It Gets Better by Dan Savage Page A

wasn’t a very good decision. I was lonely for a lot of years.
    I’ve served five churches as pastor, and every church I served grew. I was closeted all those years and always felt as though I had to look over my shoulder, fearing I would be discovered, or that I’d somehow slip up and give my secret away.
    Carefully and slowly at first, I came out to a few selected friends and confidants where I lived and worked. While those moments of personal liberty were great, I found that partially coming out was not going to give me the freedom to be myself—not as long as the fear of exposure haunted me. A close friend of mine, to whom I had already come out, offered me some of the best advice I had have ever received. He said, “Steve, if there are no longer any secrets, then there can be no ambushes.”
    I took what he said to heart, and made the decision to put secrets about my sexuality behind me. So twenty years ago, I came out—utterly, fully, and completely—and I wouldn’t go back into the closet for anything in the world. I am able to tell you, person to person, that it does get better. Because now, as an ordained minister—and Baptist, at that—for the last thirty-three years, I’ve had a full, complete, and active religious life. I teach in a divinity school and I love what I do. I have the best job in the whole school, and wouldn’t trade my job for any other job here. I love the students I teach; I respect the colleagues that I work with; I enjoy talking about God all day long; and I’m as out and free as I can be, partnered for the last eleven years with a wonderful man. We’re even the proud parents of an English bulldog named Winston. He loves his two daddies, and we love him, too.
    So, when it seems that things are about as bad as they can possibly be and the worries weigh upon you, like a murder of crows on top of your head, just tell yourself that Steve Sprinkle says it gets better. When I came out, I found out that I had a multitude of friends I just hadn’t met yet—people who were willing to know me for exactly who I was. People in my church family loved and accepted me. Coworkers appreciated me even more than before I came out, because I had thought enough of them and myself to be honest about my personal life. And there were many friends and allies who just seemed to appear at my side out of nowhere, right when I needed their support and encouragement the most.
    There were people who couldn’t make the leap from the closeted person I had been to the open and honest gay man I became. I am sorry they could not accept the real me. But I can tell you that for each one of them who walked away from me because of my sexual orientation, scores of new friends arose in their place. I am so grateful that I have them all in my life.
    I hope that if you are ever given to despair, you will take hold of hope with both hands. Never turn loose what gives you hope! Because you are going to find out that your life will get better. A lot better. And I hope down the road somewhere, I’ll meet you in a divinity school classroom, and we can tell each other face to face, “You know what? It really did get better, for both of us.”
    Stephen V. Sprinkle is the director of field education and supervised ministry and an associate professor of practical theology at Brite Divinity School on the campus of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. An ordained Baptist minister with the Alliance of Baptists, he is the first openly gay teacher and scholar in the history of his seminary, and the first out gay person to be tenured there. His most recent book is Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memory of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims , published by Resource Publications of Eugene, Oregon.

OUT OF DARKNESS
    by Philip Deal
    WINTHROP, MA
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    I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness. All my family and friends, and basically everyone I knew, were