Dead Forever

1982 

I'm the brunette, transgender wife.

Church Youth Group 

There came a time, in the summer, where the church I attended held a cookout for the youth. This church, which I attended throughout my childhood, because that was where my mom went, and because I didn’t know anything else, was very conservative. They would have said they were not super conservative, but looking back, I would have to disagree.

At this cookout, a young man came to speak. I estimated he was about 24. He was a college student at a Christian university, going for a graduate degree in the seminary there. Part of the time he spent talking with us was in giving a talk about gay people. This young man, whose name I do not recall, was very firm in his convictions. What he taught us as impressionable teens was that gay people were simply people who were controlled by the devil, and their only purpose in life was to lead other people astray. They wanted nothing more than to make us forget that God hates gay people.

Be Careful

So, we had to be careful. Very, very careful. He told us that the Bible says that men who touch men sexually, or women who touch women sexually, would burn forever in horrible torture, unlike anything we could imagine.

Are you kidding me? I have a great imagination, and I could imagine some rather horrible torture at that moment! Boys like girls and girls like boys, and that’s okay, but we must always be vigilant, or the devil would get us, because he was right behind us, just waiting to pounce, and trick us into liking each other's bodies, and we would be dead forever. Dead forever. Forever. Dead.

Without hope. Dead.

I was almost 14 years old, it was late at night, around a campfire. This person was in seminary, and was billed to us as a person wise in scripture. I was a young person who was always wondering why I felt so different. Can you conceive how that talk hit me?