Born Again Lesbian?

How I found my family in the LGBTQ+ community

Born Again Lesbian

It was 1984 and my partner at the time was named Winky. We had heard there was a gay church near us somewhere. Honestly, that did not pique our interest much. I sort of thought it would be a more daylight, less smoky version of a bar – maybe with drag queens pretending to preach. But we had friends who went and really liked it, so we waited for a weekend when my ex-husband had the kids and decided to brave Ocean of Life Metropolitan Community Church, less than two miles from our house in Costa Mesa, California.

Like many people on their first visit, we sat near the back and sort of waited to see what “gay church” would be. They prayed. They sang hymns and a couple of what we would have called “singalongs” that we knew. They read the Bible. They had a sermon about what things God might be calling us to for the next week. Then they served communion in a way we had not seen before. People could come forward alone or with friends or family and take communion together before being offered a short prayer from the church representative who was holding the wafers and juice and serving us.

I am not sure of all the reasons this way of taking communion affected me. I was accustomed to passing plates one person to another along the pews, or in smaller groups passing a loaf of bread and a jug of some kind of fruit juice around a circle. Going up to the front of the church had the effect of feeling that each person was special and “seen” to me. Then the idea that the ministers holding the elements served you seems more closely related to Jesus serving the disciples or, in the book of John, Jesus washing their feet. But the most amazing thing was walking to the front of the church arm-in-arm with your “lover!” (We all tried different words to describe the person we loved at the time, special friends, partners, companions, etc. But usually we had to say “lovers” to make it clear.) So here we were in front of God and everybody, loving who we loved and being served the eucharist together. We took communion, heard a prayer given for the two of us, returned to our pew, and burst into tears.

I tried to get myself together during the closing hymn so I would not be a spectacle walking out of the service. I made it to the door where Pastor Karen and her “lover”, Sue, were waiting to shake hands or give hugs as each person left. I almost made it out the door, but Sue turned to Pastor Karen in her unmistakable Kentucky accent and said, “Hunny, these wimmin luv Jeeesus!” And I burst into tears again.

We only went to that church every other Sunday, on the weekends that my children spent with their Dad, so we didn’t go back for a couple of weeks. The Saturday night before our next visit, I had been on a phone call with a woman who was berating me for being gay, shouting that it was not possible to be gay and Christian. So, on Sunday morning as I headed into church again, I was crossing the parking lot with Winky and quietly praying, “God, are You and I okay?” Then I saw a woman we had met two weeks before at the MCC church service running across the parking lot toward me. Breathlessly, she reached over to my collar to pin something on me.

“I was at Pride last weekend,” she said, “and I saw something that I knew was just YOU all over.”

I tried to look down at my collar and read upside down. Mind you, I had NO idea what “Pride” was, but I finally saw the button. It said, “Born Again Lesbian” on it. So here I was, new to the idea that there was any such thing as a gay community, new to the thought of a gay church, praying to ask God if we were “okay,” when a woman stuck this pin on me. I don’t pretend that this qualifies as a “sign from God.” I would characterize it as a love pat or a kiss on the cheek from a loving Parent.

But the first thing I thought was this: “If they sold buttons that say, ‘Born Again Lesbian,’ then there are more of us!”

As Winky and I began to try to build a life together, our previous lives sometimes interfered. Many members of her family had issues with drugs and alcohol and even at a family event, we might have to leave quickly if we saw illegal activities or violence that we did not want to be a part of. For me, it was people from the church we were not sure how to handle.

At the time, the group I was in, The Children of the Day, was well-known in some circles. We attended a very large church in Orange County, California and we had been on Christian radio and television and sung at large concert venues. Once, in Columbus, Ohio at the state fair, we were playing an arcade game when someone recognized me and asked for an autograph. Another time in Southern California, Winky and I had picked up trays at a restaurant counter and headed to find a seat when someone came up to me saying, “Marsha, our whole family loves your music. Where are you sitting?” I turned around to see that Winky had set down her tray and left the restaurant rather than having to observe someone encounter me with any negativity.

When we heard at the MCC church in town that the man who had founded this denomination for gay people was going to be speaking somewhere in Hollywood, we had to talk about the wisdom of going to hear him speak. No one we knew from the straight community attended our little MCC church. But if Rev. Troy Perry, the founder, was going to be speaking in Hollywood there might be press or hecklers or picketers there and I could be recognized. We decided we would arrive a little late, since he surely wouldn’t speak immediately, then we’d sit near the back and leave early. The place was crowded and if you’ve ever heard Troy you know he has a very loud preacher’s voice. He was busy sharing how and why God showed him to start these churches, what miracles God had done along the way, how certain he was that Jesus loved all of us just as we are, when he caught my eye.

I looked down, looked away, tried to slouch, and whispered to Winky. Troy stepped away from the microphone and whispered to someone behind him, who also looked out at me, and nodded as he spoke back to Troy. Troy stepped back to the mic and boomed out,

“I see that our sister Marsha Stevens is here with us tonight. How many of you know Marsha?”

I’m thinking, Oh my god, surely nobody.

“Well I’m going to ask her to come right up here and sing for us this minute. Marsha, come on up here. Someone get her a guitar so she can sing for us. Marsha, sing Come to the Water for these nice folks.”

I tried to protest.

“I don’t write. I don’t sing. I don’t do this anymore.”

But it was lost in the applause. So I grabbed a guitar and sang. I was terrified. Would someone tell my kids or my ex-husband? Would I lose custody of my kids? Troy was unperturbed and beaming. He closed up the service and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Marsha (he actually says “Morsha”), we have a General Conference coming up in Sacramento. The theme is ‘Free to Be’. I’d like you to write a theme song for it.”

I tried again to explain. No singing, no writing, none of that was on my horizon any longer. But Troy knew how to get to me. He spoke King James. Now I happen to be fairly fluent in King James and he seemed to know that, because he would just quote half a line to me and he knew that I would finish the quote.

“Marsha, how do you know it wasn’t for such a time as this that you came IN to the kingdom??”

Notice that he did not try to stop and tell me that this was from the book of Esther and that her cousin Mordecai was calling Esther to put her life on the line to make an appeal for her people. No pause at all. Troy went right on.

“The gifts and calling of God are what? Say it with me! ‘Without repentance.’ You know that.”

And I did, in fact, say it with him. I don’t even remember what other Scriptures he blazed on at me. I do remember the moment I tried to wrap my head around the possibility that this was the calling of God on my life; that this was the very reason God had called me into “His kingdom.” To share Jesus’ love in music that no one else was writing at that moment. To do what I had always done with my music. To do as the apostle Peter told believers to do; “to give an answer to anyone who asks, a reason for the hope that is within you.” Could that be true? I knew that God loved me no matter what and that nothing I did had “earned” my relationship with Jesus. But I figured that after all the wonderful times of touring with Children of the Day, being married, and having kids, I had now missed out on Plan A in my life because I was gay. I was probably stuck on Plan B.

As I began to write the lyrics of the song, Free to Be, I had to stretch further than I ever had before to think that this could possibly be Plan A.

I had wandered homeless, a minstrel unto God

Longing just to sing my precious tunes,

A person with no people, cast down, but not destroyed,

Now with your help I’m singing through my deepest wounds.

(Chorus)

Now I’m free to be in the great I AM, I’m free to fall and I’m free to stand,

No secrets to hide from the Holy Lamb, I’m free to be, free to be who I am.

Verse 2

Lilies just are lilies, fledglings grow to birds,

Both without a struggle or a thought,

And all my strongest efforts and best self-righteousness

Can’t add an inch of height or make me what I’m not,

Bridge:

Someone new, not someone else, Jesus made of me,

Slavery behind, birthright is mine,

And no one can sell me if I’m free,

(Chorus)

Now I’m free to be in the great I AM, I’m free to fall and I’m free to stand,

No secrets to hide from the Holy Lamb, I’m free to be, free to be who I am.

The lyrics complete, I began to wonder how I could write the music. I would have to be able to play it on guitar since I couldn’t write it out for anyone else to play. I knew that Pete, from Children of the Day, who had worked with me before, would not do that for a song for a gay church. I headed down to the MCC in San Diego where they were having a “music conference.”

I was expecting to hear mostly choirs, and there were a few. But there was also a group of men who were very clever with their quartet songs, some funny and secular, some gospel music. They had just won a “Johnny Mann Singers’” award and I was so impressed with them. Somehow, I sort of thought that we were the leftovers in the gay Christian community, but they were excellent, and I found myself thinking, “Hey we are not the dregs after all!” Then someone tapped me from the row behind me.

“Marsha? Is that you?”

I turned, afraid I would see a fan and have to explain what I was doing here. But it was the choir director from my senior year in Claremont High School. I hadn’t seen him in over a decade.

“Mister Caton??”

People around us laughed at me calling him by his “teacher’s name.” Then several lights went on in my head. Yes, it was him. Yes, he did remember me. Yes, now that I think of it I DO remember him being a little different when I knew him back in high school. We stayed after the concert to catch up. He was out of the closet now and attending this MCC in San Diego. On a whim I asked him if he’d like to write a song with me and he was all over it in a heartbeat. He, of course, was perfectly able to write music and to play the piano. We worked on the song together and had it finished by the end of the next week.

When we showed up later that summer to the MCC General Conference in Sacramento, I had no idea that this was a major conference for the denomination and that many, many people had been working on the music for it for months. I just popped over to the sound booth I saw at the back of the sanctuary and said,

“Hey a guy named Troy Perry asked me to write a song for this conference. Do you need the music or can we just sing it?”

Danny Ray, who had countless hours in on this conference was very kind. Some chick shows up and says she has a theme song for the conference. No problem. He said,

“Sure. There’s a talent show on Thursday afternoon. Why don’t you sing it then?”

I actually thought that was just fine. At the talent show Ken Caton and I sang “For Those Tears I Died” first. There was a lot of murmuring in the crowd. Wasn’t that a Contemporary Christian song that had sold a million copies? Did she just say she wrote that? But we followed quickly with Ken saying,

“So that was the first song she wrote. I was her teacher at the time and her class assignment was to get it copyrighted. (Everyone laughed and I thanked him for that.) And this is the most recent one and we wrote this one together.”

And we sang “Free to Be.” Honestly it was so fun. The standing ovation went on for well over a minute and I thought, “Yes, I do think this could be plan A.”