Doug PollardSexuality, Religion & Suicide
DOUG: A tragic set of circumstances lead to a number of reports of young, gay teenagers committing suicide in the U.S.A. recently and as you know my guest who was on earlier, Rob Mitchell, has talked about suicide amongst same-sex attracted young people in this country as well – one of the people who is also deeply concerned about this issue, from a particular perspective is Anthony Venn Brown. Now, Anthony wrote a book which you’ve probably stumbled across somewhere called: “A Life of Un-learning” about his journey from being a married, evangelical pastor to his present situation where he, I think it would be fair to say, ministers mainly to the gay community. Particularly those who struggle with the conflict – the perceived conflict, between their religion and their sexuality – Anthony joins us on the line, now. Good morning, Anthony.
ANTHONY: Good morning, Doug. How are you?
DOUG: I’m well, thank you. You are very, very concerned as I’ve just said, about the issue of youth suicide and attempted suicides – suicidal thought, ideation as it’s called, in our community. But it’s a particular problem for people who are struggling not only with their sexuality but also with their religious beliefs.
ANTHONY: That’s true, Doug. Look, when my autobiography was released – done in 2004 – immediately, I began getting emails from people and I’ve had thousands of them. After a short period of time it became very clear to me that possibly, LGBT people from faith backgrounds are possibly the highest risk group in our community, of a whole range of things include mental health issues and suicidality(sic). It was like my Inbox became like a microscope into a hidden world that hadn’t been tapped-in to before because many of these people had never spoken to anyone about what they were going through. The contributing factor to this is of course, that if you have a belief system that your acceptance or rejection of your sexuality has an eternal consequence that takes the cognitive dissonance to a whole new level that is experienced by the average gay and lesbian person.
DOUG: Yes – now, how do you counter that?
ANTHONY: I always say, Doug, the enemy is ignorance. Doug, sometimes we are very keen to attack certain individuals or organisations but – you know, we sometimes miss the point in doing that. Because the enemy really is ignorance and the way I counteract that is by – I use social media, I have websites out there. I’ve encouraged other people to tell their stories; we have a fantastic organisation that’s been set-up called: Freedom to Be. There’re over 180-stories on there now and so we network these people. We’ve had people come on to our site – I’m thinking of a young guy in country New South Wales who’s 19, who was ready to have his final attempt to take his life. For the third time. He said this time he was going to do it, found our site that night and suddenly connected with everybody – and he is doing fabulously, now.
DOUG: It is all a question of ignorance, isn’t it – I mean, this is what we’re up against.
ANTHONY: It is – you know and I think we need to take ownership of this, ourselves. ‘Cause when I say that all that I went through for 22-years, that internal torment it wasn’t just other peoples’ ignorance it was my own ignorance about sexual orientation. Also contributing to that was the level of understanding about sexual orientation within mainstream society but today, of course, there’s no excuse for that. We can find something in a nanosecond, on the Internet these days. So that information is out there and we encourage people to access that.
DOUG: Yeah. The trouble is not everybody is on the Internet and bringing something to peoples’ attention particularly in rural and remote areas can be – m’mm, difficult. That is of course, where the Internet also has its greatest impact isn’t it?
ANTHONY: Yes. Yeah, there’s a challenge there and we have several challenges. One, of course, is rural and remote areas. The other thing, too, which we haven’t totally identified but we’re becoming more conscious of it is within certain cultures this is even more of a problem, today – you know, an Asian culture or Islamic culture. These communities sometimes are quite tightly knit and have another layer which increases the intensity of the conflict in terms of the conflict(sic) the people go through.
DOUG: Yeah, I think the important point to get across particularly from your perspective is there in fact need not be a conflict between your sexuality and your faith. It is possible and I know there are many people here, at this station – I remember one guy saying it was harder for him to come out as a Christian to his gay friends than it was to come out as gay to his Christian friends.
ANTHONY: [laughs] Yes – you know, I run a seminar which trains LGBT community workers, chaplains and a whole range of people who work with gay and lesbian people. I call it: “Walking between Worlds - - -”
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
ANTHONY: - - - and if you are from a faith background you sometimes can be in this space, where you can be out-of-the-closet about your sexuality but in the closet about your faith and beliefs. I’m glad, too, you corrected yourself in your introduction where you said the “perceived” conflict [laughs]
DOUG: Well, that’s what I want you to clarify. Because I’m sure there will be some people listening who say, well of course Christianity is against homosexuality.
ANTHONY: It’s interesting because that perception has been around for many, many years now but of course usually people are totally – once again – uneducated; there are only a handful of passages in the Bible which refer to male-to-male, same sex activity. But if someone studies these and not just reads them in an English translation they discover that in each of these contexts it’s talking about temple prostitution, about pedestary – talking about rape – it’s talking about abusive relationships. It never talks about same-sex orientation or same-sex love as we know it today. Also, of course, it always shocks to find out the word “homosexual” does not actually appear in an English translation of the Bible until 1946.
DOUG: There is this problem with everything in the Bible which I try to point out to people, which is it’s a translation-of-a-translation- of-a-translation – you know? It’s several books in several, different languages written over a long period of time and passing through several translations where we don’t have any original, in a lot of cases.
ANTHONY: That’s right and the other thing, too, if you want to try and get some understanding of the meaning of what was being said at that time you have to understand the context, the historical and cultural context. If someone is reading an English translation of the Bible they might read the Sodom story, they might read Leviticus where it says man shall not lay with a man as with a woman – they’re interpreting that through their own current cultural [indistinct] which might be anti-homosexual. They have no understanding of ‘what is that actually saying to those people in that time’ and that was actually about temple prostitution which was commonplace amongst the fertility gods at the time that was written.
DOUG: You recently ran what you called a safe, conversational space: “A Different Conversation - - -”
ANTHONY: Yes.
DOUG: - - - that was on Saturday the 30th-of-October. Take us through what you did at that gathering.
ANTHONY: Well, it’s fabulous because there are now – there’s a climate within Australia I think even more so than in the U.S., where Evangelical and Pentecostal leaders and churches are asking the question first of all, has our response to the LGBT community been Christ-like or Christian and of course the answer to that is “no”. The other question they’re asking is do we need to look at again, at our previous(sic) held beliefs about homosexuality and the answer to that of course is “yes” – and so, this space on Saturday in Melbourne has come out of what’s known as the : “Hundred Revs”, in Sydney where 100 ministers signed an apology to the LGBT community and marched in (the) Mardi Gras Parade. Last year - - -
DOUG: Yes, I remember.
ANTHONY: - - - a conference [indistinct] called: A Different Conversation. So let’s talk about this in a respectful way, let’s not attack each other and this was the first one in Melbourne on Saturday. Which was really encouraging.
DOUG: Who was there at this conference of yours?
ANTHONY: A whole range of ministers and people from churches so it was – yeah, quite a cross section and some quite prominent mega-church pastors, Christian leaders – what I would call Christian statesmen were there speaking – m’mm, who is the chaplain of “Freedom to Be” – so things are changing, Doug. Things are definitely changing and we need to engage more people I believe, in a dialogue. We’ve been very quick to attack in the [indistinct] but the way that I work, I guess, I style myself instead of being an activist as such I feel like I’d like to be an ambassador for our community. To be a representative and to engage people in informed, intelligent (and) respectful dialogue – and it’s working.
DOUG: Yes and of course, you’ve got the credentials so to speak – that means people from that background will actually talk with you.
ANTHONY: Yes.
DOUG: (and)Give you a measure of respect.
ANTHONY: The interesting thing, too, I’ve had some very high profile, Christian leaders in Australia say: ‘I might not agree with you, Anthony, at this stage but all I hear about you is people speak about you with respect and how you’re going about this’ which is interesting.
DOUG: I must plead guilty here, myself – we’re often in the gay community guilty of using the word “Christian” as if it was an insult. Because of the way certain Christians have treated certain members of our community.
ANTHONY: Yes and there’s an organisation dare I mention their name and I think, probably most people in the gay and lesbian community have heard of them and they’re called: “God Hates Fags - - -”
DOUG: Yes.
ANTHONY: - - - this particular group and many in people in the community think they are speaking on behalf of Christianity. But what they don’t realise is this is an incestuous, Christian cult of less than a hundred people - - -
DOUG: Yes.
ANTHONY: In Kansas. But they just work the media and in some ways we have contributed to their celebrity status.
DOUG: Yes, indeed we have. Keep up the good work, Anthony.
ANTHONY: Thanks, Doug and I loved your interview with Daniel who’s a wonderful man doing a great job.
DOUG: Yes, he is. He’s terrific isn’t he?
ANTHONY: Yes.
DOUG: Let’s hope he finds himself some cuddle time soon ‘cause he desperately needs it.
[laughs]
ANTHONY: Thanks, Doug.
DOUG: Anthony Venn Brown, thank you for joining us this morning.
ANTHONY: ‘Bye, ‘bye.
