\u201cDid I tell you about the pastor and the rainbows?\u201d my friend asks while on our way to a church event. Apparently, some catechists had taught their young class about Noah, and the flood, and the promise of that great bow in the heavens. A classroom full of mini-replicas now adorned the wall used by the faith formation program. The pastor encountered this display and told the catechists, \u201cYou need to take this down.\u201d The catechists attempted to explain the genesis of the rainbows, to which the pastor replied, \u201cI know, I know, but\u2026you need to take them down.\u201d My friend and I groan. The rainbows were decommissioned, as if you could tear God\u2019s promise from the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My friend and I arrive at the event. An older gentleman squints at us, but can\u2019t quite place how he knows us. \u201cAre you the parents of\u2026.\u201d My friend and I look at each other, trying not to smirk. This is not the first time we have been mistaken for a couple over the years,given our lively banter, comedic timing, and virtual inability to look at each other cross-eyed without laughing. Yet we have never considered dating, specifically because he is gay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so am I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last summer, I received my first ever piece of Pride paraphernalia \u2014 a pair of dangling rainbow flag earrings. My friend Cassidy made them, and I love them. I happened to be wearing them last Thursday while having a Zoom meeting with an unabashedly queer member of Gen Z. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Angela. I\u2019m just not into Pride month this year,\u201d they said. \u201cI think it\u2019s internalized homophobia<\/a>.\u201d Their reflection is insightful \u2013 it\u2019s not uncommon for LGBTQ+ persons to use homophobic messaging to berate ourselves, or LGBTQ+ persons in general, leading to self-hatred and distancing from our own community. I nodded in validation, trying not to swish my earrings too violently. \u201cWe all have it,\u201d I said. \u201cOr many of us do, including me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have winced countless times at a distorted image of myself, sitting on the razor\u2019s edge of sin. And as I did with sin, I learned to fear myself, or to be repulsed, or both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coming of age brought new meaning to the phrase, \u201cscared straight.\u201d And I was, or thought I was, at least for a while. Like so many other circumstances in my life, I prioritized being \u201cgood,\u201d sometimes to the exclusion of being true, to those around me and to myself. So, some of the things I did while being good didn\u2019t work out so well. I stayed in personal, professional, and ministerial relationships longer than I should have, sometimes when they were directly harmful to me. Sometimes I believed that I deserved that hurt. In the face of failure, I was more afraid. I tried to make myself smaller, unseen. I didn\u2019t want to risk being known. I imagined my friends and family shifting uncomfortably, pulling their babies closer. I figured it was pointless to look for future positions in ministry. It wouldn\u2019t matter if people \u201cliked\u201d me; it wouldn\u2019t matter how faithfully I served others. There was something bigger, magisterial even, between them and me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes I wonder what I would have been, if I did not find myself choosing between kneeling outside of the sanctuary, begging for the crumbs of a blessing, or lying prostrate, hiding what surely is a scarlet letter stitched to my heart. Sometimes I wonder who we as Church could be if we were not so hyper-focused on one particular aspect of queer love, because queer love, like heterosexual love, is about so much more than just sex. It is, like all love, about self-gift and honoring the entirety of ourselves in that gift. And dear Church, some of the most loving, passionate, creative, sensitive, and faithful people among us have left and are leaving, because their giftedness has been denied or devalued. People who make us as Church uncomfortable, or afraid, or disgusted. I know this, because at times, I am simultaneously disgusted with myself, and within a hair\u2019s breadth of leaving an institution that sees the LGBTQ+ community for our sins first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But let me assure you, we also are not going away. We queer folk are accustomed to finding beauty in what has been labeled ugly or just plain absurd. This is not uncharted territory for us. We see the full spectrum, in a world where black swallows color whole and white washes it out. We take the sun and rain together and search for the ribbon of God\u2019s promise and tie it upon ourselves so no one can say it wasn\u2019t there in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n