June is Pride Month. I had this interview with Patty Guthrie a while ago and thought it would be timely to release it.
Patty Guthrie is a High School English Teacher in Sydney, Australia, and author of “Colours” a young adult novel about young characters navigating sexuality and faith. A couple of weeks ago, I got to sit down with her and have a coffee and chat about the impetus for the book, the space in LGBT+ Christian faith, and the future.
If you need to reach out for support you can get in touch with:
Life Line (131114) - Australia
Beyond Blue - Australia
Samaritans (116123) - UK
Sam: Hey Patty, it’s great to finally meet in person, I know getting together has been a long time coming! We were meant to catch up, events conspired, but here we are. I first came across your book, when a dear friend mentioned how much it resonated with him, and I’d also read a review of it. The novel is about a young Christian man coming to terms with his attractions and his faith, and seeking to hold the two in tension; tell me a little about the heart that drove you to write it?
Patty: I just want to say before I start that I am going to use the words ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ a lot in this interview, particularly when I’m referring to non-Christians. That’s something I do on purpose because that’s what the community calls itself, and I want to meet them where they’re at. When it comes to Christians, especially those who have requested specifically, I try to use the term ‘same-sex attracted’ or ‘SSA’, which means essentially the same things but comes with a different connotation. Sorry to be pedantic!
A few things came together to kick off the novel, but it started with one of my good friends coming out to me a few years ago. A strong Christian, heavily involved in ministry, I was shocked to hear that he hadn’t told his parents he was same sex attracted and didn’t openly share it with many other Christians in his life for fear of how they would react.
Then, I did an article for The Gospel Coalition about people who had fallen away, and someone else told me they had left the church due to their sexuality, again out of fear of rejection and growing up hearing theology which effectively ignored or admonished the queer community. It got me thinking about the way we do or don’t talk about sexuality in the church, even as it becomes a larger part of our social rhetoric, and I hoped putting a novel out there would start some conversations.
Sam: What was it like to exercise your imagination and step into the shoes of a completely different experience and reality? Was there anything confronting or carthartic?
Patty: My personal experience is neither attracted to the same sex or male. I hope the publication of my novel encourages more people, especially young adults, to tell their own stories from their own perspectives. Fiction can be a powerful way to enable people to explore their feelings and learn other ways of perceiving situations. especially through fiction, and for young people.
The experiences around gender dysphoria or sexual identity are based on stories my friends have told me, both Christian and non-Christian. The climax of the novel is actually based on an anecdote in Ed Shaw’s ‘The Plausibility Problem’, where he talks about his “kitchen floor moments”, when he feels completely alone and hopeless. Ed Shaw is a same sex attracted minister, who has chosen to remain celibate and often has to wrestle with this idea of not having a family, and kids, which he so deeply desires, because he thinks that is how he can best live out God’s will for his life. The kitchen floor encapsulated this heartbreaking image for me of grappling with existence in such an everyday space. This scene helped me begin to comprehend the emotional and mental toll it takes just to live as a queer Christian, a queer person in society. I asked one of my friends what he found the most difficult about being attracted to the same sex, and he said the way people’s perception of him changes once they find out, even if he doesn’t act any different.
Sam: You mentioned that the events in the novel are drawn from a pastiche of personal experiences with dear friends. How have those experiences shaped your life and faith?
Patty: A lot of the novel is also based on my own story. I grew up in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney, where the book is set, and I was pretty heavily bullied in school - the story of the little girl who was picked up and thrown around was my own, and I was also one of the only Christians in my grade, which lent itself to Luke’s struggle of finding his identity in Christ and at school, often feeling like he didn’t belong in either, feeling like the mouthpiece for Christianity even when he was doubting or felt completely out of his depth.
My own struggles with depression, especially towards the end of the novel, are presented honestly, although talking about those experiences will always be a mixture of confronting and cathartic. The novel is a loose allegory of ‘The Prodigal Son’ in the gospel of Luke, and I was struck by the fact that at the end of the parable , the son has to choose to come home. I had initially written it so that Luke’s dad came to find him.
I used my own experiences of staying out late at night and grappling with suicidal ideation to create these scenes. Like Luke I chose to keep going, trusting that my parents would understand how I was feeling and love me regardless, and also to trust a God I still had my doubts about.
Sam: You also told me that after publishing this book a lot of young people have reached out and came out to you; they particularly resonate with currently being in the closet, not being able to express or engage with these topics in a safe space. What do you think is happening there?
Patty: The Gospel Coalition review, and one of the ministers at my church have pointed out that it has such a happy ending and my response to that was “yeah, but how many stories, especially in this community don’t?” It’s a literal trope in tv and movies to ‘bury your gays’, to kill off gay characters or to give them horrible back stories and trauma, and I wanted a book where there is a queer hero who decides to become a Christian. I wanted a world where the protagonist, Luke, is accepted when he comes out to his friends, he’s safe around an older mentor who wants to talk to him, he is loved by his father, who is a minister.
A few years ago, one of my friends texted me from a sleepover where all the boys were taking their shirts off and he felt uncomfortable, but he wasn’t sure how to address it, so in the novel, there’s a scene similar to that. Luke jokingly calls his friend out for having his shirt off, and there’s no question or push back, Jamie just puts his shirt back on.
There are definitely some uncomfortable moments in the book - Luke has friends who have had uncomfortable experiences with the church, and he has one of his own - but ultimately, I wanted a happily ever after.
I think that young people don’t feel as though the church is a safe space, or they’re not sure what they’re going to come up against if they do try to bring up sexuality. I wanted the book to be a third party to pick apart and discuss, both for the person wrestling with their identity and the person who is willing to talk to them about it, and I wanted to try and capture some of what they might be feeling to create an empathetic starting point rather than an intellectual one.
Sam: Parents of children who are LGBT+ have also reached out. I’m interested to hear more about this.
Patty: Yeah, I’ve had a few really interesting and heartbreaking conversations with parents.
One lady checked that all the rooms around us were empty before telling me that her son was gay. She had felt so isolated, unsure of who to talk to about it, and she didn’t want to out her son who was afraid he would lose his position as prefect in a conservative Anglican school.
Another lady I had met only a few days earlier broke down when she heard about my book and told me that her two sons wanted to change genders. She and her husband were part of a Facebook group of Christian parents going through the same thing, but she was so confused as to what they had done ‘wrong’, confused about how to address her sons when they came home for the holidays because she didn’t want to use their new names, confused about how to be loving when she didn’t agree with what they were choosing to do. One of their family members had even called them transphobic, and she wasn’t even sure if her sons were going to come home again over Christmas because everyone was so tense.
This is one of the side effects of a church which remains silent or treats the issue as if it is purely a matter of practice - these are real people, really seeking the will of God while facing these dilemmas with people they love. I didn’t have a magic bullet, and I’m by no means an expert on the topic - I think it was just a relief for them to have a safe space of their own to talk about what was going on in their family lives, and have a conduit for that conversation in my book. Parents are definitely another stakeholder in this conversation.
Sam: In our conversation earlier, you talked about a wider Evangelical culture that struggle to sit in the nuance and the human experience, especially in the space of sexuality and gender. Some of these assumptions are portrayed in the characters in your book, particularly I think in the father who is a minister. What do you think are some existing assumptions that are unhelpful in this space?
Patty: When it comes to politics or an increasingly polarising social rhetoric, it can feel as though Christians are being forced to choose a side of the fence over prioritising the spiritual wellbeing of people. Sometimes this comes across as the church being ‘for’ or ‘against’ what they see as an ideology, while society sees it as a people group; for example, with same-sex marriage, the church was largely discussing the abstract concept of marriage, while society was defending the rights of same sex couples. With transgenderism, the church is operating around God’s considered plan for sex, which is binary and set, while many are concerned about the implications this can have for those who suffer from gender dysmorphia or are repressing what they consider to be their true identity.
Sometimes the church is just silent.
Neither of those approaches is very welcoming, and when you make these discussions black and white, you will isolate people, either because they are unable to choose a side or they are on what has been deemed ‘the wrong side’. I reckon this is really harmful to gospel conversations with non-Christians or people who are searching for answers, not because the church is supposed to excuse sin, but because it is supposed to be a safe space for sinners. It also teaches young Christians that this is how they are supposed to act, these are the hills to die on, and they’re not.
Luke grapples with this perceived dichotomy in the novel, through his relationship with his dad. His dad is quiet, doesn’t really seem interested in getting to know Luke on a deeper level, and also stays silent when the student minister at the church gives a poorly handled sermon. His mum is also constantly pressuring him to get a girlfriend, which is another experience I talked about with my friend, and I wrote about this spiral that many of us feel, wondering what will happen if we never find a partner, but for SSA Christians, is a reality if they choose to remain celibate. For Luke, it’s a question of whether his parents can accept him if he isn’t what he thinks they want him to be, which is something I think a lot of teenagers wrestle with, but as I said, has been particularly highlighted in the conversation around sexuality.
I also wanted to present the flip side of the coin through the character of Chris, a non-binary student at Luke’s school who eventually befriends him. Chris is openly out, both in appearance and conversation, and goes by they/them pronouns. They also have a fractured relationship with their conservatively Christian father, who goes to Luke’s church. Luke ends up choosing to be a Christian, and returns home to his family and church, but I wanted to leave space for the discussion around what it would look like if Chris came to church, or if Chris could have an open conversation with their dad.
Sam: Of course, when something like this is published, there will always be push back, critique, and criticisms. How have you embraced those?
Patty: As there’s not much out there on my book, the only articles that really come up at the moment are The Gospel Coalition review, which is mainly positive and a right-wing American blog which denounces TGC as liberal communists who should be ignored at all costs. Go figure.
In all seriousness, I’m not too bothered. I think the majority of the criticism is coming from people who haven’t read my book. If they read it, and thought it was garbage, I’d be happy that at least they critically engaged with the ideas in it. There are plenty of brilliant, theological-type books out there, and I hope people at least turn to those and figure out what they think and why they think it. The main criticism about my book is that it isn’t really my story, and I think that’s valid. I address it in the author’s note at the end - I hope someone comes along and writes something better, but I also wanted to use my skills and time to shed a light on a story I didn’t see being told.
Sam: When I finished this book (without spoiling the plot!), I was left with ambiguity – what’s going to happen next? But I think that’s the point right? It leaves the story open for the reader: if you are straight and Christian, what’s next in the story? If you are gay/LGBT+/attracted to the same sex and Christian, what’s next in the story? For any young reader out there, who experience various patterns of sexual attraction and desire to follow Jesus, what do you want to say to them?
Patty: If you are wrestling with your sexual identity, I hope the message is clear by the end of the book - you are welcome in God’s family. Jesus loves you so much that he died for you, to welcome you into that family. I hope you can feel the same way walking into God’s church. Find someone to talk to, don’t go through it on your own.
If you are straight, the message is actually pretty similar, but now the onus is on you to make people feel welcome into God’s family. The politics, and votes, and hard conversations are all worth having, and worth figuring out what you believe, but they won’t matter in heaven. Be that safe space for someone.
For all readers, I hope the message would be to start with Jesus, and go from there.
Sam: Thanks for your time!
If you need to reach out for support you can get in touch with:
Life Line (131114) - Australia
Beyond Blue - Australia
Samaritans (116123) - UK
For more resources see:
A Christian’s Posture towards Pride Month and LGBTQ+ People. Sam Wan & Akos Balough.
Humility in Pride. Andrew Bunt
