A man who survived the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, recently revealed that he has become a Christian and is no longer gay.
Luis Javier Ruiz was at the gay nightclub the night terrorist Omar Mateen opened fired, killing 49 people and injuring dozens more. Ruiz sees his survival as an act of divine mercy that allowed him to flee destructive behavior.
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“I should have been number 50!,” Ruiz said in a message posted to Facebook Monday. “Going through old pictures of the night of Pulse, I remember my struggles of perversion, heavy drinking to drown out everything and having promiscuous sex that led to HIV. My struggles were real! The enemy had its grip, and now God has taken me from that moment and has given me Christ.”
Ruiz’s testimony was shared on the official page of the Freedom March, a Christian event celebrating “freedom from homosexuality and transgenderism.” The march will take place Saturday, May 5, in Washington, D.C.
The event’s organizers partnered with Voice of the Voiceless, a Christian organization created “to defend the rights of former homosexuals, individuals with unwanted same-sex attraction, and their families.”
In in an email to NBC News, Voice of the Voiceless Co-Founder Christopher Doyle explained that the event is “about celebrating our lives and not hating the LGBTQ movement.”
“We made a conscious choice to leave homosexuality, and we should be able to do that without being mocked,” Doyle wrote.
Ruiz will attend Saturday’s event along with others who have experienced freedom in embracing the biblical view of sexuality.