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Matt's Letter
Growing up in the Baptist church, these ideas were constantly drilled into my head and taught to me as God's truth. To be gay was to turn your back on God and his purpose for a man to be with a woman. I always knew I was different from the other guys, a fact that made it hard for me to have close friends. My closest friends were always female, but even that was difficult for obvious reasons. While in high school I poured all my efforts into studying and doing well in school. I knew I wasn't the son my parents had really expected. I couldn't play any sports to save my life which I always felt disappointed my father whose Latin background dictated that all sons were to excel in soccer, and I never played army and death and destruction games with my brother. I was too busy saving the insects he was trying to kill and building peaceful cities so my Lego people could be happy and live in harmony with one another. I guess putting so much effort into school made me feel like I could please my parents more and make up for my male deficiencies, but it was also a way to avoid facing the issue that I didn't get turned on when Demi Moore got naked in Ghost. I was too interested in Patrick Swayze. Of course, it was a phase I was going through that would pass eventually, and maybe buying Playboy and looking at naked women would help me get over it, right? Wrong. I just got grossed out with that and would always turn to my stash of International Male catalogs and Playgirl. But it was just a phase and it would pass. Besides, I was so busy with school, being president of the high school environmental club, church orchestra and choir, a job at the local greenhouse, taking care of my orchids, and all of my art endeavors, I didn't have time to think about it. I had to concentrate on graduating valedictorian and write my valedictorian speech and find a date for prom and help organize the environmental fair and design the t-shirts for it and... Then I came to college in the fall of 1995. I was expected to join the Baptist Student Union and while I was there I ran into many good Christian kids I started hanging out with, especially with my roommate and friend from high school, Michael. But I began getting more and more depressed because I was finally realizing that my homosexuality wasn't going away. I had to tell someone, so I told one of my best friends Monica who was very supportive and caring of me, and told me she'd had a crush on me throughout high school. I had no idea. After our conversation, Michael asked me what was wrong because he could tell something was wrong with me. It was hard, but I ended up telling him. He was very cool about it, but since he was also a die-hard Baptist he thought it was wrong. And I did too at the time. I started crying and told him I just wanted to get over it and be happy, but it was so hard. Michael recommended I talk to the counselor at the BSU who would be able to help me through this. I agreed. I started meeting with the counselor but it only made things worse. Since it was Baptist counselling it was assumed that we both agreed homosexuality was wrong, and the sessions were more focused on helping me deal with my depression. It really did help to have someone to talk to about it, but now that I think about it I can't think of one thing that it helped me overcome. We met on Friday afternoon and when it was over I would walk back to my room and cry because I just wanted to be happy and for this hell to be over. The counselor always told me it wasn't going to be easy and I would go through a lot of pain, but I had to trust God and he would help me through it. I didn't want to suffer for the rest of my life though trying to pretend my emoitions didn't exist. Everytime I walked around campus all the cute guys would catch my eye and I would have to check myself and remind myself that it was wrong to look at them like that. It wasn't fair that other guys could just follow their hearts and go out with a girl and be happy and everyone was happy for them. My life wasn't fair. I hated myself and I just wanted to be dead. Michael usually went home on the weekends and was usually gone when I got back to the room after the session. Most of my friends left too, so I was by myself and depressed. I could go home, but I had projects to work on. So I'd just sit in my room and work and cry and work and cry and cry and wish it were over and get so depressed. I remember one weekend I'd been watching Apollo 13 while working on a paper sculpture for an art class. I was sitting there in the silence after the movie had ended holding my X-Acto knife and I realized that I could just end my life right there so easily. I put the blade to the bulging veins in my wrist, but something held my hand back and wouldn't let me do it. I threw the knife across the room and just lay on the bed sobbing. I prayed to God that it wasn't fair. I asked him why I couldn't be happy. I asked him what I had done to deserve this hell on earth. I believe that Hell is eternal separation from God, not fire and brimestone. So if Jesus had died to save us from that separation, why was I living with something that separated me from God that I had no control over? Now, I don't believe that God speaks to us in everyday activities of life. I don't believe we should listen for the voice of God to tell us which color socks to wear or how much nutmeg to put in the pumpkin pie. That's why God made Martha Stewart. But I do believe there are certain times in our lives when if we are truly focused on God and need him then he will speak to our hearts. Call me crazy, but I believe it because it happened to me at that moment that I was at the lowest point in my life. After I'd thrown the knife and was crying out to God, a complete calm came over me and it was like Jesus himself was holding me and telling me not to worry. Everything was ok. It was ok because he still loved me no matter what I was or what I did. That was the first time I realized that maybe it really wasn't such a bad thing. That God could still love me if I loved another guy instead of a girl. Somewhere in there I met Thom. I don't know exactly when we started talking, but it was over the internet. I had been talking to him on America Online in some chat room full of nasty old men looking for young innocent boys to have a one-night-fling with. I thought Thom was just like everyone else on the internet until he started talking about spirituality. We began emailing back and forth long detailed discussions about being gay and being Christian. It seemed like such an important issue to him which really impressed me since I thought that gays didn't care about God. I had so many questions because I just couldn't understand how it was possible to believe in and love God and be gay at the same time. One day in December of '95, Michael came into the room with a newspaper and flung it into my face. They had run a complete feature article about Thom and his charity work in Oklahoma City for AIDS awareness week. It really freaked me out because I didn't know that he was so well known. I didn't know that he'd also been a Playgirl centerfold and on the cover of who knows how many magazines. I had told Michael everything about Thom and he had recognized the picture of him from one I'd shown him as well as the name. A few days later I got this message from Thom that he was going to be at an Open House for one of Open Your Heart's hospices in Oklahoma City. It's only about 30 minutes from the University of Oklahoma campus to the City, so I wanted to meet this guy I'd been talking to all this time. Especially after seeing his picture he'd sent me and reading the article in the OU paper about him. The directions he gave me were very vague, but I managed to find the house and got up the courage to knock on the door. He looked just the same in person and he was so glad to see me. The event itself wasn't that interesting, but it was the first time I'd ever been around openly gay people. I'd seen videos and flyers in church propaganda, but the people I saw here were not the same ones I'd been taught about. It was a real experience to be there and to see male-male couples together and people admitting they're gay like it was admitting you're blond. For the first time in my life I felt comfortable and accepted for who I was, and yet at the same time I was uncomfortable because I was still hung up on the idea that homosexuality is a sin. After the open house, Thom and I continued to talk and discuss spirituality. He had started talking to Father Don at the OU campus Episcopal center about taking up an offering for Open Your Heart, and apparently Thom had mentioned me to him. One Sunday Thom invited me to come to a service to meet Father Don so I went. I knew nothing about the Episcopal church, and the orthodox service was quite a shock and frightened me a little considering my Baptist background. But I met Father Don after the service and he was very friendly and told me to set up an appointment to talk to him sometime. I ended up meeting with him and talked for over an hour. It was mostly my trying to find out what the difference was between Baptists and Episcopalians, and I was very confused. He seemed to have such radical views compared to mine - like it wasn't a sin to be gay - and I began reading my Bible and the teachings of Jesus to see if I could see this perspective. I tried to read them and see them for what they said and not what everyone had always told me they said. I wanted to find out what I believed and not what I'd been told. The more I read and prayed the more I saw that Jesus' teaching were about love and not legalism. I began to see that there were so many different interpretations of the stories and passages in the Bible that no one could say exactly what the real meaning was. If the Golden Rule was love, the commandment more important than anything else was love, then how could being gay be wrong? God created love and relationships because that is how we can experience what God's love is like for us. And I don't mean sex. To me, reproduction is just a side effect of this although having children also teaches us about love. But when you love someone you learn what it's like to want to do anything for someone. What it's like to feel sad when they don't want to talk to you or have anything to do with you. What it's like to forgive no matter what. These are all ways that God has shown love to us and by loving someone we can see this. So to me when people tell me it's wrong to love a certain person they're telling me it's wrong to experience God's love. But anyway, I have come a long way in my spiritual journey. I am happy now for the first time in my life because I know who I am, I love who I am, I have friends I relate to, and I love God and know He loves me. But I think the most important factor in my reaching this point in my life was Thom. He is the one who cared enough to talk about spiritual things with me. He encouraged me not to give up and to talk to Father Don. He introduced me to my first gay friend, Mike, who I could hang out with and talk about growing up gay and Baptist since we came from the same background. But the most important thing is that Thom was the first person to give me a hug and tell me it was ok to be gay. That was the best thing anyone has ever done for me. Thank you Thom. Love, |