Finding Your Voice: The Church Helped Me Find Mine

It was winter 2009. Not a dark and stormy night, but a bright Saturday morning. At a meeting of the Northeast Georgia Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), I spoke in favor of allowing openly gay people to hold leadership positions in the church. To say I was nervous is an understatement. I was terrified.

But I did it.

I mention that morning in my memoir, but when I wrote the book a few years ago, I couldn’t find a draft of that brief talk, so I paraphrased it. Well, today I found a copy tucked into a notebook on a bookshelf.

And so I share it here.

I hope my narrative voice is stronger than it was that Saturday morning in 2009.

This talk was my first attempt at finding it.

Good morning.

I come to you today as a devout Presbyterian and an openly gay man. Like millions of homosexuals in this country, I am just an ordinary person. My partner of 32 years and I go to work, pay our taxes, take care of our yard, walk our dog. We have a life, not a lifestyle. And we consider ourselves lucky that we have found a congregation where we are welcome, a church that doesn’t put a fence around the table of worship.

Some people want to argue with me and my church over what the Bible says about homosexuality. My answer is that I am a Christian, and the arguments are irrelevant to me. Irrelevant because, during a personal crisis a few years ago when I really needed help, I turned to God and He was there for me. He listened. He gave me His love and acceptance.

It’s just that simple.

I don’t have time to recount the ways He made his presence known to me, but they were as real and tangible as we are gathered here today.

What’s more, God didn’t hold back, didn’t place conditions on His love, didn’t demand that I forsake my partner and find a woman to marry. He invited me to participate fully in the glory of His grace just as I am, just as He made me–even though the Presbyterian Church, the church in which I was raised, has rules to the contrary.

Some people may accuse me of having an agenda, and I do. But not the one you think. Like so many gay people we know, my partner and I want to live honorable lives with the same rights as anyone else. That’s all we ask.

Among those rights is the opportunity to hold leadership positions in the church. Deny us that, and you not only deny us the opportunity to deepen our faith, but you also deny the church our strengths and talents, our willingness to share our God-given gifts to further the work of our congregations. That is a tragedy, especially today when our church’s voice is struggling to be heard in our noisy, troubled world.

Today, we have the opportunity to chip away at the wall that divides us, to join other Presbyteries that have approved the amendment to our Book of Order. Some may say that by supporting it, we bend to the whims of culture. But I view it differently.

Approving the amendment means the Presbytery is accepting what God has said all along.

Remember Galatians 3:28-29: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Jesus Christ.“

Thank you.

Though I had some allies in attendance that day, it was a largely non-receptive … at times openly antagonistic … audience.

The regional Presbytery (representing 50 churches from Augusta to Milledgeville to Winder to Clayton) never did get around to approving that amendment, though it was finally adopted by PC(USA) in 2011. Quite an impressive move by the largest body of Presbyterians in the country.

As for me, I grew more confident talking about my sexuality in public through the years that followed. My husband Ted and I were very publicly married in a Presbyterian Church in 2013, with a huge party afterward. When my book, The Way from Me to Us, was published 10 years later, we began a series of engagements at bookstores and book fairs where we spoke openly about our relationship and our experience growing up as gay men in the U.S.

It got easier. That’s a good thing … because we have more speaking out to do.

And I am forever grateful for the friends who helped me through that cold Saturday morning in northeast Georgia.

Note: The photo at the top of this blog features me singing my first solo ever in church. The year was 2010, I believe, at Nacoochee Presbyterian Church in Sautee, Georgia. I was finding my voice in other ways then, too.

Our wedding day October 19, 2013, at Nacoochee Presbyterian Church. Our friend Rob Curry was best man. Photo by my wonderful cousin Adair Soderholm.

“We have a life, not a lifestyle. And we consider ourselves lucky that we have found a congregation where we are welcome, a church that doesn’t put a fence around the table of worship.“