Growing Up Gay in a Religious Home – A Story of Survival (Part One)

There are some stories that live in the bones. They shape how we breathe, how we love, and how we learn to be in the world — even long after we’ve outgrown the places where those stories began.

This is one of mine. I’m sharing it not for sympathy, but for solidarity. For anyone who has ever felt like love came with conditions. For anyone who’s had to choose between being accepted and being authentic. For anyone who grew up in a world that told them they were broken and are now finding their way back to wholeness.

The World I Was Born Into

I was raised in a deeply religious home, where faith wasn't just a belief system. It was the entire framework through which we saw the world. Church wasn’t just something we did on Sundays. It was our social life, our moral compass, and the way we defined what was good, pure, and godly. It was the epitome of indoctrination.

I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of God, sin, and salvation. From an early age, I was taught that God loved us **but only if we followed the rules. And the rules were clear: boys were supposed to grow into strong, stoic men who feared an angry god. Masculinity was prized. Anything else was dangerous. Looking back, I see just how strange it was how "the dangers of the gay agenda” were preached almost weekly from the pulpit of an angry and judgmental pastor. 

Even before I had the language to name it, I knew I was different. I felt things more deeply. I noticed beauty everywhere. I had crushes on boys, even as a little kid. But I also noticed the way people in my world spoke about those kinds of feelings: with disgust, fear, and condemnation. So I buried it. I buried me. 

Shame in the Name of God

As I got older, the pressure to conform got louder. In youth group and Sunday school, I learned that being gay wasn’t just “a sin” — it was THE sin. The sign you were lost, possessed, under Satan’s influence. And because I couldn’t pray it away, I started to believe there was something inherently wrong with me.

I begged God to change me. I fasted. I cried myself to sleep asking to be made “normal.” I tried to date girls, to prove to myself and to others that I was okay. That I was worthy of love. But underneath the performance, I was suffocating.

When I finally came out to my parents, their response wasn’t love. It was fear. Panic. Rejection. They told me Satan had gotten ahold of me. That more prayer and Bible study was the answer. That I was choosing sin over God. 

In that moment, something inside me shattered. The people who had raised me, who were supposed to protect and guide me — had become the source of my deepest pain. I learned that their love was conditional. That I was only safe if I lied about who I was.

Survival Mode

I did what so many of us do: I split myself in two. The “acceptable” version of me (the one who played the part, smiled politely, and stayed silent) got to survive. The real me? He went into hiding.

I became hyper-aware of how I was perceived. I masked my emotions. I worked hard, achieved, performed. I even attended reparative/ex-gay therapy groups and retreats to change who I was.On the outside, I looked like I had it all together. But inside, I was numb. Lonely. Disconnected from my own soul.

I wasn’t living. I was enduring.

The Beginning of Becoming

I didn’t know it then, but something sacred was still alive inside me — even in the silence, even in the shame. A quiet voice that whispered: You are not wrong. You are not bad. You are not alone.

That voice would lead me, eventually, to healing. To the kind of love that doesn’t ask you to shrink or pretend. To a new relationship with Spirit: one that holds all of me.

But that part of the story (the becoming) deserves its own chapter.

To be continued…