This is an observation that so many queer people have had to make over at least the decades that I've been alive. It's an observation I've personally had to make — about immediate family members.
It's different but the same. My family are technically WASPs insofar as they're Protestants, although I don't know that conservative Evangelicals like Baptists have ever truly been considered WASPs.
Besides, my parents were raised Catholic and converted at a point that I can still remember well. In fact, I went to first grade at a Catholic school.
Just to say that I think our family's social customs are more Catholic than Protestant. And most of the extended family remain Catholic.
The whole thing is a mixed bag. My favorite cousin left her job at a Catholic school and eventually left the Catholic Church over their anti-queer teachings. She's a social worker, and she couldn't reconcile her professional ethics with some of the damaging anti-queer acts the Church required of her at work.
Most of the rest of my extended family don't really care about the Church's teachings, so they mostly ignore them even as they attend mass. I mean, obviously, you don't have only one or two children and obey the Church's teachings about not using contraceptives.
One cousin even explained it to me that way. She told me she doesn't have any problem using the pill, and as far as she's concerned the Church is wrong to teach that she shouldn't do that. So, she asked me, why should I care what they teach about gay people? I don't care what they teach, she said.
Sadly, my immediate Protestant family and my dad's younger brother, who also converted to Baptist, are a lot more fierce in their acceptance of religious teachings that morally condemn queer people.
And there's no veneer of WASP politeness conditioning to soften that. I think Catholics are used to picking and choosing among church teachings and practices, but many Protestants are not. Baptists certainly or not.
If you're not all in, you're expected to simply leave and choose a church that you can be all in with.
So, it's rough, and it's complicated. Your story is part of that complexity and I really appreciate you sharing it.
Thank you!
