Let's Talk About Church
I didn't fully, consciously realize I was a lesbian until I was well into middle age. How, you may ask, does one not notice something about themselves as fundamental as sexual orientation until that late in life? Let's talk about church, baby. Let's talk about you and me. Let's talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be. Let's talk about church. (My sincere apologies to Salt-N-Pepa). The answer to the above question begins and ends with church.
I was raised in an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian family. To be clear, when I say "family," I don't just mean the people I shared a residence with. I mean my entire family (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents...all of them). I have multiple members of my extended family through multiple generations who were ministers. Multiple men in my family, including my father, have formal leadership roles in their respective churches. They are all very, very devout, staunch fundamentalist Christians. When I was growing up, all of my family's friends were people who went to our church. All of our family vacations when I was young were taken with people who went to our church. Any time we went out to dinner, it was with people from our church. Frequently to restaurants owned by people who went to our church. When my family quit taking vacations in teen years, most of the trips I took in summer were with my church youth group. From birth until I graduated high school, it was rare that I went to church less than 3 times a week, and as I hit my teen years it was more than that. I say all this to say that to say that my church dominated my life during my formative years would be an understatement. It was my entire world. It was my entire social structure. Everyone I knew, loved, respected, and trusted outside of teachers at school were part of my church. And for that matter, a good portion of my teachers went to similar churches with similar beliefs.
To not fall in line and keep on churching was incomprehensible to 17 year old me because I had never known anyone very well who hadn't followed the church life timeline. What's the church life timeline? You grow up in church. You join the church before age 10 because you've been told since birth stories of Hell and unspeakable torture for all eternity. People who don't go to college are married by 19 or 20. People who do go to college are married by the time they're 23 or 24. Then by 27 (and certainly before 30) you start having babies. You know that it's your job as a woman have babies because you're told from birth that a woman's most important role in life she can have is to be wife (to a husband) and a mother. It's never discussed what happens if you don't go down that path. Why wouldn't you? As a teenage girl, you're groomed for it. You're encouraged to help in the nursery during services where you're taught some basic infant care. You're encouraged to help teach pre-schoolers and grade school kids in annual day camps at the church. You're encouraged to babysit. It's just sort of assumed you're going to have babies and you're going to be ready for it.
Everything about the church is structured towards that model. The sermons are worded in ways assuming everyone is part of a nuclear family. The Sunday School classes (which tended to be where people made their close friends) were divided up by marital status and either the age of the couple or the age of their children. There's typically a singles class for people in their 20's that's heavily geared towards marrying people off, the concept of which made me incredibly uncomfortable at the time. And then everyone single between the ages of 30 and 65 were put in a class together (because why wouldn't a 30 year old who has never been married have loads in common with a 55 year old divorcee?). So, essentially, to be in church club...to really be one of "them", being married with children really sort of was a prerequisite. The people over 30 who hadn't met that prerequisite were usually spoken of with pity in private conversation. So, in my 17 year old mind, I was going to play by the rules of church club. To not be in church club was incomprehensible. That was my mindset.
Being that heavily involved in church was a double-edged sword. There were a lot of really great things. They were a fantastic support system. I watched church people hold my father as he wept when his mother died. They provided the meals for each and every every family funeral I've been to. They provided career advice to my brother and I. They taught my brother and I (first generation college grads) what it took to get into college and how to pay for it. When my relationship with one of my parents turned fiery in my teens and I wouldn't listen to my parents, I would listen to the church people. They were the quiet voice of reason that could calm stormy waters. They sat for hours for days on end with my family in hospital waiting rooms over the years when a member of my immediate family had serious health problems because they felt like no one should do that alone. They taught me things like the importance of treating others how you want to be treated. They taught me the importance of treating everyone, be they the janitor or the CEO, with dignity and respect. They taught me the importance of defending those who can't defend themselves (the old, the disabled, and most importantly, children).
There were a lot of great things about church for many (maybe even most) reasons. But, for a kid who was gay (because that's what I was, whether I realized it or not), there were some not so great things about growing up in a fundamentalist Christian church. I was taught from birth that most of the adults and all of the adult leadership were wise and had my best interest at heart. The pastors had respectively studied the Bible in ways we didn't have the time or education to duplicate. They had studied all of the history of the ancient world and they had learned the original languages of the Bible. In short, they were rarely if ever to be questioned because who were we to question their education and their wisdom? So, when the pastors of my childhood stood at their pulpit and described homosexuals and homosexuality as an abomination, I believed them wholeheartedly. When it was described to me as a young child as one of the worst things you could possibly be...worthy of the fiery pits of Hell, I believed them without question. And when church members and family members spoke at a dinner table about homosexuality with either disgust or as a punch line, I believed them wholeheartedly. There were no openly LGBT people in my life at that point, so what else did I have to go on? And how would I know any openly LGBT people when my entire life centered around an organization that demonized them?
So, when I noticed my 10 or 12 year old self starting to stare at women's figures a little too long, it wasn't that I liked women that way. When I was a little too fascinated in certain women at my church...always wanting to spend more time with them, wondering what they were thinking or doing, having my heart race when I found out they were going to dinner with us or going on a trip, clearly it was because I admired them and wanted to be like them. Not something else. Sure, I felt intensely ashamed about those feelings and terrified someone would figure out I had those feelings, but that was just because someone might get the wrong impression. Because under no circumstances could I be attracted to women. Fiery pits of Hell. That got you the fiery pits of Hell. An abomination. It would make me an abomination. Those people who were disgusting to my family weren't a "them"...it was an "us". It could also get you kicked out of the church, and so I would have lost everything. So, as an early teen, I taught myself to look away and find something else to focus on if I caught myself staring at a woman. And I was ashamed and hated myself a little every time I caught myself. I convinced myself the crushes were something else. Basically I shut it all down as best I could. It was nothing. It was a phase. It would go away. Ok, so it didn't go away. But I got really good at hiding it from myself...most of the time. And surely once I found my future husband, that would make it all go away.
Meanwhile, around the time I hit my mid to upper teens, my church became heavily involved in something called "True Love Waits" which was essentially a highly commercialized version of a movement in the mid 90's to teach teens the importance of abstinence until marriage (the Purity movement). In this program, we were taught that the only way to a happy, blessed, Godly marriage was to remain "pure" until a wedding night lest that event be tainted. They sold rings, there were theme songs, there were camps, there were concerts, there were rallies. It was sold with a lot of fun. There was pizza and Oreos and theme park trips and catchy music and trips to the Rockies and the ocean (a huge deal for a kid growing up in a land-locked state). Metaphors liked used chewing gum and flowers with their petals removed were used to describe girls who had lost their virginity before their wedding night. The girls were taught to wear long, baggy clothes to avoid showing any curves. We were taught to wear t-shirts over our bathing suits to go swimming. All of this was to avoid being a temptation for the boys who couldn't be expected to control themselves. There were lengthy discussion over what romantic activities were permissible. A married man tearfully described his shame at having once french kissed a girl and having it lead to sex before marriage and explained how it had damaged his marriage. Mind you, he's still happily married to his original wife. They've been married probably a good 30 years now. I'm genuinely happy for them. But, you know who's not still married to their original spouses? At least two of the kids in my youth group who listened to that story and others like it and internalized it so thoroughly, they were later unable to have sex with their first wives because they had so thoroughly associated sex with shame and fear. It turns out you can't just turn that off on a wedding night. The human brain doesn't work that way. Them and a couple of the church staff who were cheating on their spouses at the same time they were imparting this wisdom on the path to marital bliss that ultimately damaged multiple lives. I might be a little angry (or at least disappointed) about that now that I'm seeing the bigger picture of just what all happened and the repercussions of it.
But, I digress... My youth group put this massive emphasis on the importance of not doing anything that might cause you to feel sexual feelings towards the opposite sex. So, when I didn't have romantic feelings towards males, I just thought I was doing a good job. I honestly couldn't understand why they thought it would be so hard, because it was no trouble at all for me. Meanwhile, in all of these long, repeated discussions of sex, never were the words "gay", "lesbian", or "homosexual" mentioned in that context. They had essentially de-coupled the topics of sex and homosexuality. And I had long ago suppressed the feelings I had for women. So, while looking back, it seems fairly obvious since that I was attracted to females and had no attraction to males, perhaps 1+1="gay", I didn't (or wouldn't) make the connection at the time.
I had my first kiss in high school and didn't feel anything and had to sort of work to go through the motions. I couldn't see what all the fuss was about, but that was ok because I was 18 and I didn't have to be married until I was 24. That was 6 whole years to figure something out. Then I dated a little in college and it went more or less the same. But, that was ok, because I still had several years before I needed to get married to my mythical husband to still stay on schedule. I had time. Then I realized I couldn't have kids halfway through college and the whole thing seemed futile. What are the two pre-requisites to church club? Get married. Have a baby. I couldn't do the second thing without going to great lengths and I finally admitted to myself it didn't seem fair to drag someone I wasn't going to be enthusiastic about through that process. So, I gave up and kind of determined I was likely asexual. At 21 years old I had failed at church club, but I was far from being ready to face just how far away from that fundamentalist Christian ideal I actually was. Until now.
I was raised in an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian family. To be clear, when I say "family," I don't just mean the people I shared a residence with. I mean my entire family (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents...all of them). I have multiple members of my extended family through multiple generations who were ministers. Multiple men in my family, including my father, have formal leadership roles in their respective churches. They are all very, very devout, staunch fundamentalist Christians. When I was growing up, all of my family's friends were people who went to our church. All of our family vacations when I was young were taken with people who went to our church. Any time we went out to dinner, it was with people from our church. Frequently to restaurants owned by people who went to our church. When my family quit taking vacations in teen years, most of the trips I took in summer were with my church youth group. From birth until I graduated high school, it was rare that I went to church less than 3 times a week, and as I hit my teen years it was more than that. I say all this to say that to say that my church dominated my life during my formative years would be an understatement. It was my entire world. It was my entire social structure. Everyone I knew, loved, respected, and trusted outside of teachers at school were part of my church. And for that matter, a good portion of my teachers went to similar churches with similar beliefs.
To not fall in line and keep on churching was incomprehensible to 17 year old me because I had never known anyone very well who hadn't followed the church life timeline. What's the church life timeline? You grow up in church. You join the church before age 10 because you've been told since birth stories of Hell and unspeakable torture for all eternity. People who don't go to college are married by 19 or 20. People who do go to college are married by the time they're 23 or 24. Then by 27 (and certainly before 30) you start having babies. You know that it's your job as a woman have babies because you're told from birth that a woman's most important role in life she can have is to be wife (to a husband) and a mother. It's never discussed what happens if you don't go down that path. Why wouldn't you? As a teenage girl, you're groomed for it. You're encouraged to help in the nursery during services where you're taught some basic infant care. You're encouraged to help teach pre-schoolers and grade school kids in annual day camps at the church. You're encouraged to babysit. It's just sort of assumed you're going to have babies and you're going to be ready for it.
Everything about the church is structured towards that model. The sermons are worded in ways assuming everyone is part of a nuclear family. The Sunday School classes (which tended to be where people made their close friends) were divided up by marital status and either the age of the couple or the age of their children. There's typically a singles class for people in their 20's that's heavily geared towards marrying people off, the concept of which made me incredibly uncomfortable at the time. And then everyone single between the ages of 30 and 65 were put in a class together (because why wouldn't a 30 year old who has never been married have loads in common with a 55 year old divorcee?). So, essentially, to be in church club...to really be one of "them", being married with children really sort of was a prerequisite. The people over 30 who hadn't met that prerequisite were usually spoken of with pity in private conversation. So, in my 17 year old mind, I was going to play by the rules of church club. To not be in church club was incomprehensible. That was my mindset.
Being that heavily involved in church was a double-edged sword. There were a lot of really great things. They were a fantastic support system. I watched church people hold my father as he wept when his mother died. They provided the meals for each and every every family funeral I've been to. They provided career advice to my brother and I. They taught my brother and I (first generation college grads) what it took to get into college and how to pay for it. When my relationship with one of my parents turned fiery in my teens and I wouldn't listen to my parents, I would listen to the church people. They were the quiet voice of reason that could calm stormy waters. They sat for hours for days on end with my family in hospital waiting rooms over the years when a member of my immediate family had serious health problems because they felt like no one should do that alone. They taught me things like the importance of treating others how you want to be treated. They taught me the importance of treating everyone, be they the janitor or the CEO, with dignity and respect. They taught me the importance of defending those who can't defend themselves (the old, the disabled, and most importantly, children).
There were a lot of great things about church for many (maybe even most) reasons. But, for a kid who was gay (because that's what I was, whether I realized it or not), there were some not so great things about growing up in a fundamentalist Christian church. I was taught from birth that most of the adults and all of the adult leadership were wise and had my best interest at heart. The pastors had respectively studied the Bible in ways we didn't have the time or education to duplicate. They had studied all of the history of the ancient world and they had learned the original languages of the Bible. In short, they were rarely if ever to be questioned because who were we to question their education and their wisdom? So, when the pastors of my childhood stood at their pulpit and described homosexuals and homosexuality as an abomination, I believed them wholeheartedly. When it was described to me as a young child as one of the worst things you could possibly be...worthy of the fiery pits of Hell, I believed them without question. And when church members and family members spoke at a dinner table about homosexuality with either disgust or as a punch line, I believed them wholeheartedly. There were no openly LGBT people in my life at that point, so what else did I have to go on? And how would I know any openly LGBT people when my entire life centered around an organization that demonized them?
So, when I noticed my 10 or 12 year old self starting to stare at women's figures a little too long, it wasn't that I liked women that way. When I was a little too fascinated in certain women at my church...always wanting to spend more time with them, wondering what they were thinking or doing, having my heart race when I found out they were going to dinner with us or going on a trip, clearly it was because I admired them and wanted to be like them. Not something else. Sure, I felt intensely ashamed about those feelings and terrified someone would figure out I had those feelings, but that was just because someone might get the wrong impression. Because under no circumstances could I be attracted to women. Fiery pits of Hell. That got you the fiery pits of Hell. An abomination. It would make me an abomination. Those people who were disgusting to my family weren't a "them"...it was an "us". It could also get you kicked out of the church, and so I would have lost everything. So, as an early teen, I taught myself to look away and find something else to focus on if I caught myself staring at a woman. And I was ashamed and hated myself a little every time I caught myself. I convinced myself the crushes were something else. Basically I shut it all down as best I could. It was nothing. It was a phase. It would go away. Ok, so it didn't go away. But I got really good at hiding it from myself...most of the time. And surely once I found my future husband, that would make it all go away.
Meanwhile, around the time I hit my mid to upper teens, my church became heavily involved in something called "True Love Waits" which was essentially a highly commercialized version of a movement in the mid 90's to teach teens the importance of abstinence until marriage (the Purity movement). In this program, we were taught that the only way to a happy, blessed, Godly marriage was to remain "pure" until a wedding night lest that event be tainted. They sold rings, there were theme songs, there were camps, there were concerts, there were rallies. It was sold with a lot of fun. There was pizza and Oreos and theme park trips and catchy music and trips to the Rockies and the ocean (a huge deal for a kid growing up in a land-locked state). Metaphors liked used chewing gum and flowers with their petals removed were used to describe girls who had lost their virginity before their wedding night. The girls were taught to wear long, baggy clothes to avoid showing any curves. We were taught to wear t-shirts over our bathing suits to go swimming. All of this was to avoid being a temptation for the boys who couldn't be expected to control themselves. There were lengthy discussion over what romantic activities were permissible. A married man tearfully described his shame at having once french kissed a girl and having it lead to sex before marriage and explained how it had damaged his marriage. Mind you, he's still happily married to his original wife. They've been married probably a good 30 years now. I'm genuinely happy for them. But, you know who's not still married to their original spouses? At least two of the kids in my youth group who listened to that story and others like it and internalized it so thoroughly, they were later unable to have sex with their first wives because they had so thoroughly associated sex with shame and fear. It turns out you can't just turn that off on a wedding night. The human brain doesn't work that way. Them and a couple of the church staff who were cheating on their spouses at the same time they were imparting this wisdom on the path to marital bliss that ultimately damaged multiple lives. I might be a little angry (or at least disappointed) about that now that I'm seeing the bigger picture of just what all happened and the repercussions of it.
But, I digress... My youth group put this massive emphasis on the importance of not doing anything that might cause you to feel sexual feelings towards the opposite sex. So, when I didn't have romantic feelings towards males, I just thought I was doing a good job. I honestly couldn't understand why they thought it would be so hard, because it was no trouble at all for me. Meanwhile, in all of these long, repeated discussions of sex, never were the words "gay", "lesbian", or "homosexual" mentioned in that context. They had essentially de-coupled the topics of sex and homosexuality. And I had long ago suppressed the feelings I had for women. So, while looking back, it seems fairly obvious since that I was attracted to females and had no attraction to males, perhaps 1+1="gay", I didn't (or wouldn't) make the connection at the time.
I had my first kiss in high school and didn't feel anything and had to sort of work to go through the motions. I couldn't see what all the fuss was about, but that was ok because I was 18 and I didn't have to be married until I was 24. That was 6 whole years to figure something out. Then I dated a little in college and it went more or less the same. But, that was ok, because I still had several years before I needed to get married to my mythical husband to still stay on schedule. I had time. Then I realized I couldn't have kids halfway through college and the whole thing seemed futile. What are the two pre-requisites to church club? Get married. Have a baby. I couldn't do the second thing without going to great lengths and I finally admitted to myself it didn't seem fair to drag someone I wasn't going to be enthusiastic about through that process. So, I gave up and kind of determined I was likely asexual. At 21 years old I had failed at church club, but I was far from being ready to face just how far away from that fundamentalist Christian ideal I actually was. Until now.
Comments
Post a Comment