Lance Weldy and Peter Crane join Nate and Gail to discuss their stories of life as gay people at Bob Jones University. Lance's forthcoming book, BJU & Me: Queer Voices from the World's Most Christian University, is a compilation of stories of many LGBTQ+ people who attended the conservative fundamentalist Christian university based in Greenville, SC.
Pre-order the book:
Lance:
Website | lanceweldy.com
Instagram | @lanceweldy
Peter:
Instagram | @fotocrane
Resources mentioned in the episode:
BJUnity | bjunity.org
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This is a dauntless media collective podcast. VISIT DAUNTLESS DOT FM for more content. Hi, I'm nate, I'm gail and this is full mutuality. Before we get into today's conversation, we want to give a quick shout out and a big thank you to our very first patron. I didn't know if we wanted to name them or not, but you know what I do want to do this, Janis Lagatta, because I am so thankful for her and I really believe that those of you who support us are the producers of this show. Yes, Janis is an incredible content creator herself. She makes music videos, short films and podcasts specifically for those of us who are deconstructing and decolonizing our evangelical beliefs. So if that's you or you want to check out her content, please head over to Janis lagatacom just to see all of her stuff. Janis is a great friend and, speaking of her podcasts, her main ones called God has not given and you know, if you ever want to check out what we're up to, we've had Janis on our podcast, but sometimes we go on other people's podcasts and nate has actually done a few episodes over at Janis's podcast, God is not given. They did one entitled creative theft, about your time at Hillsong, and you guys did another one on being nonway in an evangelical environment. Both of those are really interesting conversation. So I really think everyone needs to go check out the notes. Yes, absolutely, so goes. Subscribe to Genesis podcast. Again, the name is God has not given. You can subscribe on and of course, apple podcast, pocketcast or wherever you get your podcast. So, Janis, thank you again so much for being our first patron and if you like what you hear on our show, you could still become our second patron. Just head on over to Patreon andcom full mutuality to become a partner of our show. So on today's episode we actually have two folks were connected to my Alma Mater, Bob Jones University, Lance weldy and Peter Crane. Lance is the editor of the Book Bju and me, queer voices from the world's most Christian University, and Peter is one of the contributors. Both Lance and Peter Graduated from Undergrad at Bob Jones University. Peter was one of my classmates and we sang in choir together for a couple of years. Their book is a powerful compilation of stories from lgbtq folks who attended the university and it will be available on June fifteen, but you can preorder it now and we'll go ahead and put the links in the show notes so you can pick it up. We've been reading through the book of Queer Stories from Bob Jones University. We found it to be fascinating and we think it's really important, not just for people who are at Bob Jones University, but we know there are queer students in many Christian universities and settings where it might be very difficult. So we know it's important this conversation for people to understand and that there's hope outside of Indoc tradation and if you're in the closet and feel and are not feeling very safe, we just want you to know that there's people you could reach out to. If you want to contact us through our website, full mutualitycom. You could do that if you'd like a list of resources communities that can come alongside and help you in your journey, especially if you're a queer person in a community that's conservative or fundamentalist or an evangelical environment. We want to be a support to this conversation. Even though it's a heavy topic, we think it's an important one. Man, we had a lot of fun, so we hope you enjoy listening along. And without further ADO, here's our conversation with lats and Peters. So I think we'll start off the conversation talking about what Bju is, the way it's actually you could give us a quick little overview of the teacher and all great and and being this, as you like to say, the senior one of us, I am the elder here. Please respect cad all times. I appreciate that. I've been here longer all that good stuff. Yes, you remember the old school be day stuff. Sorry that. Yeah, I'm the twenty century representative here. So, as I tell my stitutions, I guess, but I guess what body what Bju is. I guess. I mean I'm not, you know, religious Historyan by trade. I guess, technically, but I guess, and not of it. I could just say as a it's a small private fundentalist college that's been arouses nineteen twenty seven and has moved around a couple of times and is finally landed. I believe it was in one thousand nine hundred and forty seven, and Greenville, South Carolina has been there ever since and was started by the believe Methodist Evangelist Bob Jones senior and then as the president. And then it's the dynastic kind of a s situation. And so his son and then grandson took over as a university respective presidents, and then his great grandson, Stephen Jones, took over and then had to step down for health issues in two thousand and thirteen and then they have a non Jones president starting in two thousand and fourteen. But it's nondenominational, but you know, it tends to align itself pretty closely to the the fundamentalist Baptist ideology. Yeah, just by claiming that they are nondenominational. Yeah, and those religious historians out there who are listening and and the purest who would love to correct all the stuff I'm getting wrong. Well, throw methodist in there and the you know, the beginning for methodist and I'll say Presbyterian president. Yeah, and I'm a second generation Bob Jones student and when my parents were there in the s late s early s they ornized your Sunday school get together as by denomination and so that was a that was a thing that a lot more students back then. But I think my mom was nondenominational and I think my debt my dad was maybe Baptist or I'm not quite sure, but that is how the saying goes, isn't that how they did it? Course, in our time it was through our society. Are Literary societies least might and my time right. But but yes, it's I think technically it's supposed to be nondenominational. So if you do want to be kind of exotic, you go to that face free Presbyterian church or you go to that Bible Church in greer or whatever. But yeah, what I find out it's so just actually just a point of clarification, though, because I think a lot of a lot of listeners who are familiar with mainstream evangelicalism will hear the phrase nondenominational and and the image of say, and Andy Stanley or appairing noble style church comes to mind. But that's not at all what what Bob Jones University would have even come close to looking like in their version of nondenominational. Right. It's well and again this is probably where my ignores would show up, as like nondenominational is more, I guess, separational. It's a it's not going to be following some sort of pentecostal or evangelical order of events or or things like that, right, or the accouterments up on stage right right. I think. I think, just to kind of paint the picture, one of the things when when we talk about the idea of nondenominational at a place like Bob Jones, it's what you were just saying last that the sort of separatist ideology. They don't want to be affiliated with any of those labels, whereas a nondenominational church, by sort of the mainstream of angelical standards, is one that would welcome you no matter what your previous denominational affiliation is. But we're sort of the new style of church that doesn't have the music standards or dress standards that the other churches might have in your past. So we're nondenominational because we're not like you're, you know, Southern Baptist stylized churches. But so, just to kind of paint the picture for those of you who are listening and our are like who, Bob Jones is not denominational. Yeah, yes, it in a different way, and some of the interesting Bob Jones facts look there, since we're getting into it. I mean from what I understand, Bob Jones is sort of one of those evangelical flagship things organizations. It's a university. It's on the more in the fun eventalist spectrum and if I'm not mistaken, it started as a response to church, to schools integrating and this fear that was being stirred up of Oh my goodness, white kids are going to be going into school black kids. So it was this response to trying to desegregate and having integration, and this was sort of a backlash. Bob Jones was a school where white parents could feel safe. I mean, of course they're going to say that wasn't what it was about, but a lot of white parents were feeling that this was a safe option to send their kids to instead of being pushed to desegregate. And Bob Jones had policies in place way past any other schools that I know, main colleges or universities in the states where they enforce those segregation as mine mentalities and mindset. So you guys want to elaborate on any of those points and I totally off because I'm not. I'm the only non Bob Jones a love. Nay, true, yeah, but yeah, I'll go ahead. Go ahead. Nine are good. Oh, no, and again I think you know religious a story would say it would go. It's going farther back then then the s or the s of the segregation and stuff. What I've been able to piece together in my research so far is that it, you know, it was a response to modernism in the S and Eve evolution being taught as a fact in public schools. And so that's the which is still kind of, I guess you could say a hallmark, but I mean what you're talking about is definitely a part of that as as it was the journey of it, will say. But I believe like the direct reason was as this response to like, oh, they're making us it's evolution, they're making us teach it as a fact in public schools. We got to get out of there. And so began there, and y'all can take over and connect it to Peter. I was going to say the the one thing that I get as far as, like, most people recognizing Bob Jones, when I say, Oh, I went to Bob Jones, and either I get people that have like blank place, blank faces, no clue, or like you can see it on their face, or like Oh, you went to that school, like Bob Jones versus the United States of American Supreme Court case Bob Jones, where they had to go all the way to the Supreme Court about their in regards to their rule against interracial dating, and so the the Bob Jones and race like it's always been a complicated history for the school and that seems that specific issue, I think, is one that a lot of people recognize the school for as far as it's like publicity and what is known for. So I have to like explain why I chose to go to a school that had that role. And I mean it went on for a pretty long time, if I'm not mistaken right. Yeah, only I don't know exact dates. Yeah, I think, if I'm if I'm remembering correctly, it was in the year two thousand that they officially removed the rule, but there were still some vestiges of that rule floating around. For example, I was dating a white girl and apparently, I don't know if this was something that that was like maybe a thing that her, her parents, wanted to adhere to, or if this was something that somebody in her dorm had mentioned. Oh, you're dating somebody WHO's not white. Therefore you need to have a permission slip, although I was never required to get a permission slip signed. Now because you were, you were not the white one. Well, you don't need that's interesting that that the onus was not on you, but on her right, on the white parents to be okay with her dating, and on white perfect. When I will this story, I was like completely blown away that they could get away with doing this. Yeah, anywhere, and and like I was just soun that you actually went through the twenty one century. What Year was sce? Like two thousand and it was. I started there in two thousand and three. I believe might have been two thousand and four, although actually, no, I think it was. It was my first semester there, because after that, anytime I started dating somebody, which I don't know how how we can call it really dating by most most under dating. Is that a whole other can of worms, from what I hear with that until but yeah, I think I would not too close to a girl you're dating right now. Exactly, tally, technically, yeah, yeah, exactly, my baby's with her on the couch. Okay, I gotta explain that phrase. That was my babies. That is that. Don't why? What are you saying? That's that is scandalous. So I don't. I don't know. Peter, did you hear that phrase when you were around? Oh, I maybe, easy. Absolutely, yeah, I would have turned both of Y'all in because that is that is ree that's suggested a very productive stuff. And hold on the tool stuff and and yeah, we had something called cow I'd stairs because we were very lidestairs. We were more cheer rated in the Twenty Century, like twenty century. So, but the ibaby stare, you probably would have gotten in trouble for like if a someone really wanted to be mean to you. But making eyebabies, making babies, getting on. I mean, I'm making that step right now and I'm sanctified as it is and I'm I'm having trouble looking at you guys right now. But God, to explain, because we've used the trace a few times because there was a no contact rule at the university. Six tems. Yeah, dating couples had had to keep physical distance from each other. They weren't never allowed to touch. They would stand. They couldn't hold hands. Right, they can hold hands, they could. Yeah, only in specific scenarios, like dating outings, right, like dating anywhere where the activity actually required for it. Yeah, and hold which they could hold up without activities that require probably, Yep, yeah, exactly. Like right. Yeah, we come up with like specific activity, yes, design, very rare, once a year. Yeah. Yeah. So what happens in these fundamentalist circles where you're not even allowed holding hands except right, once a year under chaperone and specific requirements? So use that you called up standing uncomfortably close to each other and staring into each other's eyes. Were using they could make out with each other. Where you doing this? You do this at the dating parlor. Are you doing this at the Diet where are you doing I said, I hating parlor. All these are teas. Are these are Bob Thing, I say the lander. Yeah, yes, and in Lance's book there will be a glossary. So, yeah, but in I saw some couples doing this, even like out in in the area in front of the snack shot, between the snack shop and the dating parlor, that Little Pavilion area. Yeah, babies outside of the dating parlor. Yeah, it was. And you walk past that and in any other school such weird a would be very weird behavior. You'd be like just go here, dorm, Chee. Yeah, what the Fuck Are you doing together? Not Even? No, no, that's any state school, yes, but like not an even. You couldn't do that at like C crown called will not grow college. What's a seat? College or Seeterville? Oh Yeah, if you are straight and you snuck some one of the opposite sex in your dorm, you get expelled. kind of it. That's ground. That's a more mediate expulsion. I mean there's there's a there's a little opportunity because they're there are people stationed at every floor, at every entry way in the dorm buildings. I'm just wanting to paint the pictures of like, if this is so, we're talking about we're talking about fundamentalism with an evangelicalism and Bob Jones being a fundamentalist school, and we're talking about how, even if you were straight, the rules were really, really tight, very sexually repressed, really stringent, lots of punishments being handed out for the most minor things. And so the topic that we're getting into today and that we're going to be talking about is what is it like to be a queer kids? A Queer kid not even a straight nait was a straight kid, straightway hit straight, although he didn't have the white thing going for him, and that, I like ad that story still still blows my mind. That you had to do a permission slip. And and I won't, we won't get sidetrack to far off there. But like now we're going into if you're not straight, this is this, this is the theme of the book that you've put together. This is your story, Peter, this is your story, Lens. You guys have how we're queer students in Bob Jones. So I know who we going to start with, unraveling, telling your story. How do you we're talking about like how you know guys and girls are or allowed to hold hands or you know they're touch in any way. And then, and I was thinking, meanwhile, you know, like I'm giving guys back rubs in the dorms, and I was reading that in your chapter of your book. Yeah, exactly your story. Well, the back rubs and you know, and about you having a crush on so many boys. I was reading that I was like, neat was like the straight version of you, like he crushes on every he always crushing on all the girls, like you'll often say to me, Oh that will watch TV's. I had a crush, such a big crush on I'm like, you want to crush on everyone. Yeah, like you. So you're the Queer version of need. Lots of from what I was reading in your chapter. Yeah, a lot of digressions. I've been learning a lot about myself since coming out and since my days at Bob Jones, and learning about my capacity to love is been one of those things, and my my capacity for just finding connection with people and being able to embrace that about myself and not be ashamed about it. Just an example of one of those things that I've learned, you know, since my time at Bob Jones versus you know what I was, what I was taught when I was younger and what I learned about myself now. Yeah, yeah, tell that to your hall leader about capacity to love. Peter, I don't think it's backups, and that's brotherly love, but no, no, you can't do that. They were. They were Ra's by the time, by the time Peter and I were there. Are a resident assistant? Yeah, are these the police of your school? They were. They were students depending underground. Aur Is, I think, more of a sexualized term than they've that I put coopted. Probably I mean a little bit. I mean the history and that was that's part of the glossary to because that the name is has changed in our my time, back in the twenty, late twenty or century, when there was a Saxophonishan in the White House, it was for your school spies, weren't they? What that school spies? We well, everybody was. Yeah, pretention, yes, yeah, you had to be like a spy, but we called our all leader. Yeah, the other ones that are level spies, right, oh, pro level spies, right, the ones that got extra points for being like they're the big shot. They were the ones who were officially given a title by the University to spy on us. It was her job. They were giving up as spies, that they were given this position of leadership over their fellow students, yester, and I think that's important to understand in terms of culture. Of Bob Jones because there's a level of fear, like their shame. There's fear as rules, but there's like this just culture of not being allowed to do anything without getting in trouble, of feeling like people are going to turn you in. That's like a that's a regular kind of vibe going on in the background of Bob Jones. Rightly, it's you get, I mean nate has trauma. I mean I think you're part of a group called the discipline committee online. Yeah, I'm part of a yes, there's a there's a chat group that former a former professor at Bob Jones actually started this group and got together a handful of bju survivors. So the title, Yes, it's it's sort of just that, making fun of the fact that that's that was traumatizing. Yeah, right, like this is goody, like that was a part of Bob Jones. So yeah, they they named it the discipline committee as a nod to the discipline committee at Bju, which was, you know, to explain it a little bit, if you ever broke any of the rules at mostly lower level in fractions, because bigger in fractions you would go directly to the dean. But if you had a girl in your dorm. Oh, that's yeah, you'd be gone, you'd be done. That dared. Yeah, that's not. It's the low level in fraction. Is Is. Your hair is not parted. Writers, your hair is isn't isn't cut short enough. As as a guy, you haven't shaved that day, you didn't make your bed. I'll get in trouble for these things, each of you. Yeah, you are good less. There were a few, a few days that I did not into the trash like I was supposed to. Oh, you don't clean your room. Yeah, that's what that worst thing. You got in trouble for it. Bob Jones, Um, I think you went were worst holding fracture. What's the biggest thing you got de merits for? Like in one Chil, in one chunk the what made you feel the most threatened that you might get kicked out of it? There were a couple instances actually. One was related to music. I was in charge of music for my societies. Like we had a Bible study dating outing, which was a terrible idea, but we got together with our sister society. Thought of that? I don't know. We got together with our sister society and we planned this little almost like a camp fire. I guess in the mainstream evangelical world you call it like a worship night. We we played like a campfire, singspiration as they would, as some fundamentalist churches would call it, and I was in charge of putting together the the music for it, and one of the song wait, you played a rock song at this know what well, one of the songs that it was something really vile. Use Boys, was above all by Michael W Smila, who blasphemous, and that was that was fifty two merrits, I believed. How did you think you're going to get away with it? Because you're doing this in front of an audience of people. You thought none of them would recognize this song? I'm not grilling, I'm just very curious about your thought pattern from five o long ago, whenny something in that exactly. So I honestly there was a part of me that was like, I don't care, I it was my junior year at this point and I was at I was. I had already crossed that threshold of Yeah, I don't give a shit anymore and I'm going to this song, as I was still wanting to be a devout Christian and this song gave me all the Christian feels. So I so I chose it and and a lot of Harible, bad, bad, but bad. They loved it. This was my thought. If anybody knew who knew, anyone who knew what that song was, knew the artist who wrote it, wouldn't turn me in because they would feel the same way about that song that I did. And the people who would want to turn me in for something like that aren't the type of people who would listen to that music anyway. Yeah, that is my fire. That would fly on. That's smart. No, I U should work. I'M gonna say there was a bunch of US listening to that kind of stuff anyway. But yeah, it's so funny for me, as an evangelical, former Evangelical, to think that the contraband music and your schools, Michael, like I, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around getting in trouble for playing a Michael W Smith Worship Song. You know it. It's so wild. It's so a Christian contiffrey music. It would be anything that is non separatists. It's the sounding like the world. So anything from Sandy Patty to Michael to be Smith, to Stephen Curtis Chapman, Steve Green, whoever in the S. yeah, would not check because or Carmen or whoever, because they're going to have a beat to their song, they're going to have something and it's reminiscent or it's going to make it's part. It sounds like the worldly secular music. Slippery, slow, you know, and start listening to Michael Dobbes Smith and then next thing you know, you're listening to you'll be a crossover artist like amy grant, yes, I got her, and you'll become day and wait. Well, on topic. Next thing you're doing a collaboration with Elton John. Yes, but I will say art. My dorm supervisor tried to like always say this one stick about, like okay, you people, because everyone, all the cool kids, had a guitar. I didn't have one. Obviously they all do. All the cool kids would have a guitar and you could play it like after quiet hour in your dorm and all that sort of stuff. Like there's the does are the cool style, only well, and he is like, you know what, people try to get past me and they'll play like it a classical style, like stairway to heaven or something, but I had all the time. I'm onto them. I know, like. So, you know, he's like to like, how do you know all the secular music? I don't know that song. What are you talking about? And I really didn't. But that's a different story. But yeah, that's how I learned those, those songs, that they sounded. They said, like. I mean, look, you know my feelings on this band currently notwithstanding, I learned some of the intro rifts to a few of creed songs because on an acoustic guitar they sound classical. Trying to get around those Bob Jones rules already. Yeah, we find ways. Yes, I wanted to get back to your stories and we got into like just how the culture was a fear and punishment and you know, you know, you could get in trouble for so many different things. Peter, we're at which point did you realize that you were gay and you're in a you went grew up in a fundamentalist school. Yeah, so I grew up at a school, baptist, independent fundamentalist Baptist school up in Vermont, but it was it was very connected to Bob Jones. Again, read about it in Lance's book Um and I carry, you know. I that's where a lot of the culture of Bob James was kind of like put into me as a young child, you know, from a very young age. As far as like me knowing when I was gay, it's kind of that's an interesting question because it kind of comes in stages as far as far as like self realization goes, and and then shame plays a huge role in that and like what you allow yourself to even realize about yourself. When I first knew that I was a like attracted to two men, was pretty young, you know, like five years old. A little bit later. It's like you you realize pretty young when you know you're different from the other kids as far as like what you're drawn to. Again, at five, though, you know, like you're not thinking and complete adult terms around it, you know, but it's you know that there's something different about you and so you immediately start to recognize this difference and you're not sure how what to call it and at that age or anything. But then progressively, as I grew up in that environment, there were things that I would do and I would learn quite quickly which things were okay in which things weren't okay as far as behavior, as far as like how I express myself toward other boys and girls, you know, like what's okay what isn't, and realizing, Oh, this is one of those things that's part of this part of myself that I can't let people see because I'm different in a way that will, you know, I'll people won't, you know, respond positively to it. And so that again, that's where you start creating this deep seated urge to just make everybody happy around you so that you don't Rock, you know, rock the waters as a little queer kid. You know, I don't know. I think that answered your question. I think it's sort of events answers it. So it's like young, but it's maybe didn't have words and you're just kind of observing. Yeah, and different things. Yeah, was there any conversations about gay people that went on that sort of where you were able to be like, that's me and they're talking in a certain way about it and now I know there that's how they're going to respond to me. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, the you start to learn, oh, this person do we don't talk about this person. They're they're gay or whatever. We don't, we don't, and and understanding what that meant and hearing Oh, so and so, you know, he's he's gay, he does things with men. You know, Oh, we you know. And then and again. This is in the in the book, I talk about my experience growing up in Vermont during the gay marriage debates that happened in the late s and that was really when I was like full force, you know, like middle school or fully coming into mine, like sexuality and understanding what it meant to really be attracted to men and having to process all of that. Wow, my my pastor is preaching on a pretty regular basis, like condemning homosexuality, because it's in the news all the time. Like we're at there having debates on do we let gay people get married and have the same benefits as a heterosexual couple, and does that mean for society? And you know how, because again, like this is this wasn't just religious people talking about it. Everybody was talking about it. Like how do we, how do we deal with this? Because, like, a lot of people had gotten to the place where they did have gay people that they loved and wanted to see, you know, happy and that living fulfilled. Lives and accessing the same benefits as their heterosexual friends and family, and the culture that I was growing up in, a trinity, was very much this is going to be really bad. God has a lot to say about being gay and I'm going to tell you every single bit of it and why we can't allow this to happen. Meanwhile, I'm like, you know, discovering gay porn on the Internet and having to deal with those feelings and like praying every day that I could change it, because I know, I knew it was bad that, you know, my pastor been preaching it, you know, on a regular basis and like, yeah, I love how you said in your in your chapter about how this happens a lot. But we're how the how the adult inadvertently tells the kid how how to do the thing by telling them not to do the thing. Yeah, so he was some of traveling evangelist was at your church telling the telling you how to clear your brows as something. Yeah, well, he, like me, you are thinking, came and he came in and had this whole like presentation, was like a weeklong thing, and he was presenting like to the parents, like you need to. The Internet is a dangerous place for your kids. They're going to be exposed to all this stuff. And he wasn't wrong. I mean there's up on the Internet to for kids to be exposed to. But the problem was they let us in, like the sermons that he was pretty like these things, and like I'm literally sitting there like, oh, cookies, okay, browsing history, got it, you know me, and like it's okay, like, how helpful was that? But for his goal it was very helpful for me. But although, you know, died when I was discovering the Internet, dial of Internet was a thing, and so I was waiting like, you know, half an hour for a picture to load. Right, so there wasn't like a vast quantity of things I was consuming at this prace, but you were at I was odds with your family, though. To Peter, you are in your chapter that this is happening and meanwhile your brother's writing a letter to the editor or reading it, you know, your dad, your brother. I'm getting that visual image that you sort of create. Yeah, my might was so the they had basically a public forum kind of scenario where people could come to the state capital and they could talk about personally what it means to them. Marriage quality happening in Vermont, and so you had people from both sides doing it and it was it was being aired live on PBS, like the local, you know, public television. And Yeah, my dad decided to go down and my brother was like, Oh, I'll write you know a thing about why, you know, we can't allow gay marriage to happen, because, you know, he had been convinced that if, if gay married would be allowed, that gay marriage was happening in Vermont, then all these gay people would come into Vermont, like, basically, Vermont would become the gay state, taken over. Very clear. So these not looking back on. I'm like, Oh, that would have been a great thing. But how old was your brother at that time? This was late so he was in high school at the time. He was getting he graduated in two thousand. So yeahs riter, you know up, you know, sophomore, junior, that age range. Okay, so he's kind of parting the stuff he's been taught all around him. Let me we not realizing he has a queer brother. Yeah, exactly. You know, he's he's being raised to believe a certain thing about people and he has not been given in for Mary information contrary to that. So he's just operating a what he knows. So again, don't listen to hold it against him for will. Now we all said it did terrible exactly in our teen years. Were were like please, I'm glad no one record. I'm glad we have the Internet that you're growing as n yeah, I don't even. Oh, yeah, I have facebook to remind me and stuff, but that is up ten years ago and I'm like, Oh, this is bad, exactly, really bad. Seeing my seeing my dad on TV reading this thing about, you know, what my brother wrote about how bad it would be for gay people, and then also knowing now that my uncle, my dad's older brother, who is gay, was at the capital at the same time, you know, while he was reading this and because it was really important to my uncle to you know, wait, note about your uncle. Did that factor into your story at all? Learn about him? Did you know he was gay? Not, not until recently, like around that same time, is when I found out. We were in the car. Remember my brother, you know, saying something, you know, about gay people, and then my mom deciding at that moment to be like, you really shouldn't say that about gay people because your uncle John is is gay, and do you really want that to happen to your Uncle John? Wow, so you heard your mom defending your yes, uncle you didn't even know was gay. And yes, she was talking about the way that. I mean as family you should be talking about. Yeah, but your own family. Looking looking back on it now, you know absolutely should have not he was gay. You know, there's so many, so many obvious signs as far as like, especially being his friend David, that came to every family function. You know, really good friend. Yeah, really good friend. He is always, always coming to the family gatherings. That's cool. Did you know at that point that you really needed to have a conversation with your uncle, like, was it one of those moments where like somebody I could finally open up to? Or I wasn't going? I wasn't quite ready then I to acknowledge it. Yeah, I mean, I spoiler alert. I didn't come out till I was twenty five, which was a lot longer at you know, I was after Bob Jones. It was a few years into working at the US and it really wasn't until my uncle actually read John, reached out to me and started to develop a relationship with with myself, he and my cousin kind of they skim and scheming because they knew how they both knew I was gay from, you know, just interacting with me at family events and stuff. They're like, okay, how do we how do we get people to Peter to join our little group and help him realize that he needs to come out and stop pretending to be something he is an, you know, basically, you know, rescue and rescue me from fundamentalism. And they did. Yeah, they were able to build that relationship and you funnily enough, it happened over over knitting. I had I picked up knitting on my own as like a hobby to do on the side, and my uncle and cousin were both happen to also be into knitting, completely separate of that, and they both pick they both kind of reached out to me like hey, let's go to this knitting this knitting yard store down and Massachusetts and, you know, have lunch and you know. So it started spending more time with them, going to these things, going my uncle's looked about an hour and a half for me appear in Vermont and so I'll go go down and visit, you know, spend time with them and then later after it was while I was living down in South Carolina, but I was still coming home pretty frequently to visit family. Out I spent I went over. It was a few day trip to their place in Provincetown, Massachusetts. I don't know if you were familiar with that town at all. It's a pretty gay place, Super Gay, it's super dead. There's a lot of they, there's more gay people's what you were afraid Vermont would turn in. Exactly exactly it's lover could have been. But yeah, so it was. It was one I kind of I've been spending time with them and really seeing them as, you know, a couple that loved each other, supported each other and gave each other the space to be who they were, in the same way that my parents had done. You know, my parents modeled that as well for each other. But fundamental isn't happen to work for them, you know. But and being and your taught and fundamentalism't that? That's how straight couples are. They're going to be healthy. Yeah, following the Lord. Yeah, definitely not a game company a gay couple. Yeah, exactly. It's functional and healthy and lovely exactly. Yeah, because I've been I've been raised to believe that these are people living for purely for self pleasure and, you know, no consideration for anyone else and not like having don't have any morals, you know, and then seeing my uncle and his husband living fulfilled lives where they did have morals, they had, you know, things that they, you know, had structured their lives around and really at things that they believed in and that they love each other and support each other and that that kind of life was possible, you know, was it was pretty eye opening. And it was. It was after my first trip to provincetown where I saw that on a whole, like town wide, they you know, scale, where I saw gay couples everywhere living out. Saw a community that felt safe. Yeah, I did. I was like, Oh, this is this is different. You know, maybe, maybe, maybe I can stop trying to hold onto this idea, you know, that I'd been clinging to for so long, which was that I could somehow fit in to the culture at Bob Jones and fit into this world that I was clearly not fitting into. So that time that you spent what your uncle's you were already at Bob Jones. While that was happening, you were with it. You are. I was on staff at Bju Press. Yeah, wow, so you kind of knew before you'd come out. You known since you're young that you didn't fit, that you were not straight, but you were trying to like fight against that. Then you choose to go to Bob Jones, which a probably shocks the whole bunch of people, right, and let's kind of a theme in your book is like, yeah, there's a lot of queer kids that choose to go to Bob Jones for many different reasons, any different. And you're still hoping, I guess, that you could fit into the being straight or being perceived that way, or that I'll change or something's going to work and and it's not working right, like it's and it's causing you to to live a double life. or how how did that affect you? I mean it's I had. I had had a grid one girlfriend, like right at the end of Bob like my time as a student at Bob Jones, and the it didn't yeah, I just didn't work. I tried really hard. Imagine that. Yeah, you know the the you're good enough Christian and you obey God it's all gonna just hard, and you know, I'm a lot of mixed feelings around that too. Is Because, like what I put her through, you know, trying to make this relationship work with desires that weren't there and and you know, making her probably wonder what was wrong with her, you know, like what's going on here, you know, and finally being able to just say, you know, enough is enough, this is not working for me, and forging a new path. But it wasn't even even after that, like breaking up with her wasn't a big enough push. I don't I could get I don't know. I could look back and give you a thousand reasons why it took me as long as it did. But, you know, I feel like everything happens, you know, in their own time, when it when they're supposed to happen, and the moment that I finally did like say the words out loud to another human being, it was it was one of those things where like in my mind, you know, like the stars are aligning and like this is truth, you know, this is this is something that I have been avoiding for so long, but this is actually true and I need to honor it and I need to go forward with this truth in mind and stop being ashamed of it. Did you resign from being on staff at Bob Johns before you came out? That go the other way around? How did that? When I came out publicly, I had, I quit. I res I had resigned from Bob Jones. I had started to I had told a few my telling when I told my cousin, that was still about a year, about a year before I fully, almost two years before I left Bob Jones complete, letely and all times dress. It was a lot of schools. Why did you say to somebody that you're gay and you're working at like, if anyone at Bob Jones knows, you're gone, you're fired. Yeah, your job. Yeah, yeah, pressure on you for two years, basically. Yeah, be super careful. Yeah, right. Yeah, and it was it was more of a it was more of a, you know, the beginning of a journey for me and like I knew that there would come a time when I would need to separate and and move on, but I had, you know, I'd be I had kind of built a family there about at Bgu Press, where I was working, and I wasn't quite ready to let go of that immediately and I liked the job that I had and it was I was still processing what it meant for me to be a Christian and gay and and what I actually believed about, you know, my what my how my faith factored into me working there, what I really believe, you know, as there were still a lot for me to process and go through. And again, you know, I had to move at whatever pace was right for me and I it wasn't easy, but it was something that would the whole process was, it's been, and still remains to be, very, I don't know, fulfilling. It's been like every every new level that I unlock, like truth, unlock about myself and learn about myself, like Oh, I have this whole level of power that I didn't know I had access to. I I can, you know, shed the shame around this that I've been holling onto. For whatever reason, you know, it's been locked away. One of the themes in your in your story, Peter, is that idea of shame and breaking free from shame, and I think that's that's something that I mean you, Gael, would would recognize crops up in in my life as well, given the theme. I mean, I the the fundamentalist church that I grew up in would have, I guess, called themselves like a four point calvinist. They didn't feel comfortable with the limited atonement, but total depravity was very much a part of how they saw faith and and and the Gospel. And so I find, I found that, as I was reading through your story, incredibly relatable, that that idea of shame breaking free from it. And then, as you were mentioning, it's still something that sort of POPs up even even today. And, like you know, I'm, Gosh, like over ten years removed from from Bob Jo almost almost fifteen years removed from from my time at Bob Jones, and and still I feel shame popping up in various areas. Ye, could you talk a little bit more about that and your relationship to shame now and maybe even thoughts about like, if you feel so inclined to share some some of how you might maybe walk alongside somebody who is struggling with or fighting shame in their own life? Yeah, you know, I was love to plug Brenn a brown. I don't know if you've heard of her and her work around. Yeah, if you haven't, checked her out, she's got a special in Netflix, super accessible. She's you know, the shame is a great it's a powerful tool for change and for behavior control and fundamentalism is not, you know, a novice and using shame as that tool of control. And so, you know, Queer, Queer people in general, you know Lance, you can attest to this. You know, we we get taught the lesson very young, as far as you know, having that shame put on us. And Yeah, I you know, shedding it is it's a hard it's a hard process, but it's extremely liberating it. Sorry, take the crime deep yeah, I hear. Yeah, I mean it's from from me and I guess the relationship with shame for me is a little a little different, quantifiably so, given the fact that I didn't have, you know, I wasn't living a good chunk of my life in in in that kind of a closet. But there is still this sense, I don't know, I like any time I I make any kind of mistake, there is this feeling that that is my nature. Yeah, and that's like that is who I am at my core, fundamentally, and I spiral into this place of shame. Yeah, and I find actually interestingly enough, speaking of Netflix, I don't know if you've if you've seen that that cartoon show big mouth about house, like, how is it going to make this connection to big mouth of all things? But I think I know we're going with the hormone monster near and yeah, yeah, and there was the shit, the character that personifies shame. And Yeah, how, how you can have it was. It was such an incredible lesson about how shame can paralyze you. And and also what I've found is that, and maybe kind of speaking of my own journeys, that I'm never really rid of it. I might have found a general sense of, to borrow Christian parlance, victory. Sorry, I think. Sorry, I wasn't ready for that good. If I were unpack it, I would say you have a self awareness and you have had you have an inductual knowledge of what's going on, yes, and who you are, but that doesn't always prevent the feelings that will emerge. You know, like in your head, you could know that this is what shame is and this is how it makes you feel, and you can understand that you were fine and that that's shame lies to you or makes you feel something's wrong with you. But it doesn't take away always the strength and power in those moments where you do something you're embarrassed about or that you regret from, having the flooding thoughts just rush up to you. And you know, the head stuff is not always accessible in those moments. Right. Yeah, your body's talking a lot and it's hard to hear anything else over that. And because that's the Resili those shame responses are very like body eccentric as far as the hormones that get flooded into your body and you know you're going into like fight or flight and you don't have to do with it. And Yeah, it's like the internalized thing. And I'm trying to see your connections with what Peter Saying and what they's saying about the shame and how there is a lot of overlapp or crossover of I was trying to figure out. Listen for some examples of what nate, you were talking about with feeling like if you've done something, it doesn't have to be super egregious, but as long as you've sort of connect that with what you've been trained to feel like is your total depravity or the you know, the horribleness of the the broken man to sinful man and just feel like I'm never going to get your victory over that. But I think like, even with Peter Being a super progressive and in affirming state of mind right now, that it could always creep back up. And I I like to think of it. who was that one person in your life who could wield that sympathy from you to make you sort of, sort of think about going back to that former life? WHO, if they knocked on your door right now or called on you in the most melodramatic soap opera way with the que the music and everything? Nate, would you please just come back to the fundamentalist church? I really feel God told me this and like, for me, I'm doing it like in a mom voice or something great. There's like a there's like a Ron Hamilton born to die. I could could Christmas Cantata. That's where I'm drawing it from. Where, Oh, chip, you just I have cancer and please come back to church. And so it's like, Oh, Peter, if if you could just try not to be getting go to counseling for me, you know, like who is that? Like is there one? Is there one person who touched your life? Aliver or not alive still, who could do that to you? And I think that's why it makes sense to me. Of like it's never fully going, a hundred percent go away, whether the fun fundamentalist part of that shame or whatever you want to name that thing that if we've grown up with it and internalized it for decades, you can't shut that off and I don't know if it will ever fully be shut off. Like you said, Gail, there their apparatus hes or awarenesses or things that you can use to combat those things or rebut those things in eternal monolog or what our dialog. But yeah, the shame of like, okay, yeah, feter, you're a well adjusted man and you're no one is going to take your, you know, livelihood away, or your didn't be away, but there's still something there. And Yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah, I mean it's in those moments when the shame hits. Now, you know, I instead of you know in the past, where I may have just shut down, retreated, you know, pull back, don't think about those things. It's you know, it's not worth the trouble. Now I have now I take the two track. Okay, this I'm feeling a weird way about this. Let's investigate it, let's let's try to write down, you know, how I am I feeling about this. What is what it? What is it actually that I am feeling in this moment? Maybe let's examine why I might be feeling those things. Is, you know, being able to take that track and like really investigate it in a objective way versus making it subjective, you know, internalizing it is is the way that I've been able to move through a lot of that shame and being able to take those things and be like, is this actually bad for me? Is it? Was it just something that I was, you know, raised to internalize that it is bad? I think that's hard to to do and and I admire people who have been able to do that and still hold onto their idea of God in some way, shape or form. I find I don't know if this has been York sperience and Peter, but having to kind of rid myself of a lot of the the tenets of my faith have been instrumental in in helping me sort of overcome those feelings or, even better, analyze those feelings for what they are. And and I think it's a powerful thing when you know, the God who who supposedly created the entire universe is the one who is dictating how you're supposed to what you're supposed to believe about yourself, and therefore, if you're not meeting those particular standards, it's it. It all like it, it all kind of kind of gets, you know, piled up in those in those thoughts, those feelings, those emotions, and and why? I think shame coupled with fear right, because this is this is a powerful deity that we're talking about. I don't know, I don't know if Peter, what what is your relationship with your faith been since since coming out and and kind of working through your identity in this way? Yeah, you know, you're not. You're wrong, you know, like a lot of it has been just letting go a lot of a lot of that and realizing that my faith, maybe it wasn't as important to me, you know, as I had initially thought, and that a lot of it was the community that I was a part of and believing that I needed to embrace this faith to be part of the community that I was a part of, because what is important to me is community, it's that connection with other human beings, it's it's celebrating life with people that I choose to have around me. It's it's that's where that magic is found. That's where I have those spiritual moments. Now, I kind of I investigated where that those that spiritual connection that I had with my faith was like, and I found it in the connection with other people. I found it in for you know, like, I don't want to get super graphic, but like I found it in the sex. I found it in in love. I found it in choosing family, you know, over over living with, you know, your family that you were given or received or, you know, we're born into you get as a that's a major recurring thing that you'll find with a lot of queer people, is chosen family and having to build, you know, a support system of your own, because, though, want the one that you were born with. Just is it up to the task? Yeah, and learning that so much of you know what I what I got out of the faith that I was raised and really was just in that sense of being connected with other people and having a space to call my own and a space that loved me for who I was. Yeah, how powerful. Like it's interesting too, and you're talking earlier in your story, but what kept you? You know where you were, why I couldn't just come out and why you stayed where you were and what it meant to you. The thing that hit me was that sense of community, the eve lots of people around you who you loved and cared about, and I think you know that, that need for connection with other people. It's such a powerful and important key point of how hard this all is and how painful this all is is that you to lose the people that you love, who feel like family to you. Is, it can't be underestimated on how difficult than that. I mean, I didn't, I never, never went through that specific experience from back. I'm straight, but definitely, you know, leaving my evangelical community behind, as my face shift as I went through a divorce, all of that was jarring. It was very jarring. It was jarring when, like, that's who I identified with and I the sad part, as I thought they were my chosen family because I was told, like you know, I grew up as a foster kid and like you're like, well, this is the family that will never leave you because they're your heavenly family. Guys, are united by that love of God and then like, if that comes apart, it's so startling because you were you thought there was a security there, yeah, that this was deeper than just blood, you know, this was like spiritual connection, you know. But the other thing in your story that really touched me, Peter, was when you were talking about the values that stuck with stuck with you even as you exited a lot of your previous stuff. Was Love, and that just love being a thread of your life in the meaning that you have now, and you're talking about your chosen community and being around people who accept you for who you are, and I just think that's so powerful and so beautiful. Yeah, and I enjoyed reading your story. I really encourage yeah, you know, I mean the biggest, the biggest obstacle and like challenge in my coming out process was learning how to love myself first, because I had, you know, is as far as like growing up in fundamentalism. You know, you I care about my community and I love my community. So I poured everything into making sure the people around me were happy and I was putting on this this front as of someone that fit in to this community, like look, I'm one of you, I'm going to. I'm part of this group. I can play the rules, you know I I can do it. I can do what's necessary to be accepted here. And that's and that's the danger where shame comes in as a tool, because the reason why shame is so powerful is is shame is knowing that if you continue with this behavior, you will not be part of your community, you will not have access to your community, you will not have the support of your community. And that's where it shame does as warns you, Hey, you better stop this or else you won't have that. And that's why it's so powerful as a tool for behavior modification. You know, it's not necessarily a good tool, but it's a powerful one. Yeah, and being able to to recognize that and say no, I don't need to be ashamed of this, like I can. I can learn a new way, I can learn, I can build a I can find a community that does support me and love me for who I am and find, you know, a different path forward. Yeah, I love thank you and I hope that gives inspiration and hope two kids that for maybe at Bob Jones and gay and listening to this, I don't know, sneakily I don't get in trouble because they don't know who to talk to you about things, but to listen in to hear your story, Peter, that there's hope and of how your journey is taking into such a healthy place right now, that that really fits with who you are. Thank you. I know that when you share a story and you're vulnerable, those are the moments that, even when you're confident and where you're at, and I know you even wrote when you're writing the book and the chapter, that those feelings came back even as you're writing, which was cooled by the way that you wrote it up pride, you were saying it. Pride, pride month was when you finished your your chapter. But you're sharing with us and I just I want to say thank you, want to thank you for your vulnerability, thank you for sharing your story and I really believe that that's powerful and that's going to help other people. And, yeah, and I value and appreciate you sharing. Thank you very much. I appreciate what you too are doing with this podcast. I think it's really important work. I'm happy to be able to be part of it be included. So it's an honor and thank you for bearing with my brain farts, like when I start to think too much about the fact that I'm on a podcast, my brain just shuts down. I don't know what to say. The Chapel Probation podcasts takes a critical look at evangelical colleges and universities, focusing initially on a Zoosa Pacific University where I taught English for fifteen years. I'm Scott Okamoto and I'm writing a book about how I'd deconstructed from faith completely while at Apu. This podcast, though, is my tribute to the students and other faculty who survived Evangelical Higher Education. They faced ridiculous racism, sexism, anti lgbtq hatred and all manner of bigotry, from the heartless evils of the Prosperity Gospel to the destructive pseudo theology of purity culture. The stories will break your heart, but they will also inspire. These people faced bigotry and fought back in a weird kind of sick way. We went through some street but we formed identities and we formed communities through it all. I hope you will join us. We live in an era of unprecedented access to information, news and media, but what happens when all that information leads you to suddenly realize you spent the majority of Your Childhood in occult? Well, we can tell you. Join me, Jessica, go forth than Kathleen Reynolds, as we take you into the world of cult recovery after all the emotional, psychological, financial and sexual abuse we experienced as part of Bill Gothard's advanced training institute. On our podcast called leaving the village, we talk candidly about our journey out and interview other survivors whose experiences boggle your mind. As scandals continue to rock the twisted world of IBLP, subscribe to leaving the village today so you don't miss a single episode. Okay, Lance I love how you kick off your chapter because it's so for for the average Christian reading that passage. Oh it brings so much comfort, but when you think about, I mean you even the title of your chapter, surveillance, control and rumors, and then you think about how a place like Bob Jones University functions. So you kick it off with Psalm one hundred and thirty nine, seven through ten, and I'll read it in the NRSV because our listeners aren't all super familiar with the authorized version, allow it time reading Bible on our podcast. We have not done this this week. Ada. This is where we should add the content warning Bible, Bible versus being read. This is this is a reality and, and I really mean this sincerely, like religious trauma is so real, though. Absolutely Bible out loud is so triggering. That's every yeah, be so difficult for someone who's gone through religious yeah, have the Bible read so like just like you need a warning for suicidal content if you're having people have come from a religious trauma. Yeah, I think we need and it sounds funny, but it's really I just want people don't realize it's still it's had that kind of a level of visor roll. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, often often find myself skipping over Bible passages in like if I read somebody's blog posts and they're, you know, even somebody who I'm sympathetic with their story or their their ideas that they're trying to get across, if they quote scripture, I'll skip past it. I know they're going to get into into what what they're talking about in the paragraphs following, but I well, I find guess for not going to do responsive reading, then don't need to go back right. Yeah, I was, I had my heart set up. Okay, go ahead, I want this, nate, and I go to a liturgical church now, main mainline, and they do responsive readings, but it's different. But it's funny that that's a reality of our sentiation. I grew up in a church like that. Is a blessing, weird blessing. It's weird, but go ahead. What I find very fat fascinating about the passage that you chose here is that it is just that for somebody who is still steeped in Christianity, this, this passage brings so much comfort. But first for those of us who have either left our evangelical faith or I've left Christianity altogether, this passage can bring a lot of a lot of those emotions that we were just talking about in Peter Story. So so the passage one psalm, one hundred and thirty nine seven through ten reads. Where can I go from your spirit or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you were there. If I make my bed in shale, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest midst of the sea. Even there, your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me fast. Your chapter give that passage another dimension that I hadn't really made that association, but even remembering my own experience at Bob Jones, that those feelings were very much there. So your chapter, like I mentioned a minute ago, is titled Surveillance, control and rumors, and if you couple it with that first I think it gives us a sense of what we're what we're walking into with your stories. Could you share a little bit and like maybe elaborate on what your thoughts were and in incorporating a passage only that right and and and that passage is part of like that whole first part one, so all the stories there. I divided the the nineteen stories, so peters in in a section. So I trying to figure out way. I got some good suggestions about how to compile these stories, and so what I did was thematically put the first five stories under this surveillance, control and rumors, since that's the first part. Then the second part is just two stories other institutions, and the third part, if with intersections and Peters in the first part with family guilt and shame. The last is about religious and spiritual people who still identify that way. So I thought, okay, the these five people I'm going to there's a lot of connect or a thematic connection, with this idea of surveillance and rumors and control, which I think of. We're all honest, you know, when Peter's been describing it at the very beginning of this podcast, and you that's one of the hallmark reputational things that we take away from Bob Jones is the rules and the fear about what happens if you're caught breaking those rules. And you know a lot of people, I'm sure from have thought this way about the the surveillance aspect of it, with being watched and acting as though you're being watched the whole time. So I thought, okay, why don't we go down that road? And and so a lot of the stories that are in this this first part, have that same kind of factor of people who have friends who are the concerned friends. I'm using air quotes there to show concern in a fundamentalist sense, meaning high it in the same way that if anyone's been in any kind of church that gives public prerequests on a Wednesday night or whatever. It's about. It's about spreading and sharing gossip or whatever. Right. So thanks. I just had it on my heart and I live in a part of South Carolina I didn't even really know existed until I came over here, and I'm happy to be here, but I lived in the upstate in Greenville, and there's a whole nother decided state I never got to. I didn't go to Myrtle Beach, I was never allowed to leave campus and stuff like that. But one of the thing thing that I love this very southern regional at least here, is that someone can say anything they want to you and say it's from the heart. Now, I've heard the blush your heart thing and everything, but the from the heart is is is a blessing. Like Kayl I just need to tell you that. You know when you do that, it's your dress is not matching your socks. I'm telling you that just from the heart, though, just the heart. It's under the blood if you do that from the heart. But the only part of South Carolina I've ever been to is Myrtle beats, of course, of course. And Yeah, I live about an hour away from Myrtle beach, so I don't even get to go there often, but it yeah, I like it. I don't have a problem with it. But where are we going with that? With who want your book, though? I can, I think, a quick moment. So we're you. We're going to get to your book, just your I want to out later ask you about you know, what inspired you and how that came about as a project, but one of so we've already started talking about your book and how the chapters are divided up your you're a chapter in your own book. You've shared your story as well. Yes, other stories, yes, and and surveillance, and we all know. We all of us knew what we were getting into when we're going there, and so we all willingly went there. And and so I think that's something that I went. I did a summer school stint there. I was it's the only place I really wanted to go. I was excited to go there. There's quite a few people in this book who will literally wanted to go there and have mixed it's also a mixed kind of feelings of how do I talk about this now when I have all of these great college memories that are also entangled with the these other not so great college memories. And so for me, because my story ended up being on the receiving the the the negative end of a surveillance, of being turned in and being kicked out, I thought, well, why don't I start with that, because as a deditate, dedicated student, that Psalm one hundred and thirty nine is something that I remember us again having to memorize and and being, you know, grated on that. And so, yeah, it's like it felt good when you were in an all of us, I think the first first month, first semester, we were there. I mean you went to the dark side when you're a junior year and eate, I think are you were like had enough or something, and Peter you probably. I mean we're all earnest at still, still, a certain point, or whatever that is, and we were all at the sun is Shining, God is watching us and we are we're going to have a good time of we are safe in the everlasting arms of God and all that sort of stuff. But there's also there's also a dark side to that, to a sinister side to that, and you know, it starts happen. It could happen to I'm sure both Peter and nate could talk about how they'd heard this happening to other people, people disappearing, people leaving under we are fast, quick circumstances and not knowing really the hundred percent truth, but knowing hearing the story from other people, and so I thought that's where I'm cut, that's where I'm going to go with this story. Is, you know, preface it with this surveillance and the control which the university wants as well, and how the rumors can make people's lives miserable. Can can peep? Can't keep everyone on edge and keep people sober, sober minded and vigilant that, you know, if the wrong person heard what I just said, if the wrong person said baby, I babies, or whatever you said, then use that term right, then that could go things could go bad, really cooltly. Right last when you went into Bob Jones, were you you were aware that you were gay at the time, or did you not have language for it, or were you denying that you were? Or how was it? I knew I was happy, gay asn't happy, because I'm happy all the time. But yeah, I think what that Peter Saying a new phrase that I'm loving seeing people talk about on social media's probably been around for longer than what I recognize it as. But like the sexual awakening, I think is something that for me, it's in stage, is right there. You don't really you can't articulate it with a specific words. But for me, again, unintentionally, of thinking of Peter Chapter with how the preacher unintentionally told him now to access things he shouldn't. For me I was accessing like a chick track. Jack, chick tracks were, remember, we had doesn't make did you? Clarence did, like said, they were servative for a pentecostal church. They had like, you know, strict chest codes and they probably aligned a lot more. Actually, when he tells me fundamental the stories, I usually take that as a reference point. Yeah, Oh, yeah, he's you know, kick tracks, chick tracks like. I grew up with those. My church had them, you know, we had them to pass out to chick or treaters with the candy and stuff you night, for all occasions. There's really something for anyone. You had one of the things of homosexuality that I was expressly fond. Oh, of course there's one. I didn't come across that one, but of course there was. Well, one of the first ones, which are collectors item now and I still have the original from the S, is called wounded children and obviously they conflate, you know, the gay is and the pede pedos and stuff like that. But the the sexual awakening is looking at you know, Jack Chick is drawing these this beard and handsome guy. Well, this guy is going to the gay bars and he's drawing gay bar scenes and they're dancing and all the stuff, and I'm like wow, okay, I'm looking at this, this panel of this comic a little bit too long and and so there there are moments of that like the wow, this is it. Guys really hot and he's bearded, he's kind of where leather and and the thing is it's like this wink before I knew what that word was and then didn't call him a twink. But, like you know, he goes and he goes into this foray, into the gay underworld, and it goes downhill from there, right, but I'm looking at it from a different way. So that's the beginning of that. But I you know, the physicality, I think probably started in high school with with people who could never really be traced back to me because of for obvious reasons, I went to a public school at that point. But so I had some had some experience. But so, yeah, I let's say that I would. I knew that that were I didn't identify as being gay, though, no way, not at not in college. I guess that's a short way of saying sorry. I got to get better at this, the sound bite. No, I did not identify as gay, but I had had some experience, but I did not. I was in denial. The at a psychic break, you know, like there is. It's a persona divided persona a double life kind of a thing, and and a lot of people who contribute to the book I say the similar kind of thing. If I'm going to this place because it's going to make me a better Christian and it's going to get rid of the gay or get rid of that inkling, get rid of the whatever. So that was so for a lot of my experiences there, I I was earnest and I'm going to go to everything, I'm pretty much everything, I'm going to have the school spirit, and that was not fake. But I was also once I had more freedom and could drive off camp us with my own car had those freedoms as an upper classman. Then you start to explore a little bit more and so, yeah, it becomes this increasing noise that you know, Peter and nate could probably relate to this of just you. You hear all these sermon illustrations and you never want to be or to personify or become that sermon illustration. That's I guess that's kind of like an ultimate shame where your you. I'm not the projectal sign, however you pronounce the word, Prodigal, projecical, however you say it, but I am not that prodecal sign and I'm very adamant about that. And we've heard, I know, hundreds of hundreds of sermons and I didn't want to end up that as that kind of a thing that your preacher would talk about when you were there or not there, and so but it happened to me in my chapter of what I was able to successfully finish and graduate and then stid it, stuck around for graduate school and and then got in trouble for going to a nearby to firm and university and looking at gay stuff on their computer. And then, you know, a fundamentalist would say, well, God wanted to get ahold of you because he placed a Bob Jones student or formacy and they and the Carol right next do you. You're right next to you with this girlfriend or something. And then it got it. It's to this thing. You know, we're living in Alex okay, so I can I talk to you. And then we went outside and I was like what, and he you know, it was pretty but you could you know what we're they're going with that. Yeah, so eventually, the that's for your name and idea, right yes, which is which is a beloved phrase that we love to just sort of joke around and and it is something that you know, that's try and disguise yourself as a nonbob joonan student, you know, like change. That's what I did. Try and blend into the back room that you could get away with more things. Now. Look, I didn't have a room to talk about lots of other adventures that I had to try to disguise myself, but in this particular moment I thought driving out of the you know, Fermon's outside of the city. I thought driving to another campus would be a little bit enough. But looking back, it was not as discreet as it could have been, let's just put it that way. But no, and so it it's one of those moments that you and gail, you probably have heard these in your church growing up to is where the the altar call and the piano starts to play and your emotions start to become a manipulated and caressed and just softly and tenderly, where you're like, okay, I got got, this is the moment, and you're like that terrifying for you, because you pick your moment, like you did not have a say, like Peter. You had a chance, I guess, little by little, to process and figure out who to come out to and to prepare for when you wanted to get to that decision. Okay, out of Bob Jones now and I'm ready. I'm at this point in my life and now I'm ready to come out. And for you, Lens, that was sort of taken, ripped right out of your hand in a sort of traumatic way. Yeah, now, and I still think that's like one of the lowest points of my life so far. But the thing is it wasn't, as far as I know, they as a graduate student. They didn't get my parents involved. Now there are contributors to the story whose parents were notified and they were out at to their parents, not their undergraduates, who had no say in that. I was not, and so I I was using this moment to say like, okay, God's trying to get ahold of me, but I don't laugh, Peter. But I was also like, okay, on this thirteen hour drive home, what am I going to say now? I've skipped over quite a bit. My sister was a freshman at the time and so I had to tell her, but I didn't even tell her the reason. So I didn't tell anyone the reason. I didn't tell anyone the real reason. And so there is that. There is, you know, you become numb and holid out, and there's lots of ways to describe this, the trauma that happens to you when you become one of the other, one of the one of the people who are on the other side or out cast out, or however you want to talk about it. You flew dealt to home. That Ha, yeah, the fly dealt to home. I don't know if, Peter, if you're over that, but the to the tune of love lived at me was what was something that I had heard, you know, because getting shift as a fact of life, and I think in the first is this the expression for me? Yeah, getting joined a new society, fly dealt to home. I think with the lyrics I should have set you, but I already I'd already set y'all too much literature the first chapter and everything. But there's a glossary I could have sent you if you had time. But you might have said that. Did I said that a lie, but I it might be in my emails. Of course I do. Anybody's listening, you're going to get it in the book. So but oh my gosh, it's there. That brought me back. Yeah, getting that. But you know, like the in the opening chapter when I try to write about the background at the school, is stuff like I learned through, you know, reading the historical stuff at that getting getting expelled was a part of the first class, you know, the first years of its founding. So it was very strict. That fascinating, but I guess it fits the profile, as you would say, and so we all go there knowing that it's always a potential thing that can happen to any of us if they kicked out some good cult control, as you just make an example of a bunch of people in the regular and make it when I was living fear that. Yeah, and you honestly and you you mentioned it in your chapter lands, but this was something I remember very vividly. Was the the the annual or even semester purge where towards the end of the semester there were are a handful of people that you likely tangentially knew and then you know the the later I got in my into my career, Bob Jones, people that I knew personally would just like you were saying, which is vanish, and there was no explanation. And I remember one of the guys on my haul one year who I was kind of friends with, not really, but a an our was following him around campus all day and I'm like, Oh, he's gone, I'm not going to see him by the end of the day and there's no way for me to get the story because he's being tailed the entire day. Shadow. Um. Yeah, so that that fear and I think over time, like when I had my my first like big chunk of demerits, why I had that, that threat of being shipped, and I think I got off easy where I got like, you know, seventy five demerits in one shot. Your socialed, right, we're so well, I already had over twenty something, over twenty five two merits at that point. So I was campused. I went yeah, well, I had like thirty five demerits or something. I hit I got seventy five and one shot. So I was campused. But, and this is the first time I'm putting it in like a recorded medium, I I was quote unquote, dating. I was very close. I was very close friends with a girl who was a towny. So, because of the double standard between men and women, yes, and how girls who lived in town didn't need a chaperone to date a campus boy, be she would pick me up from and and she didn't have to check in and out. Her car was, you know, whatever. And she's always she always had like a pair of my ripped jeans and and like an Abercrombie sure in her cars. Is Going Okay for me? All right, go ahead, yeah, it's I could change. Yeah, so I could change into into noncheckable, as the phrase goes, noncheckable attire. So when I left campus I looked like world leasin full heathen, not of Bob Jones, and I that that was definitely my junior senior year where I was mentally checked out of that place already. But I do remember the first time it happened, I thought through what I would tell people, what I would tell my pastor, when I got home, what I would tell my parents, although I think with my parents I probably would have had to be a little bit closer to honest with whatever. I didn't even actually know what I was being called into the Dean's Office for, so I was trying to come up with stories prior to even finding out what I was in trouble for. Oh yeah, so what'sn't the Michael Dobi Smith? No, no, this was something else. This was actually somebody had snooped on my myspace page and found that I had list, did I think, the Matrix as one of my favorite movies. And the crazy thing is you bonded over this. If my ex throughout my copy in the Matrix because he's very funamentalist and thought and didn't like that trinity was dressed with skin tight clothing, so he chucked out my copy of the Matrix. When and I met, he was like you know what Matrix story too. I have another copy of the Matrix and I'm giving it to you. It's one of our favorite, both of our favorite movies. Actually it's up there. It's definitely my top ten. It's a good movie. That was my first R rated movie that I ever Wot was it? Yeah, I watched that actually with gay's off campus, while I was still down there. It was home video, but I was at Jamil the time. So I think it might be better. Okay, but obviously the the the whole theme at that is, you know, we lived it in a sense. Yeah, totally fine. Yeah, Oh, absolutely, and so I think kind of what's relatable is that, you know, having to come up with something. Well, what are you going to tell your people when you get home, because you're not at Bob Jones anymore? So I yeah, I did. You got kid out, but you were just you got social day. Did you let home or something? I didn't. I didn't. Actually, I don't remember. Hang on let the story. I didn't, but I remember working through a story because when when I got called to the Dean's office, I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know that I would I would be slapped with seventy five to nars. I thought I might be expelled because I had up until that point I kept my nose clean. So an email from the Dean's office telling me to report. You even know what you're being called in for. I didn't know what I was being called in for. That know what was about to happen. I just assumed. I assumed that I was going to get kicked out. I didn't know what the process was like. You know, nobody had ever expressed I explained that to me or anything. Not An orientation to worm your way out of explaining why the Matrix is on your myspace page, basically. And Yeah, I came up with well, the explanations that I gave was like, you know, that was that was pre Bob Jones. I did that in high school and we, you know, we don't have access to our my space page on can true, Bob Jones? That's true. So I can't go in there and change it. So, you know, I repented. I had to to attend. I just meet with my dorm counselor for, you know, a semester or a few months or whatever that was, to talk about I don't remember what, but you know the and and like I think Lance. I don't know you mentioned it, for it was Peter who mentioned it in in one of your chapters, that these these dorm counselors are not licensed, and they're not. They're also not psychology students, so they're not they're not study, they're studying ministry, they're in the seminary preach. Yeah, yeah, so these people aren't qualified to be counseling anyone. Yeah, I think that was a general like procedure for anyone who got campused. Was Mandatory Counseling. Yes, I remember at a few friends who had to do the same thing. I makes it, but you didn't think of anything more unhealthy than to be canceled by people who are going to just try and further indoctrinate you and and do the opposite of whatever. You need a right and maybe two years older than you anyway. And Yeah, you know, there's the ethos and authority. There is like, why should I listen to you? Well, you have my future in your hand, so you have to play ball. But there is that walk over to the administrate, the ADMIN building, which, side note, is no longer there. It's been torn down, has it okay? Yeah, this is a little bit of alleged asbestos or something. But that was that was the place where you went to get called in and and there is that flutter moment of when you've been summons with the Call Slip You, and I knew. I knew I got summons the next morning, so I knew what my deal was. But sometimes you go over there and you it's just your heart because, well, Peter, do you where you ever summons or I? So there's a couple. I have a couple stories I can tell there was well, one one was the one time I was summoned to the Dean's office. Was Not for any gay stuff. It was for it was actually I knew what it was for the minute it happened because of the people that were called there with me. I was on a crew, I was on Stagecourt, wrote a Heyer Auditorium, and one night after like a technical like before the production. I don't know where the idea came from them or like how what happened, but all I do know is that we decided, as the stage crew leaving road havear at like one in the morning, that it would be a good idea to pick this car up and put it halfway onto the sidewalk as like a group activity. That's fine, that's a college thing to do. Yeah, that was you. Well it turned it turned out I solved it. Mates life something. He hasn't been able to go to bed. Well, like he's been thinking about it every night before he goes to like what it turned out to be? Like someone related to the president, like his sister in law. Oh, snap, and so the next yeah, the next the next day. We all get called out there. I'm like, Oh, Bo I found out. Obviously somebody snaid. Oh, yeah, yeah, I guess. I guess it was a little like it became a thing because she literally couldn't get her car started because it had lost it up because we twisted the wheels and she couldn't get her key like in there. I was like, oh my goodness, this is the only what is that? You probably got what fifty trror, twenty five, like that's twenty five for that one. Yeah, that someone else is. Someone else took like to the front of the demerits. I think some Oh, I think the ringleader ended up getting like five. Oh, okay, it's got twenty five for you know whatever. Yeah, but then the most merits I got at one time was fifty and that one I got called to the dorm supervisor's office, which is not it's like a step up from the Ra the dorm supervisors you really a Grad student, and they're given like domain over one of the whole dormitories. And I I was in my room. It was like right before lights out and he comes up to our room and like asks and he hasn't. He asked me to come down to his office. Is like right before lights out. I'm like, that's not good. I was like this thats not good at all. Nothing ever good. I had no idea. I was like, I have no idea what this is about. I'm like, but it turned out so I had he he was coming me with this information, saying that it had found that I had been on a porn website and had been on there for like a decent amount of time of our yeah, yeah, it sounds this sounds so familiar, but keep going. Yeah, well, what had happened was, it's incredibly relatable to take a weird turn. So what had happened? I was searching the Internet for an end sixty four. What's it called? Like a soft can emulator? An emulator. Yeah, I was. Yeah, I was looking for an sixty four emulator and I click on this links like Oh, I can finally play like, you know, Mario Kart on my computer whatever, and the next thing I know is I just see like naked bodies all across my screen and I'm like Oh crap, you know, and I don't even think to look at the URL or anything. I just exit out of the window as fast as I could. Her personal computer, like in your dorm? Yeah, in my dorm room. Yeah, yeah, well, they got on so much. Yeah, exactly, and the count girl. Yeah, so what I did was I was like, well, I don't know what the URL was, so I can't report the website, like because the rule was if you come across an objectionable site, quote unquote, is what they called it, like love your the rule is you're supposed to report the URL to the it department so that they can block it and know that you didn't do it intentionally. I didn't know the URL, so I went to my Ra and asked them like hey, I came across this site. You know, I don't know what to do. I didn't I didn't look at the URL, I didn't copy it down, I panicked and just closed out the window. He's like I was like, what do I do? And he's like, Um, I guess you're fine browser history. Yeah, so then. So, yeah, it wasn't. It was like the next the next night is when the supervisor comes up and brings me down there and I'm like, I don't know what to tell you. I was on that site for less than like five seconds and I was just try like the time it took me to scramble to close out the window. He's like, well, it says you were on there for thirty seconds and you know, thirty point five seconds. So, oh, and this seems like, and this happens to be the worst porn site that's ever gotten through our firewall. You know, you get it bad. To the guy who's in charge of checking this down. Yeah, exactly, see, let's rank right ups. I oh yeah, well, it's just things we stare at. How many seconds that they've been staring at? It was that the May bury software that they were trying to like there's something that was supposed to block all that stuff. I forget what it's called, but yeah, they had yeah, it was. It was. It was ridiculous because it was a very exact amount of time. That was way long, way longer than I was actually on it. I'm like, I don't know where you're getting in this information, but suffice to say, I guess the rule was if you get caught looking at porn it's an automatic hundred demerits, and so for my situation he decided to drop it to fifty, which is failure to follow instructions, which is fifty per demerits, whatever the offense was. Yeah, that's a good blanket one. If you don't like some one, just failure to followers already. Yeah, goode. Yeah, wow. So, yeah, that one got me social because I already had over twenty five. But that was that was my freshman year. So that was I got scared because that that was going to knock me out of being able to participate in the musical mission team the following. Sure Right, and that was that's very much a part of your story as well. was traveling with the musical mission teams. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, my my I had I had a similar incident. It was the same. It ended up being the same kind of situation where they knocked it down to fifty to Marians for failure to follow instructions or whatever, but I was I was just searching for I had gone down this rabbit trail. I was working on a paper and it ended up like taking me down some rabbit trail of, you know, some niche Internet thing, and I I stumbled on this website that was kind of along the same lines, like video game emulation, but instead of pop ups, it was down below the scrollable section of the site. Apparently there was some pictures that were showing up under it like a little you know gifts or jifts that were like, you know, animated girls dancing, and I had the crazy thing was they didn't show up above the fold, as it were. So I'm reading the top part of the site. I don't I never scroll down any further. So I'm on this site for a good like ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. Done with my research, close it down. The dorm supervisor has a print out of the website. So fifteen pages into this print out are the pictures in question. So I had to explain. I like I there's no possible way I would have seen this. You do notice how all of the information that's pertinent to what I was working on is up here on page one or page too, but, like you know, you have to go all the way down to like page fifteen to find the the images that were flagged. So He, you know, knocked me with like fifty Mer which I think is also ridiculous. Like fifty two Mariors, Willy did? What for? What? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like you're just living in a constant culture where you're going to get in trouble even when you're not doing anything. Yeah, like it just constantly worried that you're gonna get yeah, yeah, I got. Yeah, I know by our UR A for rough housing one time because I jumped off of the second level, like they had the bunk beds in the dorms, and I we literally all we did is hop down from the second bunk onto the floor and he happened to be in the room below us and came storming up and was like you're rough housing in here and like didn't even ask any questionss was just like handed out the de merits and left like yeah, great, now I have one of the discipline committee and explain this. Yeah, just a trunk out of my although, you know, I think I might have been mentioning this to lance at a while back, but the part of the discipline committee. For me it turned into something fun because I would coordinate with my other friends who were also called into the discipline committee that week and we say, Hey, do you want to stand in line together? We'd get like five or thinks of us. We're all standing in line. I wonder what we could be in trouble before these. Yeah, that whole thing was fascinating, that you had to look for your name on the list. Yeah, and then you had to your require to window out, block out of window, an hour or so out of your schedule every semester for the DC line. and to me it looked like it's kind of a public humiliation line because it's in the main at a school class building with all the classes, and the lie would go in front of the front doors and so you'd always have to like, you know, excuse or like you know, there's always a mad dash when people are going through the doors and stuff. But then would have to stay your name and and then figure out what your crime was that you were reported for, and then and then try to make your case, I guess, and then they would judge if it could be forgiven a race or applied, denied whatever. So talk about a culture of shame. All of what you know, but like how deep this does right? Like, I mean it's one thing for your pastor to just get up and say I'm going to teach the bout total depravity and how we're all disgustingly wicked and God is all ashamed of us and we need Jesus to take on God's wrath so he could take accept us and love us. If it wasn't for Jesus, he just knew us all. You know, it's one thing to like be told that. It's another for to be in a system that is displaying to you that constant reminder that you are bad, you're going to get in trouble for something, you're going to be publicly humiliated. You need to be worried constantly about being caught doing the wrong thing and being humiliated for it. Like it's not just a teaching it's a practice that's kind of in your face, in your everyday living, that you have to keep in your head at all times, or you get kicked out of school. You have to deal what your parents you have to deal with. Right. What is expulsion mean? You go to losing a job, if you're working. They're like it's yeah, it's a defense mechanism, and I think that's like why? That shame, if we want to go with that theme of why. I couldn't tell anyone the truth about it. I couldn't tell I couldn't tell anyone and I don't know what any conversations are. Letters set administration might have sent home to my family. They didn't say anything about it. But when I can't went home, I had to make a decision and I don't really go into this part in the chapter because there's just too much. But you know, I didn't tell them the real truth until you years later, because I couldn't live with that and I thought, all right, I'm going to make a personal promise to God. I'm going to start over, I'm going to be for real and I'm going to be good. I got an at first of all had to see can I do you have a place for me at home, you know, because they didn't technically have to take me back. I mean I'm at an adult, I'm over twenty one or whatever. But you know, I I integrateed myself back home and that was a shameful process to of like what are you doing back in October, in the middle to semester? Why the and you know, I I just would tell I told my immediate family. has sent a shameful email. Is Like Hahu, I'm I'm home again, and they're all like in different parts. You know, they weren't living at home anyway at that point, but it's that shame of like I can't bring myself to it. There are those it's like a Sunday school lesson moment of like Lance to tell the truth. He's got twelve hours to think about what he's done and he's going to make a decision when he gets home, maybe not that night but the next day. What do you think he should do? And I you go over the scenarios. What am I going to tell why I gotta live at home? I don't. I know. I've nowhere to go. I know where to go. Nowhere to go. What I'm going to do taking you from moving back home in that position where you still haven't told them the truth, to where you are today? If you were in a summer I see, yeah, I did. I did finally come out with the help of a community like what Peter was talking about, an online community of social media community and and then came out and that that's an ALD whole nother story to it. was very awkward. But you know, that's been almost ten years now and I've we're just kind of awkwardly Copa setic or we just don't ask invading questions and stuff. And a lot of people who contribute to the boat talk about that. Like one person calls it like a toleration game. Doesn't that's not really trying to sound cruel, but it's just like, all right, you know Peter with his family. I'm sure it's a similar kind of set up of love seeing you, but don't agree with stuff and we're just not going to really talk about it because we know the direction that it's going to go. Yeah, probably, HMM. So, but I'm I've you know, I'm outside of the gates and I'm happy where I am and a lot of people have a similar kind of trajectory that contribute to the book or and tons of people that Peter and I know who we didn't. They were just wasn't enough space to put everyone's story in here. But a lot of people that I know of who have to deal with that shame and figure out when can they come out? And so we're for Peter when you coming out a little bit later. It's funny. It's always like other people know it or waiting for you to articulate that, and sometimes your family doesn't want to hear that. They want to stay in denial about it, because there's always hope if you don't really commit to that. But you know that. I think I end my chapter trying to be optimistic about like. Okay, well, if I was raised to believe, an eternal security to the believer. If I was raised to believe and I I was a kid who knew what he was doing at five. I wasn't saved it like two years old or something. I know five is kind of on the younger end of things, but I believed in what I was doing then, then I'm then that's going to stick with me and I'm just going to use that as my stamp of approval that I if I feel I need. So. So, yeah, so then I guess my follow up and it seems that that you still have some perhaps a positive relationship with your faith in some way, shape or form. Or Am I misreading that? It's it's kind of an evasively positive thing. Okay, because I no longer regularly attend church. Sorry if there's anyone of WHO's listened to who knows me and it's really disappointed in that. Of what I know, I go on occasion when I'm visiting family and that's a kind of a you know, I'm you know, the more I maybe I'll have time to be able to reflect on that. Spiritually, I mean the the Christian agnostic term has been something I've been seeing thrown around. That kind of interests me a little bit. But I know I was faithful attending church here until I, in a weird dramatic way, came out to the pastor and stuff and and stop going regularly to a fundamentalist church and just haven't picked up on a regular basis for any kind of church. So yeah, it kind of can do weird things to your head about well, what does what I believe still apply to me and where do I want to go with that? And you know there are people who've been in the same situation who've written about it. There's a really good memoir out there and at the very end of his afterward he said, you know, I was I tried, after a coming out like I tried to go to the different denominations and then finally I just realized that my parents were right. They said that it's either all or nothing, and I really couldn't take all all to all. So okay, it's pretty much nothing and that's where I am right now and it works for me. So yeah, I think for me that's that's the takeaway that that I that I have even for myself or for others who might not have had exactly the same experience. But I think we all need to be a little bit more comfortable with accepting that what works for me works for me and that I as an individual, as a person, and more in tune with my spirituality than any ancient text, than any group or denomination or church or pastor could ever possibly be, because this is a very deep and intimate part of my self. So, like I mean, I guess for for me to kind of like show my cards a little bit, I would probably lean a little bit more on the agnostically atheist side of things, though I do have my theist days from time to time when I want to to believe that there is something spiritually significant to how the world functions, and I do practice still I mean Gail mentioned it. We are a part of a of a church here in New Jersey that that we love, that that is very socially conscious and and justice minded. But you know, there are those days, like like we were talking about earlier, where hearing those passages or even like reciting some of those phrases just does not hit and it doesn't feel authentically me. And so I guess like I'm kind of in this place of like, you know what God just this is, this is who I am, take it or leave it. You know, I've been there, I've heard the stories, I've read that, I've heard the different versions. We've all been through countless sermons in church services and that's not worth it's not hitting us the same way. But right now I felt it was kind of important to me to be able to provide for voices in the book who, Oh, absolutely now religious and ritual and good for y'all. Yeah, and you know what I think? I think the the other takeaway is, again, like I was saying, is it. It is a part of who you are and if that is something that's deeply important to you, you know, I'm not trying to convince anybody to give up their their beliefs, but I think one thing that gale and I often talk about, both in this podcast and offline, is what we would like to see is people become more honest about their beliefs and to to analyze what they're believing and whether it's worth holding onto. And if the conclusion you come to is that it is worth holding onto, then I think you're better for it and you'll be a better adherent to whatever faith practice you you would you believe if, if you do take the time to work through it that way. Lands, I want to talk a little bit more. I mean, we've talked around your book and we've talked about some of the stuff in your book, but I want to talk about your book, about come to me. Yeah, and also you just go like I'm going to write a book about Queer students who went to Bob Jobs. How did that come about? And you know, this book is it? I could just say I just snap my fingers, like you know, I just thought about it last month and then it just kind of happened. And Peter's laughing because he's lived this for the past years. But that's kind of par for the course when you're doing an edited collection and I talked about that a little bit in the conclusion, which I didn't throw your way because I think I'd thrown enough sample chapters your way. But I think there's it started with this, the social the facebook group that of all these former gay feet of people's student from Bob Jones who just really met each other at the right time and the right place. For me it was just like finding a new family, finding a chosen family, finding finding a light or a beacon or something. This is still exists as as a resource for students ors. Is something that it's still there. It's evolved in different ways. The original thing is still there, but it's evolved into other manifestations, trying to be helpful to when the pandemic lifts up. But it find just finding one person, and I don't know how to non cliche saying that you're not alone thing or the like. It helps to de see representation matters or whatever. But I mean, I don't know, you know, Peter, if I don't know if this feeling was the same for you, of just like finding one gay, one Bob Jones ex student or former student or whatever, who you found out was gay and not a not ashamed of it or like rightly owning up to it, like what did that do? But the just so is it was transformational. Yeah, yes, yeah, that's the best word. That's the best word. It's like what. What? And again, because of the surveillance culture and stuff like that on campus, which it breeds. You got that, you can't got to keep yourself, which is also why of Peter Telling people that he's gay. Well, I still on under contract, and other students or who contribute to the book or like Adas coming. Yeah, I'd Say I beg what do you? I don't know. You like what? That's crazy. That is that is not the right way of going about it. As a as a boomer from the S, I would never trust anyone. David D Chenco talks about that and his chapter to and I it's funny you mentioned David de Chenko because I, like, I remember being a student around the time that he that he left, and it was a it was Attar campus scandal. Yes, it. Oh, yeah, I mean, I'm not like, Oh good, he tell me, but I kind of want to know, like what is your perspective of especially I think it happened when I was either a freshman or a sophomore. So it was early in my in my years at Bob Jones, and I just I remember because I was in music. Wasn't wasn't my major or minor, but I was extra curricular, extra curricularly involved in music in a number of ways. And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, David Chenko was on the the music faculty there and when he left it kind of made waves and I had assumed that he was forced out, but based on what you had written, he he made the decision to leave, which is probably why that the rumors swirled the way they did. And I remember seeing him at at a barnes and noble and and having that thought of like Oh there's an outside like what like you probably did known very well, but you're like if I knew him better, I might even come up and ask him like well, know you what happen? Like I like I knew who he was, I don't think he had any clue who I was. I was probably a freshman or sophomore that time. So yeah, it's and you know Peter and some others, more younger. The younger students talk about coming out or talking about their sexuality or their identities. To these faculty members in the S or whatever, and I'm just thinking, are you? Are you? What are you thinking? Why would you tell the why would you tell anyone who you really are? The enemy, like anyone who has the power to do in your life and to turn you in get the dirt on you. But David was really cool about it because he was he knew the game. He grew up in this system and he he been at Bob Jones for a while then and he ended on his own terms and he like said, I'm going to finish at the school year. Already know what I'm going to do. And in his chafter he writes about it very suscaftly of like I had this letter for these people and I had my email ready to send out to people so I could tell them on my own terms and say it from say it from my own mouth, and then I'm going to tell my church, I'm going to tell my family and boot, beat boop and I'm out. So some people can do that and good on him for being able to do that. But yeah, this, this whole idea of leaving on your own terms or not, can can really the it can. It can change your story a little bit, I guess. But your book is a collection of yeah, or it's chance for people to know that they are not the only people who have this fast room love them. Yes, yeah, it's the epiphany, is the transformational moment of like, okay, if the culture that's fostered there, and David, you know, and I were there at the same time as students, and he says a lot of things that are overlapped with mine. Two of the I was like yeah, I'm right, I'm right with you there. I don't trust anyone, I'm not going to tell anyone, but it once you find someone else, this whole campus fosters is culture of don't tell anyone about yourselves, the true self. Once you find even one or two people were three or seventeen or gathered in my name, all that sort of stuff, it's it really does take over. You're like what, what? Okay, I'm not, I'm not an aberration, I'm not a perversion, I'm not an abomination. Y'All went through the same system and it didn't work. Da Dada dubt. So this book was this thing of like, okay, we're all sorting to like we got to do something with this growing nucleus. We got to do something, and so it's turned into like marching in the pride parade in New York City in two thousand and twelve. And then rich merit, who is one of the people who actually wrote his own memoir about the secrets of a gay marine porn star, and that's that's a fun book, and so he and I were going to he's first suggested doing something with this and I was like, I would love to be a part of that. Do I have to put my name on it, though, because I'm not out yet? And then, you know, fast forward to a year and I'm like totally out. And then he had to step down for the project and so I took over and then it was like, well, how do I do this thing? And the BJ unity is sort of the is this entity that is the public face of this of queer straight allies, former people from Bob Jones and a lot of people, some people had written versions or earlier exert versions of a story, and so I thought, okay, I can, I can, I can hit you up and say, would you like to be a part of this book proposal? I don't know exactly where it's going yet, but I really think we need to do something with this. So so it's it was a quite a yearslong process, but it's finally happening and I'm really thankful for that. And but yeah, you know, the major things that we wanted to come away from this is to answer the like the three questions that I think probably Peter gets asked out, and nate, I'm sure you could asked in different context to but like why would you go to such a controlling place? And for us, you know, why would you go if you're queer? But then like if you number two, if you didn't like it, why don't you just leave? which is an interesting rhetoric to you know that you could talk about that in America a lot of ways to politically speaking America. But and then number three, like why and how did you get away from Bju and fundamentalism the whole network? So I want, really wanted, every kind of story to touch at least on on those three things. In their own way. However, they want to do that creatively and three questions are helpful, even for myself as I kind of work through this. I think I looted to it earlier, but even in in therapy as I'm says, as I'm working through it with my own therapist and and trying to to regain a sense of these memories from my years at Bob Jones being my memories. You know, she made this comment about how I describe some of these things as as somebody else's memories. And and what's helpful for me, I think, are those are those questions, asking those things, like why would I choose to go to a place like that? You know what, why not just leave? I think, from from myself, even as as a SIS gender straight man who has who has since spurned a lot of that ideology, I think it's helpful to think through some of that. So I thank you for for putting that into into my mind as I as I work through it very selfishly, but the thank you well. And you said other people's memories. That resonated with Peter. When you said that, I didn't what did you mean by that. Disassociation, I think, is the right word. Yeah, playing that sort of vibe of when you're talking about your own life story, as if it were you're talking about someone else's story rather than your own. Yeah, yeah, I think there's a part of me that doesn't want to accept that I had I had elected to go there, that even even given my story, even the fact that I spent nearly twenty years of my life in a fundamentalist church and a fundamentalist elementary school, Middle School, high school, that I wouldn't, I wouldn't have chosen that place right knowing what I was getting into. I could, I couldn't have chosen that, and yet I did, and I have to wrestle with that, with that fact. The other thing, too, that I that I think through is, at least from me, the recognition that all of that independent fundamentalist Baptist institutions is a that's a cult, and it took me a long time to recognize that for myself and and some, some people, I mean you all might be on different on different state, at different stages in that, whether acknowledging that or not, but for me, and I have to do that, is cults. Nate, I think it's gonna come up because no, and I'll just say this really fast and throw it out there is a teaser, but when you grow up an Evangelicals, and on my sure it's the same, and fundamentalism your total, you're told a cult is someone who believes the wrong doctrine. So they're more men their JW that's how a cult is defined. They believe something that's wrong about Jesus or God or something fundamental to the to the fundamentals. Yeah, but but once you start learning about what the actual definition of a cult is, meaning the mind control, the indoctrination, that the the behavioral programming, all of this stuff that you guys described of what Bob Jones looks like, I mean the definition of a cult is not what we have been told. The cults. So it's hard to admit that you are in an environment that was that was right, like lands and made. Did you, either of you, take modern cults? Bob James, I you know what? I signed up for it and then I ended up dropping it and drop bad period because it conflicted with one of my major classes. But I my sister took it. But Yeah, did you? I didn't take it. I it was a fascinating class to take. Yeah, especially I. I don't have the book anymore, but I remember her held on to the book. Did they spend a lot of that? I, like Mormons, they did like a lot on more matters and a lot on witness. Was One and then the big chunk on Mormons, and then also on the Korean, the Church of Christ Home Korea. Right, right, yeah, not the Mooney. Yeah, the Mooney's, the MOONE's. Okay, that one too. Yeah, yeah, it was wow, aiming to hear how they like, what they thought of calleds and what divine a cold. And that's a sound of the Bible class, wasn't it? Yeah, it was a Bible C yeah, yeah, wow, I like. I know we can go on, yeah, forever and and I think even after I hit stop on the recording, I'm sure we'll have some more stuff to talk about, but I I want to thank you both for coming on here. The book is called Bju and me, queer voices from the world's most Christian University. It's put together edited by Lance Weldy. I will will go ahead and put the the link to preorder it in the show notes. Last you know when it's coming out? The University of Georgia Press says like June fifteen, and so Amazon says maybe may end up. May You know? I don't know what the difference but hopefully you know by middle of June. So okay, happy pride and before people can get to reading your book. I'm just thinking there's a resource. You mentioned it was it Bob Jones unity, with we have better unity J unity. Yeah, and we will get the details of that that. Yes, so notes. Yes, yeah, that's break in there as well. You know, if, if by any chance, there are any students who are listening to this podcast, there are, there are resources and there are people who want to support you. Whether's that you look either of you up. Peter, you open if people want to reach out to you. If there's any Queer Bob Jones students, are you open to people sending you a message? Yeah, we're not against to. Yeah, from my instagram or something up there. Sure, sure, so, we'll put some links to your a, to your social media, you know, and we'll keep it social media so that it's not like people are getting into your it's your emails or anything like that. But yeah, so we'll do that. I'll put a link to your instagram, if you're okay with that, and then again, the link to Bej unity. Will put into the into the show notes and and I think it's important to know that, no matter. Here's here's the thing that and and something that I learned from from my therapist and something we actually talked about in a previous episode with a with Kayla Felton, who's a religious trauma specialist. Like, we're not trying to influence you one way or the other. If this is still your expression of belief for faith, nobody's trying to convince you not to believe that, but we are trying to to express to you that there is a healthy way to fully embrace who you are as a person and hopefully embrace your faith. And if that journey takes whatever, wherever that journey takes you of exploring your faith, know that that the the most important thing is to know that you're safe, that you're healthy and and that there are people who are willing to help and support you. So, anyway, I don't want I don't want to give the last word. So if Lance or Peter, if you want, if you have anything that you want to share, please feel free to do so. Go ahead, Peter, I mean I just yeah, go ahead. Just again, thank you for letting me part, of letting me be part of this and to, you know, share my story. It's I know it's a unit, it's not completely unique, but it's one that I think that people would benefit from hearing. I know that there are a lot of people out there who've gone through similar situations and it's it's good to know that you're not alone and that there is light on the other side and that absolutely you don't have to hide. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would just decord that too, and thanks for having US both on here. And I say thanks Peter for a contributed to the book, because without these stories of the we wouldn't really have this book. So I'm so happy it's it's probably coming out. Ge't tell you. I Know Peter will be happy to finally see it out to but that's its own kind of backstory of Fawd to get things published in this world. But that's, yeah, other story. But I thank you both, nating gale, for being fun people to talk to and and nate, we will get back with you on how you did on your creed recitation. I think you were not word perfect and to pass orientation has to be word perfect. So you'll have to find the TIA and the ADMIN building. One hundred and one B what was it? There's gonna be a lot of Bob Jones reminiscing going on behind that. Yeah, I just say praise you Jehovah, at least one first of it before you can leave this podcast. But yeah, yeah, or think just as I am, without one plee yes one, the one that nate and I would remember is the most sobering your reality in the world. Oh Yeah, today is that people are dying, going to hell to today. What about? What of our chapters ends with that? What? Gay? Yeah, what of our Megan talks about that in her chapter. So you'll be blessed by that. Yeah, oh, fantastic, can't wait. Thank you so much, both of you. Thank you so much. That wraps up another episode of the full mutuality podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast apt and if you don't already have one, head over to our website, full Mutualitycom for a list of all the apps you can find us on. We ahead and do this without you, our listener. So thank you so much for your continued support. Speaking of support, one of the best things you can do for us is to head over to apple podcasts and leave us a review. I'm pretty sure five star reviews get you an extra crown in heaven. Looks. Seriously, have you found this episode insightful. Spread the word and share it with your friends, and don't forget to follow us on social media. You can find us on facebook, instagram and twitter at full mutuality. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of the full mutuality podcast.
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