Nick Booth enjoys the Church’s LGBT welcome

I am asked from time to time by curious friends about when and how I came to know I was gay. Who did I tell first? How come I was still a Christian? Frustratingly, none of these questions really have a straightforward answer.

I was well into my late teens before I knew definitively that I was gay, but looking back there were plenty of early signs. In the first few years of secondary school, when my peers were beginning to objectify the girls, I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. At the time, I naively assumed that this must be due to some innate superior moral character and was rather pleased with myself, but in reality I was simply intrinsically uninterested in the bodies of the women around me.

My obliviousness was born of ignorance. I knew objectively what a gay man was, but I lacked the experience and understanding to recognise that I myself could be one. I had never knowingly met or even seen a gay person in order to discover this facet of my personality. I don’t blame my family, school or church for this, since it hadn’t been long since the abolition of the Section 28 law that prohibited ‘promoting homosexuality’. It was easier and more comfortable not to talk about it, but this silence meant I had no reference points besides sensationalised plotlines from EastEnders…

Nick Booth is Youth Assembly Clerk

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This is an extract from an article published in the June 2021 edition of Reform

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