I’ve lived many lives. This consists of an enthusiastic (and really earnest) half-dozen years of my adolescence and younger maturity as an brisk Daytona Seashore, Florida-dwelling born-again Christian. I participated in actions reminiscent of going to church 4 instances per week, asking strangers on the bus if that they had accepted Jesus Christ as their private savior, and giving out Gospel tracts on the seaside.
Nowadays I’m an enthusiastic (and honestly, equally earnest) nonbinary large-city-dwelling queer. My actions now embody issues like making triple-threat artwork as a comic/author/nurse, chatting with patrons at my neighborhood espresso store about moral nonmonogamy, and attending protests, a few of which additionally occur on the seaside.
So once I obtain a social media pal request, the potential connection might come from Column A or Column B, and one Column B pal describes me as having an “accept ’em all, let God sort ’em out” technique.
A few of my Column B associates don’t love my social media pal anarchy, particularly when interactions a few presumably impartial matter go deeply and bizarrely awry.
“Um, why am I arguing with some guy you went to high school with about how 5G and scripture prove the Earth is flat on your post about finding a home for a three-legged kitten?” my pal will textual content on a random Tuesday afternoon.
These interactions will be stunning and deeply troubling, it’s true. However principally, my associates don’t love my All Pals Aboard coverage as a result of they love and fear about me.
The continuing painful wrestle of a queer grownup who got here out of a rejecting, evangelical Christian previous is, sadly, a standard expertise. But it surely’s not my expertise. I used to be not out as queer or genderqueer in highschool. Maybe I ought to have been. I did love softball, and I owned a mirror.
Photograph Courtesy of Kelli Dunham
I even knew a number of LGBTQ+ of us personally, however they have been principally deeply caught in chaotic, typically messy closets. I don’t suppose I totally understood exploring my sexual orientation or gender identification as a constructive potential choice for me.
Throughout this time, the folks of my church’s youth group confirmed me nice love, transformative love even. My involvement within the youth group saved me busy and out of bother. Particularly the form of bother that a particularly under-supervised youngster of an exhausted single mother would possibly discover in Daytona Seashore, Florida, within the Eighties. So perhaps I join in gratitude.
I’m not so filled with myself that I believe my hilarious recounting of encountering bodily fluids on the A practice, sizzling takes on the “Real Housewives” in Montana, and yearly repost of my grandmother’s chocolate sheet cake recipe are so inherently useful that they supply some form of karmic compensation for the impression this had on my youthful self. As a substitute, my optimistic recollections of optimistic interactions make me shrug a bit and suppose, “Why would I let a little thing like being on the opposite sides of the culture war break up a cyber friendship? How bad can it be?”
Typically it’s not unhealthy. Typically it’s hilarious.
For instance, the conference of evangelicals utilizing their Fb standing for direct deal with prayers retains me guessing as I scroll. At a fast look, “Thank you, Jesus, for keeping my boy Jake safe from the snapping turtle last night” may be literal, or it could possibly be a drag queen pal, paradoxically subposting a few Grindr encounter.
Typically, it’s heartwarming and hopeful. My second cousin, somebody I do know from eighth grade Sunday faculty, and an ex-girlfriend wade into troublesome conversations, and we’ve a significant change. Particularly once we’re speaking about injustices that aren’t mine to forgive, it may really feel, if not impactful, at the least not unimportant.
And generally it’s June. For the previous decade, practically each June, I’ve determined, “It’s happening. I’m pruning my social media friends list.”
That’s as a result of perusing sure corners of social media beginning June 1, you would possibly conclude that everything of all Christianity — 1000’s of years of historical past, worship, each stained-glass window, each theological treatise, all the things written on the again of a prayer card — all existed solely to speak the important tenet of: “OMG Jesus said stop being GAY!!!!!” Although most mainstream Christian denominations not train this. Not even all evangelical church buildings nonetheless do.
I ignore many of those posts; there isn’t something a few repost from a Christian rapper whose total act is anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech that claims, “I’m very much open to hearing how this might be destructive, especially from those most directly involved.”
However generally, I lookup on the sq. container containing the ashes belonging to my deceased lover Cheryl’s deceased cat Lulu atop my bookshelf and determine to wade in with my coronary heart extensive open and my fists held excessive.
For instance, Reverend Sincerity was my beloved youth pastor once I was a born-again, pre-queer highschool pupil. He was terribly sort and exceedingly beneficiant to me when he first met me; I used to be an obnoxious tenth grader clad in three completely different neon colours and sporting a horrible spiral perm. He didn’t see me simply as a troublesome teenager (which, to make certain, I used to be) however as a promising teenager, with a ardour and coronary heart for service. Reverend Sincerity inspired my writing, telling me it was a present from God.
These days, 11 months out of the 12 months, we each attempt to join — virtually heroically — on impartial floor. He feedback that my sister and I nonetheless look a lot alike; I reply to pictures of his grandkids.
However when my beloved former youth pastor begins posting about LGBTQ+ folks, it’s onerous to scroll by. Typically I’m unsure why. His posts are pointed (for instance, an allegedly anti-LGBTQ+ Bible verse with no further commentary), however they’re not dismissive or sarcastic. In my coronary heart — maybe buoyed by my reminiscence of our long-ago interactions that have been so vital to me — I perceive this as merely misguided reasonably than hateful.
Perhaps that explains the 12 months I made a decision to weigh in on an anti-LGBTQ+ publish by describing what occurred when my companion Cheryl acquired sick.
Cheryl — an introverted efficiency poet from Staten Island, a beneficiant sarcastic soul who at all times had a sort phrase for a fellow artist — and I had been collectively two years when she known as me from her major care supplier’s workplace. She’d been having shortness of breath that appeared too extreme to be merely her regular allergy symptoms. A chest X-ray revealed a grapefruit-sized tumor in her chest. She had Hodgkin lymphoma.
She began therapy, and our associates rallied round us. When Cheryl began to lose her hair, a pal urged “a good ol’ fashioned lesbian head-shaving ceremony.” We have been all so hopeful. Then she developed a extreme pulmonary response to one of many chemo brokers.
The chemo that was imagined to be saving her life was as an alternative killing her.
Photograph Courtesy of Kelli Dunham
Cheryl was admitted to Beth Israel, and I slept on a radiator subsequent to her mattress within the hospital so she would by no means be alone for 3 months earlier than she died.
I defined this all in a touch upon Reverend Sincerity’s publish, then added:
“Because of anti-gay laws, including laws that banned gay marriage at the time … her mother was able to swoop in after she died. She took Cheryl’s body, and I never got so much as a tablespoon of her ashes. Cheryl’s cat Lulu did come to live with me, which my nephew has informed me ‘is the most lesbian inheritance ever.’ When Lulu passed away, I put her ashes on my bookshelf so I can pretend they’re Cheryl’s ashes. Can you imagine if that happened to your spouse’s body? How devastated would you feel? I get that you can’t change your beliefs…I just want you to know what it costs people like me.”
The response to this? Nothing. Not a single particular person replied.
I perceive on the size of horrible issues, with 1 being a paper lower and genocide being 10, having to faux your lifeless lover’s cat’s ashes are your lifeless lover’s ashes is a 1.7.
But it surely appeared … relatable. Till I discussed this change (or lack thereof) to a pal who frowned so onerous at me I assumed her brow would possibly break.
“Um, what do you think the word relatable means?” she requested, apparently rhetorically, as a result of she instantly continued. “Those folks couldn’t imagine that happening because their relationships would never be in that kind of danger. It’s the very opposite of relatable to them.”
My pal wasn’t very delicate, however she additionally wasn’t fallacious.
“Why are you arguing with someone you haven’t seen in three decades?” my identical pal requested later. “You don’t get it. He really believes what he’s posting.”
Photograph Courtesy of Kelli Dunham
I do know he actually believes it.
He actually believes that the love that Cheryl and I had for one another would ship us each to a literal hell, an everlasting fiery torment which, by just about any account, is worse than grieving your lover’s dying along with her cat’s ashes.
I spent highschool observing the facility that midsize cities afford their most profitable pastors, and due to this, I additionally know Reverend Sincerity is an influencer within the truest sense of the phrase. Which means “one who influences” reasonably than “a person an online therapy platform pays to make videos about drama in the fiber arts community.”
I additionally know it will be virtually statistically not possible for him to not have a closeted younger queer child in his congregation who’s studying each anti-LGBTQ+ phrase he writes. It’s unlikely I’m altering anybody’s opinion, definitely not Reverend Sincerity’s. However I’m reminding him (and everybody else participating with the publish) that there’s one other opinion available.
Maybe extra importantly, I’m giving a face and a historical past to what would possibly in any other case appear to be an summary subject.
In order one other June passes by which I’ve determined to not block, not like, unfriend or unfollow in any case, I believe what I’m asking of my outdated associates is that this: “Believe what you want, but look me in the eyes when you say it.”
Do you’ve a compelling private story you’d prefer to see printed on HuffPost? Discover out what we’re in search of right here and ship us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.
