There was a point, maybe 15 years ago, when I thought I would have a career teaching students who hadn’t experienced the kinds of things I experienced when I was a student. I believed, in that naive moment, that because I had read the Newsweek article about Matthew Shepard’s murder while I was uncomfortably home from college, I would be able to talk to young queer people with different language, less scared language, than my teachers could use with me.
This week, the United States Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee ban on medical care for transgender minors. When I read about it, I immediately saw in my mind the cover of that Newsweek magazine I read in my parents’ bedroom, crying, knowing I would die in some kind of bar fight in Iowa.
That was a quarter of a century ago.
I don’t have strong views about the medical care for transgender minors. I don’t know enough about it to have strong views. I do, however, know the feeling, as a young person, of realizing your nation hates you after having been told it loves you.
I spend a large portion of my days talking to 19-year-old queer people. Last semester, I can pinpoint the moment when one of my students stopped making eye contact with me when they spoke to me. I noticed it, but I didn’t really process why it was happening.
Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped and murdered when I was a little boy. He was my age. Matthew Shepard was tortured and brutally murdered when I was 19. He was my age.
At some point in my adulthood, I was supposed to fix this. I had an obligation to fix this because I survived. We didn’t talk about it in church.
Last week, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives of my state was assassinated by a Christian evangelical zealot whose religious affiliations sound frighteningly similar to the affiliations I was born into. The focus, resolve, concentration required to move through those spaces as a reject are beyond my ability to put into words. Hate surrounded me, and I had to find new communities and new interests so I could ignore the smug bullies telling me what a man is and what a woman is. Who deserved Heaven and who deserved Hell (spoiler: I was the latter).
That ghoul impersonated a police officer. He claimed authority that was not his. He, like every other evangelical I have ever interacted with, operated with a surety of purpose that did not require context. A bully. Now an assassin. Always sure and righteous. Christian.
I think, as a young man, I gave the Christian bullies a pass because they were part of family tradition. What a failure. Back when I had energy, I sent strongly-worded letters and yelled at my family, but a psychotic religious madman still murdered Melissa Hortman.
I have been radicalized. I’ve been radicalized to kindness. That means I might be less kind to Christians going forward. When I think about the cognitive and emotional work I have had to do to live alongside the bigotry, I refuse to let my students do the same. Kindness, as I see it, is explicitly not Christian. It can’t be because Christians have a track record.
There are good, kind Christians in my life, including my spouse whom many Christians in this country never thought I should be allowed to marry. I sometimes cry when I see him pray. I’m related to pastors and committed religious people who are wonderful and decent. I often observe these adored people, people I love desperately, but struggle to understand. For decades, I have tried to help people, while the devout people in my life smiled and prayed.
They have to take up the work. They have to prove to me that their worldview isn’t a nightmare of cruelty and violence. I’m not sure they’ve even tried. They say nice things but they do nothing. Count on me to never trust a church.
I’m done. I’ve spent a life trying to get their permission to exist. My students have a harder climb. It’s worse. And Christians don’t seem to care.
The problem is that I do. The problem is I read that Newsweek article and absolutely believed I was going to die.
I teach at two universities that have explicitly religious foundations. The one I consider my home because it is my alma mater and saved my life shortly after two monsters dragged Matthew Shepard to his brutal death, is Methodist. Or, it once was Methodist. Connections to Methodism are serious and clear, but university leaders over a century or so have correctly understood that dogma doesn’t work in education. They’ve retained a piece, though, in addition to the beautiful church that still bears the name of the university. Anyone who interacts with the school knows the words of John Wesley: “Do all the good you can . . .”
Some of my college friends are now ministers. Most are not. Every one of them, though, every single one, has worked to do good in their communities. None of them have done that because they are Christian. They have done that because they are good.