Struggling With Same-Sex Attraction at a Christian School

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Readers share their personal stories of grappling with stigma and shame on campus. Email hello@theatlantic.com with your own experience.

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Chris Bodenner

2:00 PM / March 25, 2016

Being a Gay Teacher at a Christian College

A reader provides a perspective from the faculty side of our discussion on same-sex attraction on campus:

I read with interest the article you published about LGBT politics at Christian colleges. I happen to be gay and teach at a member institution of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. I have written three anonymous essays for Inside Higher Ed. Here is the link to the most recent one.

The other two essays are here and here. The latter begins:

My story is neither dramatic nor a profile in courage. Raised in a conservative Christian home, I only knew that homosexuality was a very serious sin. Then in graduate school, I fell in love with someone of the same sex -- ironically enough, a conservative Christian like myself. My feelings scared me greatly. This person loved me as well, but we never articulated what those feelings were to each other until much later, when the feelings had changed. Since that time I have loved other persons of my sex, but only recently have I accepted my sexual orientation, when I am already teaching at a CCCU institution.

Our next reader, who is bisexual, attended Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. That private school’s community covenant states: “[W]e are to avoid such sinful practices as drunkenness, stealing, dishonesty, profanity, occult practices, sexual intercourse outside of marriage, homosexual behavior, and sexually exploitative or abusive behavior.” Here’s our anonymous reader:

When I signed the covenant, I was an immature home-schooled child living in a conservative Christian household. I had a closed mind, had not come to my own beliefs, and knew little of myself. It was only after years of growth while attending college that I learned to accept that I was bisexual, and that parts of Christianity could not only accept but embrace my non-heterosexuality.

I learned to see that my bisexuality was as much of a choice as my height or ethnicity—the only choice was accepting and embracing or denying the truth. And so bisexuality became a part of my identity.

As a young adult learning who I was and how to be that person, I was living my life, every hour of every day, under the confines of oppressive rules and policies that were explicitly against my identity. This was harmful to my sense of self and to my mental health.

Messiah College’s policies, and the policies other conservative Christian colleges, utilize a false separation between homosexual orientation and behavior. Orientation is an identity defined by action or the possibility of action. If you are allowed to be homosexual, but aren’t allowed to act homosexual, how are you allowed to be homosexual? How can you tell a person of color it's OK to be black, Latino, Indian, etc., as long as he or she only acts like he or she is white? How can you place judgement on the actions of an identity without placing judgement on the identity itself?

Speaking of race and ethnicity, the covenant also states: “Because we see people as having intrinsic worth, we avoid gossip, manipulative behavior, and sexist or racist attitudes or behaviors… .” But any advisement against “homophobic attitudes or behaviors” is nowhere to be found in the covenant. Back to our reader:

Conservative Christian colleges are slowly changing their stances on homosexuality. Acceptance of the identity without the action is a step forward from rejecting both. At Messiah, there is an acceptance of the diversity of many Christian denominations, beliefs, and values. I hope that Messiah, and other conservative Christian colleges, can grow to allow individuals to make decisions about these beliefs and values for themselves.

Messiah College helped me grow into and learn to be the person that I am. But the institution would not accept that person. I pray that Messiah will soon be a place that will allow young adults to grow into themselves, and accept them as they are, both in identity and action.

Chris Bodenner

10:25 AM / March 16, 2016

Why Go to a School That Rejects Who You Love?

The most up-voted comment on the Atlantic piece that sparked our discussion thread is the following:

I say this as a gay man: Instead of paying for the privilege of attending a university that thinks you are an abomination—and thereby supporting them in their efforts to keep their awful beliefs alive—perhaps it would be wiser to attend one of the many (excellent) secular colleges and universities of our nation?

I have spoken out against and will continue to speak out against discriminatory behavior from businesses and government, but when you do business with philosophically-based organizations—i.e. the service they offer is inextricably bound with their philosophy—you tacitly agree that they are in some way correct, or at least due respect. So while you have every reason to expect a public bakery to sell you cakes without imposing their worldview on you, you don't have the right to the same expectation when you submit to an organization dedicated to promoting a particular worldview.

Separately but very relatedly, a reader emails the hello@ account with the personal story seen below. Among many points, she describes how “the most painful thing” about being lesbian at a Christian school is the sentiment expressed by the reader excerpted above:

Thank you for your discussion about LGBT students at Christian colleges. I am a lesbian who attended Olivet Nazarene University, which is part of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) and has a statement in its code of conduct prohibiting “homosexual acts.”

What your readers convey regarding the silence and confusion around LGBT issues is absolutely accurate. The worst part is that as a shy 18 year old desperate to fit in with the school culture, I was traveling alone. I did not know how far I could go before putting my education and livelihood in jeopardy. Could I attend pride or wear a rainbow bracelet? Could I write about and talk about my experiences in class, in front of my professors? Could I come out to my RA? My friends? Even more than disciplinary action, I feared social rejection.

It was painful enough losing friends when I came out. More painful than the once friendly acquaintances who avoided eye contact when I walked by, were the friends who provided their hesitant “non-judgment” but then spoke in hushed tones whenever I brought up a romantic interest or spoke of my struggles coming out to my family. I was the subject of prayer meetings I wasn’t even aware of, and of conversations between roommates who weren’t comfortable living with me anymore.

It was painful enough being turned away from counseling services when I said that I was in a same-sex relationship and didn’t view it it as a sin, or sitting through mandatory chapel services of “ex-gays” who said I needed to pray about my sexuality (as if I hadn’t spent night after night crying myself to sleep and begging for God to change me).

But the most painful thing, what I heard from fellow students at a school whose motto is “we believe you belong here,” and what people say over and over in the comments section of articles like these, is “why go to a college that doesn’t accept you?”

As someone who grew up in a Baptist church, who never missed youth group, who considered faith the most important part of her life, and wanted to attend a school that shared those values, it hurts to hear “why did you even come here?” As a bright student who wanted to be a music teacher and received a life changing scholarship to a school with a great music program, it hurts to hear “why did you even come here?”

But even more, as a kid who didn’t yet fully understand or reconcile my sexuality and just wanted to figure out what God wanted for me, who wanted to make my parents happy, it hurts that people can’t understand why a gay kid would end up at a school like Olivet.

Students don’t choose where to go to college based on their sexual orientation. A number of factors influence this choice including location of the school, programs the school offers, great sports team, cost of tuition, opinions of ones family who are often funding the education, extracurricular activities, and so forth. For some including myself, a faith-based education is the only one their parents will financially support. To say “why would you even come here?” is simply petty and unfair, and it refuses to confront the real issues that LGBT students face at Christian colleges.

Chris Bodenner

11:00 AM / March 15, 2016

'So Many of the Celibate Gay Christians Are Cruel'

Most of the threats to free speech on campus these days are coming from the activist left, but here’s a reminder that the Christian right has its own problem at certain schools. A reader at a Southern Baptist college in Mississippi shares her frustrations living as a lesbian:

If any of this is useful to you, please preserve my anonymity. I work as a graduate assistant, and I’m not sure whether I’d be fired or not, so I’d just prefer to play it safe.

I am one of few gay students who openly accepts my sexuality, as many of us are pressured by our peers to “pray it away” in order to make friends and for administration to allow us to serve in student positions. We are not allowed to have any sort of LGBT-friendly student organization, publish anything in the school newspaper that could be read as pro-gay rights, or participate in other ways. For example, my college compiles a literary magazine every year, but I was warned not to submit any poetry that “mentioned lesbians,” since it would be immediately discarded, regardless of any literary merit. This is just one example of the limitations on our free speech.

Most gay students here either try dating members of the opposite sex, believing that they’ve fixed themselves, or they commit their lives to celibacy. Also, I don’t think you can underestimated the roles of local churches in this forced celibacy, as many of us would lose our church memberships that we’ve had for all our lives if we came out in favor of same-sex relationships. (And forget leadership roles.)

Many of the celibate gay Christians I know claim that they freely choose the celibate life because it most correctly reflects God’s purpose, but as someone who grew up in that environment, I know that they simply don’t want to lose their church, their friends, their family, and potential career. No “free choice” involves losing all of those things.

I am thankful that I took the plunge, because I’ve been with the woman of my dreams for two years and couldn’t be more fulfilled with her. But so many of the celibate gay Christians are cruel to us. I can only guess that this is because they are so scared of being grouped in with us “sinners,” they want to put as much distance between us as possible. I’ve seen them point at us, and many of them won’t speak to us, even separately. Sometimes I feel like a total freak, but I have to remind myself to feel sorry for them, because they are simply desperate to have a normal family, a normal life, while everyone around them is saying they can’t have that unless they “pray away the gay.”

This also encourages a culture of secrecy, wherein many of the gay people in opposite-gender relationships simply turn to Grindr or Tinder for sexual fulfillment. There are several people in seemingly blissful relationships whom I know for certain use those sites to hookup.

To the faculty’s credit, most of them are more accepting than the Southern Baptist Convention would prefer, and this is why I have not transferred. As a graduate student, I hope to set a good example of a woman who enjoys a Christ-centered relationship with another woman. Since the closeted or celibate gay Christians will not speak to me, I can only hope that they notice that my girlfriend and I are not the evil, broken, God-hating liberals that they are told we are.

I apologize for the long-windedness of this story, but I wanted to provide a fuller picture than I thought the original article presented. I think many straight people, or liberal people, or people from Northern areas really have no idea just how many gay Christians still enter straight relationships as late as 2016, or how limited our rights are on Christian campuses.

Chris Bodenner

5:09 PM / March 14, 2016

Secret Sexuality at a Christian School

After reading David R. Wheeler’s piece for us on the “LGBT politics of Christian colleges,” a reader in Georgia shares his own story:

I went to a Christian college in a southern city from 1975 to 1978. I am a bisexual male, though I didn’t fully recognize my homosexual side; I just knew that naked guys interested me at least as much as naked women, and in my dorm there were plenty of opportunities to see men in the flesh. A great experience, though I had to work hard to keep from seeming overly interested, if you know what I mean.

The college administration banned any sort of sexual activity, but it strongly encouraged male/female romances. The college president was famous for saying in chapel when he announced one of the college-sponsored socials, “You might meet your future wife!”