Growing up queer is already a difficult situation, but growing up queer in a religious school is an entirely different experience. The messages and actions of the Catholic Church make being yourself seem wrong.
Even as a child in elementary school, my peers treated me differently. Looking back on interactions I had as a child, I have to wonder if those peers could sense something about me that made them treat me badly.
That being said, I was a weird child, but most children have quirks because they’re just beginning to figure themselves out. Navigating school is hard enough for most kids without the extra weight of religion hanging over their heads.
A lot of my experience with the homophobia of the church was internal. I didn’t officially come out to my teachers and peers as pansexual until my senior year of high school.
Hearing the anti-LGBTQ+ messaging in theology classes, I was forced to take was enough to influence my self-image in a negative direction.
One of the very first negative experiences I remember after realizing my queerness was a freshman theology class. Each year, every high school class had to learn a segment called “The Body of Christ.” This segment was primarily meant to drive home the practice of abstinence and the Christian teaching that sex is for procreation only. The teachers also felt the need to add “homosexuality” to these two classes’ long presentations. They spoke about how you’d immediately go to hell if you were gay.
In the mind of these men teaching me to abstain from any sex, especially homosexual sex, they were preaching their beliefs and saving this generation from sin. But I heard that I was wrong, imperfect and damned. At 14, I shouldn’t have been thinking these things about myself.
These same teachers also preached that their God made everyone perfect and wanted only good for his people. When asked why then, did God make gay people if he doesn’t want people to be gay? My teachers would give a reply along the lines of that being gay was meant to be a test. That you were meant to “fight” your “homosexual desires.”
Even little 14-year-old freshman me found fault with these statements. If their God was a God of love, as they claimed, why would he make love a test? The answer only left me with more questions that went unanswered.
It wasn’t until three years later that I would officially come out to my teachers and peers. Until then, I remained one of the only voices in the classroom who would speak up and argue for LGBTQ+ rights. The one bright light in my Catholic school was that I managed to gather a few queer students into a small group. We had each other to lean on when class or home got difficult.
Because I wasn’t out socially, my peers didn’t have a chance to be cruel about my sexuality, and that I am thankful for. The bullying happened internally.
The messages and talks that I’ve heard from adults around me made me very insecure about my attraction to women over men. I struggled to accept my sexuality and would pretend to “like” boys as a cover. This led to so much self-doubt and hatred that I didn’t know who I was anymore. In high school, you have enough to deal with without having a major mental struggle.
It wasn’t until around junior or senior year that I became more comfortable expressing myself. My parents set me up with an amazing therapist who helped me accept myself for who I was. As I grew older, I began identifying with the label of pansexuality or the attraction to all. Personalities and brains are more important to me than my partner’s sex or gender identity.
Despite my rocky relationship with religion growing up, I was able to free myself from those confining ideologies and become the person I am today. My support system was key to my survival at the school, where I felt unwelcome. The most important thing to remember is that you’re never alone in your struggle. Friends are made in the most unlikely of places.