I’m back from some R&R, and now that it’s June, Pride Month, I thought I’d reflect on when I came out. I want young LGBTQ people to know that a wonderful life awaits you even if you are being told right now that you have to somehow change into a straight person. I believe that you are made in the image of God, and so do a lot of other people. You are not alone, and you are not damaged goods.
As a teen, I felt the pressure to conform as straight. That pressure was so strong yet unspoken in my experience. But the writing was on the wall — nobody talked about homosexuality or lesbianism in my church.
My youth director didn’t discuss it, our “old white guy pastor” didn’t mention it, and I felt I had nowhere to go that would be safe for me to talk about my feelings. That was the 70s, but in many ways that pressure still exists today, and a host of churches and traditions are much more blatant about rejecting young people who come out of the closet to claim their full self.
Even today, many teens and young adults are put out of their house at the behest of their own pastors! There are millions of church kids who have or will feel like this. It’s a terrifying place, especially if you wind up on the streets.
A forced and unholy choice
In addition to feeling alone, there is a presumption out there that you can’t have your faith and live out your life as a lesbian or gay man with honesty and integrity. NOT TRUE. The church expects, and in some cases requires you to lie, to live in secrecy, to misrepresent yourself to your community, and to misrepresent yourself to your Creator as you engage in your cloaked existence. That’s a hypocritical solution, and one that is destined to fail.
If you speak up, you maybe are cast into the land of the rejected, the outcasts, the others. Or worse yet, you are subjected to “conversion therapy,” which has been proven to harm rather than help. When you are 17, the consequences of rejection are devastating.
According to the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University:
“Gay and transgender teens who were highly rejected by their parents and caregivers were at very high risk for health and mental health problems when they become young adults (ages 21-25). Highly rejected young people were:
- More than 8 times as likely to have attempted suicide
- Nearly 6 times as likely to report high levels of depression
- More than 3 times as likely to use illegal drugs, and
- More than 3 times as likely to be at high risk for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases compared with gay and transgender young adults who were not at all or only rejected a little by their parents and caregivers – because of their gay or transgender identity.”
I was suicidal
I was suicidal for months and thought about climbing to the second story roof of our house and jumping headfirst to my death. What stopped me? My guess is that small inner voice that kept saying to me, you can’t give up on Jesus, and you can’t give up on yourself. And you can’t hurt Mom like that.
Now, I was lucky there. When my Mom found out, all she said was, “You’re mine and that’s it.” She meant she would love me always, and nothing on earth could break that bond between us. And, she was true to her word to her last breath. And she loved my partner like her own daughter.
Love. That’s what my Mom was about. That love saved me. I cannot imagine navigating the coming out process without at least one loving adult to turn to for advice, support, and affirmation of my personhood.
Reject that label of “Abomination”
When I was in seminary, I served as a chaplain at an urban drop-in center for LGBTQ youth. One day I was walking up the steep staircase and saw a big white board at the top of the stairs.
At the top of the board was a question written in cursive:
How are you feeling today?
ABOMINATION
The answer, ABOMINATION, was written in block letters and centered top to bottom and side to side.
I was immediately so angry — it was the same BS that I had experienced 30 years before. It was at that moment that I started “The Lazarus Lives! Project” on Facebook. You can go there and start following. I post positive, life-affirming news, Bible verses, encouragement, and even info about safety and being careful, and how proposed laws would limit our civil rights. Check it out! You belong there!
Don’t let others weaponize the Bible against you!
Next week, I will provide some insight into the “Clobber” passages that anti-LGBTQ Christians use to beat us over the head. Sometimes this is done with a real concern over our “salvation.” However, mostly these passages are used to insult, belittle, and humiliate us in order to exclude us from the beloved community as inferior or degenerate.
In the meantime, I will leave you with one of my favorite Psalms to remind you how wonderfully and marvelously God has made you. This is a special and favorite translation by the Sisters of the Episcopal Order of St. Helena.
I make a point of this because I’m honored to say that I am an Associate of the Order. This learned and spiritually deep group of women religious translated the entire collection of Psalms into inclusive English so that all who read it feel like the language is meant to include them. This is incredibly important for members of the LGBTQ communities for numerous reasons.
Their book is called The Saint Helena Psalter, published by Church Publishing (Episcopal) in 2004. You’ll notice an asterisk at the end of the first phrase of each verse. Traditionally we pause at the asterisk, and I encourage you to do so. Pausing slows us down, and the psalm becomes more prayer-like.
1 O God, you have searched me out and known me: *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
2 You trace my journeys and my resting-places, *
and you are acquainted with all of my ways.
3 Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O God, know it altogether.
4 You press upon me behind and before, *
and lay your hand upon me.
5 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.
6 Where can I go then from your Spirit; *
where can I flee from your presence?
7 If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.
8 If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
9 Even there your hand will lead me, *
and your right hand hold me fast.
10 If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me, *
and the light around me turn to night,”
11 Darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day; *
darkness and light to you are both alike.
12 For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
13 I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
14 My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.
15 Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,
when as yet there was none of them.
16 How deep I find your thoughts, O God; *
how great is the sum of them!
17 If I were to count them, they would be more in number
than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to
be like yours.
22 Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
23 Look well whether there be any wickedness in me, *
and lead me in the way that is everlasting.
Blessings on your journey.+
