“Scarborough Faire”

By Ronald Lawson

This Christmas was going to be different. As usual, I attended the junior camp run by our local conference. But this year, because I was so “mature” for a nearly 14-year-old, I could stay on for the youth camp that followed. The night between the two camps, Peter moved into my dorm.

I had known him at a church during the time we lived on a pineapple farm in Queensland. We had moved there from my birthplace in Sydney, Australia, when I was six years old. Then when I was eleven, we moved to Toowoomba, a provincial “city” of 40,000. That was because Dad had allowed himself to be talked into becoming a literature evangelist. This was but one sign I grew up in the bosom of the church. Dad seemed to be elected elder wherever we went, and he was on the conference executive committee for years. “Mum” had taught in Adventist colleges in India and Australia before marriage. We also had a relative in high places in the church hierarchy.

I remember realizing that I was different when I was about five years old. I didn’t have a name for it yet, of course, nor was it expressed yet in sexual attraction. Perhaps it was feeling more comfortable with girls than boys, not liking the rough and tumble of boy behavior; perhaps it was my love for singing, and soon for playing music, and my eagerness to spend hours by myself practicing. Later, as I became a serious organist and then, later still, when realized about my sexuality, I would come to see my organ playing as a sure sign of my sexual orientation; for almost every male organist I knew turned out to be gay. Perhaps it was also in the joy I felt at church, in my sensitivity to spiritual things, my delight in the music there, in the love and acceptance I felt there as a child, my sense that I belonged there–a sense that seemed to be greater than that felt by my peers.

Puberty had hit at age twelve, and I shot up to a skinny strapping six feet. My peers started to notice the girls differently, and they started talking about the girls, but I started noticing guys. It was all very confusing. I had questions, but nowhere to find answers.

Now Peter, age sixteen and a camp counselor, was inviting me to move to a bed next to his. That night he seduced me. I was a very willing participant, and it was a wonderful experience, for we talked a lot and many questions were answered. I was pleased at last to discover that there was a whole category of people who felt as I did, and I learned what they were called; I heard the word “homosexual” for the first time. I realized I was not the only one in the world with these attractions, and I also had some enjoyable lessons on what “we” could do together to express our attractions. Indeed, so much did we enjoy what we did that we continued doing it throughout the youth camp—discreetly, after lights were out. It all seemed very natural; there was no guilt at all–yet.

Peter grew up and married, became a pastor and worked for the church, and eventually become a union president in Australia. He later would offend me greatly, given our history, by writing to the presidents of Avondale College and the conferences in his union before my research visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1986 telling them to be careful of me because I was a “gay activist.”

I was still very naïve on the subject but determined to do something about it. I guess I showed my academic bent, for I first turned to the library. For several months when I was fifteen, I traveled with Dad to Brisbane, the state capital, every month. While he attended a conference committee meeting on those Sundays, I went to the big public library and looked up everything I could find on homosexuality. There was not much available in 1955. There were mostly accounts by shrinks of men who had come to them with “homosexual problems,” often called, as I remember, “inversion.” It was pretty depressing, but I read some of them several times; I felt a kinship with those men. I am not sure what my parents thought I was doing in the library. Certainly they did not know my actual interest!

In my last couple of years in high school, I had a friendship that unexpectedly developed into a sexual relationship. I would say that it was experimental rather than romantic. We did a lot of bushwalking together, and somehow often ended up naked in the grass. He, too, married later.

Guilt came about the time I went to college. I was still pretty naïve and isolated. There was not yet any gay movement, of course, especially in Australia. There were not yet any gay bars, even in Brisbane—not that I would have gone to one! However, after I moved to Brisbane to go to the university, I gradually discovered that “my kind” met in certain parks and other indoor locations known as “beats,” and I gradually spent more and more time “cruising” there.

My sex drive was really strong, and I realized it was easy to find sex with men, so I became quite promiscuous. I longed for the romance I saw between my straight friends at church, but there seemed to be nothing there for me. I was strongly attracted to a friend there, but I could not even let him know.

All I could find was quick sex acts with strangers. I felt so bad after each that I would pretend I did not know the guy if I saw him again. Since I rejected myself, there was no possibility of forming a relationship with anyone. I was intensely lonely. I prayed all the time for God to take this away, to change me; I cried, fasted. I knew instinctively that I could not tell my parents, nor go to anyone in the church for help. They would only condemn, and I did that already to myself.

I had become personally much more involved in church, and now, for the first time, I started to feel guilty about my feelings and behavior. I cannot put my finger on where that guilt came from; I guess it was all around me in society. It may have also come from the fact that I was dating women because that was expected, and they seemed to be attracted to me. I realized I saw them as friends, not romantic objects, that there was no sexual attraction at all. Sex before marriage was not expected in Adventist circles, especially from a fellow so active in church. Although I could hide behind my “high morals,” I felt great confusion and guilt.

Through these years I never had a gay friend. Once I had sex with a guy, he knew my shame, so I was totally embarrassed should I see him again. I remember forming close bonds with straight friends and then feeling intense loneliness as they developed romantic relationships with girls. Because no one knew my secret, and this included my family, no one knew the real me.

Eventually the tension became so great that I yearned to “change.” I knew instinctively that I should not talk with a pastor about my “problem”, so instead I went to the head of the counseling service at the university. This was early in my time in grad school. I don’t think he was judgmental. His main comment expressed amazement that I was doing so well academically while finding the time to do all that cruising. Since I wanted to change, he offered me the best tool available to psychologists then—aversion therapy. This involved showing me slides of “dirty pictures,” and giving me a small electric shock when the picture was a naked man but allowing me to “enjoy” a naked woman photo without interruption.

This did not make me straight! Indeed, it caused so much turmoil that I cruised much more frequently during that time. My reaction was to become even more promiscuous. I tortured myself, wondering if it might be Jesus’ will for me to cut off my genitals. I became totally desperate–WHY DID GOD NOT ANSWER MY PRAYERS? My religious training led me to reject the method of “treatment.” I felt I should be able to “choose” the right path rather than have my psyche manipulated into it. After six turbulent weeks I broke an appointment and did not return, and then I realized what a relief this was. I was not yet admitting to myself that I was gay. This was something that I did, not what I was.

As my work in grad school progressed, I realized more and more acutely that I was romantically attached to my best friend who was, of course, straight. He, his girlfriend, and I often did things together. Weirdly, she always sat in the back seat of my car (Greg did not have one), and the three of us spent a great deal of time together both on campus and at church. There were many mixed feelings here–joy, frustration, jealousy.

Eventually, after we both graduated, Greg and I spent a year traveling overland, as much as possible, from Australia through Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe to Scandinavia, where I received word that I had a post-doc at Columbia University in New York City, and had to leave him abruptly to meet the deadline. I remember sitting outside on the ferry from Lund to Copenhagen, crying my eyes out.

This was 1971. The gay movement was new and overwhelming initially to me. It was too sudden. In New York City I initially repeated my Australian pattern: dating girls and having sex with strange men. I still did not think of myself as gay. This was not what I was, only something I kept doing and then repenting of and fruitlessly promising God I would never do it again. The remarkable thing was that I remained sure of my connection to God.

The struggle continued until I was 34. I was still deeply spiritual, heavily involved in church. Eventually I thought through the significance of God’s failure to answer my prayers. Surely God had the power to change me if He wanted to! Then maybe He did not want to?

In 1974 I helped a friend at church, a student living in the dorm at Columbia University, by putting up a visiting former classmate of his in my apartment. Even though Dick talked a lot about his girlfriend at Stanford, there was so much electricity between us that he looped back to New York on his Eastern tour; and when I returned home, there he was awaiting me in my bed!

Dick and I discovered we were mutually attracted to one another. This was something new; it developed into love. This made such a difference! He was not an Adventist, but of course I took him to church; I wanted to share all the important things in my life with him. Instinctively I knew that this was good, that God was leading. Indeed, I found that in loving another for the first time that I gained important new insights into the love of God. Truly it was “not good for man to be alone.” I was in love, sure at last that I was gay, and so proud of everything that I told my church group at Columbia University about it in a sermon some weeks later.

The commuter relationship with Dick did not last, but I was finally out of the closet. Neither of us had had any experience in relationships, and we were unreasonably possessive and jealous, for having finally found love, it was so important to us. We had missed out on all the experiences most heterosexuals have as teenagers.

Along the way I had dated lots of women friends. I was responding to social pressure and also to my loneliness. I was comfortable with these friends and enjoyed sharing concerts and picnics with them. The problem was that they often came to be attracted to me. I was considered good looking, intelligent, well educated, and I had become socially comfortable. They saw my failure to apply sexual pressure to them as compatible with my heavy church involvement. I am so glad that I did not fall into the trap of “turning on the romance” and marrying one of them, as so many gay Adventists have done. Indeed, those who went for counseling were often advised to “pray about it, date a woman, and marry her–God would make sure it would work out!” That would have been a recipe for disaster for both of us and for any children who might have resulted.

The next year I got mad about some academic put-downs of the new gay researchers at the convention of the American Sociological Association, put up notices calling a meeting of the “Sociologists Gay Caucus” in my hotel room, which overflowed, and I was elected the first president. A year later I argued with the incoming president of ASA after the business meeting, demanding that a session on homosexuality be included in the program the following year. After five minutes, I was told that the conversation was coming out all over the ballroom through the speakers! That was how I came out in my profession, and that was another step. There are now several sessions devoted to us each year at the ASA meeting.

My chair at Hunter College, where I was teaching, was a conservative man whom I liked but whom I felt I could not trust with my news of being a gay activist in the profession. When he retired and was replaced by a black radical, I decided it was now time to complete the coming out process at work. But the new chair turned out to be a closet case who was threatened by my openness, and he then made sure that I would not be re-appointed for the next year. I was not yet tenured, so on a yearly contract. But it all worked out after some months of acute anxiety.

I found a new job, with a promotion to Associate Professor, at Queens College–and what could be more appropriate for me? At Queens College I later discovered that the chair who hired me was gay, so my orientation disappeared as an issue. I feel so comfortable that I regularly come out to my classes at their first meeting. I remember how important it could have been for me to have a role model when I was in college.

In 1980 I was heavily involved in arranging the speakers at the first Kinship Kampmeeting. I guess that was my coming out to the denominational leaders, because it required scary phone calls to people I had not yet met inviting them to speak, a meeting with a General Conference Vice President, and finally phone calls to Neal Wilson, the General Conference President then.

Finally, after I felt increasingly good about what I was doing in Kinship, I was at last able to come out to my parents. If I had told them about it early in my life, it would probably have been in the context of “I have this problem,” and I would only have brought them grief because they would not have known what to do. I felt it was great that I could do it in terms of “I have been doing some really exciting stuff in the church, where I am sure God is leading, and I want to tell you all about it.” They took a while to digest that mouthful.

I could also tell them I had four gay cousins. We had grown up in different countries and in three different denominations, but this was clearly a family trait. Just as I had taken a long time to accept myself, I could not expect my parents to embrace the news immediately. They had to have room to ask questions, to mull over the answers. I had to be patient when Dad wondered aloud what was “wrong” with our (extended) family. I found that for a while the traditional roles were reversed. I had to be there for my parents rather than they for me, at least in this matter.

For me, coming out was a long process. A couple of years ago my nephew came out to me. He is very glad to have a gay uncle.

I have been with my present partner, Scott Wager, for more than a decade. We are officially “domestic partners” registered with the local authorities, and we have a strong sense that God has led us. Indeed, looking back, I realize He was trying to lead me for years when I would not allow myself to follow. I was much more attuned to the prejudice around me that to the leading of God.

While many of my gay Adventist friends seem to have encountered only rejection at church, and have often left in despair, my experience has been different. It has been a mix, of course, but I have received a lot of love and support. I am very grateful to God for that, and to those who have been so supportive.

I have been very fortunate to be the Adventist chaplain at Columbia University for almost 25 years. They are a loving, searching congregation that thrives in its diversity. Scott is active there, too, as the organist. When they learned that we had become formal domestic partners, they got together and planned a great formal party for us as their celebration!

They were delighted with the story of how, when we came away from signing the papers, which occurred at the college where I teach, Scott exclaimed, “We just got married!” He grabbed my hand, and we then walked that way down the long corridor in the very building where I teach my classes.

Those giving support ultimately included my parents, whose love for me led them to accept me. In 1989 I took Scott home with me for the first time. When they saw us together, they realized how much we meant to one another. After a few days, Dad got us all together, told Scott how much he and Mum liked him, and formally welcomed him into the family. There were tears all around that day. It was one of the best moments of my life.

Ronald Lawson was born in Australia in 1940 to a family heavily involved in the Adventist Church. He completed a Ph.D. in history and sociology in 1970, and moved to New York City in 1971, where he was a Professor at the City University of New York and the Adventist chaplain at Columbia University at the time of this writing. Sadly, his partner Scott Wager has since passed away.

Dr. Lawson is a prolific researcher and author. His papers on Seventh-day Adventism, with some comparisons with Mormons and Witnesses, can be found at https://ronaldlawson.net/.