‘Like I was shunned’: Ex-member says Rocklin’s Destiny Church ostracized him for being gay
Ben Bird-Taylor is the happiest he’s been in years.
The 27-year-old Sacramento vocal coach and singer-songwriter was recently married to his boyfriend of over three years. A shared Christian faith and relationship with Jesus has served as the bedrock of their partnership: The two bonded over a mutual love for the worship song “Reckless Love” and walked down the aisle to an orchestral rendition at their wedding.
But being Christian and being gay has, at times, proved challenging for Bird-Taylor. Though he’s never questioned his belief in or love for God, he has questioned himself and the teachings of the churches he’s attended. He also denied his sexuality for over a decade despite knowing he was gay since the third grade.
“When I was in high school, I had already fought it for the longest time,” Bird-Taylor said. “But I was taught that someday I’d meet a girl, get married (and) have kids. Whenever I saw a guy I was attracted to, it was like, ‘No, I have to fight these feelings because they’re evil.’ ”
Bird-Taylor got involved in Rocklin’s Destiny Church in 2013, while he was a student at Sierra College. He had found a supportive faith community in the church’s college ministry and volunteered there for two years as a worship leader, background vocalist and keyboardist.
Bird-Taylor wasn’t openly gay at the time. And although he doesn’t remember the church taking a hard-line stance against homosexuality when he attended, from 2013 until 2016, he also wasn’t ready to come out when he first joined the church.
His mentor, a worship leader at Destiny, served as his confidante, and Bird-Taylor decided to tell him about his sexuality. Despite knowing he was gay, Bird-Taylor told his mentor he was bisexual. In response, he was told that he could still be on Destiny’s worship team as long as he wasn’t involved in “the lifestyle” — meaning he could volunteer at the church as long as he wasn’t having romantic relationships with men.
Even after this conversation, Bird-Taylor felt church congregants and leaders accepted him for who he was. But that all changed in 2015.
“Devastating”
Every year for the past decade, Destiny has hosted a “Celebrate America” Fourth of July event in and around Rocklin. It draws thousands and often offers musical performances, and Bird-Taylor was invited to perform at the event that summer.
That year, Celebrate America coincided with the momentous Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states. Bird-Taylor wanted to come out as a gay man and decided to take a subtle step in that direction: He put a Facebook filter on his profile picture celebrating the ruling. Almost immediately, he got a call from the Destiny leader in charge of Celebrate America.
“He was like, ‘I need to know: Are you for or are you against gay marriage?’ ” Bird-Taylor recalls. “And I said, ‘Honestly, I don’t know. I have a lot of friends who are LGBTQ.’ And I wasn’t even speaking about myself, because I was so not out at the time. He was like, ‘Well, let me call you back in a few hours, and I’ll let you know if you’re still going to be involved in this event.’ ”
Three hours later, Bird-Taylor was told he was no longer invited to perform at Celebrate America. Not only that, he wasn’t allowed to perform at any Destiny event thereafter.
“It was a horrible experience,” he said. “All these people I thought I was close to all of a sudden just disappeared. I was uninvited from events (and) hangouts, and no one even spoke with me. It was literally like I was shunned.”
Asked to respond to such allegations of homophobia, Destiny Pastor Greg Fairrington said the church “believes in the word of God and what Scripture says about God’s desire for marriage and sexual identity.”
“For the past 30 years, we have welcomed people from all lifestyles to Destiny to experience the redemptive and life-changing message of Jesus Christ,” Fairrington told The Bee. “We do what Ephesians 4:15 tells us to do, which is to speak the truth in love, and we will continue to speak the truth with love.”
Bird-Taylor, however, found that nearly all his friends, peers, and leaders at Destiny turned on him overnight once he was suspected of being gay. The experience forced him to take a critical look at the church, and he concluded that it was a culture more of fear than of love.
Asked to respond to Bird-Taylor’s claims that he was shunned by church leaders and congregants, a spokesperson from Destiny declined.
Bird-Taylor continued attending Destiny’s college ministry program even after the shunning began. He recalls attending one worship night event at which a pastor asked him if he was “OK now.”
“It was absolutely devastating,” he said.
Although the experience was “extremely painful,” he said he got through it with the steadfast support of his family and his personal relationship with God. Even at his most angry and bitter, Bird-Taylor had sympathy for his peers at Destiny. Even now, instead of condemning the church, he believes there’s room for its leaders to grow.
Destiny unrecognizable
But since Bird-Taylor left the church in 2016, Destiny has become almost unrecognizable to several ex-congregants, some of whom attended for decades. Since the pandemic began, the church has taken on a political life of its own, holding indoor services in defiance of state COVID guidelines, encouraging congregants to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, and offering religious exemptions from COVID vaccines to anyone interested.
“It’s like, if you don’t believe the exact same thing, it’s hell and fire and brimstone,” Bird-Taylor said. “It’s changed from what was compassion into anger and condemnation.”
Destiny’s leadership has been outspokenly anti-LGBTQ since embracing the church’s new political identity.
Two former congregants who spoke to The Bee on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation said Fairrington once expressed his views on the LGBTQ community in more subtle ways, preaching about the ideal heterosexual nuclear family. In recent months, however, he has been vocally homophobic, demonizing the “LGBT agenda” and “gender-neutral doctrine.” During one recent sermon, Fairrington played a YouTube video in which the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sings a satirical song with the lyric “We’ll convert your children.” Fairrington says, “that’s wrong, that’s vile.”
One former church employee and longtime congregant said they would be nervous for any transgender or openly queer person to even walk into Destiny.
Bird-Taylor said Destiny’s homophobia is almost certainly forcing gay people who attend the church to stay closeted.
“Because of what they’re being taught, I think it’ll be a lot harder for people to be able to share that side to themselves, which is really sad,” he said. “I would never feel comfortable there.”
A new chapter
He and his husband are currently seeking out a new church — one that will genuinely and fully accept them.
Bird-Taylor, who records music under the name Ben Cole, released a single entitled “Heartache” at the end of 2021. It was inspired by his experience at Destiny.
“It’s a heartache that never ends,” he sings, “when you lose the ones you used to look to, you used to call your friends.”
This story was originally published January 16, 2022 at 5:00 AM.