It’s Not You, It’s the Lord: Queer Women vs. Religious Guilt

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One minute, she’s lying in your arms, whispering sweet nothings into your ears and drawing invisible, scabrous lines on your chest and cheeks until you begin to wonder why she’d chosen you even though there are thousands of better-looking women who’d prostrate at her feet at the slightest sound of her voice. One minute, her hands and feet are finding yours beneath the brunch table in a not-so-crowded restaurant, and you keep thanking God for finally leading you to ‘the one’. One minute, she’s winking and blowing you a kiss—which you grab from across the room and stuff into your pockets, making an effort to stop grinning wildly. One minute, you’re her everything, and she, yours. Next minute, you’re both arguing over the phone. She’s telling you “We can’t keep going against God’s will!” and you keep reiterating that you know God. You're screaming at the top of your lungs that you know it can’t be in God’s character or will to tear down something so pure—so gentle, so genuine, but she won't listen. And now, she’s asking you how you know what God wants when you don’t even go to church and have never had a ‘spiritual awakening’. 

Just like that. You’ve been dumped. Not just by an entire belief system, but by a person whose job was not only to help save you from the madness of solitary confinement, but to comfort you, post-recovery. 

“Am I Really Queer? And Even if I am, Isn’t That… Abnormal?”

The dating pool is insanely difficult, but dating queer women with religious guilt can be another version of arduous. You are never certain what awaits you at the middle or end of your adventure, and sometimes, it feels like you’re that obstinate person who’s done nothing but rent a beach house in the middle of a tsunami, despite the weather forecast of the day. I mean, the vibes are chill no doubt, the sun is out (probably at its hottest, too), but somewhere deep in your heart, you know there's a storm definitely brewing. You’re not certain when it’s going to hit, you're just certain that when it does… Oh, baby! Below is a short story about two incredible friends of mine whose love lives at a particular time got cut short courtesy of religious underwareness. 

They met at a queer open mic thing. Poetry and performance, I think. She was beautiful, artsy, not-exactly soft spoken, bald, wore hoop earrings and glasses large enough to cover all her eyes plus a bit of her brows, smelled of chocolate and vanilla, and was performing her latest piece about “finding yourself” that evening. In this article, we'll call her Tumelo. After Tumelo was done performing and I was done cheering from behind, she came to the table that we both shared and whispered to me that a certain winsome girl in the crowd had caught her attention whilst performing, and she intended to head over to her table after the show. Being Tumelo, I laughed at her intentions so hard I nearly puked. However, that jeer never amounted to much, because she did get the girl, and we’ll call her Koko in this article. 

With Tumelo and Koko, it was love—or should I say attraction—at first sight. They didn’t even need to have a lengthy conversation to conclude that they were going home together, leaving me standing outside with furrowed brows, an agape mouth, and half a glass of Nigerian cocktail—which consisted of a sprinkle of Coca-Cola, Captain Jack, a few commitment-phobic ice cubes, and a slice of cucumber tucked between the tip of my glass—in an outstretched hand, wondering what the hell happened to genuine friendship. 

Three months in, things were exceedingly great. I had become Koko’s friend by proxy, and all three of us tried to communicate almost every week by phone since we lived in different cities. Throughout our numerous conversations, I got to know that Koko drew a portrait of Tumelo, and Tumelo, in turn, told Koko things she’d never dare bring to light, which was super utopian to me at the time. Nonetheless, this fairytale didn’t last as long as I expected it to, and it pissed me off severely. I mean, why would people who blend seamlessly not work out? 

One night, I was reading for my upcoming exams when I got a call from Koko. It was not unusual for Koko to call me, but it was unusual for Koko to call me at that time of the night. So I said a silent prayer and hoped everything was fine. Well, it wasn't, because as soon as I answered the phone, on the other end was a heartbroken Koko who could barely breathe and kept mumbling several words, some of which I was unable to grasp, in tears, pleading with me to talk to Tumelo, to tell Tumelo that she was willing to take the plunge and do all it took to make her feel safe and prevent her from breaking up with her. I calmed Koko—or I, at least, tried to—and told her I was going to speak to Tumelo in her favor. 

It was ridiculous to me in the beginning. I knew Tumelo was one to destroy everything and anything because of a belief, but I just never thought it would be over a religious belief. So when I spoke to Tumelo and she said, “Precious, I love Koko, but every time she puts her hands on me in those places, I can't help but think, maybe, I am choosing a life with her over a life with God,” I was dumbfounded. Let me tell you something. When someone hits you with that type of statement out of the blue, there's really no particular response that you'd give to them that'd make them change their mind, because the clarity they seek has to come from within.

I let Tumelo figure it out while I debated on the feedback to give Koko. Was she to fight for her relationship or allow her girlfriend to follow the ‘light’? Tumelo said if they were meant to be together, the Lord would never have spoken to her in her dreams. So, was Koko supposed to restrict Tumelo from listening to the voice of the Lord, or was she supposed to watch her gently slip from her fingers despite having imagined an entire existence with her? By the way, where was the voice of the Lord when I and Tumelo drank various bottles of alcohol almost every weekend that we could reconvene? Where was that voice when she ate just as much as she drank? And, damn! Where was that voice at the beginning of their relationship when the feelings weren't that steep? 

Is it me or Religion?

I'll get my thoughts straight. I am not mad at religion. Never have I been. Never will I be. I am rather infuriated by the way it is being taught. By the way different people around the world pick and determine what is sinful and what is not. You go around and hear ‘God is love’, and then you hear them further emphasize the ways that he's not. They tell you to fall in love and then want to tell you whom and how to love—what part of ‘love’ is appropriate and what part is not. This version of religion ends up tearing its victims apart. They're being torn between two valid desires—the desire to be seen for who they really are and the desire to be saved. And these women who were born into conservative faiths and have learned to constantly internalize their attractions will continue seeing their attraction to other women as a phase, a test, a temptation which they should never yield to. Therefore, since the desire to be seen is as valid as the desire to be saved, it keeps recurring. And when they can’t contain it anymore, they date you like they are sneaking a sip of communion wine behind the priest’s back without his knowledge. They date you with a conviction that a judgment, that's probably just stalling out of God’s grace and mercy, is definitely coming for them. And when they begin to really fall for you, that guilt springs up quickly, defiling all you've ever worked to build. In that moment, you know you shouldn't hate them, because they don't hate you, and you know they are not leaving you, just fleeing from themselves, but you cannot help the way your heart gradually comes apart. You cannot help the way your chest clogs in despair, the way your fingers curl in outrage, and the way your eyes sting with tears at night when you think about them fluently. 

No one tells you how hard it is to go from being adored one minute by your partner, to being part of the reason they're having a spiritual crisis. Not because of anything profound, but because of who you are as a person. And while the LGBTQ+ community focuses more on queer closeted individuals, which is a good thing, no one really talks about the other members of the same community whom the closeted individuals take down on their way in. Their journey of “finding themselves” ends up messing with the sense of worth of these other individuals, and before long, they, too, start wondering; perhaps they're meant to be the ones suitable for only tests. The ones novices have to pass through first before running back to church, to men, to someone their parents can boast of and post on their WhatsApp statuses without social humiliation. Subsequently, they begin to feel too bold, too queer, too confident—too much in their skins. And soon enough, they begin to feel like sin. 

I know it can be funny—shameful, even—losing your girlfriend over a chapter Paul wrote. It might be amusing getting dumped over the fact that your girlfriend had a dream where Jesus was frowning in disappointment over her sexuality. But I want to tell you today that you're not the sinner. You're not the mistake or the… stumbling block to the blessing. You're not the reason they keep crying in the car right after kissing you. You're you. Wholly. Deserving. Complete. Unapologetically queer and sacred in your rights. You're not hurting anybody. You seek consent before falling for other adults, so why should you be crucified?

Conclusion 

To the queer women who stay wrestling with their beliefs, I see you. The world may not in the way that you want, but at least someone sees you. I know you’re scared. I know you've been told time and time again that queerness alters righteousness, but I want you to know you can be both queer and holy. You can be queer and go to church. You can be queer and still worship God and he’ll listen to you. You can be queer and still do a host of other things, because being queer does not equate promiscuity or lack of sexual boundaries. Being queer does not equate dirt, neither does being straight equate abstinence or purity. And the sooner you realise this, the sooner you'll stop ruining hearts in God’s name. 

For the rest of the world? They'll heal. Maybe they'll learn how to love boldly, maybe they won’t. Maybe they'll stay out of your business, maybe you just won’t get that luxury. 

Until then…

Live fully. 

BY PREECIOUS NELSON