BJUnity

This past weekend, Jeffrey Hoffman, Executive Director of BJUnity addressed the record crowd gathered for the Fifth Annual Upstate Pride March in Spartanburg, South Carolina. As usual, Pride marchers were met with a counter-protest from fundamentalists wielding signs proclaiming God’s judgement from a tortured exegesis of Scriptural references they quoted.

Image © copyright 2013 by Bill Ballantyne. Used with permission.

Our new YouTube channel, BJUnityTV launches today with this video of most of Jeffrey’s speech. Thanks to BJUnity’s own Bill Ballantyne for recording and editing the video. (Apologies for a small gap towards the end, when the battery needed to be changed, and please see the transcript below for Jeffrey Hoffman’s complete remarks):

 Transcript:

Thank you. It’s wonderful to be here with you today and I am grateful to the Upstate Pride board for asking me to speak. If you had asked me even two years ago whether I thought I would be here marching in Upstate Pride or standing here today speaking at an LGBTQ Pride rally, I probably would have laughed at you. When I had recovered my composure, I would have more than likely said: “I’m gay. I’m neither proud of it nor ashamed of it. It just is. It’s just a very small part of what makes me the person that I am. I’m a Christian, a composer, a writer, a Tolkien freak, a movie lover, a gardener who loves to cook… in fact, there’s a whole long list of things I’d like people to know about me before they know I’m gay.” You see, when I came out of the closet, the image that the words “Gay Pride” conjured for most people here in the Upstate was that of outrageous people doing outrageous things in public on New York City’s Fifth Avenue. I didn’t want my family and friends to think that was what I was doing when I told them I am gay. I celebrate the freedom we have in the United States to be who we are and to express ourselves in whatever way we feel comfortable, but I’ve never been compelled to behave outrageously to get attention. Today, I understand the impetus of outrage against oppression in the 1970s and 1980s a little better and I have grown to love and respect my LGBT+ friends in New York who demonstrate their personalities and their individuality any way that they want to but marching naked down Fifth Avenue really isn’t me. So, you can imagine the thoughts that went through my head when I realized last year at BJUnity’s debut in New York City’s 2012 Pride Parade, well, actually Pride March (they’re very insistent on that language: it’s a march because we don’t have equality yet), that we were to march in front of the NYC Gay Naturists…

I was born on the campus of Bob Jones University and I spent nearly my entire childhood and adolescence there, here in Upstate South Carolina. I was a child of nine when Bob Jones, III stood on the steps of the White House and told an Associated Press reporter that

“it would not be a bad idea to bring the swift justice today that was brought in Israel’s day against murder and rape and homosexuality. I guarantee it would solve the problem [interjection: I didn’t know that we were a problem] post-haste if homosexuals were stoned.”

And he brought that message back to Bob Jones University where nearly every one of his chapel messages throughout the 1980s and 1990s and to this day included a tirade against “homosexuals” and “the gay agenda.” (We surveyed his messages at sermonaudio.com last year and found that he mentions “homosexuals” or the “homosexual agenda” somewhere between 20 and 25% of the time. A little obsessed, perhaps?).

As a teenager, day in and day out, that message of hate and judgment hammered me, permeated me, instilled self-hatred in me for the person I had begun to realize at just eight years of age that I am. I cried myself to sleep every night, praying, begging God to take this secret desire away from me; tortured with guilt over this awareness of my orientation to desire an intimate relationship with a member of my own sex and gender and afraid that people could tell what was going on inside me. I was afraid to talk to anyone about it. Not my pastor, my parents nor my teachers at Bob Jones. There were many, many dark thoughts of just ending it all when God didn’t answer my sincere prayer to make me straight. I was terrified to pursue a relationship with anyone for many years because I believed, as I had been taught, that this would result in my dying of AIDS. There was no sex education at Bob Jones Academy, so I didn’t know how to prevent STIs.

When I moved to New York City over twenty years ago, I was relieved to find that not all devout Christians hold these views I had been taught. I got psychotherapy and sought godly counsel from my Episcopal priest and I learned, slowly and painstakingly, but surely, to accept myself the way God made me to be. Over time and with much prayer I came to the conclusion that I am God’s beloved child just the way that I am. And eventually I fell in love.

About two and a half years ago, in a Facebook community for BJU survivors, we gay, lesbian, bisexual and, yes, trans* and queer BJU survivors began to discover each other. And when we shared our stories, we discovered that isolation, despair, self-loathing, suicidal ideation or even attempts at a suicide were a common thread and a recurring theme for so, so many of us.

My friends, this has to stop! Young people growing up today face so many challenges. LGBTQ kids shouldn’t have to face bullying by adults in positions of authority and power in their lives, let alone by their peers. And so, we were compelled in early 2012, to begin sharing our stories online and to form BJUnity, a New York based not-for-profit organization. We are still in the early days of what we hope to accomplish to help LGBT+ people from the fundamentalist world find support within a community of folks who understand their experiences, to find resources to aid them on the path to self-acceptance, and to encourage our families and friends to change. Perhaps they will change their hearts and their minds, but surely they must change their words and their actions with respect to their LGBT+ families and friends of this community. And we challenge Bob Jones University and other religious institutions like it to make this change.

My friends Tara and Johnny at Upstate Vision tell me that when they conducted their online survey earlier this year, 90% of the respondents were still in the closet in some form or another, 60% of them said that almost no one knows their sexual orientation or gender identity. I think I know why this is the case here in Upstate SC. I think I know why people are afraid to tell their families, friends and neighbors who they are. I think a large part of the problem is Bob Jones University. You see, when I was growing up there, I often heard that “we have no ‘homosexuals’ at Bob Jones University and we never have.” It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now, but this official erasure serves to isolate and marginalize us within our religious communities and families. It has long served to lock and seal the closet door for many people. I perused the governor’s Facebook page last week when the announcement was made that a MARRIED lesbian couple in this state have sued to have their marriage recognized. I saw the vitriol, bias and religion-based hatred in many of the comments. This has to stop!

Folks, the most powerful tool we have in our hopes for equality under the law is visibility. That’s why BJUnity began sharing our personal stories on our web-page at bjunity.org. No longer can BJU say that we don’t exist. No longer can they pretend LGBT+ people are lonely addicts who lead miserable lives and die excruciating deaths. With every personal story we publish, we show that we are happy, confident, successful people. We are college professors, business owners, pastors, teachers, concert artists, corporate executives, scholars, and authors. Some of us are Christians. Some atheists. Some agnostics, pagans or Buddhists. We’ve all found our own way and our own answers about faith. But we are all graduates or former students, faculty, or staff members of Bob Jones University spanning five generations. We are human beings created in the image of God and whom God loves. We are human beings who have dignity and purpose. Our relationships are as significant and committed as those of our straight contemporaries. Many of them have lasted much longer than many of our straight contemporaries’.

For many years, fundamentalists have controlled the narrative about who we are as LGBT+ people here in Upstate South Carolina and across the nation. They have borne false witness against us, by trivializing our lives as a “lifestyle,” our loves as “lust,” and our relationships as “meaningless” or “sinful.” But this is changing. Bob Jones University is currently the subject of an independent investigation into numerous allegations of sexual abuse, sexual assault and improper counseling for sexual abuse. Their lack of regional accreditation and history of mistreatment of their students has resulted in a declining enrollment. And BJUnity is here to challenge that persistent false narrative of who we are.

We lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning and intersex people of BJUnity are here to say that Our lives are real. Our loves run deep. Our relationships are profoundly significant. You may not agree with us, but you cannot ignore us, you cannot continue to discriminate against us, and you may not continue to bully us into silence.

When I read John 3: 16, I don’t see any exceptions, exclusions, or limitations to those words “whosoever believeth.” I see no asterisk denoting a disclaimer printed in fine print at the bottom of the contract. My friends, whether you are straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, intersex, queer, or questioning, don’t let anyone ever tell you you have no claim on the love and grace of God. You are a beloved child of God, created in His image. You are beautiful just the way you are.

I hope you’ll stop by our booth today and introduce yourself. I’d love to meet you. If you haven’t already done so, please visit our website at http://bjunity.org and sign our petition calling for repentance from hate speech at Bob Jones University. God bless you and thank you.

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