Religion, Sexuality & Family Life in the Late 20th Century

I grew up in a home that did not practice any religion, I never attended a church service, I went to public school, and overall growing up, I did not experience hardly any exposure to religion/religious beliefs. I also grew up during a period of time that followed some major progress made in the gay rights movement that influenced a large societal shift in attitudes toward non-heterosexuality. Additionally, I had the privilege of being raised by two, quite progressive-thinking, loving, and accepting moms, who’s only expectation for me was to be the best me that I could.

So for my project for my Christianity and Sexuality sociology course, I wanted to talk with people who grew up differently than I did — during a different time, having had different relationships with their family, experienced different religion practices-to be able to hear their thoughts concerning these topics and explore how their experiences may have shaped them. I decided to talk with a few people that identify as gay that also grew up in an actively religious environment, around the 60’s/70’s era.

I quickly realized that my moms, Laura and Devon, would meet the perfect criteria for whom I was hoping to interview. I wanted to see how their experiences with religion and with their family affected them and if it hindered their ability to come to terms with their sexuality. I also wanted to learn a bit more about their relationships with my grandparents.

After having lengthy conversations with them and hearing their stories more in-depth than I’d previously had, I realized that they both have had very different experiences that have produced varying life course effects.

Segment from interview with Laura:

“My mother, strongly yet quietly, devoted to the Episcopal church, took us to church every Sunday, and encouraged us to see Christianity in terms of what she treasured as Jesus’ teachings — love and kindness to all, education, peace. My mom and my dad both felt strongly about human rights, civil rights, women’s rights… and raised us in a setting of educated conversation. My dad appreciated parts of the Bible in terms of written expression; as for my my mom, the Bible held truth, gave liturgy and faith in most of its words. I recall feeling strongly attached to both notions… As far back as i can remember, I felt different from my female peers. In truth, I desperately wanted to be a boy. I was considered a ‘tomboy’ when that was an insult, though my mom found affection in that term for me. But still, ‘tomboy’ was an insult and gay-related jokes were entirely acceptable. Despite my mom’s rather progressive views, I seemed to believe being gay was a sin against God and Nature. I took it in personally, and with a lot of confused shame. I worried about how God might feel about all of that, so rejecting or ignoring my feelings for girls seemed the safest for me. Safer, for me, was to stay quietly attached to this inner shame. When I was 10, my dad died. Not identifying as a Christian, he certainly was a Humanist, and a Feminist. Still, along with a myriad of other questions, I will never know how he would have reacted, finding out I’m gay. My mom, eventually and remarkably, accepted my decision. I have tremendous respect for her setting aside her beliefs, really, in her accepting me and my journey. Although I held onto her, what was later deemed, “internalized homophobia,”. After I came out to my Grandma, she essentially turned her back on me. Sometime later, we exchanged letters, and she revealed her reasons for initially rejecting me for awhile. On the one hand, she simply feared for how difficult life would be made for me choosing to come out — choosing, in fact, to be gay.

Segment from interview with Devon:

“I was 13 when I knew I was gay. My mom was, for her generation, progressive. But I was nothing like the kind of straight girly girl she’d envisioned and I for that I felt that I was a failure. My dad thought I was an abomination, and sick. For nearly a year I was under house arrest and dragged to therapy. When the therapist told them that I was fine and they had the problem, they let me stop going. I believe that after Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins, (aka faults and humanness, weaknesses) the Old Testament became a history book. Jesus is the way, truth and light to God. He condemns no one. He condemns folks who act in evil. Not humanness. So, I worried for like 2 minutes before believing that God made me. I am a decent person. I’m not perfect but humans are not. God loves me and if I’m trying to be the best me I can, and live my life doing so, even if I mess up sometimes, God could give a rats ass if I’m gay or not. I think all God expects is that we try our best and work on being the best person we can throughout our lives. No human is perfect. Only God is. If Jesus could die so that we can be forgiven, I can honor that, and God, by doing my best.

My response and analysis to the interviews:

I was able to draw connections from our conversations to several themes and concepts that I absorbed from our class readings and discussions. Laura’s experiences are representative of a “climate of fear”, defined in Moon’s article, Beyond the Dichotomy: Six Religious Views of Homosexuality, as ‘a culture of silence has more negative effects than positive because of the broader heterosexist and homonegative messages in our society.’ (1226). She describes feeling shame due to the ideas she was socialized into believing, and describes having feelings of shame and choosing to stay quietly attached to these feelings while rejecting and compartmentalizing her true self. This would only perpetuate more negative effects for her, placing her directly in an active climate of fear. These experiences also made her fall victim to oppression sickness. Bishop Yvette Flunder discusses this concept in detail in her article, Healing Oppression Sickness, describing it as “internalized oppression that causes the oppressed to be infected by the sickness of the oppressor” (117). Due to societal messages as well as homophobic discourses experienced from family members and acquaintances, Laura became tainted into believing that maybe, in fact, she really was what everyone else said she was.

Additionally, during my conversation with Laura, she told me a story about when she and her partner were walking home together one night, during the late 80’s, and were holding hands, when all of the sudden a car approached them, began throwing eggs at them, and continued to do so while following them. They had to run from the car for a few blocks until they eventually got away from the attackers and made it inside their home. This is a perfect example of ‘queerbashing’, a term used by Gayle Rubin in their writing, Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. In this article, Rubin discusses gender inequality, sexual oppression, and feelings of sex panic, during contemporary times. Rubin gives readers an example of ‘queerbashing’ in her writing: “a significant recreational activity for young urban males” where “they come into gay neighborhoods armed with baseball bats and looking for trouble, knowing that the adults in their lives either secretly approve or will look the other way” (6).

Throughout my conversation with Devon, I quickly understood that her parents’ reactions and actions to her coming out were very centered around the idea of heteronormativity. Defined by Megan Defranza in the first chapter, Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God, of her book, as “the attitude that heterosexuality is the only normal and natural expression of sexuality”(7)”. This idea erases any other sexual or gender identity, silencing and isolating the existence and integrity of so many individuals. Devon dealt with this while battling with her parents over whether or not she was “sick” or, simply, a woman who was interested in women. Devon also touched on Defranza’s interpretation of “imago dei”, meaning “image of God”, in the interview where she describes how God made her the way that she is and that He would not care if she was gay, He only expects that she tries her best and is the best human being that she can be. Another connection I made was to Moon’s article, and the specific, homonegative, view, the “born gay” view, that “posits sexual orientation as innate”, likening homosexuality to a disease that needs to be cured. Devon’s parents believed that she was sick, and that sending her to therapy would cure her abominable sickness.

Both interviewee’s experiences coming out to their family seem to have both had some significantly homonegative responses. Moon discusses this view quite densely in her article, depicting it as the “religious view that same-sex sexual behavior is unambiguously sinful and forbidden in scripture … posits same-sex sexual activity, desire, and/or identity as sinful, sick, and/or wrong (1218).” Although their parent(s) may have eventually accepted their sexuality, they continuously held on to homonegative views while their children struggled to accept their own, very real, identities.

Reference List:

Bishop Yvette Flunder, 2015, “Healing Oppression Sickness,” pp. 115–124 in Queer Christianities: Lived Religion in Transgressive Forms, ed. by Kathleen T. Talvacchia, Michael F. Pettinger, and Mark Larrimore, New York: NYU Press.

Dawne Moon, 2014, “Beyond the Dichotomy: Six Religious Views of Homosexuality,” Journal of Homosexuality 61 (9): 1215–1241.

Gayle Rubin, 1984. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” pp. 3–41 in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. by Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, & David M. Halperin; New York: Routledge.

Megan DeFranza, 2015, “Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God,” pp.1–19 in her Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co.