A journey toward loving drag queens

I learned in my teens that in my faith walk, my best friend and ever-present source of guid­ance, com­fort, and con­vic­tion, is the Holy Spirit. So, as I began to ques­tion my church’s teach­ings on the queer and ques­tion­ing, I asked my Friend for guid­ance. I prayed to be direct­ed to the teach­ings, read­ings, and expla­na­tions I need­ed. I par­tic­u­lar­ly prayed to be led to the peo­ple I need­ed to meet and learn from.

While what I stud­ied and read helped me immea­sur­ably, it was, of course, the peo­ple who had the most impact. In fact, get­ting to know the peo­ple fur­ther encour­aged me to keep research­ing the truth. 

Two gay indi­vid­u­als with whom I worked patient­ly explained, and even some­times gen­tly rebuked, while allow­ing me to keep ques­tion­ing. Two small boys, in two dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies, had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on me when I learned that they insist­ed they were not boys at all. Each was four years old, each was tak­en from doc­tor to doc­tor, and in the case of one of them, I learned that the final doc­tor, a Christian who spe­cial­ized in child psy­chol­o­gy, assured the par­ents that this lit­tle child was men­tal­ly healthy, and of course, had no “agen­da.” He expressed the opin­ion that there was a sci­ence here that we were still try­ing to learn.  This was in the late 1990s. I think of those two adults often.

I stud­ied the writ­ings of folks like myself, who were ques­tion­ing what they’d been taught. I stud­ied the works of the­olo­gians who knew the orig­i­nal lan­guages of scrip­ture. I already knew that nowhere in the study of my Savior were there any words of con­dem­na­tion for the queer and ques­tion­ing. In fact, He had nev­er men­tioned homo­sex­u­al­i­ty one time. 

Ever.

I was left to research who exact­ly may have shak­en this up and come out with con­dem­na­tion that wasn’t there. After all, scrip­ture itself describes the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as inhos­pi­tal­i­ty to strangers, not sodomy. (I’d say that yes, rap­ing vis­it­ing angels is about as inhos­pitable as it gets; this was a pow­er move, an attempt to sub­ject rather impres­sive-look­ing, intim­i­dat­ing vis­i­tors, who were there to stay with a rather wealthy, pow­er­ful res­i­dent of the city.)

Various trans­la­tors, over a lot of years, added their own cul­tur­al bias­es, their own slants, to the orig­i­nal texts, and com­plete­ly removed much scrip­ture that didn’t fit with their world­view; that’s for anoth­er chap­ter and anoth­er time.

For now, for myself, I was also faced with this ques­tion: who, in the name of all that’s obvi­ous, would CHOOSE a life of being per­se­cut­ed, at the very least, and endan­gered, at the very worst. (Please research Matthew Shepard for more on that abom­inable history.) 

Did it not make more sense that a gay per­son sim­ply was born gay, and, to live out their truth, must pur­sue their own way in this life?

Throughout these months and even years of study and research, I con­tin­ued to pray, ask­ing to be led into truth. So, when my long-ago and far-away stu­dent (I’d taught him when he was in high school, in the ear­ly 1990s) found me and called me to invite me to his wed­ding and to the days-lat­er recep­tion to a man he’d already spent a whole lot of years with, I imme­di­ate­ly said yes. My hus­band and I could make the trip back east for the recep­tion; I was deeply touched that this stu­dent want­ed his old English teacher there. I’d also learned that his one remain­ing par­ent would have noth­ing to do with him or his wed­ding, and my heart ached. What I expe­ri­enced was deeply mov­ing: two indi­vid­u­als com­plete­ly com­mit­ted to each oth­er, desir­ing only to live their shared future.

When the cen­sor­ship and ban­ning of library books became nor­mal­ized in our soci­ety, it didn’t take long for any­one to see that almost the only books being cen­sored were those with LGBTQ sub­ject mat­ter. Heterosexually-explic­it books were accept­able in the teen area of the pub­lic library, but books with gay char­ac­ters? Big nope. When books for younger chil­dren appeared, books that taught chil­dren that kind­ness toward our LGBTQ neigh­bor is what should be the norm, these, too, were cen­sored, nation­wide in some cas­es, because of some per­ceived “gay agenda.”

The dam­age being done to chil­dren was my final straw. I learned that the sui­cide rate among queer and ques­tion­ing kids was much high­er than in the gen­er­al teen pop­u­la­tion. God is the giv­er of life; life is what He desires for us, and it could not be His will to shrug and say sim­ply, “Well, we are bet­ter off with­out that homosexual.”

Finally, when I com­plete­ly opened my mind and heart to the absolute truth that GOD is LOVE, all inde­ci­sion melt­ed away, and I found that the gay peo­ple in my com­mu­ni­ty were already so lov­ing, so full of wel­come, so hap­py to allow me into their lives, that I was and am full of thanks­giv­ing to my Friend, the Holy Spirit, the gen­tle nudger of the Trinity, for the faith­ful work of lead­ing me onward. 

I’m still study­ing, still learn­ing, but the top­ic of the Lord and the LGBTQ folks has been resolved for me. It can be that for you as well, but you must be bold enough to ask for it.

I am a mem­ber and the Senior Warden of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Winchester. Our church is ful­ly affirm­ing and ful­ly wel­com­ing. Please let us wel­come you, wher­ev­er you are in your faith journey!

Recommended reading

I high­ly rec­om­mend the fol­low­ing books.

• Any works by Rachel Held Evans, par­tic­u­lar­ly Braving the Truth
• Dan McLellan, The Bible Says So
• Matthew Vines, God and the Gay Christian