I Stole a Book to Reform my Sexuality
When the fundamentalists tried their hardest to make me hetero
I looked around the room of the portable building the Christian club met in on campus. Everyone was preoccupied with the lamingtons (an Australian delicacy that has to be experienced to be appreciated but think sponge cake, chocolate, and coconut) that Rachel had brought, and discussing the sermon the visiting pastor had preached.
So I picked up the book and quickly slid it into my backpack behind my sociology textbook but in front of my notebook.
I was the newest member of the club as this was my first semester of university, and I was overwhelmed with the new world I found myself in. I enjoyed it, but I was still tryinig to navigate how things worked.
Rachel was my mentor. I didn’t particularly like her, but I also didn’t dislike her. She was fine, and she was helping me. She even invited me to her house and worked some with me. She was getting married as soon as she graduated, and she was very excited.
The book I stole was Out of Egypt: One Woman’s Journey out of Lesbianism by Jeanette Howard. It was the story of a woman who claimed to be an ex-lesbian, and such books were becoming popular. Jeanette, the book said, had been an active lesbian until she found Jesus.
Born again Jeanette knew that she could not be a lesbian anymore because God said it was an abomination, which was the same thing I had learned growing up. I was unable to stop liking girls, it seemed, and I was hoping the book would help.
She promised that healing from lesbianism was possible, and so far, nobody knew that I liked women except for the women I had been with. Since being a lesbian was a sin worthy of being sentenced to death in my world, I had to figure this shit out so that I could stop being a lesbian.
It would be a redemption story like no other, and I was going to make it work. The book supposedly had stories about what temptation looks like and how to avoid these temptations or at least not act on them.
At the time, I was living with an American couple and their teenage son. God had called them to be missionaries to Australia, in the beautiful, tropical tourist city I lived in. I often wondered why God never called these people to the desert areas, but I kept that question to myself.
I was currently staying in the spare bedroom that once was the bedroom of their oldest son who had returned to the United States for college. We didn’t have many fundamentalist Christian colleges in Australia, and so he was shipped back to America.
I read the book in less than a day, devouring it, because I needed to stop sinning pronto. There was no time to waste, because I was an abomination to God. Eventually I couldn’t hold it in anymore, and as Sandra sat in her recliner to relax, I sat down on the couch and asked if we could talk.
“I need some help,” I said.
“What kind of help?” Sandra asked.
“Sandra, I need find a counselor who can help me and I thought you might know of someone.”
“We don’t recommend people see counselors, they use psychology, which is a worldly thing designed to assure people that their sin is fine, and to find other sources for why the person is unhappy when usually they just need to repent,” Sandra responded.
“I don’t know what to do” I said to her.
“Well, Bert can probably help,” Sandra said, referring to her husband. “Always go to a pastor first. What are you wrestling with?”
I took a deep breath, and began to cry and shake.
“I’m a lesbian,” I blurted out, before I could back out. As awful an admission as it was, I needed the help because otherwise I was going to hell. I couldn’t possibly be “saved” if I was living an active lesbian lifestyle.
Sandra looked at me and said “Bert and I had wondered, and I know that Bert can help you with this. He’s been waiting for you to admit it.”
I sighed in relief. I would have help overcoming this terrible sin.
Bert handed me an exercise book and told me to write down, in detail, every single temptation, even if I didn’t act on them. He could help me evaluate them and come up with an intense plan for radically eliminating the desire to date women.
He also asked me to write down all the activity I had with women to date, even if it were just a longing to date them.
It would really help, he promised. I told him about the book I had read, leaving out the part about having sneaked it into my bag when nobody was looking.
I handed Bert the book because he had asked to see it, and he said he was glad it had helped me reach out to him, but that he couldn’t endorse it for any help from here on out.
“She’s a liberal Christian,” Bert explained, “and while she has some good things to say and God has redeemed her, you can’t trust all of her advice.” He told me that he had better resources I could use.
Those resources, of course, were written by male fundamentalist pastors who didn’t believe in psychology or psychiatry.
I meant to return the book when I was done, I really did. I didn’t set out to steal it, but I also didn’t want anyone to catch me with it and since I didn’t have a good plan on how to get it back, I just didn’t put it back.
I hoped that God would consider it okay because it had helped me to come forward and confess my sin.
For people who claim they don’t believe in mortal sins, they sure acted like they did. It was unspoken, but lesbianism was a mortal sin and I had to radically and rigidly follow the prescribed program in order to be rid of it.
Years later, when I no longer identified as a fundamentalist or a born again Christian, I posted some things on Facebook.
Sandra was pissed.
I wrote things about how fundamentalism had damaged me, and how strict it was, and called it a cult. I railed against the ‘King James Version only’ movement that I had been part of, and in my anger at a system I no longer believed in, called fundamentalism to task.
I was angry at how badly I had been hurt, and about all the lies. I was tired of the people who had acted like they cared all those years, but only if I carefully followed the rules.
I was even wearing pants, which wasn’t something a woman should do. I had turned into an immodest harlot.
Sandra felt the need to say something and she posted these words: the fundamentalists that you are angry at were the ones helping you in your walk with God. I don’t understand why you would no longer want to be a born again Christian and follow God’s instructions, especially as we helped you overcome the sin of lesbianism.
Sandra had publicly outed me, and I was ashamed. I didn’t delete the comment because I figured it was time to face the music and that if my new church was going to ditch me over it, it was best to know.
Almost twenty years later, and I never have been able to overcome lesbianism, and I no longer desire to. I’ve come to learn that God made me this way because it pleased him to do so. God wanted diversity among humanity and so he created us all unique.
God wants me to live as the person who he created me to be rather than hiding. He told me that if being a lesbian were a sin, he would not have created lesbians. Furthermore, it made him happy when I accepted who I was.
I’m also aromantic and asexual, and that’s okay too.
God created me and loves me, and that’s the most beautiful thing of all.
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