While learning theology in the classroom and self-discovery in therapy sessions, I slowly began to believe that being LGBTQ+ wasn't a sin, at least it wasn't a sin for anyone else. For me, though, I had to fight my attractions. If I was LGBTQ+, especially if I actually allowed myself to pursue a non-heterosexual relationship, then I was sinning. For many years I was afraid that God and the church hated me, or at least would hate me, if they knew the true me, which included my attraction to women. Yet, I eventually realized that not being out was killing me, as I struggled with intense shame and suicidal ideation.

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I had to become affirming of LGBTQ+ Christians first and call myself a 'straight ally' and even then, I took an additional couple years before I could begin to allow my mind to 'go there'. It wasn't until I was sitting in a Buddhist temple on the other side of the world after leaving my job and on a solo trip where I found the space and presence of God Herself to say: yes, I am bisexual.

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I was forced to take a long and difficult look at my pursuit of straightness due to a deepening shame-filled depression and eventual emotional breakdown due to my inability to purge myself of queerness. The sense of failure that I felt was staggering and overwhelming. Every closed door and unfulfilled dream would point back at that failure and add more failure on top of it. Added onto that were layers of denial about what it meant to not be straight, and still be attracted to men. I realized that I could never be in a relationship, and never enjoy partnership with someone whom I loved. As I realized that was actually something that I wanted, I realized that, along with the shame and the depression, my current course was unsustainable. I needed to learn to love myself in my entirety if i was to survive.

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In our church tradition, there wasn't such a thing as an LGBT Christian. “Gay” was something that exclusively existed outside the church, and it was rarely talked about. Because being gay was so diametrically opposed to being Christian, we never even had to talk about it, it just wasn't a thing. I would even deny my own feelings because my identity was a Christian, and that couldn't coexist with being LGBT.

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It sounds strange to say it, but I truly didn't know I wasn't straight until I was 25 years old and already married to a man. I had "dated" men my entire life, but having grown up in Christian purity culture, the first person I slept with was my husband. Before that, I had referred to myself as "the straightest person I knew!" I think I had just never stopped to ask myself if that was really true and never had any experiences that made me question it. But once I realized I was attracted to women, it was like a light bulb went on, and as hard as I tried, I could not turn it back off.

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Walking in to the kitchen, I saw my mom fervently washing the dishes quietly with her back towards me and my dad sitting next to the table with one leg over the other, quietly looking down. My eyes traveled to the rectangular object on the table and my heart stopped. There, lying on the kitchen table was the gay porn Falcon video I stashed in my room, adorned with butch leather men on every surface of the VHS tape sleeve.

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I realized my attraction to females (I’m AFAB, or “assigned female at birth”) when I was 16 years old, and then realized I was FTM transgender when I was 19 years old. I was raised Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, so I believed that being LGBTQ+ was a choice and a sin, and that if someone was LGBTQ+, they were living in sin until they had enough faith in God to repent and change.

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I’ve known that there was something “different” about me ever since kindergarten. But it wasn’t until my sophomore year of college (at a conservative Evangelical university) that I finally looked in a mirror and said the words “I’m gay” out loud.

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I first put the pieces together during my senior spring at Wheaton College. There had been a lot of pieces I'd been thoroughly ignoring because I had been maliciously identified as "the gay kid" in middle school well before I was ready to embrace being different. The other boys had essentially said "Peter is different from us, therefore he is gay, therefore he is worthless", so I made it my mission to prove they were wrong.

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Picture this: A studious, driven Christian girl spends 18 years studying to get into Ivy League schools. She not only gets in, but also thrives within rigorous academic environments, and earns engineering and law degrees. She cultivates a strong faith and leads praise dance ministry and church Bible study groups…But when this 29-year-old Jesus-loving virgin, anxiously awaiting Christian Prince Charming, instead meets a sporty and funny Jewish girl, falls accidentally in love and comes out to her family, everyone really gets thrown for a loop… 

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“Lauren, you’re not a lesbian.” My friend finished her sentence and I stared into my hands to avoid her eyes. I knew if I looked up, her gaze would be kind and compassionate, but I felt my own eyes sting as the blood rushed to my cheeks. My face turned crimson with the deep shame and embarrassment that I felt knowing that she knew what I was hiding. “You’re not a lesbian,” she repeated. She was right. I wasn’t a lesbian. I was actually bisexual, but didn’t have the vocabulary or anyone in my life who fit that description to explain my “conflicting” feelings.

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