The Script

Western College Latin play 1923, Wikimedia Commons

I’m 19 in my Latin class and connecting for the first time in a long time with people my own age. Like any homeschooled Christian kid venturing out into the world for the first time. I definitely make a few faux pas but still I’m connecting with people: having study groups, making friends, and yeah I’m sad, and tired, and irritated by everyone all the time, because it’s only been 6 months since my mom died, but I’m also having an adventure getting to be my nerdiest self, with other people who are generally accepting and interested in the same things I am. Like literature, and history, and Latin. 

The Latin class is a close knit group because it’s our second semester together, seeking to fulfill our community college foreign language requirements. I’m beginning to wonder if this is what public high school might have been like for me if I could have found a good group of friends. I only have a B in my astronomy class because we keep going to Shoney’s All You Can Eat Breakfast Buffet after class and so I keep skipping. (I’m still reading all the chapters and doing all the homework and the teacher is merciful since I know what I’m talking about when I am in class.)

And there's a girl. Of course there's a girl.

She dresses strangely, kind of tomboyish and it’s not just the way she dresses but the way her shoulders sway, and the rainbow care bear ringer tees she wears with her cargo shorts, and I know it’s not how the girls are supposed to be dressing right now but I like it. She looks Cool. She looks like the kind of Cool girls weren't allowed to be in all my world before this one.

On one of those breakfast trips to Shoney’s, she keeps saying how cute I am and it’s honestly sending me, and even though I’m not sure how to take it, I can’t stop grinning. My heart races a little when she asks if we want to start a study group for our final exam, just us girls, but for the last two study sessions the other girl in our class can’t make it. After studying we go on Myspace and compare our music tastes; I like more hardcore and she likes more indie pop but we know a lot of the same bands. Most of the people she follows are girls like her, with a little swagger, wearing  a lot of neckties, and their hair in their eyes (there's so much eyeliner, but to be honest most of us are wearing lots of eyeliner). If we were comparing we’d say they had hair like Justin Bieber, but that’s not fair because Justin Bieber is still at least 3 years from being a thing, so these girls were definitely doing it first.

After the final, which I passed but didn't do great on (she aced it), we schedule a hang out because she says she has something important to tell me. I finally meet the older sister she’s been telling me about and I like the sister a lot too. She’s bossy but in a really caring way and she feels wise and protective. I hope I’m a good older sister like her older sister is. 

And then while we’re eating, she tells me she’s gay. At first I’m confused. Because on the ride to her apartment we’d been talking about our interpretations of the book of Revelation. When we’d hung out before, Christian music came out of her radio and we realized we liked the same worship songs. She tells me again that she’s a Christian and she thinks it’s okay to be gay, that God loves all kinds of love.

I sit for a while, and I know the longer the silence, the harder this is going to be. But I know what I believe and what I’m supposed to say. I ramble out a tangle of words that check all my apologetics boxes: My sibling is gay and I love gay people; God does too, but that still means we aren’t supposed to do certain things, feel certain things; and being gay and Christian isn’t allowed. 

We all know this already, I think to myself. Why do I have to say this? Why is she making me have to say this?

She’s devastated, her face crumpling and her sister’s face has turned hard. I can feel that this is wrong, feel that I’m fucking this up, but I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say. I guess I could have been vulnerable and said hanging out with her was the first time I’d felt comfortable in my own skin, like I was settling into the person I was going to be, the kind of girl-woman I dream about being, and she’d been a part of that. That this was the first time I was getting to say out loud what I was thinking just because she asked me: yeah of course Myspace lesbians are cute, everyone knows that, too. The first time getting to hear, you’re so cute you know that right? Getting to share worship songs with someone whose soul feels like mine, and not feeling stuck on the outside of girlhood like I've always felt at youth group, at the homeschool co-op, and everywhere really. I could say that I’m not sure what that means when it comes to sexuality but I want to hear more. But that’s not in the script. I heard a sermon about it just the other day, and so I say the things I’m supposed to say.

So why isn’t this coming out right? I don’t know why my words can’t convey the confusion and hope and interest and fear and conviction that I’m feeling.  

It sticks in my mind like taffy in my teeth, the first time someone I wasn’t related to came out to me and I said all the things I was supposed to say as Bible-believing Christian, and still the whole time I could feel I was missing something deeply important. It wasn’t until I came out to someone myself that I noticed that I hadn’t heard any of the confusion/hope/interest/fear/conviction that was coming from her. I didn't realize until years later that I hadn't heard her story at all, hadn't asked any questions, didn’t offer any comfort or thank her for her vulnerability, didn’t even know the fullness of her beliefs. All things I might have gotten to know if I had any script more nuanced than “hate the sin, love the sinner,” and any feeling more developed than a desperate need to make sure everyone knew where I stood and that where I stood was right.

If you’re wondering why queer folks who are committed to a Christian sexual ethic are so unrelenting about the ways the Church has harmed the LGBTQIA community, about the need for better (any) discipleship, about the Church needing to preach not only a theology of no, but a theology of yes… It's probably because moments like these stick in a lot of our memories. It's not just about the times we needed a listening ear that understood nuance and the love of God for who we were coming to understand ourselves to be, but also about the times we were needed to be that ear and had nothing to offer and knew that it was wrong that we were left so empty-handed.