Jayden Jones searches for acceptance

Rainbow Connection affinity group leader and junior Jayden Jones describes themself as more spiritual than religious, unlike most of their family, who practice Catholicism. While most of Jones’s family’s reactions to them coming out were positive, or at the very least neutral, there is one instance that stuck out in their mind.

“There was one time I came out to a family member of mine, and, you know, they were not very happy about it,” Jones said. “They were like, ‘God made you this way; God made you as a woman, and God makes no mistakes.’ And I was like, okay, well, Noah’s Ark is just a story about God screwing up and saying, ‘Now, we got to start this over.’ So I don’t know what you mean!”

While Jones is currently not an active member of any organized religion, growing up, they went through the traditional practices of having their first communion and so on, as well as adopting internalized homophobic ideas about themself.

“Even though I didn’t care about other people, you know, I wasn’t like, ‘Oh you’re you’re queer or you’re LGBT, yeah, no thanks.’ It was just more of like other people can do what they want but I myself cannot do that because that’s not me. Spoiler alert, it was.”

During this time, however, Jones was also beginning their journey of gender and sexuality discovery, as well as trying to find acceptance. They reflected on the first time they ever felt seen by a religious figure.

“For a couple of years, I was struggling, trying to figure out what was going on with me, and I just didn’t understand why I was different in terms of who I was attracted to and why I felt weird in my body,” said Jones. “And I was watching this video where there was a lesbian pastor, and she was talking to a gay minister. And, you know, the minister had spent most of his early life being in the closet and kind of scared of his environment. And the woman was like, ‘Well, what would you do right now if one of the kids that you work with came out to you as gay?’ And he said, ‘Oh, well I would be so supportive of them. I would love them because God doesn’t make any mistakes.’ And then the woman, she goes, ‘Then why do you punish yourself, child of God?’ And at that point in my life, I was like, ‘Oh, wait… Damn it!’”