august laperche

This week, I was reading some passages out of one of my favorite books, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Towards the end of chapter 5, he shares about one of his favorite authors, Nuala O’Faolain, whose words Pádraig found to be a sort of guiding light in his own journey through life. He wrote about Nuala and said,

“Through her truthtelling, she helped me tell some truths to myself and ask some new questions.”

I was struck by this statement. Upon reading it, what welled up in my heart was an overwhelming kind of “yes”. That is the kind of legacy that I want to leave in this world; that in my truthtelling, I helped others tell some truths to themselves and ask themselves some new questions.

My 2020 began with a trip to Florida, which is where I grew up. I closed out the trip by serving as a visiting preacher at the church where I spent my middle and high school years, and where my dad was a minister throughout those seven years. This is the congregation that has known me for over a decade and has supported me through my educational and ministerial goals. This is the congregation that offered me a pulpit for the first time when I was 14 years old, and the congregation that invited me to see that ministry is what I am called to do…long before I was ready or willing to accept that for myself. When I was last in town for a visit in December 2018, I was able to guest preach for them. Having just concluded my first semester of seminary, the experience felt extremely connective and convergent. I felt full of gratitude and very at home in that pulpit.

I would love to be able to say the same about my latest visit.

Upon arriving at the church on Sunday morning, and after saying a brief hello to the folks who were already there, I was asked by the church secretary (whom I have always been very close with, and is like a grandma to me) to step into a quiet room with her for a few minutes to go over the order of the service. This was typical practice for me, both at this church and otherwise, and so I gladly agreed. We had hardly finished reviewing the liturgy for the day when she said, “and one more thing”.

My heart did a little bit of a jump, and my gut warmed. The tone with which she said it caused me to pause. The energy in the room had shifted. When you’ve been hurt by the church, oppressed by people who say they are of God, and barred from the places where you are most truly called, you build some defenses to keep yourself safe. It is difficult to describe, with words, how I knew that I was about to face a painful inquiry other than; when it happens so often, you become accustomed to what the build-up feels like. I tried to focus on my breathing.

She said to me, “one of the members of the session sent me your blog on Wednesday night. We have all read it, and I have to ask you – on behalf of the session – to not use this pulpit today as a platform.”

First, I had to exhale. I had been holding my breath after she said that she and other session members had read my blog. She was referring to the last post that I published (October 2019), which talked about my coming out process, especially in relation to my faith and ministry formation. I was preparing myself to hear, “and we want to thank you for planning today’s service, but you can’t preach here.”

To her statement about “platform”, I probed a bit further. I said, “before I assure you that we are on the same page and that I won’t be doing that, I do need to ask you for clarity – as a platform for what, exactly?”

Her response came slowly, with clear discomfort, and with a cutting rawness: “to identify yourself as a part of the LGBT community. I know I told you earlier this week that our church has decided that we are an inclusive community but…we aren’t really sure what that means for us yet.”

I explained to her that I was there to preach the Gospel. The thesis of my message that day, and of the service I had designed, was the expansive and inclusive love of God that we find in the model of Jesus. My plan was not to – and had never been – to come out from the pulpit. Our conversation of the inclusivity of the Gospel did not involve me centering myself in the conversation, or identifying myself as part of any particular community – therefore, there shouldn’t be a problem. I respect the context and specific culture of that congregation – I grew up in it, and know it well. I acknowledged that it would be poor ministerial practice for me to utilize the pulpit to effectively force the congregation into conversations that they are not ready to have yet.

She said that she still has a lot of questions, and wished that I didn’t have to fly out that evening because she would love to have a chance to talk more and ask me things. I told her that I answered many questions in my blog post that she was referencing. She asked to pray for me. After she said “amen”, we quickly and awkwardly shuffled out of the room.

It was a whirlwind morning. This experience is something that I will be processing for some time. But, I do want and need to publicly acknowledge that it causes pain when people who say they are of God let fear drive how they operate and engage in the world, and with others.

I was not expecting blatant homophobia to come at me just moments before approaching the pulpit…but then again when are ever really expecting it? I was not expecting to get pulled aside and effectively censored within an hour of delivering a sermon that I had finished writing several days before. The fact that this church does not have these conversations with every guest preacher, and only decided to have the conversation with me because I am queer, is discrimination. It was wrong for them to wait to have this conversation with me until Sunday morning when the decision to talk with me about their concerns was made on Wednesday evening.

This experience offered an extraordinary amount of contrast to the first part of my trip to Florida, during which I was an attendee and breakout session presenter at Q Christian Fellowship’s annual conference.

My week in Fort Lauderdale beach, surrounded by my beautiful queer Christian siblings and allies was so life-giving. I was given the opportunity to share some of my scholarship and minister to others also on this journey oft-made so tenuous by institutions like the one in the story above. It was an incredible way to start off the new year.

I acknowledge that no space is perfect and that wherever we form a community, our flaws also show up with the love that we share. And still, those days enveloped in the community took my breath away. I am so deeply inspired by folks’ journeys. I am encouraged to know that I do not walk alone. I am fired up to continue living and bravely speaking my truth, knowing that hate will not have the last word. It cannot have the last word, because we are resilient. We are so beautiful. We are light. We are the color of life.

I am so proud to be a part of this community – the LGBTQIA+ community. I am so proud to be a part of the family. It is a transcendent movement of love that survives and thrives in the hardest circumstances. Our community is the best reflection I know on this earth of the Gospel. I am proud to be bisexual and non-binary. I am proud to be queer.

I have been told by some, even some of those closest to me, to pull back. I’ve been advised to shy away, to stop putting myself out there so much about being a queer Christian. I have been told that it is because of my own openness that I am vulnerable to the discrimination and oppression I face. This is the response I was given by someone when I told them the story above, about the church so terrified that I would come out from the pulpit.

I refuse to accept this “advice” to hide in my privilege and step myself back into the closet so that I can avoid the discrimination that I face as a queer person, and particularly as a queer Christian. I refuse to cower and hide because I know that it would kill me. I refuse to do it because I know that showing up as my full self – and especially in my vocation – matters. I refuse to cover myself up or keep quiet because my identity as an LGBTQ+ person is a Divinely made part of me, and it is not a shameful thing. I refuse to respond to pushback and discrimination in the way that this person advised because even though it’s the only way that many might see for me to move forward into my calling and profession as a Christian minister, I know that it would actually be major steps back.

I refuse to hide because I believe that my courage and visibility is a crucial part of that process. I refuse to stay quiet because I know that the idea of doing all that is necessary to avoid persecution, discrimination, bias, and bigotry would completely disembody me, and form me into a pawn of Empire instead of drawing me out as the catalyst of God-love that I am meant to be and that this world so desperately needs.

I will practice truthtelling about this beautiful part of myself because finally, after a lifetime of believing the lie that I’m “too much”, I know the truth: I deserve better than that. I deserve better than to be told to hide, to cover up, to stay quiet, to be ashamed, to betray my truth so that I might please more people.

If someone’s best advice or response to a story about a time I was discriminated against is for me to hide, and avoid, and be quiet…that surely says more about them than it does about me.

For me, particularly, because I am a bisexual person in a female body who is in a committed relationship with a cisgender, heterosexual male, people seem to have a compounded amount of confusion. They want to know why it “matters”, since my relationship follows the heteronormative expectations. They want to know why I have to make a “big deal” about the fact that I’m bisexual – that I’m queer.

Why do I talk about it? Why do I celebrate it? Why do I put time and energy into expressing it?

Because I believe that we can do better. I believe that the way that things are right now is not how they always have to be. I know that my visibility, my bravery, my truthtelling – matters.

Through my coming out process, I have given up a lot. I have lost a lot. Doors have closed, and people have left. I continue to get hurtful and homophobic messages on a weekly basis – exclusively from people who say that they are Christians. This is because of the hate and fear that lives in this world towards people who are different, and it continues to be painfully true for LGBTQ+ folks who identify as Christians. This is my community. This is me.

Something that I hate about homophobia is that it makes me feel so small. It makes me feel invisible and worthless. It wounds me – stabbing to the depths of my core, leaving my whole being bleeding from the inside-out. Religious homophobia is a sharp and fiery cutting feeling that comes with knowing that someone is justifying hating you, ignoring you, even damning you to hell, under the pretenses of God. This experience is especially, brutally painful when you also believe in God; even if you know that God made you this way, in love, to love who you love and to not live in a spirit of fear or confusion, but freedom and clarity.

Being an LGBTQ+ or “queer” Christian is not an easy path. Accepting who I am, fully, and learning to love myself has taken a painstaking amount of time, study, reflection, prayer, and community support. Loving myself and accepting the grace of God which leads me further into my ministerial calling is a daily practice. It can be, honestly, so intensely difficult. But I truly, deeply, wholly do believe this: my truthtelling matters, and it is a holy act.

And so, I show up. No matter what the cost is for authenticity. I practice being brave. I do not want to be afraid of what people might say, or what opportunities I may be denied. I cannot push myself back into the closet, out of hopes that life might be a little bit easier on the outside. To regress in my acceptance of myself is to kill myself, slowly but surely. That tomb is not where I belong. I am meant to, and I want to, live in the abundant, life-giving, bright love of God. And there is no fear in love.

This is the truth that I know, and so this is the truth I will tell. May my pursuit of liberation through authenticity beget your liberation through authenticity, and may your bravery continue to inspire mine. We all walk our own unique paths, and still – we never walk alone.