I identify as queer in most instances because I feel no need to affirm the current power paradigms by dignifying the idea that I owe the world any thing by way of explaining my body and how I use it. I am brave. I am fearless. I am God’s. I have found myself, and learned to love who that is. These are all the parts of me that would have spilled out of that cup. This might get messy. But it will forever be me. 

I was queer. I was Christian. I was beloved. It wasn’t a person, a teaching, or my emotions which convinced me it was possible to be gay and Christian. It was Holy Spirit, present, living, breathing, speaking…I’m walking in the fullness of God. I am unashamed, unrestrained, unchanged, and entirely in love with the path of Jesus, more in love with God than I’ve ever been. I am finally whole because I let God have God’s way with my sexuality and gender.

Peace is what has caught me off guard. I never imagined life would be full of this much peace and gratitude. I was fully prepared for the pain of coming out within a non-affirming Christian family, but I did not anticipate the inner peace. 

I grew up in a small, conservative town in rural Northern California…On Election Night 2008…my heart sank when I saw that California voters had narrowly approved Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in the state…I was very much in closet at the time, and that night confirmed that being out wasn’t an option until long after I had left that environment. So, I did the next logical thing–I tried to completely suppress my sexuality and dove headfirst into American Evangelicalism. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. 

When I think about life in the closet, it makes me laugh. Like many Christians, I languished in the closet into my adulthood, making the assumption that God’s love only worked one way for straight people.

I moved to Indiana six days after I graduated college to work for a non-denominational megachurch. I was totally closeted and coming off of an emotional few months, but despite years of self-loathing and internal struggle over my same-sex attraction, I was excited to start a career in ministry. It was what I loved the most, and I thought it could be enough. I thought I could stay quiet. Stay single. Stay faithful.

I’ve often described myself as black, Christian, and gay. I’m also a lot of other things, like a photographer, a worship leader, and an advocate. Each of these descriptors could be used to identify groups that I fit into, but none of them tell the whole story of who Darren is.

I grew up in a church that taught me to love God and introduced me to a loving Christ. However, in the faith tradition I was raised, it was not acceptable to be gay. This was a problem because I’d known since the 5th grade that I was gay. I was constantly bombarded by the message that God loved me, but if I loved God, I had to change this part of me. I struggled with “same-sex attraction” (“SSA”), and I hated this part of me. 

I did everything right to be a strong, faithful Christian… I did everything I could to follow God and cope with the fact that I would never be able to love and marry because my sexuality was broken. As a result, my life bore the fruits of such a faithful Christian walk: In my late teens, I developed major depression, anxiety and an intense obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I started figuring out that I was gay at the age of 34. I was at the movies with a church friend, and two movies about angels were playing…After we dithered a while about which movie to see, she finally asked, “Well, who would you rather look at for the next two hours, John or Denzel?” I answered, “Whitney!” She looked at me for a moment, then said, “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

It took me a while to realize I liked other boys…Perhaps halfway through middle school is when I started to get the idea that something wasn’t quite right. It would be years before I realized that my self-conception was what wasn’t right, but at the time, I was stuck on the slow realization that I was very, very interested in other boys.