I grew up in church. My family was involved in a very traditional, very conservative evangelical church. We lived and breathed church – at least three to four times a week. Sometimes we would go to church on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, a bible study on a Wednesday, socials on Fridays. I lived in the church.
I grew up being taught that it is a sin being gay. Homosexuality is an abomination. You go to hell, that’s what my pastor said. And when we’re little and we’re taught that over and over and over, you just believe what you’re told because that’s all you know. That’s what my parents believe, my grandparents, all my cousins, everyone in the church. And I believed it. I mean, I’m a little kid. I believed it was wrong.
We didn’t even say “gay.” My pastor always said “homosexuals.” (I think it sounded more scary or something.) He would just tell us, absolutely don’t even consider it, it’s wrong.
I guess I was a little lucky. Nobody really picked me out as gay when I was a kid. I played sports growing up. I played baseball. My father used to take me out to teach me how to play baseball. We’d go fishing together, and we did stuff all the time. I had a good relationship with my dad. I had lots of friends. I was popular at school. I had girlfriends. (I think I only had girlfriends because my friends had girlfriends, so to be cool, I had to have a girlfriend.)
I had a girlfriend all through high school, and went to the prom and everything. I went to college. When I graduated from college, I became a member of a Black church in Compton, working with gang members. I wanted to do outreach and give back. I wanted to reach out to young kids to show them there’s alternatives to being in gangs, and to provide them alternatives for that. So, I actually formed an NGO, a non-profit organization, and we have probably 50 to 75 teenagers that were involved in our youth group. I was a youth pastor of the church.
While I was there, I met a girlfriend of mine. I was only 20 years old. She and I ran the youth group. And we became best friends. She was my buddy. So, I just knew I found the solution! If I just do the right thing and get married, God will work this all out. Because that’s what I was taught in church.
So what did I do? I proposed, and we got married at 21 years old. And the church thought we were wonderful. I was the youth pastor, she was my wife, we were running this youth group. Everything on the outside looked amazing. On the inside, it was not working.
You know you change a lot in your 20s– you start to realize who you are. You become aware of who you are. When you’re young, you just do whatever your parents tell you. You follow your parents. But when you get in your 20s, you start to realize stuff about your life.
And I wasn’t happy.
I loved her with all my heart. But as my best friend. Not the same as what we would want for a wife.
Our marriage lasted 2 years. And in the end of 2 years, we both knew we weren’t happy. (Personally, I think she was lesbian, because neither one of us really wanted sex a whole lot. It worked out so good!)
We were both trying to prove what the church said, to please God, to please our pastor, to please our families. From the outside, it looked beautiful. But on the inside, neither one of us was happy. And it was getting harder and harder every day.
I was feeling guilty. I was having these thoughts about my male friends.
“Oh, my god, I can’t do this! This is wrong! “This is wrong!”
I was just in major denial. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t gay. I was just in denial. I can’t be gay, or I’ll go to hell. I kept hearing that message. The messages the church has put into us, the traditional church, it goes deep. And we hold on to those messages, and they affect us.
The day we separated, my wife walked out. It’s kind of we both knew it was coming to an end. She walked out. Very next day, it was the first time I walked into a gay bar. Oh, but it wasn’t that easy because I came from church! That’s sin! That’s wrong! I knew I was gonna get hit by lightning. I was waiting for something to strike me down. If I come out, the tires of my car would be slashed. God would get me somehow. I’m just convinced those messages can damage us on the inside so deep. I didn’t really believe it that God could love me the way I was. I had to be fixed, I had to be tamed.
So, after probably 2-3 months of going out and drinking up alcohol for the first time (and I knew that was a sin too, as my pastor said). Those internal messages damaged me well enough that I said I gotta change.
So I joined an ex-gay ministry. A church ministry that said they were gonna fix me and make me straight. Prayer, scripture memorization, confessing all of your sins, which meant confessing every guy you’d ever had sex with. Group counseling. The theory of an ex-gay ministry is everywhere around the world. They’d say they can change you. The theory is we were all born heterosexual. And because of some damage: abuse, bad parenting, something that happened; our attractions got redirected incorrectly. But if we just pray, memorize scripture, confess, go to counseling– if we keep doing the right thing, then our natural heterosexual desires will begin to emerge on their own.
Two years of ex-gay ministry. I prayed for hours and hours. I memorized so much scripture. I confessed every nasty thing I’ve ever done. And I felt a lot better, but there was no heterosexual desires coming out naturally. Nothing could change. In my heart, I still know what I love.
I don’t know why we love what we love. Why do we love pepperoni and not salsa? Why do you like vanilla ice cream but you hate chocolate ice cream? Who knows? God makes diversity. And sometimes, we just do! When we walked down the mall and we see something that looks good, it just does! We don’t choose. People always say that we choose to be gay, we choose to be trans, we choose to be a lesbian. There’s no choice! Think about it, when did you make that decision?
I always ask my straight friends: when did you decide that you were gonna like women and not like guys? They say: I never did that! Of course, they never did. None of us do. We just are who we are. That’s what God created us to be.
It took me 2 years of going through a lot of trauma before I realized that maybe, if God wanted me to change, God would’ve changed me. But nothing has changed. I prayed. God knew my heart. God knew I wanted difference. If that’s what God wanted for me, then God would’ve done. So I finally had to start looking at scripture from new eyes. I had to start looking at everything I’d been taught my whole life in new eyes, new vision, and in all new way.
It was at that time that I decided I needed to change life. I had set up my whole life to please my family, now it’s my turn.
I was working in a business environment. I always wanted to be a police officer. Don’t ask me why, but in my mind, I wanted to do something that mattered, that I can actually help people when they’re in trouble and actually make a difference. And working in an office just didn’t do that for me. I want to be somewhere at two in the morning when they’re trying to cut their wrist or harm themselves. I can be the one to show up and say: babe, you deserve better than this. Let me get you the help you need.
So, I changed my job. I left the church that I had been going to– the traditional church telling me that I was horrible, that I was going to hell. I said, I’ve gotta change. I started going to another church that started just at the same time as MCC, called Unity Fellowship. It was a predominantly Black church, but it’s just like MCC– same theology, progressive, supportive of LGBTQ people.
I decided it was time to change my life. So many times during my life growing up, I thought I couldn’t go on. Everything was wrong with me. I thought this is the end. What I didn’t realize, through all of that, was that God was making a way. God had never left me. (My pastor said God left me, but God hadn’t left me. Maybe the pastor did. That’s his problem.) But God had been there all along. God has stood by and made a way for me, even when I thought it was absolutely impossible, that there is no way God could approve of me. But God did.
There are many times MCC Quezon City, now Open Table MCC, has thought it was not going to survive. It has moved from location to location to location, and trying to figure out: will this church make it? But through it all, God continues to make a way. God made a way for me, God is making a way for Open Table, and God will continue to make a way for each and everyone of you.
(Transcript from one of Reverend Troy Perry’s sermons on the beginning of MCC Church:)
Just Heavenly Father, we come to you this day oh Lord, thanking you God for your divine mercies and your goodness. Lord, we ask oh God that you would look down upon this assembled group, that you would anoint us this Sunday in Metropolitan Community Church. We know, oh Lord, that you can move and that you can help when no one else can or will. We we ask, oh Lord. Move now. Let your power and your goodness flow upon us. In your holy and Your precious name, we pray, amen and amen.
I looked back to October the 6th 1968 and I ran into some of the people who were at that first service and I said, “What do you think?” They said, “I can’t get a seat.” And I look back to that little group of Christians who met and prayed and believed that God could do a thing and it was something unusual and different that a group of persons would have to meet together just because of their sexual orientation and yet that’s what it boiled down to. They were a group of people who felt like they were denied the rights of most Christians to even worship God. As I always say, in that service, God moved. And, when we got through, it wasn’t a matter of having 12 or 1200, we knew that the spirit of the Lord had been in that service. And, we started growing and finally, we reached the grand number of 36 and we just couldn’t get them in the living room of my house anymore. And we said: we’ve got to find something.
And you’ve heard the story but I want to tell it again. We went to the Women’s Club. They asked what kind of group we were. We smiled, said we were a Church group. We wanted to rent their facilities and we were scared to death. Willie Smith went with me and was very charming to the ladies as we talked to them. Flattered one on the way her hair looked, and talked about another’s dress. And when we got through, the women let us sign the lease for the building. They said, “Okay, great. You can use it.” And, we started worshipping God there. We went from 36, to 40, to 45, to right around 50. All at once, an article appeared in the Los Angeles Advocate. And when it did– and that was a move of God too.
I want to tell you something, God works in strange ways sometimes. And we outgrew the bottom of the Women’s Club and had to move to the top. We went to their upper room and we finally started averaging around 200 upstairs in that building, when disaster struck.
One day, I went over to pick up my robes for a wedding and the president of the Women’s Club met me and she said, “I’d like to talk to you.” She said, “You people can’t rent the building anymore. After the next two weeks are up, you’re paid up to then and that has to be it.” And I said, “Why?” She said, “Well, the janitor doesn’t want to come in and work on Sundays.”
So I went upstairs and picked up my robes and walked back downstairs, I said, “Now, tell me something. What’s the real reason?” and she said, “Well, that’s the reason we’re giving.” And I said, “All right. God bless you. Thank you.”
But, you know it was really strange we were visited by some people who weren’t really friendly to our community. Just about four weeks before that, they come down to look us over. A certain man was running for a certain public office here in Los Angeles and I never tell you people who to vote for. But I preached– when that man was running– that if you voted for him, you’d almost die and go to hell, if you remember that. I didn’t care who you voted for, but I just wanted to let you know how I felt about him. Most of you got the message and you voted against him and he lost. That was a victory for our community. Amen? Amen. Alright.
We moved and we moved to another location— Embassy Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, and we got to stay there for one month, before one day some minister walked into the basement and wandered into the wrong room. Then one rose up in the back and said: “I have a question I want to ask.” And of course, when he asked this question, the man’s mouth just fell open. As the young lady said, she just spoke up and said: “As this type of individual, what would you say to me?” and all at once, he started looking around. And, I just saw this look cross this man’s face and it scared him to death.
He got up and he walked upstairs. “Do you know what kind of group they have worshipping down there?” and the person looked and said, “Why, a Christian group, I guess.”
“No, no, they can’t be Christians. They’re this, that, and the other, and that was terrible.” And we were given a two weeks notice to move from there. And, I was really broke up on that and finally one of our friends who was a member of the First Methodist Church went to them and said: “Look, here’s a group of Christians that need a place to meet. Can they meet here?” And they said: “Okay, for one week.” So, we started making announcements. You better stick with us because you’re liable to show up next week and you won’t know where we’re at or whether we’re worshipping. Sure not, that happened. We got to stay in the Methodist Church for 2 weeks. They extended our tour.
And from there, we went to the Encore Theater. Willie Smith, who was the projectionist there, walked in and asked Mr. Louis Fredericki, who was the owner of the theater said: “Look, we’re a Church group and we need a place to meet for about four or five weeks.” He said: “would you permit us to use your auditorium?” And of course, we didn’t stay there four or five weeks. We stayed there for over a year. And, you know something, Louis Fredericki never attended our Church. He only arrived once, that was one day, the day that we honored him. And yet, he was a real Christian. He didn’t charge us a bit of rip to that building. He didn’t attend MCC. But he believed we were a group of people and he wanted to be compassionate and help out a little bit. That was being more Christian than some of the Christian groups had been. But, you know, we overstayed our visit there and we started looking around.
When I look back, it’s almost comical that things had happened to this Church. In Huntington Park, when we were young, one day, someone came and said: “We have found the Church.” And I said: “Oh, where’s it at?” And they said: “Oh, it’s over here.” We went over to a certain area of town, it’s right next to a junk pile and I remember, we went and looked at this little Church and it would sit about 75 people. And we all got together– the board– and we tried to decide whether to buy that church or not. And I remember we said: “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll wait, we’ll pray, and next week, “the Lord will let us know whether to buy that church or not.”
The next week, we had 90 in attendance and that was God’s answer. Amen.
I want to tell you something: a building a Church doesn’t make. We’ve got a Church building here. But I want to tell you, if we get so wrapped up in this building and unwrapped in God, we’ll fail like so many other churches have. Amen. If we get to the point where we forget Him and we remember just ourselves and we put us on the pedestal and we say: “Look what we’ve done”– and we forget it was God who did it for us, we’ll fail. The day that we refuse to worship God and to serve Him and to look to Him as the author and finisher, we’ll fail. But, if we look to him, and we’re the doorkeeper in the house of the Lord, we shall overcome. And we shall run the race with patience, and we shall see the end of this thing. Some people look at us and say: “oh we’re here, this is it.” But I want to tell you something. We’ve just begun. This is the start, church. We’re not going to give up and throw up our hands. We’re not going to quit tomorrow. We’re going to look to Jesus Christ and we shall march forward, victorious with him.
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I grew up believing that I was cursed. God could not love me as I was. But I was wrong. I am so glad I was wrong. God loves me, just as I am. And God loves every single one of you in this room, just as you are. Gay, straight, bi, trans, non-binary, fluid. We are all god’s children. Everyone of us. Regardless of what your priest used to say, regardless of what your pastor used to teach you, what your grandmother said… You are here because God created you and God does not make mistakes. We are exactly who we are supposed to be. Just because some relative or some political politician doesn’t approve of us, that doesn’t matter because God does. God loves us exactly as we are.
As Reverend Troy Perry said at the end of that video, a building doesn’t a church make. This building is not the church. YOU are the church. You’re the church tomorrow morning. Wherever you’re going to be. If you’re going to school, you’re the church at school. If you’re going to be at the mall, you’re the church at the mall. If you just stay home and sleep all day, guess what? You’re the church at home.
God lives and breathes through everyone of us. You could not be sitting here breathing today if God didn’t put that breath in you. God loves you! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be breathing. We would not be here. We are all God’s children.
So, does that mean God is trans? Does that mean God is non-binary? Absolutely. Everything that we are comes from God. God is trans, non-binary, gay, straight. God is all of that and more.
We all come from an amazing, loving, Heavenly Father/Mother, and Spirit who loves us and created each of us in Their own image. Know that today. Hear it.
Some of us have been in MCC for a long time. We’ve heard that message, but we even kind of forget and deny how deep those old messages we heard when we were kids are. They are still in there, and sometimes at night, we still feel like maybe I’m not good enough. Maybe if I was only different, my mother would love me more. Those messages do serious damage. It took me years to work through that– the damage the traditional church did to me.
I don’t know what you grew up in religiously, if you grew up Catholic or Christian, Muslim, Seventh-Day Adventist… Some of those traditional messages of choice, that some of us are better than others, that pit us against each other. Those messages have gone deep. This morning, I want you to put those messages down and know that God truly loves you exactly as you are today.
Let’s pray: Lord God, we just thank You this morning. We thank You for Your incredible unconditional love for each and everyone of us here in this room, and each and everyone of us out on the street, outside this building right now. Lord, thank You for creating all of us just as we are meant to be. Thank You for sending Your child, Jesus, to show that example to sacrifice His love for us to let us know that we are worthy. We truly are worthy of Your love. Lord, we still mess up, and we doubt, and we stumble, and sometimes we really screw up. But every time, You stand by us and You continue to make a way for us. You make a way for us each and every day, every week, every month. When we think that we don’t see a way ahead, that I don’t know how I’m going to get through this, that it’s so bad, I don’t see an answer. Lord help us feel Your presence and know that You’re standing right beside us and You’re not going anywhere. Help remind us that we are your children and that You love us with all Your heart and soul and mind and all Your being, that You created us just as we are and You are proud of who we are. Thank You for that love. Help us to share that love. To share that with others. To let all of our friends and family and our acquaintances and our schoolmates know that they are also created in Your image, and that You will make a way for them also. Just thank You for all that You have done and given for us. And this morning, we give You the praise, and we give You the honor, and we give You the glory in Your wonderful and holy name. Amen.
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