Born in a Jar with One Eye

My mother used to tell me that I was “born in a jar with one eye.” Unbeknownst to her, she was writing the beginning of my gay coming-out story.

If you ask her today whether she ever said I was born in a jar with one eye, she will deny it. But she did tell me that story, and I quite like it. Why? Well, my mother seems to have known early on that I was built different.

– AI-generated art of a baby in a jar with one eye –

It was clear early on that I was not like heterosexual boys. I identified with women. I often wore my mother’s clothing, including her red high heels, and called myself Ms. Hoshaw, especially when pretending to be a teacher. She-Ra was my goddess.

This is not to say that I didn’t do normal boy things. I pretended to be a cop and in the military (with uniform and gear), and killed animals (hunting and in other contexts). And I was athletic, though average, running track and cross-country from elementary school until I went to college.

Middle school was especially hard.

At least according to my peers, my fem side was strong (I guess the incredible amounts of hair that suddenly appeared on my legs and forearms didn’t matter much to them). I was mercilessly bullied for it, and the adults who could have stopped it either ignored it or said it would get better. Ah, the early 1990s. Anti-sodomy laws were still on the books; HIV wasn’t history, but remained a serious crisis. So, I had no choice but to man up.

As some of my more precious peers will tell you, I wasn’t only a victim. They are not wrong.

I said and did stupid and hurtful things, too—including terrorizing even fem-er boys than me. Timothy, if you are reading this, I owe you an apology.

High school happened, and life quieted down.

Many of the bullies had graduated, and my peers generally lost interest in explicitly and openly ruining my life. All that became, mercifully, implicit.

Faith happened, too.

I converted to Christianity in high school, the summer before my sophomore year (at a Presbyterian camp in the Sawtooth Mountains where I discovered the word “faggot” prominently etched on a work shed door). Conversion didn’t change me all that much. I remained a kid who was, like his peers, capable of kindness and equally (if not more) capable of cruelty, especially to the few people in my orbit queerer than me.

But what faith did do was give me a direction. In that sense, Christianity saved my life.

It got me out of Idaho and into an expensive private Presbyterian school.

In one way, Whitworth College was like the high school I left behind on the banks of the Snake River. When I came out in the student newspaper thanks to an episode of the U.S. version of Queer as Folk—when I told everyone what they already knew, midway through my senior year, atop my perch as Student Body President—crickets! Mercifully.

Don’t tell my father, but I received a bad education at Whitworth (as in, not worth the $100,000 my dad paid for it). Ok, that’s too uncharitable.

Whitworth (now a university and no longer affiliated with the Presbyterian Church) did teach me that if you want to get laid (as in, sodomized) at a Christian university, it’s best to stay in the closet. Also, I learned that both the mind and heart of Evangelical Christianity are feckless.

Even so, I met a lot of really wonderful people at Whitworth. Some of the best people I’ve met, I met there. Grace abounds!

In late summer of 2002, I drove from Boise to Spokane to Chicago, using a paper map (I’ll never forget driving through the Badlands at night), to begin my seminary education at McCormick.

I had received a well-deserved, full-ride scholarship (sorry, Leanne—you were not more deserving of the scholarship) that would allow me—or so I thought—to remain a full-time student. If Ozempic had been a thing at the time, I would not have had to work. Alas. The scholarship paid McCormick to educate me, but not to feed me. The silver lining: I started working at Starbucks on 55th and Woodlawn, where I met some of the best people in the world. Shanell, you know I am talking about you!

I met fantastic people at McCormick, too. Hardy, now a pastor in California, introduced me to Chicago. He kindly pointed out the location of Boystown. Thank you, Hardy!

I forged relationships with many more people while parsing Greek verbs (sometimes fake ones, like fucko-mai) on the dance floor of Roscoe’s, and while learning to read the Bible seriously in our biblical hermeneutics classes. That’s the first and only time reading the Bible with others has done anything good for me.

That is to say, I received a proper theological education at McCormick.

I learned New Testament (Greek) from the remarkable Sarah Tanzer, a Jewish New Testament scholar who had a nice way of not putting up with my bullshit while inspiring me to become a better student. I learned the Hebrew Bible (and Hebrew) from a Quaker, Ted Hiebert. And I learned how to think at the intersections of theory, philosophy, and the Bible from New Testament scholar and genuinely wonderful human being Robert Brawley.

It was Robert who recommended that I read The Man Jesus Loved, a book that reads like it was written by a robot but that nonetheless opened my eyes to genuinely creative and orthodox biblical hermeneutics. It was Bob Cathey and Anna Case-Winters (her theological commentary on Matthew is brilliant) who introduced me to We Have Been Believers: An African American Systematic Theology by James H. Evans, Jr.—the book that inspired me to start doing gay theology (yes, another bit of irony), a project that continues, two decades later, to preoccupy my attention.

I also finally came out to my family, through my mother, when she asked me the name of the girl I was then dating. I said, “His name is Josh.”

It didn’t work out, and that may have had something to do with the fact that I took him to the symphony on our first date. It was from him that I learned to communicate gay—that is, without using words (he didn’t call me after that date).

Silent communication is an invaluable skill in bathhouses like the one located at 3246 N. Halsted. I was introduced to Steamworks by a fellow seminarian. To preserve his privacy, I will call him Toby. Thanks, Toby!

I would refer to Steamworks as grandma’s (place)—because I was a student at a seminary of a denomination that didn’t ordain open, unrepentant sodomites, or anyone enjoying sex outside the confines of marriage. I don’t think telling my rural Idaho Committee on Ministry that I read Calvin’s Institutes while taking breaks from getting sodomized would have helped my case.

Of course, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has since changed its tune on same-sex desire, and they would like our applause. I’ll pass. But I will note that I did meet my first more or less serious boyfriend at Fourth Presbyterian Church. Wes, I am truly sorry for the person I was in my early twenties! Of course, you weren’t perfect either. Remember how you reacted when I nearly came on your very expensive sheets?

I entered McCormick, as the Dean at the time said, with curly hair, evangelical, and Presbyterian, and exited bald, queer, and a member of the United Church of Christ (an improvement, but less and less of one as you travel outside the national church orbit). In other words, I started to learn from Chicago’s North Side how to be gay, something the Reformed Tradition I was learning about on the South Side was entirely unable and unwilling to teach (and my professor wondered why I wasn’t taking notes…).

The only education that mattered to me at the time I received from my dear friend, Michael. He introduced me to Musical Monday at Sidetrack.

Working full-time as a flight attendant for United, I started my Ph.D. program at the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) in 2009, also full-time.

Over the next decade, I got hitched, gave birth to the love of my life (he’s now almost 12), and earned a fucking Ph.D. I got out at the right time, too, because CTS has recently paused enrollment. I would say chickens are coming home to roost—but I won’t say it, and I didn’t say it.

I have David M. Halperin to thank for the Ph.D.

How To Be Gay gave me the gay language I needed to bring two parts of myself (gay and male) into conversation and to write a dissertation about it (a tragic piece of writing if there ever was one. . .but given that my committee was surprised I even pulled it off, I will take the win). Learning a new native language takes time. Thankfully, and with a lot of practice, I am improving at speaking my gayness.

As my mom observed early on, I am a different kind of boy. A boy, yes, but a gay one. I am so thankful that I am.

Gayness is the best thing about me.

That’s what all the education I have received, inspired by my conversion to Christianity—and oftentimes in spite of even so-called queer Christians—has taught me.