Johnathan Walker:Coming out saved my life. LGBTQ+ ex-Christians like me deserve to be proud of ourselves.

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Months after coming out publicly, I told my mom it felt like she didn’t love me anymore.

“Loving you isn’t the same as affirming you,” she replied. I felt the words cut through my chest.

Taking pride in my identity doesn’t come naturally to me, but what Mom may not understand is that I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t start learning how to do it.

At its core, pride is a celebration of self-worth. I was raised to believe God hates it more than anything – that it’s a middle finger to his face, the deepest blasphemy. Raised in the church, evangelicalism taught me I had no beauty, worth or goodness outside my relationship to the all-powerful spiritual being known as God.

It turns out that when core aspects of your identity are stifled, your mind becomes a torture chamber. When I hit puberty, I dutifully wore bras and dresses – though I hated how they felt – and tried to follow the rules purity culture promised would ward off leering boys. I fought panic attacks at the thought of being touched sexually, yet I knew someday as a good Christian girl I’d be forced to endure that touch on my wedding night.

I felt trapped by roles that made me feel unsafe and unmoored, and my insular church community didn’t give me the vocabulary to express why.

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'Why am I still alive?'

By age 16, I was fantasizing about death and how to accomplish it. I spent my young adult years consumed with starving, freezing, hiding, cutting and numbing myself. One wintry night when I was 19 and engaged to a man, I snuck outside in pajama shorts and lay down in the snow until I thought my back was bleeding, gripped by a fear I still couldn’t describe. Years later when my Christian therapist fired me, she said it was because she couldn’t in good conscience watch me kill myself.

Why am I still alive? Because when I finally looked inward on my own terms, instead of finding filth and sin, I discovered wonder unmirrored by anything external – it was all my own. Terrified but anchored by a new resolve, I decided to leave the church in 2020, and two years later I came out publicly as a nonbinary lesbian. For the first time in a decade, I can trust myself to enjoy being home alone. I don’t remember the last time I felt tempted to skip meals or slice my skin. My mind is quiet. I take pride in that.

Coming out didn’t flip a magic switch and make life perfect, but it did make life worth exploring. I went back to school for a master’s degree and found new ways to channel my passion for writing.

In my first lesbian relationship, I felt a deep sense of safety I never knew romance could hold. Cutting my hair, overhauling my wardrobe and buying my first binder unlocked a joy so strong it almost scared me. And when I joined a budding sapphic kickball team one summer with my partner, we helped create a community that’s gone on to change more lives than my own. People tell me I look younger these days, and I feel it.

Evangelicals can't see the sin in dehumanizing people

Despite the joy and wonder I’ve found, evangelicalism says my sexuality and gender identity are abominations worthy of hell.

When my mom says she can’t affirm me, it’s because Christianity is the only metric she has with which to weigh the world. She can no longer see – let alone affirm – my humanity as an openly queer person. When she looks at me now, she sees sin. I wish she could see me again.

I'm a trans man.We don't have a secret agenda – we're just asking you to let us live.

Dehumanization starts with fixating on one facet of someone’s identity to the exclusion of everything else. It starts with putting conditions on someone’s inherent worth. It starts with saying loving someone doesn’t have to mean affirming them.

When you refuse to see someone’s full humanity, you give yourself permission to commit atrocities – and it’s happening right now across America.

For many LGBTQ+ people, coming out is an act of defiance involving sacrifice and danger. Being visibly queer cost me my family, and that hurts like hell. But being invisible in the church nearly cost me my life.

This Pride Month, I’m reclaiming the notion of pride from what evangelicalism taught me it meant. Our beauty, worth and goodness are inherent to our humanity; the real sin lies in any attempt to dictate the conditions of our worth. As LGBTQ+ ex-Christians, we deserve to feel proud of ourselves and the darkness we’ve overcome.

Mishka Espey is an avid reader and writer who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with their partner, Gianna. They hold a Master of Arts in journalism from American University, where they co-launchedan investigation into a Christian ministry called Cru.