Integrating My Faith and Homosexuality
By Tom
Looking back, I realize that I have been attracted to other men since early adolescence. For years, though, I worked very hard to hide my gay feelings from everyone, including myself. There were a few times when I would acknowledge to myself that I might be gay but then would quickly stuff away that realization again. When I was 17, I looked at myself in my car mirror and shouted, "You're gay aren't you?" And then I shouted back even louder, "No, it can't be true!"
I grew up in Texarkana, Texas, which is not the world's most liberal or diverse place. Growing up, I never met another person who said he or she was gay. I was taught that the Bible condemned homosexuality, but it was as if being gay was so bad that religious people couldn't even discuss it or as if gay people just didn't exist.
My freshman year in college was the first time that my armor of self-deception began to crack. One day, my friends were looking at the new Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition, and I was horrified to realize that these women had absolutely no sexual effect on me. As the semester went on, I increasingly became aware that I was much more interested in the guys in my classes than I was in those supermodels.
Hoping for a "cure"
As doubts about my sexuality grew more intense, so did my religious activity. I started going to the Baptist Student Union regularly. Later that year, I even volunteered to lead a Bible study, motivated in part by the belief that doing so would keep me from succumbing to homosexuality. To the contrary, it was on a retreat with the Baptist Student Union that I realized how real my attractions were.
On the first evening, we re-enacted the Passover dinner and the leader asked us to hold hands with the people beside us. When one of the guys took my hand, it was almost like electricity. Just the touch of his hand was so intense that it distracted me throughout the rest of the dinner.
By the summer of 1995, I had come to the point of despair. I had to talk to somebody, so I told my Southern Baptist pastor. When I asked him what I could do to change, he said he didn't know if there was anything that I could do, but that I should continue my religious activities and pray to keep my relationship with God alive. After that, I was in church every time the doors opened, hoping that God would reward my faithful attendance by "curing" me.
Later in the summer, I came out to my aunt, who has a gay son. She had repeatedly said that, if he wanted to, he could change. She sent me to an "ex-gay" counseling group, known as LifeGuard Ministries, whose slogan was "Offering Freedom from Homosexuality through Jesus Christ."
I began to attend LifeGuard, which, at least, brought me to a where I could be honest with some people about what was going on in my life. However, being in LifeGuard seemed to give my feelings a new prominence in my life and caused me more guilt. During January of 1996, I had become very frustrated that my desires were intensifying instead of going away. The next month, I became romantically involved with another group member and we both stopped attending. I didn’t think that LifeGuard's methods had failed me. I thought just I wasn’t devout enough.
Trying to abandon my religion
Almost daily, I felt as though there were two great forces in my head which were constantly fighting one another: my homosexuality and my desire be a good Christian. After several years of trying to turn off my homosexual attractions, I tried instead to turn off God. So, I stopped attending church, reading the religious books, praying and listening to Christian music.
In addition to guilt, I also got a large dose of condemnation from my aunt. Just hours after my grandmother’s funeral, she told me that my struggle represented a battle for my soul and that I must repent or face eternal punishment. What she refused to understand was that I had tried hundreds of times to repent but that I never became any less gay.
I also had an increasingly difficult time having conversations with my mother for fear that I would somehow reveal my orientation. When I was 12, she told my brother and me that we could tell her anything but that we were "queer." Words like that leave an indelible impression upon a child who somehow knows they have special relevance for him, and they haunted me each time I thought of coming out to my parents. My mother and I have always been close, and my sexuality is probably the only major secret I have kept from her. Though I felt deep down that my parents really would love me regardless, I wasn’t prepared to find out otherwise.
Making sense of my life
In the midst of all this, school became an afterthought. One day, a professor asked me what was wrong. She said that my class attendance was sporadic and my work far from my potential. When I told her I was having difficulty reconciling being a Christian and being gay, she suggested that I withdraw from school so that the upheaval would not permanently damage my transcript. I followed that advice and, free of the pressure of school, I started working full time and trying to make sense of my life.
I bought the book "What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality" (Helminiak, Daniel, Alamo Square Press, 2000), which had an unexpected impact on me. The first few chapters talked simply about what the Bible was and how to interpret it. That was probably the first time I had ever read something that said the Bible had to be read in its historical context, rather than literally. Although I wasn’t entirely convinced, the book had done two things: it gave me a viable alternative perspective on homosexuality and the Bible and it gave me the courage to continue exploring.
Coming out
A couple of months later, my mom and I were talking on the phone and she brought up my return to school. I told her that I wanted to wait until the stress in my life calmed down before I went back. She became concerned and pressed me to tell her what was wrong. I hesitated for a few moments but decided the time was right to come out to her. Although it was not easy for her to hear, she told me from the first moment that she would always love me.
In the months that followed, there were tense moments and heated conversations, but my parents never once stopped loving me. Still, the pace of their progress was frustrating. I wanted my parents to accept me being gay immediately. In retrospect, my parents -- especially my mother -- handled the situation extremely well and made steady progress in understanding me, particularly given the church, culture and generation in which they had been raised. They needed time though, just as I did.
Soon after coming out to my parents, I began to attend University Baptist Church, which had gained fame for ordaining a gay deacon. It was a wonderful place for me and helped me to bridge the divide between my Baptist upbringing and the theology that approved homosexuality. I also felt spiritually nurtured there, through my first interactions with gay and gay-friendly Christians.
By early 1997, I had come to a place of relative peace. I no longer questioned whether it was possible for me to live as an openly gay Christian, even though I was still answering my own questions about how to do so. With my inner turmoil at a low, I re-enrolled in school and had my best semester to date. I continued to meet gay people and became much more comfortable telling others about my orientation. I even joined a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender campus group.
Soon I became an officer in my campus GLBT group. In that capacity, my name appeared several times in the student newspaper, which put an end to my days in the closet. It wasn't long before people from Texarkana found out that I was gay. This made my parents uncomfortable at first, but decided I didn't care who knew.
Each day, I was becoming more and more involved in GLBT happenings on campus. In late October, I became president of the campus group. With this new responsibility came an ever-increasing visibility. It wasn't long before I began to wonder why I had ever cared if people found out. Having come to terms with myself, my involvement with the group was an opportunity to help others so that they might not have to experience the pain I did.
Conclusion
It was amazing. In less than six months, I went from being a scared bystander at meetings to what some people jokingly called the "big fag on campus." I had waited so long to begin dealing with my sexuality that, when I finally did so, I was determined not to waste any more of my life living a lie.
From the depth of my despair in 1993, I could not have even imagined the joy, peace and wholeness that I would experience in those six years. Though I have had sad and trying times, out of them have come the blessings of my life. For some, being gay is a struggle that they would gladly toss aside. For me, being gay has been something I wouldn’t give up -- it has forced me to learn so much that I might never have otherwise. Perhaps the most important of these lessons has been that no matter what I have faced, God has been with me and has brought a fullness and richness to my life that I never imagined possible.
