Queer people who are raised religiously often find themselves in an uncomfortable position, one that a new genre of music seems to capture well.
As a queer teenager who was raised in a Southern Baptist home, I have spent most of my life searching for media that I can connect with, that captures the intermixed feelings of grief and hope that I hold toward my sexuality and my faith. Openly discussing my queer identity throughout my life has led to alienation, misunderstanding, or even emotional and physical harm from those closest to me. This fear is so strong that I have decided to withhold my name from this article.
A 2023 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and Utah State University found that “almost two-thirds of LGBTQ people who were raised Christian no longer identify as Christian,” and “people who identified as Christian as adults reported more internalized homophobia.”
Religious queer people can be hard to find, because many religions uphold the idea that queerness is sinful, wrong, and an abomination. It’s hard to exist in religious communities when all you feel is judgment and shame.
Conversely, the queer community can be less than welcoming to religious people. Many of them have been burned by faith in their own lives, so when they see individuals who hold God in one hand and their queerness in another, it can cause confusion and animosity.
I’ve experienced both sides of this: shame from my parents for straying from the Godly path they set me on, and judgment from the queer people in my life who don’t understand my beliefs.
Films like “Boy Erased,” an adaptation of the autobiography of Jared Eamons, the gay son of a pastor who was subjected to conversion therapy, “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” a story of a girl who escaped a conversion camp, and “But I’m a Cheerleader,” a film about a preppy girl’s experience coming to terms with her queer identity, made me feel less alone.
But something about music is different. It’s shorter form, so I can play it instantly whenever I feel isolated or victimized by the communities I wish would welcome me.
Find the sun
The first song I discovered that captured my experiences as a queer Christian was “Find the Sun,” a hopeful, warm, and emotive song, by the ex-Christian queer artist, Tornsey. The verses “there’s not a rule book for living,” and “it’s okay to just be yourself, find your own way” are comforting. They are the words I wish my parents could hear, then say to me.
The gentle, hopeful music behind the lyrics is just as impactful. It’s golden and shimmering. There is understanding in the lyrics “It’s overwhelming to leave what you know, but I swear it’s worth it.”
When I was in the process of dismantling my faith a few years ago, “Find the Sun” was a song that helped me deal with fear. I was terrified of a fiery eternity in hell for questioning my faith, for feeling the way I felt, and Tornsey made me feel understood. I could tell from the emotion in her song that she was like me, and that feeling, knowing I wasn’t alone, saved my life.
I discovered artist Maddie Zahm in the summer after my junior year. My parents had sent me to church camp and Christian family therapy, trying to “fix” me, and Zahm’s music reminded me of my worth. Listening to her music reminded me of the fear I’d felt when I was first coming to terms with my sexuality; it was music I wish I’d had when I was younger.
If it’s not God
Now, her song “If It’s Not God” captures my approach to faith quite well. The words “set myself on fire, let them call me the liar” encapsulate the way I rolled over for my family and my church.
I didn’t fight back when they told me I was broken, that I was wrong. Their hatred manifested in my own anxieties, and it was overwhelming. The lyrics after, “all the Sundays I worried I’d disappoint my mom, ‘cuz I never understood a type of love being wrong” speak to the confusion and inner conflict that queer religious people often feel.
Being told one moment that Jesus loves everyone, that nothing you do is irredeemable, and the next being told that your queerness — an aspect of your identity — will condemn you to hell, is challenging. There is a lot of hypocrisy within the church: They might preach love but then practice hate.
Choosing between faith — which has been ingrained in my life since I was born — and sexuality — which I cannot control and spent years hating myself for — is immensely difficult, and probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Choosing both, trying to find the balance, is even harder.
Zahm’s closing lyrics, “[God will] know why I left, why I ran in a hurry. So either way I choose I’m not wasting my life, ‘cuz the voice in my head has always been right” seems to capture the nuances of queer faith and the rationalization that queer people find comfort in, as they deconstruct the religions in which they were raised.
Balancing queer identity with religious faith means a lot of introspection. For me, it has meant practicing independently. Many churches nowadays offer more progressive opinions but aren’t available to people like myself, who don’t have the freedom to choose their churches because of their parents’ decisions or other circumstances.
A close friend of mine asked me recently “What are you, exactly?” when we were discussing the differences between Christian denominations. Honestly? I have absolutely no idea.
What I choose
I am suspended between two realities: my queer identity and the spirituality that has been instilled in me for the entirety of my existence. I pray sometimes in the car, late at night, during my nature hikes, or when I watch the rain on the porch. Yet, I am angry with God, with the community that forsakes me.
I lost a queer friend to suicide a few years ago, and that experience forever changed my relationship with the church. I’m stumbling through a valley filled with my own transgressions and experiences. A valley in which God is both defendant and prosecutor, yet I hold the gavel.
How am I meant to choose? I grieve for the queer people who walk away from their faith, because I remember the community I once had, how wonderful they were before I became something they feared. I also grieve for the Christians who reject their queer identities, forcing themselves into heterosexual marriages where they are not happy.
God doesn’t promise an easy life, but the God I worship wouldn’t create me as a homosexual — a natural part of life, seen throughout the animal kingdom for generations — only to then ask me to pursue a straight marriage or a life of sexual abstinence, denying myself love and connection. He wouldn’t ask a straight person to marry someone they don’t truly love, and I believe He wouldn’t ask that of me either.
The original Pascal’s Wager says that believing in God is simply the safest option, because if God isn’t real, there’s no harm in spending some hours in church and being a good Samaritan. If God is real, you’ll be glad to be a believer, because otherwise you’re staring down the barrel of hell and eternal damnation.
For me — and other queer people of faith who I’ve spoken with — it’s a sort of inverted version in which leaving the church — if God is real — is understandable, because the church I was raised in was hateful and cruel, not loving like the God they worship. God will understand why I chose to leave that church.
If God is not real, then leaving has no impact on me. If God is real and does not empathize with my position, then I don’t really care to worship Him anyway. Why would I — as Zahm puts it — worship a God who “picks a few just to leave the rest?”
I don’t know what I believe or what I want to believe. I don’t think I’ll figure that out for a while. But I do know what I feel. I know that I am queer, and I have spent too long hating myself for that, for something I cannot control. I’m learning to find beauty in my existence.
My queerness has exposed me to a side of the world I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. It has shown me that for some people in my life, their love for me is conditional, based on my adherence to what they deem as the “correct path.” It has shown me the flaws in our society, exposed me to the cruelty of the world when I was too young to fully understand it.
My queerness is a part of me. I’ve spent most of my life hating it, trying to remove it, ignore it. It was only recently that I began to embrace it, to accept myself. If faced with the choice, I would choose to be gay every time.
Editor’s note: This author’s name is withheld at their request to prevent possible retaliation or harassment.
