I Survived but Many Don’t: Homophobia Kills

Content note: homophobia, religious and spiritual abuse

By Elora Dodd 

Growing up in a staunchly conservative Christian home, my parents would demand the remote the instant a gay person came on television. If I lagged a second too long, my parents would unleash an angry lecture about how dangerous it was to “normalize that lifestyle.”

I could not truly immerse myself in the entertainment, not if it risked me allowing homosexuality to leach into our home. I had to be ever-at-the-ready to defend my family.

I did not want to let the sin affect myself or my siblings. How would it change a person, I wondered, to normalize that lifestyle? Would I change into some kind of monster-woman, empty inside, deplete of the joy of the Lord? Moreover, I feared awakening my parents’ anger, should my obedience hesitate. 

My parents viewed this as normal parental oversight over media. After all, isn’t it a good thing for parents to limit their children’s media use?

What I learned from this experience, however, was not positive. Rather, I learned to be afraid of anything gay.

I learned that if I did not immediately respond the moment someone spoke positively about gay people, or expressed their sexuality, I would risk being yelled at by my strict parents, perhaps accompanied by my mom’s trademark vise grip on my wrist to keep me from turning away, overwhelmed.

My mental healthcare provider would not diagnose me with autism for another decade or more — I had no idea back then that it took me longer to tear myself away from something I was focused on than other children, that I struggled to understand spoken instructions in a room with background noise, or that looking someone in the eyes could be painful for me. I assumed everyone struggled in these ways.

Besides, none of that mattered. I had to respond as fast as possible, or shame myself in front of my family. My parents would not have called it punishment, rather a well-timed “discussion.” But it hurt, emotionally (and physically, if mother employed the vise grip).

Now, as a grown woman in my mid-twenties, I sometimes still feel the pangs of fight-or-flight when someone or something gay comes on screen. I find myself looking over my shoulder, even if no one else is around, just in case. 

I learned that gay people were a visceral, immediate threat that would endanger me and my family and damage my parents’ respect for me.

The frustrations of watching television did not end there, however. If a show introduced a gay character (or just said nice things about gay people several times) my parents would ban it from the house. One gay episode could be skipped — but a pattern of homosexuals was unacceptable. 

As a lonely, homeschooled, undiagnosed autistic child, I found myself a perpetual outsider.

While I garnered real-life companionship where I could, and held a select few close friendships, sympathetic peers were hard to find. Thus, like so many children before me, I supplemented my lonely life with books, and television, and elaborate fantasy worlds of my own design. 

Yet all too easily, my fictional “friends” could be torn away because someone near them was sinful. I grew to resent homosexuals for murdering my imaginary friends.

“Why did they have to force a gay character in there?” I thought to myself. “They ruined the whole show. Now I will never know how it ends.”

Left with unresolved plot lines and the ever-renewing quest to find replacement friends, my frustration grew.

I learned that even something as simple as a fictional person acknowledging that someone was gay would take away my joy. I couldn’t relax if gay people existed.

In church and at (home)school, teachers explained to me that throughout history, God often let an evil nation invade God’s “chosen nation” because they had gotten too sinful and needed to be punished. I learned about cruel punishments and ongoing, dehumanizing tortures that the captured peoples faced at the hands of the heathen oppressors.

I imagined what it would be like to do your absolute best, but still be enslaved because the people around you chose to sin. Rubbing salt in the wound, these same teachers told me that the United States is a Christian nation, founded on the Bible and a love for God… and that the gays and the abortions were corrupting the nation, sending us down a wicked and slippery slope of sin. It did not take me long to put two and two together. 

I once had a full-blown panic attack leading up to the 2016 presidential election, because I thought if Hillary Clinton won, then she might crucify all the Christians. My mom tried to calm me down, but laughed a bit as well. She could not understand where these wild ideas were coming from.

I felt ashamed. Not only was I hurting, but I was not as smart as my mom wanted me to be — at least that is how it felt. I did not understand how I could be so illogical.

Looking back, however, I see how pervasive the messaging was that our country was imploding on itself, due to the evil liberals polluting the country with marijuana and anal sex and the morning-after pill. What is a child supposed to believe when you tell them that countries like yours — the special holy ones — get taken over by sadists when people sin too much? 

I agonized — what would happen to my family? If the gays kept being gay, how many of us would survive? Would they kill my parents in front of me? As a child, I sifted through all the ways I knew that someone could be violated and wondered how many I would have to face — and how many my siblings would have to face — if the abortion tally kept rising. I visualized my family being tortured in medieval ways, and wondered if I would be taken as a child bride.

I believed that if too many people were gay, ISIS would invade the US and brutalize my family.  And then, the worst possible thing happened. I realized I was gay. 

The person polluting my family was ME. 

The person ruining my life was ME.

The person who was responsible for the impending massacre of millions was ME.

I even wondered if there was a chance I was the antichrist, reserved for a fate worse than death, doomed to bringing about the end of the world. After all, if I had such a perfect life and knew all about God and was still gay, I must be a deeply wicked person. 

There is a common misconception among Christians that they can holler all day about how evil the gays are, and how wicked they are, and how dangerous they are, but as long as they don’t scream those words at the gay people, then they aren’t hateful. I suspect a lot of Christians see hate as something you wield as a weapon, and think that if they phrase the same rhetoric as warnings then it cannot hurt. 

What people do not realize is that when you unleash your vitriol within the group, you are still unleashing it on gay people. 

I did not choose to be gay. I did, however, nearly choose to end my own life, partially because I could not endure a life of hurting my family by simply existing. 

When you raise your child to feel fight or flight every time someone is gay, you risk that they become terrified of their own reflection.

When you raise your child to never relax around a gay person, you risk that they could never be able to rest again.

When you raise your child to see gays as a national security threat, you risk that they could think that they are gambling with their parents’ lives, simply by choosing to live a day longer.

I survived. Many don’t. 

Homophobia kills. 

Elora Dodd is an Autistic comedian who performs online for her more than 600k followers, often under the digital pseudonym Online 1 Room Schoolhouse. When she is not engaged in general nonsense, she serves as an advocate for the two causes closest to her heart — disability advocacy and religious trauma survivor advocacy. She is also gay, which is cool. You can connect more with Elora through her LinkTree.