“Your comfort is my silence.” — Barbara Kruger
Last month a friend from long ago reached out with a suggestion that I explore the videos of a Prominent Ex-Gay (PXG) who had experienced a conversion to Christ which led him to renounce his homosexuality. This was a surprise for a few reasons: I’d never heard of PXG, the last time my friend communicated with me was perhaps in 2020, and I have been living out and proud almost 35 years — and my friend knows it.
My response to her included this:
“While thanking you for your concern, PXG’s spiritual journey is leading in the opposite direction from mine. I’m now at a place where I can live openly and proudly as a gay man and behave and treat others decently as a Christian living in a democracy*. I’ve been treated more lovingly and compassionately in the life I’ve lived since I came out in 1989 than I ever [was growing up in the church]. And by the grace of God, I came out into a community of gay men, mostly Catholics, who want to have a relationship with their church, and have. I feel very much that God is looking out for me. The evidence greets me daily.”
*And I hope I do. As a miserable sinner beset by the tempest of human emotions, I do not always act or speak with compassion. And I am more aware of it than you might think.
What I did not say, but will express now, is that I am mighty tired of radical conservatives trying to “cure” homosexuals by scripture or any other means when they have so many of their own problems, also identified in scripture, that require their attention first. See Matthew 7:5. It’s so much easier to fix someone else’s “problems” especially when it’s something you don’t experience yourself, isn’t it? How would it be if I started sending my friend materials about turning away from Trump, who has led millions of Americans astray? Would my friend receive that as an expression of my love for her? I haven’t done that -- but I've been tempted.
Religion needs to be a guide for one’s own behavior, not a goad for the behavior of others. And this is especially true in a democracy that guarantees both freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Radical conservatives try to use freedom of religion as an excuse to deny the existence of homosexuals and to erase them from public life. Just look at what’s been going on in Florida and in some other states. Living in a democracy means having to live equally with people you disapprove of. No, it’s not easy. Democracy is messy.
I need to be accepted as I am, as an out gay man on his own religious journey that doesn’t require renouncing any aspect of me for approval. Suggestions to the contrary are not welcome.