Aug 01, 2003  |  By: LAURA DOUGLAS-BROWN  | COMMENTS     

chat room. They began meeting in the late fall of 2001, and their sexual relationship lasted about six months.

“It wasn’t all the time — he would just appear from time to time,” the man said. “But we were friends for a year and a half.”

Michael Johnston appeared with his mother, trong>Frances Johnston, in a controversial 1998 television ad claiming he ‘walked away from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ,’ but not before contracting AIDS.

“Sean” only revealed his HIV status at the end of the men’s friendship, claiming he had just found out, the man said. He learned Sean’s true identity from a friend who also dated him.

The friend apparently learned that Sean’s real name was Michael Johnston from his driver’s license. An Internet search revealed Johnston’s work with ex-gay ministries.

“I was shocked, and I felt betrayed,” the man said. After seeing photos from the ex-gay Web sites and television ad, “I have absolutely no doubt Sean is Michael Johnston,” he said.

After discussing the issue with friends, the man contacted Michael Hamar, a Virginia attorney.

Virginia law makes it a felony to knowingly expose someone to HIV, but Hamar said his client hasn’t pursued either a civil lawsuit or a criminal complaint against Johnston.

“At this point, he is sort of overwhelmed by it all,” Hamar said. “But he felt at minimum he needed to get the word out, so that if nothing else, others who may have been exposed would go get tested.”

Hamar learned of Besen’s book on the Internet and contacted him. Besen then traveled to Virginia where he said he interviewed Hamar’s client and his friend who also said he had unprotected sex with Johnston.

One of the men told him Johnston had said he was entering Pure Life Ministries, Besen said. The facility in rural Kentucky requires a minimum stay of six months and “helps Christian men achieve lasting freedom from sexual s