True or false? 

Although we know that any believer can fall into sin, unrepentant homosexuals will go to hell. 

I was 17. I should have been thinking about my summer plans, college in the fall. Instead, I found myself in my senior Bible class, staring down the gates of hell. 

We watched a video on the wickedness of gay sex—sodomy. Still illegal in thirteen states until I was a teenager, still on the books in my home state of Michigan to this very day. Because of Lawrence v. Texas, it’s no longer enforced. Still, it’s there. Left to rot in plain sight into bony joints and eye sockets. 

As for Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court ruling wasn’t 9-0. Or 8-1. Or 7-2. Three justices upheld a state’s right to criminalize sex between men. And one of them is still a justice.

Coffee in hand, our teacher mused, “You know, I can sort of understand affection between women, but two men?”

He grimaced. 

So we watched this video, a relic of the 90s. What was happening in the 90s? The AIDS pandemic. Gay men were dying at alarming rates, and for many, that was sure proof of God’s judgment. 

A string of emaciated “ex-gays” explained how they had been pressured into sex. One thing led to another, boom, AIDS. 

I wanted to scream. Instead, I bottled it up in a way I am no longer capable of doing—long enough to settle for a hushed conversation with a friend over coffee. Me, trying not to make a scene, after years of trying not to be gay. Trembling, I told him. I might be gay. In the greatest rush of my life, the words spilled from my mouth: I’m still a Christian. I’m not out at bars sleeping with a different man every night. I’m still a virgin. I understand if this changes how you feel about me, if you need time to process this, if you don’t want to be my friend anymore. 

Back in our windowless classroom, it was time for a quiz on indoctrination disguised as education. 

True or false? 

Although we know that any believer can fall into sin, unrepentant homosexuals will go to hell. 

I knew the answer my teacher wanted. Twenty years later, my heart breaks for the other queer people who sat through that class and circled “true.” 

I didn’t. And as we reviewed the answers together as a class, I realized with a sinking horror that I was the only one who hadn’t. Our teacher asked if we had any questions or disagreements. With trembling defiance, I raised my hand and pointed to the question. 

I don’t have many moments in my life that I claim with glowing pride—and here, my pride is hardly glowing. It was the courage of the weak, tired, and downtrodden who might be on their last leg, but stand nonetheless. 

A scared teenager, an unrepentant homosexual, a virgin, a Christian, quietly refused to be groomed.