The Last Church Days of McCallum J. Morgan, Summer 2020

I remember once, after church, standing around with the youth group guys.

Gossip was, a church girl in Canada had left her husband--
Left him for another woman.
The disgust was palpable, performative, pulpy, shock, horror, and awe.
I stayed silent. By this point I had admitted my own sexuality--to myself, to a friend, to a pastor...this youth didn't know he was wrinkling his face in disgust at something that he stood very near to. I squirmed inside. But didn't move.
"There had to be something wrong with her from the start," he says. The others agree. Readily and without pause. I don't remember if I joined in automatically, so used to condemning others like me to avoid any suspicion that there is also something wrong with me.
But it strikes me--in the derisive, dismissive tones of these youths--if they truly believe there is something fundamentally wrong with this lesbian, where is the compassion? Don't they profess to be Christians?And isn't that the core tenant of their religion? Our religion, at the time. I was still trying to hang on to it.
The core tenant of our religion was that something is fundamentally wrong with all of us. Yet this was different. There was none of the compassion we were supposed to have for mankind. Just skin-crawling  disgust.
I follow the youth guys out of the church building into the sun.
I feel more lonely than ever before. Each Sunday, after hearing about how Jesus will deliver me from my sins, I stand in the circle of the youth group in the parking lot. They laugh and chatter. I used to linger until the last one had gone home, or off to lunch plans, hoping that I would find a place in the conversation, hoping I could open up and actually make friends.
But each Sunday the emptiness increases. The sermons don't make me feel better. My homosexuality isn't going away. I can't get rid of it. And God isn't going to remove it, either.
And I can't linger as long, hoping as the group gets smaller, I won't be so shy, hoping maybe someone will invite me over for Sunday dinner.
I have nothing in common with these people. And they are disgusted by people like me.
And I can't keep pretending to be disgusted by people like me. I can't sit here on my high horse of righteousness, claiming that I am resisting sin and so therefore I am not the same as those malfunctioning individuals that apparently deserve no compassion from Christians.
I leave early.
My heart hurts. A heavy burden is crushing me. And Jesus isn't taking it.
But this is the final stretch. Soon I'll realize that I was asking for the wrong thing--I wanted him to change me, because I thought I was broken.
What I really needed was someone to take the shame away.
Shame that I carried for how others looked at people like me.
Shortly thereafter, I stopped attending church. There was a 2nd covid hiatus and I didn't go back when services re-started.
I stopped getting that weekly dose of guilt.
Slowly, I accepted that I am who I am. And that's ok. Its good.
I already knew that the unnamed Canadian lesbian didn't deserve the blatant loathing from Christians. I know now that the Canadian lesbian and I don't need their compassion, either.
They need ours because they are blinded.
I hope that wherever she is, she is happy and has let go of all the shame that she should never have had to bear. I hope she is free, like me, and I hope she flourishes.
Amen

Let Us Be

I wrote this piece in response/inspired by uproar at my local library last year...a group tried to recall the board of trustees, believing that they were allowing smut into the library. They failed, but now they are trying to elect their own people to the board. This reflects the uproar across the country about books deemed inappropriate. Usually these books feature queerness or racism as topics. I'm focusing on queerness only because that is where my personal experience lies.

Let Us Be

By McCallum J. Morgan

Gay and trans kids have always grown up feeling like no one understands them-- alone, isolated, and unsure why they feel that way. Now that things are changing--now that their identities are more visible and are finally being normalized with positive depictions in media, you are making it your mission to take that away from queer kids. By trying to repaint queer identities with the old stigmas, you will make queer kids--who might possibly be *your* kids-- feel alone again. Isolated.
You ban the books, ban the topic in schools, ban drag, and try to erase queerness from public.
Suddenly, queer kids have no frame of reference for their feelings. If they never hear about queer people in a positive way, they will internalize all the negativity.
I speak from experience.
All I ever heard about gays was that they were decadent, delinquent, unnatural sinners.
Any of my interests that weren't stereotypical boy interests made me feel like I was weird and strange. Crushes on male celebrities were carefully compartmentalized in my brain where I could pretend they weren't crushes. I just wanted to be like Orlando Bloom, I identified with blonde Peter in Narnia. They couldn't be crushes. That would be gay. And gay was bad. I learned to hate myself before I knew what I was. I used denial to protect myself.
But not everyone can do that. Some kids will face the truth sooner than I did. Some won't be able to handle being the monster that everyone taught them they were. And then what? If they are unable to see past the lies you taught them about themselves--that they are rapists and pedophiles because they aren't straight--if they can't unlearn those lies, will they choose to live in pain all their lives? Or will they decide the pain isn't worth it and cut their lives short?
Society wants to change, people want to leave homophobia behind. How does being queer do any harm to anyone else? But because you insist your book says it is unnatural, you cannot let it go. So you keep teaching that it is an abomination. And those of us who are queer grow up hating ourselves with your hate.
We grow up broken and alone. And you still insist we're wrong. That we're broken and Jesus can save us.
Save us from what? Ourselves? From *what* harm? The only harm we face is from you and your refusal to understand, your refusal to truly love.
If only Jesus would save us from you.
He taught love. And in the name of that love, you alienate, isolate, and drive children to choose death over this pain we are taught to feel. That you taught us to feel.
We are not trying to indoctrinate your kids. We were indoctrinated by you. We aren't telling kids to be queer. We're trying to make it safe for the queer kids to be queer. To exist as themselves without the pain and the hate.
And that is what you are trying to take away. You are trying to destroy any peace that we claw back from you. That we are claiming.
I'm done explaining myself. I'm done telling you I didn't choose this. It just happened. I don't need to justify or explain it to someone who will not listen.
Now I am explaining you instead. You've told me long enough who I am, what I am. So listen here.
Just shut up and listen.
You hurt us. You created the closet we had to gnaw our way out of. We don't want revenge. We're just trying to live outside again.
And then you come along and try to stop us, rob us of what we fought for, and silence us.
Just shut up and let us be. We're not after you. We really want nothing to do with you. Stop following us into bathrooms to scream at us. Stop waving your bibles in our faces in the name of false love. Stop rising up in fury at the mention of a Pride parade. Just turn the other cheek, God dammit. Stop burning our books. Stop erasing us.
Just stop.
And maybe fucking listen.