By Michael LaCoste
I come from a good Adventist family. In fact, we were “seven-day” Adventists. Our religion governed everything we did not do. We ate no flesh foods. Tobacco, tea, coffee, and demon rum never touched our lips. Mother never wore a hat decorated with a feather. Dad never went to church without freshly-polished shoes. How then did I come to direct my affections toward men instead of women? Could it have been that come sundown Friday dad did not throw the breaker on the fuse panel to cut off the electrical power? Did that lapse in righteousness by works vest the sins of my fathers in me?
Not that I was at all light in my sneakers. Throughout public grade school I raced out to the playground with the rest of the boys at recess time, thrilled to have fifteen minutes to roughhouse, get a bloody nose and skinned knees. I loved playing soccer, football, and especially rugby where the object of the game was to grab the football and run with it until all the other boys piled on top of me in a satisfying tangle of sharp elbows, smelly feet, and panting chests.
Home was a mixed farm on the Canadian prairies where, along with my two brothers, I enjoyed the usual innocent little-boy pursuits. I poured pails of water down gopher burrows. I captured frogs and performed open heart surgery upon them after anesthetising them with a rock. With my brothers and cousins I played cowboys and Indians. In the winter I built snow forts and initiated snowball wars. I enjoyed tobogganing and skating on the frozen river that ran through our property.
As I got older I bumped across the summerfallow on the John Deere tractor, raising clouds of mosquitoes while cultivating the weeds into feigned oblivion. I drove the truck at harvest time, crank-started the gas engine that ran the auger, and shovelled grain without benefit of a dust mask. I milked cows, cleaned out the barn, flung dung upon the summerfallow, and heaved alfalfa bales into the loft. I helped dad fix fences, build bins, and pick potatoes. In other words, I was a normal, action-oriented farm boy that no one would have guessed was gay.
Well, I suppose there were a few clues. I took piano lessons and actually enjoyed practicing. I also liked helping my daughterless mother with the housework; and since dad didn’t quite trust me with the larger farm machinery, I was often lend-leased to mother while dad and my two brothers took care of the more complicated outdoor chores. Inside the house I dusted the furniture, washed the dishes, made beds, scrubbed and waxed floors, and even learned how to whip up a cake from scratch. All of these enjoyable pursuits hinted at another side to my personality, and yet I might still have turned out to be most every woman’s dream husband if dad hadn’t sat down with The Reader’s Digest one cold winter evening and ordered a multi-volume set of LPs entitled Organ Memories. I don’t know what possessed him to order the album, a man who gained aural pleasures by tuning into the farm broadcast and The Voice of Prophecy. Perhaps he was hearkening back to the Friday evening vespers programs during his school days at an Adventist college. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t too pleased with the album when it arrived, perhaps because it had one cut labelled Wine, Women, and Song. He quickly consigned the boxed set to a spot beneath a pile of Western Producers and Country Guides.
During one of my dusting forays I discovered it and spirited it downstairs to my room where I loaded the LPs onto the RCA record changer. Before going to bed I would switch it on and lie there in the dark falling in love with Bach, Widor, E. Power Biggs, and Virgil Fox. This musical influence, combined with my entry into a composite high school populated by hundreds of beef-fed boys, may have been what tipped my personality toward the elfin side. I was soon in love with Mr. Barlow, my Grade 9 English teacher. How I resented his wife who each day drove up to the door in his new 1964 Pontiac Laurentian to pick him up for lunch. At night as I lay listening to the pastoral tones of Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze I imagined fiery accidents in which “that woman” would be fatally injured. I would rush to console Mr. Barlow, cradling his big shaggy head in my love-starved arms. I imagined myself sitting with my arm around his shoulders at the funeral, and since he was so paralyzed with grief that his very life was in danger, my dad insisted that I move in with him to provide domestic care and comfort. After two hundred nights of such imaginings you can picture my extreme disappointment when towards the end of the term I brought my yearbook home and eagerly stood by as dad feigned interest in it. After glancing through the book he flipped back to my class picture, took off his glasses, peered closely at Mr. Barlow and said, “He’s kind of a queer-looking fellow, isn’t he.” I was speechless with hurt and disappointment. From then on my imaginings involved two car accidents.
Despite these dreams, I never thought that my affectional orientation was warped. I assumed that all males thought endearingly of the football and hockey players they idolized. Why else would my classmates spend hours watching Hockey Night in Canada where the players took delight in rolling around on top of each other on the ice? Why else would grown men attend games of the Canadian Football League to see beefy boys fondling each other’s butts after well-executed plays? It was obvious that men loved loving men.
While all these thoughts were going through my mind, it was fortunate that my brand of Adventism prevented me from dating girls. You see, I quite liked girls and I daresay I might have married one just to be like Mr. Barlow. Of course, I would never have dated a girl from school where the only Adventist female was my cousin. The other girls danced, watched movies in theatres, ate pork, and one or two even smoked cigarettes. There was no way I could have anything intimate to do with them. Sabbath School and church were peopled by more relatives, so there was nothing for it but to wait for college, not that I was particularly looking forward to that. My parents, wanting to protect my older brother from worldly influences, had packed him off to one of our schools for Grade 11. There he had been promptly kicked out for improperly conducting himself in the company of girls, driving fast cars, drinking beer, and smoking. None of these delights appealed to me, so I attended a worldly college, but boarded with a very upright Christian couple who had come to Canada on Noah’s ark and kept a close eye on my attachments, not that there were any attachments to monitor. I went to class each morning and came home every evening to do my homework, and that was the sum of my college life.
In fact I had entered upon the frigid period of my life which would last about ten years. After graduation I began a successful teaching career in the big wicked city, though the crime and dissolution had no effect upon me. My social life was confined to Sabbath dinner at the homes of several elderly spinsters who liked to look out for the young people. During the week I spent most of my time outside the classroom preparing lessons to tickle the fancy of my fourth graders, or taking extra courses at the university to upgrade my teaching license. My free time was spent reading wholesome books, in particular every book written about the Kennedy clan who had come to my notice one November Friday afternoon when the eldest son and his lovely wife visited Dallas, Texas. On my living room wall I had a large poster of President Kennedy, and I kept a scrapbook filled with clippings reporting the family’s activities. Perhaps it’s not surprising that Bobby Kennedy was the first man to kiss me. In my dream, which remains vivid to this day, I was snuggled on his knee, comforting him about some mean thing Tricky Dick Nixon had said about him, and in gratitude he bent his head down and kissed me on the lips. This was while he was still alive, of course.
In the wicked city I served as organist in the local conference’s largest Adventist church. Early Sabbath morning I was downstairs playing the piano for the Junior and Cradle Roll Divisions. Then I would hurry upstairs and teach an adult Sabbath School class. I was at the organ for the church service and quite often back on the organ bench for the Adventist Youth meeting an hour before sundown.
I was a particularly naïve young man so I cannot remember the moment when I realized that I was gay, though it may have been after school let out for the term one June. Feeling liberated from the clamourings of my eager students, I was meandering though a bookstore when I discovered among the magazines one that showcased male models. The men weren’t completely naked, but the towels they were coyly cuddling weren’t exactly mammoth bathrobes. I was so startled that I bought the magazine along with a copy of Playboy to allay any suspicion the clerk might have had about my affectional orientation. Once home I felt I owed it to myself to flip through Playboy, but the images disgusted me. Dad had been right. That sort of filth had no place in a Christian’s home. I tossed it aside and concentrated on the male models in the other magazine. I told myself that I was just admiring them from a bodybuilding standpoint. I believed this rationalization because at the time I was a regular at a downtown gym, and the sight of those wholesome models with their muscular thighs and thick chests inspired me to work out harder.
Of course I knew that looking at male models wasn’t completely kosher either. I kept them at the bottom of my underwear drawer and sometimes even threw them down the garbage chute after a particularly frightening sermon. However, in time I would slip into the bookstore and buy some more. I was hooked on those glossy pseudo-friendships which were both gratifying and totally unsatisfying at the same time. What I really wanted was a flesh and blood man to hold and cherish. Sitting in the choir loft during church services I would study the men’s faces in the congregation, willing just one of them to be my guy. My hopes ascended every time I saw a lone male walk in, but too often he was joined a few minutes later by a female who, through her body language, indicated a close kinship with him. Was there no one in the Adventist church for me?
As one would expect, my first romance was brought about through my interest in the pipe organ, and I remember that cold November evening vividly. I walked over to a large United Church of Canada to attend their anniversary service, which included an organ recital. The organist had just begun to play when I was joined by Andrew, a practicing radiologist I had been introduced to at an earlier recital. It was good to see him again and I moved over in the pew to make room for him to sit down. After greeting him I closed my eyes to better concentrate on the music. After a few moments I felt a knee against mine, so without opening my eyes I nudged myself over a little further in the pew; but, a moment later, his knee touched me again. What was wrong with him? I wondered. Why did he keep invading my personal space? I opened my eyes and looked at him. He smiled and winked. I smiled back, and in the exchange of glances I realized we were both special people. I snuggled over against him to enjoy the rest of the recital.
After the final hymn we went to a coffee shop (hot chocolate for me, of course) and talked into the wee hours of the morning, exchanging life stories. Our romance continued with long Sabbath or Sunday afternoon walks and once-a-week excursions to a church for practice sessions where he was taking organ lessons. I would lie down on one of the pews in the choir loft while he practiced Bach’s Little Fugue in G Minor and Clerambault’s Basse et Dessus de Trompette. As I opened up to Andrew I felt like a kernel of wheat that had been buried in the pyramids for centuries. Finally, I was alive. Finally I had a friend with whom I could be real.
It was true that he wasn’t an Adventist, but he was a Christian of the Baptist persuasion. He had heard of Adventists and knew a good bit about them so I didn’t have to explain about the Sabbath and coffee and pork. I was thrilled that he was a radiologist because that would appeal to dad who had been disappointed when he was unable to afford medical school. I imagined him and Andrew having fascinating conversations about medical matters.
Coupled with my excitement at being in love was a fear that pursuing the romance would eventually result in my conversion into everlasting ashes. I studied the Biblical references that supposedly addressed our situation. The Jonathan and David friendship was promising but seemed a little weak since both boys were married, though they claimed that their love for each other surpassed love for a woman. I searched the public library and Christian bookstores for writings that provided prospects for special people like Andrew and me. Within their pages I found a host of options: everything from lonely celibacy to marriage-like relationships that included sexual love. All the writers appealed to the Holy Scriptures to support their preferred options. Who was I to believe? I prayed that the Holy Spirit would guide me but no particularly illuminating message came to me. Where was E. G. White’s Counsels to Gays and Lesbians when I needed it?
During our walks Andrew and I talked about these options. We knew that the Bible writers had no understanding of affectional orientation as it was now understood. Both of us were confident that we had made no deliberate decision to bend a naturally heterosexual orientation out of shape. Heterosexuality had never been our nature. So, presented with the truth of our affectional bent, we had to decide how best to live life to God’s glory. Might it not be best to take St. Paul’s advice and marry rather than go through life frustrated and lonely?
As I became more serious about the relationship, Andrew began pulling back. Finally, a few weeks after Christmas, he said that we should be friends, but not boyfriends. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach and promptly marched home and stepped onto the balcony of my 20th floor apartment with the intention of jumping. I had been disappointed in love and would quickly end the pain of my ruined dreams. However, it was January and it was cold out there with a strong northwesterly whistling past the building, so I decided to go back inside and go on with my life.
Going on was rather difficult. I couldn’t walk past Andrew’s apartment building, see cars similar to his, or hear certain organ compositions without thinking of him. There had been times before my friendship with Andrew when I’d been lonely, but now life was worse than lonely. Weekends were the worst. Saturday night the loneliness seeped out from beneath the fridge like dustballs and followed me around the empty apartment. My life wasn’t made any easier by some of the women at church who felt it their Christian duty to commiserate about my single situation. After one of their more aggressive attacks I decided I couldn’t bear my burden of despair any longer. I would pour my hurt out at the feet of my parents. Aching with the pain of hiding my awful secret for so many years, I drove out to the farm and bawled out my disappointment over Andrew’s rejection.
Mom and dad had been hearing a lot about him during our courtship though I had not shared with them the exact nature of our attraction. Confronted with the reality of what he had long suspected, dad put his arms around my shoulders and wept with me. Mother, who always looked at life in a practical way, offered to heat up some cinnamon buns and homemade soup. Both of them concluded that the failed romance was God’s way of directing me away from an unnatural life. They wanted to help; and, in the first flush of parental concern, they snatched at whatever desperate measures they could invent. Dad wondered if papering my bedroom with centrefold pinups of naked women would help. Mother questioned whether marrying a lesbian might be an option. That way we could be a comfort to each other without having to bother about sexual relations. Best of all, no one would talk. Neither suggestion filled my heart with anticipation.
Back in the city I turned to the organ for comfort. Andrew had been practicing on a three-manual instrument. I would outdo him by finding the biggest organ in the city. This I did and engaged the organist for weekly lessons. The hours of practice filled some of the void, but I still yearned for someone male in my life. It was about this time that The Council on Homosexuality and Religion began telecasting a weekly half-hour show. The host interviewed various clergy, authors, and local personalities to show that gay people were not child-molesting monsters, but contributing members of society like everyone else. After each telecast, the credits included a list of gay organizations. How surprised I was to see SDA Kinship listed in the credits one Sunday afternoon. I immediately contacted the show’s host to ask for the address, and that’s how I discovered that there were other gay Adventists. What a comfort it was to get in touch with several of them by mail and telephone. I was not alone.
I may have been a professional public school teacher, a well-liked Sabbath School teacher, and a faithful church musician, but I was terribly naïve when it came to matters gay. I was thrilled with Kinship and the friendships I’d found there, but I lived in Canada and most of the Kinship members were in the United States. I was sure there must be some in my own country and perhaps even in my own province and city. I placed an ad for Kinship in the daily newspaper: SDA Kinship, support for gay Adventists. Call 783-XYZX for information. The telephone number I published was my own. A couple days later the telephone rang. My ad had proved effective. Someone wanted to know more about SDA Kinship. And he lived right in my own city. In fact I knew him. He was the pastor of the church I attended! Not only did he want to know more about Kinship; he wanted to meet with me personally!
When I arrived at his office he acknowledged my presence, invited me to sit down, and then continued typing some apparently urgent document. After about five minutes he turned the electric typewriter off and swung his chair around so he was facing me. Without any preliminaries he asked whether I believed that gay relationships were sanctioned by God. I said that I wasn’t totally convinced but hazarded that from my study I thought that God might meet gay people where they were just as he did Abraham who had taken two wives. God hadn’t spewed him out of his mouth for doing that. And then there were David and Solomon with their hundreds of wives and concubines. I hypothesized that out-of-the-norm affectional partnerships may not be as big a thing to God as they are to humans.
He asked whether I believed that God could change me. I testified that I believed God could change me in any way he wished; however, despite years of prayer and study, it didn’t seem that change of my affectional bent was in the works. I handed him a copy of Kinship Connection which included the stories of several other gay Adventists who had prayed for change but had been disappointed. They had come to the conclusion that they must live the truth about their lives. Some of them recounted how God had led them to find Christian partners with whom they intended to share their whole lives.
The pastor didn’t try to convince me that my conclusions were wrong. He simply opened the Church Manual and read a passage that indicated that living with another man would not be in keeping with church policy. He then explained that he didn’t wish to expose me to the wrath of the church, so if I would write a letter asking that my name be removed from the church books the matter would go no further than a line item at an upcoming business meeting. I had invested a great deal in that church, practicing service music for hours each week, preparing Sabbath School lessons, and driving icy roads on Friday nights to get to choir practice. I refused to leave willingly. He then suggested that I ponder my position for a month, after which time a decision about my membership could be made. Meanwhile, I would have to relinquish my perch on the organ bench and in front of the Sabbath School class.
I didn’t know how people would react the next Sabbath, but no one said anything to me as I sat out the program. Perhaps everyone was looking at me strangely and whispering behind their church bulletins; but, if they were, I was too naïve to notice. One lady sent me an It Is Written publication with a story about Colin Cook’s Quest Learning Centre. She wondered if his program might be of benefit to me. Pastor Cook’s efforts were not news to me, for shortly after telling my parents about my affectional orientation they had sent me a large package of audio tapes published by his organization. I dutifully listened to them but couldn’t make sense of them. If I remember correctly, his theory was that everyone is heterosexual though some may be operating under the delusion that they are otherwise. If I kept telling myself that I was straight and acted upon that reality, I would be changed. (My parents read extensively and later came to the view that affectional orientation was genetic in nature.)
The month the pastor had allotted passed quickly. I was busy with work and organ studies; however, I did take the time to read over the “gay” texts once again. It was clear to me that the Sodom story was more about uncaring yuppies than men having sex with each other. Reviewing all the references to the story in the Bible, it was clear that both the men and women were bent on satisfying their own selfish lusts for wealth and a life of ease while they trampled upon the poor. St. Paul’s references in Romans appeared to be linked to temple prostitution and worship of false gods. I could not see the link between any of the Bible references and my own desire to love and be loved.
When the pastor called to ask for my decision, I could only say that my viewpoint had not changed. He sounded genuinely distressed as he told me that, in light of my decision, he would be obliged to ask the church business meeting to discuss removing my name from the membership list. When he called a few days later to inform me that this had happened, he advised me to find a good man and settle down in a monogamous relationship. Meanwhile, he hoped that I would continue to attend church.
I went for several weeks, but soon grew bored and began to stay at home on Sabbath mornings. I found an outlet for my musical gift in playing for Sunday-keeping churches. My search for a man continued; and, after a multitude of false starts, I found Mr. Alright. Shortly after we met we moved west where we began attending church at one of the local Adventist congregations. My partner had never been baptised; and he was genuinely excited when the pastor, whom he admired greatly, held an evangelistic series. At the end of the meetings we were both thrilled when the pastor made an appointment to visit us. We were sure he would be asking my partner if he’d like to be baptized. That Sunday morning we dusted the furniture, vacuumed the rugs, and even polished the mirror in the bathroom in case he would honour us by using the facilities. We set out our best mugs and a box of herbal tea along with a package of chocolate covered Hobnobs and then waited, and waited, and waited. We thought an emergency might have taken the pastor to the bedside of some dying saint. We expected he’d call later that evening to explain what happened. We dined. We washed the dishes. We watched the late news. We went to bed.
We were both disappointed, but we expected that there was a good explanation that would be provided when we saw the pastor on Sabbath. He greeted us warmly but didn’t mention the planned visit. We continued to attend Sabbath School and church until one Sabbath when the lesson focused on witnessing. The teacher asked to whom we should direct our witness—one of those Adventist questions that everyone knows the response to but no one wants to answer. After a silence a very prim and proper sister spoke up, “Ellen White is quite clear that we should have nothing to do with homosexuals.” Immediately several people in the class disagreed with her; and before either of us could say anything, the discussion leader rushed on to other matters. Unfortunately, my partner did not hear anything after the ignorant remark had been uttered; and from that day he refused to set foot inside the Seventh-day Prejudice church, as he christened it. I continued to attend for a few weeks, but then lost interest as well.
It was several years later that one of the members who had kept in touch called to say that the church had a new pastor who preached “nothing but Jesus.” My partner was still locked in the ugly embrace of Miss Prim’s ignorant remark; however, I decided to attend. The pastor did uphold Christ in his sermons. After a few months the church board asked me to assist with organ playing and teaching an adult Sabbath School class. I resisted both appointments, sure that eventually someone would make an issue of my affectional orientation and demand that I stop taking an active part in the life of the church. I clearly explained that, according to the Church Manual, I should not serve in either capacity since I was no longer a member. The elder asked if I’d like to become a member. I declined, remembering how a recent article in the Adventist Review had decreed that “gay Christian” was an oxymoron. How could I officially support an organization that sanctioned such an ignorant opinion that didn’t even coincide with the Church Manual’s admonition to love the sinner while hating the sin?
When the church board again requested use of my talents I consulted one of my brothers who was employed by the denomination. He advised that gophers who do not wish to get shot keep their heads down. After further approaches by the church leaders, I agreed to help out, which I continue to do today. Though the pastor is supportive, there are times when church members ignorantly and with some satisfaction condemn all homosexuals to hellfire. At times like that, I sense myself to be the queerest of all of God’s creation: a creature trapped in a no-man’s land between the hedonistic lifestyle of the world and the rigidly narrow prejudice of the church. As I leap and dodge from cover to cover in this no-man’s land, I try to keep in mind that Jesus will be my ultimate judge and lawyer. Only He will pass judgement on whether I have clung to Him throughout this life or shunned Him. I am confident that He will save me, but I’ve asked Him to allot me a tiny cabin in heaven’s back forty. I will be perfectly content to live quietly there with occasional visits from my Saviour and Lord. The rest of the saints are welcome to the mansions.
Bach: Sheep May Safely Graze
Michael LaCoste (pseudonym), former public school teacher and public administrator, lives on Canada’s west coast. He spends his days practicing the organ, freelance writing, and spreading the health message.
Gay SDAs 