Letter to the Glitter Kids

I feel the need to write you a letter that I never received. 

As news focuses on a war building in the Middle East, divergent perspectives argue vehemently over the value of human life. Folded in the commentary are a thousand opinions on how politics, history, and zealotry are to blame for the fighting. Although this war may have temporarily shifted focus, it seems a pointed opportunity to remind you, as a queer kid, that you are not cast aside and forgotten. 

The value of human life here, in the day-to-day, still matters. Each of you are stunning brilliant flames, despite what a church, your neighbors, friends, or family may believe, say, or do around you. 

Being Southern can feel complicated. Often misunderstood and dismissed by non-Southerners, we can be worse to our own kin. As a gay, queer, or trans kid, you know this intimately. 

Raised in the First United Methodist Church, I have watched it fervently divide over whether the church should marry two people of the same gender. Congregations nationwide are voting to “disaffiliate” over LGBTQ issues. This AP wire provides a non-editorialized summary of what’s happening. Although some argue it’s only about “bishops not following the rules,” it boils down to one: United Methodist bishops have been refusing to enforce the ban on same gender marriages. 

Perhaps folks need an excuse to avoid tackling difficult questions, or avoid guilt when they think about you. It’s also possible they don’t support LGBTQ issues. When it comes from loved ones, that may sting the most.

The United Methodist Church split slowly reveals who has voted to leave for the Global Methodist Church, which supports anti-LGBTQ positions. Even at 50 years old, I have a mix of frustration, astoundment, and (of course) hurt. I can imagine how you may feel as a teenager, even if your church isn’t going through this spectacle. 

For the most part, I’ve lost concern for what strangers may think or believe about me. Particularly when they are inconsistent in their actions. Especially when it involves religious bodies that fail miserably in serving the poor, sick, and needy.

It isn’t easy watching any news unfold–global or local–that says “you don’t matter to me.” 

Growing up in Mississippi, deep in the Bible Belt, I eventually realized how many folks can wear their faith on their sleeves without holding it in their hearts. It reminds me of The Mother Crab from Aesop’s fables. Mother Crab says to Baby Crab, “Don’t walk so funny.” Baby Crab responds, “Show me how to walk so I will learn.” When Mother Crab tries, she walks as awkwardly as her child. 

Actions always speak louder than words. Perhaps hypocrisy is part of human nature: we are, after all, human.

Southern christianity made me hate myself until I realized that it wasn’t, in fact, “Christian.”  According to the 2023 survey of Trevor Project, 41% of LGBTQ youth “seriously considered” suicide in the past year alone. According to the CDC, in 2021, 26.3% of LGBTQ high school students attempted suicide in the previous 12 months: five times the rate reported by heterosexual students (5.2%).

There is nothing loving, kind, or even Christian about fostering an environment that destroys youth. 

At least two teens in/near my hometown of Starkville, Mississippi, have committed suicide in the past 12 months. Outside of what is reported by newspapers, including the nearby university, that number is much higher.

Please do not add to that number. 

Please help each other so that your friends do not add to that number.

Life isn’t created by a glitch in the universe. None of you were a mistake: from the individual cells full of living protoplasm to the Earth that feeds and protects us with its magnetic core, its atmosphere, and perfect distance from the Sun; from Jupiter’s housekeeping gravity holding back giant asteroids that would obliterate us to our solar system located in a spiraling galactic arm far enough from monstrous blackholes devouring light …. 

Each of you is a vast number of miracles. Star dust and all.

The belief that homosexuality is somehow “wrong,” despite appearing in more than 1500 species (which Christianity teaches God created and that everything God created is “good”), is based upon translations of very old texts. This is accompanied by a challenging frustration: the oldest texts were oral stories, passed from generation to generation, before they were written down more than 3,000 years ago. The books of the Bible were selected by the Catholic Church at the Council of Hippo in 397—more than 16 centuries ago. In the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, Martin Luther removed books from the Bible, an act purportedly prohibited by its pages (a decision subject to its own intense, fascinating history). I once met a “devout Catholic” who believed Protestants have been corrupted because of this act and, thus, you may guess… would not experience “salvation.”

My brother recently reminded me of the childhood game Telephone. Perhaps you’ve played this, or a version of it. A group of people sit in a circle. One person whispers something to the person sitting to their left, who then whispers that same message to the person on their left. It continues around the circle until the message is whispered back to the originator. I have never seen any message make it through the circle without significant changes.

I am grateful my brother gave me that reminder. 

Honest, critical reading requires us to ask hard questions and acknowledge capacity for human error, particularly in oral storytelling and translation of ancient languages. Faith doesn’t mean running from those difficulties; it compels the opposite.

Raised in the Christian faith, a critical passage provides a simple, direct, yet profound challenge that helps me navigate most everything, particularly when it come to the value of human life and other people. I’m sharing this, in the event it helps you: 

“Love God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40

That last line is often dropped when the verses are quoted, but it’s the linchpin. By its own terms, anything contrary to these 3 requirements is neither law nor from a prophet. The Golden Rule, found in Matthew 7:12 (“do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) and several other religions, tells us how to love someone else. This creates a hard boundary: whatever contradicts that framework isn’t Christian law. Even if it’s in the Bible.

Quite simply, gender and orientation no longer matter. 

Sobriety has further taught me about the belief of something conscious in the attic. Millions of people rely upon a higher power of their own understanding to stay sober every day. Their stories demonstrate, for me, that no one has a monopoly on faith and miracles come in countless forms.

Religion may always display hypocrisy. The Bible has been used to justify a vast range of hate-fueled dogma, whether its the genocide of the Crusades or burning William Tyndale at the stake for translating the Bible into English. It was used to justify slavery, segregation, and bans on interracial marriages. Horace Bushnell even used it to argue against women’s right to vote. Churches will build giant metal crosses instead of funding soup kitchens and free medical clinics. 

If you are like me, you are flabbergasted by that history. Or by folks with multiple ex-spouses who still believe that one marriage between two men (or women) is wrong. Of course, they offer context to fervently disregard passages that otherwise apply to themselves. Not that I agree with the baffling absurdity of ancient Biblical prohibitions, whether divorce (1 Corinthians 7:10–11), men trimming their beard (Leviticus 19:27), women braiding their hair (1 Peter 3:3) or speaking in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35), planting two crops in a field (Deuteronomy 22:9), children born out of wedlock from joining the church (Deuteronomy 23:2), or even same-gender relationships (Leviticus 18:22).

This isn’t a game to identify outdated concepts of “sin” but to reveal the inconsistencies and absurdities from a failure to read critically. That failure leads to an ever-expanding list of questions: How many homes can someone own before it becomes greed? How many bankruptcies are a sign of gluttony? Are expensive box seats at a sporting event a sign of gluttony and greed?

I am not telling you to ignore your faith, if you chose one. Churches are built by humans. We are not divine and not perfect. Rather, do not listen to people who have an incredibly limited belief in the divine scope of love. They do not understand what they do.

Many of you may feel trapped. You aren’t. 

Build your family of choice. Whether school, work, or through an extracurricular activity. Family of choice is an incredible gift to yourself that takes time to build. Maybe it’s in college; maybe it’s later. Be sure to include yourself in that family of choice: it’s an inherent part of self-love. 

Use this experience to explore the Golden Rule: listen to what others have shared about their personal lived experiences. Have you dismissed something because you didn’t understand why it’s “such a big deal”? If you don’t understand how poverty can be like quicksand, trapping multiple generations, volunteer at an after-school program at a public housing organization. If you didn’t understand Black Lives Matter, read about the Rodney King Riots and how Black Americans have told us for decades that police often treated them differently. Go back just a tad further and you’ll step neck deep in history where police overtly collaborated with the Ku Klux Klan, like in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in 1964.

People are out here waiting to meet each of you. They accept you, now, for the amazing part of creation that you are and will become. 

You can love and leave your family without a funeral.

Fuel your wings and give them time to grow. 

Photo by Nechama Lock on Unsplash