What "Getting Warmer" Used to Mean...and Still Does
WARNING: This post might be triggering for someone who has had bad experiences with ex-gay therapy or self-harming behavior. Proceed with caution and be safe.
So I went to MBLGTACC 2013 this past weekend.
For those of you who don't know or who might need a refresher, MBLGTACC is the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference, and it's held at a different college campus in the Midwest every year. I've gone 4 different times now. The first was in Bloomington, Indiana in 2009, and it was mind-blowing. I also went to Madison Wisconsin in 2010, Ames Iowa in 2012, and to Lansing Michigan this year (less impressive, right? We could practically walk there. It would take awhile, but not as impressive as the 11 hour drive to Iowa).
Some of you probably also remember that I promised to write a long blog post after I got back from that conference and tell you all about it. Said post never appeared, however, and it's not because I forgot about it, it's because I lost what little mind I have left during that conference, and have only recently gotten it back a year later. I sat down to write about the conference, and I even have the half-finished draft of that post on my computer, but that's as far as I ever got on it. Part of it is just that I didn't know how to put it into words, I didn't trust that I'd be able to convey what the conference meant to me, and part of it is that honestly, it was going to be extremely painful for me to try and write that post, and I didn't want to put that much blood, sweat, and tears into a post only to have no one comment on it. I get that you're all busy too, and I totally understand, but sometimes pouring out my heart and getting no response really hurts me (attention whore that I am) and I didn't want to go through that. I'm writing this now not to whine about no one commenting on my posts (because, let's be honest, back when I used to get a lot of comments, it was mostly because people started knock down drag out fights with me, and I don't miss that, plus LiveJournal has been dead for awhile now and no one is getting the comments they used to) but because I just got back and had some awesome experiences and I want to share them with you.
The first night of the conference was awesome. We registered, then went to this sports bar that was across the street to eat some dinner, and the place was called "The nuthouse," which I love since, you know, most of us belong there anyway. I got a delicious steak quesadilla that I loved, and most people raved about their food as well, so it was a major hit with us. Unfortunately, Anthony wasn't able to eat with us because he got stuck waiting for a shuttle bus that was an hour and a half late, which foreshadowed what would become a major problem with the shuttle bus situation for the rest of the conference. I stayed outside the main session with Anthony's bag of goodies and name badge and stuff to wait for him, so he and I got into the room late, but we were in time to hear the main speaker for that night. I thought she was AMAZING but apparently I was the only one who thought that, because most of the rest of the group complained about her. A lot of them said they couldn't hear her, and I think that was a problem with the speakers on that side of the room because she was loud and clear on our side of the room, so that might have been technical difficulties.
She also talked about a lot of stuff that pisses people off and it's stuff I wind up fighting with people about all the time, so I can get why people didn't appreciate her speech. Her name was Emi Koyama, and most of her talk focused on the "victim vs. Survivor false dichotomy" and how "it gets better" can be used to bully people for not coping or healing the "right" way. It was very powerful and I wish you all were there to hear it. It's something Melissa McEwan talks a lot about at Shakesville, so it was nice to have my beliefs on the subject reinforced. I love the "It Gets Better" project, but I tend to get hives and freak out when people start preaching that someone isn't healing the right way or isn't healing fast enough or is acting like a victim and not a survivor. I am both a victim and a survivor, and while I get the unhelpfulness of wallowing in the bad things that happen in life, and I've had friends who traded on their past abuse a lot and used it to excuse all manner of bad behavior, I also know that I still cry myself to sleep some nights, and sometimes I wake up from terrible nightmares and throw myself across the room and then can't sleep for the rest of the night and I need to watch movies or some TV to occupy my mind and keep the monsters away. I still get really angry too, and while I'm better than I used to be, I still scare myself from time to time. I don't excuse any of this or pretend that I'm a shining example of what a "survivor" should be, but that's exactly my point. Everyone is different, and if you're still alive, you're doing better than the alternative, at least in my book. Even if my way of surviving isn't good enough, it's going to have to be, because it's all I have. It does get better, but "Better" doesn't look the same for everyone, and I'm kind of tired of being put down because my "better" isn't good enough for some people.
So yeah. Powerful session. Then I proceeded to go back to the hotel and not be able to sleep for fifty million hours even though I had only gotten an hour and 45 minutes of sleep the night before. On this day, I finally fell asleep for one hour or so, only to wake up at like 2:30 fully alert and not able to get back to sleep again. Jason was in my room and he had the same problem. we were both like "Oh great, I'm going to crash and die at about noon or so." We got ready and dinked around a bit and then at 5:30 we left the hotel room to go to Tim Horton's for breakfast. I've never been there, but I can attest that it's delicious. I got a bagel sandwich and a coffee with three shots of espresso, and then we walked back to catch the shuttle bus that was supposed to pick us up at 6:30 AM. we stood in front of the door where there was a big sign outside that said "BUS PICKUP FOR MBLGTACC HERE" and that's where the bus picked us up on Friday night. The crowd kept growing as people kept getting tired of waiting in the cold and coming inside to wait with us. At 7, people started trickling away to go get the free breakfast provided by the hotel which we didn't want to wait for since we thought we'd be catching the 6:30 bus. At 7:30 half of our group was gone eating. At 7:45, Jason came back to the big group still waiting for the bus and informed us that the bus already came and left because it decided to pick up people at the lobby door instead of at the sign. Cue homicidal rage. I stomped over to the front door and wound up getting snapped at by the cranky people waiting there, which almost resulted in a fist fight, but I managed to control myself and went to sit down for the first time in two hours, and of course as soon as I sat down the bus came, so we ran to catch it. The bus driver was going to let us stand, since because of the screw up with the timing he knew he had more people than usual, but Anthony and I managed to eke out seats so we didn't have to stand.
We arrived late for the first session, but luckily we weren't the only ones. I got to my session I'd picked out, but the presenter for that session never showed up, so I got up and tried desperately to find a workshop that looked interesting, finally settling on one about how to integrate LGBTQ issues in K-12 classrooms. It's funny though, because I wound up LOVING the session I was in and learning a lot. I'm not a K-12 teacher but I interact with and work with kids a lot in my various endeavors, so I got a lot of good information. The handout (I love handouts!) first asked us to list experiences we had with gay issues in classes in our K-12 years (good or bad), what our goals would be as teachers, and what attitudes we've encountered as teachers with regards to these issues. Then we were supposed to break off into groups and discuss the next three questions, which concerned three different scenarios where we might encounter homophobia in the classroom and how we might address these situations.
I thought I might be doing group work alone, since everyone else seemed to have their own groups decided upon right away, but the guy next to me actually seemed friendly and he was willing to work with me, so that worked out well. He actually had some good insight, too, since I had no idea how to handle the first two scenarios on the list but I had a good idea for the third, so he shared his ideas for the first two. The first scenario is what if a student says an assignment is "so gay"? He said that he would stop the class immediately so everyone would know it was a serious issue, and then he asks his students if they've ever experienced any kind of prejudice, and when they give some examples, explain to them that using "gay" to mean a bad thing is prejudice against people who are gay. he says he's had some good response when he's done this in his classes, and it seems like a good idea to me. The second situation was what if a student steals another student's pencil, so the student whose pencil was stolen says "hey, that was mine, you faggot!" He said he'd have everyone else continue doing their work in the class and then he'd take the student that yelled outside the class and explain that the "F word" is hateful just like the "N word" and not allowed in class. I like the idea of having others continue their work and taking the student aside. The presenter of the workshop said that in her school she's not allowed to send students out into the hall, so that's not an option, but on the first day of class she tells everyone "I don't want to hear "gay" or "retard" used as insults to mean stupid or anything, period, and this is the last I want to hear about it," so they know it's going to result in disciplinary action if they say it.
The third example was asking how we'd react if a student said something like "being gay is gross. It's not natural. I don't want to see that pervert stuff." Now this was the one I've had experience with, and since I'd be teaching a drama class or an English class anyway (let's be real) I'd ask my students to read the books "Leo the Lop" and "The Velveteen Rabbit" and then we'd discuss them. "Leo the Lop" is one of the "Serendipity books" I read as a kid, basically a liberal hippie kids book publishing company, and it's about a rabbit who has droopy ears and all the other rabbits have ears that stand up, so he thinks his ears are abnormal and tries to change them, but then the wise old possum tells him his ears are normal, so the other rabbits try to make their ears droop down like his, but then the wise old possum tells them that their ears looked normal before, so the rabbits decide that normal is whatever you are! My mom totally bought me this book, then when I was a teenager and started saying that being gay was normal because normal is whatever you are, she asked me where I learned that shit, and I said "...from the book you gave me when I was a kid." Funtimes. Anyway, "The Velveteen Rabbit" is about a toy rabbit that becomes a real rabbit after it dies, and halfway through the book one of the other toys tells him that when a child loves a toy that toy can become real, and the process hurts and often you don't look the same afterward, but once you are real you can never be ugly except to people who don't understand. That still hits me hard, even today, and I've never had a discussion about that book where people didn't go away thinking hard about what "normal" is and I love it. The guy in my group liked my answer, and the presenter did too. she said even if you tell kids "we don't talk about" gay issues, you're still sending a message that "gay" is bad, so it's important to be persistent and not give up. The guy in my group said that he's originally from Wisconsin, and when he turned 18 he moved away to go to a more liberal area, but he kind of feels like he let the conservatives win, because this is his state and he should have stayed and not let that drive him away. That's how I feel about Michigan. This is my state, dude, and I love it. Instead of moving somewhere else, maybe we should try to make Michigan better, huh?
After this session we met up with some more DSAGA peeps and went to find a place to eat. We walked a few blocks looking for a place but never found it, so we stopped at a place called "Kewpie's" which was a hole in the wall with amazing food. I got a burger with freshly ground beef and homemade olive sauce that was like mayo, and I loved it so much I posted a picture on Facebook. Totally worth the walk. Then we came back and we had two hours to kill, and we got separated, and I literally did NOTHING for the two most boring hours of my life. This is where it started to kick in that 45 minutes of sleep was not enough for my poor, poor body. It didn't help that the session I was in was not only boring, it wasn't what it was supposed to be about, and the presenter was wrong wrong wrongitty wrong about almost everything. She kept contradicting herself and I wanted to get up and leave, and I finally did because she was going overtime and I wanted to get upstairs for my next two sessions, which were "Queer Theory and Queer Theology" parts I and II. Sounds right up my alley, right? I was kind of worried because I was delusionally tired at this point and my last session had been such a dud, but I was pleasantly surprised because the next two sessions were AWESOME and I could have sat there for two more hours because it was that much fun and I got so many notes and books to look up. Whee, more shiny knowledge!
The Queer Theory and Queer Theology session was a panel discussion with some small group work thrown into the mix, too. There were four presenters, but because I'm a douchecanoe, I didn't write down anyone's name in my notes, so the only name I have is Rev. Matthew Cockrum, who is a Unitarian Universalist minister, and I only have his name because it's in the MBLGTACC booklet they gave us when we registered. He was really hot. I remember that. I think my exact thoughts were "He has nice hair. I like his scarf. My cat's breath smells like cat food" and further thoughts of that nature. He was also really nice, too. Are you digging this deep, deep insight yet? Luckily I took notes, because my brain was cornmeal mush at this point, and my notes are HILARIOUS and hard to read, and I wish you all could see them. Like, sometimes I'd write down the wrong word, and then instead of scribbling it out and moving on, I thought it would be ok to write the correct word on TOP of the wrong word and make them both impossible to decipher, so I'm guessing a lot about some of this, but I think I'm pretty accurate about the gist of what was said, if not the actual wording.
Some good points made by the various speakers were:
-People of Faith are more important than objects of faith
-Who gets to decide who is christian and who is not?
-What race is your sexuality and what class is your religion? These intersect and it's important to recognize that.
-The chief error of philosophy is overreaching. This is true of Queer theory as well. It attempts to do everything and ends up doing nothing.
-Achieving a well-accessorized Queer identity is only a phase, not a destination.
-Are we asking the people who we are supposedly serving what they need?
-Queer theory is not about proving that Paul or other biblical writers approved of homosexuality, because it rejects the premise that it's important to do so.
-Queer theology assumes a stance against comfort and against the normality of the world, therefore the acceptability of homosexuality is not important.
-Queer theory and queer theology disrupt the heteronormative patriarchy of interpretation of sexuality and theology.
-From where you're sitting, you need to claim the truth of your context.
-Jesus exudes Queerness because He challenges the foundations of the world.
-Gender and sexuality are not about what a person is but about how a person reacts to others.
-One of the presenters showed a slideshow of his artwork and other photos, and he showed pictures of various pride floats, and then he showed a picture of Noah's ark with the big rainbow overhead, and he said "Here's the first Pride Float."
-The bible is full of visual language
-Our job isn't to touch God or to solve that mystery, our job is to live in that mystery
-Queer theology would preclude us trying to convince conservative Christians
-Study your tools and recognize you don't want to cut other people, you want to teach them to use the tools, too.
-There's always more than one way to present things.
-All of us who love gay people, we have our coming out stories, too.
-As we come out, asking people to accept us, their reaction is a part of who they are,too, and we need to accept that, even if it hurts.
I felt really good after going to these sessions, and I talked to the presenters afterward (even the guy with nice hair and a cool scarf) and got some good book suggestions and articles to look up so I can learn shiny new things, so I was stoked. After this I got to hang out with Anthony, Jen, and Courtney, and we drove to Meijer to buy some alcohol and got pizza from Domino's (no sauce for me...my kidneys don't like tomatoes, and I have the stones to prove it) and we hung out in the hotel room where I proceeded to drink like, 2 beers and one sip of my vodka, then go to sleep because I'm old and decrepit. Anthony woke us up when he came in drunk at like, 2:30, but it was ok because we had a lot of fun then, too, and I posted some of the quotes on Facebook to prove it. So the next morning I got up at 6 AM, showered and ate the rest of my cold pizza for breakfast, then packed my stuff and went downstairs to hang out, load my stuff in the car, and get on the bus for the last session. the bus was only 20 minutes late this time (yayness) and so I walked into the first workshop session a little late and tried to discretely slip into a seat in the back, but then I heard people calling my name, and some of my friends were already there sitting right up front and they'd saved a seat for me, so I felt all loved and wanted and stuff. The workshop was about same-sex relationships in the bible, and I'd heard most of it before, but I got more info and more depth this time around, so it was cool. The presenter talked about how there are different perspectives from which to read the bible, and maybe it's supposed to be that way. We are conditioned to read the bible from a heterosexual perspective, but maybe we should challenge that when we read it. Back in the bible, marriages were about procreation, not about love. He had a video to show us, but the technology wouldn't work to let him show it, so he said "well clearly Satan's forces are trying to stop us," which made me laugh.
He talked about how the word "Abomination" was about purity, and we need to ask ourselves what is biblical marriage and what is traditional marriages? Traditional biblical marriages included a lot of concubines and laws about property and traditions we don't follow these days. For every single person there is a different interpretation of the bible, and we need to think about what we think and how much of that is actually the text and how much of that is our interpretation of the text. The first verses we looked at were 1 Samuel 18:1-4, which talks about David and how he loved Jonathan so much he stripped off his armor and gave it to Jonathan, and how armor was a symbol of power, so it was a big deal to give someone his power. 1 Samuel 20:30 is "ye olde homophobia" rearing its ugly head, and Jonathan's father Saul was angry because Jonathan was bringing sexual shame on his family. 1 Samuel 20:41-42 is the verse where David says that Jonathan's love for him surpasses the love of women, and in 2 Samuel 1 we read about how David was a King when Jonathan died and he ordered his whole kingdom to mourn when he heard of Jonathan's death.
Then we switched to talking about Ruth, and how in biblical times, a woman without a husband had no social standing, and when Ruth's husband dies, in Ruth 1:14, Naomi clings to Ruth, and the word "cling" here is the same word used to describe how Eve "clung" to Adam. He said "at this point, I'm not reading "gay" into it. It's gay on its own." When Ruth eventually did get married again and had a son, the people of the town rejoiced and said "A son has been born to Naomi." Basically Boaz (Ruth's second husband) was a sperm donor, and Ruth and Naomi raised the son, and for them, the most important relationship they had was the one they shared together. The presenter said "The next time someone says "Are you a bible believing christian?" say "Yes. Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan."" Trying to "queer" the bible this way makes people angry, but why are they getting so angry if we're just inventing all this? If the book of Ruth isn't a love story between Naomi and Ruth, then why are Naomi's words to Ruth used in marriage ceremonies? "where you go I will go, your people will be my people, your God will be my god." He then said "Why read the bible for yourself when someone can tell you what it says?" Reading these stories is good, because it's like finding yourself in stories you've read your whole life.
It's a good idea to try reading the bible from a queer perspective. If anyone tells you they don't interpret the bible, smack them, because we all do it. No matter who you are, your story is in the bible. You're meant to draw from the bible and use it to strengthen yourself. you are affirmed in the bible. In no place does the bible condemn consenting same-sex relationships...any time you read the word "homosexual" in the bible, it's a translation (I have lots of info on this if anyone is interested). The presenter also said "Jesus Christ never condemns same sex sexuality. Paul does, but did Paul die on the cross for my sins? Even if Paul was a homophobe, I think I'm gonna go with Jesus on this one." I'm not sure how much of this I buy or to what extent I buy it. To me, it's pretty clear that David loved Jonathan and Ruth loved Naomi, and they loved each other, but I think for me to point and put the label "gay!" on that is the same thing as everyone pointing and putting the label "heterosexual" on it (or the label "totally just friends, y'all"). that they loved each other is important, but I don't necessarily have to say "and they were totally gay or in point of fact more like bisexual," what's important is to try and live out the love they expressed in my life, not pretend it doesn't exist or try to label it as something. That's just me, though. I got a lot of good info from this session, and a lot to think about, so it was worthwhile, methinks.
Ok, here's the fun part. Remember when I told you that I was supposed to write this big update about the conference last year, but then it never happened? Well a big part of why that happened is because I had a major breakdown after attending a certain workshop last year. I was excited when I got the booklet last year and saw that one of the workshops was going to be presented by someone who had gone through "Conversion therapy," which is therapy that purports to help change sexual orientation (or help people repress their same-sex attractions, or help people live a celibate life and fight their same-sex urges, or whatever semantics they're using to make it sound like a better practice this week). I wrote a little bit earlier last week about my own experiences with "conversion therapy" in my review for the movie "This is What Love in Action Looks Like," but what you might not realize is that it took me almost a year to get to the point where I can be even as descriptive of what I went through as I am in that review, which isn't much. I've talked about my experiences before, to a much lesser extent, and I think I've called my therapy many different things, and I honestly don't remember what or how much I said about it because I think I'd honestly convinced myself that it didn't happen, or it didn't happen the way I remembered it happened, so the way I remembered it changed in my head, or I didn't think about it or talk about it without calling it something else or trying to make it sound like something it wasn't. This probably doesn't make much sense, but I'm going to try and make it make more sense, and I know this has already been ten thousand pages long, so I'm going to try and make this as brief as I can, I promise. Last year I was all confident, telling everyone I was going to go to this workshop, and I walked right in, ten minutes early, and I set my stuff down at a table in the back, and then I turned and left and went into the bathroom and threw up for like, ten minutes. This means that my body must have realized what I was in for even if my mind was plugging its ears and singing "Kumbaya" or something.
I went back to the room and my seat was taken, so I stood up in the back corner, and I went through the session in a kind of a fog, and I remember what happened and I had pages full of notes afterward so I obviously took notes, but I remember swaying on my feet a lot and I just looked over my notes before writing this, and you can totally tell I was in motion, because they're slanted and moving all over the page, but much clearer than some of the notes I took this year, and that's because I went into a dissociative state while I was writing them, where I sort of went outside my head and my body was writing and taking notes mechanically while I was somewhere else. I do that sometimes. I did it when I was younger a lot more than I do now (in fact, I don't think I've done it since last year, which is good I guess) but after the session was over, I left the room and went into the bathroom and threw up again, then I wandered around the hallway, slowly losing my grip, and it's funny because the only thing I could think was that in these situations, it's usually not safe to ask for help, or at least it has been that way in the past, and now I had friends at the conference with me who had known me awhile and didn't think I was crazy yet, so maybe they were safe people to talk to, so I should ask for help before I do anything else, so I sent out a frantic text and my friend Anthony answered and said "where are you? Stay there, I'm coming to get you" and he drove to meet me and we hung out and things wound up being ok.
I think my biggest realization from that session was that the person giving it was younger than me by like six years, so that means that the type of therapy I went through was happening more recently than I thought it was. I think part of my brain consoled me with the thought that it didn't really happen, and even if it did really happen, it was a long time ago and things like that aren't happening anymore, so I don't need to think about it anymore, because what good would that do? I tried right after it happened to get help for a few years, and even throughout the years since then I've talked to therapists from time to time and tried to reveal small bits of what happened to me,and what they always say to me, without fail, is "well obviously they thought that would help you, they were trying to help you" and they'd tell me I have to move on, so a big part of me thinks there's no real point in talking about what happened, because talking about it isn't moving on, and talking hasn't really helped me in the past. The only people who really knew, who had similar experiences to mine, are dead. They've all killed themselves over the years, most recently with my friend Michael, and that was hard for me because of everything the world lost when it lost him and also because selfishly, it felt like I was losing the only people who really understood.
Over the years I've been going to DSAGA meetings, I've shared little bits of my story with people, and one day I remember mentioning it when my friend Jess was in the group, and she replied that she hadn't known that I went through "reparative therapy" and she said "honestly, I'm surprised you're doing as well as you are, now that I know that about you." I carried that comment with me throughout the years, and Jess was there at the conference last year, and I ran into her at the dance that night after I went to the workshop, so I had a chance to talk to her, and I ended up telling her about going to the workshop and how it freaked me out, then I told her that she was one of the only people I felt safe talking to about it because I knew she might realize how important it was to me, because she was one of the only people who heard "I went through conversion therapy" and had such a serious reaction that I knew she had an idea of what that meant. I told her that I had kind of convinced myself that it didn't happen throughout the years, but that facade was ripped away that day, and I felt kind of stripped, like everything was suddenly hitting me harder than it would have before because I was more sensitive suddenly, like a raw nerve with feet. She told me "What happened to you is real, and it caused real damage, and you're stronger than you know, because you are trying to heal that damage instead of ignoring it. You are a good person and you have value, and my wish for you is that some day, you will be able to see yourself through my eyes."
I'm telling you all this not to be all like, "Oh, I'm awesome!" or anything, but so that you'll know that when I didn't write that blog post last year, it's not because I forgot, or that I didn't care, it's because it was too painful for me to think about or to write. It's taken me a year to even admit that. Honestly, I was writing this blog post tonight, and right when I got to the part I'm writing now, about my last workshop on the last day, I freaked out again and I had to go grab a beer and drink it to calm myself down enough to keep writing. I don't drink very often, I assure you, but I tell you that to say this: It's hard for me to write this, but I think it's important, so I'm going to try and do so anyway, in my imperfect way, and I hope that the words will sound right, and I hope that good will come of it. So yeah, in case you haven't figured it out yet, my last workshop on Sunday was the same one that I went to last year, "You Can't Change what We Never Chose," with Samuel Brinton presenting again, and I wasn't sure how it was going to go, but I'm a different person than I was last year (hopefully for the better) and I took my anxiety meds that morning, so I was a lot calmer than I had been the year before (no puking this time). The workshop followed a lot of the same format as last year, so he introduced himself and the topic, warned us about triggers in the presentation, and then he told his story of his experiences with "conversion therapy," then he gave us some more info and some resources, and then we had a question and answer session afterward. People had a lot of good questions and we had a good discussion.
One of the things that he's really passionate about is ending the practice of "conversion therapy," because of all the harm it can cause and all the people who go through it and then later commit suicide, and he said "Before we can get married, I think we need to LIVE," which I thought was a great point. At one point during his presentation, he said something that really resonated with me, which was "The only thing that I had in this world was that God loved me," and how when someone tries to take that away, it can be devastating. I remember that. I remember lying on the floor and I wanted to pray but I didn't have words left, and the only thing I could think of was Jeremiah 29:11, which talks about how the Lord has plans for you and plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope, so I kept repeating that over and over and over. I think I've told some of you about that before. It also makes me think of John 20:13, when Jesus has died and Mary is at the tomb crying and people ask her "woman, why are you crying?" and she says "they have taken my lord away, and I don't know where they have put him." I could go on for hours about this whole chapter and this verse, but mostly, it hits me because I remember what it was like to have my lord taken away, to think that I didn't have God's love anymore because of something about me that I couldn't change no matter how hard I tried (and then they told me I needed to "let God change me," and somehow that never worked, either, and they told me I had hardened my heart like Pharaoh). I remember having my lord taken away, and that was the only thing I had, so I felt like I had nothing left. I don't want anyone else to feel that way, ever, and if maybe I'm annoying in the way I repeat that God can still love you if you're gay, and you don't have to change, it's because I don't ever want anyone else to feel that loss of hope because no one ever told them that it's ok to be gay.
We still have churches in this area that teach that homosexuality is a sin and that God can change people and they need to seek that. We still have churches that teach people that they can have the "demon of homosexuality" or the "demon of transgender" cast out of them if they let people in the church lay hands on them and cast it out. It's happened as recently as last year, that I know of, and every time I hear it, I hear the congregation shouting "Amen" and I think of all the people in those churches who aren't saying "Amen" or who are dying inside when they say it because they think they have a demon inside them or that God can't love them and they don't know how to change so that God will love them. I think about them because I was one of them once upon a time, and I don't know what to do, except to speak out wherever I can and to try and combat the other voices that people might be hearing. Most of the time it feels like I'm not doing anything, but it's all that I can do, so I will try. I really want to try and bring Samuel Brinton to this area to give a talk, and ideally I'd try to get flyers out to all the churches in the area too and all the campus ministries so we'd have people there...I don't want a mob with pitchforks and torches, but I want to try and get people talking about this issue, because I don't think people know that this kind of "therapy" happens and that it's STILL happening and that it's still hurting people and it needs to stop. He gave his email after the presentation, and when people stood around to meet him and to take pictures, this time I stood in line, too, and didn't run away and you know, puke or something, because I wanted to meet him and thank him and tell him that I wanted him to come to our school sometime if he could and speak. Maybe that will get the conversation going. I don't know. But I did get to meet him and talk to him (even though I cried) and someone took a picture so I have evidential proof that I didn't run away screaming at the end of the session, so I want to share the picture with you:
I also want to share this song with you, because I've been listening to it all day, and it's helping me keep going and keep writing, so I hope it helps give you hope, too:
I love you all. Thank you for listening.
So I went to MBLGTACC 2013 this past weekend.
For those of you who don't know or who might need a refresher, MBLGTACC is the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference, and it's held at a different college campus in the Midwest every year. I've gone 4 different times now. The first was in Bloomington, Indiana in 2009, and it was mind-blowing. I also went to Madison Wisconsin in 2010, Ames Iowa in 2012, and to Lansing Michigan this year (less impressive, right? We could practically walk there. It would take awhile, but not as impressive as the 11 hour drive to Iowa).
Some of you probably also remember that I promised to write a long blog post after I got back from that conference and tell you all about it. Said post never appeared, however, and it's not because I forgot about it, it's because I lost what little mind I have left during that conference, and have only recently gotten it back a year later. I sat down to write about the conference, and I even have the half-finished draft of that post on my computer, but that's as far as I ever got on it. Part of it is just that I didn't know how to put it into words, I didn't trust that I'd be able to convey what the conference meant to me, and part of it is that honestly, it was going to be extremely painful for me to try and write that post, and I didn't want to put that much blood, sweat, and tears into a post only to have no one comment on it. I get that you're all busy too, and I totally understand, but sometimes pouring out my heart and getting no response really hurts me (attention whore that I am) and I didn't want to go through that. I'm writing this now not to whine about no one commenting on my posts (because, let's be honest, back when I used to get a lot of comments, it was mostly because people started knock down drag out fights with me, and I don't miss that, plus LiveJournal has been dead for awhile now and no one is getting the comments they used to) but because I just got back and had some awesome experiences and I want to share them with you.
The first night of the conference was awesome. We registered, then went to this sports bar that was across the street to eat some dinner, and the place was called "The nuthouse," which I love since, you know, most of us belong there anyway. I got a delicious steak quesadilla that I loved, and most people raved about their food as well, so it was a major hit with us. Unfortunately, Anthony wasn't able to eat with us because he got stuck waiting for a shuttle bus that was an hour and a half late, which foreshadowed what would become a major problem with the shuttle bus situation for the rest of the conference. I stayed outside the main session with Anthony's bag of goodies and name badge and stuff to wait for him, so he and I got into the room late, but we were in time to hear the main speaker for that night. I thought she was AMAZING but apparently I was the only one who thought that, because most of the rest of the group complained about her. A lot of them said they couldn't hear her, and I think that was a problem with the speakers on that side of the room because she was loud and clear on our side of the room, so that might have been technical difficulties.
She also talked about a lot of stuff that pisses people off and it's stuff I wind up fighting with people about all the time, so I can get why people didn't appreciate her speech. Her name was Emi Koyama, and most of her talk focused on the "victim vs. Survivor false dichotomy" and how "it gets better" can be used to bully people for not coping or healing the "right" way. It was very powerful and I wish you all were there to hear it. It's something Melissa McEwan talks a lot about at Shakesville, so it was nice to have my beliefs on the subject reinforced. I love the "It Gets Better" project, but I tend to get hives and freak out when people start preaching that someone isn't healing the right way or isn't healing fast enough or is acting like a victim and not a survivor. I am both a victim and a survivor, and while I get the unhelpfulness of wallowing in the bad things that happen in life, and I've had friends who traded on their past abuse a lot and used it to excuse all manner of bad behavior, I also know that I still cry myself to sleep some nights, and sometimes I wake up from terrible nightmares and throw myself across the room and then can't sleep for the rest of the night and I need to watch movies or some TV to occupy my mind and keep the monsters away. I still get really angry too, and while I'm better than I used to be, I still scare myself from time to time. I don't excuse any of this or pretend that I'm a shining example of what a "survivor" should be, but that's exactly my point. Everyone is different, and if you're still alive, you're doing better than the alternative, at least in my book. Even if my way of surviving isn't good enough, it's going to have to be, because it's all I have. It does get better, but "Better" doesn't look the same for everyone, and I'm kind of tired of being put down because my "better" isn't good enough for some people.
So yeah. Powerful session. Then I proceeded to go back to the hotel and not be able to sleep for fifty million hours even though I had only gotten an hour and 45 minutes of sleep the night before. On this day, I finally fell asleep for one hour or so, only to wake up at like 2:30 fully alert and not able to get back to sleep again. Jason was in my room and he had the same problem. we were both like "Oh great, I'm going to crash and die at about noon or so." We got ready and dinked around a bit and then at 5:30 we left the hotel room to go to Tim Horton's for breakfast. I've never been there, but I can attest that it's delicious. I got a bagel sandwich and a coffee with three shots of espresso, and then we walked back to catch the shuttle bus that was supposed to pick us up at 6:30 AM. we stood in front of the door where there was a big sign outside that said "BUS PICKUP FOR MBLGTACC HERE" and that's where the bus picked us up on Friday night. The crowd kept growing as people kept getting tired of waiting in the cold and coming inside to wait with us. At 7, people started trickling away to go get the free breakfast provided by the hotel which we didn't want to wait for since we thought we'd be catching the 6:30 bus. At 7:30 half of our group was gone eating. At 7:45, Jason came back to the big group still waiting for the bus and informed us that the bus already came and left because it decided to pick up people at the lobby door instead of at the sign. Cue homicidal rage. I stomped over to the front door and wound up getting snapped at by the cranky people waiting there, which almost resulted in a fist fight, but I managed to control myself and went to sit down for the first time in two hours, and of course as soon as I sat down the bus came, so we ran to catch it. The bus driver was going to let us stand, since because of the screw up with the timing he knew he had more people than usual, but Anthony and I managed to eke out seats so we didn't have to stand.
We arrived late for the first session, but luckily we weren't the only ones. I got to my session I'd picked out, but the presenter for that session never showed up, so I got up and tried desperately to find a workshop that looked interesting, finally settling on one about how to integrate LGBTQ issues in K-12 classrooms. It's funny though, because I wound up LOVING the session I was in and learning a lot. I'm not a K-12 teacher but I interact with and work with kids a lot in my various endeavors, so I got a lot of good information. The handout (I love handouts!) first asked us to list experiences we had with gay issues in classes in our K-12 years (good or bad), what our goals would be as teachers, and what attitudes we've encountered as teachers with regards to these issues. Then we were supposed to break off into groups and discuss the next three questions, which concerned three different scenarios where we might encounter homophobia in the classroom and how we might address these situations.
I thought I might be doing group work alone, since everyone else seemed to have their own groups decided upon right away, but the guy next to me actually seemed friendly and he was willing to work with me, so that worked out well. He actually had some good insight, too, since I had no idea how to handle the first two scenarios on the list but I had a good idea for the third, so he shared his ideas for the first two. The first scenario is what if a student says an assignment is "so gay"? He said that he would stop the class immediately so everyone would know it was a serious issue, and then he asks his students if they've ever experienced any kind of prejudice, and when they give some examples, explain to them that using "gay" to mean a bad thing is prejudice against people who are gay. he says he's had some good response when he's done this in his classes, and it seems like a good idea to me. The second situation was what if a student steals another student's pencil, so the student whose pencil was stolen says "hey, that was mine, you faggot!" He said he'd have everyone else continue doing their work in the class and then he'd take the student that yelled outside the class and explain that the "F word" is hateful just like the "N word" and not allowed in class. I like the idea of having others continue their work and taking the student aside. The presenter of the workshop said that in her school she's not allowed to send students out into the hall, so that's not an option, but on the first day of class she tells everyone "I don't want to hear "gay" or "retard" used as insults to mean stupid or anything, period, and this is the last I want to hear about it," so they know it's going to result in disciplinary action if they say it.
The third example was asking how we'd react if a student said something like "being gay is gross. It's not natural. I don't want to see that pervert stuff." Now this was the one I've had experience with, and since I'd be teaching a drama class or an English class anyway (let's be real) I'd ask my students to read the books "Leo the Lop" and "The Velveteen Rabbit" and then we'd discuss them. "Leo the Lop" is one of the "Serendipity books" I read as a kid, basically a liberal hippie kids book publishing company, and it's about a rabbit who has droopy ears and all the other rabbits have ears that stand up, so he thinks his ears are abnormal and tries to change them, but then the wise old possum tells him his ears are normal, so the other rabbits try to make their ears droop down like his, but then the wise old possum tells them that their ears looked normal before, so the rabbits decide that normal is whatever you are! My mom totally bought me this book, then when I was a teenager and started saying that being gay was normal because normal is whatever you are, she asked me where I learned that shit, and I said "...from the book you gave me when I was a kid." Funtimes. Anyway, "The Velveteen Rabbit" is about a toy rabbit that becomes a real rabbit after it dies, and halfway through the book one of the other toys tells him that when a child loves a toy that toy can become real, and the process hurts and often you don't look the same afterward, but once you are real you can never be ugly except to people who don't understand. That still hits me hard, even today, and I've never had a discussion about that book where people didn't go away thinking hard about what "normal" is and I love it. The guy in my group liked my answer, and the presenter did too. she said even if you tell kids "we don't talk about" gay issues, you're still sending a message that "gay" is bad, so it's important to be persistent and not give up. The guy in my group said that he's originally from Wisconsin, and when he turned 18 he moved away to go to a more liberal area, but he kind of feels like he let the conservatives win, because this is his state and he should have stayed and not let that drive him away. That's how I feel about Michigan. This is my state, dude, and I love it. Instead of moving somewhere else, maybe we should try to make Michigan better, huh?
After this session we met up with some more DSAGA peeps and went to find a place to eat. We walked a few blocks looking for a place but never found it, so we stopped at a place called "Kewpie's" which was a hole in the wall with amazing food. I got a burger with freshly ground beef and homemade olive sauce that was like mayo, and I loved it so much I posted a picture on Facebook. Totally worth the walk. Then we came back and we had two hours to kill, and we got separated, and I literally did NOTHING for the two most boring hours of my life. This is where it started to kick in that 45 minutes of sleep was not enough for my poor, poor body. It didn't help that the session I was in was not only boring, it wasn't what it was supposed to be about, and the presenter was wrong wrong wrongitty wrong about almost everything. She kept contradicting herself and I wanted to get up and leave, and I finally did because she was going overtime and I wanted to get upstairs for my next two sessions, which were "Queer Theory and Queer Theology" parts I and II. Sounds right up my alley, right? I was kind of worried because I was delusionally tired at this point and my last session had been such a dud, but I was pleasantly surprised because the next two sessions were AWESOME and I could have sat there for two more hours because it was that much fun and I got so many notes and books to look up. Whee, more shiny knowledge!
The Queer Theory and Queer Theology session was a panel discussion with some small group work thrown into the mix, too. There were four presenters, but because I'm a douchecanoe, I didn't write down anyone's name in my notes, so the only name I have is Rev. Matthew Cockrum, who is a Unitarian Universalist minister, and I only have his name because it's in the MBLGTACC booklet they gave us when we registered. He was really hot. I remember that. I think my exact thoughts were "He has nice hair. I like his scarf. My cat's breath smells like cat food" and further thoughts of that nature. He was also really nice, too. Are you digging this deep, deep insight yet? Luckily I took notes, because my brain was cornmeal mush at this point, and my notes are HILARIOUS and hard to read, and I wish you all could see them. Like, sometimes I'd write down the wrong word, and then instead of scribbling it out and moving on, I thought it would be ok to write the correct word on TOP of the wrong word and make them both impossible to decipher, so I'm guessing a lot about some of this, but I think I'm pretty accurate about the gist of what was said, if not the actual wording.
Some good points made by the various speakers were:
-People of Faith are more important than objects of faith
-Who gets to decide who is christian and who is not?
-What race is your sexuality and what class is your religion? These intersect and it's important to recognize that.
-The chief error of philosophy is overreaching. This is true of Queer theory as well. It attempts to do everything and ends up doing nothing.
-Achieving a well-accessorized Queer identity is only a phase, not a destination.
-Are we asking the people who we are supposedly serving what they need?
-Queer theory is not about proving that Paul or other biblical writers approved of homosexuality, because it rejects the premise that it's important to do so.
-Queer theology assumes a stance against comfort and against the normality of the world, therefore the acceptability of homosexuality is not important.
-Queer theory and queer theology disrupt the heteronormative patriarchy of interpretation of sexuality and theology.
-From where you're sitting, you need to claim the truth of your context.
-Jesus exudes Queerness because He challenges the foundations of the world.
-Gender and sexuality are not about what a person is but about how a person reacts to others.
-One of the presenters showed a slideshow of his artwork and other photos, and he showed pictures of various pride floats, and then he showed a picture of Noah's ark with the big rainbow overhead, and he said "Here's the first Pride Float."
-The bible is full of visual language
-Our job isn't to touch God or to solve that mystery, our job is to live in that mystery
-Queer theology would preclude us trying to convince conservative Christians
-Study your tools and recognize you don't want to cut other people, you want to teach them to use the tools, too.
-There's always more than one way to present things.
-All of us who love gay people, we have our coming out stories, too.
-As we come out, asking people to accept us, their reaction is a part of who they are,too, and we need to accept that, even if it hurts.
I felt really good after going to these sessions, and I talked to the presenters afterward (even the guy with nice hair and a cool scarf) and got some good book suggestions and articles to look up so I can learn shiny new things, so I was stoked. After this I got to hang out with Anthony, Jen, and Courtney, and we drove to Meijer to buy some alcohol and got pizza from Domino's (no sauce for me...my kidneys don't like tomatoes, and I have the stones to prove it) and we hung out in the hotel room where I proceeded to drink like, 2 beers and one sip of my vodka, then go to sleep because I'm old and decrepit. Anthony woke us up when he came in drunk at like, 2:30, but it was ok because we had a lot of fun then, too, and I posted some of the quotes on Facebook to prove it. So the next morning I got up at 6 AM, showered and ate the rest of my cold pizza for breakfast, then packed my stuff and went downstairs to hang out, load my stuff in the car, and get on the bus for the last session. the bus was only 20 minutes late this time (yayness) and so I walked into the first workshop session a little late and tried to discretely slip into a seat in the back, but then I heard people calling my name, and some of my friends were already there sitting right up front and they'd saved a seat for me, so I felt all loved and wanted and stuff. The workshop was about same-sex relationships in the bible, and I'd heard most of it before, but I got more info and more depth this time around, so it was cool. The presenter talked about how there are different perspectives from which to read the bible, and maybe it's supposed to be that way. We are conditioned to read the bible from a heterosexual perspective, but maybe we should challenge that when we read it. Back in the bible, marriages were about procreation, not about love. He had a video to show us, but the technology wouldn't work to let him show it, so he said "well clearly Satan's forces are trying to stop us," which made me laugh.
He talked about how the word "Abomination" was about purity, and we need to ask ourselves what is biblical marriage and what is traditional marriages? Traditional biblical marriages included a lot of concubines and laws about property and traditions we don't follow these days. For every single person there is a different interpretation of the bible, and we need to think about what we think and how much of that is actually the text and how much of that is our interpretation of the text. The first verses we looked at were 1 Samuel 18:1-4, which talks about David and how he loved Jonathan so much he stripped off his armor and gave it to Jonathan, and how armor was a symbol of power, so it was a big deal to give someone his power. 1 Samuel 20:30 is "ye olde homophobia" rearing its ugly head, and Jonathan's father Saul was angry because Jonathan was bringing sexual shame on his family. 1 Samuel 20:41-42 is the verse where David says that Jonathan's love for him surpasses the love of women, and in 2 Samuel 1 we read about how David was a King when Jonathan died and he ordered his whole kingdom to mourn when he heard of Jonathan's death.
Then we switched to talking about Ruth, and how in biblical times, a woman without a husband had no social standing, and when Ruth's husband dies, in Ruth 1:14, Naomi clings to Ruth, and the word "cling" here is the same word used to describe how Eve "clung" to Adam. He said "at this point, I'm not reading "gay" into it. It's gay on its own." When Ruth eventually did get married again and had a son, the people of the town rejoiced and said "A son has been born to Naomi." Basically Boaz (Ruth's second husband) was a sperm donor, and Ruth and Naomi raised the son, and for them, the most important relationship they had was the one they shared together. The presenter said "The next time someone says "Are you a bible believing christian?" say "Yes. Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan."" Trying to "queer" the bible this way makes people angry, but why are they getting so angry if we're just inventing all this? If the book of Ruth isn't a love story between Naomi and Ruth, then why are Naomi's words to Ruth used in marriage ceremonies? "where you go I will go, your people will be my people, your God will be my god." He then said "Why read the bible for yourself when someone can tell you what it says?" Reading these stories is good, because it's like finding yourself in stories you've read your whole life.
It's a good idea to try reading the bible from a queer perspective. If anyone tells you they don't interpret the bible, smack them, because we all do it. No matter who you are, your story is in the bible. You're meant to draw from the bible and use it to strengthen yourself. you are affirmed in the bible. In no place does the bible condemn consenting same-sex relationships...any time you read the word "homosexual" in the bible, it's a translation (I have lots of info on this if anyone is interested). The presenter also said "Jesus Christ never condemns same sex sexuality. Paul does, but did Paul die on the cross for my sins? Even if Paul was a homophobe, I think I'm gonna go with Jesus on this one." I'm not sure how much of this I buy or to what extent I buy it. To me, it's pretty clear that David loved Jonathan and Ruth loved Naomi, and they loved each other, but I think for me to point and put the label "gay!" on that is the same thing as everyone pointing and putting the label "heterosexual" on it (or the label "totally just friends, y'all"). that they loved each other is important, but I don't necessarily have to say "and they were totally gay or in point of fact more like bisexual," what's important is to try and live out the love they expressed in my life, not pretend it doesn't exist or try to label it as something. That's just me, though. I got a lot of good info from this session, and a lot to think about, so it was worthwhile, methinks.
Ok, here's the fun part. Remember when I told you that I was supposed to write this big update about the conference last year, but then it never happened? Well a big part of why that happened is because I had a major breakdown after attending a certain workshop last year. I was excited when I got the booklet last year and saw that one of the workshops was going to be presented by someone who had gone through "Conversion therapy," which is therapy that purports to help change sexual orientation (or help people repress their same-sex attractions, or help people live a celibate life and fight their same-sex urges, or whatever semantics they're using to make it sound like a better practice this week). I wrote a little bit earlier last week about my own experiences with "conversion therapy" in my review for the movie "This is What Love in Action Looks Like," but what you might not realize is that it took me almost a year to get to the point where I can be even as descriptive of what I went through as I am in that review, which isn't much. I've talked about my experiences before, to a much lesser extent, and I think I've called my therapy many different things, and I honestly don't remember what or how much I said about it because I think I'd honestly convinced myself that it didn't happen, or it didn't happen the way I remembered it happened, so the way I remembered it changed in my head, or I didn't think about it or talk about it without calling it something else or trying to make it sound like something it wasn't. This probably doesn't make much sense, but I'm going to try and make it make more sense, and I know this has already been ten thousand pages long, so I'm going to try and make this as brief as I can, I promise. Last year I was all confident, telling everyone I was going to go to this workshop, and I walked right in, ten minutes early, and I set my stuff down at a table in the back, and then I turned and left and went into the bathroom and threw up for like, ten minutes. This means that my body must have realized what I was in for even if my mind was plugging its ears and singing "Kumbaya" or something.
I went back to the room and my seat was taken, so I stood up in the back corner, and I went through the session in a kind of a fog, and I remember what happened and I had pages full of notes afterward so I obviously took notes, but I remember swaying on my feet a lot and I just looked over my notes before writing this, and you can totally tell I was in motion, because they're slanted and moving all over the page, but much clearer than some of the notes I took this year, and that's because I went into a dissociative state while I was writing them, where I sort of went outside my head and my body was writing and taking notes mechanically while I was somewhere else. I do that sometimes. I did it when I was younger a lot more than I do now (in fact, I don't think I've done it since last year, which is good I guess) but after the session was over, I left the room and went into the bathroom and threw up again, then I wandered around the hallway, slowly losing my grip, and it's funny because the only thing I could think was that in these situations, it's usually not safe to ask for help, or at least it has been that way in the past, and now I had friends at the conference with me who had known me awhile and didn't think I was crazy yet, so maybe they were safe people to talk to, so I should ask for help before I do anything else, so I sent out a frantic text and my friend Anthony answered and said "where are you? Stay there, I'm coming to get you" and he drove to meet me and we hung out and things wound up being ok.
I think my biggest realization from that session was that the person giving it was younger than me by like six years, so that means that the type of therapy I went through was happening more recently than I thought it was. I think part of my brain consoled me with the thought that it didn't really happen, and even if it did really happen, it was a long time ago and things like that aren't happening anymore, so I don't need to think about it anymore, because what good would that do? I tried right after it happened to get help for a few years, and even throughout the years since then I've talked to therapists from time to time and tried to reveal small bits of what happened to me,and what they always say to me, without fail, is "well obviously they thought that would help you, they were trying to help you" and they'd tell me I have to move on, so a big part of me thinks there's no real point in talking about what happened, because talking about it isn't moving on, and talking hasn't really helped me in the past. The only people who really knew, who had similar experiences to mine, are dead. They've all killed themselves over the years, most recently with my friend Michael, and that was hard for me because of everything the world lost when it lost him and also because selfishly, it felt like I was losing the only people who really understood.
Over the years I've been going to DSAGA meetings, I've shared little bits of my story with people, and one day I remember mentioning it when my friend Jess was in the group, and she replied that she hadn't known that I went through "reparative therapy" and she said "honestly, I'm surprised you're doing as well as you are, now that I know that about you." I carried that comment with me throughout the years, and Jess was there at the conference last year, and I ran into her at the dance that night after I went to the workshop, so I had a chance to talk to her, and I ended up telling her about going to the workshop and how it freaked me out, then I told her that she was one of the only people I felt safe talking to about it because I knew she might realize how important it was to me, because she was one of the only people who heard "I went through conversion therapy" and had such a serious reaction that I knew she had an idea of what that meant. I told her that I had kind of convinced myself that it didn't happen throughout the years, but that facade was ripped away that day, and I felt kind of stripped, like everything was suddenly hitting me harder than it would have before because I was more sensitive suddenly, like a raw nerve with feet. She told me "What happened to you is real, and it caused real damage, and you're stronger than you know, because you are trying to heal that damage instead of ignoring it. You are a good person and you have value, and my wish for you is that some day, you will be able to see yourself through my eyes."
I'm telling you all this not to be all like, "Oh, I'm awesome!" or anything, but so that you'll know that when I didn't write that blog post last year, it's not because I forgot, or that I didn't care, it's because it was too painful for me to think about or to write. It's taken me a year to even admit that. Honestly, I was writing this blog post tonight, and right when I got to the part I'm writing now, about my last workshop on the last day, I freaked out again and I had to go grab a beer and drink it to calm myself down enough to keep writing. I don't drink very often, I assure you, but I tell you that to say this: It's hard for me to write this, but I think it's important, so I'm going to try and do so anyway, in my imperfect way, and I hope that the words will sound right, and I hope that good will come of it. So yeah, in case you haven't figured it out yet, my last workshop on Sunday was the same one that I went to last year, "You Can't Change what We Never Chose," with Samuel Brinton presenting again, and I wasn't sure how it was going to go, but I'm a different person than I was last year (hopefully for the better) and I took my anxiety meds that morning, so I was a lot calmer than I had been the year before (no puking this time). The workshop followed a lot of the same format as last year, so he introduced himself and the topic, warned us about triggers in the presentation, and then he told his story of his experiences with "conversion therapy," then he gave us some more info and some resources, and then we had a question and answer session afterward. People had a lot of good questions and we had a good discussion.
One of the things that he's really passionate about is ending the practice of "conversion therapy," because of all the harm it can cause and all the people who go through it and then later commit suicide, and he said "Before we can get married, I think we need to LIVE," which I thought was a great point. At one point during his presentation, he said something that really resonated with me, which was "The only thing that I had in this world was that God loved me," and how when someone tries to take that away, it can be devastating. I remember that. I remember lying on the floor and I wanted to pray but I didn't have words left, and the only thing I could think of was Jeremiah 29:11, which talks about how the Lord has plans for you and plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope, so I kept repeating that over and over and over. I think I've told some of you about that before. It also makes me think of John 20:13, when Jesus has died and Mary is at the tomb crying and people ask her "woman, why are you crying?" and she says "they have taken my lord away, and I don't know where they have put him." I could go on for hours about this whole chapter and this verse, but mostly, it hits me because I remember what it was like to have my lord taken away, to think that I didn't have God's love anymore because of something about me that I couldn't change no matter how hard I tried (and then they told me I needed to "let God change me," and somehow that never worked, either, and they told me I had hardened my heart like Pharaoh). I remember having my lord taken away, and that was the only thing I had, so I felt like I had nothing left. I don't want anyone else to feel that way, ever, and if maybe I'm annoying in the way I repeat that God can still love you if you're gay, and you don't have to change, it's because I don't ever want anyone else to feel that loss of hope because no one ever told them that it's ok to be gay.
We still have churches in this area that teach that homosexuality is a sin and that God can change people and they need to seek that. We still have churches that teach people that they can have the "demon of homosexuality" or the "demon of transgender" cast out of them if they let people in the church lay hands on them and cast it out. It's happened as recently as last year, that I know of, and every time I hear it, I hear the congregation shouting "Amen" and I think of all the people in those churches who aren't saying "Amen" or who are dying inside when they say it because they think they have a demon inside them or that God can't love them and they don't know how to change so that God will love them. I think about them because I was one of them once upon a time, and I don't know what to do, except to speak out wherever I can and to try and combat the other voices that people might be hearing. Most of the time it feels like I'm not doing anything, but it's all that I can do, so I will try. I really want to try and bring Samuel Brinton to this area to give a talk, and ideally I'd try to get flyers out to all the churches in the area too and all the campus ministries so we'd have people there...I don't want a mob with pitchforks and torches, but I want to try and get people talking about this issue, because I don't think people know that this kind of "therapy" happens and that it's STILL happening and that it's still hurting people and it needs to stop. He gave his email after the presentation, and when people stood around to meet him and to take pictures, this time I stood in line, too, and didn't run away and you know, puke or something, because I wanted to meet him and thank him and tell him that I wanted him to come to our school sometime if he could and speak. Maybe that will get the conversation going. I don't know. But I did get to meet him and talk to him (even though I cried) and someone took a picture so I have evidential proof that I didn't run away screaming at the end of the session, so I want to share the picture with you:
I also want to share this song with you, because I've been listening to it all day, and it's helping me keep going and keep writing, so I hope it helps give you hope, too:
Click to viewI love you all. Thank you for listening.