National Coming Out Day – # 2

I don’t know what it’s like to be gay. But for a long time I’ve been supportive. I’ve had lots of friends and acquaintances and colleagues who were (are) gay. Apparently in high school I had friends in who are gay, but I didn’t know it then. I’m sure I would’ve been supportive. I certainly had a number of what I would call moderate but others would call liberal viewpoints. (I remember arguing with my brother at the kitchen table about things like inter-racial relationships and women in positions of authority. I was on the side that says both of those things are okay. My brother called me a “flaming liberal”. Funny thing is that not long after that I had a friend in college who called me conservative.)

About a year ago I had an experience, well it lasted several months—is that “an experience”? Maybe this is better: about a year ago I went through something that gave me some clue what that must feel like. My experience felt awful. It made me very unhappy and bitter.

At the end of last summer I had very little money and no future work lined up. I felt that I couldn’t afford to go back to NYC, so I started looking around for some possibilities. Just at that time, a friend posted as his facebook status that he needed an accompanist at the school where he was head of the voice faculty. So I ended up working there. It was a private Baptist university outside of Mobile, Alabama. I wasn’t familiar with the school and was a little wary at first, as I am not a Christian and certainly not a Baptist. But my friend assured me that as long as I wasn’t cursing at the students and sacrificing babies in my backyard at midnight it would be fine.

Well, it wasn’t fine. The head of the performing arts department asked me to not tell the students that I was not a Christian. I thought that it didn’t need to be a big deal, but I still didn’t understand just what sort of place I was working at. The students and faculty are all assumed to be Christians. It seems that the faculty are considered spiritual advisors to the students in addition to whatever they are teaching. All the time in the hallways and classrooms you hear people throwing out these catch-phrases that let you know they’re in the know: “Have a blessed day” and that sort of thing. I played some for the theatre program, and they would have prayer at the beginning and end of every rehearsal.

When I found out that they have a musical theatre major, before I met anyone there, I wondered if they had any gay musical theatre boys. (Yes, that’s a stereotype, but it’s based on real-world truth.) I’m pretty sure they do, but those boys are not even close to being out. The official position of the school is that if you are discovered to be a homosexual, engaging in homosexual behavior, you’ll be kicked out. In practice, it depends on who you are. If you’re someone the department really wants to keep, because you’re really good or a leader or whatever, then they’ll pray for you and have a sort of Jesus-based intervention at which, I suppose, you can renounce your sin and get right with God, and then it’s okay, I guess.

Well, as the semester dragged on, I found it harder and harder to not talk about my lack of faith. Only one person, other than the head of the department, ever asked me directly about what I believed. I told her the truth. I’m agnostic. But there were so many other times when I could tell that people were assuming that I was like them, that I shared their faith. There were some faculty members that I told, mainly so they wouldn’t ask me to lead a prayer or anything like that. But otherwise, I was in the faith “closet”. There was something about me that was rather significant, and I knew that most everyone else around me was not “that way”, and they assumed that I was just like them and not “that way” either.

If I had stayed on there for another semester it would’ve had to’ve been on the condition that I be honest about my lack of faith. But I did not stay. I could not stay. My being asked to not reveal that I wasn’t a Christian was a symptom of the larger problem of a focus on the appearance of things at the expense of the substance. That’s why I left. That attitude is in direct opposition to my feeling about life, how people should communicate with each other, and certainly education: teachers and schools ought to be encouraging students to examine things and explore the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. I think this is a general problem in “the church” and the reason behind so many church/minister scandals. They’re busy working on the appearance of right-ness or righteousness and not dealing with the substance or truth of things.

When I decided to leave, I did tell a few of the students about the whole thing. They didn’t think it was a big deal. It's not that they didn't care, but they weren't devastated, their faith wasn't shaken by my not sharing it. One of them was actually mad about it and told the head of the department. Good for her.

Before that experience, I knew that I considered it important to tell the truth. It’s something that I value. But I now know that it’s also very important for me to not not tell the truth. Not telling the truth about something feels just like lying, which I hate. In other, fancier words, it’s important to not commit lies of omission, not just to avoid lies of commission.

The whole experience of feeling “closeted” in that way was just dreadful. And I didn’t even feel any shame about being agnostic. How horrible would it have been if I thought it was bad or evil or sinful or unnatural or just plain wrong to be the way I was.

It’s not wrong or evil to be agnostic. Sometimes it can be difficult. But there are people out there who are like you and others who aren’t but will support you and love you and not think that you’re bad because of it.

And it’s not wrong or evil to be gay. Sometimes it can be difficult. But there are people out there who are like you and others who aren’t but will support you and love you and not think that you’re bad because of it.

Have a “blessed” National Coming Out Day.