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Keeping The Faith
episode • Insight • news and current affairs • 51m
episode • Insight • news and current affairs • 51m
I knew I was queer a long time before I met Jesus.
It wasn’t shameful, or even revelatory – simply a quiet observation in my late teenage years that I was indeed attracted to women, and it probably explained all those weird ‘best friendships’.
I told some people. Dated some women. Some people around me were sceptical, but the lesbians picked it a mile away.
It wasn’t the easiest time to be out, but it certainly wasn’t the hardest.
Coming out as a Christian felt harder than coming out
Coming out as a Christian about five years later, however, felt akin to saying I had decided the earth was flat.
Friends and family baulked, withdrew, interrogated my ethics and sanity.
I understood the shock: I’d been vehemently anti-religion, politically progressive and a chaotic queer artist who loved tarot and LSD. 'Good Christian Girl' didn’t really fit.
But internally, it felt like a creative provocation I couldn’t ignore. It felt like a call to a deeper mystery, so I went all in and chose to wear the consequences it might have to my reputation.
I spent almost 10 years in the Pentecostal church, and in this time discovered a depth of compassion, faith, wonder and community I had never encountered previously.
Smart, funny, nuanced human beings held a beautiful balance between the human and the divine.
The black and white narratives of bigoted Bible bashers did not fit with who I met. The Bible was a challenge, but to begin with it was just a creative experiment.
I’d dip my toe into theological ideas, knowing I could bail at any moment. Initially, I stayed firm on my value systems. God could have my attention, but I’d never give him my whole self. Until of course the micro-dosing of doctrine tipped into dependency, and I realised that within the walls of the echo chamber (now the only community I had), the holy book had only one clear position, and my queerness was not welcome.
I tried 'gay conversion therapy'
I renounced my sexuality willingly — under no duress. It was a story rarely heard. I enrolled in so-called gay conversion therapy and I continued to attend prayer sessions where I had to 'pray the gay away'.
It seemed to work for a moment, on an actress no less! Soon my testimony was being circulated to other churches, in other states, and eventually in other countries I travelled to.
I convinced many of the benefits of laying down their queerness, and convinced myself, too. I believed in living out the poetic metaphor I had encountered in meeting God, and it seemed like a small price to pay for the mysticism I discovered.
I kept my female crushes to myself, kept my thought life from straying too far into fantasy.
When I wavered, I reminded myself how nihilistic and empty the world felt when I was a 20-year-old heathen (not realising of course, that’s just what the world feels like when you’re 20, full stop).
From queer and questioning, to a 'good Christian wife'
I married a man I had known for less than 12 months, after seven years of celibacy, and we fell pregnant six weeks later.
The spiritual perspective on marriage and sexuality had been easier to embrace when I was single or dating. It was a concept, not a practice. Faced with a husband, a family, a shared home and future, the pressure to be a ‘good wife’ ramped up.
I began to realise it wasn’t only my queerness that had been disengaged, but my feminism. And my feminism, unlike my queerness, had never been something I was willing to renounce.
I was now a leader in the church community — an advocate, preacher, performer and educator around all things Jesus and art — and I suddenly faced an increasing internal isolation.
I wanted to love God, not a man. I wanted to serve the ideals of generosity and grace, not what it meant to be a respectful wife and stay-at-home mother. I felt so guilty for the lie I felt I was living – I had told so many people Jesus would save their lives, and the way I was now embodying the metaphor felt like it was slowly killing me.
Anna has since written a novel, Immaculate, on the exploration of loss, identity and healing. Source: Supplied / Morgan Roberts
Finally finding myself again and embracing my queerness
I tried — and struggled — to pray the questions away.
After all, divorce is not something conservative Christianity abides. However, when my non-Christian father became sick and died of cancer, I was confronted with a beautiful revelation: I didn’t believe he was going to Hell.
It was a key that unlocked an escape route within me from the confines of fundamentalism. I finally decided to leave the marriage, with two very young children in my arms. When the church community learned of my decision, most of them withdrew contact with me immediately.
The process was explosive, traumatic, and entirely worthwhile. I never lost God, though I lost many friends.
Within the reclaiming of self, my queerness poked its head back out of the closet, as if to say ‘Have I been asleep this whole time?’
In the last three years, it has taken me some time to believe I was allowed to enjoy my queer identity again, because I felt so much guilt for perpetuating the narrative of compulsory heterosexuality in God’s name.
Once I did allow myself to date and fall in love with women and non-binary people again, I remembered what it felt like to embody something sacred.
Coming out this time feels strangely similar to meeting God.
I have met a version of myself that feels like the truth — I want to love, and be loved, like I never have to lie — and I am going to hold this love for as long as it keeps me alive.
And for more stories head to – a new podcast series from SBS, hosted by Kumi Taguchi. From sex and relationships to health, wealth, and grief Insightful offers deeper dives into the lives and first person stories of former guests from the acclaimed TV show, Insight.
