Transcriber: Youju Ko Reviewer: David DeRuwe
What would you say if I told you that we know who and what
the biggest serial killer of queer youth in the United States is;
that we know not only that,
but also why they are the leading cause of death
to LGBTQIA children in the United States,
and we are doing next to nothing about it.
I want you to keep that question in mind while I tell you a story.
In 2016, I was a junior
at a severely fundamentalist evangelical university in the mountains of Virginia,
and every day for nine months that year,
I stood in front of my dorm sink mirror and I stared at myself.
I examined the contours of my face, and I looked into my own eyes,
frantically searching for a single reason to stay alive.
Any reason.
And every day for nine months that year,
I told myself that unless I found justification enough
to quell the chaos in my head and heart,
I would end my life.
Now doing this every day for nearly a year
is not exactly your therapist’s daily recommended affirmations, right?
But I did it because I was a queer teenager
attending America’s largest evangelical university.
And it was at this university
that we had required convocations three times a week
at which famous Christian pastors, authors, and motivational speakers
would come and talk to us about a variety of topics,
but one of the main ones of which was human sexuality.
So for the better part of three years, at that point,
I had sat in an auditorium of 10,000 people
and watched as standing ovations were given to famous Christian men and women
for teaching us about the dangers of lesbianism,
the waywardness of the gay lifestyle,
and essentially how sad I was making God with my sexuality.
Now I venture to say that any person who identifies as queer
would also find it difficult, after that long,
to not also wind up contemplating taking their own life.
Personally speaking for myself,
I consider it no less an act of God than a miracle
that number one, I’m standing before you today alive,
and number two, that I am still an active and engaged member of Christian community.
And herein lies the problem.
Pastors across the Bible Belt into the Midwest
and even the Pacific Northwest
have platforms that allow them to reach hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, of people every week.
And some of them are choosing to preach death.
They’re giving enthusiastic eulogies to the queer youth of America,
and we are letting them.
Now, even if you’re not directly involved in crimes against queer children,
as most of us are not, obviously,
if we do decide to remain silent,
in the face of the denigration and the vilification of LGBTQIA children,
we are, by default, made complicit.
And when this happens over and over again, as it does in the church,
it becomes serial.
When pastors fail to denounce acts of violence against the queer community,
when they fail to do their research before preaching condemnation
over their closeted queer congregants,
when they allow codified hate speech to be preached from their podiums,
they are inciting violence,
and in many tragic cases, death.
And when we see these spiritual leaders take to popular social media platforms,
maybe we comment on a post,
maybe we block them,
maybe warn our friends to no longer adhere to their teachings,
and yet, the fact still remains
that LGBTQIA children are four times as likely as our peers to attempt suicide.
It is the second leading cause of death among our youth.
70% of us have reported public harassment,
and queer children are twice as likely to experience violent physical assaults.
Now, these numbers are already mind-boggling,
but they skyrocket when queer kids are in religious spaces.
Even though Christian communities’ main claim is to love our neighbors,
recent studies have actually shown that if a queer child is being raised
in a religiously or spiritually affiliated household,
their chances of attempting suicide double.
They double.
The empirical evidence is in.
We know who and what the biggest serial killer of queer youth in America is,
and it is bad theology.
Bad theology is quite literally killing us.
Bad theology is causing the very real deaths of human beings
who, if you do adhere to a Christian worldview, are made in the image of God.
Now,
if our elected political leaders,
if the senators, the presidents, the board chairs of our world
consistently maintained rhetoric that contributed to their own constituents
dying at twice the rate of their opponents,
they would hear about that.
In their next poll, in their next focus group,
in their next town hall,
if they consistently adhered to language that was causing harm to their voters
at double the rate of others,
there would be consequences.
Whether monetarily, politically, socially, morally,
the fact is there would be repercussions for this fact becoming public knowledge.
So where is that accountability for our elected spiritual leaders -
for the deacons, the bishops,
the youth ministers, the pastors of America?
We will demand
that political leaders speak to the issues of the day
or that local leaders comment on current events,
but the people who we allow
to instruct our children about their body image,
about their self-knowledge,
about their entire relationship to and perception of the divine,
those people are often acquitted without thought,
though we allow them to inform our children about their very hearts -
hearts that will inform them for the rest of their lives.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
We have checks and balances and government systems that ensure
that public defamation does not go unchecked,
and if nothing else,
the media does hold those who are spewing this kind of rhetoric accountable.
So where is that in our places of worship?
Even if it is a simple lunch with your pastor,
or a sit-down after work with your deacon,
it is worth it
to create the slightest bit of hesitancy the next time that they sit down
to write a Sunday school curriculum or a Sunday service sermon.
It is worth it because we’ve become desensitized to death
over the last few decades of school and nightclub shootings,
COVID death tolls, suicide rates.
But the sad reality is ...
each statistic we hear about holds real human beings with loved ones -
perhaps aspirations to be a sous chef;
a single mom to twin boys
who will turn out to be much more trouble than she’d planned;
a musician who busked on the street for free,
simply because it brings her joy;
an accountant who can find rhythm and stability in rows of numbers.
Regardless, we should not have to provide justification of a human life
because of sexual orientation.
And more than that,
there should not be spiritual leaders in places of power
who demand further justification of a human life
because of sexual preferences.
This is not a matter of political ideology.
This is not Catholic versus Protestant, liberal versus conservative.
This is about ensuring that our kids
are not taught to make a value judgment about themselves and others
based off of something is unmalleable as the color of their hair or eyes.
Regardless where you stand on gay rights, or side A versus side B Christianity,
we have a moral obligation as human beings,
and if you are one, as people of faith,
to ensure that our holy books are not being weaponized
and our sacred spaces are not being usurped and used
to harm our fellow human beings.
I don’t want there to be another me
standing in a white concrete dorm room wondering what method of suicide
would cause their friends and family the least amount of trauma.
We cannot stand by with the masses of the Bible Belt
and continue to watch as our youth take their own lives,
firmly believing that the only way they will ever see heaven
is if they die before they find love on Earth.
I cannot withstand the weight
of being counted as a doctrinal serial killer.
I demand more of my spiritual leaders.
You can demand more of your spiritual leaders.
And I pray to God we do.
Thank you.
(Applause)