By: Ian L. Haddock
I was raised, like most queer folk in the South, in the church. My small town of 14,000 had one bank, one high school, one grocery store, one hospital and a church on every single corner. The church was a refuge for La Marque, Texas.
We had a hard life: a home full of drugs, murder and dropouts was what I was surrounded by. From living with my grandparents back and forth to moving into one of their rental homes, my mother struggled with sustainability. She, like most single parents, did the best she could but could only give me the life she desperately wanted to escape from. My outlet to have my peace was the church. Although my home and church were both loud and full of life, the church was a welcome relief from the life of struggle I went home to.
Still, I was queer. I didn’t have a term for it yet, but I knew what the feelings were. No amount of Sunday school, altar calls or invitation to discipleship would change that.
The first inkling I had of what being queer looked like for me was when I was about 14. Being involved with church five days out the week, I naturally made my friendship circle there. I had just gotten my own room when my mom finally let me have a friend from church over. After being too quiet in the room and him being noticeably same sex attracted, she randomly propped open my door to make sure there was nothing inappropriate going on. I knew my mother’s standards of having other children over, but I also didn’t understand why I felt uneasy about this situation. I was smart enough to realize I enjoyed hanging with him and found excitement talking with him but didn’t grasp that my young hormones were impacted by these joyous feelings. For me, he was just my best friend.
Things became more concrete when I moved down the highway to Houston in 2006. I visited home often until my mother’s passing in 2012. Through this time, my experience with having my own space, like my mother, was an uphill battle. 40% of homeless youth are LGBT and I happened to be one of them. On top of this I was selling my body, hanging with the wrong crowd and was not in college. I struggled not only to find a place of my own but to find my place in the world.
At some point after my mother’s transition, I realized that I had no safety net and needed higher aspirations. I didn’t have a plan, but I only held in my subconscious my mom’s hopes for me to have it better than she did. By God’s design, I ended up in what I consider the ministry of the oppressed, i.e. LGBT community development: from working in public health to government then to consulting, nonprofit management and senior level board member/advisory group placement. I have become a part of leadership to a community while still finding my way in life’s journey.
Finding my place but shielded from the world while working in the background, my territory enlarged as I became more visible, which led to being more critiqued. With very little connection to my past, I began to come up on my home community’s radar. Though I rarely talked to them and no one ever checked on me and visited me, I had become a topic of conversation. All a sudden, I became shameful to the communities that raised me. There were conversations had with those closest to me about the disgust of those most genetically connected to me with the largest hand in rearing me in my youth. I was an out, open, gay male.
“Men shall not lie with men,” I heard delivered to me via a family member on account of her conversation with my aunt. “God doesn’t approve of a sex that cannot procreate, son.”
Years before, I would have been broken by this but seeing I had been figuring this out all alone for so long, I was confident and sure. See, I realize that sexuality is much more than my sex. Sexuality encompasses all my attractions (mind, body, spirit) and is connected to my humanness; sex, on the other hand, explains a human’s natural desire and need to be intimately connected to others. Still, it goes deeper.
My sex—or sexuality—is intimate. For me and my preference, intimacy is sacred. It is my hiding place from the world. It is where I find my center and allow my spirit to fully engage with the inner beings of those I choose to connect with.
Coming from a child who only had a room to himself for a few years before I moved out and not being able to conceive ever living alone, intimacy is my bedroom. My bedroom is my hallowed space where few are invited. In my adulthood, few people have slept in the bed with me only including my sickly mother, a few friends and partners. My home is a connection point for all types of conversations and my guest room is extended as a resource to all types of needs, but my bedroom is a protected space.
In this, I think there is a clear statement to be made to people: “Get out of our bedrooms!” It matters not what you feel religiously or as a concept of normalcy; get out! If you are not going to come to our figurative “living rooms” and have conversations about love, hope and faith, don’t tell me what to do inside my bedroom. It is not my desire or intention to have any more conversations about my queerness with people who don’t want to have conversations with me about my wholeness.
Think about how much more alike we are than different. We all to some extent desire love, belonging and to build a plan for our estate. Ironically, some of us are excluded because of what happens in our bedroom. This is even though the same sex union is 50% less likely to end in divorce than our heterosexual counterparts. We all desire to some extent a connection with God—the unknown, the universe or the many other things S/He is called—but based on what happens in our bedroom, we are ridiculed into a state of not being accepted. Well, of course unless you are a director, musician, singer or closeted pastor. Otherwise, there is a place you can come pay to keep their doors open by being condemned to hell at least quarterly and paying money once or twice a week.
Until we come to an understanding of love, compassion and community advancement for all, I want no parts of church, community or even family that wishes to stop progression. Progression for any marginalized community is progression for all of us. So, until we want the best for all communities, I’ll stay in my bedroom because I won’t go in anyone’s closet.
