I Embraced My Sexuality and Learned to Live Without Fear
By: Eric Beach
Tags: Christianity, Life, Storytelling, Faithfullylgbt, Gay Christian Network

So there I was. I entered the hotel and conference center in Houston for the 2016 Gay Christian Network Conference. This was foreign territory for me in that I’d never been to anything like this, and I had no idea how things worked here. At the registration table, I got a red lanyard for my conference ID, which meant that people should ask me before taking my picture for publication purposes.

I chose this lanyard because I had come to this conference somewhat on the sly. I didn’t announce it on Facebook, and didn’t tell many of my acquaintances. And I was also teaching part time at a conservative Christian college that would have fired me on the spot if they knew that I was at such a conference.

I’m an introvert whose natural inclination is to reflect almost continually on everything and that whole weekend I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d gotten there.

So here’s where I flashback to my childhood and tell you that I grew up like most kids in a small town in the Midwest: going to church all the time, doing pretty good in school, having a blue-collar Dad who tended to be verbally abusive. He wanted me to play football like my older brother, but I didn’t even know how the game worked. Though I never did play, I had a pretty normal childhood: chicken pox, church youth group trips, figuring out what you’re really good at in high school (which was English and journalism).

I didn’t really start recognizing who I was until I got to college. I was at conservative Christian college in Chicago when was I first able to admit that I was attracted to guys. One aspect of college life that confirmed this for me was living on a floor with 30 guys who all shared one communal bathroom.

I had developed a fear of getting in trouble and a desire to do everything perfectly during high school, and these approaches to faith were reinforced during my freshman year of college. But this approach changed when I started seriously struggling with depression. This depression came from realizing I was a legalist and from realizing that legalism couldn’t save you. My depression got worse when I started experiencing some cognitive dissonance between what my spiritual life was supposed to be, and how it actually was. I became disillusioned with the evangelical subculture I was part of and distrustful any kind of Christian institution.

A kind of evangelical PTSD continued after I’d graduated, though my cynicism and anger were only perpetuated during my time as a crime reporter in Chicago. What made things worse was a friend’s suicide, which happened only a few months before that friend was to graduate from my alma mater. This was a double dose of the dark night of the soul.

So I became quick to question just about everything. For some reason, though, the one thing I didn’t question was my commitment to fight my same-sex attractions. I’d been to different counselors to help with my depression, but my same-sex attractions, though obviously part of what contributed to this issue, usually took a back seat.

So I fought these attractions faithfully for 15 years. I even became part of a ministry associated with Exodus International for a year while living in Dallas. Though I wasn’t forced into trying reparative therapy, I found some amazing community that really helped me become more comfortable in my fight. I dated 6 women during those 15 years, though each relationship lasted for less and less time.

After the most recent relationship attempt, I became more exasperated with my situation. I kept remembering so many different things I’d heard and read about same-sex attraction that I’d sidelined. And this was the start of a process when my thinking and stances on my attractions began to change. Many factors came together during this process, making it difficult to pinpoint if one led to another or if one idea domino-ed into another and another.

Perhaps the first event in this process came during grad school, when I proposed a presentation to a pretty huge academic conference and got in. The theme for the conference was Rhetoric Across Borders, and the title for my presentation was “Calling it Quits: How Exodus International Closing It’s Doors Opens up Rhetorical Possibilities.”

I had researched the rhetoric surrounding the ex-gay movement and how former president of Exodus International Allan Chambers’ admission of his own same-sex attractions not fully disappearing was such a big deal. At that time, though, I knew I wasn’t quite on the same page as the conclusion to my presentation, where I added some super liberal — or what at the time I’d thought were super liberal — conclusions. I argued that one good which had come from this organization shutting down was the creation of more room for gay Christians to identify themselves and more room to, if needed, define themselves in different ways. Little did I know that these conclusions I had added were almost exactly where I would end up at the end the process of me changing my mind.

Friends who were counselors told me in the past that the longer someone has same-sex attractions the more the wiring in your brain solidifies. This idea — and ideas were quite a big thing for me during grad school where I studied rhetoric — is what led me to more fully accept that I couldn’t change my attractions. I mean, if the president of Exodus International couldn’t do it, I couldn’t either.

So for a while, I’d considered being gay but celibate. I mean, I had already pretty much done that for the last 15 years. So why not stick to that, and just admit that I was gay? But, once I started to consider that, I realized that I would have to start adding so many different qualifiers to the word ‘gay’ and add so many explanations for that I meant when I said ‘gay’. So I realized I would have to start taking time to explain, “I’m gay, but not like what you think.”

Another factor that fed on my evangelical PTSD and angst is the idea that maybe Christians had got it wrong on their stance against all things LGBTQ. There have been a couple times in the past where Christians had it wrong about some idea: the world being flat, slavery, etc. I already was distrustful of the church, pastors, and Evangelicalism as a whole. There were times where I felt like doing exactly what Evangelicalism was saying not to do. You can’t love the LGBTQ community? Well, then maybe I should love them. You can’t be gay and Christian? Well, then maybe that’s just what I’ll be. I mean, more and more respectable evangelicals were coming out in support of LGBTQ people, relationships, and this community’s full inclusion in the church.

Similar to my desire to be contrary was the role of Soren Kierkegaard’s existential faith. I was first introduced to this Danish philosopher back in undergrad, when I started to experience my first bouts of depression and cognitive dissonance with how my faith actually played out. What cemented Kierkegaard a place in my faith was one idea that if you don’t get depressed when thinking through your faith and through the absurdity of life without God, then maybe you’re not thinking hard enough. As dark and depressing as Kierkegaard can be, he was a light and an encouragement to me during my depression. I felt vindicated in feeling like my evangelical expectations weren’t meeting up with what I was actually experiencing.

More and more Kierkegaardian ideas became revelations and integral parts of my new worldview. Ideas like the process of questioning and wrestling and praying with God could be more important than if your conclusions place you outside the majority opinion. This is because the activity of questioning and wrestling and praying is what makes your faith genuine. One of the worst sins for Kierkegaard would be to go along unthinkingly and uncritically with the crowd and become part of the mob. I could talk Kierkegaard for days, as I’m sure people in my church small group could tell you. But one way to paraphrase much of Kierkegaard’s ideas would be to figure faith out for yourself.

Also, one of the largest reasons why I decided that I was wrong for fighting my same-sex attractions was fear. This fear started back when while I was kid and afraid of the wrath of my Dad. Afraid of getting yelled at, I was afraid of doing anything wrong. That is why I so quickly adopted a legalistic mentality: maybe if I did everything right, I’d be okay or more worthy of love. That same fear is what kept me fighting against my same-sex attractions because I was afraid of the inevitable judgment and rejection that would result from coming out.

So each of these influences all sort of dog-piled on top of each other: Kierkegaard’s ideal of being genuine; not trusting whatever evangelicalism said was true; knowing I couldn’t change my orientation. All of this pushed me to think that maybe I should stop being so afraid. Maybe I should be bold and embrace being gay. Maybe I should sin boldly. If this put me on the outside of the crowd, then so be it. I was already used to being an outsider, so why not fully embrace this identity and accept whatever consequences came with this decision? So these rhetorical questions became my basis for changing my mind.

Since then, I have slowly been coming out to more and more people until two summers ago, when I announced on Facebook that I was in a relationship with a man. I have dated this man for 16 months and fallen in love with him. And in this, I know that God has a huge sense of humor because, in spite of my distrust of the church and my wariness to get too involved, my boyfriend is a pastor. Which means that I know that I’ll be involved in a church for the rest of my life.

That year, I approached my church’s leadership about starting a group that talks through LGBTQ+ topics in a way that fits with this church’s values and priorities. The group would describe different perspectives without privileging one over the other and half of the time would be more about different people sharing their stories. I was nervous and expecting more rejection when I proposed this, but the leadership said yes. And this group has been amazing.

So there I was. Seven of us from this discussion group traveled to Pittsburg for 2017’s Gay Christian Network Conference. And that year, I wore a blue lanyard, which meant I had no issues with anyone taking my picture. I didn’t have to worry about a Christian employer finding out that I was at this conference, or that I was gay. I even got interviewed on camera about my experiences at the conference that year. And during that interview, I spoke without any fear.