Would I really go to heaven, despite being gay? Growing up, I was tormented by this question. My earliest and most significant childhood memory is being six years old and learning to “accept Jesus into my heart.” Looking back now, I ask myself: Did I really understand what that meant, or was I just looking for parental love?
I was raised in a strict, fundamentalist Christian household in Lagos State, Nigeria, where my family referred to homosexuality as “a sin to God, worthy of eternal damnation in Hell.” At church, school, and home, being gay was condemned and, when it was mentioned, it was described as an abomination comparable to rape, murder, and child molestation. My family attended God’s Grace Christian Center in the city of Ikorodu. Temitayo Biodun was our senior pastor for more than fifteen years, and he had strong anti-gay beliefs. I vividly remember his sermon one cold Wednesday evening, during the mid-week service, when he told parents to isolate, alienate, and give over to Satan their homosexual children.
I couldn’t reconcile such an extreme instruction with what I felt inside. I knew I was different, but I couldn’t explain why. A lot of my male peers were interested in girls, soccer, and Power Rangers. That wasn’t the case for me. I loved drawing and playing with dolls, and I knew I was attracted to the same sex. This was confusing, and it made me feel as though expressing what was inside me was a huge risk. I couldn’t relate to other boys and men at school or home. I didn’t want to be rejected by everyone around me. I didn’t want to experience the pain of eternal damnation in Hell. So I prayed to God every day and night, begging him to take my feelings away. I practically ate, lived, and breathed the Bible in an attempt to suppress and deny who I was. But nothing changed inside me.
When I was fifteen, my mum saw self-inflicted cuts on my hands. I confessed that I was struggling with same-sex attraction and that I couldn’t grapple with the conflict between God, the church, and gayness. She was devastated. She cried, called me names, shouted at my dad for being lenient, and immediately sought the help of pastors and planned a deliverance session. She was concerned and wanted to help me change so I could join her and my dad “in eternal life with God.”
One sunny Thursday when I returned home from school, my parents called me to the sitting room, where there was a man I’d never seen before dressed all in white. I later learned that the man was a religious leader in a sect called The Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim. This sect differs from mainstream Christianity in that it is known for its white garment dress code and maintaining that only its founder, Moses Orimolade Tunolase, received the calling to go about preaching the gospel of the Lord and healing the sick.
What followed was religiously oriented conversion therapy. My first interaction with the sect was standard. The prayers started with appeals for me to get good grades and ward off evil eyes, then moved on to address the spirit of perversion, lust, and homosexuality. It was a horrible experience. The following week, my parents asked me to attend a service at their church wearing a white garment. Toward the end, I was called to the altar, where I was surrounded by elders, prophets, and prophetesses who prayed over me.
They went around me in a circle, singing, jumping, slapping and hitting me. Then they requested a broom, which one of the prophets used to hit me for a long time. My heart-wrenching screams shattered the uneasy peace in the community around the church. By the time they were finished, I felt excruciating pain all over my body. My mum refused to let me go home. Apparently, one of the elders had asked that I stay there for three weeks. I didn’t have a choice.
During that time, I was deprived of both food and water and placed in the middle of prayer circles, where I again was hit as a way to “beat out the homosexual spirit.” They ignored my cries for help and mercy. To them, this sin was too abominable and required drastic steps to break me out of the shackles with which Satan had bound me. By the end of the three weeks, I had learned that the only way to survive was to make the sect feel as if they had won.
I was in pain, tired, smelly, hungry, thin, and ill. I was desperate to go home. So I went along with the abuse as my days there came to an end.
At the end of the session, my mum suspected that nothing had changed. Even the spiritual leader to whom my mum looked to “convert” me knew not even his God could change my authentic self.
She decided to take me to another prayer house to deliver me from the “Spirit of feminine mannerisms.” The building reeked of incense and contained various colored candles and herbs on display. I was taken to the altar, where a middle-aged man dressed in white was waiting. Out of fear, I clung to my mum, who pushed me away and told me to comply. I was stripped naked, my hands were bound together, and I was made to sit inside a red basin that contained olive oil, ashes, and water. Fifteen lit candles surrounded me, emanating heat into the space. They wiped me down with five live chickens before ripping their heads off and collecting the blood in another basin for later.
Six hours later, the candles had melted and my body was so numb that I had to be dragged to the other side of the altar, where I was bathed with a mixture of warm water and chicken blood, accompanied by chanting from the Book of Psalms. Afterward, I was forcibly injected with a strange substance. I passed out, only to be revived at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
When I returned home after being discharged, I packed my belongings and left quietly. I never exchanged parting words and never saw my family again. Walking out of our family compound that day, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread. It was like a shapeless dark cloud closing in and suffocating me.
I left the entire state. My experience had made me grow to despise it. I needed to be somewhere safer, and Lagos was not an option. I had to find people like me, a community where I could openly be myself. The only gay friends I had were folks I’d met in social media groups, and they all lived in large cities. In Nigeria, the only place LGBT people can live openly in relative safety is bigger cities, like Abuja. I took to online message boards and began chatting with gay friends there. They said there were safe houses for gay people like me who had left our families. So, I moved to Abuja. Now that I’m here, I feel included and home among lovely friends.
Being gay is my identity, and that’s not going to change. I’ve learned I can still live an upright and righteous life without fear of rejection or eternal damnation, and without the regulation of the church weighing heavily on me.
Vee Basse is a medical student, content writer and story teller based in the southern region of Nigeria. He is a lover of classical music with special preferences to works from Mozart, George F. Handel and Beethoven. He volunteers for several medical and gender based Non-Governmental Organisations.
