transgender

I Want To Be Like You: Kaden’s Story

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CC image courtesy of Flickr, torbakhopper.

“When I’m big I want to be a boy like you.”

My four year old self thought I was giving my cousin a complement. However he saw otherwise; I was beaten, called “faggot”, then pushed down the stairs. That complete rejection from a family member was enough to scare me into submission for the rest of my childhood.

I grew up in a conservative homeschool family. At a very young age I showed signs of being transgender I always wanted my hair cut “like a boy.” Only played male characters during play dates, and hated being called a girl. Any effort to be myself was squashed under strict southern baptist doctrine. Thus I did my best to ignore my growing dysphoria so I could fit in with my peers.

After I graduated high school. I slowly came out to  friends with very mixed reactions. I felt that I had to prove myself to them so I made the horrible mistake of coming out to my parents. My mom cried while my dad exploded in anger kicking in my door and telling me “You are as bad as a child rapist!” I was forced into conversion therapy and shoved back into the closet where I spend two more years.

Last month everything came crashing down.

I drove my dad to the store then without warning he started screaming at me demanding to know why I was “Giving God the middle finger”  I was shocked by his sudden aggression. He told me that he wouldn’t allow me to corrupt my siblings by being a “cross dresser”  I locked myself in the family bathroom for safety. While he pounded on the door and threatened to drag me into the parking lot.  In a panic I texted my coworker who came to my rescue. Her mom got security  to keep my dad away while we walked to their car. He threatened her the entire walk but she refused to back down.  As we drove away she told me “We will not let you be homeless.”

When I got to their house I was group hugged and given hot chocolate. The rest of the week was a blur of crying, having the police help me get my things from my parents home, saying goodbye to my younger siblings, quitting my jobs, and adjusting to a totally new environment.

Lucky for me the family I’m staying with have been very patent while I adjust to not being abused.

My progress is slow but steady. I’m saving for top surgery, finding a new job, and I no longer jump every time a car goes by. They have all proven to me the support that they have from buying me my first suit, to helping my save for top surgery. They have given me the confidence to see that my dad can call me horrible names, he can tell my siblings and other church members that I’m a horrible person. But he no longer owns me. I’m no longer going to cower in fear while my life goes by without me.

I am loved, I am important, and have everything I need to be ten times the man he ever will be.

Trans In Hiding: Lyle’s Story

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CC image courtesy of Flickr, torbakhopper.

“Do you want to go to counselling?” my mom asked.

She asked this after she and my dad had spent at least two hours interrogating me on my faith, the most terrifying conversation I’d ever had. At seventeen, I’d tried my best to explain my own agnosticism through tears, saying how I never truly believed what they did. I hadn’t come out as trans, but coming out as non-Christian alone proved to be terrifying.

It was the first time she’d ever expressed concern about my mental well-being. I knew counselling would likely mean seeing a pastor, and, if they were able to wrench my identity out of me, conversion therapy.

I said no.

Up to this point, my upbringing had prepared me greatly for questions like these. I was homeschooled in a strict Christian household through K-12, and my education was mediocre at best. My mom was my only teacher until I was deemed responsible enough to use video courses, and coping under her authority was difficult. She was impatient, yelled constantly, and punished poor behavior with physical abuse and isolation. When bad grades meant getting hit, I learned to adapt.

It wasn’t long before I began to cheat. By 6th grade, I’d cheated heavily in nearly every subject, routinely lying about completing tasks. My mom was the perfect mix of abusive and neglectful, and rarely checked my progress enough to notice. Even when I was caught, I would fall back into the same patterns when her guard was down, trying my best to both placate her and keep myself safe.

It was a smart plan, and I felt wretched about it from late elementary school till the day I graduated. Every day, all I could think about was how I was throwing away my future, and how much it would hurt if she found me out. It wasn’t a proud thing. I’d distract myself with whatever entertainment I was allowed to block out the petrifying guilt and dread. Some days, it caused so much anxiety that I had to stop playing with the only friend I had to go panic and punish myself.

It was the worst time of my life, but in a messed up way, you could say it prepared me.

I never recognized myself as a girl, growing up. I didn’t know being trans was an option, but I knew I felt different. I hated my name, dressed oddly, questioned gender roles, and gradually cut my once waist-length hair shorter and shorter every year. I didn’t have a word for it, and I wasn’t even sure what I was doing, exactly. I just knew it felt right, and as long as I still called myself a girl, no one stood directly in my way.

I’d begun to privately consider myself androgynous, but even that didn’t fit the way I wanted it to. It wasn’t until getting more involved in social media in 2011 when I learned the term “nonbinary”. The internet had finally given me a term for what I was feeling, and after some time, I asked online friends to use they/them pronouns for me.

All of this was followed by clearing browser histories countless times.

Surprisingly, aside from dysphoria, I never began to hate myself for being trans. For once, I started to gain a sense of self, pushing through my own defensively dissociative state and dwelling on my identity and place in the world. This, however, did make things more difficult. The more my eyes were opened to, the harder things got to bear.

I had already been wrestling with an increasing lack of faith over the years. Christianity had never truly “clicked” for me, but I pretended it did, just like I pretended to be a good student, and a girl. I’d never enjoyed going to church, but was forced to go twice a week, to the point where it became triggering. Till I was nineteen, I heard sermon after sermon that demonized gay and trans people like myself. Most Sunday mornings were spent crying in the nearest bathroom for as long as I could without raising suspicion.

I felt like if the people of that church knew what I was, I’d be eaten alive within a week.

Despite coming out as non-Christian, despite routine breakdowns, and despite watching me literally cover my ears in the auditorium, my parents continued to force me to attend. The only reason it stopped was due to starting work as a 3rd shift grocery stocker, a job I’d specifically chosen to keep myself out of church and away from my parents. My quality of life increased immediately.

And living on an opposite schedule has proved to be more than a blessing for me. Working 3rd shift was a challenge of its own, but I fought hard to keep my first job, and still keep it to this day. Anything was better than the alternative. What better way to avoid the people you’re too poor to move away from?

Getting a job also helped me distance myself. The hardest thing about growing up trans, about growing up non-Christian, about growing up a liar, was knowing that no matter how much they said they loved me, they were going to abandon me. That was always at the front of my mind. If they knew what I was, they wouldn’t love me.

So I felt no obligation to love them back.

Even as young as sixteen, I anticipated being cut off from my family, and prepared. The only thing I could remember my mom telling me during our pitiful “sex ed” day was how some of her cousins were lesbians, and how lesbians were sinners, and how we were to avoid these cousins. I already knew that, someday, I’d be those cousins. I’d be the shameful qu**r in my relative’s warning tales, someone who only existed as a nebulous sex demon. I’d never follow the path they wanted, I’d never be an aunt/uncle figure for my siblings’ future kids, and I’d never be respected for what I really was.

And that was hard. It’s still hard. Trying to live with people who will hate you isn’t easy. Facing that no one will support you in financial crises due to what you are isn’t easy. Looking at my sweet thirteen year old brother and knowing I’ll likely be banned from speaking to him isn’t easy. I may not get to talk to him for well on five years as he faces the same abuse I did. And when we’re allowed to talk again, he may shun me with the rest. I worry about him the most.

But even now, I want to use it to my advantage. 2017 is the year I plan on moving out, escaping a toxic household to strike out on my own with gay friends who really love me. Coming out is likely to follow, the topic being practically inevitable at this point. I want to declare who I am as loudly as possible, cutting off every abusive relative in one fell swoop. It’s still going to hurt like hell, but you can’t say I’m not prepared. I’m ready to be banned from parties, weddings, and funerals. I’m ready for excommunication.

I’m encouraging it.

Homeschooling, in its own messed up way, may have helped me leave less traumatized than expected, teaching me enough to duck out of potential conversion therapy. It highlighted and encouraged my abuse, but it’s shaped who I am today: a twenty-one year old nonbinary man with nothing to lose and everything to gain. An autistic bi artist with a real future ahead of them. My treatment may have handed me an array of mental illnesses (avoidant personality disorder, social anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, the works), but I was able to survive, and I’m getting better.

Not everyone can say that much.

-Lyle (they/them, he/him)

Trans Is: Elliott Grace’s Story

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CC image courtesy of Flickr, torbakhopper.

My name is Elliott Grace, and I am a homeschool alumni.

I am Non-Binary Trans, and this is my coming out.

This is probably one of the hardest things I’ve written up to this point.

I’m afraid to come out, to share this. I’m afraid of being questioned, being rejected, being told that I don’t qualify as trans. I’m afraid that people will try to correct me, argue that this is not who I am, that I am wrong and will eventually find out they were right.

Some of my close friends already know I consider myself trans, and sometimes I explain that I use “they/them” pronouns when I’m introduced to someone. It says “trans” on my facebook profile, but you only know that if you’ve looked for it, and it doesn’t explain what that means to me.

Because I don’t know what it means.

It would be nice if there was a quiz I could take, a checklist of things that grants me permission to use the term “trans” to describe myself and my gender. I wish I could give you a straightforward and approachable description of what it means to be non-binary. I wish I could explain everything it is and is not, and educate you so you’re better equipped when someone comes out to you.

But I’m not prepared to do any of these things, so I’m just going to come out. I’m going to tell you what it’s like to be the me who is trans.

. . .

Trans is thinking it’s normal to hate being a girl, because my parents were misogynistic and openly talked about the ways girls were bad.

Trans is assuming that I didn’t want to be a girl because it sucks to be a girl in christian fundamentalism, not because I’m trans.

Trans is missing the gender roles from my childhood, because when I followed them people approved of me.

Trans is not coming out to my parents because they stopped talking to me years ago.

Trans is hating my voice, and not watching recordings of myself so that I can forget what it sounds like. Trans is knowing that If I’m reminded what I sound like, I’ll likely end up trying avoid talking altogether.

Trans is the happy and safe feeling when a partner says to me, “you’re dashing” instead of “you look pretty.”

Trans is spending a couple years trying to figure out if I’m a guy.

Trans is needing to get permission from my boss to shave my head.

. . .

Trans is a client telling me I “stole a man’s haircut” and having to play nice when I want to tell him to fuck off.

Trans is cringing when someone refers to me as “ma’am.”

Trans is feeling guilty for not appreciating passing as a woman, when so many people wish they could.

Trans is waiting to change my name at work until I change jobs because I’m afraid it will be too hard.

Trans is wishing there was a box to check besides “male” or “female” when I have to fill out a form.

Trans is crying in the bathroom at the doctor’s office because the staff chided me for putting down the “wrong” name on my paperwork even though Elliott is my legal name.

Trans is my doctor asking what’s wrong, and when I tell him he says “you don’t look like an Elliott.”

Trans is when the bank says my husband Elliott is a signer on my account.

Trans is thinking I don’t deserve to ask people to change the way they talk about me.

Trans is debating whether I want to take hormones.

Trans is dating someone that wishes their body was more like mine, and feeling like I should be more grateful.

Trans is other trans people feeling threatened when I say that I’m not a man or a woman, because it will be harder for them to convince people being trans is valid if I don’t fit in the gender binary.

Trans is wishing I had a beard so people wouldn’t think I’m trying to measure up when I wear makeup.

Trans is when I feel like I’m in drag but so many people just see a girl in a dress.

Trans is people telling me I’m a trans guy, even when I tell them I’m not.

Trans is when my mail is addressed to “Mr. Elliott Harvey.”

Trans is other trans people telling me that I don’t qualify as trans because I don’t hate my body enough. Trans is wondering if they’re right, because what I hate most about my body is being disabled.

Trans is deciding I don’t want to take hormones right now, but being afraid people will tell me I’m not trans if I’m not on hormones.

Trans is answering to Elliott and then asking to be called Grace.

Trans is when people think I’m a boy, until they hear my voice.

Trans is people asking what my real name is.

Trans is not asking people to use they/them pronouns for me, because I don’t know how to handle it if they refuse.

Trans is going on a date with someone that assumes I was born a boy, and listening to them complain about how awful people who were born girls are.

Trans is when people assume I’m a trans woman and I don’t correct them, because at least they think I’m trans.

Trans is knowing that I will never pass as non binary, that people will always try to see me as either a man or a woman.

Trans is the joy I feel when someone says they didn’t know whether I was a boy or a girl.

Trans is coming out to the internet, but still feeling unsure about coming out to friends.

Trans is me.

I Am Trans: Reese’s Story

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CC image courtesy of Flickr, torbakhopper.

Hi. Name’s Reese, like the peanut butter cups.

I first realized I was trans FTM in college, I believe. I read some post or another on Tumblr (I know, I know), and it got me thinking: Was there such a thing as being agender? It sort of fit in my head, because I’d never liked girly things, like Barbies or nail polish or even the color pink.

(Which is a perfectly acceptable color, by the way.) It ate away at me for years, being non-gender conforming. I hid it behind jokes and feeling generally uncomfortable in my own skin.

“Oh, I don’t wear nail polish, it makes my fingers feel weird.”

“Oh, no thanks, I can’t walk in heels.”

I mean, these are very highly gendered things that shouldn’t be gendered, but at the time I felt like I was…failing to be female.

I really didn’t understand anything LGBT+ during pretty much my entire life until college. I was raised in a fairly strict Christian home, and was homeschooled K-12. I do remember pseudo-teaching myself to read, with some “help” from my mom, who was my teacher. We used the A Beka Book programs, starting out with just textbooks, then moving on to the videotaped classroom experience.

At any rate, I discovered Tumblr around 2010-2011 (which was… an Interesting Time, as it were), at first because of the Broship of the Ring comics by Noelle Stevenson, and then because of the Doctor Who/Sherlock/Supernatural craze. (Yes, I was a SuperWhoLockian. No, I still haven’t forgiven myself for it.) But there was a whole lot of “Gay is good!!!!!!! Because boys kiss!!!!” nonsense going on, which struck me as odd, but I went along with it.

Fast forward to 2014, when I first started feeling like being agender was being truly and honestly myself. My mother “found” (snooped in a notebook that I carelessly left out) a coming out letter where I detailed my plan to have a hysterectomy/top surgery, because I wasn’t their daughter anymore. (I also came out as biromantic/asexual, but that’s another story.) I was working midnights at the time, so I woke up at around 1:30 PM to a phone call from my sister-in- law, who was literally shaking as she fed my infant nephew his lunch. My mother had gone completely off her rocker. She took the letter she searched for (how did she know to look in that notebook? Should I have left it out? Was she just looking for a piece of paper?) directly to my brother and sister-in- law, because I had mentioned that I’d told them about being biromantic and asexual.

She literally said to them, “The next time I see you, I’ll have a gun.”

She threatened them with violence, because she thought we were “hiding” things and “lying” to her, and (her favorite word for a while) “deceiving” her. She turned out to be mentally ill, and that overshadowed the emergency family meeting we had later in the day. Fortunately I had the night off, so we could have a meeting. I was shaking and sobbing the entire time. To quote my father, “We’ll talk about what’s in the chair later.” Guess who was sitting in the chair? Yours truly. My father, the man who I thought understood me the most out of all the adults I’d ever talked to extensively, called me a “what.” Not “her,” or even “who.” “What.”

I’ve never felt so dehumanized, so belittled, so Othered than at that moment.

Most of the “family meeting” consisted of my older brother talking about forgiveness and something else that was probably really good and important, but I was just too shocked to listen. I was numb. How could my mother do this? How could she be so completely mad that she threatened her own son, her own daughter-in- law, her grandson, with violence? What about me? Was I going to be kicked out? I was making minimum wage at a McDonald’s and barely paying off my student loans.

What the hell was I supposed to do? Where was I going to go?

“You’ll always be my daughter.”

That pretty much ended my closeness with my father. I’d always wanted to be like him, to be book-smart and goofily funny and able to fix things with my hands. But after that conversation, I just wanted to go bury myself in a hole somewhere and feel the crushing weight of earth on my body. It would’ve been better than the crushing disappointment, the feeling of “Who you are isn’t wanted here.”

I’d been tentatively feeling my way around the gender spectrum, first finding solace as an agender person, then realizing that I felt more masculine than anything. I don’t doubt NB folk, but I know who I am and what gender I am.

I haven’t exactly come out as trans to my parents.

My mother, as I said, is mentally ill and refuses to seek treatment for it, and my father is at his wit’s end as to how to deal with that, so I feel like starting T and changing my name/gender and/or getting top surgery would be something that would, well, be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. So I’m waiting to come out.

I have very fortunately either learned to completely shut down my dysphoria, or I have very minor dysphoric symptoms, but there are days (since I still present as female in public) where I have to steel myself, grit my teeth, and say, “Okay, they’re gonna call me ‘R;,’ and it’s not ‘Reese,’ but it’s close enough, right? I can do this.”

To this day, I still don’t like little stupid things, like hugs, or buying women’s shirts (because they’re SEE THROUGH, dammit, and that shit WILL NOT STAND), or even washing myself in the shower. I have been wearing baggier clothes to work, ones that don’t flatter my figure or make me look feminine, but it’s been hard. I work at a Christian-based company, and it’s… it’s a bit like being homeschooled again, which is nauseatingly comforting, or rather nauseating because it’s comforting. Nobody swears, nobody really takes the Lord’s name in vain, none of that. And it’s a nearly all-female crew, which makes things even worse, in a way, because I have to use my girly-girly customer service voice, and I have to withstand people saying “God bless you” when God either blessed me with his Holy middle finger or simply forgot to do the whole “blessing” thing.

I mean come one, nobody blesses on Wednesday!

(I was born on a Wednesday. Y’know that one poem, “Monday’s child”? About the days of the week? Well, the line for Wednesday goes, “Wednesday’s child is full of woe.” I would like to thank God and also Jesus for that little bit of whatever-it- is.)

My self-image has always been skewed, since I was basically born with major depressive disorder, and apparently when you’re born like that you don’t get the mandatory Self-Esteem package. And of course, not being able to come out safely has been worse because of that. But at the same time, I take comfort in the fact that I know who I am now. I am Reese, and Reese means… me. Will I ever be okay in my own skin? I don’t know. I honestly have no idea. I just know that I’m more comfortable with myself now than I have ever been, and I hope that I will only get more comfortable as time and money and legal changes allow. I mean, it’s fairly difficult some days more than others, but I’m not out, which is both blessing and curse. I don’t have to deal with slurs being thrown my way, I don’t live in a metropolis, so I don’t have to deal with any kind of sexual harassment, and to top it all off, I’m so shy and awkward I either wouldn’t notice unless it were blatant harassment, or would notice and would (in my head, anyway) get increasingly snarky about it until the other person got uncomfortable and shut up. (In reality, I think I’d nod and smile until they left/I left that environment, and then I’d go home and cry. Or possibly kick myself for not being brave enough to stand up for myself.)

As far as community support goes… I don’t really talk about being AFAB, except on my sideblog/private Twitter, so. My online friends (which are, come to think of it, for the most part either LGB or trans men themselves) have been nothing but supportive and kind About my issues, going so far as to respond to my over-emotional posts about whether or not I’m “really” trans (because let’s face it, if I’m not out in public, if I don’t “act masculine” at all, if I’m not taking T and/or immediately planning surgeries, am I “really” trans, or am I just some stupid Special Snowflake Tumblrite who really desperately wants to be “different” in order to “fit in” with the “different” crowd?) with kindness and Compassion.

My two brothers have sort of expressed support.

My older brother in particular has been kind and accepting, and my younger brother has been at the very least reading my emo tweets and going so far as liking some of them. I really can’t say about my sister-in-law, and I’m quite sure my grandparents would possibly die of shock if they knew.

My mother… is mad, and I don’t trust her as far as I could throw her. I fully intend on coming out once I get the money/financial stability to say, “Oh hey guys, by the way, my name is Reese and I’m a dude, LOL bye see you in Europe” (where I plan to move once I can get a job lined up).

As far as faith is concerned… being depressed sort of killed all positive aspects of faith for me. I thought God hated me. I thought I was sinning somehow, because why else would I be sad? I must have been making God angry, and that was why He was making me sad. And so on and so forth. My faith officially died during my sophomore year of college. I was exhausted, and I kept up appearances until my second attempt at getting my degree, at which point I threw all pretenses out the window. Knowing what I know now, I wonder that I was a believer as long as I was, because if God truly loved me, if he really really honestly wanted me to be fulfilled, why would He have put me through this?

Am I supposed to be held up as an example of what to do when suffering?

If so, what is the point? Honestly, it boggles my mind that people who suffer are expected to take their pain and turn it positive, like some kind of twisted Pain Olympics.

“Aaaand here comes Van Gogh around the bend, painting away! Oh, he is going so strongly! Oh wait, he shot himself. Well, at least we got some pretty pictures out of him, eh folks? Naturally, we’ll only like them after he’s been dead for a while, but hey! Ahead of his time, am I right?”

I know for a fact that being bitter is a bit like being a robot with internal rusting, where it eats and eats away at your infrastructure until you collapse/implode, but really? What if I want to be whole, and not in pain? What if my pain is preventing me from creating? What if I don’t want to do anything anymore, because everything hurts? Why do we prize pain over anything else? Is it a learning experience? Yes, of course. Should terrible things happen? No, but they do. Are you “not really” something because you don’t suffer from/for it? Absolutely not. Creative people, or people in general, exist and create in spite of and in active resistance against the pain they experience. Does pain make something more precious? Is that why we value it?

If anything, pain is a handicap.

Is that why we cheer so loudly when someone in pain produces something?

“Oh look at him, he ran 300 yards with a broken leg! Never mind the fact that because nobody fixed his leg and waited for him to get better that he’ll be crippled for life, he ran 300 yards on a broken leg! Amazing!”

I digress. Basically, faith, while nice and good and generally not an objectively terrible thing (honestly, it’s what you do with and about and because of your faith that makes it terrible), I don’t really see any value in it. I’m biased, of course. But what can I do?

The hardest thing about self-discovery is honestly other people. I’m a sheep, I’ll say it now. It is very difficult for me to have an original thought. I tend to agree with sensible people, so I must have some modicum of sensibleness, but I am as unoriginal as a stick figure comic on the Internet. (Can be original, but it has to try really, really hard.) I have heard many differing opinions about trans/NB-ness, from openly trans/NB people no less. I’ve heard trans men staunchly discredit NB people as “trying to be special” and “taking away from our legitimacy as a group.” I’ve had NB people completely not respond to me when I asked for reassurance in my gender identity (though come to think of it, they were probably the wrong person to ask).

Overall? It’s been confusing. The language we use to talk about ourselves has been  changing constantly as we do more research and learn more about the human body/brain and gender in and of itself. I really honestly don’t know what to think of myself nowadays. Am I a man? Am I a deluded female who has internalized so much misogyny that she doesn’t know what to do with her female aspects? Is my rejection of stereotypically “feminine” things a reaction to having “femininity” shoved down my throat because I was born with certain genitals? Am I honestly a trans man, or am I dishonestly trying to “steal” another identity because I want to “be different/cool”?

And so on.

On good days, I know I’m trans and male and I read my friends typing my chosen name, not my deadname, and that makes me feel…not content, but fulfilled.

On bad days, I type angry Twitter rants through my tears and try not to cry too loudly.

I suppose the impact of not coming out has been…well. I’m honestly not sure. It’s been easy in that I don’t really have to deal with being outright rejected and/or cursed up and down for who I am (yet), but at the same time, I get no support from my family (which I really doubt I’d get to begin with), so. I’ve been sort of stunted, in that regard. I always get surprised when people are nice to me and use my name. As far as emotions… I’m going to sound like a lame action hero, but I prefer not to have them if at all possible. I’m an avoidant sort of person, which means vulnerability gets paraded around as either a horrifically self-deprecating joke, or, if I can’t get away from facing my emotions, I get Too Real and make people uncomfortable.

This is very rambly, for which I apologize. I honestly don’t really have a hopeful message here. It can be hard, it can be easy. It all depends on who you are, where you are, and how you are, as well as who/where/how other people are with regards to your gender identity. I think of a Terry Pratchett quote, from The Wee Free Men, about trusting in yourself, and believing in your dreams, and following your star.

And if you do all that,

“…you’ll still be beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”

I suppose that’s the best advice I can give.

You have to put in the work.

I have to put in the work. We have to put in the work. And we will screw up. I’ve probably screwed up at least a dozen times (badly) telling this story of my being trans, and I will probably continue to screw up until I’m dead. But it’s the trying, the incessant reaching for and struggling towards a goal, or a series of goals, or just getting through tomorrow. That’s what’s important. If you’re going to do anything, you have to keep moving forward. (A shoutout to Meet the Robinson’s, which was a very underrated movie, in my opinion.)

Never stop reaching.

Gender Rainbow: A Call For Stories

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CC image courtesy of Flickr, torbakhopper.

By Shade Ardent.

Trans. Non-Binary. Gender Non-Conforming.

Until recently we have existed on the edges of society. Often estranged from family and community, or living a hidden life for our own safety. We walk the paths hidden from society too often. When we come out, we are frequently met with derision and physical danger. With the recent legislation and now the current National Geographic issue discussing trans issues, our existence and challenges have come to the forefront of society’s dialogue. This awareness has brought new acceptance but also new challenges for our community.

Homeschooling can bring particular challenges with being trans, non-binary, or gender-nonconforming. The closed-off lifestyle filled with strict gender roles and fundamentalist teachings is largely unsafe for us. When there is no way out, what do we do? How do we survive?

Are you a trans, non-binary, or gender non-conforming homeschooler or homeschool alum?

Homeschoolers Anonymous would love to hear your story.

Here are some story prompts:

Did you know you were trans/non-binary while being homeschooled?

How did you find out?

If you came out, how was it received?

Did you find support in your community?

Did you find out after you were homeschooled?

How did this affect your self-image?

What has been the hardest or easiest thing about self-discovery?

How did this impact your faith, or lack of it? Did you have to hide yourself for safety, and if so, what means did you use to hide? How did that affect you emotionally?

We are going to begin posting stories on January 16th, and continue throughout the month.

If you are interested in participating in this series, please email us at HA.EdTeam@gmail.com.

We take privacy seriously and will happily make your submission anonymous at your request.

Policy: We accept autobiographical stories with a minimum age of 13. Stories belong to the people they happened to.

No Longer Afraid: A. Drake’s Story

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

Content Warning: Descriptions of child abuse, sexual abuse, animal abuse, and transphobia

It was 5am. I woke before dawn and got ready for work in the dark. I went outside into the cold fall air, my breath visible. I went around the side of my car and my heart stopped. My father was kneeling in the frost and gravel next to my driver’s door. He didn’t say a word. I quickly ran back into my house, bolted the door, and woke my boyfriend. “My father is outside,” I said, my voice shaking. “I think he’s here to scare me or kill me; I’m not sure which one.” He jumped up and went outside, but my father was gone.

In the aftermath of that day, I broke family scripts: I called the police.

His behavior alone was creepy and stalking. But the more disturbing thing was that he shouldn’t have known where I lived. Unbeknownst to me, my younger brother had disregarded my concerns about my safety and told my father where I lived. The day before, my older sibling had mentioned to my parents that I was working early the next day. And my father was waiting for me that morning.

It’s been 5 years since that day. For the first 2 years, I left my house every morning for work, prepared to do battle with a spook, a stalker that may or may not be there. And every day he wasn’t there in body, he was there in spirit. I lived my life with the knowledge he might be around the next corner. I wouldn’t know if he was empty-handed or if he had a weapon. Or even worse, I might never see him coming.

Growing up, I worried a lot about the day when my father would snap and murder all of us.

One day, us three older siblings sat my youngest brother down and said “Nathan, what do you think would happen if mom tried to leave dad?” He thought about it for a second. And then without missing a beat he said “I think he would try to kill all of us.” We looked at each other and said “Even he sees it, even he knows.” He was 11. We lived with that reality from birth.

I worried. I worried so much. I worried that if my mother spent too much money on groceries, my father would get angry. I worried that if I didn’t read the Bible long enough each morning before breakfast, my father would get angry. I worried that if I wasn’t contrite enough in spirit, my father would get angry. I worried that when my father got angry, he would hurt us.

Like the Sunday morning my brother went to church with my father’s hand-prints bruised around his neck because he had the audacity to try and walk out of a room when my father was angry. The youth pastor teased him about the bruises being hickies from his girlfriend.

Like the night at the kitchen table when my father became angry. He reached under the kitchen table and pulled out the 60-pound dog lying there. He picked the dog up by the throat with one hand, and threw him down the basement stairs, closing the door in a calm, controlled manner.

See, some people think anger is an explosion. Sometimes, it is. And sometimes, it is the coldest thing you will ever experience.

And sometimes, the anger wasn’t the scariest thing. Sometimes, it was the sound of my bedroom door softly sliding across the carpet at 2 a.m. It was the sound of my breathing as I tried to regulate it so he wouldn’t know I was awake. It was the feeling of his rigid cock pressed into my lower back as I hoped he would leave without raping me.

Sometimes it was the existential agony of knowing that my abuse was either sanctioned by god and I deserved it or god didn’t care enough to intervene.

It was the soul rending pain in my heart, knowing my father was right – I was worthless, useless, and unlovable. It was the bone-searing rage that wanted to tear apart all the people who saw the signs of abuse and turned away. It was the trapped animal in my brain, trying to cut me free from this torturous captivity through the surface of my skin.

And my father was the good Christian who sang hymns at church, chatted with the teens and deacons, and made small talk with everyone. So at the end of the day, if I said something negative about him, I was told I was a bad child, a rebellious teenager. That I must stop speaking ill of my parents, that I must stop lying.

I was raised in a conservative, fundamentalist Christian household. I was homeschooled kindergarten through 12th grade. And somehow I escaped.

I wasn’t supposed to.

My life was not built to prepare me to fly; it was built to contain me in a cage with my wings clipped, never thinking for myself, never dreaming any bigger than the bars that held me.

My narrative is similar to many others who went before me and will come after me, though it is complicated in some ways by the fact that I am both queer and transgender. Neither of those things blatantly came to the surface growing up. I had far more pressing things to worry about, like survival of my physical body and preservation of my mind and spirit, and so I buried my gender and sexuality as best I could. But I couldn’t bury them deep enough. Even if people didn’t often target me directly, they spoke with derision and scorn about queer and trans people in general. My parents and the church I grew up in were homophobic and transphobic. I knew from a young age that who I was, deep inside, was an abomination, anathema, and abhorrent. Those attitudes heavily impacted my internal self-concept; I still struggle with feeling broken and shameful regarding my queerness and transness.

My younger brother did not escape; he left but his wounds were infected with my parents’ poison. He was my best friend for years but he became increasingly racist, homophobic, transphobic, controlling, and abusive as time passed. A few years after I helped him leave my parents’ house, he cut me out as I set boundaries around his increasingly abusive behavior. He made it clear he reviled my gender and sexuality. My youngest brother is still at home with my parents. He has not escaped either. The minimal contact I had with him through text stopped completed after I came out to him as trans.

My older sibling has escaped; they live an hour away from me. They are queer, just like me. We support one another. We have an adult relationship now; we have worked past the experience of our parents pitting us against each other. We are able to affirm for each other what childhood was like.

With time, I found myself wondering if I imagined things or if I made them out to be worse than they truly were.

After being a victim of [gaslighting] for so many years, it’s hard to believe your own brain. But having a comrade to tell you “oh no, I remember that. Do you remember this?” is validating and bonding. It is family. I have begun to build my chosen family of partners and friends, people who love and respect me.

I am 28 years old. I left my parents’ house when I was 19. I have not returned. They still live in the 4 bedroom colonial where I was raised. They still send me mail to a PO box I set up when I moved. I didn’t want them to know where I lived because I was afraid of being stalked and killed. I did not register to vote at my new address for 3 years because I was afraid: voting information is public record.

But there came the day when I had a dream. Until that point, my dreams had always involved my father trying to hurt me or someone I loved. In the dream, I would be too slow, like was I stuck in molasses, or I would hit him and it would do nothing. I would be a helpless observer to abuse, as I had been throughout my childhood. But there came the day when I had a dream. And I beat the shit out of my father. I knew then I had really and truly escaped.

I am no longer afraid of my parents. I have not just survived; I am thriving. I know myself and what I can endure. I am no longer afraid what would happen if my father showed up. Because I have grown and know now that I am stronger than he is.

I Guess It Was Love: Andy’s Story

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CC image courtesy of Flickr, John Perivolaris.

Content warning: descriptions of self-injury, homophobia.

All of the strong memories I have of my mother include yelling. When I was eight, I was outside watching our bunny, and got distracted. I couldn’t find him. She screamed at me at the top of her lungs. He was fine, just a hop down the street, but I couldn’t forget her voice screaming my name in absolute fury over two pounds of fur.

When I was 14, I began to discover myself. But this led to a lot of bullying.

My real life friends thought I was a “disgusting homosexual.” My “fake” internet friends thought everything I did was for attention. Maybe it was. It’s not like I got any from anyone else.

We left on a trip to Texas, and I remember very clearly that I propped my only mirror up on a rather unstable surface for the week, thinking it would stay. During that week, my codependent best friend and I had a huge fight. I was heartbroken. When we got home, the mirror had fallen. Shards of glass were all over my carpet. I broke. I scrawled “bitch” into my leg in fire and glass and pain. I did it over and over, until it was deep and bleeding and full of glass pieces I dug out for months. A few days later, I realized it wouldn’t heal right. And so I went running to Mom. I guess I’ve always trusted her a bit more than I realized. I don’t know what I thought she would do, I just needed Mommy. I was broken and desperate.

She screamed at me. She screamed questions, why did I do this to myself, what was wrong with me, what kind of person was I. Didn’t I know I was created in God’s image? Why would I ever do that to myself?

All I remember is screaming.

After that, things only got worse. I tried over and over to kill myself, getting more and more frustrated when it didn’t work. Mom and Dad sent me to a therapist to pray the gay away, and a skin specialist to make the scars fade. Not that I really wanted them to.

Then they found out that I had put off my schoolwork for an entire year. Mom screamed at me.

All of the memories after that involve crying. I cried when I came out to some of my homeschool friends, Mom cried when she found out about my girlfriend. Mom cried when she learned that all of my college papers were signed “Andy.” Mom cried when she found out about my testosterone supplements. I guess I started getting better around then. I got my computer back, I started going to college classes, I got away from the “homeschool bubble” that perpetuated the Christianity around me.

Now I’m very comfortable with myself, and about to go off to college. I’m planning to become financially independent and begin HRT alongside my transgender boyfriend.

She’s probably going to scream at me.

I guess she thinks it’s the loving thing to do.

How Many More Dead Kids?

HA Editorial Team10 Comments

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kathryn Brightbill’s blog The Life and Opinions of Kathryn Elizabeth, Person. It was originally published on December 31, 2014.

Leelah Alcorn was 17 years old when she concluded that life was never going to get better for her.

Before she reached the point that she ended her life, Leelah endured years of spiritual abuse from her parents and from Christian counselors. Her parents eventually pulled her out of school to homeschool, keeping her isolated from her friends and support system by taking away her phone and laptop for months on end.

Here are some of her own words describing what she endured:

“When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don’t tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don’t ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won’t do anything but make them hate them self. That’s exactly what it did to me.

My mom started taking me to a therapist, but would only take me to christian therapists, (who were all very biased) so I never actually got the therapy I needed to cure me of my depression. I only got more christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help.

When I was 16 I realized that my parents would never come around, and that I would have to wait until I was 18 to start any sort of transitioning treatment, which absolutely broke my heart. The longer you wait, the harder it is to transition. I felt hopeless, that I was just going to look like a man in drag for the rest of my life. On my 16th birthday, when I didn’t receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep.

I formed a sort of a “fuck you” attitude towards my parents and came out as gay at school, thinking that maybe if I eased into coming out as trans it would be less of a shock. Although the reaction from my friends was positive, my parents were pissed. They felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an embarrassment to them. They wanted me to be their perfect little straight christian boy, and that’s obviously not what I wanted.

So they took me out of public school, took away my laptop and phone, and forbid me of getting on any sort of social media, completely isolating me from my friends. This was probably the part of my life when I was the most depressed, and I’m surprised I didn’t kill myself. I was completely alone for 5 months. No friends, no support, no love. Just my parent’s disappointment and the cruelty of loneliness.”

Leelah’s death hits me hard, she wasn’t just an LGBT kid, she was an LGBT homeschool kid, and her parents used homeschooling as a tool to isolate her, to try to turn her into the “perfect little straight Christian boy” they thought she should be. As a one-time homeschool kid, I have a feeling of affinity for other homeschool kids. Leelah was one of us, and now she’s gone.

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Just as surely as the homeschool kids who were beaten or starved by their parents, Leelah Alcorn is one of Homeschooling’s Invisible Children. Leelah’s parents are just as responsible for her death as the parents who beat and starved their kids to death, but even though they drove their child to suicide, they’ll never see the inside of a jail cell. They’ll get sympathy, some will probably pat them on the back and tell them how they were good Christian parents doing all they could for a troubled child. Make no mistake though, Leelah’s death was entirely preventable, and if they had given her love and support instead of disappointment and loneliness, this story would have a different ending.

And to the pastor who told me recently that he was going to continue preaching anti-LGBT sermons because to do otherwise would be to disregard the unchanging Word of God, this is what happens. You have kids who are tormented by their church, by Christian counselors, by their parents, all because theology is more important than people.

Christians, if your theology results in a child stepping in front of a truck because she can’t imagine a world where her life will get anything but worse, then it’s time to reevaluate your theology.

A theology that leads to dead kids is wrong and immoral. Jesus said to let the little children come to Him, that whoever harms one of them should have a millstone put around his neck and be thrown into the sea. You’ve got it backwards, you’re tying the millstone around the child’s neck and calling it “love.”

I’m tired. Tired of the dead homeschool kids. Tired of the dead queer kids. Tired of the fact that the Evangelical world doesn’t care about the lives of either group.

Please, don’t let Leelah’s death be meaningless. Change the world and change yourselves so that there aren’t any more Leelahs. No kid should have to endure what she did.

RIP, Leelah.

*Both images taken from Leelah’s tumblr

Ken Ham — The Evolution of a Bully: Jeri Lofland’s Thoughts

HA Editorial Team24 Comments

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Jeri’s post was originally published on her blog Heresy in the Heartland  on October 16, 2013. It is reprinted with her permission. Also by Jeri on HA: “Generational Observations”, “Of Isolation and Community”, “His Quiver Full of Them”, “David Noebel, Summit Ministries, and the Evil of Rock”, “The Political Reach of Bill Gothard”, and “Bill Gothard on Education”.

Last week, in an approach founder Ken Ham described as “cordial and engaging”, the creationist organization Answers In Genesis sponsored billboards like this one in several major cities. I can’t help wondering who Ham’s atheist friends are, and how long they will remain his friends with engaging expressions of cordiality like these.

aig1

*****

I first encountered Ken Ham at an ICR conference in Michigan.

I was a young homeschooled kid and adored Ken Ham from the first time he opened his mouth. I loved his Aussie accent, his beard, his jokes. I retold his story about “nursing the baby” way too many times. Science was my least favorite subject, but I liked history and social studies and I believed his every word.

It never occurred to me then that Ham might be wrong about fossils, Cain’s wife, homosexuality, or the book of Genesis itself.

*****

In 1974, Ken Ham himself was searching for answers.

Ham taught science in a public high school in Australia, but apparently, teaching about evolution and millions of years presented a challenge to his faith. A church friend directed him to the book The Genesis Flood by Henry Morris (a hydrologist and founder of the Institute for Creation Research in California) and John Whitcomb (a theologian).

Morris viewed the Bible as a history book and was excited to share his notions of catastrophism and how a global flood a few thousands years ago could have shaped all the geological forms we see today. Morris was greatly influenced by a Seventh-Day Adventist named George McCready Price, who went searching for geological evidence to support the visions of Ellen White, who proclaimed that the fossils were “thus preserved as an evidence to later generations that the antediluvians perished by a flood. God designed that the discovery of these things should establish faith in inspired history“.

Morris, a Baptist, read Price’s book on “flood geology” in 1943, then quietly repackaged this novel approach to geology in his 1961 book The Genesis Flood. A decade later, Ken Ham was thrilled with Morris’ solutions that could simply do away with the “millions of years” question. He felt compelled to tell as many people as he could about these new answers.

Ham quit his teaching job in 1979 to start Australia’s Creation Science Foundation (CSF) with fellow schoolteacher and fundamentalist John Mackay. At first, CSF operated out of the Hams’ home. Ken Ham later wrote that Mackay had suggested on multiple occasions that he (Mackay) and Ham could be the two witnesses described in Revelation 11 (an idea Ham says he could not accept).

Dr. Carl Wieland, a medical doctor and former atheist, believed he had encountered the supernatural while playing at card tricks with his wife.

Recognizing that modern science and telepathy were incompatible, Wieland became a creationist and even founded a creationist magazine Ex Nihilo. When Wieland joined forces with the fledgling CSF, the young magazine’s name was changed to Creation.

In 1987, Ham moved to America with his wife Mally and their five children, first to work with Films for Christ on a creationist documentary, then to work for the Institute of Creation Research as a traveling speaker to popularize ICR’s creationist message. Ham continued to direct CSF from across the Pacific until 2004. Carl Wieland, still recovering from a near-fatal car accident that took his sight in one eye, served as CSF managing director in Australia. But the Creation Science Foundation was about to rip wide open.

Margaret Buchanan, a widow, and her disabled daughter, Debbie, joined the CSF staff in 1984. Margaret served as Ham’s personal secretary. Shortly after the Hams left Australia, John Mackay, angry about being replaced as editor of Creation magazine, called Buchanan at her home, told her not to come in to work, and made bizarre accusations.

Mackay claimed Buchanan practiced witchcraft and necrophilia and was a tool of the devil.

(Mackay told Ham that he had had to cast demons out of his dog and a black cat because of Buchanan’s satanic influence.) Another staff member then sprinkled Buchanan’s office space with grape juice to cleanse it of evil spirits. Buchanan agreed to take a four-week leave of absence while staff considered the whole affair.

When the board finally decided Buchanan was innocent, Mackay laid down an ultimatum. He would not stay unless she was dismissed. So Mackay left, with a handful of followers, to lead his own creationism organization. When Margaret and two other staff members tried to meet with Mackay at his home, he threatened them with police action if they did not leave his property. Mackay was later excommunicated from his Baptist church. CMI’s website includes more than 63 sordid pages of documents dealing with the allegations, investigations, witnesses, diary accounts, signed letters, and more.

In the stormy aftermath of Mackay’s departure, Dr. Andrew Snelling, a CSF scientist who later followed Ken Ham to ICR, admitted to having had concerns about Mackay’s “extremely sloppy research”:

I worked alongside Mr. John Mackay for some years when he was with the Foundation…

As a Christian and a scientist, I have become more and more concerned with some of the claims he has been making, particularly in the area of geology. Instances have come to my attention that are either totally untrue, or misleading, even to the point of deception. Even while working with him I was concerned about an emerging pattern of extremely sloppy research, coupled with a tendency to gloss over opposing facts, even when they were graciously brought to his attention by myself and others, which drew progressively closer to the borderline between honesty and dishonesty. My concern, then as now, was his growing potential for bringing discredit to the whole creation movement.

Warnings such as these are difficult to give about someone professing to exercise Christian ministry. Undoubtedly, if past experience is any guide, Mr. Mackay will skillfully seek to have them interpreted as further ‘persecution’.

(Meanwhile, Dr. Wieland ended up divorcing his wife and marrying Margaret Buchanan. Of course, this added to the tension within the organization as some staff members believed the Bible forbade remarriage after divorce.)

In 1994, the Hams left ICR to found their own layperson-oriented creation ministry (CSM), and moved to Kentucky with the Creation subscriber list. CSM (USA) and CSF (Australia) were closely tied and their leadership overlapped significantly. Before long, “the board decided to change the organization’s name to “Answers in Genesis,” to reflect the fact that the ministry was not just about “creation,” but the authority of all of Scripture—as well as about evangelism and equipping believers to build a biblical worldview.”

According to Ham, the Australian and American AiG organizations made a “mutual” decision to separate in 2005 over differences of philosophy and organization and met “cordially” to iron out the details. Other sources describe the split much less pleasantly, writing of a years-long “bitter power struggle”, “domination”, taped phone calls, and accusations “of deceptive conduct”. The Australian organization rebranded as Creation Ministries International (CMI). Still more friction arose over printing and distributing Creation in the U.S., with AiG introducing its own Answers magazine sometime after the Creation Museum opened in 2007.

Today, creationism has become a multi-million industry with AiG strongly dominating the market.

AiG materials are available in 77 languages. The organization conducts evangelistic campaigns and literature distribution at the Olympic Games. Plans are in place for the construction of an amusement park around a “replica” of Noah’s ark, partly to serve as a warning of God’s judgment for tolerating homosexuality.

Ken Ham and his brother Steve authored the parenting study Genesis of a Legacy, in which they teach that children are foolish sinners who are actually disobeying God when they disobey a parent. Instead of “reasoning” or allowing “questioning” or “delay”, the Hams advocate John MacArthur’s approach: “short, stinging strokes to the backside”, “painful enough to make the consequences of disobedience… unforgettable”.

Based on the story of Adam of Eve, Ham is a staunch opponent of gay marriage.

He has written an article suggesting that if homosexuality is to be deemed morally acceptable, then child sacrifice should have an equal status. 

He also opposes efforts by schools to accommodate transgender students. His suggestion that transgender students are disguising their real motives betrays a truly painful ignorance of gender issues:

Sadly, these school authorities don’t recognize the sinful heart of man and what can come out from it. Surely schools officials have thought about the potential for high school boys to pretend to “identify” as a female just so they can have access to the girls’ restroom and, maybe, to their locker room—winking to their friends as they do it?  

*****

AIG prayed for my request. :)
AIG prayed for my request. 🙂

For years, I read Ham’s books, got his newsletter, sent him my money and my prayer requests. I was excited about the progress of the creation museum as they overcame the opposition of the community to build a temple to unchanging Truth.

Then, I had kids of my own. Before I knew it, they started to gravitate toward picture books about dinosaurs and stars at the library. My parents had always rejected books that mentioned “millions of years” or talked too much about biological “adaptations”. I didn’t want to discourage my kids with unnecessary censorship, and I didn’t want them to grow up feeling as uneasy around science as I was. So I started researching. As a homeschooling mom, it was important to me to be able to teach them accurately about dinosaurs and astronomy and geology. And as a Christian, I looked for trustworthy sources who shared my belief in the inspired truth of the Bible.

But what I learned shocked me, and sparked new questions.

The next time I visited my parents’ house, I pored over the latest book from AiG, studying their answers. And I felt lied to. AiG isn’t about the data, or the scientific method. AiG doesn’t offer scientific responses to questions about the rock strata or the age of the earth or fossils of whales with hips. They can’t offer plausible explanations for day and night and light and vegetation on Earth before the Sun appeared on the fourth day of creation. Most of their “answers” can be summarized as “Well, a global flood could have caused…” And they pretend there is no contradiction in the two Genesis creation accounts.

AiG is about one specific religious agenda — a fundamentalist approach to Biblical doctrine that assigns everyone who is “wrong” to hell.

Suddenly Ken Ham, my former idol, looked more like a bully.

*****

In 2010, Rachel Held Evans rocked many in the evangelical world with her book Evolving in Monkey Town, in which she considered the scientific validity of theistic evolution. When Ham shook his head sadly over the “indoctrination of our age” and “compromising church leaders”, dismissing the faith of Christians who also embrace modern science, Evans posted an articulate and heartfelt response on her blog:

“We are tired of fighting. We are tired of drawing lines in the sand. We are tired of Christianity being cast as a position in a debate when it is supposed to be a way of life.

“What we are searching for is a community of faith in which it is safe to ask tough questions, to think critically, and to be honest with ourselves. Unfortunately, a lot of young evangelicals grew up with the assumption that Christianity and evolution cannot mix, that we have to choose between our faith in Jesus and accepted science. I’ve watched in growing frustration as this false dichotomy has convinced my friends to leave the faith altogether when they examine the science and find it incompatible with a 6,000-year-old earth. Sensing that Christianity required abandoning their intellectual integrity, some of the best and brightest of the next generation made a choice they didn’t have to make….

“Ken likes to frame his position as an unwavering commitment to the authority of Scripture, but in reality his is an unwavering commitment to one interpretation of Scripture.“

The following year, Ham was banned from speaking at a homeschool convention in Cincinnati after making “mean-spirited” remarks about another speaker, a Bible scholar and theologian who approaches the Old Testament very differently than Ham does. AiG also used its deep pockets and legal staff to bully a smaller Christian ministry with a similar name, threatening them with charges of trademark infringement.

And this month, AiG’s billboards appeared. Responding to criticism over his message to his “atheist friends”, Ham both defended and reiterated his satisfaction with his own belief that atheists will spend eternity in hell, while mocking the notion that dead people cease to exist. He described atheism as “sad” and “purposeless”.

*****

Many, many followers of Jesus doubt Young Earth Creationism, and even St. Augustine considered the Creation account to be allegorical.

Exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

But no one told me that. I swallowed the whole Ham sandwich: you couldn’t have faith, or sin, or Jesus, or heaven, or God… without Adam, Eve, Eden, a global flood, and less than 10,000 years. The only problem was, when I could no longer believe in a young earth, the rest of the story disintegrated, too.

Once upon a time, my meager tithe checks helped build Ken’s creation museum. Today I am one of his “atheist friends”, taking my kids to see dinosaur footprints and ancient rocks. Ham’s cartoons (the red “Abortion” balloons flown from the castle founded on Evolution) and his jokes (“God didn’t make Adam and Steve”, “fossils don’t come with labels!”) led directly to my atheism.

My life is neither sad nor purposeless.

But if it makes him feel better, Ham can thank his God that I’m finally wrong.

7 Ways Christian Homeschooling Parents Can Support LGBT Kids: Theo’s Thoughts

HA Editorial Team11 Comments

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Theo blogs at The Neon God They Made.

Some background for consideration: I am a homeschool graduate, now in college. I identify (right now) as queer and trans*. I no longer practice my parents’ religion, but I grew up in a conservative-evangelical Christian community. Certain aspects of that culture have not only made it difficult for me to understand and accept myself, but also deeply harmed my relationship with my parents.

I realize that Christian/homeschooling parents may not be eager to take parenting advice from someone like me, someone who turned out very differently than my own parents expected and hoped I would, but — my parents did their best to give me a Christian education. To raise me to serve Jesus.

I became who I am anyway, in spite of their efforts to control my future. I hope that parents in this culture can try hard to listen to the stories my peers are bravely sharing, so we can work together to build healthier, respectful relationships.

Speaking as a member of the LGBT community, a child of evangelical Christians, and a homeschool grad, the best advice I can give parents struggling to come to terms with their child’s differentness is to listen without condemning. Even if it goes against what you’ve been taught. If you want to maintain a relationship with your kid, you’re going to have to learn how to let go of your expectations for them. They’re going to be who they are anyway, with or without your acceptance.

This is in no way an exhaustive list of things you can do as a Christian/homeschooling parent to actively support LGBT youth in general and your kids specifically, however they identify — just a few things that would have dramatically improved my self-image and my relationship with my parents.

______________________________________________________________________________

(1) Create an environment of approachability.

Employ positive parenting techniques so we can learn how to be confident and capable from a young age. If you teach us to conform or else, you’re teaching us to shut ourselves off from you in order to protect ourselves from what we perceive to be a real threat, regardless of your actual intentions. Our relationship with you will suffer, and we may also suffer long-term emotional consequences.

(2) When you tell us that you love us “no matter what,’’ prove it.

Don’t undermine our trust by simultaneously expressing hateful views of others. If we catch you lining up at Chik-Fil-A to protest federal protection of LGBT employees or cracking transphobic jokes, we will determine that your love for us is very conditional indeed.

(3) If you want to raise us with a knowledge of Christianity, do some research into textual criticism.

Catch up on the latest theological scholarship. Educate yourself so you can distinguish between what’s good and helpful, and what’s overly simplistic, lacking in nuance, or downright harmful. If this is uncomfortable for you, remember that many Christians — in fact, entire denominations — have found that being open to new information has led to a richer, more vibrant faith.

(4) If attending church is important to you, make sure our church home is a loving, accepting community, in theology, theory, and practice.

If it’s not consistently encouraging you to love more, if it’s sending mixed messages or advocates a systemic hierarchy wherein queer people are “rightly” treated as subpar humans, even in subtle ways, it’s not a safe community for us.

(5) Thoroughly research Christian textbooks before you purchase them.

Don’t blindly accept curricula just because it has “godly” and “biblical” stamped all over the cover. (This might require you to confront other assumptions, like theories of origins or structures of society.) Unfortunately, many of the big names in Christian-homeschool publishing are pushing a very specific political agenda that does kids a big disservice by discouraging and suppressing critical thinking skills.

(6) Treat other LGBT people in your life with kindness and respect.

Make our home a safe zone for our queer friends. Stand up for us. When we’re bullied, when we’re discriminated against, when “authority” figures in our world act with arrogance and hate. Be proactive in supporting political policy, at all levels of government, that seeks to protect LGBT people from discrimination and hate crimes.

(7) Don’t interpret any point of divergence as a personal attack.

We love you, but we are not you, just as you differ from your own parents. Everyone has the right to express themselves and make their own life choices. If we grow into happy, healthy, functioning adults, you should see that as a sign of success! You’ve done your job well.