CW// Religion, Homophobia, Transphobia,
As most of you know I go to church, that I just recently started going. My mother's friend goes to church there and she went by herself to begin with. They held a candle light service and I went. To my shock I actually enjoyed it.
I know religion is a touchy subject, it is for me too, but I just feel I need to share some stuff while it's relevant. If that makes any logical sense? This also might be pretty long so if you don't want to read it that's totally okay. No one has to read this at all. In fact I expect most of you to not read it.
Anyway on to the post. As a small child I was raised in church. I went to a Southern Baptist Church. We always have. They preached on end times and gays going to hell more than I think was ever necessary, not that it ever is but you get my point. When I was little I didn't really understand why I had to follow this when God and the Bible say we should love everyone. Let me tell you I'm glad my Momma had sense enough to let me ask questions. Growing up she wasn't allowed to so she let me ask as many as I wanted.
So I did. I questioned everything. Why would God let people with down syndrome or things like that be treated poorly? Why do I have to hate gay people when they've done nothing but show unconditional love? Why did God make them who they are if his people would just shun them? She answered them all to the best of her abilities. We were raised in a house where one parent was as Homophobic and as Racist as could be and the other taught us to love everyone no matter what.
But despite all these conflicting views I decided I knew right from wrong. It was wrong to treat anyone any different than I expected to be treated in return.
But even as a kid I struggled with faith. My mom always said I had more faith in my little finger than most people had in their whole body. Which I guess outwardly that was how people saw me. Inwardly though I was struggling big time. There was this God I wanted to believe in and be close to, but all his people were telling me left and right trans is wrong, gay is wrong. It was so confusing. I couldn't let that affect me though, I knew what was right.
Questioning yourself when you are raised in an environment where you're not allowed to question things is hell. I was a lucky kid who's mom let ask questions. But that didn't protect me from internalized homophobia and transphobia. Ask anyone I know and they'll be able to tell you I've never said an ill word towards anyone that wasn't causing physical or emotional harm to someone else.
Inside though I was hateful. Not at others, but at myself. There was this little voice inside me dying to find the light. Dying to scream "I'm here! I exist! I want to be proud!" Even if I didn't have the words then I still knew I wasn't cis or hetrosexual. It was a struggle. One I tried to fix through faith. That didn't work, I practically forced myself to pray it away and shut myself off from that part of me. Despite being so openly supportive of others I hated myself for being the same.
What I'm getting at is at one point in my life I was like Rhett and Link. A lot of kids who grow up in the south or in church are or were. You're taught not to question God, the Church, or your parents. It's pushed on you from a very young age. Growing up that's all you know. Escaping those ideals are a bit like escaping some kind of cult, that's basically what it is. For me it took coming out as Pansexual (refer to my post about the ace gatekeeper who made me not come out irl as asexual). My "best friend" at the time told her mother, who told the whole fucking Church.
The next Wednesday night at youth church my youth pastor proceeded to stand up in front of every one of my peers. I was sitting in the front row as always, he tells us he changed his message last second because "God" put it on his heart. The lesson ends up preaching about gays going to hell and everyone, I mean everyone, was staring right at me. Eventually I had enough stood up flipped them all the bird with both hands walked out backwards said "Taste the rainbow bitches." and left. Was that the best way to handle it? No. Was it fucking hilarious when the pastor's wife fainted? Hell yeah it was.
I never went back to that church. Actually I've only been in a church a handful of times since then. You've all seen a bit of my self discovery story so I won't go into that. But the point I'm making is I still struggle with my faith to this day. Trying to have a relationship with a God who can't answer my questions vocally and supposedly hates me is hard. There's times I doubt that God even exists. People have all this "evidence" but the same evidence has been brought forth for Norse Gods and Greek Gods. So it's never clear.
What I'm trying to say is I never expected anything less from to men raised in the deep South than to be evangelistic Christians at one point in their life. I am extremely proud of how they have grown and learned how wrong they were. It's not easy to escape that mind set when it's been drilled into you basically since you exit the womb. As someone who is still growing in my beliefs and trying to balance what makes sense and doesn't I really admire their openness when supporting us and things most Christians don't condone.
