Dad Wrote a Letter to Son’s Future Wife Before His Birth. His Son’s ‘Courage’ to Come Out as Gay Changed Everything for Him

Bill White’s faith and career as a popular evangelical pastor in California were built on certain beliefs, including that homosexuality was a sin. Then, in 2015, his 15-year-old son Timothy told him he was gay, triggering a years-long journey that prompted Bill to become a fierce LGBTQ+ advocate. 

In those early days, it was a transformation that came with significant pain.

“When people turn out differently than what you wanted them to, you have to grieve the loss of your dreams,” Bill, now 57, tells PEOPLE. “And there are a lot of dreams there I had for my son to marry a woman.” 

That specific dream is revisited in Timothy’s New York Times essay, “How My Dad Reconciled His God and His Gay Son.” In the essay, published earlier this year, the 26-year-old shares excerpts of his dad’s journal entries, including a letter Bill wrote to his son’s future wife before Timothy was born.

“You are a dear, dear woman to me and to [my wife] Katy. We love you,” wrote Bill in a note to his future “daughter” in 1999, according to the Times. “We look forward to meeting you. We will be praying for you over the years.”

Timothy says reading the letter had a two-fold effect on him. 

“It definitely transported me back to some of those fears and sense [that] I was different,” says Timothy, who works in political communications. But the letter also made him appreciate the love that his parents had for his future spouse.

For Bill, supporting his son was never a question.

“It’s always been my goal to champion my children,” he says. Now, he’s a pastor at City Church Long Beach, a “small, radically welcoming church” in Long Beach, Calif., and co-founder of Small Church Big Table, a nonprofit that supports church leaders as they navigate the inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community in their places of worship. 

“The truth is, I want people to love LGBTQ folks better,” Bill says.

In the 1990s, Bill was decades of biblical study away from that progressive stance.

“I’ve been taught you could either be a Christian and believe that the gays are going to hell,” says the pastor, “or you could like the gays and be fine with the gays, but not be a Christian.” 

Bill and his wife, Katy, a doctor, raised their son and daughter in the church that Bill began in his backyard. For Timothy, faith “meant family, it meant community.” While he’d always had an open relationship with his dad, coming out was anxiety-inducing. He told both of his parents at a Starbucks.

“I was worried that it was going to destroy my faith and my relationship with church and God,” he recalls. “I knew that it was going to have a difficult impact on my dad’s church.”

Timothy’s fears were valid — his father’s church would lose more than 100 of its roughly 165 members after the news broke — but Bill responded to his son’s declaration by saying, “I love you.”

“That was one of the finest conversations I’ve had in my life. Father, thank you for it,” Bill wrote in his journal in 2015, according to the Times. “Thank you for Timothy’s courage in speaking to us. We were incredibly honored that he chose to talk with us first before any of his friends.”

While Bill’s support of his son never wavered, internally, he was battling fear and confusion. Bill wondered if he’d lose his ordination, but his even greater fear was that he’d lose his faith.

Captured in the many pages of his journal are what he now describes as his entry into six different historic perspectives, the first of which considers homosexuality an “abomination,” followed by the hope that “you can pray the gay away.” In the final stage, Bill says, “You fight for inclusivity, every chance you get.”

The journey has taken Bill years, but Timothy says his father protected him the whole time, from both Bill’s own internal struggles and the adults who sought to condemn Timothy as a teen. 

The young man says reading his dad’s journals as an adult has given him “such a profound admiration” for what his father sacrificed. Timothy adds, “So much of that came out of a love for me.” While coming out was difficult, Timothy says the process “in some ways really cemented my faith.”

For the White family, the fight for inclusivity is far from complete.

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Bill says he was called “satanic” by someone recently. He’s familiar with the name-calling.

“People said I was a false teacher, I was anti-Christ,” the pastor recalls. “It’s just part and parcel of the journey.”

Both father and son are sharing their private family story to guide others in the church who are searching for ways to make space for their faith and the people they love.

“We’re not going away,” says Timothy. “The future of the church means talking about our community.”