Opening doors to faithful LGBT youth

The impact of religious-fueled homophobia on youth is a topic that is personal for Crystal Cheatham.

The 30-year-old Philadelphia resident was raised in a religious environment in Central Pennsylvania that denounced LGBT identities, setting forth a struggle to unite her faith and sexual orientation.

Once on the other side of that journey, Cheatham created the Identity Kit in 2012, a resource guide for queer Christian youth.

“I started the kit to offer youth in fundamental Christian spaces information about some of the issues they were struggling with that I didn’t think the adults in their lives would deal with,” she said. “It was a way to help them understand that, biblically, they weren’t going to hell, and to affirm them as they were coming into their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Cheatham teamed with Soulforce to lead workshops based on the kit and later built a structured organization and website to connect youth in need with the kit’s message.

Ultimately, funding for the initiative ran out, but Cheatham said the need is still very much there.

“There definitely aren’t enough resources,” she said, noting that, while some LGBT or faith organizations offer resources, the variations among faith communities in their approaches to sexual orientation and gender identity make it difficult to offer a single clearinghouse for information. “Each faith group comes up with their own way of incorporating sexuality or gender variance into their interpretation of their holy book. One of the things we were trying to do with the Identity Kit was to create books that reached kids in Muslim audiences, Jewish audiences. Right now, there aren’t those kinds of resources that have the nuances talking about specific religions and faiths, as well as sexual orientation and gender identity.” 

Despite the dearth of resources for youth, Cheatham acknowledged that some faith communities have made gradual progress in opening their doors to LGBT youth.

“There definitely has been a transition, or a breaking of the ice,” Cheatham said. “When Soulforce first started, its bus tour would travel from Army base to church to college, and they’d be met with protestors.  When I went on the tour in 2012, we went to universities and churches and people weren’t yelling at us, but rather engaging.”

However, she noted that, while some circles are open to dialogue, the chasm has deepened with those that aren’t.

“Those who were OK with thinking about these issues have seemed to move toward the idea of, Yes, this is the way it’s going to be, while those who aren’t OK have completely closed off their hearts and minds,” she said. “The ones that truly need an adjustment, the ones most entrenched in discriminatory policies against LGBT youth, are the ones who don’t have the information and who are most closed off to getting it.”

And that cycle continues, Cheatham said, when LGBT individuals respond by closing themselves off to faith.

“When I first moved to Philadelphia, I saw that one of the major roadblocks for me as queer Christian was that so much of the queer community had closed their doors to faith and religion, and that’s because the other side had done the same thing to them,” she said. “Here we are in this space where we still have kids having all of their ideas about God derailed and nobody’s answering their questions. Nobody is getting in there and helping them. So you either have kids who decide not to hold to a religion even if they want to, or those who stay in that religion and internalize that homophobia, neither of which is healthy.”

Cheatham said she advises struggling LGBT youth to seek out one of the myriad accepting faith traditions and use their personal stories to continue the work of uniting faith and LGBT communities.

“The argument inside a church if a kid is coming out is going to be biblical rhetoric, but what really needs to be discussed is the personal story of that kid’s struggle. That’s the only thing I think that can really change people. So find another faith background and put your story out there as often and as loudly as you possibly can.” 

Newsletter Sign-up