You Almost Killed Me With Your Religion

by Gary Cottle

All of my life I have regularly encountered people who use scripture and dogma like weapons. Whenever my grandparents, whom I love and miss, would get into arguments, it was only a matter of time before the scripture quoting and the claims of righteousness would commence. And, of course, they were not the only adults I encountered who would do this. It turned my stomach from the very start, and I’ve never been interested in memorizing the Bible so that I could pick out verses at will and hurl them at people like darts.

I don’t claim to be all sunshine and smiles. I readily admit that I have a temper, and I’m not above telling people off when I get mad. In fact, I’ve been told that I’m rather good at it. But what I don’t do is claim to have any kind of Godly or supernatural authority backing me up. I let people know how I feel and what I think, and sometimes I’m not very diplomatic about it, but I never tell anyone that God is displeased with them or that they are in danger of divine retribution.

I learned very early the value of humility, and that’s not only because I witnessed well-meaning and sincere people, such as my grandparents, slip in moments of anger and use supposed spiritual insights as a means to rip into a fellow human being. In addition to that lesson, I learned that our minds can mislead us as to the nature of reality by watching what happened to my mother who happened to be very seriously mentally ill. Eventually she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Her illness caused her to believe quite a lot of unusual things. When I was a toddler, I was often at home alone with my mother during the day because my father worked and my sister had already started school. I can recall sitting beside her on our sofa in the living room and listening to her tell the most fantastic stories imaginable. I had a picture book filled with artists’ renditions of various Biblical characters, and when I was alone with my mother, we would often go through it, and she would tell me about the people in the pictures. I can assure you that most of what she said wasn’t orthodox. For instance, she would often tell me that the painting that represented Mary, Jesus’ mother, was actually a painting of her. She also used to tell me that I was the twin of our minister’s son and that we were special because we were born in the same way Jesus was born. I now realize that she was talking about immaculate conception.

My father was a country boy without much formal education, so he didn’t know exactly how to handle the situation, and rather than consulting a doctor, my father decided to confide in our minister, and our minister hatched a plan to remedy the situation. One day, out of the blue, when my mother and I were home alone, my father, our minister, and several men from our church showed up unannounced. And right there in front of me, these men hauled my mother off kicking and screaming. They basically kidnapped her as I stood witness. Not one of these men, not even my father, paid the slightest bit of attention to me. Not one tried to console me. After they literally dragged my mother outside, shoved her in a car and drove away, I was left alone in the house for several minutes.

Eventually my grandmother showed up. She came into the house and proceeded to make me lunch, a grilled cheese sandwich, without assuring me that my mother was alright or offering a word of explanation.

I didn’t see my mother again for a couple of weeks, and when I did, her condition had not changed. It wasn’t until years later that I learned she had been taken to a Christian based counseling center. My father told me that the “doctors” there informed him that they couldn’t help my mother because she refused to cooperate with them. By that, they meant that Mother was unwilling to pray to God and ask to be delivered of her affliction per their instructions. So long before I ever heard of “pray the gay away” therapy, my mother was subjected to “pray the schizophrenia away” therapy.

For many years after this, my father buried his head in the sand in regards to my mother’s illness. He didn’t do anything about it, and he stayed away from the house as much as possible, and when he was home, he often retreated to his room complaining of what he termed “sick headaches”. I learned that I couldn’t rely on my parents for much in the way of emotional support, and I learned to keep my mouth shut because God only knew what kind of irrational response I would get if I said anything about a problem or a concern.

My mother finally began receiving proper care for her condition just a few months before I went away to college. And when I got away from home, one of the first things I did was seek out the services of a psychologist. Much to my amazement, my counselor informed me that treatment for schizophrenia wasn’t new. It turns out antipsychotic medication has been around since before I was born. So we suffered needlessly all those years.

I do have regrets, and I have my resentments, but I don’t blame my parents. They did the best they could. I don’t even blame them for whipping me when I was young because the Bible says “spare the rod, spoil the child.” My mother used to hit my sister and me with her hairbrush, and Dad used to take down our pants and hit us with his belt or with a switch. I can still remember the sting. I remember how my soft, smooth baby flesh would turn bright red. I remember the blood blisters and welts. And I remember that these whippings often occurred on Sunday because I found it difficult to sit through Sunday school and two church services without becoming restless. But my parents had been taught that you should drill religious dogma into the heads of children at a young age, and they were taught that you should beat children when they disobeyed. But to their credit, they abandoned the whippings by the time I was about seven. Neither one ever hit me again after that. And because my mother couldn’t be trusted not to espouse her unusual beliefs in church, we stopped going on a regular basis by the time I was seven.

That isn’t to say I escaped fundamentalist indoctrination. Unfortunately I was subjected to the ravings of televangelists almost daily. The only one who seemed truly loving and caring was Billy Graham. All the rest were scripture quoting, dart throwing meanies. And their condemnation for anyone and everyone who didn’t follow (their interpretation of) The Word, stung all the more when I realized I was gay at age eleven. There I was a kid going through puberty. I had just discovered that I liked boys, and my mother was talking to invisible people, my father was so stressed out by this point, it seemed that he would explode at any moment--eventually he did have a massive heart attach--and there was Jimmy Swaggart screaming stuff about "homosexshials” and pantywaisted boys from the TV.

I had already learned by this point not to share much with my parents, and once my sexuality hit into high gear, I buckled down and guarded my inner thoughts and feelings as if my life depended on it. For seven long years I never told a soul about what was going on inside me, and you know how long seven years is to a young person.

It was like torture, and school didn’t provide much of a break either. The kids were generally homophobic and a number of them had noticed that I was just a little different. Although I certainly wasn’t given the worst of it, I was bullied regularly, and I never truly felt safe anywhere, certainly not at school. And the thing I longed for the most, I couldn’t have. I didn’t even allow myself to hope for a boyfriend. The only thing that seemed possible at that point were quick encounters in the dark sometime in the future.

These experiences have left their emotional scares. Depression, sharp mood swings, anxiety and suicidal ideation plagued me after I escaped home, and eventually I was diagnosed with post traumatic stress and labeled an adult survivor of childhood abuse.

After all of that, I have very little patience for people who claim they know what God “wants” with absolute certainty. I don’t care how much of the Bible you’ve committed to memory or how clear you think your understanding is. To me, to claim with absolute certainly that you know anything at all about God is insane. I have little patience for those who get bent out of shape when schools attempt to address homophobic bullying. They don’t know what it’s like to be a gay kid in school and to be afraid someone is going to find out your secret. I have little patience for those who scream bloody murder if a teacher even mentions anything about homosexuality or LGBT people. They don’t know what it’s like to be so starved for even a small crumb of affirmation. I have very little patience for those who take to the streets, or the internet, or the TV or the radio to shout that people like me are diseased, disgusting, and a threat to the family, religious liberty and civilization. I have little patience for those who march to the poles to vote me down and petition their elected representatives to step on my hopes of being recognized as an equal. I’m tired of these people, beat down and sick of them.

I know that not all Christians are alike. I know many, maybe even most, know they don’t know everything no matter how careful their study of their scripture or dogma may be. I know these people are capable of being sincere in their faith and serious in their efforts to adhere to their beliefs while remaining open to different perspectives and respectful of others who may see things differently. But for those who insist that they are right about everything and I must surrender to their directives which they equate, quite unashamedly, with the wishes of God, I say this: You have your own life. You can’t have mine. I have my own beliefs. I don’t want yours. So please stop trying to force me to follow you, and please stop demonizing me when I refuse.

I have long realized that one of the brightest and most wonderful aspects of my life is my desire and admiration of men. Even back in high school when I couldn’t tell a living soul about my desires, I relished them. I can remember vividly crushing on so many of the boys I went to school with. Of course it hurt that none of the feelings I had for these boys, to my knowledge, was returned. But I felt alive and in the moment when I longed for those boys. I remember the way certain actors made me feel when I watched them in a movie. I absolutely fell in love with C. Thomas Howell and his character Ponyboy in the film The Outsiders. Deep down, I wanted a boyfriend like Ponyboy more than anything, even though back then I didn’t even give myself permission to dream of a boyfriend. I just watched that movie over and over again with quiet longing. Of course I was sexually attracted to Ponyboy, but it was so much more than that. I wanted to be with him. I wanted to share my thoughts with him in quiet moments. I wanted him to tell me his secrets. I wanted to joke with him and giggle with him. I wanted to kiss him and lay my head against him. I wanted to hold his hand.

My sexual and romantic attraction to men is one of the things that sustains me. Right above my desk is a calendar with a large picture of two nude, slim young men. They are standing outside with woods behind them, and sunlight is streaming down. They are smiling, and the one on the left is affectionately touching the stomach of his friend. The beauty of their bodies, the brightness of their eyes and the warm of their smiles sparks in me a sense of hope and appreciation for life every time I look up. I know this feeling well, for many beautiful young men cause me to light up in this way. I cherish the experience.

I never found a boyfriend. I’m way too shutdown and withdrawn for that, I guess. But there are those who even object to my appreciation of men, and they would take it away from me if they could. And they would tell me and themselves that they’re doing it for my own good. Well, I have news those people, I have never liked your kind. Even before I knew anything about my sexuality, I didn’t like those who pounded on their Bibles and insisted they are right about everything. It is because people like you that I associate religion with pain. It is because of people like you that I have no desire to attend church. It is because of people like you that I am cautious around anyone who claims to be religious until I know they are not like you. I find you repellant, and I do wish you would shut up and leave me and people like me alone.

It may be too late for me to find love. After all these years of being so independent, I might be incapable of letting anyone in. But I want things to be different for young LGBT people. I want them to grow up in supportive homes. I don’t want them to be afraid of telling their parents or their classmates. I want them to be able to talk to their parents about their feelings. I want them to be able to talk to their parents about their boyfriends and girlfriends. I want them to be able to bring their boyfriends and girlfriends home. I want them to go through life open and free. I want them to be able to get married and raise kids if that’s what they want. I want it all. …if not for me, then for them.