Thank you, Brit! What a beautiful story. I was a Baptist, not a United Methodist but I did take those pills when I was in college. Thankfully, I survived, soon realizing that being gay did not mean I had to lead a life without love. Although, I did forever leave the practice of Christianity, feeling that it was just too hateful a religion for me.
It was many years before I began to meet Christians who did not define their faith by rejection of LGBTQ people.
By the way, yesterday I published a story here on Medium and in the Los Angeles Blade with a very distressing United Methodist connection. A fifth-grade teacher in Oklahoma who is also a United Methodist pastor has been calling children in his classroom fags and queers as sluts to "negatively motivate" them, and he's been encouraging boys to call other boys fags.
Some of the children's parents reached out to me asking me to name him in the press — partly to encourage the school administration, who have condoned his behavior, to take action to protect their children.
While this isn't the main point of my story, I spent three days reaching out to United Methodist leaders at all levels, from the trustees of the pastor's church, to the North Texas conference that it's part of, to United Methodists leaders at the national level, to United Methodist leadership all over the country.
Despite hours and hours on the phone, I could not find a single United Methodist leader anywhere in the United States who would agree that it's wrong to call children fags.
I got the spokesperson of a bishop on the phone at one point, and she flatly refused to answer that question. I gasped in shock each time she refused to answer.
That leads me to ask another question. Why are United Methodist leaders seemingly such horrible people?
I mean, if somebody can't say that it's wrong to call children fags, something is deeply wrong with them as a human being.
After three days of failing to find a United Methodist leader anywhere who possesses basic human decency, I was left agape with astonishment.
