>> i start off talking about an era because they had such an influence on the direction that my life took. they were baptist, southern baptist so i was brought up in the baptist faith tradition. they were leaders in the church. my dad served as a deacon and both of my parents taught adult sunday school classes. it seemed like we were at the church every time the doors open. i learned to take my religion very seriously. so much so that when it was time to choose a college to attend i chose baylor university. i had to face the fact that i

was different because i fell in love with the girl at taylor. now when i had been in high school i had what i call strange feelings toward a particular girl. having been brought up in a very conservative home i had never heard the word. i had no idea it was even possible for a girl to fall in love with another girl. so i have no vocabulary to explain to myself what it was that i was feeling. as i have already mentioned i fell in love. we were both 17 and this was in 1956. when the christmas holiday came

we were separated for the first time and we missed each other so much that we were always writing letters back and forth. each evening i propped up in bed and i wrote to her. my dad was a sociology major with knowledge of same sex attraction and rightly concluded that his only daughter was. he shared this information with my mother and suggested she go when and have a talk with me. so she came into my bedroom that evening and she shared with me what she had been taught about teen, that it was sinful and certainly an unacceptable way for me to live my life. she and dad had plans for me to earn my teaching certificate. she told me that evening that no school district would hire me to teach in their school. she also explained we would have

a very difficult time just finding a place to live, that no one would grant us an apartment and if people would even sell us a house. so she painted a very bleak picture of our future together. her talk with me that evening devastated me. i felt guilty. i felt shameful for something that i felt i couldn't help. after all i had planned to fall in love with the girl. i would have much preferred to have fallen in love with the boy , someone i could probably show off, someone that i could marry, someone with whom i can have a family but that didn't happen to me i fell in love with a girl and i felt my life was in a mess.

i felt sorry for myself. what i year and for that evening was for my mother to show a little bit of sympathy for the predicament i was then. all i received was condemnation and a type of cease-and-desist message. this was the beginning of a life pretending to be something i really wasn't. i had always stated -- dated. i dated draft high school and i continued to date in college. it was part of fitting in that became a part of my life. when i was 23 i was teaching high school in odessa which is in west texas. one day i simply said to myself,

lou and you are not ever going to fall in love with a man. i was waiting for that to happen but you do need to get married. find a nice fellow marry him and get it over with. it wasn't long after i made that decision to marry without love that a friend arranged a blind date for me. he was a nice fellow, a schoolteacher with aspirations to be a school administrator. this appeal to being -- to me because my dad was a school administrator. his dad with the was a southern baptist preacher. he loved children and he very much wanted to have a family and i wanted to have children. so i asked myself what more is it that i'm looking for? he fits the bill. we were married in march of 1963

it wasn't long after we married when i realized i had made a terrible mistake. i was very unhappy that by the time i began to seriously consider divorce we have had our first child, a little boy named after his dad. as i contemplated asking for a divorce i told myself it would be cruel to separate his father from his young son. then i told myself that i would bring shame to my parents who were in the public eye because getting a divorce in the 60s was shameful. and then i told myself i would bring pain to my in-laws who

loved me and were proud of me and i would be divorcing their only son. as i thought through all of the ramifications of getting a divorce i always came to the same conclusion that no one would benefit from a divorce but me. in fact made it a very selfless decision. i had been taught all my life not to be selfish. so i eventually decided that i would honor my wedding vows until death do you part and that's what i'd did for 37 years but i was very unhappy during that time. we had four children and they brought light and joy into my life and they still do. but i was determined that no one would ever know that i was.

i especially didn't want my husband to ever find out that i was. i also avoided reading anything about homosexuality for fear someone would see me reading that kind of material in the gear out that i was. so i went through life very ignorant of the subject. i actually thought i was a unique human being suffering and away no one else's suffering. i also avoided having a close friend for fear i might fall in love with them. after all that's what it happened to me at baylor. so i became a shell of a person. i wasn't the woman i was created to be. it began to think of my inability to love a man as that

dirty trick.played on me over and over that spot would go through my mind. then i added to the thought by saying god is trying to make up for that dirty trick he played on me by giving me a good life. i had a good life. i had married a good man. i had four wonderful children. i have a secure life. i was always thinking of my college love missing her wondering what she was doing and wondering whether or not she was happy. when i think about her i convince myself that i would never again be happy and only abide dying and going to heaven would i ever again be happy.

so i spent close to 40 years of my life yearning for death thinking of all kinds of ways i could kill myself. eventually begging god to take me right then, that i was ready to go. but all of this changed in august of 1999. at that time i was teaching a lazy sunday school class at a church in downtown -- it was a small class. i hadn't been teaching long and i didn't know the members well at all. one morning i was simply visiting with one of the members. we were sharing with each other information about our families. she began telling me about her son who was an artist and she told me that he was such a kind

and awful person especially to his grandmother. and it was about then that i thought came into my mind like a light old going off. her son is. now the thought i had was not in the form of question like i wondered if her son is. it wasn't like that. i knew her son was. for that reason i believed god put that thought into my head and i believed god pushed me into what i did next which was totally illogical. i asked this woman, is your son a? well you don't ask people that question especially in a conservative area like our texas and a member of the southern baptist church.

she was shocked. she hesitated for quite some time before she eventually said yes, but that's just the way god made him and god loves them just the way he is. well is my turn to be shocked. i had never heard that before that god loved and especially the god loves when they weren't even pretending to be straight. her words that morning changed my life. it would take too long to explain all the emotions i experienced that very afternoon. but mime emotions centered in on this woman. her words of acceptance, words i have never heard before stirred that dad spotted my heart and i fell in love with her. after all my efforts to avoid

this very problem never telling anybody i was, never reading about the subject, never having a close friend, all of those efforts had been for not. that feeling of love for a woman came completely out of the blue and hit me hard. i'd couldn't pretend any longer. i had to get out of my marriage. about five months later i asked my husband for a divorce after telling him i was very unhappy in my marriage. i moved out of our home into a small one-bedroom apartment. about two months later he sent me a long e-mail asking me to please be specific about what in the marriage of made me so unhappy. i didn't want to answer that letter because i had never had

any -- admitting to anybody that i was. when i reread his letter i realized he was blaming himself for some things that had nothing to do with my asking for a divorce. then i reminded myself we have been married for 37 years and i felt i owed him the truth. late that evening i wrote a long e-mail back. i simply told them that i was and i had always been and then i tried to explain what it's like to be in a world that doesn't accept. he wrote back immediately saying that this was a subject he didn't want to discuss and asked if he could come by my apartment the next morning after his exercise class. when i opened the door to him about 9:00 the next morning he

took me in his arms and held me tight and began sobbing. i held him and cried. when we eventually sat down on the sofa i placed a box of tissues between us and i gave them an opportunity to vent for all those years of frustration when he had tried to be close to me and just couldn't. he had always said there was a wall between us and i had always known there was one but i never told anyone. one of the questions he asked me that morning was, is this something you've thought about every year? i said every year? i thought about it every day. and he said it must have been a miserable life. i came out to my brother in california.

he told me i needed a support group because i didn't know any other, none. he sent me a list of various organization which i looked up on the web, found a lot of them in dallas but that's a good hour and a half away. one of them was in tyler, texas. p. flag at that time stood for parents, families and friends of and. i called their phone number asking when and where their next meeting would take place. on monday evening april the tenth of 2000 i drove to st. francis episcopal church, parked my car and just sat in it for a long time working up the courage to walk into a meeting of strangers and out myself to

them. at that time i was 61 and i had spent my whole life hiding the fact that i was. a new that my life would be changed after that evening. when i sat in my car that evening there was a certain curiosity on my part as to what and look like an acolyte. when i eventually walked into that room of 25 to 30 people there was one empty chair by the woman who is now my wife. we are in a relationship for over 17 years now. the last to legally married and i have always felt god was

really watching over me that evening. at that first meeting is seen very much like a church service to me because there was a lot of talk about god and how much god loves despite the messages we were getting around town. when i came out of my church i started feeling very uncomfortable. there were several members i considered friends who simply could not look me in the eye and it ate me feel as if they saw me as the epitome of evil itself. i gave serious consideration to leaving the church, finding somewhere else to worship where i would the more comfortable but

i feel god nudged me and reminded me that at that time i had been a member of first this for almost 12 years and the congregation knew me not only as a christian but as the wife of the deacon, the mother of four children, sunday schoolteacher a hand bell ringer and a very active and supportive member of the congregation and if i left i would be throwing away all that goodwill so to speak whereas if i stayed i told myself i had a very unique opportunity to become known as a christian. what too many if not most and maybe all was an oxymoron. so i decided i would stay and then when brenda joined me there shortly thereafter we became the church's example of the christian couple and we made a point of sitting together the

third row from the front in the center section where everybody could see us and we remained as effective as they allowed us to be in there were restrictions placed on us. we remained an additional 15 years. we finally left in the first part of 2015. i spent most of my life believing that being was some kind of a moral failure. i did everything in my power to hide the fact that i was. but now i believe that being is just the way that some people are. it's the way i am and i'm thankful. 's love and for the freedom he gives me to essentially be who i am. my purpose for writing the story at least at the beginning was to

have a target audience of fundamentalist christians who are convinced that being gay was chosen. i have always felt that my story depicts perfectly that being gay is not chosen. i wanted to target bag group and convince them of the erroneous belief that we can change, and gays could become straight people. all they need to do is pray and i prayed for years. so that was my target audience and once i realized fundamentalist christians are not interested in my story then i thought well i had learned by

that time that those who were interested were those who had lived either a life similar to mine or who have gay children. this targeted the organization. many of the talks that i had given in nine different states at this time had began groups primarily. although college classes of primarily the p. flag groups. it's amazing how many would come up to me and say you just told my story. or some state when i would make it say that's exactly how i felt i have become a voice for many who have the same story to share and just have not been able to share it in the way i have.

i never started off to be a gay advocate. that was not my goal. my goal was to convince fundamentalist christians and then i realized and an attempt to do that i had become a gay activist and had become able to admit that i am gay. no longer bothers me. i'm proud of the fact that i am gay. i wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.