Two years ago, we brought you the story of Art Pereira, the homosexual Director of Community Care for Revoice, and his heterosexual friend, Nick Galluccio, a young adult pastor at Stonecrest Community Church. The two got a two-year lease and moved in together. Going far beyond mere roommates, they have formed a “family” and a “household” on account of being “deeply committed to each other” and “planning on sharing life together for the rest of our lives.” Art explains:
We are totally committed to finding a way to live together and to function as a household. There are different ideas of what that looks like, right? There are a lot of details we don’t know. Do I live in a house with them? Or do I live next door?… We’ve got a few things worked out, which is we don’t move out without each other. If he moves, I move; if I move, he moves. We make decisions together as a family…when he has a wife one day, she’ll make the decisions with us.
Throughout the webinar, Art calls his straight counterpart “cute” and “physically attractive” and confesses his romantic feelings towards him, showing himself to be a mess of roiling and conflicting emotions. Despite this, we learned that Art’s pastor supported this whole affair, even giving them “friendship premarital counseling.” This was done despite the fact that Nick has, at some points, started questioning his own sexuality.
When considering the future, if Nick will one day get married, the plan was for the household and family to continue, with Nick and his wife having a sexual relationship and Art eternally pining away in a semi-celibate lifelong throuple, forming a family, having children, and making life decisions together. It’s basically Revoice confusion embodied.
But that was two years ago, and things have shifted a bit. There is still some clinginess there, to be sure. Art notes:
“I will never move someplace without Nick, and Nick won’t move anywhere without me. When Nick dates he lets women know, “ok, this guy’s my best friend, he’s my brother, but he’s also gonna be part of my household. So I can’t pursue a marriage that wouldn’t make room for that.”
But Nick has found a girlfriend, and despite being in a self-described “committed friendship” that goes far beyond mere roommates, Art says if they get married, they’ll share a duplex rather than a single-family home or apartment as they initially planned because he wants to give them a bit of space.
And also because “I don’t really want to live with kids.”
Rather than being perpetually joined at the hip, Art acknowledges that they don’t even necessarily have to live together, but even living within a 5 minute walk of each other might be a viable option in different seasons of life.
Offering some commentary, Woke Preacher Clips writes:
In case it isn’t clear, I see this latest clip as a positive development. The feel-good dream they once had of maintaining a throuple-not-throuple (husband + wife + celibate third wheel) is crashing hard into reality.
However, that’s going to be dangerous territory for Pereira once this tension comes to a head. He goes on to say “most” celibate Side-Bs are “not actually wired this way” (i.e. not gifted with singleness). “Everything in me is like, let’s make a family. Let’s raise some kids.”
Just watch the sad body language as he talks about giving up marriage and family and then tries to claim that “God had something way better in store for me” (i.e. this doomed mixed-orientation “household”). It does not look like he believes what he’s saying at 1:39 onward.
I’m not gonna beat up on people if they say they can’t muster the desire to marry the opposite sex. But I really want to know: why not a “committed friendship” with a same-sex-attracted woman? Companionship, emotional intimacy, no (or much less) temptation. What’s the hangup?
It’s certainly not my hope, but I fear this guy is gonna go Side A when the contradictions of his current situation become irreconcilable. I feel like the suggestion of mixed-sex SSA roommate households is a decent compromise.”
