"I Can't Look at that and Call it Wrong"
Six years ago, nine words from my mom changed the course of my life
“All the Sundays I worried I’d disappoint my mom, ‘cause I never understood some types of love being wrong.”—Maddie Zahm, “If It’s Not God” (which was my top song on Spotify in 2022, even though she released it in August).
The following is an excerpt from my work-in-progress memoir, Butterflies in the Wilderness: A Queer Woman’s Journey Out of Evangelicalism.
The first Sunday of each new year, the church that I grew up in held a Question & Answer service—churchgoers would text in their questions about the Bible and theology, and Pastor Anthony1 would answer as many as he could within an hour. My mother and I went to the service. Since we didn’t want to deal with finding a seat in the large sanctuary, we sat in the dining area of the He Brews Cafe2. The café was double or even triple the size of the one in the old building, a space with polished wood floors, beige walls with a few stone columns, filled with chairs, couches, and a fireplace. I bought a hot chocolate, and my mother bought a mocha latte with soy milk. Sitting on comfortable couches, we watched the service on a TV screen. The questions ranged from ones about church structure/leadership, Genesis and science, parental relationships, civil disobedience, and suffering. There were also questions about sin, and how to confront people about the sin in their lives. And of course, someone asked the head pastor, “What does the Bible say about homosexuality?”
My body tensed. Although I wasn’t quite ready to approach my questions about sexuality, I was uncomfortable with this church’s incessant conservative messaging about sexuality. This discomfort, among my other theological questions, was why I decided not to volunteer at the church’s winter youth camp, despite having enthusiastically told many church ladies and friends that I would. Setting my questions aside, I had also needed those four winter camp days near the end of my break to continue my healing from depression. Still, it never crossed my mind to stop going to church, or to think about going to a different church. I even started to attend the Monday night Young Adults group. As everything inside me was changing and as the world was changing, I desperately clung to whatever sense of familiarity I could still grasp, and I found that in contemporary worship music at that church, standing in a crowd of people, arms raised and eyes closed, even if I couldn’t find it in a sermon.
As I watched Pastor Anthony in his suit jacket and tight-collared shirt on the TV screen, I took a sip of my hot chocolate, getting ready for his usual spiel about homosexuality.
With a blank expression, not missing a beat, he said, “I think the Bible makes it very clear that homosexuality is a sin. In Leviticus 20:13, God calls homosexuality an abomination. We can still love people who are a part of that community, though…We can speak the truth, and still love them.”
I looked at the dark wood coffee table in front of my feet and wondered, What does that look like? How can we tell people, in a loving way, that the way they love is sinful? The rhetoric of “love the sinner, hate the sin,” or “speaking the truth in love” was spouted all the time, but no one talked about what that actually looked like.
For once, though, Pastor Anthony gave an example of what he meant. Keeping his voice nonchalant, he said, “I had a friend who was invited to a gay wedding, and he asked me what he should do. I told him to write the couple a note, saying that he loved them and still wanted to be friends with them, but could not attend their wedding because that would be against his religious beliefs…”
This only brought up more questions and thoughts (the first of which being: How is that loving? The words “I love you” are empty if you don’t support people for one of their most important moments), and as he went on, I started to tune him out, drinking more of my hot chocolate. I knew what he was saying; he was likely using some ridiculous anecdote like the ones he’d used at summer camp—that there was an agenda being pushed by the media to normalize LGBTQ+ people, with Hollywood executives planning TV shows like Glee. As Pastor Anthony was talking, I noticed my mother picked up her well-loved and worn Bible and started leafing through it.
After the service ended, my mother and I walked to the car in silence. As we started to drive out of the parking lot, she said, “You know, as Pastor Anthony was talking, I started to look through my Bible to find where the Seven Deadly Sins were listed…” She sighed. “If someone is struggling with gluttony, we don’t sit them down and constantly tell them that they need to eat less.”3
I nodded and said, “Yeah, all sin is equal,” assuming that this was her argument, that we focused on this “sin” much more than any others.
Then, my mother paused a moment, before saying in response, “In my hometown, there was a pastor’s son, and he knew he was gay from a very young age. And when his father found out, he accepted him. Today, he’s married to his partner of 25 years, and they both go to church each Sunday and praise God and love God, and…” She shook her head. “I can’t look at that and call it wrong.”
I stared at her for a moment, not sure how to respond. It was the first time I heard my mother say something in favor of queer people; we had had one conversation about the topic prior to this, in the fall of my senior year of high school. In youth group, I’d had a conversation with Nancy4 about my gay friend Julie and how awfully her parents were treating her by telling her God hated her. I wasn’t sure how to help, and I wanted Nancy’s advice, not just about this friendship but also about what to believe.
“I don’t struggle with it myself, but I’m struggling with what I believe about homosexuality,” I managed to tell her.5
Nancy said that was common among those my age. She told me that Julie was seeking love in the wrong places, that she should instead try to find satisfaction in God’s love. Nancy told me that Julie’s being gay didn’t mean that I couldn’t show her friendliness and kindness. Nancy believed that being gay was a sin equal to any other (like lying) and that therefore they could be Christians, since we were all sinners saved by grace. She said that we should encourage people (particularly LGBTQ+ people) to experience Jesus’ love first, and that he would do the rest. By that, she meant Jesus would convict them of their “sin.” Nancy thought I was doing the right thing by gently trying to talk to Julie about God. During the car ride home from youth group, I told my mother about this conversation, and she agreed that being gay was a sin, but that we shouldn’t treat gay people differently from anyone else.
This is why my mother’s change of heart really surprised me. Especially because this change did not come after hours of Bible study and research; all she needed was to hear about someone’s personal experience, and nothing Pastor Anthony said could invalidate that experience. She chose people over doctrine because doctrine was getting in the way of true love. Later, she told me how important prayer and spiritual discernment were to her, that she believed God gave us the Spirit so we could discern things that the Bible did not speak about (because, as it turns out, the Bible doesn’t have anything to say about loving, committed relationships between people of the same sex).
In that moment in the car, although I still had mountains of internalized homophobia to confront, my mother’s words made me less afraid. It was as if something in my brain had shifted, opening up a new pathway of thinking. I felt the Holy Spirit speak to me in that moment, too, like a spark of light, my heart pounding, a thought suddenly jumping to mind: You have to figure out what you really believe about this. If my mother, whose faith I had come to respect as I became more comfortable talking with her about religion, had changed her mind about this, then maybe I could at least consider the other perspective without having immediate shame.
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Six years later, I’m preparing to do a live podcast show at the Q Christian Fellowship Conference, the largest gathering of LGBTQ+ Christians in the world. I’m so grateful to my mother for choosing love and kindness before I was even able to accept LGBTQ+ people and accept myself, because a month and a half after she said that, after several hours of Bible research and prayer, I became LGBTQ+ affirming, and then at the end of 2017, I came out to a few friends. In February 2019, I came out publicly. That journey started in that moment. I love my Mama, and I will never take for granted that everyone in my immediate family (and lots of relatives too) will support me no matter what.
What hopes do you have for the new year? Who has supported you in your faith deconstruction, and if you’re LGBTQ+, your self-acceptance journey?
Not his real name, of course.
Not the real name of the café; if I gave the name it would also might give the real church name away, and for various reasons I have decided I’m not publicly stating which church I grew up in. I don’t want their lawyers on my ass, and the point of my memoir is not to critique a certain church but evangelical theology and churches in general.
I recognize that there is some fatphobia going on here in this statement, but I don’t think that is the central point of what she’s trying to say.
Not her real name, Nancy is an older blond lady who volunteered in the high school youth group. Those who were in that youth group might remember the affectionate nickname we gave her.
I find it hilarious how many times I said this…like, straight people don’t say that lol