from the archives: about the uncle no one talks about

I wanted to pull the following out of my archives; it's sat heavily on my mind this past month of Pride. As the country's Republicans continue to come up with creative ways of discrimination and exclusion in the year 2021, particularly towards our trans neighbors, I find myself thinking more about my uncle. Part of me recognizes that talking about this subject openly could potentially hurt my family, and it is not my intention to do so. But now, more than ever, transparency about our confusion and past mistakes will help guide us towards a brighter path. 

Written in January of 2014, the following is inspired by the increase in legislation against Hoosier LGBQT+ individuals during the days of HJR3 (which eventually became HJ8). The years '14 and '15 mark significant changes in my relationship with the church.  You'll note that I speak with such conviction about certain religious themes and topics; in some ways I feel like I am listening to a stranger. In 2018, I left the church completely, call myself an apathiest and am a loud LGBQT+ ally.  In 2014, I grappled with what I knew to be true and with the archaic policies of the church. In 2008, I was aware of the legislative struggles but uninvested. In 2003, I regurgitated what the conservative youth group taught me, "Hate the sin, love the sinner." As we gather and process new information, we grow and evolve. 

I'm sharing because I want to honor a man who is still loved, despite the darkness that surrounded him. There were no Pride parades in those days. There was no rainbow merchandise, no commerical investment in the alternative lifestyles, no protections to be who you really were and it surely wasn't acceptable.

Despite my departure from religion, I still want to leave my thoughts concerning the church in place, because I know that for some Christians out there, they need to hear it.

 I want to remind my friends to continue to stand for what is right the eleven other months out of the year, not just during Pride Month. I want to affirm the value of the lives of my friends and family who are lesbian, gay, bi-, queer and trans: you are loved, you belong, you are wanted. 

Happy Pride Month... but also, I'm just happy to know who you are. There is a place at my table for you.

January 26th, 2014: "the uncle that no one talks about"

When I was a little girl, younger than eight, maybe.

My mum's youngest brother lived in Florida. He would send little Christmas presents and letters and my grandma had some pictures of him on a boat in the ocean. He was incredibly foreign and adventuresome.

Even when he moved back to the Midwest, I never really knew him as well as you think that I would have.

One night, Mum & Dad let me stay up and watch Rescue 911. On this particular episode, a boy was swimming in Florida off the family dock. An alligator attacked the little boy, dragging him underwater; there were scary scenes with dark water and the camera angle depicted that the little boy could never quite reach the surface of the water. I was so scared, I kept worrying about my uncle, what with all of the alligators in the Everglades. (Although, I couldn't quite tell you if he even lived near gators...) I wanted to know that he would be okay and that he wasn't going to get drug underneath the water by a gator. I fretted enough that Mum picked up the phone and called my uncle. He reassured me, hundreds of miles away, that the gators couldn't get him in his boat and that he would be okay. It was probably so late that night.

In my panic about ensuring the safety of my uncle, I never found out if that little boy survived or not.

Time passes so quickly, I don't think that children really understand what is really going on when their grandparents die, one by one. How family dynamics change so drastically in the span of three years, how siblings fight one another like they used to when they were kids. How the ties that bind no longer rally everyone together. No grandparents, no close relationships with anyone else, well, my small family was getting smaller.

When I was eighteen, I think, barely a freshman in college, I was hanging out with my then boyfriend. For some reason or another, I met my dad at the parking lot at our old high school before going to another friend's house to watch them play video games like the good little girlfriend that I used to be. I remember the parking lot lights didn't really seem to illuminate the world like they should have that night. The night pressed around the dim spheres of light as Dad and I talked. It was like this casual statement that broke the otherwise low-key atmosphere that night. Like saying that the weather was unusually warm for that time of year. Or that the stars were particularly dim in the sky.

"Your uncle killed himself tonight."

It was so bizarre, so absurd. No emotion, at all. None. From him, from myself, and certainly not from that boy that I was dating at the time. In my husk of a body, I went with him to his damn LAN party and, before I left, Dad said so bleakly, "Make sure you come home tonight." It registered with me that I was once again shoveling emotion from my heart to the basement, where the door stays locked tight. It didn't occur to me until I was already in my boyfriend's car that maybe other people would be grieving for my uncle, too, and maybe they weren't as cold and heartless as I was.

But this isn't about me. This is about my uncle.

I had an uncle. I had an uncle who was gay, but I didn't know about it until after he killed himself. I had an uncle who committed suicide. I had a gay uncle who was either too drunk or too high or too sad or all three to get out of his idling car in a locked garage. And he just sat. And sat.

I had an uncle who killed himself. And I hardly knew him.

His funeral was about as awkward as they come: family that wants so desperately to heal itself but can't seem to find the words, friends who are devastated. Guilt - overwhelming guilt. And that fucking ugly carpet at the funeral home that I had seen way too much of. The friends of the family played a lament on their guitar and accordion. I think that the pastor talked about forgiveness and pain on earth and how it is taken away when we die, and I hoped that my uncle was at peace.

I actually didn't know that my uncle was gay until, at the funeral, my dad introduced my sister and I to his "special friend." I mean, if it were not so absurd to make little quote signs with your fingers in the middle of a funeral parlor, I'm pretty sure they would have been used. My uncle's "special friend" wore a large gold ring and he had gray hair on the backs of his hands. He walked with a very elegant cane. He said he was very happy to meet us, and then, I think he was teary, said, "Your uncle loved you both so very much."

It wasn't too much later, maybe a season, that my Dad and I were driving back to the homestead from campus and he said, "I always wondered if I didn't love your uncle enough."

I froze, like an animal caught in the beam of a lantern on the edge of the woods, heart muscles the only thing moving, unsure if it would live or die.

At the time, I was so naïve, I didn't know what that meant, because shouldn't family love each other? To paraphrase, what Dad said was this. He was unsure of how he presented his beliefs of homosexuality around my uncle, and felt terribly, horribly guilty in thinking that his presentation was interpreted as hatred, or (maybe worse) un-love. In that abiding so much by the scriptures that damn "sexual deviation," in stating his belief that homosexuality is a sin against God's nature, he forgot the commandments to love.

Since then, homosexuality is more than a topic you debate at the lunch table in high school, acting like you knew what the fuck you were talking about. Homosexuality is no longer about white wedding gowns versus "disgusting, lewd" behavior. Homosexuality is no longer foreign or weird.

Homosexuality now has a face. My best friend's sister is a lesbian. My sister-in-law is dating another woman. I have friends and co-workers who are gay. Now, my Dad's cousin married her girlfriend of twenty years in Iowa, and the family can't get away with calling her "the Roommate" anymore.

(see how those little finger quotations are just rude? Dismissive?)

Sometimes I see my uncle's friend - lover? boyfriend? - out and about downtown. He rang the opening bell at the bluegrass festival a couple of years ago. He was drinking beer with a large group of friends at the Brew Co. last month. He's older; I recognize him by his elegant cane. I don't think he recognizes me.

My uncle was gay.

And now I'm at a point in my life where I've grown up enough to defend my beliefs and my faith. Where the constant struggle of the gay community seeking the same civil rights as the rest of the nation is always on my news radar. Where hatred and disgust laces both sides. Where suddenly our thoughts are thrown under the spotlight and I feel like I have to have an answer, to all of the sides, that will be acceptable or revolutionary. Where being a queer ally is now topic of the week. Where what we once thought and said no longer makes sense. Where Christ and Christians conflict.

To draw wisdom from Seester, who, when asked, said that there is no denying what the scriptures say about homosexuality. That certain books of the Bible make very clear what is and is not good. What is sin, which is more than just homosexuality, before you string me up by my toes. Don't believe me? Go look it up for yourself.

But unfortunately for those who beat people with the Books of Leviticus and Romans, we all - pure, sinners, Christian, agnostic, atheist, whatever-ist - forget that there is more to the story. In fact, I'd go so far as to point out that the Gospel - literally the good news - follows the life of Jesus, his most teaching of what is Good and the grace that passes all understanding.

That passes all understanding.

I don't understand how this world works, and how the meeting of the heavens and earth will pan out. And I don't understand how we deserve anything more than this world that we have; and I'm tired of talking about it and trying to make sense of it. Which is why I'm so bitterly angry at the conservative right and their bigoted agenda that has no place in the statehouse or in our federal government. Our world is full of every sin named in Romans, much of that is exalted and worshiped, more of it is ignored as human nature that does no harm to anyone else, so we turn the other cheek and examine the logs in our own eyes. As an institution, we do not criminalize sexual promiscuity, divorce or hair length based on gender. So what's with the attitude?

But a handful of people continue to rabidly pursue this idea that, in this state, not only should lesbians and gays be not allowed to marry (which is already an established law), but anything representing marriage, such as civil unions and domestic partnerships, would also not be recognized by the state government (in the form of an amendment to the constitution). Simply put, the basic, commonplace rights and privileges that we straight people utilize and take for granted every day would be denied to the LGBQT people of this state. It would, at its very core, declare that they are not welcome.

Frankly, legislation like this should make us all very unwelcome in our home state; we must want better for our neighbors. No where in our sacred texts is it written that we get to judge others, condemn them, or act in any way on par with God. Because of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, and his greatest commandment that declares that we must love our God and love our neighbors as ourselves, I could not be more stridently opposed to the proposed amendment to my state's constitution.

No one really talked about my uncle for a long time. Seester often felt left in the dark concerning the details, and I always felt like I would upset Mum by talking about it.

No one wanted to talk about how he was gay.

And no one wanted to talk about how he killed himself. And no one really knew how to talk about the why of it, and it's so damned terrible thinking that he never felt safe enough or accepted because of who he was.

That day, as I felt dread growing like a hard rock in my belly as I was hearing a confession of guilt that was far too advanced for such a naive eighteen-year-old, Dad said, "I am afraid that your uncle died thinking that I hated him." It is incredibly clear to me now, almost ten years later, that Dad was remorseful of the words he spoke to my uncle so long ago, whether or not he still believes it is a sin. The words that he spoke at the time were inconsequential to him; as a straight, white man, he will rarely have hatred and bigotry heaped on him the way that my sister-in-law, friends, cousin, and neighbors do, every day.

Dad's regret is a testament to the rash actions of people, who believe so righteously that they are doing right at the moment, but come to realize the enormity of their mistake after it is too late. But it is also a testament to the grace that passes understanding, and the love that is reflected in Jesus through us. It starts by abolishing pejorative, bigoted, hate-speech from our vocabulary and minds and replacing that space with a mindset of equality and empathy.

This story is not an expression of frustration of my family, or a reason to hate Mum & Dad. They are anything but bigoted or hateful; in fact, quite the opposite. This story is not about me, either.

This story is about my uncle

that no one talks about about, and I'm tired of not talking about it.

And this story is about the thousands of people are like my uncle, in some form or another.
And we need to be talking about us,
and our neighbors,
and in ways that encourage love.

"Unstoppable Grace: Thoughts on the Gay Christian Network"  by Rachel Held Evans is a good resource for anyone in the church struggling with their faith and the church's stance on LGBQT+ community. For those of you who just don't give a shit anymore about who gets into heaven or hell, well, congratulations and welcome aboard.