YouTuber Anthony Quintal, known by viewers as Lohanthony, has announced that he is turning away from his homosexuality — and from fornication or lust of any kind — as he now finds his identity in Jesus Christ.

“I am feeling a big love and I can’t hold it in any longer,” he announced in a video on Aug. 18. “I’ve been feeling a shift in my life for a while, and I can only thank Christ for that.  … Jesus found me, and Jesus has known me for a while.”

Quintal, 21, said that his parents raised him Catholic, and while he was not opposed to God as a youth, he tried to fill the “God-sized void with earthly pleasures.” He and his friends stole a number of items from the local Rite Aid, and he turned to smoking, drugs and menacing the community.

As a teenager, he launched his Lohanthony YouTube page and began garnering attention.

“My relationship to God wasn’t right, so naturally so, I fell down a rabbit hole, of trying to replace God in my life with views [of my videos], with subscribers, with meet and greets, with likes, with attention, with shares, with you name it — leading up to the big bang in my teenage life when I discovered drugs,” Quintal explained.

He pursued the high that he felt in taking drugs, thinking they were his “portal to God,” and also found himself addicted to alcohol. Quintal also dabbled in the occult.

In the meantime, his videos sought to tell people how to love themselves, as he thought it was his purpose.

“How vain it seems now that I believed that. What would a world be filled with people just staring at the mirror all day, saying ‘I love you,’ hypnotizing themselves into self-obsession [and] into vanity?” he asked. “I needed love … and I thought I could provide myself with that love. I understand now God can only provide that love …”

In a separate video, Quintal shared that he also became involved in homosexuality in middle school, seeking sexual activity from others over a decade after being sexually assaulted as a child.

“I was beginning to understand that I was desired by men, and I was already beginning to understand that my youth was attractive to people, and I began to think about who it was that I was attracted to,” he explained, outlining that he generally thought about sexuality at first before being led into homosexuality, entering a relationship with a girl in third grade.

In middle school, Quintal learned that a male student was homosexual and it intrigued him. He soon shared in a chat that he had an attraction toward the student, and they became involved in a relationship. They later separated, again realizing that they could not fulfill each other’s desires.

“At first, I came out as bisexual to my parents through this incident with this boy. … I eventually came out as gay,” Quintal shared. “And I was kind of back and forth with this myself.”

He continued to have relationships with men, downloading Grindr and hooking up with others.

“I thought that since [God] put me through a struggle [of being abused], that He could not heal me from what man had done to me,” Quintal said. “I thought it was what God did to me, but that is not true.”

Quintal outlined that he has now come to understand the fallen nature of mankind, “both through man and through my own wicked ways.” He realized that he was searching for fulfillment in others.

“That person hurt me; that sin hurt me and I sinned against other people,” he stated.

But, “[e]ven when I was pursing my same-sex attraction, I felt this impending force against me that wouldn’t allow me to feel fulfilled in that relationship,” Quintal recalled. “There is nothing on this earth that can fulfill me the way that He can, the way that He did, and there is no one that can love me in the way that Jesus is.”

Last Wednesday, Quintal released a follow-up video in after his message sent ripples online about his renunciation of homosexuality, explaining that he isn’t just against homosexuality. He’s against lust and fornication of any kind.

“I support abandoning consuming lusts, homosexual and heterosexual alike. No person is safe from lusting over whoever we are attracted to, both single or in marriage,” he said. “This is a temptation that most likely none of us are safe from.”

“I support leaving our old ways behind, especially if we’re saved — ways ruled by the flesh, ways ruled by sensual want and ways unreflective of how Jesus walked,” Quintal explained.

He pointed Matthew 16:24, in which Jesus said, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow Me.”

Quintal said that the announcement of his decision to refrain from sexual activity of any kind was not meant to target anyone but should rather be considered “a declaration of our victory through faith in Jesus Christ alone.”

He also stated that while some assert that he doesn’t need to change because “God loves us the way we are,” Quintal felt compelled by God to examine his inner lusts and behavior.

“I came to Jesus having experienced all kinds of intimacy, all of which left me empty. But my Lord satisifies with comfort of which he deals plenty, with love He supplies bountifully. With him, my cup runs over,” he declared. “His love has replaced my emptiness, and with Him, my cup overflows.”

“I came to him feeling trapped by pursuits of masturbation, lust of the eyes and observance of pornography — acts that entangled me with objectification, alienation and what felt like separation from God,” Quintal continued. “God has always been there, willing to show me a way out.”

He says that he has now turned to Christ for salvation and regeneration.

“And rather hide where I was, hide in my sin, hide in my hurt, hide even from salvation, which I did for so long … rather than engaging in the same cycles over and over and over again, I appeared to my Heavenly Father in prayer … and I ended my avoidance. And to me, He shared His law,” Quintal stated. “If I confess to King Jesus and gave Him my heart, rebirth and forgiveness He would surely share.”

Outlining that spiritual warfare is real, and that temptation comes in many forms, he said that it is not just lust and fornication that he has repented of, but he wishes to resist all sin and dedicate himself to God.

“Our Heavenly Father is not a God of passivity, turning a blind eye to the ways we harm ourselves and damage the temple He built,” he said. “Rather, He is a God that through His Son Lord Jesus Christ grants new beginnings and strengthens our discipline with Him. We overcome the enemy with Him by our side.”

“I pray we can all see that nobody is excluded from salvation through Christ,” Quintero posted to social media on Aug. 23, “and I pray we can all come to Him and place our past at His feet.”

2 Corinthians 5:17 proclaims, “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

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