Best-selling Christian author's intense path to his public coming out: 'A man at peace'

Long hair on boys? A sin. Holding hands in church? Also a sin.

Watching "The Smurfs" on TV? That was a sin, too — television shows with any element of magic in them were abominations to God.

Many mainstream activities and behaviors in the 1980s were sins at young Matthew Paul Turner's fundamentalist Baptist church, even watching movies in a theater.

Smoking? Huge sin, one that would literally have offenders burning in hell, church elders told frightened kids in Turner's Sunday school.

Homosexuality?

Well, that was 10 times worse than smoking.

"We talked about gay people like the lowest of the low," Turner said. "My dad would hear something about gays on the news, and he'd say, 'Every single one of 'em should be put on an island and be done away with.'"

Soon after college, Turner started moving away from Christian fundamentalism.

He eventually transformed into a progressive, inclusive Christian voice, first as Christian media writer and editor, then a blogger, then a New York Times best-selling children's book author of titles like "When God Made You" and "When I Pray for You."

His final, most dramatic and painful break with the church of his childhood — the church of his family of origin — came July 17, 2020, when he posted "difficult news" on Instagram that he was divorcing his wife, the mother of his three children.

"While we’re best friends and thoroughly love doing life, parenting, and pursuing our dreams together," Turner wrote, "ending our marriage is necessary because I am gay."

Turner and his now ex-wife, social media influencer and author Jessica N. Turner, got thousands of supportive comments and messages from around the world. That support grew stronger as the Turners figured out a loving way to co-parent, where they could live apart and still each see their kids every day, still vacation together, still do holidays together.

Still, in the past three years, Turner has faced hate, online and in person, from conservative critics who say being gay is a sin, who publicly wonder why he lied to his wife for all those years, who snarl that Turner's ex-wife is stupid for not knowing her husband was gay.

He has lost the close relationships he once had with his mom and his siblings. And Turner hasn't spoken to his father for nearly four years.

Turner, 50, said he's like many others in the LGBTQ community who spent years wrestling with confusion about his sexual orientation. He had the additional challenges, though, of growing up surrounded by complete intolerance of LGBTQ community members and of being a late bloomer.

As a boy, the target of slurs

Turner grew up in a tiny farming community in eastern shore of Maryland, the son of one of the founders of the fundamentalist Chestertown Baptist Church.

The boy was at the church nearly every day, going to school there full time, constantly being told what was right and wrong at church and at home.

Among the church's beliefs was that men were masculine leaders of families and the congregation.

"A man had to be a man, and a man had to look like a man. Women were silent. Women’s opinions were less. God ordained men to be leaders," Turner said he was taught.

As a boy, though, he was always small for his size and had a high speaking voice. He didn't hit puberty until he was 18. And that didn't sit well with his dad or some of the other kids, Turner said.

"I was hyper aware that I was not a manly or masculine kid," he said.

He said he got called "sissy" and other homophobic slurs all the time growing up.

"I would try to compensate, talk quieter so my voice would be lower."

Turner had his first girlfriend in 10th grade, a short-lived relationship.

"I heard guys talking about girls in a way that was sexual, and it felt weird and awkward," he said. "But we weren’t supposed to talk about girls that way."

Eventually, though, Turner, as the only boy among his siblings, was told he was expected to have kids to carry on the family name.

"In the environment I grew up, gay was not an option," he said.

So Turner never considered any romantic feelings he might've had about guys.

'For years and years, I hated myself'

He was in college away from home before he even thought about exploring those feelings.

"I looked for library books about the male body, in the encyclopedia for an entry explaining what it was to be gay. I looked at an illustrated photo, but it was a medical photo. That was my porn, if you will," he said, laughing.

"It would ebb and flow. I wondered, 'Why do I feel this way? Why do I think that?' There was lots of shame in looking in those library books."

In the meantime, he was wrestling with living outside of the church bubble, meeting Christians who didn't believe like he did, meeting people of other religions and meeting atheists in his classes, first in community college and then at Belmont University in Nashville.

Turner slowly changed his feelings about most tenets of fundamentalist Christianity.

But he carried the shame about his feelings about men all the way through his 20s, and beyond.

"For years and years, I hated myself for being attracted to men. I hated feeling what I felt being turned on by what I was being turned on by."

Including the moment when he was a 29-year-old Christian magazine editor in Nashville and he met a college student through AOL messenger.

"When I met Jessica, I fell in love. I really fell in love. I knew I wasn’t straight, but I also knew I was really attracted to Jessica," Turner said.

He and his wife were physically intimate and had three children.

"For other people, it may be hard to understand. But I wanted to get married to Jessica. I didn’t get married to Jessica because I was running from being gay," he said.

"I wanted a life with Jessica and she made me happy. She’s this strong, brilliant human. I believed we’d have a wonderful life and it would work," he said.

"I compartmentalized everything. I didn’t wake up thinking, I’m gay, or I’m attracted to men. It was this thing that was in the corner, and if it was in the corner, everything was going to be ok."

Turner said he loved being married, loved being a dad, loved just sitting in the same room where his kids were playing and his wife was reading a book.

He wanted to walk his talk

Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, a year after Turner got married, and he hated how recovery and aid came much slower to the poor and disenfranchised. That started a shift inside him, one where he wanted better for everyone, regardless of income, one where he thought everyone was deserving of love.

He wanted to believe God loved everyone regardless of race or sexual orientation. And he wanted his children to believe that God would love them — even if they were gay.

Turner started writing children's books to show his kids this loving God.

In "When God Made You," Turner wrote:

So be you, fully you, a show-stopping revue. Live your life in full color, every tint and every hue. ... Learn and relearn all that God made you for.

Turner wept hard when he wrote those words, knowing he wasn't fully being himself, he said. That started some depression, and Turner started to escape in work, in television shows and in other distractions. He started pulling away from his wife, and she suggested therapy.

In 2019, Turner, in a therapy session, told another person he was gay for the first time ever.

"It was freeing to be in a space where I could say the words without it exploding my whole life," he said.

Turner told his wife six weeks later, and that started several months of painful back and forth as to what they should do about their marriage and their family.

The two found a house to rent less than a mile away. They decided to separate.

And Turner — "my anxiety was through the roof" — knew he had to tell his parents and his siblings why his marriage was ending. So he made a video, sent it to them and ended it with, let's talk about this in a few days.

His family seemed supportive at first. Then Turner told them his wife asked him to publicly say why they were getting a divorce, and Turner's parents and siblings changed their tone in a Zoom call a few days later.

"They were like, 'Why in the world would you tell anyone you were gay? Why would you want anyone to know? We’re so disappointed.'"

Turner's children were loving and supportive, but his daughter asked a tough question:

"Why did you marry Mommy if you're gay?"

Advocacy and authenticity

When Turner came out on Instagram, he was overwhelmed with support.

"I got messages from people I had not interacted with in years," he said. "People came out of the woodwork from every corner of my story to show their support, show their love."

Among them was former church school classmate Julia Amling Raley, now a 50-year-old florist and grandmother in South Carolina, who hadn't been in regular contact with Turner for decades.

"I found out about Matthew's coming out like many of us did, when he shared online," she emailed The Tennessean.

"Of course I was supportive. Love is love, it holds no gender, faith, ethnicity, or economic bias. Can we take a moment to showcase his ability to rise above his fears, our cult-like upbringing, the undying hypocrisy YET still have a relationship with God?!" Raley wrote.

"His ongoing relationship with his wife and children is moving/touching and a powerful message to all families."

Several of his close friends in Nashville said Turner seems more at peace since coming out.

"l see a man at peace who's free," said Christian author Zack Hunt, one of the first people Turner told he was gay.

Turner is using his public platform now to advocate for the LGTBQ community, to rail against what he believes to be discriminatory laws being passed in Tennessee, to amplify his view of an inclusive, all-loving God. He often gets pushback on those posts.

"There’s a part of me that feels sorry for them. There's nothing I can do to change their perspectives," he said. "And I was raised in that environment and I certainly understand it. They have to have their own journeys for change to happen.

"But challenging their perspectives is necessary because their views limits everyone else's."

Turner said he has found purpose, peace and a deeper sense of authenticity since coming out.

"I spent years not belonging to myself, and because I couldn’t walk into a room and be fully me, I struggled," he said.

"Now, I get to wake up every day and to totally belong to myself, to my kids, to my friends. In finding my belonging, I have come back to life."

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384.

Matthew Paul Turner to read his new book

What: Children's book author Matthew Paul Turner will read his new book, "You Will Always Belong," at a local bookstore

When: 10:30 a.m. March 16

Where: Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pike

More info: ParnassusBooks.net

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Christian author Matthew Turner feels more authentic after coming out