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lg:!mx-to"> <img width="275" height="225" class="lazy round-lg" data-src=" srcset=" 480w, 1000w, 4000w" alt="article image"/> <div class="photo_cred"><span>image by © Koren Shadmi 2010, Levy Creative Management, NYC</span></div> </div></div></div> </div> <article id="article_ntent" class="prose prose-primary prose-base md:prose-lg prose-headgs:font-semibold prt:prose-sm text-[#222222] marker:text-[#222222] max-w-none mx-to lg:mx-36"> <p>Last year I got a ll om an admistrator at a Midwtern semary wh a reputatn for s take-no-prisoners nservative theology. He had permissn to nduct a seri of semars on hot-button issu like abortn, stem-cell rearch, and gay marriage. His plan was to brg a succsn of speakers, one to take the pro si of an issue, followed by a send to prent the opposg view.</p><p>I took a ep breath. I knew what was g next. “We want you to take the pro si on homosexualy,” he said.</p><p><i>Yippee</i>, I thought. <i>I get to argue for Satan</i>.</p><p><span class="3-wordtrosans">Several years earlier </span>I had given a readg on the same mp. It was om my novel, <i>The View om Delphi</i>. I hadn’t e out as gay then, only as a Baptist. Years before, I ma the cisn that the only time I should feel obligated to reveal my sexual orientatn was when there was somethg posive for me–like a quick way to get rid of a Jehovah’s Wns.</p><p>“Why me?” I asked the ller.</p><p>“Actually,” he said. “I heard you were gay before you showed up.”</p><p>It turns out that the an had done his bt to ncel my prev readg. I had not known at the time that my gay prence was sufficient to e a sndal. What would happen if I were to actually talk about ?</p><p>The admistrator plead his se. “I want you to e here not only bee you’re gay, but bee you’re relig. You’ve obvly held on to your spirual beliefs.”</p><p>I didn’t tell him I’d been able to reta my fah by steerg clear of the hateful fundamentalists that universi like his turned out. Instead, I lied and told him I’d thk about .</p><p>“Well, I n’t blame you if you say no,” he said. “In fact, I might lose my job over askg you. But I thk ’s worth .”</p><p><i>Great</i>, I thought. <i>He’ll get fired and I’ll get ccified</i>. Who uld refe an offer like that?</p><p>The people at this particular school were the same relig fanatics I had fled Mississippi as a young man. I knew already how ssns like the uld turn out: each si g every trick s holy book to stroy the spirual legimacy of the other si. And even on those ocsns when I got the better of my opponents public bat about gay rights and gay marriage, I me to realize that few mds had been changed, and that some hearts had actually harned.</p><p>Still, the admistrator’s requt tugged at me. Thomas Wolfe famoly wrote, “You n’t go home aga.” Well, perhaps Wolfe was only half right. You n never go home aga, but you n never leave pletely, eher. I spect the unfished stori of home will hnt all until the day we die, creatg a never-endg succsn of possibili to get right. To say “to hell wh you” and slam the door isn’t healthy closure, yet that’s how I had exed my Christian muny Mississippi.</p><p>I cid I would say no to the requt, but I uldn’t tell my ntact that I was really clg his vatn bee I was terrified of beg rejected. After all, I was apparently the only homosexual he had e across who actually believed God. So I did what I ually do when I need to make a purely emotnal cisn appear ratnal: I turned to Google.</p><p>I entered the name of the school and the word <i>homosexualy</i> to the search enge. My aim was to fd a way to blame the fundamentalist Christians for beg so hopels that I wasn’t gog to waste my time on them.</p><p>The first h was an anonymo letter, wrten by one of the semary’s own stunts to a gay support group, pleadg for help. He wrote about beg a Christian, a closeted gay, and suicidal. “From the outsi, I appear much like any other stunt on mp,” he wrote. “I am a Christian, dited to my fay, my iends, and my amic reer. . . . I am also gay.”</p><p>“I me close to mtg suici several tim, but God had been lookg out for me. He had given me one iend on this mp, one person who I uld be totally hont wh. I believe that were not for him, I would not be here today.”</p><p>“But most importantly, I hope that we n be seen for who we tly are, as fellow brothers and sisters Christ.”</p><p>This stunt’s poignant ttimony of speratn and isolatn, his love for a church that rejects him, the brought me back to my own youth. As a boy, I too was sperate for some adult to say, “I know jt how you feel. I was aaid, too. But look at me. I survived. So will you.” I uldn’t refe an vatn to speak whout rejectg this young man or that kid si me who is still wag for an adult to stand up for him.</p><p>For the first time, I would be showg up to speak at an event as a “profsnal homosexual.” I would no longer be charge of how, when, or whether I me out. The only thg people would know about me beforehand is that I am gay. To them, I would reprent all their feelgs and judgments about gay folks, a cumulative rponse over which I had no ntrol. I was stumped about how to beg.</p><p>A participant a workshop I lead lled “Darg to Tell Your Story” helped me clarify my thkg. “Don’t bate them,” Betsy advised. “Jt tell your story and let them tell you theirs, like we do class.”</p><p>As we say a sobriety program I attend, “Simple, but not easy.”</p><p>As a gay man, I have several versns of my story, pendg on what the ocsn might ll for. There is the polil “I pay tax, too” versn, and the religly challengg “J never mentned ” versn. I have an aggrieved “Look how you’ve opprsed me” prentatn, and a ant “I’m queer and get over ” one.</p><p>Betsy was suggtg somethg different: that I get beyond the urge to e my story as a strategy. Instead, as wrer John Cournos advis, I should relate my personal tth to a more universal one, what theologian Miroslav Volf lls “a moral obligatn to remember tthfully.” That means tellg my story whout embellishg , tidyg up, or turng to a moraly play wh clear-cut villas, victims, and sats. It meant cludg unrolved tensns, even if my doubts and mistak would give others ammunn to e agast me.</p><p><span class="3-wordtrosans">When I walked </span>to the podium that night the place was only partially filled. Most the dience were faculty and female stunts. Hangg the back was a crowd of young guys who eyed me spicly, still cidg whether this talk was for them, and what exactly their attendance might say about their own ttosterone levels. I nervoly blurted out the first thg that me to my md.</p><p>“Hello, I’m the gay guy!”</p><p>It was meant to be humoro, but the silence was so thorough that I uld hear them breathg. <i>OK</i>, I told myself, <i>don’t be clever. Jt tell the tth. If they walk out, they walk out</i>. I began aga.</p><p>“When I got the vatn to e speak today, was a no-braer.” I looked directly at the young men massed the back of the room: “Not a ln years!” I noticed a few smirks. At least we shared some mon ground. We all would rather be somewhere else.</p><p>“I’d like to say I’m happy to be here today,” I ntued, “but I’d be startg our relatnship wh a lie. Right now, you are the folks I grew up wh. The folks I fled over 30 ago and have kept nng om. You were my first fay, and fai know how to wound you the ept. So today I jt need to say that I’m not here bee I want to nvert you, or change you, or sway you, or make you like me. I’m here bee, whether I like or not, you are my life and I need to somehow make peace wh that part of my life.”</p><p>Then I told them that <i>peace</i> is the last word I would e to scribe such foms. All we seem to learn om such exchang is how to fight one another better the next time. Y, I told the dience, I did want gay marriage. I told them how much I love my partner, Jim, but that I was jt about through wh public ntroversy. I explaed that was a Google search on this semary and homosexualy that had changed my md about speakg, specifilly the anonymo letter om a stunt at their universy.</p><p>I noticed that people began lookg furtively at one another, as if the thor might be the room. I told the dience about this stunt’s fear and prsn, his thoughts of suici. I scribed his sire to walk wh his brothers and sisters Christ, but also his terror at what might happen if they ever found out who he was. I told them that what he wrote rang te to my own experience growg up a Christian muny. The last thg on his md was the gay-marriage bate. He was operatg survival mo. That’s why I accepted their vatn to speak.</p><p>We were all breathg differently now. Even the guys the back had nonchalantly drifted to the room. Others, who had been listeng om the hallway, began to file si, until fally all the chairs were filled and people stood lg the walls.</p><p>I told them of my own journey to adulthood as a gay man, as a profsnal, a Christian “wh all the answers.” I told them how my life llapsed when I me to the realizatn that my answers were right, but I had spent all those years askg the wrong qutns. Then I told them my story of beg a Southern gay Christian alholic or, as a iend puts , a queer, Bible-bangg, redneck dnk. It was the first time I had let all the refully segregated, ntradictory parts of my history loose a sgle place at the same time.</p><p>I end by sharg a story about my nservative, fundamentalist father. It was the day I fally asked him if he thought I was gog to hell. “Johnny,” he said, “I believe every word the Bible is God’s leral tth, and the way I read , says homosexualy is wrong.” He ntued, “And I know my son. I know for a fact that he is not evil.” He nodd once, and then said cisively, “I gus both are gog to have to be te.”</p><p>A sign of geni, someone said, is the abily to hold two ntradictory thoughts your md at the same time. I told the stunts that my father had died the year before. “I’m not sure I ever lived up to his expectatns,” I said. “I know I haven’t lived up to me. But has been a fort to know that there uld be a God who don’t hold that agast me–who n say, ‘You have failed and you are perfect.’ I gus both will have to be te.”</p><p>As I said this, I found myself fightg back tears. <i>How strange</i>, I thought, <i>that I have never felt closer to my late father than standg before this group of fundamentalist Christians</i>.</p><p>The talk took about 50 mut. When was over, a pall of silence hung over the room. Then a few people started to clap, then a few more. Someone stood, and whether was ntag enthiasm or peer prsure, I received a standg ovatn. <i>Oh, great</i>, I uldn’t help thkg, <i>now they feel sorry for me</i>.</p><p>But somethg tertg happened durg the Q and A. The qutns were not the on I had expected. Instead, stunts asked thoughtfully about my life and my stggle wh relign. “How do you as a gay man experience the prence of Christ your life?” “How do you handle Christians who reject you whout knowg your story?” “If your parents had not accepted you, what do you thk you would have done?”</p><p>The queri were not accatory, but timate and vg. I was able to talk of my stggl, of my own ambivalence about a topic that is ually prented only black and whe, pro and n. It was their obv ncern for me as a person and a Christian that allowed me to go ep wh myself to rpond.</p><p>And then there were no more qutns–only a flood of stori. Some told tearfully of brothers and sisters who are gay, and whom they had been tght to reject. Others told how iends had e out to them, and how poorly equipped they felt when me to offerg support. About how the admonn to “hate the s but love the sner” proved woefully aquate when the sner happened to be a person they red for eply.</p><p>I unrstood the dynamic–how story elics story–but I had not anticipated the monaly of the stori told that eveng. They were sharg wh me how they had also been wound by their relign’s tolerance toward homosexuals. Carg and ialistic, the young people still believed that love has the power to remake the world. It hurt them to be asked to mistst their ept stcts, the on that had led them to mistry.</p><p><span class="3-wordtrosans">I would like to say everybody volved</span> went on to live happily ever after, but life don’t work that way. A few profsors whose stunts were at the ssn plaed to the an about my beg allowed to speak. Some of the semarians attendg the ssn cid to ph for a mp support group for iends of the GLBT muny. The an, alarmed, charged a mtee to create a list of faculty and stunts who challenged the stutn’s policy on homosexualy.</p><p>Was worth ? For the stutn, I hope so. I don’t know whether the urageo man who ved me will keep his job, or what he might have to do to reta . I’m fairly certa I will not be asked to speak aga anytime soon. As I feared, the stunt body may have bee even more polarized over the issue than before. But was worth for me as a Christian.</p><p>In the most unlikely of plac, I had experienced a g home. Such a g home is not a matter of nqut or retributn, of fally gettg the love, rpect, or apologi that are your due. Rather, simply by tellg your story, your tth, whout the expectatn of ga or the dread of loss, you are set ee. I me away wh a new unrstandg of the old sayg that while facts n help expla , only stori n save –and, I hope, others.</p><p><i>Jonathan Oll is a wrer, motivatnal speaker, and thor of the novel</i> The View om Delphi<i>. This article origally appeared </i> Commonweal<i> (Jan. 15, 2010), a vibrant, thought-provokg opn journal and a 2010 Utne Inpennt Prs Award</i><i></i><i>nomee for spirual verage.</i><b><i><a href=" target="_blank"></a></i></b></p> </article> <div id="related_articl_panel" class="hidn"><div class="clear-both w-full lg:w-[300px] lg:float-left mr-6 mb-4 bg-gray-50 round-lg divi-y divi-gray-200 prt:hidn"><div class="flex flex-l mt-0 py-3 px-4 lg:leadg-loose"><span class="p-0 m-0 text-xl lg:text-[1.35rem] lg:leadg-[1.85rem] font-bold text-primary">Related Articl</span></div><div class="divi-y divi-gray-200"><a href=" class="block p-4 !no-unrle hover:bg-gray-100 group first:round-bl-lg last:round-br-lg"> <div class="grid grid-ls-4 gap-3"> <div class="l-span-1"> <div class="aspect-w-6 aspect-h-4 lg:aspect-w-3 lg:aspect-h-3"> <img class="lazy w-full h-full object-ver round-lg bg-gray-300 !m-0 !p-0" alt="An Unual O to Home" data-src="> </div> </div> <div class="l-span-3 flex flex-l"> <span class="text-base text-gray-600 leadg-tight font-semibold le-clamp-2">An Unual O to Home</span> <span class="text-sm text-gray-400 le-clamp-2">In "God Help Thee: A Manifto," thor and playwright Joel Thomas Hyn do a lot of trash-talkg about Newfoundland. 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