When I was almost 15 years old I became a Christian at Summer Madness, “Ireland’s largest Christian festival”. To give you some indication of what sort of religious experience this was- Andy Flan was singing Here I am to worship by Tim Hughes, I was standing with people I had never met, I’d lost my voice and I had my hands in the air. I was caught up, I knew everything. There was no doubt in my mind and I prayed the prayer…
Elsewhere at summer madness…. I was sharing a tent with my occasionally self loathing gay friend Christine and her then girlfriend.
Christine went on to dump the girlfriend (for ‘religious reasons’) at another Christian event the next February. At March mannafest that year 2 other friends decided to leave the church because they were gay.
I had a secret… When I had wee adolescent fantasies they were about girls… When I later started to read erotica online…. that was about girls too… and even later when I had a bit of a problem with porn… that was girls too.
I had a lot of trouble seeing how this little secret related to my real life. In real life I was meant to pretend to never to think about sex before I married a nice Christian boy and having nice Christian babies. In my secret life I would read lesbian erotica, think about girls I fancied and… well… ask God for forgiveness all the time and feel shit about myself.
I don’t know where I got the idea that being gay was wrong. I was surrounded by good influences… 2 of my primary school teachers were in a committed relationship and now an inspiring civil partnership, one of my ministers at that time was gay and a good friend from that time had just started going out with the love of his life and and although he was struggling with the church, he never thought that God didn’t love him.
I was deeply convicted of my ‘wrongness’ and that is a very uncomfortable place to be. It took a lot of undoing but I really believe that God loves me just as I am.
Read this…
xx
No comments:
Post a Comment