The Cross in the Closet (2 page)

The protest sign in my hands feels awkward, surreal, as I stand in the vigil line. Rain drenches my sweatshirt and jeans, and the cold makes it difficult to feel my body. I am in lower Manhattan, protesting with a group of Soulforce activists outside the Vatican’s embassy to the United Nations. The knot in my stomach is the result of nerves and intense culture shock, but still I stand here in the rain, holding my red, octagonal sign to my chest. The morale of the group is waning: my new friends stand silent like statues against the backdrop of the booming metropolis. Matthew, one of the leaders of the group, sings “We Shall Overcome,” his pleasant tenor fighting the sense of hopelessness we all seem to feel as we look at the vacant building across the street. Chris and Bryan join in, and I feel all the more awkward because I can’t. I do not know the words. I know the words to hymns and many contemporary praise songs, but not protest songs.

This particular protest is small, from what the others have told me; there are just under thirty of us here. But it seems intimate, passionate, a last stand against an ideal no one here supports. Not even me, anymore.

Until I got to New York City, I did not even know the Vatican has an embassy to the United Nations, but here I am. The gates are barred and locked like the doorway to a prison, but we can see inside. The letters on the lobby wall read
The Path to Peace
. This very morning, the Vatican vetoed a bill in the UN that would decriminalize homosexuality across the globe. Why? So some countries can go on killing or imprisoning gay people just for their orientation? Until I found myself standing on this corner earlier this morning, I didn’t know that people were still killed for being gay. My eyes are fixed on the lobby wall, on the word
peace
, and I am sure of one thing: I hate this building—because this building reminds me of me.

I’m out of place. Unbeknownst to everyone around me, I am heterosexual. I am a conservative fundamentalist Christian, undercover for a year, questioning everything I have been taught about the label of
gay
.

Matthew finishes the song and again reverent silence falls upon the group. And it is in this silence that I remember the last time I was at a Soulforce protest.

It was four years ago to the month. And back then, Soulforce was my enemy.

I entered Liberty University—the evangelical equivalent of West Point—four years earlier, in 2004, and became what the students affectionately call a “Jerry’s Kid.” As a student, I was expected to follow a lengthy code of conduct called the
Liberty Way
; my parents were thrilled, encouraging me to become what the brochures had promised, a “Champion for Christ.” And that was when I first encountered Soulforce—the lesbian, gay, queer, and transgender (LBGT) civil rights group. The young Soulforce activists were an odd-looking bunch, all waiting to embark on their first freedom ride across the country. The campus at Liberty was to serve as their training ground, a gauntlet of dogma they would have to overcome in order to make the trip.

Jerry Falwell—president and founder of LU, and also a famous televangelist—warned us about Soulforce, briefing us on the “real threat”: their amoral, degenerate leader, Mel White. He spoke of Mel’s “agenda” as if it were some master plot to invade Christendom with machine guns and rocket launchers. From the way Jerry described him, Mel might as well have been a gay Rambo. Jerry spoke more passionately about this man than almost any other I had heard him speak against, and his words felt more personally motivated. I was skeptical that this Mel White character was any worse than any other liberal activist I had watched on cable news.

I walked outside the arena where convocation (a mandatory biweekly chapel service) was held, that sunny spring morning, with my own agenda, and I found a small cluster of the young Soulforce activists about twenty strong. They seemed like normal college kids, but I knew better. I’d been taught to be wary of gays. They were all HIV-positive perverts, and liberal pedophiles. I saw my hall-mate, Patrick, already engaged in an intense debate with an activist, but it wasn’t going well. He was losing. Badly.

“So you aren’t supposed to love your neighbor as yourself?” The young man challenging my friend was tall and awkward looking, and his tone was even and delicate. It didn’t take long to figure out that he was letting Patrick make all of the mistakes. A worthy adversary.

“Well,” Patrick was saying. “I mean…Yes, but we are supposed to…That is to say, we are supposed to…”

Both sides of the crowd shook their heads disapprovingly. I decided to answer the young man’s question.

“Yes, we are supposed to love our neighbor,” I said, “but sometimes loving people means telling them how evil their decisions are.” My voice caught the young man’s attention and he smiled at me, welcoming me into the conversation. Patrick melted gratefully into the crowd and disappeared. Coward.

“But we can’t judge the heart. We have to love and accept people for who they are, without motives.” His voice was laced with something I couldn’t put my finger on. It made me uneasy. I had learned early on in religious debates that it was my job to control the conversation, and I wanted him to answer
my
questions. I was not going to get pulled into a debate over queer rights.

“Why exactly are you guys here?” I said. “Picking fights doesn’t seem to be the best way of communicating with someone who disagrees with you.”

“We are fighting for the rights of our friends who attend this college even though they’re gay. We’re their voice because they can’t speak up.” He was trying to humanize those I didn’t see as human, but it would not work. They were abominations, every last one of them, and I would not be bullied by a fag lover who was most likely a faggot himself.

“They should leave, then!” I said. “This is
our
campus, a
Christian
campus. They should’ve known better than to even apply.” My face was flushed.

“That’s not true. They should be able to come and learn here with just as much freedom as anyone else. It’s wrong to exclude them just because they’re gay.”

I looked over my shoulder and noticed that another dozen or so students had walked up to listen to my conversation. The attention was empowering and addictive, even, like a drug.

“That’s their choice, and it’s mine to not want to be around them. And you’re not even representing them, anyway—you’re promoting that adulterous homo Mel White, and the breakdown of the traditional moral family. You guys are wasting your time.”

The oohs and ahs behind me began to fuel my pride. I was doing it! I was being a
Champion for Christ
! My parents would be so proud.

“What’s your name, brother?” His tone was even softer this time.

“That’s really none of your business, and we aren’t brothers. You’ve chosen to be an enemy of God…and that makes you my enemy too.” The words, once spoken, elicited a stranger mixture of feelings.

“I just want you to know something, whatever your name is: I love you and I’m sorry you have such negative feelings about me and my friends.” And at that moment, something inside of me broke, and I felt sick to my stomach. “I really do,” he said.

His empathy wasn’t a lie. Knowing that I believed him bothered me. No, it more than bothered me. It
infuriated
me. I didn’t want to have anything in common with him because he was my opposite. I was a child of God, and he wasn’t. We played for very different teams.

“Repent, and trust in God to heal you of your sin,” I said. “I’m not going to waste any more of my time.” Knowing I couldn’t say anything else, I walked away, only stopping to reluctantly shake the hands of a few fellow students who supported my botched attempt to be a Champion for Christ.

As I crossed the street and walked up a few steps towards my New Testament Survey course, I felt an intense burden. Was my anger justified, or was it purely hubris? Should I have acted so offensively? Shouldn’t I have spoken with the same softness of voice that my enemy had? Was I even justified in thinking him an enemy? Something wasn’t right, and I did not know what it was. I had gone out there to teach Soulforce a lesson, and instead I had been talked down like a child. I sympathized with Patrick.

For the next two months the scene outside the arena replayed in my mind, and no matter how much I thought about it, I could not put my finger on why I felt such anger. I had done exactly as I had always been instructed: I fought for the truth and for my values, without compromise. Why did I feel so guilty? A few months later, my parents got a divorce, and I was needed at home. I left and never went back to Liberty.

A lot has changed since that first encounter four years ago. The octagonal sign in my hand is proof enough of that. It reads
Stop Spiritual Violence
. I wonder what I look like to the crowds of people passing by on their way to work in the morning rain. Several police officers are posted on either side of our group now, the hissing of their radios making me nervous. I am the stranger here, the awkward seeker disguised by a label that does not belong to me…But it is in that awkwardness that my perspective is being challenged. That voice inside of me that rose so violently during my first encounter with Soulforce is finally being silenced.

Just last night I was taught the principles of non-violent protests for the first time, and I cannot fathom how different my life would be if protests were a regular part of it. I feel naked and vulnerable, like the whole of Manhattan sees through me, judges me, judges all of us, for better or for worse. But even in the midst of this tension, New York is beautiful to me. I am shocked at how beautiful it is, even in the freezing rain.

For a kid raised in the heart of the Bible Belt, this experience is beyond alien. The growing presence of police standing around and in front of us becomes more unnerving by the minute. I am told that we might be arrested, depending on how far we take our protest, and the thought scares me. It scares me, but it doesn’t seem to scare anyone else standing with me. They have all been arrested before for actions similar to this one, and it makes me wonder: Would I allow myself to be arrested for my beliefs? If I didn’t, would that make me a phony?

Mel White’s assistant, Lindsey Hawkins, stands next to me, bubbly as always. Her smile is infectious and I love it. I watch her eyes dart back and forth from the female detective several yards away to the cops in front of the embassy’s courtyard. She has a crush on the lieutenant. If I were not in the closet, I probably would, too.

“You like her, don’t you?” I whisper out of the corner of my mouth, smiling.

“Shut up! I do not!” Lindsey hits me on the shoulder.

“Non-violence, my ass!” I say, trying not to be too disruptive. She is a magnificent girl. Too bad she’s gay.

Lindsey has become my Yoda over the past twenty-four hours, and every time she speaks I feel compelled to listen. For being so young, she commands a passion that I have never seen before—a passion for the cause of equal rights, and for her faith. It is yet another thing I admire but find disconcerting at the same time. Looking through the lens of my past, everything now seems amiss, and I cannot fully embrace it.

Matthew begins another protest song, probably because Lindsey and I are having a difficult time maintaining silence. She looks at me and I mime a kissing face in the direction of the lieutenant.

“I’m going to kill you!” She laughs as the rest of the protesters begin singing.

My religion began changing and deteriorating in the two years after leaving Liberty. I still played the part of the dutiful Pharisee, however, even as I began seeing holes in my own theology. Those holes made me feel like an apostate. How could I doubt what I had always
known
to be absolute truth? I hid my skepticism well, attending and even serving at several churches near my home—but I knew the charade would eventually have to end, and I would have to question everything I’d been taught. It was an overhaul I wasn’t looking forward to…an overhaul that began when I accepted an invitation to a karaoke bar near downtown Nashville. It was an odd place to find answers.

I was a twenty-year-old bigot, pacing back and forth outside of the trashiest dive bar I had ever laid eyes on. Pacing with me was Josh, my best friend, matching my stride step for step.

“But, Tim, you have to come!” he said, urging me toward the door.

Over the past twenty-four hours, Josh had been building this place up as a quasi-magical venue. “A place of wonder and enchantment,” he had called it. “You haven’t seen karaoke until you’ve seen a three-hundred-pound bull-dyke singing ‘Muskrat Love’ to her partner!”

“Bull-dyke?” I asked. “
Partner
? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Oh…” He paused. “Did I forget to mention that we’ve nicknamed Tuesday night karaoke
Lesbaoke
?”

My inner Pharisee came barking to the surface, but I could not say no to Josh’s enthusiasm and reluctantly agreed.

The little dive bar had once been ranked by a reputable music magazine as the thirteenth-dingiest bar in the country, but in truth, it was nothing short of beautiful. Walking in for the first time with Josh, I remember my eyes watering as they adjusted to the smoke and my nose to the smell of cheap beer. I felt wildly uncomfortable. It was a simple-looking establishment, an old house converted into a speakeasy during the Prohibition. The décor was characterized by the beer signs of a bygone era, and the aged neon lights in the front window glowed so dimly I wondered why anyone bothered even turning them on. The elderly bar stools wobbled, their weight shifting back and forth as people sat on them, drinking, ignorant of the stories these antique seats could tell. Unlike most bars, this one served only beer, and it was cheap. Behind the bar I only saw three taps, their light brown wooden handles labeled with masking tape, nozzles dripping the cool amber liquid that I had, at this point, only twice allowed myself to taste. In the middle of the front room a pool table stood, well used. Though it too looked to be on its last leg, two gentlemen played with Zen-like concentration, enjoying it as if it was a woman. A classy woman. A dame, even.