A Small Reflection
I was already retired from a nearly 40-year career as a minister when I learned the truth. It came in an email from the nephew who told me that his uncle, my minister when I was a kid, had been a gay man who was “outed” only after he had died in his late eighties.
A photograph I have of a church service when I was 12 years old shows this minister (let me call him Rev. X) standing behind the Communion Table. Six elders of the church stand around him; one of them is my father. The heads of the congregants are bowed, including my own. It is 1957. I am 12 years old. It is a moment stopped in time – a photograph I have looked at with wonderful memories through the years. But that feeling changed when I learned the truth about my minister. I felt confused, moving between anger and pity.
Rev. X had lived in the closeted gay world of Washington, D.C. in the mid-1950’s. He, his wife, and their children had come from a small-town church in the Midwest to serve a growing congregation in the nation’s capital. And during his ministry, and with his wife’s stalwart support (she was always dubbed “the pastor’s wife” and not really known as her own person), the church thrived.
Now, from a very early age, I knew I wanted to be a minister, and I also knew I was gay, although I learned to play the game of pretending not to be.
So, I cannot imagine what it was like for Rev. X as a closeted gay man 70 years ago: preaching from biblical texts, including parts about sins of sexual nature, including sodomy: men lying with men.
Knowing the truth about him now, I wonder if he believed the Holy Spirit was guiding him in his words and actions from the pulpit. Or was he just a convincing actor? I wonder, too, if the Rev. Mrs. X ever suspected the truth about her husband. Or was she, too, part of the charade: to present a façade of the perfect minister and wife, with an obedient son and daughter, all the while knowing that her husband was gay.
Their kids were closer to my age than to my brother’s and so we hung out quite a bit. Sadly, the son died at a young age, a victim of excess alcohol and cigarettes. He had played out his role as a stereotype of a preacher’s kid: the quintessential bad-ass. The daughter, on the other hand, turned out to be a kind of Stepford Wife (the stereotypical submissive, docile, and mindless housewife).
Indeed, Rev. X and his family symbolized the perfect, white-bread, Christian family of the 50’s. But one based on a lie!
Getting that email from the reverend’s nephew caused me to relive and reassess a world I once existed in. Where people tried harder to fit in, even though they might have been prone to be a nonconformist; an “outlier.”
Had I learned when I was still a child that Rev. X was a gay man, I might have become an outlier earlier on in my own life. But I am sure he could not have come out to his congregation back then, because if he had been “found out” he would have been asked discreetly to leave not only the congregation, but also the denomination. It would have been a damnable offense for him and his wife and kids. They would have been shunned.
I can only imagine – had that scenario played out when I was a boy – what it would have done to me. Terrified me, no doubt. At first. Then I would have gone numb with emotions for a while, denying who I really was, and who I wanted to be.
But in time I would have come out as a gay man. Only much sooner than I did 30 years ago, a few days before the US’s Labor Day weekend. And in a very conservative part of the US. I was 50 years old then and could no longer lie by pretending to be somebody that I really wasn’t.
The problem today, as I see it within religious institutions and in the world at large, is that some people still want a perfect world. One according to their own standards based on specific cultural mores, be they religious ones or otherwise.
Truly old paradigms expire slowly, if ever. But I hope that today’s clergy of any faith and the people within the institutions they serve, will address the spiritual needs of a Post-Modern World, where virtually everything that was done a certain way 70 years ago, is done differently now. Where every clergyperson is not a carbon copy of some undefiled prototype, but is an individual who is attempting to make do in a topsy-turvy world; and to serve her/his/their faith the best they can on a planet where little makes sense today. But where a vague hope exists beyond human comprehension, that a creative force shines down on all of us, encouraging us to become the better angels of our nature.
Tragically, Rev. X, who never came out as a gay man when he was alive, died of AIDS-related illnesses, but not before he passed the disease on to his wife, who predeceased him.
Don Beaudreau has written 12 books, two of which will be published soon. He is a retired minister who is a frequent contributor to the OJO, a local actor, pianist, and singer.
Discover trusted local services and hidden gems with our easy-to-use online directory.
- Being The Woman You Choose To Be - August 30, 2025
- My 30th Year Anniversary As A Gay Man - July 31, 2025
- What Women Have Taught Me - June 30, 2025
