I became friends with someone before I knew that she had an evangelical background, and was, for all intents and purposes, still in it. She threw a fit on Facebook right after the marriage equality ruling, apparently thinking that people didn't "accept" the fact that she wanted to make millions of people second-class citizens.
This has bothered me ever since, and being in class with her almost made me physically sick. The worst part is that she is so very "nice," and I don't think she wants to harm anyone. But apparently, she believes that God wants her to.
I don't care that she was a Christian, but there is really no excuse not to be an LGBT-affirming one. There is much dispute about the "clobber" passages, so that nothing is really "clear," as much as some people would want it to be. Even if it was, I believe that that would be the most damning evidence that at least that part of the bible was NOT written by an all-loving God, and that it would be immoral to harm or condemn people when they are not harming anyone else.
I wanted so very, very much to tell her, matter-of-factly and without anger, that "acceptance" does NOT include taking away people's equal rights, and that if she would vote against equality at the first opportunity, that she has no right to call herself any LGBT person's friend.
But I felt that I could not say anything, because I saw her almost every day.
I was very much bothered literally every time I saw her or thought about her. She was well-meaning, but still supported policies that harmed people. She thought that "loving" people gave her a right to do whatever she wanted. She thought that the bible was a license to get her way.
In other words, she was me, about ten years ago.
Lately, though, things seem to be looking up. I feel so much lighter and freer ever since I heard her cuss. We can now be real friends, rather than my feeling like a fraud for talking to her.
In class the other day, she talked about seeing the elderly people who came into the store where she works, and the unique way in which they walked. "They're just like, 'Get out of my way, I'm going to get to wherever the FUCK I wanna go!'" she shouted, laughing. It surprised me, and warmed my heart.
I remember when I first started cussing, at around age thirteen. It was the beginning of the end, and though it took a long time, I am finally free today.
There are other little clues that I believe point to her impending escape.
She was the one who laughed longest and loudest, a few days before that, when another person pointed out, "I think in this play, 'Dear mother!' means, 'Oh, fuck!'"
That same day, she did an impression of a British accent. "See? See? I'm just a cockney bastard!"
Practicing for a small skit, a male friend of ours said, "I guess I can stand in for the other lady right now."
"He's a lady!" she smiled.
"Well, except that's not how I identify," he mildly protested. "I identify as a man."
(This guy is straight, as far as I know, but I think the correct use of the verb "identify" is probably a sign that he's an ally.)
"Ruth" at twenty reminds me of myself at about sixteen: Surrounded by evangelical friends and family, knowing exactly what she "should" be but secretly longing to be herself (whatever that is, because she doesn't know). Afraid to say what she really thinks out loud to herself, much less to others (if she even knows what she really thinks). And wondering how much, exactly, is what God expects her to be, and how much, exactly, is what other people expect her to be.
I'm guessing at all of this, of course, except for the evangelical friends and family. But I believe that she is exactly what I was: Stuck. In so many ways.
But she is different than me in a lot of ways too. She has many gay friends, being in theater, whereas I only knew my mother's lesbian coworker at my Stuck Age, and that not very well. She has seen the film "The Laramie Project," in one of our classes, about people's reactions to Matthew Sheppard having been brutally attacked for being gay.
"I just thought, 'What if it was Harrison?'" she said, about a mutual friend that I have also written much about. (I thought that was in poor taste, actually, because Harrison was helping with that class and could have walked in at any moment--though I was thinking the exact same thing as she was.)
In other words, she has less of an excuse, and may not take as long to escape the institutionalized bigotry.
She's probably torn, but there is an easy solution (well, relatively easy, though it takes admitting to yourself what you actually believe). So she can't "come out" as an ally right now; I say, don't. There's no reason, though, that she can't tell her closest friends that she is for their equal rights, but that she can't say anything publicly right now. (She has been, I think, intentionally vague and hard to pin down on the subject, probably because she herself doesn't know quite what to believe.)
It's kind of like another friend of mine said to me once, when I mentioned him being an ally, "I actually do consider myself to be gay, I'm just not very public about it." (Although my mom once saw him swaying down the street in rather "feminine" short shorts and a crop top, so he's probably more public about it than he realizes.)
Still, the solution remains the same. But that would take actually figuring out and coming to terms with where one really stands, not where they stand only because they're afraid of hell.
Ruth has mentioned that she is going to be "Waldo" for Halloween. She will dress as someone who is literally lost. How poignant.
Harrison will be a "gender-bent" Poison Ivy, making me wonder if "they" (Harrison's chosen pronoun) will eventually become a "she." Meanwhile, I have decided to dress as what I consider myself to be in real life: A Fairy Godmother.
I consider myself to be a "Fairy Godmother" because I agree wholeheartedly (if God exists) with Ruth's ironic line in an upcoming play (by Oscar Wilde, a gay man): "I was wrong. God's law is only love."
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