Forty-seven years ago, I loaded my meager belongings into my rust bucket of a car and drove two and a half hours northeast of Bryan, Ohio to enroll for classes at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. Founded in 1954 by Tom Malone, the pastor of nearby megachurch Emmanuel Baptist Church, Midwestern was an ardent Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) institution. Malone was an alpha male who had little tolerance for weakness. From time to time, I would play basketball with Malone after Sunday evening church. Malone loved playing rough and tumble, no-blood-no-foul basketball, as did I. Students showing weakness such as complaining about getting fouled were ridiculed and, on occasion, sent to the showers.
Malone’s manliness appealed to me. I played baseball and basketball in high school and would continue to play competitive sports into my thirties. I loved hiking, hunting, and working on cars. As a dorm student, I was known for playing practical jokes and horsing around. I was, to a large degree a normal heterosexual man — typical for my generation. Malone’s brand of masculine Fundamentalism and that of my pastors appealed to me. As a young pastor, I became what was modeled to me — a masculine, authoritarian preacher.
A man I will call Bill to protect his identity was the chairman of the English department. Bill was an educated man, holding degrees from secular institutions — a rarity among Midwestern professors. Many of my professors held degrees from Fundamentalist Bible colleges, including degrees from Midwestern. (The music department was an exception. Most of the women in the music department had advanced degrees from secular institutions.)
Bill was gay. I mean 100% flaming gay. The first time I met him, my Gaydar® pegged to the right. I remember thinking, at the time, “How is it possible that one of my teachers is a faggot?” Even my naive girlfriend, Polly, knew he was gay.
Bill lived in the dormitory, on what was commonly called the spiritual wing. There were three male dormitory wings: the spiritual wing, the party wing, and the pit. I, of course, lived on the party wing. 🙂 It was common knowledge among male dorm residents that Bill was gay (though we did not use the word “gay” to describe him at the time.) A shy, backward freshman student lived with Bill, an “odd” relationship to say the least.
I have often wondered how Bill came to be a teacher at Midwestern. I assume he had some sort of IFB cred. Gay was not a thing in the IFB church movement of the 70s, nor is it today. I am just speculating here, but I wonder if Bill’s willingness to work for the peanuts Midwestern paid professors was such that they were willing to ignore his sexuality for the sake of gaining a credentialed teacher.
Bill was Polly’s English professor for two classes. I, on the other hand, only took one of Bill’s classes — freshman English. Bill’s effeminacy rubbed me the wrong way. Quite frankly, I despised the man. I have no idea whether he was a good teacher. After two weeks in his class and numerous conflicts with me, Bill told me that he didn’t want me in his class anymore; that he would give me a passing grade — a B — for not attending the class. For the remainder of the semester, I worked on my jump shot in the school gym during class time. Awesome, right?
Several years later, Bill moved on to greener pastures. This is the path most Midwestern professors took. Starvation wages without benefits led many good men and women to leave Midwestern’s teaching ranks. Midwestern wanted teachers to treat their jobs as a ministry. They were working for God, not man, the thinking went. This didn’t change the fact that these professors had rent, utilities, transportation expenses, medical bills, and other normal, everyday expenses to pay. All the God in the world doesn’t change the fact that rent is due on the first.
If alive, Bill would be in his eighties. I tried to locate him on the Internet and social media, without success. As I pondered writing this post, I thought, “What would sixty-six-year-old Bruce say to Bill?” Nineteen-year-old Bruce was an alpha male homophobe. Sixty-six-year-old Bruce, still somewhat of an alpha male, is a defender and supporter of LGBTQ rights; a man whose youngest son is gay; a man who has numerous LGBTQ acquaintances and friends, many of whom read this blog.
The first thing I would do is embrace Bill and tell him, “I am sorry for judging and demeaning you. I am sorry for disrupting your class. I am sorry for whatever pain I caused you.” I wish I had gotten to know Bill, the person, instead of thinking I “knew” him based on a homophobic stereotype in my head. Of course, I can’t undo the past. All I know to do is to be a kinder, gentler, more compassionate man today; a man who loves and accepts people as they are, even when I may not necessarily understand them. I have spent the past twenty+ years undoing a lifetime of Evangelical indoctrination and conditioning. Change is hard. Flushing one’s mind of all the Fundamentalist junk is an arduous process. I certainly haven’t arrived. My life is a fixer-upper that will require continual renovation.
I am sure some of the readers of this blog understand the sentiments I have expressed in this post. It is not easy to look back at what we once were and the harm we caused. Even though we have become better people, the scars remain.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Bruce, I probably would have treated “Bill “ badly: I was homophobic as anybody.I held on to that hatred even after I stopped believing in Jesus, and God: Some things aren’t easy to un-learn.
Every one of us has done another wrong because of our ignorance, preconceived notions, or wrong ideas planted by others. The lack of wisdom in our youth is a breeding ground for hatred. All we can do is try to be better, with the memories of those we cannot make amends to as a motivator of positive action (vs a haunting source of guilt). You’ve done more than many, and are an example to the rest of us.
I was homophobic as an evangelical. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to apologize to one of my classmates from high school. While I thought I had probably been an ass, my classmate said he didn’t even know I was homophobic but that he appreciated that I had the conversation with him.
Our growth means that we get the opportunity to do better and be better.
I hear you, Bruce. My husband’s sister is a lesbian, and we weren’t really kind or accepting nearly 35 years ago when she met her spouse. (I’m using the term “spouse” although it took years for them to be legally married, but they were married in their hearts.) We were barely tolerant.
Then I had to apologize to his sister at one point after our opinions had changed. We didn’t see her a lot because she lives far from us in the Pacific NW. So we were talking and she accused me of not accepting her wife. At which point I had to eat crow and sincerely apologize for having such terrible beliefs. Things are on a bit of a better basis since then. Still, I can’t imagine having to deal with so much family enmity as people in the LGBTQ+ community have.
Funnily enough, since we’ve lived in this area (NW Ohio) we’ve encountered more LGBTQ+ people. I’ve worked with gay people, one of my son’s teachers was gay, and I have a dear younger friend who is a trans woman. Still, this area is horrible to the idea of the gay community, while individually accepting each person.
Bruce,
One of your best articles. A brave Mea Culpa.
This is a rather sad story.
Mindy and candy got married. . .
Rest of violent porn deleted, commenter banned.
Given his age and how badly the AIDS crisis was handled, I must ask have you checked findagrave? If he’s passed, maybe you could make a donation in his memory to an LGBT charity.
On a more optimistic note have you tried fastpeoplesearch? It’s helped me find others more times that I can count. As what you would say, I always think an apology is legitimate, when someone can say out loud what they did, say how badly they feel, and ask how the can make amends. I personally would love if you offered him the chance to make a blog post, I can imagine what his life story would be.
I can’t speak for Bill, but I can share my viewpoint on people from my past.
Basically, for those who have not treated me well in the past, there are only a very few people who will be forgiven. Those to be forgiven would have to be close friends or family and would have to actually prove they have changed.
I categorize it in three ways…
1) if you are, or were, important in my life and apologize for how you treated me, then I offer a limited acceptance and allow you a chance to prove your sincerity. I do not trust you and you will need to show you are deserving of trust. Eventually you can earn true forgiveness and trust.
2) if you are a person I encountered in school, work, or regularly in life, but are not close to me, and you treated me badly, then I will listen to what you have to say. I might thank you, but I will not forgive you. I will not trust you. I will not seek to be your friend. In some cases I will agree that you have been an awful person and caused me pain. What you did ended any chance of forgiveness or “fixing” how you treated me. I will probably tell you to go out and prove that you have changed by treating people like me as equals without judgment based on gender identity. You need to live the change you are claiming and care for others you encounter that you would have hated in the past. If you can do that then I can treat you with enough respect to leave your past actions in the past, never to be mentioned to anyone.
3) some people who have done some very awful things to me will get a firm fuck off. They are such horrible people that their presence sickens me or causes serious emotional strain. There is no forgiveness, there is no discussion. I don’t care if you changed. I don’t care if you prove it by how you now treat people. Don’t care if you are a good person now. You were so egregiously bad that all you get is a verbal fuck you, including both hands. Some things do not deserve forgiveness.
I do not care if someone feels bad or guilty and feels some driven need to seek forgiveness. It is not my job to make people feel better when they have been horrid in the past. They will just need to deal with the fact they were horrible people, that there is no path to forgiveness, and they have to live with that knowledge. I reject the Christian idea that people should be forgiven regardless of their actions. Actions have consequences. Some things are unforgivable.
However, for people like you, Bruce, who in the past would have treated me badly but today are accepting and kind, and trying to treat everyone well, and doing your best to understand, I will overlook your past and accept you as the person you are today. You obviously “live why you preach” when it comes to the LGBTQIA+ community, and you openly offer public support in many different ways. Your life actions show you have made the effort to change and are an ally. And you obviously take a great deal of abuse for your support.
I think that is really what matters. So perhaps Bill would be able to see you have changed and think better of you for the change. The person you have become today is much better, and much more important, than any apology.
Sage—My code, if you will, for letting people back into my life after they’ve rejected me or otherwise treated me badly, whether on account of my gender identity or something else, is something like yours.
One thing you really nailed is how some people, in asking for forgiveness, express how bad or guilty they feel—or, at least, claim to have such feelings. In my experience, people who’ve done really awful things try to use those feelings, or their expression of them, to manipulate us into feeling guilty over continuing to be angry or mistrustful of them so that we will forgive them or, more precisely, let them off the hook.