Hey all! My name is John, I’ve been out for several years and come from a strong Evangelical background. I guess I’m here to re-examine the faith I left behind years ago. So here’s my story…
I grew up with two older siblings (brother and sister) in a very conservative Christian environment. While my parents probably never would have called themselves Evangelical (my Dad was pretty staunch on remaining non-denominational and going “where God wanted us” as it were) the churches and faith communities we ended up in were very much Evangelical. So of course when I first started questioning my sexuality early on, around 12, I was convinced my parents would never except a gay son.
I remember actually accepting that I was gay pretty early, about 13. I told a girl friend I had been close to at our church’s youth group I thought I was gay over the Internet not long after she had moved out state thinking it would be safe. That was a bad idea. It went from her to her youth pastor to her parents to my parents in about a week. They sat me down one night after I had gotten home from youth group and confronted me, first getting it out of me that I thought I was gay and then read out of the Bible about homosexuality being an abomination etc. After that they pretty much let it be, convincing themselves it was just a phase that would pass.
Of course the feelings never went away. I vacillated from being convinced that God would save me to thinking that he had cursed me to a life of evil, that he had chosen for me to be a bad person like he had the Pharaoh or Judas. Eventually as I tried to deal with it all I reached out to friends again (though I was a little more careful in who I trusted this time) for help. Mostly I had started researching online and one day after my Dad sat me down and told me God had convicted him to confront my about my homosexuality I became convinced he must have been watching my history. He suggested therapy and feeling like I didn’t have much of a choice I went along with it.
We were referred to a Christian family counselor about an hour from town. The therapist was in his late 20s, just finishing up his practicum/residency(?) in his fathers practice. While not officially affiliated with any ex-gay organization that I know of, he proceeded to direct me to online ex-gay communities for young people and begin the typical ex-gay line. He told me my father and brother were distant, that I was trying to acquire from other men what I wanted in myself and most importantly that gay people could never be true Christians or happy.
One positive came out of my experience with ex-gay ministries, it was the first place I told anyone that I had been sexually abused. Unfortunately having that experience come to light there meant that the shame and brokenness I already felt over the abuse was then transfered to my sexuality as he convinced that the abuse had made me gay. It would take me years to every be able to really deal with my abuse.
The therapy went on for around a year and half to two years. My enthusiasm waxed and wanned throughout as I would convince myself I could really become straight only to fall to ‘temptation’ yet again. The whole process was like cycle of ever more desperate failures that left me feeling hopeless. By the end I had given up on changing and on God. I was convinced the God of the Bible hated gay people and that made Christianity incompatible with my life.
While I had quietly come this conclusion myself, I hadn’t told anyone. I continued on in therapy telling Chad (not a pseudonym believe it or not…) whatever he wanted to hear and started distancing myself from my family. Eventually my dad found a copy of Brokeback Mountain on my computer and confronted me. This time I held my ground and told him I couldn’t change, that I had tried and tried and nothing worked.
From that point I began to come out to everyone in my life. I told my sister and her husband and left the rest of the family to my parents. Then I came out publicly on MySpace (ya, it was a social networking site once, weird) to all my friends. It was the second semester of my Senior year so there wasn’t a hole lot of time for me to experience any homophobia directed specifically at me.
Honestly I wish that right about that time I would have found something like this, it was exactly what I needed. I didn’t realized it at the time though. I was getting ready to head off to IU in highly liberal and exceedingly gay Bloomington, IN. I thought I’d get to college and just jump into gay life. It was at this point that I started to come back to my faith as well. I had decided that anger at God was no reason to leave my faith, that there were plenty of Gay Christians and I could be one.
Two things happened those first few months of college. First I found myself terrified of going out and meeting other gay people. It was so much easier to rely on my roommate (best friend from High School and fellow Christian) and the friends we already had who’d joined us at IU. I desperately wanted to get out and finally be with other people like me, but I felt trapped in same situation I had found myself in at home.
Second I continued to struggle with my faith. Normally I would have relied on my roommate/best friend for spiritual support, we had always been close even being each other’s “accountability partners” when we were in youth group together. The problem was that he had found his home at Campus Crusade. And while he could find a clique closer aligned to his more moderate values (he grew up Methodist and had never had a problem with my sexuality) the last place I wanted to be was in and organization known for its anti-gay stances, that was what I had been running away from.
Spiritually I was struggling. I had valued my faith so much when I was young, but in all the time I spent angry at God I did my research. I read Hawkings and Dawkins and all the rest. Having grown up in a family whose favorite past time was theological debate I was going to know my stuff before I started calling myself an atheist. As I tried to reclaim my faith I kept struggling to answer all the questions that had arisen in my search for something outside of Christianity.
As the semester went he continued to pressure me, our friendship began to deteriorate, I started wondering whether I could handle my course load, my faith seemed to be slipping away and I was feeling more and more isolated and depressed. One day in October I’d had enough. I walked to the closest gas station and got a box of sleeping pills. I swallowed the entire box in my dorm room only to immediately panic at what I had done. I called a close friend and asked her to take me to the hospital.
I spent the rest of the semester back home working. At that point I had totally given up on reconnecting with my faith, I just wanted to forget about and get back to school, get my life back on track. When I went back I was sure to get a single so I wouldn’t have to deal with a roommate again. As it so happened I ended up living on a floor with about a half dozen other guys I got along with really well. We were all nerds at heart who’d sit around playing Dungeons & Dragons or some card game, but at night these guys were like none of the Christian kids I’d grown up with or the stereotype of the kind of guys who’d play D&D. Point being we drank, a lot.
We went out every weekend night and would sneak booze into the dorm just about every week night. After we all got out of the dorms and moved into our places together things of course got crazier. I’d wake up hungover to my friends polishing off unfinished flat beer from the night before. You’d think in all of this I’d have been finally getting out and at least experimenting with other gay men, if not making friends. Yet despite all the nights of lowered and often absent inhibitions I managed to remain essentially a virgin until less than a year ago. There were a few guys I had fooled around with once or twice. But in all of 4 or 5 years I spent in Bloomington living that life I had fewer than half a dozen encounters, and still not a single gay friend.
After having failed out of IU, watched most of my friends move on and losing my job I finally left Bloomington. I moved back home while I looked for an apartment in Indianapolis and applied to a local community college. A few months after I moved to Indy I met my boyfriend online. We’ve been seeing each other for about half a year now and things are going well.
So it’s back to the beginning I guess. Like I said, I’m here to re-examine my faith and what role my sexual orientation has played in it over the years. For the longest time I told myself that I couldn’t go back to the church not because I was gay but because I could no longer believe in the Bible. But now I wonder how true that is. Lately I’ve really missed being part of a faith community.
These days as my family has dealt with meeting my boyfriend and having him over for special events I can see how far my parents have come from the people who sent me to therapy all those years ago. I sense we could be really close again, and I know they want to see me back in a church again (the constant name dropping of gay friendly churches is a pretty good hint lol) and frankly I’m kind of curious. I just don’t know that I want try that reconciliation again, it was so painful the first time. I was immersed in the clobber passages all the time and it just felt like I was trying to mold and twist the words and translations to make them fit what I wanted them to say.
So here I am :bigsmile:
|
