His empathy wasn’t a lie. Knowing that I believed him bothered me. No, it more than bothered me. It infuriated me. I didn’t want to have anything in common with him because he was my opposite. I was a child of God, and he wasn’t. We played for very different teams.
“Repent, and trust in God to heal you of your sin,” I said. “I’m not going to waste any more of my time.” Knowing I couldn’t say anything else, I walked away, only stopping to reluctantly shake the hands of a few fellow students who supported my botched attempt to be a Champion for Christ.
As I crossed the street and walked up a few steps towards my New Testament Survey course, I felt an intense burden. Was my anger justified, or was it purely hubris? Should I have acted so offensively? Shouldn’t I have spoken with the same softness of voice that my enemy had? Was I even justified in thinking him an enemy? Something wasn’t right, and I did not know what it was. I had gone out there to teach Soulforce a lesson, and instead I had been talked down like a child. I sympathized with Patrick.
For the next two months the scene outside the arena replayed in my mind, and no matter how much I thought about it, I could not put my finger on why I felt such anger. I had done exactly as I had always been instructed: I fought for the truth and for my values, without compromise. Why did I feel so guilty? A few months later, my parents got a divorce, and I was needed at home. I left and never went back to Liberty.
~~~
A lot has changed since that first encounter four years ago. The octagonal sign in my hand is proof enough of that. It reads Stop Spiritual Violence. I wonder what I look like to the crowds of people passing by on their way to work in the morning rain. Several police officers are posted on either side of our group now, the hissing of their radios making me nervous. I am the stranger here, the awkward seeker disguised by a label that does not belong to me…But it is in that awkwardness that my perspective is being challenged. That voice inside of me that rose so violently during my first encounter with Soulforce is finally being silenced.
Just last night I was taught the principles of non-violent protests for the first time, and I cannot fathom how different my life would be if protests were a regular part of it. I feel naked and vulnerable, like the whole of Manhattan sees through me, judges me, judges all of us, for better or for worse. But even in the midst of this tension, New York is beautiful to me. I am shocked at how beautiful it is, even in the freezing rain.
For a kid raised in the heart of the Bible Belt, this experience is beyond alien. The growing presence of police standing around and in front of us becomes more unnerving by the minute. I am told that we might be arrested, depending on how far we take our protest, and the thought scares me. It scares me, but it doesn’t seem to scare anyone else standing with me. They have all been arrested before for actions similar to this one, and it makes me wonder: Would I allow myself to be arrested for my beliefs? If I didn’t, would that make me a phony?
Mel White’s assistant, Lindsey Hawkins, stands next to me, bubbly as always. Her smile is infectious and I love it. I watch her eyes dart back and forth from the female detective several yards away to the cops in front of the embassy’s courtyard. She has a crush on the lieutenant. If I were not in the closet, I probably would, too.
“You like her, don’t you?” I whisper out of the corner of my mouth, smiling.
“Shut up! I do not!” Lindsey hits me on the shoulder.
“Non-violence, my ass!” I say, trying not to be too disruptive. She is a magnificent girl. Too bad she’s gay.
Lindsey has become my Yoda over the past twenty-four hours, and every time she speaks I feel compelled to listen. For being so young, she commands a passion that I have never seen before—a passion for the cause of equal rights, and for her faith. It is yet another thing I admire but find disconcerting at the same time. Looking through the lens of my past, everything now seems amiss, and I cannot fully embrace it.
Matthew begins another protest song, probably because Lindsey and I are having a difficult time maintaining silence. She looks at me and I mime a kissing face in the direction of the lieutenant.
“I’m going to kill you!” She laughs as the rest of the protesters begin singing.
Fall 2006: The doubt grows
My religion began changing and deteriorating in the two years after leaving Liberty. I still played the part of the dutiful Pharisee, however, even as I began seeing holes in my own theology. Those holes made me feel like an apostate. How could I doubt what I had always known to be absolute truth? I hid my skepticism well, attending and even serving at several churches near my home—but I knew the charade would eventually have to end, and I would have to question everything I’d been taught. It was an overhaul I wasn’t looking forward to…an overhaul that began when I accepted an invitation to a karaoke bar near downtown Nashville. It was an odd place to find answers.
I was a twenty-year-old bigot, pacing back and forth outside of the trashiest dive bar I had ever laid eyes on. Pacing with me was Josh, my best friend, matching my stride step for step.
“But, Tim, you have to come!” he said, urging me toward the door.
Over the past twenty-four hours, Josh had been building this place up as a quasi-magical venue. “A place of wonder and enchantment,” he had called it. “You haven’t seen karaoke until you’ve seen a three-hundred-pound bull-dyke singing ‘Muskrat Love’ to her partner!”
“Bull-dyke?” I asked. “Partner? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Oh…” He paused. “Did I forget to mention that we’ve nicknamed Tuesday night karaoke Lesbaoke?”
My inner Pharisee came barking to the surface, but I could not say no to Josh’s enthusiasm and reluctantly agreed.
The little dive bar had once been ranked by a reputable music magazine as the thirteenth-dingiest bar in the country, but in truth, it was nothing short of beautiful. Walking in for the first time with Josh, I remember my eyes watering as they adjusted to the smoke and my nose to the smell of cheap beer. I felt wildly uncomfortable. It was a simple-looking establishment, an old house converted into a speakeasy during the Prohibition. The décor was characterized by the beer signs of a bygone era, and the aged neon lights in the front window glowed so dimly I wondered why anyone bothered even turning them on. The elderly bar stools wobbled, their weight shifting back and forth as people sat on them, drinking, ignorant of the stories these antique seats could tell. Unlike most bars, this one served only beer, and it was cheap. Behind the bar I only saw three taps, their light brown wooden handles labeled with masking tape, nozzles dripping the cool amber liquid that I had, at this point, only twice allowed myself to taste. In the middle of the front room a pool table stood, well used. Though it too looked to be on its last leg, two gentlemen played with Zen-like concentration, enjoying it as if it was a woman. A classy woman. A dame, even.
I looked back over at Josh and he smiled, obviously in his element. Within seconds of our entrance people began greeting us with hugs and hellos. It was a shock. The feeling of acceptance rushed over me like a tidal wave that I had not seen coming. Before I sat down, seventeen people had introduced themselves. I was staring at them, tongue tied and grinning like a real moron. On stage, a man announced as “Pimp Daddy Supreme” belted out a classic Steely Dan song, while another man wearing a black leather hat adorned with a skull and crossbones toggled the lights on and off, and played air guitar as needed.
“That’s Bad Boy Breeze,” Josh said, pointing to the man in the black hat. “I work with him at Wal-Mart.”
“I thought he looked familiar,” I said, having visited Josh at work countless times.
“Tim, in this place, everyone is familiar.” He patted me on the back reassuringly, sensing my discomfort. “It’s magic, isn’t it?”
I didn’t know how to respond.
At the end of the night, I left, confused. Not just confused but overwhelmed. The people I met had sunk into me somehow, becoming a part of me. I felt protective of them.
&nbs
p; “No one ever told you growing up that queers and atheists are actually loving people?” Josh asked, smiling, as we walked out the door. The derogatory labels jumped out in a way they hadn’t before.
“No,” I answered, shaking my head. I thought about the young activist who told me he loved me, and it occurred to me again that he had really been honest. My head didn’t stop shaking the entire way home.
Summer 2008: Doubt perfected
Two years passed quickly after the first time I found myself in that little bar, and I spent those two years attending Lesbaoke more faithfully, even, than church. I had found a new home, where everyone was the epitome of loving, and where the voice inside of me was forced into silence. The regulars at that bar became a family of sorts, tied together by something stronger than blood: a combination of cheap beer and the rocking hits of the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. And while those were two of the best years of my life, they were also two of the hardest. In our dive, I became a witness to countless victims of my kind of religion. None of them spoke negatively of God; it was always the Christians who’d maligned them. I was not as outspoken a Christian as I had been in the past, at least not at karaoke, but these instances of hurt I witnessed made me feel guilty, and I did not know why.
“Tim, can we talk for a minute?” The tug on my sleeve was delicate and dainty. Elizabeth, a fairly recent newcomer, looked upset, and I nodded yes and followed her onto the covered patio in the back.
“What’s up?”
Her face looked fluid, like she was a shape-shifter, barely able to hold her form.
“How can you be a Christian?” Her voice was shaky, and I could see she was falling apart. “How can you, and still be so happy to be here? I don’t know any Christians that would be. They’d shun this place like it was contaminated. Fuck!” She stomped her foot and lowered her eyes.
“Their loss,” I said. “Lizzy, what’s wrong?”
Looking up at me through watery eyes, she said, “I came out to my family yesterday…” Tears began rolling down the softness of her cheeks. I knew she was on the verge of a breakdown.
“What? What happened?”
She reached up to wipe her eyes, allowing the sleeves of her sweater to slide down her wrists, and I could see that the silky white skin of her hands had already been stained by what I could only guess was smeared eyeliner. She had been crying a lot, apparently.
“My dad told me to get my stuff out of his house, and that he wouldn’t pay another dime for the education of a ‘faggot daughter’! And my mom told me to come back when I was ‘fixed’…” Her face found my shoulder, and my arms wrapped around her comparatively tiny body. She felt delicate, like papier-mâché that had not fully dried and was still soft to the touch.
I betrayed her, then. Without even thinking, I betrayed the soft creature crying endlessly on my shoulder.
It was a subtle betrayal, but a cruel one: I was silent.
She did her best to compose herself. “Now I have to leave. I’m moving to a friend’s. She’s my only friend that my dad doesn’t have any control over. I’m going to Texas tomorrow…” Her voice trailed off.
Tell her what Leviticus says about homosexuality. Read her Romans 1! Go on, Tim, it is your responsibility as a follower of Christ to help her see the error of this choice. The voice inside me had a distinct tone. It didn’t sound like me. It didn’t even sound like it knew me, yet it was powerful and opportunistic. It was a voice of rejection, telling me to reject Elizabeth. I realized that I hated Lizzy. Not because she was a bad person, but because she liked other women. That one facet to her being was enough to spark remarkable animosity toward her, animosity I could not comprehend.
The Bible tells us to love one another as ourselves. How could this voice be Jesus? And if this voice wasn’t Jesus, what voice was it? Whatever it was speaking to me, I knew it wasn’t guiding me in love, and that could only mean one thing. The voice had to die.
Elizabeth left the bar with tears still in her eyes, but they were tears of goodbye, not anger at my lack of understanding. Had she been oblivious to my inner turmoil? I stood silently, staring blankly at the door she had just walked out of. The din from a Styx song caught my ear but not my attention. Nothing could steal my attention; gut-wrenching feelings of shame brought tears to the corners of my eyes. I found my way to a booth and sat down.
And that’s when I saw him for the first time, sitting across the table from me, smirking like a schoolyard bully. He looked like me, dressed in khakis and a black button-up shirt, but he seemed to bleed arrogance. I wiped my eyes and shivered.
“Who are you?”
Why didn’t you tell Liz the truth? Why did you waste an opportunity to help her see her choice for the sin that it is?
I felt heat. It began in my toes and moved slowly upwards.
Cat got your tongue?
“You can’t be serious. I hurt her enough with my silence! I should have held her, cried with her, loved her, but I didn’t. That wasn’t Jesus.”
How do you know it wasn’t Jesus? Sure, Jesus died for her sins just like anyone else, but she’s not His child. You were right to think what you were thinking. Go get your Bible—there’s still time to run after her.
I felt his words in my bones, in the very marrow of my bones. He was manipulative. He felt wrong. I felt like I had that day at Liberty, standing off against Soulforce.
Someone had to say what Patrick couldn’t.
That day broke my heart. I was supposed to be the one who loved, not the one that rejected a group of people because they were gay. I was wrong to offer such empty condemnation. I should have disagreed differently.
No, you weren’t wrong. You just weren’t committed enough.
I shook my head and wiped the sweat from my forehead. No, I wasn’t right. I had not been right then, and my condemning silence with Liz wasn’t right, either. The memories of my theological instruction flashed through my mind like images on a television. But I didn’t see myself in these images; I saw the condemnatory creature, the Pharisee, who sat across from me.
And then it dawned on me, and a weight lifted from my shoulders: I might have been wrong all along.
The figure across from me shook his head, judging my thoughts as quickly as I thought them. But the Pharisee’s finger was fixed, pointing cruelly at me. I stood up, but he remained seated, smirking. I was repulsed. I had to get rid of him.
You can’t.
I had to! Something drastic needed to happen, something that would test my beliefs on a foundational level…And then it came to me: Walk in Liz’s shoes—the shoes of the very people I had been taught to hate. Live with the label of gay.
The implications of the idea were overwhelming. To do so would ruin my life. But what kind of life did I have, if such a barrier existed between me and the people I knew I should love? I felt the idea growing, rooting itself in me, like the decision had already been made, and I could almost see the path that was in front of me. I was meant for this. It was a calling I neither wanted nor understood, but I could not ignore the overwhelming sense of divine affirmation in it.
I needed to come out of the closet as a gay man.
Coming Out, into the Closet
January 1st, 2009
My brother’s face betrays concern, and it seems impossible to force the words from my mouth. He’s not just concerned, he’s worried. Each second passes as if time has been slowed, almost to a stop. My thoughts race incoherently, and my mission appears only in glimpses before diving back beneath the chaotic surface of my consciousness.
Andrew and I share similar features, but we are opposites in stature and personality. Whereas I am the typical husky American, my brother appears carved from marble. The lines of his face angle downward and his eyes are an expressive blue. He is confused. Years of learning have taught me to understand, at least, his mannerisms.
Over the past three months, I’ve stood in front of my bedroom mirror and practiced the speech, for this exact moment, no less
than five thousand times, and I thought I had it memorized. But fear has wiped my memory of anything I hoped to say. My palms are sweaty, and even though it is the middle of winter, a bead of sweat forms on the crease of my forehead. I feel nauseated, my stomach a pot left unwatched and about to boil over. No amount of preparation could have prepared me for the moment that I look my only brother in the eyes and tell him I am gay.
My sister-in-law, a recent addition to the family, stands next to her husband in the kitchen of their house, rubbing his back empathetically. She eyes him protectively, bracing herself for the moment I finally speak.
The second hand on the clock above the entryway reaches each marker with the force of a hammer strike. The dog drinks loudly from his bowl, lapping up water with a curled tongue and an animated jerk of his head. Friends are on the covered porch nearby, smoking cigarettes and laughing about something, I wish I knew what. The dishwasher clicks, switching cycles on the first load of dirty dishes from our pancake breakfast. Loads two, three, and four are stacked neatly in the sink; leftover syrup drips over the edge of the top plate. I feel my subconscious preparing for another attempt at my speech.
Still nothing audible escapes my lips. I cannot speak. Finally, out of nowhere, it happens.
“I’m gay!”
Those two simple words are sharply punctuated by the silence that follows them. My lips sting as I realize that my hand has smacked them closed. I am in shock. Two words, and no immediate response from my brother. My life has changed forever. Waiting to say the words was one kind of hell, but waiting for my brother to respond to them is a second hell that makes me long for the first. My eyes are on the verge of releasing salty, wet tears, and the fear inside me is growing. I feel cowardly as I lean against the counter, petrified, one hand still covering my mouth.
“Are you joking with us, Tim?” My brother’s voice sounds different. It is not his normal voice. It wavers and almost cracks as he speaks, and I can tell by the look on his face that he is trying to decide whether or not I’m serious, hoping that the next words out of my mouth will be Got ya! or Just kidding!
The Cross in the Closet Page 2
