to homosexual politics and behaviors but disdain for gay individuals – has become virtually synonymous with the Christian faith.”

The post interested me greatly because I spent quite a bit of time this week talking with former homosexuals, and with Catholic, Jewish, evangelical, and secular counselors and psychologists who help people walk away from unwanted same-sex attraction. Two trends emerged:

First, it appears that the cultural liberation of homosexuality is also liberating those seeking to escape it.

Second, the cultural mainstreaming of homosexuality is awakening some churches to more compassionate ways of dealing with homosexuality — without endorsing the behavior.

Brad, a recent college grad from Manitou Springs, Colo., who has successfully fought homosexual urges for eight years, told me, “I’ve seen it over and over again,” referring to a new willingness among churches to accept and love people tempted by homosexuality. “Today, it’s easier to come forward in the church because homosexuality is more accepted in our culture,” Brad said. “Before, the whole subject of homosexuality was more taboo. Even to say you struggled with it was a horrible thing.”

Stephen, who works in the Nashville finance industry, had similar observations. Stephen told me he felt trapped by gay political activism — and, paradoxically, later liberated by it.

Stephen came out to his mother 10 years ago at age 16. The year was 1998, at the dawn of a new gay ascendancy. Ellen Degeneres had just come out in real life and on TV. The murder of Matthew Shepard sparked candlelight vigils and a flood of support for hate-crimes legislation that reached all the way to Congress. Meanwhile, gay activists continued a successful campaign to shift the debate over homosexuality from one about morality to one about civil rights.

The resulting cultural milieu made it easy for Stephen to say, “‘I like men. That’s my preference,’” he told me. It also made it easier to fall into a lifestyle that by 2006, left him feeling buried alive. Repeatedly molested beginning at age 5 and abandoned by his mother at age 9, Stephen was left with a dad who burrowed into a gambling habit and dragged his son along with him. As he grew older, Stephen coped by looking for love. After leaving home, he moved in with three men in quick succession, having known each for only a couple of weeks. But it was his secret life – scores of anonymous sexual encounters – that led Stephen into an abyss of despair: “It was like being inside a dark cave and trying to scratch your way out, but there’s no light anywhere,” he said.

Many times, when the sex was over, Stephen would walk outside and throw up, he remembers. Then he would go home and shower for the better part of an hour. “But then I was doing it again the next day,” he said, “because I was so in need of love, of an identity.”

In 2006, Stephen found that love — in a church. And in some respects, he feels he has gay activists to thank. “Because it’s easier to come out of the closet today, it’s also easier to find people who have found freedom” from homosexuality, he said. “You now have people who have lived in the gay lifestyle and who have been hurt and are talking about it.”

Another paradox emerged in my talks with secular and faith-based counselors who help in this area: On one hand, gay activists have succeeded in convincing the younger generation that sexuality is a malleable trait. On the other: Having been thus convinced, young people are now just as accepting of people wanting to leave the gay lifestyle as they are of those who want to explore it. Once pariahs, ex-gays are finding increasing acceptance, albeit outside the circles of establishment gay activists.

While the book UnChristian chronicles what has become the stereotype of the gay-hating church, statistics and surveys may be, as usual, lagging behind current trends. The church may have a long way to go, but perhaps we are headed in the right direction.