Carter Kelly

I was shockingly unaware of both my own sexuality and those of the people around me until I was 13 or 14. There was a gay couple living next door to us for my entire childhood, and I had always assumed they were best friends, which just made sense to me, why wouldn't you want to live with your best friend? As I entered my teen years, I began to realize that puberty was not going to make me attracted to women, as I had believed attraction worked based on what my peers said. I finally realized that this "curiosity" I had about guys was romantic and sexual at the end of middle school.

I did not know any LGBTQ+ Christians growing up—I never considered it to be a possibility or contradiction because my Roman Catholic church never talked about LGBTQ+ people. As I came into my own sexuality, I was vaguely aware that Christians generally were not friendly to our community, yet it was not something that played out in my own life, it was always a broad and abstract understanding. I left my childhood church for reasons unrelated to my sexuality and mostly just stopped thinking about the intersections of faith and sexuality.

For many years, I lived separate from any kind of religion or spirituality; I felt that I did not need it in my life. I became more confident in my sexuality, and later my gender, allowing me to understand who I was and where I was coming from. During and after college I had a number of spiritual and mystical experiences that called me back to the Church and while I knew there were many Christians opposed to people who shared my identities, I also knew that the God who reached out to me affirmed and loved me unconditionally. I saw the queer and trans folks who had always been part of the Christian tradition, from as early as the Bible to today. I saw the space that I could have in the Church and among God's beloved.

I found a lot of affirmation in the Bible, already so full of queer and trans characters who the Church has intentionally misrepresented for centuries. David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, the Ethiopian Eunuch, the Beloved Disciple, Abram and Sarai—in all of these characters I saw myself and my community reflected back at me. I saw the cisgender and heterosexual readings of these stories and characters as forced and reading against the text when to me they were so obviously representations of queer and trans folks. Additionally, there is a lot of queer and trans art that draws on Christian traditions, either directly or indirectly, so I saw the way Holy Spirit was already present and working in our community.

Now, I would call my life hella queer, for sure. I've come to landing on "queer" for both my gender and sexuality. I attend an affirming church in Chicago, where I also met my partner a number of years ago. I'm in the process of becoming ordained so that I can continue to spread the loving and affirming message of the Gospel, building communities dedicated to Jesus' Greatest Commandment in all the forms that takes.