In a culture that treats Pride Month as a civic sacrament, MJ Nixon is walking the other direction, and drawing a growing crowd behind her. The former college basketball player and one-time lesbian spent six years in a same-sex relationship before what she describes as a direct encounter with God changed the course of her life. Fifteen years later, she co-leads Freedom March and Rainbow Revival, two ministries built around a simple, countercultural proposition: people can leave the LGBTQ lifestyle, and the church should help them do it.

Nixon's story, profiled by CBN's Steve Rees, lands at a moment when the broader culture insists that sexual identity is fixed and immutable, and that anyone who says otherwise is trafficking in harm. Nixon and the men and women who march alongside her reject that premise entirely.

A voice on the road from Kentucky to Atlanta

Nixon grew up the middle child in a conservative Catholic family, wedged between a younger and an older brother. She went on to play college basketball. At some point she entered a relationship with another woman, one that lasted six years.

The turning point, as Nixon tells it, came in stages. She remembers sitting in a church next to her then-partner and hearing the gospel. Something stirred. The two women began praying together, not for affirmation, but for escape.

"We both innately knew that there's always a tug-of-war between the spirit and flesh, so we started to pray for a way out of the relationship."

Then came the drive. Nixon was alone, heading from Kentucky to Atlanta, when she says she heard the Lord speak directly to her.

"I was driving from Kentucky to Atlanta alone when the Lord said, 'MJ, you have to choose this day life or death, blessings or curses.'"

She recognized the phrasing from Scripture, Proverbs 18:21. What followed, she says, was a vision: a line in the sand. On one side, her relationship, her sexuality, a life she had known for years. On the other, a call to lay all of it down, with no guarantee of what would replace it, including the real possibility of lifelong celibacy and singleness.

Nixon chose the line.

"I encountered the living God as He's sacrificing Himself for me. Because I was yet a sinner up until that moment that Jesus saw me. He wanted to have a relationship with me. Anything I had to lay down doesn't compare to what Jesus has done for me."

The day she last saw her girlfriend, Nixon says, was also the first time she heard the voice of God. She does not describe the transition as painless.

"With that has come so much peace and joy, though it's not always easy."

Freedom March and Rainbow Revival: nine years and growing

Nixon did not keep her story private. She became a co-founder of Freedom March, a public ministry now in its ninth year that rallies former LGBTQ individuals who have come to Christian faith. The organization first gathered in Washington, D.C., and has since held events in cities including Portland in 2025. In December, the group plans to march in New York City.

Alongside Freedom March, Nixon helps lead Rainbow Revival, a ministry built on three foundational principles: discipleship, prayer, and evangelism. Rainbow Revival leaders spend a full year in prayer before deciding where Freedom March will go next. Since 2018, Nixon and a combination of male and female leaders who left the LGBTQ community have adopted the rainbow as a symbol of their movement, a deliberate reclamation.

Nixon frames the symbolism in explicitly biblical terms.

"The rainbow is in Genesis. What I love about that is that it's the Lord's; it is not the enemy's."

She draws a pointed distinction between the biblical rainbow and the Pride flag. The original rainbow, she notes, has seven colors, representing God's completion. The Pride version, she says, removed indigo, leaving six.

"They took out a color, indigo, leaving six. It actually represents the fall of man. It literally represents their pride."

Whether one accepts that theological reading or not, the framing tells you something about the movement's confidence. These are not people apologizing for their position. They believe the culture stole a symbol, and they intend to take it back.

Inside a Texas megachurch, and a seminary classroom

In February of this year, Nixon appeared as a guest speaker at a Texas megachurch. The details of the venue were not specified, but the invitation itself signals that her message is finding a welcome in large evangelical congregations, not just small, fringe gatherings.

The connection to Faithbridge Church and its founding pastor, Ken Werlein, came through a personal encounter. Nixon met Werlein at her brother's wedding. After hearing her testimony and learning about the ministries she leads, Werlein invited her to address a seminary class he teaches.

The response was immediate. Werlein shared what happened the next morning.

"One of the students emailed the next morning and said the class was incredibly needed because, 'I've struggled with that and it has given me so much hope.'"

That anonymous seminary student's email captures something the mainstream press rarely acknowledges: there are people inside the church, future pastors, no less, who experience same-sex attraction and want a path that aligns with orthodox Christian teaching. Nixon's ministry exists, in part, because the institutional church has often failed to offer one.

Nixon herself has said as much.

"I would love for the church to be a safe place where someone can process and walk through this transformation as God works in their hearts."

The scale of what they're up against, and what they claim is happening

Nixon is clear-eyed about the cultural headwinds. She lives in Atlanta, a city where Pride Month is a major civic event. She estimates that 80,000 people turn out for one of the big citywide celebrations. Of those, she believes about 60 percent are allies of the LGBTQ community rather than members of it, a detail she finds telling rather than discouraging.

Against that backdrop, Freedom March and Rainbow Revival are not claiming to rival Pride in numbers. They are claiming something different: that a genuine spiritual movement is underway, one person at a time, beneath the cultural radar.

"We believe there is an undercurrent that is happening in this generation of so many coming out from this place of false identity into their true identity as sons and daughters."

Nixon describes the LGBTQ community not with hostility but with a kind of pastoral grief.

"I see a community of people that doesn't not understand God's mercy for them."

And she is explicit that Freedom March is not a solo act. The movement needs the broader church to show up, physically, publicly, without requiring participants to have a personal LGBTQ background.

"We, as Freedom March and Rainbow Revival, are calling the Body of Christ to come and stand with us at these marches, standing on the Word of God, His principles, and the gospel; you don't have to be former LGBTQ."

"We need the Body of Christ to come and stand with us, to hold our arms, to be alongside us."

What the culture won't say

The dominant cultural script insists that people like MJ Nixon do not exist, or, if they do, that they are damaged, coerced, or lying. Entire legislative efforts have been built around banning so-called "conversion therapy," a term broad enough to encompass everything from discredited coercive practices to voluntary pastoral counseling and prayer.

Nixon's account does not fit neatly into that framework. She was not forced. She prayed her way out of a relationship alongside the very partner she was leaving. She describes the experience not as suppression but as liberation, and fifteen years later, she is building organizations, speaking at megachurches and seminaries, and planning a march through the streets of New York City.

None of that proves anything about anyone else's experience. But it does raise a question the cultural establishment would rather not entertain: What if some people genuinely want to leave, and the church's job is to help them walk?

Freedom March is now in its ninth year. The New York City event is on the calendar for December. The seminary students are emailing the morning after. Whatever the mainstream narrative says, MJ Nixon is not going away.

In a month the culture has claimed for celebration, she is offering something rarer: a testimony that costs something, and a community willing to stand behind it.