Coming Out of the Closet in a Most Surprising Place

Notable events in Indiana history:

• In 8000 BCE humans first came to Indiana.
• The first European, Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle arrived in 1679.
• Indiana became state in 1816.
• In 1909 the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was founded.
• In July 1954, a record temperature of 116 degrees (F) was recorded.
• In July 1980, 30 years ago this month, I told someone, for the very first time, that I was gay.

I was 17 years old. There was no discernable gay community in Scottsbluff, Nebraska at the time and there was certainly no internet to help me connect to the rest of the world. What I did have were my dad’s psychology books and an ability to find every word written about homosexuality in the public library – not all of it, of course, encouraging, or for that matter, accurate.

Most gay people come out of the closet when they move to the big city or go to college. I traveled a thousand miles to come out in the rather conservative state of Indiana.

It was not my intention to come out that week. Between my junior and senior years in high school, I boarded a bus with bunches of kids from western Nebraska for the first ever Presbyterian Church Youth Triennium, a huge convention of young people from all over the world. Bible study, youth ministry, the cold war, evangelism, and social issues were among the topics addressed. New music was presented, concerts were performed, and friendships made. For many, it was an eye-opening time of discovery and a turning point in our lives.

My primary memory of the week, however, was sneaking into the workshop on the church and homosexuality. The card in my hand said I was supposed to go to something else. I didn’t know if I’d get away with it. But the room was packed full of people who didn’t have the right card, and the workshop leaders weren’t turning people away.

The presentation was rather radical. In 1980, LGBT issues weren’t as thoroughly discussed in churches as they are now. The workshop leaders talked about scripture, community, and the fact that gay and lesbian Christians did exist. Above all, we were assured that no LGBT person was alone. There were lots of us out there.

At the end of the workshop, I hung around until everyone else had gone. I approached one of the facilitators and said, very maturely, that I thought the workshop was excellent and thanked him very much.

He smiled and waited.

“That’s all,” I thought, backing away.

He smiled more and said very gently that if I wanted to talk, he was available the rest of the week.

The next day, I met him in a quiet area on the University of Indiana campus and poured my heart out. I guess I was pretty typical. Every session at that workshop had a boy or girl like me hanging behind, dying to talk. But what may have been typical for that wonderful man was a lifetime opportunity for me.

It was in that loving, accepting, Christian context that I first declared my sexual orientation. There was no judgment or condemnation. The Bible wasn’t used as a weapon to shame me into conformity. No one told me I was going to hell. In fact, I was told repeatedly that, paraphrasing scripture, love passes all understanding and casts out all fear.

Love was – is – what it’s all about. I’ve never doubted for a minute that God loves me. Angry as I’d always be with fundamentalist Christians who forget that love is the primary commandment of Christ, I never stopped believing that God’s love overcomes every kind of hate and fear. I’ve always believed, preached, and taught that if we love each other with integrity and justice, we are doing God’s will.

Coming out at the church convention in 1980 was such a good experience, that when I got home, I came out to everyone. While it took my parents a few years to come to terms with it, most everyone else I cared about, including my brother and sisters, accepted it and accepted me in the wholeness of the person I was.

In 1989, at the Presbyterian Youth Triennium, this time at Purdue University in Indiana, the workshop on homosexuality and the church was held again. As the workshop leader, I patiently waited for those kids who were hanging back to come and talk to me if they wished.