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Ray Boltz: Openly Gay

Written by Richard Easterling, on 18-09-2008 05:02

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According to an article written by Joey Digugliemo written September 12, 2008 and printed in the Washington Blade, a Gay and Lesbian news source, Gospel singer, Ray Boltz, has openly admitted that he is “gay.” This is a description by some meaning homosexual. Mr. Diguglielmo began his article stating that “Ray Boltz wanted to do something nice,” suggesting that letting others know you are a homosexual is a good thing without identifying what or who that good thing is to impact.

Thousands of Christians remember Ray Boltz for his hit songs like “Thank You,” “Watch the Lamb,” “The Anchor Holds,” and “I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb.”

Mr. Diguglielmo’s article does an extensive overview of the gospel singer’s rise to celebrity status in the Christian music industry as well as his accomplishments, recognitions and awards along the way. He even mentions the names of music stars like Amy Grant, Sandi Patty, Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman. Perhaps this is a way to make the so-called “coming out” of Ray Boltz a more acceptable and plausible admission for being homosexual. His article states “an innocuous (an adjective meaning harmless; dull; insipid; uninteresting) thing to do, but for Boltz it was a big step.”

The article details how Mr. Boltz “visited the mostly gay Jesus Metropolitan Community Church in Indianapolis and liked Rev. Jeff Miner” in December 2007 and gave him a copy of his 1997 holiday recording, “A Christmas Album” with a note containing his e-mail address. According the Diguglielmo’s article it was three years earlier on December 26, 2004 that Boltz told his family “what had been bothering him for so many years.”

According to an interview the article quotes Ray Boltz “I’d denied it (being homosexual) ever since I was a kid. I became a Christian, I thought that was the way to deal with this and I prayed hard and tried for 30-some years and then at the end, I was just going, ‘I’m still gay. I know I am.’”

About his family’s reaction, Boltz would go on to say “It was a very tough time for them too, but the bottom line was they loved me and they still love me … it’s been an amazing journey of acceptance on their part … I was offered support and love from each member of my family, including my wife.” According to the article, Ray Boltz and his wife, Carol, separated in the summer of 2005, just a few short months following his “coming out” announcement.

Mr. Diguglielmo’s article states further: “His faith was in transition –tenants he’d adhered to all his life suddenly were up for reconsideration but there was a peace he hadn’t felt before. … I had a lot of questions [about faith], but at the bottom of everything was a feeling that I didn’t hate myself anymore, so in that sense I felt closer to God. … If you were to hold up the rule book and go, ‘Here are all the rules Christians must live by,’ did I follow every one of those rules all that time? Not at all, you know, because I kind of rejected a lot of things, but I’ve grown some even since then. I guess I felt that the church, that they had it wrong about how I felt with being gay all these years, so maybe they had it wrong about a lot of other things.”

The article quotes Joe Hogue, a former producer for CCM in Nashville with acts like Carman, DC Talk, BeBe and CeCe Winans and others, and himself a divorced homosexual who worked with Boltz on his 1991 album “Another Child to Hold” and has helped him record a few new songs, says “he hopes for a day when Christians will see homosexuality as no more a perceived sin than it used to be for women to be ministers or for divorced Christians to hold leadership positions in churches.’

Diguglielmo’s article says Ray Boltz “doesn’t want to get into debates about scripture and has no plans to ‘go into First Baptist or an Assembly of God church and run there and say, ‘I’m gay and you need to love me anyway.’”

Although Ray Boltz evidently stated “I basically lived an ‘ex-gay’ life –I read every book, I read all the scriptures they use, I did everything to try and change,” his reaction and response suggest his understanding of those scriptures were void of spiritual discernment. The Amplified Bible renders First Corinthians 2:14, “But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them –of progressively recognizing, understanding and becoming better acquainted with them- because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated.”

Not only the tragedy of the life of Ray Boltz but of so many others is revealed in Mr. Diguglielmo’s article. Thousands of people, in and out of the church population, are seeking to understand and apply the Holy, infallible, inerrant Word of God without having experienced a personal relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ. That relationship is a product not of commitment as suggested by Mr. Boltz but that of faith which is unconditional surrender of your life to Christ who is thus the Answer to all our needs, sexually and otherwise.

“I basically lived an ‘ex-gay’ life — I read every book, I read all the scriptures they use, I did everything to try and change.”