Here’s the story of how I became queer-affirming in a conservative Christian environment. This is the sixth and final installment of a six-part series. For context, check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.
After that very long and gradual move toward becoming open to different lenses, it didn’t take that many interactions with openly queer Christians to figure out that heteronormativity was a big fat charade that made zero sense. I met one of the most beautiful storyteller activists, a man who happened to be gay and married to a man. This was 2015 and I was still technically on the fence about same-sex marriage. But I couldn’t get away from what was so obvious now that I had eyes to see. This activist was lovely. He was married to a man, who was also lovely. How could this loveliness not extend to their union? There just wasn’t anything wrong here except my perception.
I can’t overemphasize how crucial direct encounter with queer voices is (in person and through media). It’s sad that this even needs to be said. It still appalls me that I was able to grow up largely reading only white voices, predominately male, and if any of them were queer, their queerness was obscured. I mean, who knew that Emily Dickinson was probably queer?
People deserve to tell their stories in their own way, and if you only ever read or watch things that other people have written about queer folx by others, you won’t get very far. But more than that: There’s often an emotional shift that must take place, especially for those of us who have been raised in homophobic religious communities. I don’t remember a specific point when I became “queer-affirming,” but I do remember two very different encounters I had with queer love stories. Somewhere in between the two, I’d had some sort of emotional shift.
The first was a movie I’d found from one of those “20 Movies on Netflix You Must See” articles. I can’t remember the name. A few minutes into the movie, I realized that the main character was a gay widower and that the rest of the story was about his grieving process and, later, his story of finding love again. I decided not to finish it. It wasn’t that I thought there was anything wrong with the story per say or that gay love was evil. I just wasn’t emotionally engaged, specifically because it was a love story about a man and another man. As a cis woman who’d only ever operated on straight love stories, I didn’t feel like the story was for me.
Fast forward who knows how long to another movie on Netflix, God’s Own Country (I guess it had to be 2017 or later). Set on a Yorkshire farm in England, it’s about a young sheep farmer and his relationship with a Romanian migrant worker whom his father hires for extra help during the lambing season. It’s a beautiful film about two young men whose paths unexpectedly cross. Their relationship unfolds in ways that bring healing and intimacy. It has all the things: companionship, romance, sexuality, etc.
I remember watching and feeling so emotionally full. It was one of the most moving human encounters I’d ever seen. And in contrast to my response to that first Netflix film, I felt like every second of God’s Own Country was for me, that I was part of that love story.
The Queer Castle
In early 2019, things kicked up a notch. I got a new job and three of the six members of our tight-knit news team were not only queer, but very in touch with what queer identity meant to them personally. They also happened to be some of the coolest people on the planet, and it wasn’t long before these professional relationships deepened into friendship.
These friendships have given me a safe space to start thinking more deeply about my own sexuality and gender identity. Evangelical purity culture was in its heyday during my adolescent years and I’ve had to do a lot of deconstruction in its aftermath, rethinking nearly everything I was told about relationships, bodies, sex, and gender. But until now, I haven’t had a judgement-free zone to do this.
And here’s the thing about queer culture: It recognizes that there’s no one way to be queer. Heteronormative culture expects everyone’s sexuality and gender identity to follow the same basic pattern. But life doesn’t work like that. Every relationship is a negotiation. Things are messy. And queer culture gets that.
Queer culture also understands that society shames the bodies that don’t fit into a heteronormative mold. It ostracizes bodies that transgress the bounds of carefully manicured white order. But queer culture knows the secret: No body in its fullness has ever really been respectable. And so, its posture is one of reclamation: It takes symbols of shame and wears them as badges of honor.
I’m clawing my way out of the cesspool of shame that is evangelical purity culture. I need a culture of reclamation, an eagerness to take the old slurs meant for shame and twist them into paeans of pride.
Listening to queer discourse has also given me a more expansive language. Just as ancient peoples may not have seen blue because they didn’t have a language for it, so the capacity to perceive expands when you have words and names to describe things. Hearing perspectives from people who identify as asexual, pansexual, intersex, transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid or agender (this isn’t a comprehensive list–just examples of identifiers I wasn’t familiar with before) has opened me to a cornucopia of human existence I wasn’t aware of before.
But enough about me. I began this series to tell you about my journey toward queer-affirmation in a non-affirming religious context, so naturally it centers my personal experience, how queer people and thought have influenced me. But the important takeaway isn’t how queer-affirmation can expand the minds of straight people. So, go. Read. Listen. Engage. Here are some books by queer authors that you might want to check out. Some of these I’ve read, and others are on my to-read list.
Fiction:
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Essays Collections:
Sovereign Erotics edited by Qwo-Li Driskill, Daniel Heath Justice, Deborah Miranda, and Lisa Tatonetti
Queer and Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives edited by Nia King, Terra Mikalson, and Jessica Glennon-Zukoff
Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity edited Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane
Memoirs/Speeches:
Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Becoming Eve by Abby Chava Stein
Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story by Jacob Tobia
There’s no one book that can tell you how to think about everything or give you the Definitive Experience about anything. That’s kind of the point–debunking the myth that there’s even such a thing as a definitive experience. And you’ll find even within LGBTQIA+ communities, there’s debate and argument about what different words mean and how they should be used. That’s par for the course. No community is a monolith.
But while no one can speak for everyone, you’ll find common themes and experiences. The more you read, the more you encounter, the more you’ll start to get a feel for the lay of the land and where you happen to be in it. The more you’ll see where all these stories connect.
I doubt you’ll come to any fixed conclusion or find a voice to speak the last word. I used to find this idea disturbing, but not anymore. I’m more troubled by aspirations of finality and grand sweeping narratives that drown out other voices. A society can’t be simultaneously just, living, and static.
Decolonizing the earth doesn’t mean the end of new names or the death of language. If anything, it signals an abundance of generative speech, and infinity of communal linguistic creation. We’ll keep eating and drinking and talking and making. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want this party to end.