HUMAN RIGHTS

How Church Camp Led Me On a Journey to a Greater Understanding of LGBTQ Issues

It’s not what you think.

“Did you hear? There’s a girl with another church who says she’s a lesbian!” another little girl exclaimed, followed by a chorus of embarrassed giggles from her listeners.

I was eight years old when this happened, in the summer between the 3rd and 4th grades. It was my first introduction to the concept of someone being sexually attracted to someone of the same gender, and it was my first time away at church camp. I mean, of course, it was!

Girls, especially the mean ones, love to spill tea. The hot gossip about the 9-year-old girl was the first time I had heard the term lesbian. I’d never imagined, as a girl, how liking another girl was possible. This is because I’m hard-wired to like boys. I was more interested in swimming in the pool than joining their tea party.

I recently contemplated my reconciling with homosexuality, expanding later to include the broad spectrum of LGBTQ identities. This incident is where my journey began.

I didn’t utter a word about what I learned at that summer camp to my parents. But I did think about it more, and this was in the days before Google. And I doubted if my parents’ dusty collection of the 1964 World Book encyclopedias could have shed light on the topic, either.

In high school, a new friend invited me to a Wednesday night youth group at her church. An Assembly of God, they were decidedly more fundamentalist than my church, although mine had harmful teachings, too.

The lesson in the small group that night was that homosexuality is a sin. That did not sit well with me, and so I challenged the teacher on his declaration.

My most convincing point? Why would someone choose such a challenging “lifestyle?” Wouldn’t this more likely be the way we were born? That biologically, our brains are set to one attraction or another?

The teacher held his ground. You know, for the Bible tells you so. Ugh. I was disgusted. I felt dirty just for sitting in a place where that kind of hatred was spewed.

Now that I hold two degrees in science, I’m even more aligned with the concept of a human’s nature to be hard-wired for certain sexual traits. I detest the use of the word “preference,” as it implies that homosexuality, and, for that matter, the spectrum of LGBTQ issues are a choice when they are not.

Should these be categorized under the umbrella of neurodivergence, along with characteristics like dyslexia or ADHD? I don’t consider any of these disorders, just different variations of the human genetic code. Sometimes, these are even gifts.

For example, I have several friends who happen to have dyslexia. Almost all of them are truly gifted artists. Do you think it’s because their perspective of the world is unconventional?

One of these friends, a photographer, will look at a scene in a completely different way than I would, capturing what she sees in an unusually unique frame. Something better than I saw. What a talent when you can present the world from such a beautiful perspective.

Likewise, I have friends who are a part of the LGBTQ community. There’s so much more that unites us rather than divides us.

I bonded with one of these friends about our mutual childhood crush: Julie Andrews, although we may have had different objectives. My friend, who happens to be a woman married to another woman, wanted to have her as her lover. I, on the other hand, wanted her to be my mother. We shared a solid few minutes of laughter about this! I’ll think of my friend now every time I watch The Sound of Music.

Every human simply wants to be heard, seen, and accepted. Showing that love is love is, well, lovely.

I’m frustrated that the backlash has been swift and merciless for as much progress we have made in recent years in improving equality. It feels like we moved two steps forward and three steps back.

What burns me up right now is how my county’s school board has “addressed” LGBTQ issues.

First, there was the erasure of “safe spaces.” No longer can these stickers be used in classrooms, and the rainbow itself has been deemed repulsive, with its display by a teacher now qualifying as a punishable action. All to protect the feelings of cisgender students. Sigh.

Second, they passed this abhorrent rule that places a student on trial by the school board should they want to use the bathroom of their gender identity if it does not align with what’s on their birth certificate, punishing transgender students.

This has become personal for me, as I now have a dear friend who lost her transgender son by suicide. Even though he had affirming, supportive parents, the pain of living in a society that didn’t accept his divergency was crippling for him.

Is this what conservatives want with these punishing rules? To push our children into so much pain that they feel like their best option is to leave this world? Because it sure sounds like it to me. And that sounds a lot like genocide.

We already know that the suicide rate is high among those who are transgender. A child who has a supportive adult in their life is much less likely to die in this way. These facts are well documented.

However, if the world outside the safety of your affirming family is toxic, maybe even this isn’t enough. It certainly wasn’t for my friend’s son. And her heart is irreparably broken by her loss.

As long as your truth doesn’t harm others, everyone deserves to live theirs. And this includes having legal access to gender-affirming care. Those who think otherwise are telling us that they think people who don’t present as genetically typical are less than human.

This is where the problems begin.

When humans are ranked instead of linked, everyone loses. — Gloria Steinem

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Sexuality is not a choice; religion is. One should not impose their religious beliefs onto others. It’s past time to stop punishing humans for their biology.

As always, I hope you all are safe and healthy.