there has been tight security in washington, as a small number of far—right supporters held a rally near the white house. organisers had said up to 400 people would attend, but farfewer did so. they were outnumbered by a large crowd of anti—nationalist p rotesto rs. the un security council has called for a credible and transparent inquiry into the killing of dozens of children in an air strike in yemen. the attack on thursday hit a school bus in an area held by houthi rebels. houthi officials say as many as a0 children died. turkey has pledged it will take action to calm the financial markets, after its currency plunged to a new record low in asian trading. the lira has lost 20% of its value against the us dollar in the past week, after a trade diagreement with washington. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur.

the christian religion is divided on issues of sexuality, not least the degree of acceptance and inclusion offered to gay men and women of faith. amid the fierce theological arguments are stories of individuals torn between their faith and sexual orientation. like my guest today. vicky beeching, a popular christian singer—songwriter turned public advocate for lgbt rights, whose remarkable story has seen her described as one of the most influential christians of her generation. has she found peace after years of turmoil? vicky beeching, welcome to hardtalk.

just a decade ago, singing and songwriting were the pillars of your life. you built your life around that singing career. do you still sing today? i don't. it's very interesting, as i'm sure we'll get onto in our conversation, when i took the big step to come out as gay, many things changed. i lost a lot of things, and my music career was one of them. and that was a choice, was it? you chose to consciously not sing anymore? well, it's interesting, because i chose to come out and therefore lost my music career in the church. but then i had imagined i would continue to sing for my own personal...as an outlet, creatively.

but every time i picked up my guitar and played, itjust gave me so many flashbacks to the work that i used to do, playing in these big american churches that would preach against same—sex marriage and lg bt people. and the correlation just felt so tight and strong that i actually really lost the desire for that creative outlet. because faith and your christianity — your religion is going to be so much a part of this conversation. if you can tell me, where did you acquire your faith from? was it simply that your parents were very observant, and that you inherited faith from them? faith has always been very real to me. i think when people talk about faith or religion, people might assume that it is more of a kind of a sterile belief system, some distant deity and a set of rules. but for me, it really grew from a childhood curiosity of wondering where the world came from. as a very small child i would stare up the night sky, look at the stars and think,

"how on earth did this all get here?" and i began to talk to god, and believed that, you know, he/she was up there. and my parents are very passionate christians, so i was taken to church, and so i very much took on board the christian faith, and felt like i had a real relationship with god. when did you first begin to become aware that there was this tension within the religion you were a part of, but also within yourself — between that part of you that was very committed to the church and to the faith, and that other part of you which became increasingly aware of a sexual identity and orientation which did not fit with what the church was teaching? i think my first recollection of hearing about same—sex relationships was actually during a kind of kids version of church that we went to on sundays. when the adults had their sermon, we would go into another room

and have kids‘ church. i remember they had these picture books that talked about different bible stories like noah and the flood and they had another one for the story of sodom and gomorrah, which is the interesting bible story about god burning two cities to the ground. and traditionally it's thought to be because the cities were full of people who were gay. that's what is understood in kind of church teaching. and so i remember being told that the reason these cities had been burnt to the ground was homosexuality, i think we were told, but that we were too young to understand what it was, but it was something very bad. at a very young age, probably five or six years old, that really lodged in my brain, and ijust sort of made a mental note, "whatever that is is something very wrong". and when i was 13 i realised i was gay and that came back and i remembered it was something that god was obviously apparently very much against. was it an impossible notion that you could have talked to anybody as a teenager about your growing awareness that you were a gay young woman? well, i had several options. one of them would have been school, but because of section 28,

as people in the uk know, the law that actually basically prohibited schools from teaching about same—sex relationships, we didn't have any education about lgbt issues at school and so there wasn't anybody i could talk to there. the most natural people to turn to in some ways would have been your parents but that was impossible? in theory. my parents very much believe the teachings of the evangelical church, so i knew what they would have said, and i knew what they thought, so that meant i didn't feel comfortable and didn't feel comfortable at church. so at home, church and school, are people's main avenues, aren't they? and i did not feel able to talk to anybody in any of those. here we sit here in a tv studio talking openly, so clearly a great deal has changed over the last 20 years. yes, a great deal has changed. you have written a book, "undivided", and the subtitle of it is "coming out, becoming whole" and,

interestingly, "living free from shame". it is a theme thatjust courses through the book and through your conversation. this notion of how much shame you have had to live with for so long. and i'm just wondering what kind of a toll, when you look back on your teenage years, what kind of a toll it took on you? yeah, it's been vast, and that's partly why it has taken so long. i didn't come out until i was 35, and i think undoing a lot of that damage has taken years. in terms of looking back at the impact of shame, i see a lot of many mental health issues in my teenage years that i believe were the result of that. depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, just feeling like i couldn't imagine a future for myself, because i wasn't able to walk the same pathway that my straight friends were. they were initiallyjust dating in their teens, obviously i was unable to do that, and then as i got older, went to university, i watched my friends began to pair

up, get engaged, get married, have kids. because i could not be in a relationship with someone of the same—sex because of myjob in the church and the views of my friends and family, i could not imagine a way forward. so the toll was huge on my mental health. and you sort of tried once or twice to reach out, even within the sort of religious framework and context, to people, to tell them your truth. and you write so graphically about one particular instance which has stuck in my mind, this sort of — i guess you could almost call it almost an exorcism, at a christian camp in the countryside, where people were asked to come to the stage and share particular problems and issues that were so deep within them in a caring christian community. so you went forward and i think you sort of whispered to one of the adults on the stage "i'm gay, i think i'm gay. i am gay". mmm. and they proceeded, and you write about it, you said, "there i was, frozen to the spot, my eyes clamped

shut, my face flushed as they continue to tell me that satan and his demons that must be gotten out of my mind, my heart and my body. i knew that being gay was sinful. i'd never imagined it was caused by demons or the devil". yeah. so it seems to me this sort of treatment of you from people who are deeply religious themselves was actually making things much worse for you. i mean, it honestly did, which was very sad. i think it's just a lesson for the church to learn now about people of all ages who need to be protected from this kind of treatment. so it was in kind of a charismatic, evangelical church meeting, as we would call it in the church, one that has quite lively music, and the sort of christians who believe that god is still at work today and can heal people. and so somebody was on the stage saying that they used to be gay and they had been prayed for and they were now straight. and then they asked if anybody to come up and receive prayer for that.

so in front of 4000 people, as a 16—year—old, feeling very shy and awkward, i managed to make my way to the front and received prayer which, like you say, turned into an exorcism. and it created so much shame, ithink, because i had imagined being gay was a psychological and emotional thing, not anything to do with dark forces. the devil — the devil's work. that's what i was led to believe. it's amazing what we will believe when we're surrounded by people in authority that tell us things. i was an intelligent kid but i somehow took onboard the fact that these dark forces were making me gay. so, vicky beeching, the obvious and rather brutal question is, in the context of all of that, and the very troubled mind that it was giving you, why on earth did you, first of all, decide to go to a theological college which was training people for the priesthood, or for careers in the church, and then to even sort of double down on that, decide to sign up to a record deal

with a religious music group who wanted to make you a huge star in evangelical conservative churches across america? why?! it's a really interesting question and i think, looking back, i do have a lot of regret, and that is something that you can only look at in hindsight. maybe, perhaps the way you wished you'd lived your life. but i think, to be honest, that decision speaks of how important my faith has always been to me. ever since i was 13, around the same time as i realised i was gay, i realised i wanted to dedicate my life to working for the church. i thought about being ordained as a priest, but actually, what appeared to be my gifting was writing religious music. contemporary hymns and worship songs that people seem to enjoy singing all around the uk. the sort of christian soft rock that fills those mega—churches in america? christian soft rock, that's amazing. well, i don't mean to sound in any wayjudgemental... you're actually right. but listen, you even signed a contract with the recording

company that wanted to turn you into a sort of christian star in america which had these moral clauses in it, which you honestly say in the book, you knew, while they didn't specify lesbianism or homosexuality, you knew that that would be the sort of quote—unquote "immoral behaviour" that would end, that would be unacceptable to the group you were signing on to. so, in a funny sort of way, you were signing away your own life by going into this career. essentially, but itjust felt like this very cruel choice. i had these two crucial parts of who i was, one ofthem was my orientation and desire for a partner and a home and family and the other part was this sense of vocation which is a very strong pull of its own, isn't it? a sense of kind of calling and mission. i felt like my meaning for life was in serving god through the church in music. and that was a very important thing for me, too, so choosing between the two felt almost impossible

and because of my family, friends, livelihood, all of that was on one side of the scale, my sexual orientation was on the other, the scale tipped in favour of staying in the closet because i felt like my whole world would just collapse if i spoke out about being gay. by staying in the closet you were essentially shutting down your entire emotional life. yes, but i did not realise that at the time. i was told by various christians, not ones who knew about my sexuality because i was not talking about it, they would say things like, "oh, it doesn't matter if you're single, because marriage isn't everything, the church can fill that gap. there's community in the church, you do not need a partner". that was what i was taught, actually, in general, about marriage, because there are quite a lot of single women within the church. there is something extraordinarily powerful about playing on a stage in front of so many people who think that you're fantastic, and maybe vanity was a part of this trade—off, too? you just loved the skill you had and what it could bring you, and you made a sort of pact with yourself. well, the church doesn't really

present it like that, and it never feels like that in a church setting. it's not like a rock concert, it's very much you're there, like a priest or a preacher. you are doing your ministry, as they would call it. the meaning i found in it was really that sense that i was filling my purpose. i felt like god wanted me to write these songs and share them with the church. but how could you feel that when the ministers, the actual pastors and preachers that you were performing alongside, were preaching messages, particularly about sexuality, that ran entirely counter to your private identity and thoughts? well, the problem was that i believed that being gay was wrong. and so i agreed with them. did you? oh, yeah, absolutely. i think when something is programmed into you from such a young age — it took me until the age of 30 to come out because i had to unprogram my own brain and body and do a lot of study of the bible and church history and actually

realise that it was ok. i agreed with them the whole way through. i did not live a double life, i did not have relationships nor a private identity. ijust had a sense that i was inherently very broken and very sinful and that is why i had so much shame. and i was agreeing with their message that, actually, i should not be in a relationship and i should get help to try and change which is incredibly sad. and you have talked about the mental health issues, and the depression. how bad did it get? it got really bad, and when i came to write the book i was faced with a decision, how honest am i going to be in this book? i decided i really would tell everything, and so i talked in the opening chapter about finding myself in my late 20s, standing on the london underground, actually considering taking my own life, because i was literally that despondent about the future. i was so isolated, i think ijust...

as you say, i basically locked myself into such a difficult situation, my entire livelihood, all those contracts, moving to the bible belt in america, not being able to talk about why i was so isolated and lonely. i just couldn't really see a way out. it was very frightening. and i got to the point where i was just so alone and so full of shame and fear inside that ijust wanted it all to be over. so the book is very raw in that sense, it really does explain just how dark things got. it is raw, and you can feel the pain in many of the pages. but i'm just wondering, given what a crisis you reached, how you got to a place where, as you say, in 2014 when you were 35, you actually found the courage, the strength, the determination, notjust to declare to people around you that you were gay, but actually to make it something of a public moment. i mean, you spoke to a journalist, it ended up being on the front page of a british newspaper, because you were, you know, it is quite a story, the notion of one of the christian world's leading singer—songwriters declaring she was gay. yeah. how did you get from that girl, that young woman who almost killed herself on the london underground,

to the young woman who is prepared to speak out in that way? it took a lot, and initially it was the breakdown of my mental health. so during my 20s i had a lot of anxiety and depression. like i say, found myself at a really, kind of, suicidal point. but all of that, somehow, ijust managed to keep one step ahead. but the thing i couldn't outrun in the end was my physical health, and i talk in the book as well about a sudden decline of my physical health. i was tired all the time, i was exhausted, and suddenly i began to notice patches of white scarring on my skin. and i didn't think much of it, but i went to a dermatologist and he actually diagnosed it as an autoimmune disease, and he said it was called scleroderma, and i needed chemotherapy to treat it. so it was a bombshell, really, and my life kind of came to a crashing halt. well, the dealing with it, as i say, ended with this front page newspaper, and it was headlined,

vicky beeching christian rock star, quote, "i am gay and god loves me just the way i am". when that came out, were you really sure that god loved you just the way you were, or were you just fervently hoping that was the case? yes. because you told me that, for a long time when you were younger, you actually believe that being homosexual was fundamentally wrong. yes. so, today, for example, do you truly believe that god loves you just the way you are? thankfully i do, at last. but i think the fact that it took me until i was 35 to come out hopefully highlights a lot of the mental work that had to go on for me to actually reassess those beliefs. so when i got diagnosed with scleroderma, i started the chemo, i had to leave america, come back to the uk and have the treatment, and that was when i decided i had to come out at some point. and that is when i began really rethinking the whole issue, revisiting what the bible actually says, with academic scholarship. and i realised, actually, that the verses i thought were prohibitive of same—sex

relationships, i think we havejust misunderstood them in the church. so it took me a long time, several years of study and prayer, but i do believe that now, that god actually creates many of us to be lgbt, and that is who we are meant to be. thing is, many people who used to be sort of coreligionists of yours, in those nominations that one could loosely described as fairly evangelical, quote unquote "fundamentalist" in their christian beliefs, very heavily based upon scripture and fairly literal translation or use of scripture, they now regard you as something of a traitor. yes. they believe that you have found a path that is based upon lies, and indeed, in a sense, a betrayal of jesus christ and his life and teachings. yes, i think that has been the most crushing part. i knew that i would probably lose my music career, which i did. there was a huge boycott of my music, but ijust hadn't expected quite the amount of vitriol and backlash. as soon as i came out, and ever since, really,

i have been receiving hate mail, death threats. but why haven't you expected it? you stood there for years in churches and listened to the sermons and know exactly what they think about homosexuality, so i am surprised you were surprised. i knew there would be some sort of response, but i think i hoped against hope that because it was me and they knew me and because they liked me and sang my songs, maybe there would be a bit more compassion, or perhaps even that some churches would say, "well, we know vicky, we know her music, maybe we will rethink this issue". part of me hoped for that, and in a very small number of cases that happened, but for the most part, unfortunately, most churches slammed the door and told me i was choosing a life of sin, unfortunately. choosing a life of sin, and pastor scott lively responded to your coming out by saying, "i am very sorry to hear that vicky has given into the lie that she is a homosexual, instead of, as she could have, trying to overcome this profound challenge in her life". another leading american sort of theologian of the evangelical movement, robert gagnon, said that he could only "condemn the inauthenticity of desires that

contradict the handiwork of our creator". right, that shows you what i am up against, and why it took until i was 35. are you still a christian? yes. but i think christianity is quite a broad spectrum, and i think it is important that we don't let a very extreme wing of christianity be thought to represent everybody. i am actually doing a phd at the moment in theology, so i am very passionate about understanding the bible in an academic way. and there are plenty of people who think that you can be gay and christian, it is just part of the church doesn't. indeed, and there is now a fierce theological debate about homosexuality, and to a certain extent it is personalised around you. let's leave aside theological debate. let's talk about what really matters, personal relationships. your parents. are they fully accepting of you today? my parents are amazing. they really have only

wanted the best for me, and i think since i came out it has been an opportunity for us to learn. i think it is interesting when people have been in the church their whole lives, it is very difficult for people to kind of change their mind on things. but my parents and also my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, different people, they are all from the same... sorry to interrupt, we are short of time. which matters more to you, the acceptance of your parents or the acceptance of the church? i think both equally, really. i think i would just love to be accepted for who i am by everybody. do you crave acceptance from those of your community who have now walked away from you and described you as a complete sort of. ..charlatan? i think that is part of my problem, because i stay in conversation with them. i am gracious, i am polite, i still love the church and i belong to it. i think many people in my shoes would havejustjettisoned off, parachuted out and become an atheist.

why do you still love the church? even in the church of england, which within the gamut of christian denominations, many would regard the church of england as one of the woolliest, most liberal... and yet their traditional teaching is that same—sex relationships are sinful. forgive the intrusion, i don't know if you are in a relationship at the moment? not at the moment. but if you become in a relationship and get serious and want to get married, you can get married in the uk but in the church of england, as i understand it, you still can't have a full marriage ceremony in a church. so why do you want to be in that church? because i think it is better to stay inside and change the institution. i think if everybody like me left, there wouldn't be anybody left to fight for change. so it is uncomfortable at times, especially at the moment because there is a lot of infighting going on, but i think my influence is best served inside the church of england, hopefully trying to make it a better place for people like me, and if i could sum up my goal, it would be that nobody will have to go through what i have been through again.

throughout your life, you have clearly been a woman who has had to battle enormous amounts of anxiety, you say shame, terrible stresses. are you at peace today? i am, finally, but it has been a long time coming. and there are still war wounds that i deal with. i do still suffer sometimes with anxiety and depression. i have been left with chronic fatigue syndrome, known as me, as a kind of hangover, really, all the stress and the autoimmune issues. so i am still kind of limping along a little bit, but i'm finally able to be me. i am able to be authentic. i think that is the biggest relief. i don't have to double think before i say anything. i don't have to pretend to be someone i am not. i can finallyjustwrite, broadcast, speak, all the things i do now instead of my music career, and just be authentic and open. and i think there is no better example of a human, fully alive, and christian as well, living in love and peace, than someone who can actually be themselves. so that is something that i am very relieved that i finally get to do. vicky beeching, thank you very much

forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you very much. hello, it's been a fairly unsettled weekend. outbreaks of rain have given way to some heavy and in places thundery showers, which will continue to work their way eastwards through the early hours of monday morning. all down to this area of low pressure, which, come first thing monday morning, is still lingering along eastern coasts of england and scotland, still generating some showers. and, for most, it is a day of a few sunny spells and a scattering of showers. and, if you catch one of those, they could still be heavy and thundery. let's look at 4:00pm in the afternoon in a little bit more detail. a fair amount of sunshine

across much of england and wales, more than we saw on sunday. but notice these blobs of blue and green, just giving an indication there will still be some showers pushing their way from west to east, maybe a rumble of thunder or a flash of lightning. a few showers for northern ireland, mainly dry here. some breaks in the cloud to give some bright and sunny spells. a few breaks in the cloud for murray and aberdeenshire, but generally for much of scotland, a lot of cloud, some outbreaks of rain, which will gradually ease through the day. once again, the best of the sunshine will be for shetland. temperatures for scotland on monday, 15—19 celsius. 20 for northern ireland, and 20—24 for england and wales in the best of the sunshine. we'll still keep a few showers going through monday evening and overnight into tuesday, particularly for eastern counties of england. still keeping that zone of cloud across much of scotland, extending its way northwards into 0rkney and shetland. some showery rain arriving into northern ireland through the early hours of tuesday morning. it won't be a cold night, lows between 11 and 15 celsius. starting to feel quite warm and muggy again across south—eastern parts of england.

and it's a real north—west, south—east split as we go into tuesday, north—western areas closer to these fronts bringing some outbreaks of rain. south and east, close to the area of high pressure, so keeping things dry and settled, with a good deal of sunshine across central, eastern and southern england. but starting to see a more noticeable breeze developing across northern ireland, scotland, northern england, some outbreaks of showery rain working their way eastwards on tuesday. so a cooler feel in this zone of cloud and rain, high teens, compared to 24, 25, maybe even 26 for east anglia and south—east england. a similar sort of day on wednesday, except the rain is a little bit more persistent, and the winds will be quite strong, particularly gusty for western coasts. further south and east, again dry, plenty of sunshine, and still feeling very warm. not for much longer, though, because on thursday that band of rain will slip its way south and eastwards, and slowly introduce some fresher conditions across england and wales. so we're all in the fresher conditions on friday, with a mixture of sunshine and showers. so, to sum up the week, it'll be windy at times, there'll be some showers or longer spells of rain, warmest and driest in the south and east. bye— bye.

this is the briefing, i'm tim willcox. our top story: turkey braced for more turmoil. the lira under severe pressure, despite a government action plan to stabilise the currency. tight security in washington, as anti—fascist demonstrators outnumber a handful of white supremacists who held a brief rally near the white house. a special report from afghanistan, where 17 years on from the us—led invasion, the under—resourced local army is still hoping to end the conflict with the taliban. also coming up in the business briefing: trouble in the pipeline. could higher oil prices be on the way, as new us sanctions hit iran?