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Ed Tracey's diary about gay jazz musician Gary Burton, who is from Anderson, Indiana, reminded me of another gay artist given to us by the Hoosier State. Indeed, Ray Boltz was born in 1953 a mere thirty minutes from Anderson, in the small city of Muncie (the home of Ball State University), just ten years after Burton. Muncie is not so different from Anderson, even today, in that the climate is far from liberal. Boltz undoubtedly faced an inhospitable climate similar to the one Burton experienced twenty miles away. But the two, as you'll see, went down much different paths, both ultimately leading to a life of happiness and fulfillment.
Before I go further, I'd like to note that joedemocrat wrote a beautiful diary in May on Boltz for the Brothers and Sisters series. In fact, it was so good that I almost scrapped this diary idea. But then I decided to go through with it after all. Boltz's coming-out was extremely inspirational to me and played an enormous role in giving me strength to go through with my own coming-out, and I feel I owe him a diary of my own. Also, there does not seem to be an extraordinary amount of overlap between the audiences for Brothers and Sisters and Top Comments, so I suppose there is no harm in another diary. However, I wholeheartedly encourage you to read the previous diary, which, while dealing with the same person, tells a very different and inspirational personal story.
As I've made known before, I was raised in a very conservative Christian home. Listening to Christian music went with the territory, and for many years it was all I was really allowed to listen to on the radio. And so I was quite familiar with Ray Boltz's music. It's probably his first big hit, "Thank You," that I am most familiar with. Before "Thank You," Boltz was virtually unknown, but the single's "Song of the Year" prize at the GMA Dove Awards in 1990 catapulted him into the contemporary Christian music scene.
Boltz went on to have a very successful career in Christian music. In 1994, he won a Dove Award for Inspirational Recorded Song of the Year for "I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb," another of Boltz's biggest hits.
He went on recording until his retirement from the music industry in 2004. But, of course, if that's all there was to the story, I wouldn't be writing this diary.
Something else happened in 2004. After living a life of secrecy, fear, and shame, Boltz came out to his family.
Backing up just a bit, Boltz recalls in an interview done recently (which I encourage you to watch in full) the same-sex attractions he experienced from an early age and the beginning of his long struggle to reconcile his life as a born-again Christian and a gay man. He tells of the night he gave his heart to Christ:
I was promised...that if I confessed my sins, God was faithful and just to forgive me of my sins and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. And no one knew at that time that in my heart, I had same-sex attractions, that I was gay. Nobody knew that. I'd never shared it, I'd never had, really, experiences, like going to, you know, different cities or whatever, I was just a kid that lived in Indiana. And yet, deep inside, I knew what I felt, and I was so ashamed of those feelings because I knew they couldn't be right, they couldn't be good. And I believed that night, when I prayed that prayer, that that was gonna be gone from my life, and that I would be set free. Then, for the next thirty years, I spent trying to live and walk in faith as though I was free.
[...]
And so I dated, I fell in love with a girl named Carol Brammer, and I asked her to marry me...I always had these inner feelings, though, that again, no one--not a single person--knew about. We had four children, and my kids loved me, and we had a great family. But at the end of thirty years, the feelings were still there. And I realized, I think around fifty years of age, that it was possible that I could die and my kids not even know who I was.
Boltz notes later in the interview that his song "Feel the Nails," in which he talks about his constant failures causing Jesus pain, was actually about his lifelong struggle with his sexuality.
Boltz, of course, was born and raised in a different era, but not that different in many respects. His early life story hits home for me because I, like many people in similar environments, had the same sorts of struggles growing up and realizing the true nature of my sexuality. Conservative Christianity was all I knew, and I believed what my pastor, my parents, my friends and family, everybody in that little bubble that I thought was the entire world, said about homosexuality. I knew I was bound for hell, that every improper thought I had about the same gender displeased an angry God. I can't tell you how many times I gave my heart to Christ, praying for it to go away. In the meantime, it never did, and nobody knew my secret. Like Boltz, I dated a girl and thought the feelings would eventually go away. And, of course, like Boltz's feelings, they never did. I'm only thankful I recognized the truth before I went as far as Boltz did.
In 2004, after a long period of dealing with intense depression and suicidal thoughts, Boltz's son asked him what was wrong. And that is when he finally decided to tell the truth.
It was the same day that the tsunami hit in the Indian Ocean and swept the lives of hundreds of thousands of people away, and we felt like that night...when I uttered those words, it was like a tsunami came into our family...a flood of emotions and feelings. And yet, at the end of that evening, each one of my children and my spouse, they all gathered around me and they said, "Dad, we love you. We love you just the way you are." And all that I was hiding was now out in the open, and it was a moment of authenticity, it was a moment that changed all of our lives.
And indeed it did. Boltz and his wife separated in 2005, but they did so amicably, and as
joedemocrat mentions in his diary, she went on to serve on the board of
Soulforce, a group devoted to the task of ending anti-LGBT discrimination in religion.
But that's not the end of it, either. While Boltz was out to his family, he was not out to the nation (as he was, after all, something of a national figure). And what genre of music is more in need of a high-profile coming-out than contemporary Christian music? After visiting and performing at the gay Metropolitan Community Church, Boltz decided to sit down in 2008 for an interview with the D.C.-based LGBT Washington Blade. In the interview, he publicly came out for the first time. From the end of the resulting article (which is worth reading in full):
Boltz admits to some nervousness, but says ultimately, he isn’t worried.
He doesn’t want to get into debates about scripture and has no plans to “go into First Baptist or an Assembly of God church and run in there and say, ‘I’m gay and you need to love me anyway.’”
For him, the decision to come out is much more personal.
“This is what it really comes down to,” he says. “If this is the way God made me, then this is the way I’m going to live. It’s not like God made me this way and he’ll send me to hell if I am who he created me to be … I really feel closer to God because I no longer hate myself.”
By the time of Boltz's coming-out, I was in college and I had very much accepted that I was not going to change. I was gay, and the only question was how--or
if--I should come out to that conservative Christian family I'd moved away from. That's a story I've already told
in my diary on my mother's evolution on my sexuality, so I won't get into the nitty-gritty details again. However, there were many sources of inspiration for me as a young gay man struggling to reconcile religion and sexuality, and Boltz was most certainly one of them. As I said above, his story was one I could latch onto and identify with. His courage in embracing his inner truth was something I could look up to. His reconciling of sexuality and Christianity--which, again, was the only life I truly knew--meant hope for me. Sweet, sweet hope. I really do owe a great deal to Boltz and his decision to live openly.
The year of his coming-out, Boltz released a song, "Don't Tell Me Who to Love," which would become something of an anthem of mine in the year or so before I finally came out to my mom. I think 35,000 of the current 70,000 YouTube hits are mine. I get a little misty-eyed revisiting it. Words can't even express what this song meant to me and what it still means to me.
Of course, the reaction to Boltz's coming-out in many corners of the contemporary Christian music scene was just as you would expect. You can get a sampling of the pure, unadulterated hate that came his way just by glancing at the YouTube comments section of the above video:
Homosexual vile Beast! Nasty sinner.... I cant even think about how disgusting you are to imagine you are SAVED!!!
wow this is sad to believe... but we donot judge.. but the bible does.. as muh as you sing or make music, ray boltz if you donot repent you will NOT be finding your name in the book of life.. HOMOSEXUALS donot enter the kingdom of heaven.. people often forget that Sodom and Gomora were DESTROYED because of there sin: homosexuality!!!!! If God destroy them and they didnot know the truth how much more to us!!!!
We cant tell you who to love but, God has a right to tell you that man is not to lay with a man as he would a woman. If you dont like it ,take it up with God. I pray you see the light Mr. Bolts and return back to God.
Needless to say, Boltz's decision affected the replaying of his earlier songs on many Christian radio stations, to say nothing of the vicious hate mail he received. He recalls one letter urging him to buy a gun and kill himself. But he weathered it, and there is no doubt that he served as a life-saving inspiration to
many aside from myself. Today, he lives in Fort Lauderdale with his partner, Franco Sperduti. As for how Boltz reconciled his sexuality with his Christianity?
...I don't hate myself anymore. Not only do I not think that God hates me, I don't hate myself. I just believe that I am living the life that God created me to live, and I've come to accept that if he doesn't hate me, how can I hate myself?
[...]
Jesus is an accepting and a loving person. The only people I've seen him judge in the scriptures were the religious people who thought they had it all together and tried to control everybody with their power and with money and prestige. Jesus compared them to sepulchers and tombs full of vipers and snakes and, you know, evil things. That seems to be who he was the most upset with. And I've found that I can have a relationship with Jesus--and not only I can, but anybody can. And I've, in the past few years, been able to go to churches that are accepting and affirming and say, you know, God loves everybody and he receives everybody. And I can just express that I believe that with my whole heart. God loves me and I love him.
Although I eventually left Christianity--truthfully, I don't know
what I am today--Boltz's story continues to inspire me. He is and always will be one of my heroes. And his music will always hold a very special place in my heart. If you ever read this, Ray, to quote you,
thank you.
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January 9, 2014
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