Being Queer at Houghton Adam Reinhardt ‘11

A lot of people discover their sexuality during their college years. For a young LGBT person, Houghton College is not exactly the most hospitable place to discover that you are anything but a cisgender heterosexual. I, however, was well aware of my identity as a homosexual man well before I arrived at Houghton. Why in the world, you might ask, would I willingly choose to become part of a community that would be openly hostile toward me? Good question. I was, by any dogmatic measurement, a conservative evangelical: creationist, pro-life and, yes, anti-gay. I was following God’s call upon me to become an ordained minister in the Wesleyan Church. To say I was experiencing cognitive dissonance would be putting it lightly.

Even prior to my Houghton days I was well-steeped in the evangelical world, a world which proved to be a spiritually and emotionally toxic environment for my soul. Although I deeply believed in Jesus, or at least I deeply desired to believe in him, my growing understanding of my own sexuality created a crisis of conscience – a guilt-sickness which poisoned my faith. I would always wonder: “am I really saved? Do I believe hard enough to earn God’s forgiveness? Will I go to heaven even though I feel this way about that boy from school?” These were questions I began pondering as early as 13 or 14, and the apparent silence I received in reply only caused anxiety and angst. Looking back I believe it was this anxiety that led to the fanatical kind of faith I had when I arrived at Houghton – an unsustainable fanaticism which I was already beginning to grow weary of. I was in the perfect place for God to begin a new work on me. It was the academic study of theology and the Bible under the shepherding care of my professors that freed my spirit from despair and eventually allowed me to find a faith which my whole self could participate in. Despite the hostile environment codified right into the college’s “covenant,” the education I received gave me the intellectual tools to see that faith is a wider and deeper thing than the fundamentalist dogma which previously had been all I’d known. I do not regret my decision to attend Houghton. I believe my years there were the most formative years of my life – although in ways which no doubt would disturb certain faculty, staff, and students.

During my sophomore year I was a resident assistant at Rothenbuller Hall. I took my job very seriously and thrived in this position of leadership. My floor-mates affectionately referred to me as “Father Adam.” It was also during this year that I began to come out of the closet to my closest friends. I found much joy and freedom with those peers who refused to judge me or stop loving me even if some of them “didn’t agree” (whatever that means) with my sexuality. It gave me courage, and I admit sometimes I acted in purposefully provocative ways – such as dressing flamboyantly in women’s clothing or posing suggestively in Facebook pictures. But the most courageous thing I was inspired to do was to begin speaking out on behalf of LGBT Christians, even though I did not tell most people that I was one of them.

But I don’t mean to give the reader the impression that Houghton was one big pride parade or that it was the catwalk upon which I blossomed as a gay Christian. No. Much of the student body, administration, and several professors were openly hostile toward LGBT students and anyone who might support them. And the exercising of my newfound freedom and courage would not come without cost. Three weeks before the end of my sophomore year I was summoned to the Student Life office. I was being accused of a long list of transgressions against the “covenant” and I was to be subject to a trial. Among the accusations were sexual harassment and homosexual behavior. I was devastated, confused, and humiliated. I had never had any sexual contact with any student at Houghton, and the number of people I was out to was very small – though many students had their suspicions. I had certainly never sexually harassed anyone. I came to find that a fellow LGBT student in whom I occasionally confided in had leveled the accusations against me. He had been the first person I came out to, and though we didn’t speak frequently, when we did talk it was typically about our same-sex experiences and the hardships of being queer at Houghton. He was far more “experienced” than I was, so it was rather natural for me to tell him when I had my first sexual experience with another man. I happened over winter break, far far away from Houghton College in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania which I call home. I hadn’t even the faintest notion that by sharing this exciting news with someone I thought was my friend, I would be opening myself up for one of the worst experiences of my life to date.

A few months before the accusations were brought up, this student had received campus wide attention with his announcement in chapel that God had delivered him from his homosexual desires, and the college went on to provide him multiple venues for telling his story. During the Q&A portion of one of these speaking events, I engaged him in dialogue. I was respectful, even supportive of him taking the path he believed was right for him. All I did was point out that he, as a self-identified ex-bisexual, had opposite-sex attractions all along, and that homosexuals do not have the kind of option available that he, as a bisexual person, had. He disagreed, basically saying that homosexuals don’t exist and that they were just confused straight people. Other people joined the argument taking my side, and it got slightly heated. Afterwords I approached him, hugged him, and asked if there were any hard feelings between us. He assured me that there were not. That was the last time I ever spoke to him.

Why he would fabricate accusations of sexual harassment against me, or why he would divulge my private information told to him in confidence, I will never know. But it had serious repercussions. The office of Student Life found me guilty on all charges. They told me that telling this student information about my sex life constituted a form of sexual harassment before the information was not invited, despite the fact that there was precedence in our friendship to talk about our experiences. My Resident Director, a man I considered a friend and who I trusted, offered me no defense. I was fired from my job as an RA and forced to move out of my living space just three weeks before the end of the year. This forced me to explain to my floor-mates why they would have a different RA for the last few weeks. It was humiliating, but the display of support I received from my friends and residents helped me through. They even staged a sit in in the Student Life office in protest of my termination and held a barbecue party for me. Friends I had made from the Equality Ride which took the campus by storm earlier that year even offered to put me in contact with their ACLU lawyers, but I was too dejected to even entertain the idea of a legal battle. Despite all the support I received from my friends, I was a deeply jaded and angry person after that year.
Now, years down the road, those wounds have healed, but there are still scars. I am still a Christian. I am still pursuing ordination, now with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I have found a faith tradition where I feel welcome. And in May 2016 I will have my Masters of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. I survived Houghton and I want to tell LGBT students attending there now to cherish the good friends and cut out, as much as possible, voices of hate and condemnation; make the best of your relationships with the beautiful minds of faculty there, and do not fear the angry old guard who use their pulpits to oppress you. Their day is ending, and a bright new day is coming. God has called you his own, and no one can take you our of his hands.