Now, since y’all have the backstory, back to the song…

I first heard “Take Me to Church” in May 2014. I even remember what I was doing because it’s the first song I listened to that I understood right away on a deep level. The first song I ever listened to about being gay and Christian. Its lyrics and video spoke to me, and I listened to the song so much that summer and fall until I hated it.

When I was twenty-five, I reached the breaking point and transitioned.

I took a hiatus from dating for about a year; a moot point since my dating life was dead when I started. Fast-forward to this past December (2018) when I meet a girl and invited her to a party. That night, we had our first kiss and I fell hard. I always did, but on estrogen, it was a whole different ballgame.

The same week at my second job as a server, “Take Me to Church” played. While I’ve listened to it a few times over the past five years, it was as if I understood the song for the first time. I got it. The poetic lines described my life, my story, my experience. Later, I discovered the lyrics once more after doing something I once considered a horrible abomination. Full disclosure, I am a big believer in the Holy Spirit and saw it as a real possibility I’d wake up the following morning feeling guilty (which has occurred.) However, that conviction never happened.

Instead, that morning during Mass, a strange awareness of myself, of how far I’ve come in the last decade, overcame me. I spoke through time at the homophobic messages I received and believed saying “Fuck you, this is right.” During the Eucharist, the line “The only Heaven I’ll be sent to is when I’m alone with you” repeated in my head. A double meaning appeared. When I step foot in the sanctuary and participate in the liturgy, I’m transported. Time stops, the outside world ceases to exist, it’s only God and me. Likewise, when I’m with my girlfriend, the same phenomenon happens, except it’s she and I. The two experiences should exist so far apart, the depraved and carnal, and the sacred and divine. However, they don’t. Both do the same thing: they express love.

Love — there are several variations of it expressed in a multitude of ways.

I could make a philosophical and psychological argument on how my attraction is the same now as before, or how transgender people are evidence that sexuality is fixed. On the other hand, I could explain how my experience shows there’s no difference between my relationship and straight ones. Except, straight couples have privileges gay couples don’t (I miss showing affection in public and being allowed to be open about having a girlfriend). I could argue nothing has changed, and yet I’ve lost so much privilege going from living as a heterosexual male to a lesbian woman. I could discuss knowing what it’s like not being able to marry in your own church despite its affirming beliefs. No, arguing is pointless and only divides.

It’s still an expression of love. See, that’s something I didn’t get when I was homophobic. I failed to grasp what love is. When I mentioned my dysphoria to a youth pastor in high school, he told me I was confused and essentially needed to repent and become “the man God made me to be.” That was a lie, and I knew it then, I wasn’t confused. He didn’t love me as who I was, but who he preferred me to be. He demanded to sculpt me into a mold.

I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies. I’ll tell you my sin and you can sharpen your knife.

Dogs blindly follow. They don’t understand, don’t ask questions, only accept what they’re instructed. That is what men like my old youth pastor want, unquestioning, blind followers. I often say I was a terrible fundamentalist because I asked too many questions and know for a fact it kept me from leadership positions. Regardless, I believed their lies. Then I told them my sin and they sharpened their knife. You can’t fit an object into a mold without cutting it, even clay or Playdough. It cut me trying to fit into their mold; they wounded me, with my permission. To this day, I still bear the scars, as do many of my LGBTQ brothers, sisters, and siblings.

Offer me that deathless death and good God, let me give You my life.

While originally, Hozier uses the Christian afterlife to show how fundamentalists misuse them to justify their actions, I don’t hear the line in that way. I hear it as worshipping, It sounds to me as a gay Christian saying “I’ve been hurt so much by people in your name, but I will still worship you.” The song is a prayer, a thanksgiving, and a lament loped into one. It’s a song, a love song, our love song. Those of us who have suffered the heartbreak of those who claim to love you unconditionally rejecting you only because of your sexual orientation or gender identity. The love song of who bear the scars of from cuts into heteronormative molds because of religion. LGBT Christians love God and our significant other. I pray for mine, care for her well-being, and wish her happiness.

There’s an image in scripture Justin Lee discusses in his essay. “Bad trees cannot bear good fruit,” meaning sin always exposes itself. Sin is tempting because we see the good we assume we will get from it, but it never ends well. Yet, I see no more or less bad fruit coming out of same-sex relationships than straight ones. When I compare the gay couples and the straight ones I know, including us, the only difference is one partner’s sex. It’s the same love.

All of these years studying scripture, theology, hearing stories, being in relationship with others, and I’ve learned one fact: love is love. Funny, it’s such a straightforward concept, and it saddens me so many people don’t understand it. The lie runs deep, and humans hear what they choose to hear.

World-views take years to change

Even after ten years I still doubted if I was past all the messages I heard regarding same-sex relations. When I read things now from their perspective it’s easy to see the lie. The loathing and selfishness behind their words are obvious now. The pastor dismissing my dysphoria is an example of how their message resounds in dismissal of our pain. It’s not only blind to how we’ve been pushed to the fringes; their words pushed us there. Their lexicon, “lifestyle”, for my way of life, is the same as before I transitioned. It’s strange how similar yet different my life is living as a queer person compared to when I wasn’t. “Agenda”, what agenda? Have they experienced not being able to marry the love of your life, or adopt, or have a family?

LGBT people want to have the same rights as everyone else. The worst fear I had as a fundamentalist came to pass; people hate my existence and I‘ve faced discrimination. As I’m editing this post, I learned from a Facebook friend that her father’s church, where he has been a minister for over a decade, is announcing they’re firing him this morning. Why? For supporting his transgender daughter and officiating her wedding. Stories like this happen quietly every day. While I never lost a job, I have lost loved ones for no reason other than my queerness. It’s dehumanizing, they are reducing us to nothing more than our sexuality and/or gender identity.

“Sin occurs when we love objects and use people.”

Ideals are objects, power is a commodity, and they used me to gain or keep their authority. Back then, I wore a mask as a part of them cutting me into their mold; they didn’t love me for who I was but who they thought I was. They loved an idea. Now, I’m loved for who I am, I don’t have to wear a mask for anyone anymore. Only now am I human, only now am I free. There’s no masters or kings, no sweeter innocence in the madness and soil of this earthly scene, than in the gentle “sin” of love.