So many stories of freedom 2 be have touched my life. As I don’t have an evangelical or pentecostal background, before reading Anthony’s Life of Unlearning and finding F2B through my dad, I had never really heard so many heartbreaking and inspiring stories to do with Christianity and homosexuality.
Since as far back as I can remember I knew my dad was gay. I didn’t have a word for it for a long time and he never told me or gave out clear hints. I have been asked before why I didn’t think it was because of another woman that led to my parents divorce. I can only say I just knew.
My dad and also my mum seemed unhappy much of my childhood. They loved my brothers and me and we were all close to each other but there was always a distance I felt coming from my dad. Perhaps unconsciously through all those childhood years when the word gay wasn’t even in my vocabulary I spent time thinking why I felt this distance with my dad even though we were close to each other, and over the years like pieces of a puzzle I figured it out.
I do have a Christian background. Not an entirely good one either, though I have let most of that go. Religion and faith still trouble me. My dad attends church every week and is involved in the church but he isn’t out to anyone there. He isn’t out at work, his parents never knew and although he has accepted himself as he is and believes God loves him as he is, my dad is unwilling to be in a relationship. It upsets me because I want him to be happy and not alone and I also want him to be accepted by others as he is.
It has been more than 10 years since my family felt such incredible pain when my parents broke up. My dad couldn’t live a lie any longer, though he loved my mum so much.
I have sometimes thought how different things could have been. At times these thoughts feel like a punch in the gut. If my dad had lived true to himself then my brothers and me wouldn’t exist. Would half my genes, the one’s from my mum, be out there on somebody else? Some other person who half looks like me? Would my mum then not have gone through a divorce? Would she still be with the man she wanted to spend her life with? Would she have felt more like the woman she was meant to be and have that man that she always wanted from the start?
My dad grew up in the country where gays did not ‘exist’ at the time. The church was always important in his life. To him and those around him Christianity and homosexuality did not go together. I realise this played a huge part in my dad wanting to be like everyone else and living in such heavy denial. What if he had lived true to himself, perhaps moved to the city and met other men? Would he have found the one for him? Might he have lived with AIDS? Maybe he and a partner could have had children like he always wanted, maybe with a friend or lesbian couple.
Big ifs and that’s why I don’t bring them to the forefront of my mind very often.
I have a friend who once said to me that she thinks same-sex attracted people should change, if they can, so that then they could get married and have children. This dear friend already knew of the reasons my family broke up and of my dad. Once not long after my dad came out I was talking to a young man who said to me he was gay but didn’t really want to be. I think I made him promise to never lie and to never marry a woman.
I love my dad. The gay thing never bothered me like it may have others. I never had a chance to think being gay was wrong. I never encountered any preaching against homosexuality. The gay people I had ever heard of were always lovely people. If I still have any pain over my family breaking up because of my dad it is that of what we all had to go through. What was so needless and so helpless.
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