Coming Out at Age 60…
My story begins where most people’s stories begin, with parents. My parents were good people who valued their Southern Baptist religion and served as leaders in the various churches we joined as we moved from one town to another in South Texas. It seemed like we were at church every time the doors opened, and I learned to take my religion very seriously.
I decided to attend Baylor University because it was Baptist. It was there that I was forced to face the fact that I was “different” because my roommate and I fell head over heels in love with each other. This was a real shocker for me. We were both 17 years old. Up to that time, I had never even heard the words homosexual, gay, or lesbian. I had no vocabulary to “label” the feelings I had. In fact, I had not known it was even possible for a girl to fall in love with a girl.
During our freshman year in 1956, the Christmas holidays separated us for the first time. We missed each other so much we were always writing letters back and forth. Every night I propped up in bed and wrote to her. My dad was a sociology major; and, observing my behavior, rightly concluded I was gay. He shared his fears with my mother and told her she needed to have a talk with me. She did. She came into my bedroom that night and shared with me what she had been taught about homosexuality—that it was sinful and an unacceptable way for me to live my life. She and dad planned for me to get my teaching certificate, and that night she warned me that no school district would hire me to teach in their schools. She also told me that we would have a very difficult time just finding a place to live — no one would rent us an apartment and we’d probably have a difficult time purchasing a house. She painted a very bleak future for us as a couple.
Her talk with me that evening devastated me. I was embarrassed they knew. I felt shameful and guilty for something I felt I couldn’t help. After all, I had not planned to fall in love with a girl! I would have much preferred to fall in love with a boy, someone I could proudly show off, someone I could marry, someone with whom I could have a family. But that hadn’t happened to me. I had fallen in love with a girl, and I felt my life was in a mess. I felt sorry for myself, and I yearned for my mother to show me a little bit of sympathy.
But I received no sympathy, only condemnation along with a cease and desist type of message. I learned to be secretive, to pretend to be someone I really wasn’t. I had always dated, and I continued to date throughout college. It was part of the “front,” part of the “fitting in” that was part of my life.
Often, when I’d come home on weekends from college, Mother would have arranged a blind date for me. Girls were expected to marry, and she was worried because I didn’t seem to be serious about any particular boy. The message for me was loud and clear — get my teaching certificate and get married.
When I was 23, I simply said to myself, you’re not ever going to fall in love with a man, just pick a nice fellow you think you can be happy with, marry him, and get it over with! At that time, I had earned two college degrees and was teaching high school in Odessa, Texas. Soon after my decision to “just get married,” a friend arranged a blind date for me. He was a nice fellow, a teacher with ambitions to eventually be a school administrator. This appealed to me as my dad was a school administrator. His dad was a Southern Baptist minister. He loved children and wanted to have a family. And I very much wanted to have children. He seemed to fit all the criteria. We were married in 1963.
It wasn’t long afterwards when I realized I had made a terrible mistake. I was very unhappy. When I began to seriously consider divorce, we had had our first child, a little boy, named after his dad. As I thought about divorce, I thought it would be cruel to separate this little boy and his father. They were crazy about each other. Then I thought of the shame I would bring upon my parents who were in the public eye, because getting a divorce in the 60’s was shameful! Then I thought of the pain I would bring to my in-laws by divorcing their eldest son.
The more I thought about it, the more I always came to the same conclusion — that the only one who would benefit from a divorce would be me, which would make divorce a very selfish act. I had been taught all my life not to be selfish. I therefore made up my mind to honor my wedding vows — till death do us part. And that’s what I did— for 37 years.
But I was very unhappy during that time. I told no one I was gay. I especially didn’t want my husband to find out I was gay. I guarded my secret and lived in constant fear someone would find out I was gay.
I never read anything about being gay for fear someone would see me reading that kind of literature and figure out I was gay. I therefore remained ignorant about the subject and went through life thinking I was unique — one of a kind.
I avoided having close friendships with women for fear I might fall in love with one. After all, that’s what had happened to me in college. And by pretending to be something I really wasn’t, I became a shell of a person. I placed myself in bondage — bondage to a lie. You can’t imagine what that is like unless you have actually experienced it yourself. It’s debilitating. I certainly wasn’t the person God created me to be.
I began to think of my inability to love a man as “that dirty trick God played on me.” Over and over I had that thought. And then I’d add to it by saying “but God is trying to make up for that dirty trick by giving me a good life.” And I did have a good life. I had married a good man, I had four wonderful children, and I had a secure life.
But I thought of my college “love” all the time, missing her, wondering what her life was like, and then tears would come. I yearned to die because I was convinced I could never be happy here on earth. Only after death, in heaven, could I be happy. I spent most of my life planning various methods to commit suicide. It was always on my mind. I eventually began praying, “Lord, please let me die. Just take me, Lord. I’m ready to go.” Over and over this prayer would go through my mind.
But in August, 1999, my life changed. At that time I was teaching a ladies Sunday School class at the First Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas. The class was small, and I hadn’t been teaching it for very long and didn’t know the members very well. One day I was visiting with a member of my class who was telling me about her son. As she described how thoughtful and kind he was, especially to his grandmother, a thought came to me, “He’s gay!” I actually had no doubt about it. There’s no logical reason why I thought that, but I am now convinced that God put that thought in my head. And I also believe God prodded me into doing what I did next. I asked her, “Is your son a homosexual?”
You don’t go around asking people that question, people you don’t know well, people who live in conservative East Texas, and especially those who are members of a Baptist church! Naturally, she was shocked by my question, hesitated, then eventually said, “Yes, but that’s just the way God made him and God loves him just the way he is. And we should, too.”
Now it was my turn to be shocked. Her statement that God loves gays just as they are, that they didn’t have to pretend to be straight, changed my life.
It would take too long to explain all the emotions I experienced that afternoon. I’m ashamed to admit that my final emotion that day was toward this married, straight woman. Her words of acceptance, words I had never heard before (and I was 60 years of age at that time), stirred that dead spot in my heart, and I fell in love with her. After all my efforts to avoid this very problem: refusing to tell anyone I was gay, never reading about it, avoiding close friendships — all of those efforts were for naught. That feeling of love for a woman came out of the blue and hit me hard.
I could no longer pretend. I simply had to get out of my marriage. So about four months later, I asked my husband for a divorce, simply telling him I was very unhappy in the marriage. At that time, I had no intention of ever "coming out of the closet."
Several months later, my husband sent me a long e-mail asking me to please tell him specifically why I had been so unhappy in the marriage. I could tell from his letter that he was blaming himself for some things that had nothing to do with the divorce. I didn’t want to answer his letter, but I told myself that after 37 years of marriage, I owe him the truth. I replied with a long letter admitting I was gay and have always been gay. I then tried to explain what it’s like to be gay in a world that doesn’t accept gays.
He immediately responded asking if he could come by my apartment the next morning. Of course, I told him he could. He knocked on my door about 9 a.m. and when I opened it, he held out his arms, enveloped me in them, held me tight and began sobbing. I held him and cried. When we eventually sat down on the sofa, I placed a box of tissues between us. I gave him an opportunity to vent — to voice his frustrations through the years with what he had always referred to as “the wall between us.” He had instinctively known there was a wall, but I never explained it to him. Now he knew what it was.
In the course of our conversation, he asked, “Is this something you thought about every year?
“Every year? I thought about it every day!”
To which he replied, “It must have been a miserable life.”
I didn’t say a word, because he was right.
Coming out to my husband began my coming out process to family and friends. When I came out to my brother who lived in California, he told me I needed a support group and suggested PFLAG. That stood for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. I had never heard of it, but I looked it up on the web and found a local chapter. I called their telephone number, found out when and where they would next meet, then on Monday evening, April 10, 2000, I drove to St. Francis Episcopal Church where I parked my car and just sat in it for a while. I needed to gather up courage to walk into a meeting where I would be outing myself to total strangers.
As I sat there, I have to admit there was a certain curiosity as to what other gays looked like and acted like. I was as much a victim of misinformation about gays as everyone else. When I eventually walked into that room of 25 to 30 people, there was an empty chair by this lovely young woman, Brenda McWilliams. God was really watching out for me that evening. She and I have been in a committed, covenant relationship for 20 years, the last 5 as legally married.
I found that first PFLAG meeting to be very much like a church service — so much talk about God and assuring us that God loves us despite messages voiced from various pulpits.
When I began coming out in my church, I started feeling uncomfortable. Several members that I considered friends simply could not look me in the eye. It made me feel that they saw me as the very epitome of evil itself. I gave serious consideration to leaving the church and finding somewhere else to worship where I would feel more comfortable
But I feel God nudged me again and reminded me that I had been a member of that church for almost 12 years and that during that time I was known as a Christian wife, mother, Sunday School teacher, hand bell ringer, and a regular and active member of the church. If I left the church, I would be throwing away all that "good will," so to speak. But if I stayed, I had an opportunity to be an example of a Gay Christian, what to many, if not most, was an oxymoron.
So I stayed. And when Brenda joined me there, we became our church's example of a gay Christian couple. We made a point of sitting together about the third row from the front in the center section where everyone could see us. We remained in the church for an additional 14 years, finally leaving in 2015.
I spent most of my life believing that being gay was some kind of moral failing and I did everything in my power to hide the fact that I was gay. I played my chosen role of being straight with such skill I often told myself I deserved an Oscar for my performance. Now I know that being gay is just the way some people are, it's the way I am. After years of hiding, I'm thankful for God's love and for the freedom He gives me to simply be who I am.
In 2013, I completed writing my "coming out" story and published it under the title "A Christian Coming Out." Then a different publishing company asked me to rewrite it, which I did; and in 2016, it was published under the title "OUT, A Courageous Woman's Journey."
For those interested in a video of my story, go to: https://www.c-span.org/video/?445082-1/out
My original purpose in writing my book was to convince fundamentalist Christians that "being gay" is not chosen. I've always felt my story exemplified perfectly the absurdity of that belief--that all you had to do was pray and you could change from gay to straight. Goodness knows, I prayed! For years I prayed, and I knew that was not the solution. It did not change me.
It didn't take me long to realize fundamentalist Christians are not at all interested in my story. However, I quickly learned that those who were interested were those who had lived lives similar to mine or those who had gay children.
I have now shared my story with 81 groups (my age at this time). Most of these gatherings are PFLAG groups, but I've also spoken to college classrooms, churches, and various venues. It's amazing how many come up to me afterward to say, "You just told my story." Or after some statement I made, they would say, "That's exactly how I felt."
So I have become a voice for many who have the same story to share but have not had the opportunity to share it like I have. I never started off to be a gay advocate. That was not my goal. My goal was to convince fundamentalist Christians that being gay is not chosen. In the attempt to achieve that goal, I have become a gay activist. I'm now proud of the fact that I am gay. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
