Earlier in July, a Tennessee county library board came close to banning all books with transgender themes. After a board member expressed concern about the kind of message this would send children who may already be isolated and feeling left out, the board chair argued that the Bible supported such a decision.
“It says sexual sin is a deeper sin than all sins,” the board chair said according to the Tennessean. “And Jesus did exclude people. He did say homosexuals are not allowed into heaven.”
It was the second attempt to enact the ban, and other Tennessee counties are taking similar action.
I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s in a strong Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) community. The SBC is headquartered here in Tennessee. My parents were gospel singers. Hell was a real place to me, vividly described in sermons and Bible studies. The only time homosexuality was ever discussed was when the minister spoke of people who would burn in hell for all eternity. So it caused me many nightmares once I realized I was one of them.
Access to queer-friendly books isn’t what corrupts vulnerable children.
Throughout the Bible I saw all kinds of bad people doing bad things, and God still had use for them. I could never wrap my head around the idea that, out of everything, being gay was the most terrible thing you could be.
The first person I ever told I was gay was a preacher. I was 16, and once I could drive I went to a large SBC church in a different county, alone. The preacher’s response surprised me. He told me that many Christians face the same battle I described, as it is Satan trying to steal our souls from God. What I needed to do was reject that evil by living the life that God wanted me to live—find a woman, get married, have children—and eventually Satan would realize that his plans were not working, and give up.
I’d thought I had gotten past the trauma that the SBC caused me in my youth. But then in June the church passed a resolution called “On Restoring Moral Clarity through God’s Design for Gender, Marriage and the Family,” attempting among other things to overturn the Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality. And then came the separate decision by the Supreme Court that public schools must accommodate parents who want, based on their religious beliefs, to remove their children from any classes that teach a queer-inclusive curriculum.
Up until my mid-30s, all I wanted was to “fix” myself.
Tennessee had already given parents a state-level opt-out policy, enacted in 2021.
Up until my mid-30s, all I wanted was to “fix” myself. I was tormented by living a lie, and terrified by the absolute certainty that I would burn in hell if I stopped.
I’ve been in prison for almost 30 years now. I don’t blame that preacher—or anyone else who shared his beliefs—for my decisions and the course my life has taken. It was my responsibility to search out other perspectives on homosexuality, and to contain what I was going through without hurting other people. But if in my youth I had had a teacher, a book, a class, any source of information to suggest that being gay was not evil and that I was not a monster, my path might have been different.
Parents don’t always know what’s best for their children. My own parents believed that the gays would bust hell wide open and there was no saving grace. Access to queer-friendly books isn’t what corrupts vulnerable children. It can give them a lifeline they desperately need, at the age when they’re trying to figure it all out.
Image via Botetourt County, Virginia