Invisible Aunt

As children and teenagers, we tend to think only about how things affect us personally (maybe you know some adults who still think that way). Growing up with and around my mother’s evangelical family was definitely weird for me. It was weird that they truly believed the earth is seven thousand years old. It was really weird when, on a supposedly fun retreat with my cousins’ youth group, everyone sang trance-like worship songs, and we watched a video in which three “non-believers” (some of whom actually believed in God, just not the young-earth thing) were shown the light and converted in a tidy 60-minute narrative.

So I always thought, as the only atheist in the family, that I had it the worst, that I was the only one who felt alienated. It wasn’t until recently that I understood that while I was made to feel less than comfortable, my aunt was made to feel less than human.

My aunt is an incredible person. She has lived with and taken care of my grandma for the past 15-plus years. She’s whip-smart and was a very successful cartographer at Rand McNally and Mapquest. A map that she conceptualized—naming an Indiana bypass after David Letterman, in honor of his heart bypass—ended up landing her colleague on “The Late Show.” Despite her success, she decided to go back to school and get her teaching degree. Now she is a middle school teacher. She is also gay.

That’s only one part of her, but it’s still part of her. It’s a part of her that my family, aside from my mother, has never acknowledged, much less accepted. Because if they did acknowledge it, they would be forced to have an awkward (read: honest) conversation. They would be forced to face the implications of their prejudices. And that’s not what my family does.

The prevailing perception these days is that America is, more or less, fully accepting of non-heterosexual relationships. Gallup reports that while Americans estimate the gay population is between 23 percent and 25 percent, only 3.8 percent of the population actually identifies as gay, bisexual and/or transgender. We know that more than 4 percent of the population is gay, but people are still, for myriad reasons, uncomfortable with identifying as such, even on an anonymous poll.

That’s my family in a nutshell. They all know the truth—and if anyone doesn’t, it’s because they simply don’t want to—but they won’t talk about it. They pretend it’s inconsequential. Nobody ever asks her if she’s seeing anyone. Anytime my mom has tried to broach the subject of my aunt’s sexuality, it gets ignored, pushed to the side. I can’t count the times I’ve said to a cousin, “You know she’s gay, right?” only to have him or her respond with denial, silence or an awkward laugh.

What disturbs me maybe most of all, though, is how great they think they are because A.) they’re “religious” and B.) they’re impossibly polite—surface-level nice. They think from their hearts bursts a wellspring of goodness and charity.

Spending so much time with evangelical conservatives, I’ve noticed that, often, religious folks are more than happy to call themselves imperfect sinners. But they don’t ever seem to admit to a specific sin. It’s like saying during a job interview that your biggest weakness is you work too hard or care too much. It’s painting oneself in the best possible light under the guise of being introspective and self-critical. Like saying, “See, I can acknowledge my faults!” Convincing yourself you’re a great person is the best way to minimize or ignore your prejudices.

They don’t insult her, tell her she’s going to hell or banish her from the family (even if they might think or want those things). They simply don’t see her. And so she’s never felt comfortable in her own family. And that breaks my heart.